Sometimes, reality catches up and passes us by. I began working on this column well over a month ago, before President Bush launched the war against Saddam. As I talked with various people, spent long hours in research (well, actually surfing the net) and interacted with long time friends and various “experts” in newspapers and message boards, I thought I detected something behind the scenes that most people were missing.

Most Christian discussion groups were rightly more concerned about the theology of going to war than about what Washington or Baghdad were screaming at each other. Sincere, motivated Christians who were concerned first about pleasing God in any action, were spending a lot of bandwidth analyzing whether the United States had the moral authority to wage war, in THIS instance. Even the most fervent “anti-war” Christians I talked with were primarily concerned with God’s regulations regarding war and how they were being (or not being) applied in the looming conflict with Saddam.

Part of their dismay was a reputed difference between what was being told to (or not being told to) the American people about the rationale for going to war. Many well-informed and articulate Christians pointed out that the justification being given by the Bush administration, did not always square with the facts. Some Christians asked “if the President had “proof” that Saddam was harboring WMD, why doesn’t he show it?” Others were aghast that at least for public consumption, some of the evidence seemed to be dependant upon discredited Iraqi defectors.

So if the STATED reasons for the war were invalid, what were the REAL reasons for invading Iraq? Some wondered if Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) should really be called, Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL). Many pundits, both Christians and secular have noted how France and Germany have contracts for Iraqi oil (as well as having sold them weapons systems) which might well explain why they refused to participate, and did everything they could to stop the American invasion. The Franco-Russo-Germanic “axis of weasels” all had long term investments in pipe-lines, oil field developments, as well as a market for selling their armaments that would be disrupted by the war. Surely, American imperialism was a way to de-stabilize the Euro and undermine their economies to keep America first?

Other Christians (my “Black Helicopter” acquaintances; I know some really, STRANGE people…) insisted that the entire invasion was a feint for the New World Order. American soldiers needed actual, practical experience in urban warfare before the “jack-booted thugs” began imposing a federal tyranny on the hapless and ignorant American people.

And there were many variations on a theme. A LOT of people were adamantly convinced that there was something nasty and sinister going on behind the scenes, even if no one could get it perfectly in focus.

Allow me to wade in with my own “conspiracy” theory; the “real” reason for the war was the beginning of God’s judgment against militant Islam. Whether Mr. Bush or his advisors realized it or not, the American military is being used by God as the latest step in a 1300 year old war between two rival worldviews; a war that had been in “cease-fire” mode for almost a century until rabid, anti-Western and anti-Christian forces in Islam began its resumption by terrorist attacks against the West.

First, the stated reasons for the war are at best inconclusive; i.e., to topple Saddam’s regime because they were unlawfully making WMD has yet to be proven, one way or the other (though by the time this column is posted the issue might well be settled if American forces DO find something). Granted, American intelligence MIGHT well have had definitive proof that would have stood up to international scrutiny but withheld it because it would have given away either our human or signals capabilities.

But Mr. Bush stated from day one, that the invasion was really about stopping terrorism. Yet, though some investigators insist there was a connection with Flight 800 or Oklahoma City, Iraq figures fairly low in terms of international terror states. Iran, Syria, Sudan, North Korea and even Russia are all far guiltier of exporting weapons, training terrorists and making a bundle on the deal than Iraq; so why not invade them?

I would suggest that Mr. Bush wanted to send a strong message to every nation that supported or encouraged terrorists. He warned them all after 9-11 that Afghanistan was simply the first in a series of dominoes to fall. But deposing the Taliban was a simple affair; taking out an industrialized nation such as Iraq, with the world’s fourth largest army must have sent shivers through every other terror supporting nation in the world. Iraq because of its non-compliance and proven history of vicious tyranny, was the perfect excuse to justify using armed force; armed force that could also be used against OTHER terrorist states.

Remember how the war began; with a surgical strike against Saddam? I think a message was being sent to various heads of state that if we could do that to Saddam, just think about what we could do to you? Tyrannical nations are ALWAYS led by a strong man; if you cut off the head, the entire government usually collapses. And even though they might have missed him; Mr. Bush certainly set a precedent that in any future conflict, the head of state was a legitimate target. And not every dictator is as paranoid as Saddam with bunkers and hidey-holes everywhere, never staying in any one place for more than a few minutes.

