Democracy for Vancouver

Or bin Laden’s? Or maybe Ahmadinejad’s?

FALLUJAH, Iraq — At the western entrance to the Iraqi city of Fallujah Tuesday, Muamar Anad handed his residence badge to the U.S. Marines guarding the city. They checked to be sure that he was a city resident, and when they were done, Anad said, a Marine slipped a coin out of his pocket and put it in his hand.

Out of fear, he accepted it, Anad said. When he was inside the city, the college student said, he looked at one side of the coin. “Where will you spend eternity?” it asked.

He flipped it over, and on the other side it read, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.”

“They are trying to convert us to Christianity,” said Anad, a Sunni Muslim like most residents of this city in Anbar province. At home, he told his story, and his relatives echoed their disapproval: They’d been given the coins, too, he said.

They couldn’t fulfill al Qaeda’s master plan any better if they took direction for the Scary One himself.

Invade their country? check. Terrorize and subjugate their people? check. Forcefully convert them to Christianity?

check.

Why would they think it’s a Crusade?

The arrogance of it is astonishing. But what’s more troubling is that the Marines in question probably think nothing of it: they’re just spreading the Gospel.

When I was in 8th grade, I used to “ask” my friends for a puff of his or her cigarette, and when they gave it to me I’d break it in half. It was an infuriating, asshole move - I should have just told them I thought they were stupid for smoking. But I was 12. And I had no more power over them than the fallout of a spat between friends.

These are full grown men (and, I presume, women), with automatic weapons and the power of life and death over the people they are judging as worthy or not to pass into their own city, and from their power-perch these Marines ask, “Where will you spend eternity?”

How is that different from “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

I don’t subscribe to Richard Dawkins‘ vilification of all religion as poisonous and hate-mongering, but this makes me understand his position a bit better.