Onward Christian Soldiers!

How does a Christian relate to war and military service.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

My good friends who like Ron Paul's foreign policy approach are a stubborn lot.  They keep sending me articles and weblinks, Youtube videos and links to documents in an effort to convince me to accept the apparent core doctrines that they hold. The main ones I've heard are

1. "George W. Bush was evil"
2. "We ought to withdraw all troops back home. No one would dare attacks us here because there's too much water separating us from them. Besides we're too big to attack."
3. "If we leave the world alone, they will love us again and everything will be hunky dory." 

Oh, you mean like detente'?  I don't remember that working out so well for us back in the 70s.

I carefully read the latest piece by a former Air Force pilot turned priest out of respect for my friend. It supports, of course, the idea that we ought to have a military, but just not use it and that Christians should probably not participate in the military at all. 

I was doing okay until he blithely cited some revisionist history about World War II and our use of nuclear weapons.  He stated flatly that Japan wanted to surrender, but would just wouldn't accept it.  He ignores the account of Japanese Army officers' attempts to kidnap the emperor to prevent him from announcing the surrender on the radio. This was after two nuclear strikes on the homeland. I have read accounts by Japanese officers and historians much closer to the action that make it clear that a last ditch, hedgerow by hedgerow fight for the homeland was, not only planned, but embraced by soldiers and civilians alike. It seems pretty obvious to me that the specter of dying uselessly in a nuclear blast, unable to take an enemy with you, completely unmanned the Samuri in the officer corps sufficiently to convince them to accept the ignominy of surrender.

 

The thing that colored the writer's opinion most, I believe, was his military experience.  The war in which he served was Vietnam - a US foreign policy disaster if ever there was one. Eisenhower warned us of the power and dangers presented by what he called the military-industrial complex in his final speech as president. He was right. Vietnam little more than a corporate war run by war profiteers and supported by both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It was about field testing new equipment and experimenting with "limited warfare" as a form of diplomacy by other means. Our soldiers were mistreated, hamstrung and placed in an impossible situation where most still managed to serve with honor despite the horrific conditions into which they were thrust.

 

Limited warfare is always a bad idea. War is a blunt instrument that should only be used in extreme circumstances. It is almost never used effectively by the U.S. because we are so damned ambivalent about it's use.

Were we to use total war selectively and with a clearly conceived policy behind it, we would be a far more effective "global force for good" (as the new Navy recruiting commercials put it). Orson Scott Card's fictional "Ender" novels outline what such a strategy might look like. His books are read at West Point by soldiers studying policy issues related to warfare. Card's hero, Andrew Wiggin reacts to any attack with sudden and overwhelming force and insures his attacker can do him no more harm.  The policy implications are something I could get behind. I
Extrapolated to the world stage, the policy would go something like this:

 

1. Leave your neighbors in peace. Treat others the way you would like to be treated.
2. If attacked, respond instantly and with overwhelming force instantly. Go after the instigators of the attack and remove them. Do not stop till they are no longer able to wage war against you.
3. Help clean up the damage caused by the war. Help those caught in the middle to rebuild their lives.

The writer* of the piece I read, incorrectly credits President Reagan with almost starting a nuclear war. Reagan did no such thing! He built our own military to a high state of readiness. It was the Soviet Union's leaders, seeking to preserve their own power and position that were pondering starting a nuclear war. They did not because they knew we would fall on them like a ton of bricks if they did. There was no way for them to win, so they did not fight. We came far closer to war when our nation was engaging in detente'. We looked vulnerable and the Soviets assumed they would eventually find a way to take us down.
 
Reagan wasn't always able to consistently follow his own policy. Political expediency forced him to focus on those he considered our most dangerous enemies and compromise with the diplomats and Democrats in other cases.  That intense focus on the mission at hand, he successfully eliminated an entire class of very dangerous nuclear weapons and made a "first strike" attack by either side almost impossible.

 

It is a shame that diplomat types went back to the same old confused military strategy after he left office.

 

The Hebrew language in the Old Testament's Ten Commandments probably reads less like "Thou shalt not kill" and more like, "Thou shalt preserve life". Others have suggested "Thou shalt not murder." Whatever it says, the Old Testament often suggests killing as a political solution for a nation state when it is under attack. God, Himself, wiped out whole cities. Based on my knowledge of God's character, I suspect such drastic action was done in the interest of preserving life. There was a time in recent history when a nuke on top of Hitler's mountain hideaway would have saved a lot of lives. 

