Jitterbugging for Jesus

He won me over years ago, back when he was on the ground reporting on the catastrophe that was Katrina, when he slam-dunked Sean Hannity, in a live report, for trying to play down the severity of the storm.

“Why don’t you come down and see how bad it is for yourself, Sean? I don’t have the words to describe the suffering and devastation.”

Here’s how the Real Reporter at FOX opened his afternoon program Friday:

“Are we about to be drawn back into a conflict in Iraq? The same people who 12 years ago told us this will be quick, this will be easy, this will be inexpensive, they will see us as liberators, it’s the right thing to do, are now telling us, ‘It’s the right thing to do.’ What’s the endgame? Who’s thought this through?”

I happened to be tuned in yesterday when the Real Reporter opened his program with this hard-hitting history lesson about our first catastrophe in Iraq, when America was hell-bent on exacting revenge on somebody–anybody!–in the wake of 911.

Here Shep not only names the names of the warmongers who whipped the country into a foam the first time we debated Iraq, he also recalls exacting details to Chris Wallace, underscoring just how utterly wrong a couple of our American leaders were in the buildup to Iraq:

“I don’t think people understand how serious this is yet. I’m talking about people out there because what happened was, we went to war after they told us, Paul Wolfowitz stood up and told us there are no sectarian troubles in iraq, remember? he was talking to Eric Shinseki at the time Chris, remember that? Said there are no sectarian problems in Iraq like we’ve seen in other places, they’re not going to rise up against each other. There’s no evidence of that. That’s what they told us.

“Then we went in there, we went in for eleven years, then we drew down as President Bush set a time line and president Obama got out. And when we drew down we asked to keep some soldiers there And Nuri-al Maliki said no to an agreement. Then we left. Their sectarian civil war began and they’re ringing us up on the phone asking us to come back because the half million men we trained quit, have melted away in the face of a few hundred insurgents. That’s what they’re wanting.

“Is there anybody pushing back?”

Not many at FOX are pushing back except Shep, God bless his fearless reporter heart.

I’ve been praying this morning for the innocent men, women and children in Iraq and the throughout the Middle East who are real people like you and me, who have names and faces as you and I do, and who are all made in the same image of God. Whatever Jesus would do, he sure as hell wouldn’t be calling to “bomb them back to the Stone Age” and let his Father above separate ’em.

I’ve been praying also that cooler heads will prevail in American leadership this time. That we won’t go half-cocked into another folly of a military adventure without, as Shep Smith says, thinking it through this time.

Let us pray, pray, pray, and let us think this time rather than riding the tide of avenging emotions.