(Editor’s Note: The following article was written on April 15, 2043 by Eutychus Bailey, author and former North American pastor.  Because of amazingly quick internet access and the exponential growth of micro-processing speeds, Next-Wave is now able to publish this column forty years before it was actually written. This gives us the chance to get an unknowingly futurist perspective on where things are heading from this pragmatist writer observing his own times.)

Our nation is yet again on the brink of war this spring, as we seem to be at least once every presidential term.  It’s as though each US president must wage war at least once a term or be branded a softie by our electorate.

This kind of war pattern seems to stretch all the way back to the Cold War days in the last century, over 50 years ago.  Those were the last days in which war was seen as a last-ditch-effort only those with ice-water in their veins would support.  Of course, War in that era had the unhelpful baggage of the two super-powers most likely blowing one another into nuclear holocaustic smithereens.  Once the Soviet Union went the way of disco, wars became more manageable and one-sided affairs for the solitary superpower of which I’m a citizen.  And thus, the opportunity for the Bush Doctrine became too ripe to pass up.

People today will need a bit of a history lesson as a refresher course on what the Bush Doctrine is.  Forty years ago shortly after the turn of the millennium our President was George Bush, the latter, or #43 has he has often been called in history books because of his father’s Presidential term 8 years before him.

I know this is confusing already, kids, but stay with me here.  President Bush’s new doctrine and war campaign fit well in the post-Cold War era’s lack of a competing superpower.  More consequentially, in the feelings of people at the time, this doctrine responded to the historic terror attacks on the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City.  Bush began a series of military operations (as wars started to be called in those days) all over the world.  The initial targets for these wars had the taint of terrorism in their countries, and that was given as the greatest reason for the wars.  However, over a several year campaign the United States began to tout a new idea that henceforth became known by historians as the “Bush Doctrine.”  The Bush Doctrine meant that the United States was ordained by God in the first decades of the new millennium to spread democracy to any country that was deprived of it.  The now famous Bush mantra being, “Democracy is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.”  So President Bush spent the bulk of his 8 years in office (and the next 3 presidents followed suit) carrying out this new doctrine around the world as such war-induced democratized successes as Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and Libya began to convince the opponents of it.  The last of these four successes only came after the long-time dictator of that country died and the US launched a surprise attack with relatively few troops to seize control before his son could take over.

Well, that’s the bulk of the history lesson.  I may have lost you already on these distant events.  Let’s get back to more recent times….

Of course, the Bush doctrine has fallen out of favor today.  It was abandoned, historians point out, because for every dictatorship turned democracy there was a simultaneous reverse trend somewhere else in the globe.  Both France and Mexico’s rapid change in this direction were the most stunning in the 2020s—getting into some history that you might now remember and do not need an old man like me to recount to you.  However, the Bush Doctrine’s failure to conquer the globe with benevolent democracies may be tracked to the balancing of power the European Union super-nuclear-state caused.  Historians also point out China’s rapidly increasing influence on the cultural consciousness of the world.  Where at one time the US could depend on its economy and entertainment to conquer where its armies had not yet tred, China’s economic might and entertainment muscle eventually changed the game.  We now have three super-powers in effect these days, as much as our country may still hold the best cards in the deal.

So this Doctrine is perhaps why we find ourselves again in the mess of war in what we thought would be a much more advanced and peaceful 2043.  We have never been that proficient at using the military as a hammer before offering the hand of democracy and then with it (as many Americans hoped) offering the heart of Christianity.  This tactic just reeked of too much dissonance for the countries of the world.  We see that truth now as anti-American (which also means anti-democratic and anti-Christian these days) sentiment has overthrown the US-supported governmental systems of three of our four early century Bush Doctrine successes.

It is unfortunate that being a Christian in other countries of the world has become synonymous with being a USA-supporting political puppet.  This has hindered the gospel in many places and cost the lives of many a missionary from the U.S.  Is it any wonder that the most successful missionaries are now from China? We have lost any credibility in the world today, and I don’t make this as a political statement—because in large part I supported the Bush Doctrine along the way in my younger days as most Americans did.  Rather, I simply say that we didn’t see where this would end up.

Christianity in its Western form was so closely tied to American culture that when the US became globally marginalized Western Christianity was the baby tossed with the bathwater.  Of course, many are saying this isn’t a bad thing, since Eastern Christianity has been on the rise for 75 years and is creating a new epicenter for the faith.  And in light of our continuing warring conflicts, the U.S. just isn’t the best starting point on the planet for demonstrating the Love of Christ.

But what are we in America to do?  Can our country's leaders sit idly by as plane after plane is brought down by terrorism sponsored so boldly by other countries? Can our people ignore the bombings that now seem to happen monthly in our cities? We cannot.  However, where once a bombing in our largest city initiated offensive wars to spread an ironic and eventually intermittent peace, now these bombings force us into simply defensive actions in a pathetic attempt to hold on to any dignity and power we once had in the world in a solitary fashion.

Even old #43, who passed away just last year, would turn in his grave today if he saw us gathering our military along our northern border.  But that is the fact as we prepare to retaliate against the country of the terrorists that blew up the Capitol building this Christmas – since the Canadian government will not turn them over to us.

Past Next-Wave “Eutychus Reports" are found at:

www.next-wave.org/jun02/futuretraditions.htm

www.next-wave.org/jul02/abortion.htm