Don’t you think there are a few people around various national capitals who are sleeping uneasily these days? Have you noticed how North Korea, despite all its nuclear blustering before the war, has suddenly agreed to multilateral talks? Someone in North Korea got the message that Mr. Bush was sending!

Back during the Reagan years, Quadaffi in Libya was sponsoring, training and equipping terrorists, eventually blowing up an airplane full of civilians. Mr. Reagan sent in a few F-111 bombers from my old Air Force base at RAF Lakenheath, in England. Mr. Reagan blew up Murammar’s chemical weapons plant, and dropped a couple of “wish you were here” presents on his palaces. Murammar got the message and has been the first to deny ANY involvement in ANY terror-related activities since then.

And now, Bush the Younger is sending the same message. Already Syria, the hot bed of terrorism is being warned that “we know what you are doing and we have just proved we WILL take action.” After all the fluster and bluster and denials, I think we will see suicide bombings, attacks on civilians and hi-jacked airplanes dwindling over the next few years as terrorist resources dry up.

Militant Islam cannot compete with the West militarily, no matter how many billions of dollars they spend on advanced hardware. The only way they can hurt the West is by terrorism. WMD gives the average fanatic the opportunity to hurt even a great nation. But the terrorist cannot exist without the support of rogue states who train him, equip him, and provide him with WMD in the first place. He needs a safe place to hide, and the technical infrastructure to give him the weapons that could really hurt an entire nation. If America goes after the heads of these states, then we are undercutting their ability to put terrorists into the field.

The world has changed since the era of the Crusades when militant Islam could attack the fractured West and conquer vase areas of once Christian territory. While Western civilization was working out the implications of a truly Christian worldview and enjoying the blessings that come from a sovereign God, Islam was left behind in the middle ages. The last significant military victory for Islam was the conquest of the Byzantine Empire and the Fall of Constantinople that happened right around the time that an Italian Navigator made an historic trip to the New World at the end of the 15th century. Islam has been sinking into obscurity, poverty and tyranny ever since. And the ONLY weapon militant Islam can bring to bear is terrorism. If governments are wishy-washy and weak, they can be bullied into submission by suicide bombers, and hi-jackers.

Mr. Bush has, probably without even realizing it, now taken away Militant Islam’s only offensive weapon, to destabilize and intimidate Christendom, by attacking the nation-states supporting terrorism. In effect, he has disarmed one of the central threats to Christendom by giving specific political leaders every incentive NOT to allow terrorists to operate in their borders.

Thus the battle between these two worldviews, Islam and Christianity has now been moved from being fought on the battlefield, to the bedroom. Islam refuses to accede to secular humanism’s infatuation with birth control and abortion and is out-breeding the West. In the next fifty years, France and Germany will be Islamic states, because they are simply not reproducing themselves. In England, there are already more Muslims than Baptists and Methodists combined.

However, God is sovereign. His will, will be done on earth as it is in heaven. A thousand years from now, when historians look back on the 20th and 21st centuries, they will see secular humanism as an ideological aberration that contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It is the humanists who are cutting off their own future. Islam in the next fifty years, a less militant, more “humane” religion, will quietly go about building mosques and schools with Western oil money and achieve political power through immigration and increased birth-rates.

However, in THIS battle, if Christians will only start thinking about the future (and not just their own life-times) we will see God’s victory. One of the specific blessings of Deuteronomy 20 is that if God’s people obey Him, He WILL bless their labors for him. Social, economic and political prosperity are inevitably and uniquely the products of a Christian worldview. No other civilization in history has achieved what Christendom has achieved, nor can they achieve it. Thus either Europeans will repent of their sins and confess Jesus as Lord and be blessed, or they will fade into the ash-heap of history. A Muslim Europe will look just like a Muslim Middle-East; poverty stricken nations controlled by tyrannical despots with a brutalized and despondent people.

But if Christians obey God, look to His provident hand in the future, then we can expect His blessings to flow. In Korea, China, South America and Africa, there is a new generation of Christians growing up; a generation to replace failed European nations who traded their Christian heritage for humanist and socialist rubbish. And if these new nations embrace a consistent, Biblical worldview, and begin applying Biblical principles to their societies, wealth and power will flow to them. And the one factor that could have de-stabilized their development, and destroyed their future was a militant Islam; an Islam that has just learned the hard way that their last remaining weapon does not work.

And that is, I think the REAL reason for the war.