It was bound

to happen sooner or later.

A few days

ago, CNN featured a story about a young Iraqi boy who had been terribly

wounded, presumably by coalition bombing. The boy, who appeared to be

between seven and ten years old, was horribly burned from the chest down

and was missing his right arm at the elbow. According to CNN, the boy's

pregnant mother and a sibling were killed. The child, in obvious agony,

said that if he couldn't have an artificial arm, he wanted to die.

I watched as

long as I could with a lump in my throat and a growing moistness in my

eyes. War is a terrible thing. Finally, I could tolerate it no longer.

I switched off the television and went to look for a book.

Walking into

the dining room, I picked up a book that I bought a few weeks after September

11, 2001. I thumbed through the pages, absorbing the images of exploding

airplanes, falling towers, doomed firefighters and police officers, twisted

steel, a burning Pentagon building, the debris of Flight 93 in a Pennsylvania

field, screaming survivors, exhausted rescue workers, weeping children,

and rejoicing terrorists, some dancing in the streets of Middle Eastern

nations.

I reminded

myself of the "shock and awe" endured by this nation's citizens

in the gruesome aftermath of the day that over 3,000 innocent lives were

snuffed out by evil and malevolent men. I recalled the eyes of the orphaned

children pictured on the news as they attended their parent's funerals

and struggled to understand why Mommy or Daddy would never come home again.

I remembered

the tears I shed that day, the horror I felt, and the burning anger that

would come weeks later and remain for months. I recalled the grim determination

I felt as I placed the American flag on my front porch and vowed that

it would fly every day until the people responsible were captured or killed.

The flag flies still, although I replaced it with a new one on September

11, 2002. The war in Iraq has never been about oil, or power, or even

about the liberation of the Iraqi people, regardless of what the news

reporters, the nay Sayers, or the politicians say.

On April 12,

1861, the American War Between the States began. According to one author,

"Historians

have long debated the causes of the Civil War. Many of them maintain that

slavery was the root cause. In his second inaugural address in 1865, Lincoln

said of slavery: 'All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause

of the war.' But most historians agree that the war had a number of causes.

They note especially the sectional division between North and South-that

is, the differences in economies, ideals, and ways of life. They also

point to the disputes between the federal government and the states over

what rights and powers the states possessed. Historians further mention

the blunderings of politicians and the disorder in the American political

party system during the 1850's."

In any event,

it was well over a year later, not at the beginning of the war, when the

conflict was losing the support of many of the Northern people, that Lincoln

issued his "Emancipation Proclamation." It is a myth that the

proclamation freed the slaves. The document freed the slaves only in those

states that were in rebellion against the United States. The slaves who

were in the Northern states remained slaves until 1865. Even when Lincoln

issued the proclamation on September 22, 1862, it did not take effect

until January 1, 1863, and, as a war measure, could have been reversed.

What Lincoln

did do, and very successfully, was to turn the war into a "noble

cause." The war, from the Northern point of view, was a war to "preserve

the union." It became, with the stroke of Lincoln's pen, a war to

"free the oppressed slaves." The North did use blacks in the

Union army, but restricted most to noncombatant roles (those who were

allowed to fight performed heroically) and only paid them half of what

white soldiers received. The bottom line is that the Union was preserved

(the goal of the war) and the scourge of slavery was (as a byproduct of

the war) eliminated.

The war in

Iraq is about self-defense. The war in Afghanistan, against the Taliban

and the forces of Osama bin Laden, was and is about self-defense. It makes

us feel good and noble to proclaim that we are "freeing the Iraqi

citizenry from the 'Butcher of Baghdad,'" but it is a byproduct of,

and not the reason for, the war. The war in Iraq is about never, ever

allowing another September 11. It is about taking the fight to the turf

of the terrorists, and those who support them, and eliminating the threat

before they kill another 3,000, or 30,000, or 3 million, should they obtain

weapons of mass destruction. It is about putting the world on notice,

including the rogue nations who breathe threats in our direction, that

they attack the American people at their grave and serious peril.

I am saddened

because of the war. War is a terrible thing. But I am reminded that this

war, the war in Afghanistan, and any future war against those who would

endanger America, was not of our making and not of our choice.

Americans are,

enter the World Wars and our tendency to be isolationists. But, as history

proves, those who attack and assault our nation will be the recipients

of a terrible retribution. May the would-be murderers and tyrants of the

world learn from the missteps and the fate of others. And, God willing,

may we live in peace.

[David Epps

is rector of Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church on Ga. Highway

34 between Peachtree City and Newnan. He may be contacted at [email protected]

or at www.CTKCEC.org.]