Unfortunately, our quick-fix minute-rice instant-oatmeal fast-food culture has largely lost touch with the fact that some struggles take a long time, and that even tough, long-term fights may well be not only worth fighting but necessary to fight. I think most of our churches have lost the stomach for that, which is why the long victory of discipleship, with the lifelong struggle to put sin to death in our lives and replace it with trust in Christ, is foreign to so many who consider themselves Christians; and I’m quite sure we’ve largely lost the stomach for it in our politics. We may talk the talk of long-term effort, but we don’t often walk the walk. That I’m sure is at least part of the reason (along with partisan opportunism) why the war in Iraq became so unpopular: it stopped being easy. Once it no longer looked like a cakewalk, a lot of folks stopped supporting it.
I’m glad, though, to see President Bush (finally?) call that attitude out:
I have to wonder (not originally, I know) what that reporter, and our press corps as a whole, would have made of World War II, or the Civil War . . . (According to Wikipedia, the American death toll of the entire Iraq War through the end of this month stands at 4,058 deaths, 3,320 in combat. In World War II, the Battle of the Bulge alone claimed 19,000 American dead.)
HT: Ed Morissey