The Jews did a lot of killing at God's instruction.  Sounds terrible, but remember that many of the pagan cultures of the time were slaughtering tens of thousands of innocents on pagan altars and in innumerable raids on their neighbors and wars of conquest. Israel became known for cleaning out the corrupt and evil inhabitants of the land as they settled Canaan. That's why there was a huge mixed multitude. Many of those inhabitants, like Rahab and her family, recognized that things would be better without the corrupt kings, sleazy priests and evil gods and joined the Hebrew nation and joined up with Israel.

  

Ecclesiastes suggests there is a "time to kill and a time to heal". It is difficult for a Christian to decide which time that is. It is why many Christians adopt a noncombatant role in conflict. Some Christians do, however, feel called to participate in defending our country. That's why so many join up in the aftermath of events like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. We feel the call to protect our nation. Since we are not the president or congress, we have to rely on God to guide those men in their decision-making and do our best to serve as best our conscience dictates.

  

I know a lot of folk would like hard and fast, black and white rules that apply all the time and in all circumstances. God gives us 10 basic ones. Jesus whittled them down to two. Then God surrounded those nice black and white principles with hundreds of pages of interpretation, necessitating that a Christian spend his entire life on his knees with that book and in prayer trying to figure out how to apply what he has learned in the real world.

  

I don't know all the answers. I know from experience how to deal with thugs and bullies. I know from experience that being the one who stands in the breach and deals with those thugs and bullies can very easily turn you into one yourself if you're not careful.

 

Two presidents, I think, made an attempt to move our military policy in the right direction. They were both dragged down by politicians and pundits and never able to fully implement the kind of effective military policy that might have brought us peace. Ronald Reagan understood peace through strength and reminded the Russians that "trust but verify" was their own old adage. He defeated a real enemy and almost made them our friends if later politicians hadn't messed it up. We should have shared what we learned during our SDI program with the Russians as Reagan promised. I think we'd be better friends now. Instead, political backbiting killed SDI and left us with only the marginally effective Patriot missile system when we needed it in the Gulf War. 

 

The other president who got it, was George W. Bush. His dad didn't. When Sadaam overran Kuwait, Bush did exactly the right thing. He gathered a coalition and took back Kuwait and gave it back to its people. His mistake was not striking back with overwhelming force and eliminating Sadaam Hussein. Had we done so, there would have been relatively little further bloodshed. The Iraqi Army was defeated and unwilling to fight any further. They knew they were in the wrong and I believe that we could have taken Iraq, set up a new government and been out of there before the end of the century.

  

Instead, we reinforced a lunatic's belief that he, personally, was invulnerable. We abandoned those who revolted against Sadaam and left them to slaughter. We encouraged fanatic jihadists and made ourselves a target instead of a trusted friend. We absolutely missed an opportunity.

  

George W. knew we had to take out Sadaam and the Taliban in order to prevent a wholesale jihad against the U.S. spurred on by the successful attacks on 9/11. It was messy and not as effective as it could have been had we finished the job the first time around.

 

George W. and Donald Rumsfeld attempted to lead the military to a new "leaner, meaner" design structure which emphasized special ops troops (highly trained nation builders) over massed armor and huge formations. They tried to skip a generation of weapons and go straight to weapons that were faster, cheaper and more deadly.

 

Again, the congress, the political generals at the Pentagon (David Hackworth's "perfume princes") and the military-industrial complex launched a campaign to discredit that whole idea, continued to waste money on big ticket projects and to move massive formations around the battlefields like so many chess pieces.

  

We had an opportunity and we missed it because the powers that be in congress were addicted to a big, expensive, awkward military that spent tons of money in their districts for big defense contracts. Rumsfeld and Bush took the blame in what was, in essence, a blizzard of a snow job by big defense contractors and the stooges they support in the Congress. We could do better, but, so long as the military is run by self-serving "perfume princes" instead of warriors in service of the people, boys will die needlessly in half-cocked, ineffective fights all over the world.

 

Why do we put up with Somali pirates, for instance? A few Seal teams riding on a few ships so that the pirates didn't know where they were, could obliterate any attacking force. How long would it take for word to get around that if you wanted to spin the old "wheel o' luck" and attack a ship in the Gulf of Aden, there was no chance you would leave the scene alive?

