Would Obama be “winning” in the Ukraine if he “baptized” more terrorists?

Sarah Palin told a recent crowd at an NRA rally that “if [she] were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.” It’s a quote that’s gotten a lot of attention in the past few days for several reasons, one being that it’s a complete mockery of Christian theology which has drawn criticism from conservatives like Mollie Hemingway and Joe Carter. The psalmist says that blessed is the one who “does not sit in the seat of the scoffers” (Psalm 1:1), Sarah Palin is exhibit A of what a scoffer looks like. She’ll throw her own religion under the bus as part of a joke glorifying torture in order to get applause. It shows how culture war can eat a person’s soul from the inside out. But what’s even more disturbing to me is the realization that this mockery represents a widely-held perspective on foreign policy: that the reason behind every crisis in the world, whether it’s Putin threatening the Ukraine or Nigerian Muslim terrorists kidnapping schoolgirls or even the Malaysian airliner and the South Korean ferry crisis, is that Obama isn’t “baptizing” enough terrorists and showing the world that ‘Mur’ka is in charge.

The first problem with the theory that Obama would be “winning” in the Ukraine and other places around the world if only he were more brutal with our enemies is that Obama has been “baptizing” plenty of terrorists and a whole lot of innocent civilians too with his administration’s drone strike program. In January, the total number of casualties from the drone strikes reached 2400. It’s estimated that anywhere from a third to half of the casualties have been civilians. Whatever the drone strikes do to disrupt the organization of terrorist groups, how much have they also done to increase the recruiting pool for terrorists?

What if Pakistan had remote control unmanned planes buzzing around shooting missiles in our airspace, and they only targeted the people who were directly responsible for civilian casualties in their country? Or actually if we’re fair, they wouldn’t have to target people who had killed civilians in their country but people who were developing the infrastructure in order to be able to do so if the opportunity arose. How many people involved in our military industrial complex could be included as the “terrorist network” that Pakistan targeted if they had the same criteria for their targets that we do for targets in their country? The only reason this scenario is unimaginable is because we’re way more powerful than Pakistan and we would obviously shoot down their drones immediately and launch a few nukes at their country as punishment.

Sarah Palin said in her speech that good foreign policy amounts to “putting the fear of God in our enemies.” Again, this shows a profound spiritual immaturity and lack of the fear of God on her part. Irony is not a strong enough word for the blasphemy of throwing around the “fear of God” as a phrase in a political speech. People who really fear God just don’t do that! In the Bible, the fear of God refers to the kind of integrity exhibited by powerful people who do what is right and just even when there are no consequences for exploiting their power and bulldozing other peoples’ rights. When your foreign policy involves acting in ways that you would call terrorism if they were done to you just because you can, then it utterly lacks the fear of God.

Now let’s consider the Ukraine as a foreign policy example. Would everything be going smoothly in the Ukraine if there was more respect for ‘Mur’ka in the world because Obama gave his speeches with a more commandingly self-righteous or threatening tone and backed them up with some cruise missiles for good measure? For the past few weeks, as part of my pastoral prayer in worship, I have lifted up the people of Ukraine and the very difficult situation they’re facing. They had a democratically-elected president Victor Yanukovych who was overthrown by a revolution. There’s been plenty of propaganda in the Western media about how corrupt Yanukovych was, but what if instead of egging on the revolutionaries to stick it to Russia, the US had pushed for some kind of power-sharing agreement in order to preserve stability?

I would wager that it’s the instability and lack of credibility of the brand-new Ukrainian government that is fomenting the boldness of the Russian separatists and Putin’s response to the situation rather than any lack of respect that they would otherwise have for ‘Mur’ka if we were launching more cruise missiles at them. Imagine how angry half of our country would be if street protests forced our president to resign and the leaders of the protestors became the new government. If Cliven Bundy was able to rally some neighbors with guns to defend his cows from the federal government, what do you think people like Bundy would do if a president on their side were overthrown by street protests? Would they look any different than the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine? That kind of chaos is unimaginable to us because thankfully, as bad as things get in our broken democracy, we’ve never had a complete rupture of it. Of course, there was a time in my life when I felt that a revolution was exactly what we needed, and sometimes I still feel that way.

Bottom line is this: Ukraine is a freaking mess, and the only part of that that could be conceivably blamed on our government is the way that we egged on the opposition when there was a chance to pursue a more stable resolution. I don’t think there’s really anything that the US can do to push back against Russia other than sanctions. We can’t just go to war with them so that the people who think that foreign policy is just another hockey game will get to scream Go ‘Mur’ka! The idea that our president is responsible for “putting the fear of God in our enemies” is ridiculous because God is the “leader of the free world,” not Obama.

There are things going on in the world that Obama can’t and shouldn’t do anything about. Believe it or not, the South Korean ferry disaster and the vanishing Malaysian airliner were actually not caused by Obama. As Christians, we can have no part in the idolatry of ‘Mur’ka exhibited in trying to make Obama responsible for everything that happens in the world. And we need to fear God enough not to turn the sacred words from our faith into reckless political slogans. Baptism is a gift of eternal life from a savior who turned his own torture by the great empire of his day into a source of liberation and healing for the world.