The rightness of America's war
The italicized section is a half-column from a reader from Arizona, who submitted this under the guidelines of my challenge in January. It's quite good, actually, and my response follows.
Reader's perspective:
Invading Iraq doesn't protect our liberties - it weakens them - permanently. The Apache pilot swore to defend the Constitution, yet serves in an undeclared, unconstitutional war after Congress again shirked its duty.
Randolph Bourne's World War I-era observation: "war is the health of the state," is still true. Our latest undeclared war, the euphemistic Patriot Act, massively increased federal deficit spending, and random searches of free people and vehicles at airports and roadways, are all signs of a growing state. It's ironic how we must limit our liberty to make it easier to "protect" our freedom. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" bombs people so they can "freely" select leaders meeting our approval.
How does the pilot defend your family by invading a country we've bombed and embargoed for a decade? Wouldn't safety be better served with the pilot defending our American borders? Perhaps removal of our troops from the over 100 countries in which they're stationed might lessen hatred of us as invaders, and again make us a shining example of freedom.
You use David and Paul as examples of men still loved by God despite killing others to prove to the pilot he will not be damned for doing the same. But Paul stopped persecuting and murdering Christians after accepting Jesus, and David was punished when he killed for his own purposes. So unless the pilot knows he kills for God, your proof doesn't apply.
Nations, and terrorists, believe they do God's work. The Romans even made a god of their emperor, making their brutality divinely inspired. Does rationalizing our war as God's handiwork make use of God's Word to suit God's purposes - or man's? Surely more Iraqis are praying not to be bombed right now than for "liberation." The results of the war seem more the handiwork of the "god of this age" than of God - why help him?
Did the Prince of Peace need men to fight for him? Paul, too, says that Christians fight a different kind of war. I say to the pilot: "Come back safely; come back now."
Vox responds:
While I very much agree with the writer's core beliefs, I take issue with his conclusions, which, in my opinion, stem from some flawed assumptions. The worst of these is the implied notion that America was attacked because of our troops stationed overseas. While I definitely support bringing home our soldiers from Germany and Korea, and ending all support for U.N. peacekeeping as well, it is grossly ignorant to think that violent expansionist Islam is attacking us because of troops stationed in Saudi Arabia or the Philippines.
Islam, from the very beginning, has been a religion of conquest. Modern Islamic terror began in Kashmir after the partition of India, migrated to the West during the French Algerian War in 1954, and has since slaughtered people from the African Sudan to the Zurich airport. America is hated because she is the most powerful part of the Dar-al-Harb, and will be attacked until she either submits to the Dar-ar-Islam or defeats it.
This war is not truly about oil, Israel, Pax Americana or even Iraqi liberation. This war, as I have written before, is about ending Arab-Islamic terror by destabilizing the Arab governments which support it and allow it to thrive. Of all the Arab states, only two - Egypt and Jordan - do not finance Islamic terror, and that is only because they have survived violent attempts at revolution by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestine Liberation Organization, respectively. This is why Iraq, being low-hanging fruit from a political perspective, followed Afghanistan, why the House of Saud and the Iranian theocracy will likely fall, and why Syria worries openly that it will be next to face the wrath of the West.
I, too, am appalled by Congress' dereliction of duty and the twin abominations of the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act, but I reject the idea that this long-delayed clash of civilizations should be put off longer because of governmental failure. Since the federal government has been acting in an unconstitutional manner for more than 100 years, one could hardly expect it to do otherwise now. Still, America is not its government.
This is not a Christian war, but of course, we are not a Christian nation. The rightness of a nation's war-making can only be judged on geopolitical realities - not on that which is only concerned with the individual's soul. This war is simply one of those things that must happen in a fallen world.
With regards to the Apache pilot, do you really think he wants to be there, or is murdering for his own purposes? Of course not - he is simply doing his job, as did that Roman centurion on his mission of occupation 2,000 years ago. I also pray that our pilot comes back safely, but when his job is done and this latest manifestation of violent expansionist Islam is as broken as was its historical antecedent by Charles Martel and Don John of Austria.