 

Remember what Reagan did after the attack on our servicemen in Germany by the Libyans? He bombed Ghaddafi's flippin' house. Remember what happened when a couple of Libyan fighter planes decided to play chicken with US Navy Tomcats and popped off some shots at them? The Libyan Air Force was suddenly missing some planes. Remember how quiet Ghaddafi got after that? Remember how anxious he became to restore good relations with the US when our tanks rolled into Baghdad?

 

We should not play around with evil men. Removing evil people can be "destabilizing", but if done consistently, evil men become much more well behaved after only a few examples.

 

Americans, however, and Christians in particular, have no stomach for this kind of warfare. We're peaceful people and we live in hope that we can rap the knuckles of bad boys and reform them It never has worked well with bullies in our public schools it doesn't work with international bullies.

 

I saw this played out on the playground once. Eight grade thugs were making the lives of the smaller kids in the junior high school miserable. A very large young man, Charlie, who wasn't part of the "in":group anyway, was sympathetic with the oppressed kids. The got sick of it and next time it happened, he placed himself between the kids and their tormentor and politely asked them to stop. One of the bully boys laughed and took a poke at our hero. When the dust settled, he was stretched out on the ground with two black eyes, some assorted bruises and a total disinterest in persecuting his fellow many any further. Charlie took three licks from the principle for fighting. When he walked back out onto the playground, the smaller kids were his devoted followers. The bullies slunk quietly away. Word got around that Charlie would take licks if he had to in order to defend his friends and that getting a beating from Charlie was very painful. Charlie's "foreign policy" led to a very peaceful school year for everyone.

  

Maybe, that's a simplistic solution, but I do think it would work.

 

Sadly, I don't think a Pax Americana is possible in this world. Too many bullies and too few brave men and women. Thank God, Jesus is coming to rescue His own.

 

Incidentally, from my reading of Scripture, what happens to the bullies when He comes back will not be an exercise in detente'.

 

Just my opinion.

 

Tom King

 

*Making War: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.

Would We Be Better Off If the South had Won the Civil War

There is a cadre of so-called conservatives - I think they're mostly Libertarians - that have been lately arguing that Lincoln was evil and that we'd all be better off if the South had won because slavery would have ended "naturally".

Really?

The problem with that idea is that the South was NOT anything like a free market, pro-liberty democracy at the start of the civil war (or as my Libertarian friends know it, the "War of Northern Aggression"). The Old South was an Oligarchy back then, much like Mexico is today.  An elitist class of plantation owners dominated a poor peasant class of small farmers and merchants, who didn't argue much with their betters. The elite ruling class also owned the serf class (black slaves who were treated as little better than cattle).


You know, I might buy the argument about the South being all about "states right"except for that pesky Confederate constitution. That thing absolutely established slavery as a cornerstone of the new nation. You don't put something like that in a CONSTITUTION if you plan on letting it "die naturally".

Slavery was wrong and needed to be ended, period. The rather sudden and violent end it came to may have been God's own judgment against the South for condoning of slavery in its most vile forms. Religious leaders of the time argued that until the Union and the President came out against slavery, God would withhold His hand from blessing the war effort. Lincoln's reluctance to come out rock solid against slavery was because, as some Libertarians point out, he first wanted to preserve the Union. It was a mistake. It was like slowly pulling a band-aid off a healing wound. Better to yank it hard and quick. The war concentrated the misery over a few years instead of stretching emancipation out a hundred years or so.  It would have been a mistake to do so.  Even though the Southern oligarchy fought tooth and nail to maintain it's "good old boy" power structure for more than a century, the Civil War greatly reduced their ability to lord over the middle class the way they had before the war.  The middle class got a really clear look at how they had been used in the antebellum South by the fancy folks in Atlanta and Richmond and the local gentry in their slave-maintained mansion houses. When it came down to it, the plain folks were the ones that did most of the dying and for what. So the massa's could have their mint juleps served to them on the veranda by servants who properly knew their place?

This country was, I believe, established and blessed by God for the purpose of providing a harbor for his children - red and yellow, black and white. We've lumbered toward the freedom and respect for the rights of others for the past 200 years, making fits and starts and occasionally backsliding. In the process, His church has grown strong and mighty, protected within the borders of the United States. My own church, established here in the U.S., has over 150 some odd years spread throughout the world so that there are many more members of our denomination outside the U.S. than there are in it. I think that's the real reason God made this country the way it is.

