Ethical Questions In Warfare
BY Herschel Smith
9 years ago
Mike Vanderboegh poses the following question: How many of you are willing to kill a Muslim infant because his or her parents are Muslim? He adds, “I am not arguing about the validity of their faith. I am a Christian, but I also understand that absent the burden of protecting the innocent — ALL innocents — from attack by collectivists of any ilk, including Muslim religious collectivists, it is not up to me to execute God’s judgment upon someone simply because of their faith, however mistaken it is.”
Well, this poses a complex set of issues that isn’t fertile ground for talking points or rapid fire exchange. This is a thinking man’s territory. He later links (but does not comment on) Ralph Peters and his view that “The generals who won World War II would start by leveling Raqqa, the ISIS caliphate’s capital. Civilians would die, but those remaining in Raqqa have embraced ISIS, as Germans did Hitler. The jihadis must be crushed. Start with their “Berlin.” Kill ten thousand, save a million.”
This is enough to keep us busy for a while. Reader and commenter BluesStringer1955 also links Mike’s piece, and with absolutely no basis whatsoever charged me with wanting to kill all Muslims around me (this wasn’t even the point of the article), and continues that Mike and David make a mistake to link to anything I write. Mike and David will have to decide if it’s a mistake for them to link to anything I write, and I never said anything about killing all Muslims. I think BluesStringer1995 was having a bad day.
But I did assert that making the decision to kill ISIS fighters should be an easy ethical decision for us. I would sleep well if I flew an A-10 and got the chance to blow a convoy of ISIS fighters into oblivion (but this would only happen in my dreams – flying the A-10, that is). So let’s fill in the blanks a bit. For BlueStringer1955, I don’t take you by the hand and lead you to simplistic conclusions. My goal is to force you to ponder, to make you think. Even if you end the process disagreeing with me, that’s okay if you have spent time pondering the hard issues we will all face.
There isn’t another writer who has covered more about rules of engagement than have I, from news reports, to AR 15-6 investigations, to private communications from deployed NCOs and others on the situations they are facing. I won’t rehearse the quotes I am using or the examples I cite. There isn’t enough time to find the many references I supply in my rules of engagement category, and it would break the flow of what I want to say. So bear with me, and if you want proof, please visit my prior posts.
I’m willing to listen to just about any argument you wish to make, and I’ll respect your opinion if it’s well researched and well reasoned, and that last point bears repeating. Well reasoned. If you cannot bear to face the logical conclusions of your own views, I might show pity, but I won’t be persuaded in the least by emotion, accusations, shouting or hurt feelings.
There are things to which you should stipulate as you ponder these hard issues in order to have the respect of your colleagues and family. They will listen with a critical ear and they know when you are being irrational. If you claim that the U.S. shouldn’t have dropped nuclear bombs on Japan to end WWII, then you must stipulate either that (a) it was acceptable to lose half a million Americans in a land invasion of Japan, or that (b) the U.S. should have just stopped, potentially leaving WWII to continue ad infinitum. If you claim that Marcus Luttrell and his team should have done what they did and leave those goat herders alone, then you must stipulate that it’s acceptable to you for Americans to perish by leaving enemy spotters alive since they weren’t armed at the time.
If you assert that no one can be ethically killed who isn’t armed, they you must stipulate, along with one American general in Afghanistan who wanted to charge two Army snipers with murder for killing an unarmed known Taliban leader with a long distance shot, that many if not most American sniper kills were unethical. Furthermore, most sniper shots can never be taken under such a rule, or at least, you must stipulate to that.
If you claim that under no circumstances can non-combatant casualties be tolerated, then you must stipulate that when Hezbollah ensconced their artillery among the citizen homes in Lebanon, the Israeli military cannot target those same installation in return.
There are many more examples in my rules of engagement category, but you can see that the issues begin to be complicated. Only moral and thinking men need apply for the job. As for me, while I won’t bore you with the details of my own responses to all of the above, I will try as best as I can to answer Mike’s question.
First of all, I am a Calvinist, and there is no one who is innocent. We are all guilty by virtue of being born of the seed of Adam and equally deserving of damnation, regardless of age, ethnicity, race, or gender. Those of us who believe were saved because of God’s sovereign choice, by His grace, and through faith alone. You may disagree, and I’m okay with that. But I won’t apologize for my beliefs. They are incorrigible and there will never be a time when I don’t believe those things.
