The following is a letter that was sent to Rob Bell by the man who wrote to me here at Apprising Ministries in Breaking the Spell of Rob Bell:

Dear Pastor Rob,

As a former Navy officer, I have a few thoughts I’d like to share with you regarding the Peacemakers series. You say that instead of using the military to fight terrorism, we should just fight poverty. In reality, sometimes you need to do both. In fact, the U.S. military is fighting poverty in Iraq. The U.S. military has freed the captives, is feeding the poor, building schools, and building infrastructure in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the news media won’t tell those stories because they are not sensational. Did you know we’ve vaccinated about 98% of Iraqi children from polio? Please view this video to get a small glimpse of the other side of the story.
http://www.glennbeck.com/realstory/iraq-video.shtml

Please also listen to this clip of an Iraq woman thanking our troops.
http://fetch.noxsolutions.com/laura/mp3/kurd.mp3

Please watch the video clips on this site which also thank our country for freeing the Iraqis.
http://www.theotheriraq.com/

As you can see, there is another side of the story that is not being told. The bottom line is that evil does exist. America, although flawed, is a good nation. The terrorists are evil and are driven by an evil ideology. In reality our main enemy is not poverty, it is an ideology. Sometimes war is necessary to make peace and to stop evil.

I want to end with a quote: “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” John Stuart Mill

As Christians we are to strive for peace, but we are also to defend the defenseless and stand against evil. Peace at any price, a price that would lead to slavery and death is not something that we should stand for.

Sincerely,

Andy