I think God put Abraham Lincoln where he was, knowing full well He had a tool He could use to accomplish His will. I think He put Lee in place to punish the North for tolerating slavery for its own purposes and He put Grant in place to finish the work Lincoln started with the Emancipation Proclamation (despite its obvious initial inadequacies).

He put honorable men in the Southern ranks too, to be used as He needed them. There's that great story where, after the war, a black man entered the Episcopal church in Richmond and walked bravely down the center aisle and took his place at the communion rail to receive communion. Everyone was shocked and sat rooted in their seats. This was an all white church and only months after the end of the Civil War. The pastor stood frozen in place. Then a gray haired gentleman in the congregation rose from his pew and walked straight down the aisle. He knelt at the rail beside the black gentleman and waited for the pastor to administer the rites of communion to them both.

The pastor did so. After all, how could he not. The white gentleman kneeling beside the black man was Robert E. Lee.

I will not presume to second guess God's guidance in the events of the Civil War as some of my conservativish colleagues do. It was a horrible and bloody episode to be sure and no one had pure motives.  All the same, I am not sure letting the South go in peace as has been suggested, would have created the world we have today or given us the opportunities we have. The USA and CSA would likely have both been second rate powers in the world and dominated by the likes of Britain, Germany or Japan or some combination of those old European powers.

I don't think God was quite ready for the world to end and I think that He preserved the Union for His own purposes.

I, for one, having grown up in the South and having an intimate knowledge of how the white oligarchy works, even in its faded state 150 years after the Civil War and am heartily glad those arrogant gentleman took a thorough beating and had their power much diminished. I would not want to live in the CSA had they won their war. What a horror that would have been.

Texas should never have joined the South in seceding. Sam Houston, who was wrong about a lot of things (particularly his unreasonable hatred for the Texas Navy), was right about not seceding from the Union. He wasn't alone in that sentiment and after all the bigoted idiots went off to war and had their numbers thinned dramatically, I think Texas wound up with a better quality of human being living here. So, that too may have been God's will.

At any rate, I have good evidence that God used Abraham Lincoln, shortcomings and all at a time when God needed someone to stand in the breach.

I don't think God cares about capitalism or state's rights, socialism, libertarianism or whether or not an oligarchy gets preserved in the south or an industrialist robber baron dominated culture gets preserved in the North. "The King's heart is in the hands of the Lord and He turns it whichever way He will." I believe God works whoever thinks he is in power to God's own purposes, though we may not understand those purposes.


I admire Lincoln because he came to see that he was wrong about slavery and that it cannot be tolerated and he did the right thing. I admire Lee because he helped heal the damage done in the South by his example in the years following the war. I admire Grant for his tenacity and stubborn belief in the righteousness of his cause. I admire Sherman for his magnanimity toward the Southerners in establishing surrender terms (it almost got him arrested by Congress).

If letting the South win the war had been a good thing, then I do believe God would have let them win the war. You guys who argue that He was wrong, are braver than I. I wouldn't want to try and argue that God made a mistake - not when Scripture so obviously predicts the role the US will play in the ending of the world and the Second Coming.

Obama and his ilk, the country club Republicans and their cronies are nothing more than tools in God's hands. We are commanded to pray for them. Remember, it was God who hardened Pharaoh's heart and it worked out for His own purposes. I think it was for the purpose of turning the Jews from slaves into the mule-headed independent minded people they are today. He led them for 40 years in the desert and He helped them win when it helped that process and even caused them to lose in wars and campaigns when they needed to learn a lesson. It took hundreds of years for God to teach them to be who He wanted them to be. But, as a result of all this education, when it came time to spread the gospel to the world, Jesus was able to find 12 monumentally stubborn Jewish guys who would do just that in spite of the incredible odds working against them.


I think this country was designed by God to breed and train the stubborn, muley-headed people that stand today in the breach, prepared to fight the last battle in Earth's history. I think a lot of them are in the Tea Party movement, but there are a lot of them in the Democrat and Republican parties as well. There are plenty of these folk who are in no party at all.

God bless 'em and thank God for 'em, I say. So how about let's everybody quit second-guessing our Commander on the subject of history. He knows what he's doing. Perhaps what we should be doing is studying history to figure out just what God, in His wisdom was up to. I think that's a more profitable use of our time.