I prefer to speak of non-combatants rather than “the innocent.” In the entire history of warfare, notwithstanding whether non-combatants were targeted, no war has ever been fought without non-combatant casualties. The question is whether they should be targeted. I understand the decision made by the generals in WWII, who knew that Germany wouldn’t be defeated as long as its war machine was supplied by its industry. I didn’t say I would have made the same decision, and I didn’t say I wouldn’t have. I said I understand it. But that’s quite a bit different than killing a Muslim infant simply because his parents are Muslim.
As the choice stands, my answer is no, not just for being children of Muslims, and not at all if I don’t have to. Let’s use Ralph Peters’ approach to Raqqa to illustrate. I will no more assert that we should turn Raqqa into a sea of glass that I will assert that we shouldn’t be allowed to shoot Iraqi insurgents who are throwing cinder blocks off of bridges into American convoys. The goal is to “stay between the ditches” in our decisions.
Turning Raqqa into a sea of glass is a profoundly bad idea for a number of reasons, none of which have to do with there being Muslim infants there. First of all, al Baghdadi might be away and avoid death, thereby adding to his mystique. This would be a terrible outcome. Furthermore, bombing Raqqa would be likely to create more haters of America than it killed. Again, this would be a terrible outcome.
As to there being infants there, God is the only sovereign and decisions of life and death are His alone if we don’t have to make that choice. And herein lies the crux of the issue. Ralph is playing the devil’s game. He wants to bomb Raqqa into dust, but that wouldn’t solve the problem and we don’t have to make that choice. The administration doesn’t want to solve the problem, which is open borders.
It isn’t necessary to kill the enemy or his children thousands of miles away, when the answer is to seal the borders, completely and immediately. It’s like the game my fifth grade teacher wanted the class to play. We were supposedly all aboard a life boat, and there was only enough food and water for four of us, whereas there were five on board. What do we do?
I refused to play the game, pissing her off but standing my ground. There are worse things than death, one of which would be throwing someone overboard in order to stay alive. Someone wanted Ralph to play this game, perhaps Ralph. But what they don’t want to do is what is necessary to make the decision unnecessary in the first place.
Look folks, this example is a fairly easy one, but I honestly think that things aren’t going to go down so easy for us. I think the answers are going to be much tougher, much more involved, and much murkier than this example. Again with commenter BluesStringer1955, he believes that Muslims ought to be free to practice their religion in America. I don’t think BluesStringer1955 understands what it means for Muslims to practice their religion.
No civilization in more than a millennia has been able to peaceably coexist with Islam. BluesStringer1955 sees the world through Western eyes, not through the Islamic world view. In order to assist here, I wanted to convey a little short story.
This is a story about a man we will call Mark, who lives in Boiling Springs, S.C. He lived far enough from the center of urban problems that he didn’t figure that any of this would come his way. But then resettlement of Syrians happened in Spartanburg, S.C., right down the road from him.
At first it was all benign. But soon enough a few Muslim families moved into his neighborhood – on the government dime, and problems started. They began to demand that the school system get Arabic translators, and his taxes were going up in order to pay for the translators. Furthermore, it was said that there might be more days in school in the summer to make up for the Muslim holidays that they were demanding. No, they weren’t demanding those holidays for themselves, but that everyone observe them as well.
Next, they demanded footwashing stations in the airports, malls and stores, and prayer rooms with arrows towards Mecca, complete with prayer rugs. All of this was going to cost money, and while he thought that no one would give this kind of thing the time of day, state senator Larry Martin of Pickens, along with others from Greenville and the lower part of the state, were considering actual changes to the law to allow Sharia courts for the Muslims for certain things.
But there was a more immediate and personal concern for Mark. One Muslim family near him had been eyeballing his dog, who had gotten lose and was playing with their younger children. Not biting, but playing. It happened only once, but now every time Mark goes out to walk the dog, the Muslims say something to him and the teenagers even make obscene gestures. They hate dogs. They consider them unclean.
Mark was weeping this particular day. Mark has no fence, and while his dog did not leave the yard, while he wasn’t watching someone had apparently shot the dog’s eyes out with a pellet rifle, or so the vet thinks. The dog, who had been with him for ten years, had begun to nip at anyone who came near in self defense because he was blind. Understandable, but Mark couldn’t let that go on with his own children. Mark was headed to the veterinarian to put his dog down.
