I think it is time to read Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran - released in September 2006.

It is the story of  the US Coalition Provisional Authority. I suspect many people depicted in the book have already read it. And I suppose many voters in the US that need to read it won’t.

The news in the US at the moment is that G.W. Bush is replacing top military, intelligence and state department people and preparing a ’surge’ - a clinical and detached word for more troops in Iraq.

In the evangelical blogosphere around the world, many of us have simply stopped posting about the Iraq war. I’ve been wondering why, even as I read two more Hussein loyalists are to be executed this weekend. I also read predictably, that the Iraq witness with the cell phone was arrested. I read about the meeting of Iraq and US officials, I read about the US helicopter transport. I read about the last minute consultation with Muslim religious leaders. Most people around the world knew the day the former Iraq leader was dragged out of his hole he was a dead man. We didn’t know three defense authorities would die, we didn’t know a lot of things. But we did know a dead man walking.

I read a comment last week mocking the Catholic Church for speaking out on the execution of Suddam Hussein. I wish now I’d bookmarked it to prove I’d read it. It was on an evangelical blog and it was so far into it’s own reality, I was left speechless. The poster believed the Catholic Church had no authority to say anything about the death penalty because the belief was the Roman Catholic Church didn’t speak up for the lesser known. No mention was made of of Protestant groups that spoke out around the world.

What has the evangelical community in the US said?
Like me, pretty much nothing.

Brian MacLaren posted at God’s Politics at Beliefnet and asked what I call the front line trauma question. “How do you feel”…about…the execution of Suddam Hussein?

Are the comments under the post surprising?
No.
He is predictably attacked, some commenters are short on facts and quick to miss the nuance of what he posed. Not everyone did, but careful and honest voices are drowned out. This is not fair of me, but I find myself wondering if some are paid to dominate and inhabit certain comment sections to distract, mock, bible thump and silence. Desperate, partisan and cocky anger has continued to be something many of us have seen online prior to the US invasion of Iraq in pockets of US evangelicals. I do not believe silence is always complicity. Sometimes it is wise to walk away from foolish argument, and do I not always know when it is time to break silence with my fellow man.

I think it’s time to read Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

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