Tom
(c) 2010


* I use the term "conservative" loosely here noting that the logical abbreviation for both liberal and libertarian is the same. Coincidenc or vast left-wing conspiracy? You decide.

Prophets and Unions and Socialists, Oh My!

Glenn Beck is not alone in distrusting unions....

© 2011 by Tom King

A best-selling writer (not a radio talk show host or conservative blogger) wrote the following excerpts:

“Those who claim to be the children of God are in no case to bind up with the labor unions that are formed or that shall be formed. This the Lord forbids. Cannot those who study the prophecies see and understand what is before us?"

"A few men will combine to grasp all the means to be obtained in certain lines of business. Trades unions will be formed, and those who refuse to join these unions will be marked men."

“These unions are one of the signs of the last days. Men are binding up in bundles ready to be burned.”

"Unionism has revealed what it is by the spirit that it has manifested. It is controlled by the cruel power of Satan. Those who refuse to join the unions formed are made to feel this power. The principles governing the forming of these unions seem innocent, but men have to pledge themselves to serve the interests of these unions, or else they may have to pay the penalty of refusal with their lives."

Her name was Ellen White and members of her church consider her one who had the gift of prophecy, though she did not, herself, claim to be a prophet. In fact, the church considers refusal to join unions a tenet of faith because of a whole series of these warnings to the church that unions would eventually be complicit in the actions that will confirm the power of the Anti-Christ, the so-called “Beast” of Revelation. She wrote these warnings in the late 1800s and early 20th century until her death in 1915. Whether you believe she had the prophetic gift or not, her warning against unions (and corporate monopolies) seems prescient given that at the time, unions were actually accomplishing some good on behalf of workers in areas like child labor, workplace safety and fair pay.

Today, a hundred years later, we see Union-sponsored unrest worldwide and spreading quickly. Mrs. White was not the last person to issue warnings about unions either. In the 1950s, newspaperman Victor Riesel had acid thrown in his face for warning about union corruption. The Kennedy brothers, Jack and Robert, both made efforts to address union corruption issues and faced threats on their lives for their trouble. Notably, Robert Kennedy once claimed that Americans didn't know of tenth of how corrupt the union bosses were.

Recently, radio talk show host, Glenn Beck, has drawn widespread public ridicule from mainstream media pundits for his allegations that unions are part of an unholy alliance with progressive socialists and Islamist fanatics.

Yet, many Christians find themselves increasingly uncomfortable with the behavior of unions in a world in which sweeping cultural and political changes appear to be marginalizing, if not actually threatening, the faith. Union leaders, increasingly anti-capitalist and pro-socialist with a dash of atheism thrown in for good measures, appear to be on the side of the progressive/socialist forces within our government. Many Christians fear a loss of fundamental rights like the right to freedom of religion, speech, assembly and the right to bear arms if political forces jockeying for power today have their way. With unions marching lock step with progressives, evironmentalists and even their own churches many suspect the corruption may be as deep as Robert Kennedy suggested.

A Christian church member (not my church) just yesterday, reported finding his church's bulletin board plastered with pro-progressive messages urging parishioners to “support” causes like global-warming, environmental issues, universal health care and even so-called “women's reproductive rights” causes because "that's what Jesus would do". She complained that the pastor's homily sounded more like a Democrat stump speech than a sermon.


I'm not surprised. God criticized the last historical church described in Revelation as "lukewarm" and wishy-washy (not His words - mine).  I suspect God knew we'd need further guidance and didn't stop sending messages to the human race just because the last of his disciples died off. There have been other messengers to the church time and again throughout the history of the Christian church who have steered us in the direction we should go.

Whatever does happen in the coming months, one thing is clear: Christians are becoming more aware that there are signs in the Earth that as Shakespeare put it, “Something wicked this way comes.”

Jesus said, “When you see all these things, recognize that the end is near, even at the door.” When I was a young man no one talked much about the Second Coming of Christ. Now, I find myself talking about the coming of Jesus and the end of the world with strangers in the street, the checker at the grocery store and Facebook friends.

I've always thought God would let his people know when it was time. It seems He's doing just that, albeit using some rather unusual prophetic tools. It really doesn't surprise me, though. After all, God does have a habit of working “in mysterious ways”.

Tom