As he was driving, he pondered what he was going to do? The Muslim teenagers had been ogling his own daughter, and had even yelled that she was a whore and daughter of a whore since she isn’t Muslim, dressed unseemly and didn’t wear a hijab. He wanted his wife and daughters to have weapons and carry them, but the government had cracked down on the purchase of guns since the advent of the heavier Muslim immigration to America.
America, Mark thought, wasn’t the same country in which he grew up. And this wasn’t even Dearborn, Michigan. It was Boiling Springs, S.C.
Now, as for the little short story, Mark is fictitious, but Mark’s saga is just beginning. And if you haven’t pondered long and hard about the borders, Muslim immigration, Hispanic and Latino immigration, government intrusion, and what you will and won’t allow yourself to do, including the broader moral rules you will follow and down to the tactical level, then you need to. Mike’s question is a good one, but folks, this is only the beginning. You’d better seek for clarity of thought and a strong moral compass.
For the record, so-called just war theory was constructed for centuries old models for warfare with great armies lining up in fields of battle against other armies, fought in the daylight, with non-combatants left out of the mix, with hand-to-hand tactics using implements that didn’t act as standoff weapons. Christian theologians, as I have pointed out many times, have let us down. You don’t see papers written in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society on modern warfare and its ethical exigencies. They haven’t updated their theory of warfare for modernity, with weapons that kill large numbers of people, and with non-combatants being brought into the mix (along with or against their will). Much less have Christian theologians pondered fourth or fifth generation warfare and its implications for mankind. We have been let down, abandoned, and ignored. Perhaps because of ignorance, perhaps because of cowardice, but abandoned nonetheless. As you ponder these issues, you are on your own, you and your conscience and your copy of the word of God.
On November 23, 2015 at 4:54 am, DAN III said:
H,
Interesting essay.
Here is my take on the entire situation in the Middle East….we do not belong there !
There has been no declaration of war by ANY Amerikan Congress/Administration since DEC 41. In the meantime Amerikans of every stripe have supported these unconstitutional wars of aggression/imperialism.
The “war” is in Washington District of Columbia and the battlefields are the borderlands where multitudes of unvetted, uneducated, disease-carrying invaders are attacking this once-Christian nation; invading this country at the invite of soetoro-obama and the silent Citizens and Congress.
The time is well past worrying and discussing and fighting in the Middle East, Africa and every other locale the world over. We fight everywhere for, hahahahaha, “freedom”. In the meantime “Freedom & Liberty” is being extinguished every day right here in the USA.
The problems are not Muslim children. The problems are Amerikan politicians and the 4th branch of Amerikan government.
What are “you”, “we”, “us” willing to do ?
Face reality. The war is here.
On November 23, 2015 at 5:12 pm, John Shore said:
Given your cutesy misspelling of the word ‘America’ with a ‘k,’ I infer that you are one of those Leftist, nihilist, anarchist types that believes that the US is always nefarious, always to blame for whatever befalls us, an Evil Empire of sorts that causes trouble everywhere it goes for its own ill-meaning benefit. That is reinforced by your use of the words ‘aggression’ and ‘imperialism’ in the context of any conflicts that we have entered since WWII.
The USA has, mistakenly on occasion, entered many distant military conflicts out of an at-times-simplistic desire to ‘do good,’ to STOP aggression by others, to spread the blessings of democratic government to any who would benefit from it. Sometimes, we have accomplished that mission. Sometimes, we HAVE gone to war for nefarious ends–we are not perfect. Those instances have been few; Almost universally, when we go to war for erroneous reasons and try ‘nation-building,’ those wars have blown up in our faces, resulting in no monetary or territorial benefit whatsoever. In the wars that the Left claims were started ‘for oil,’ we haven’t even gotten THAT.
We have also done a TERRIBLE job at being imperialists; In fact, our territorial size has diminished greatly since WWII, and we have added no new territory whatsoever. Our military footprint is greatly decreased all over the world, and we seem unable or unwilling to project what power we have where it is sorely needed and in a manner that forwards our national interest. In comparison to REAL imperialist powers, we are abject failures.
It is true that our current war is being waged partly in the seat of our seemingly anti-American government, and that the enemy’s forces are marshalling on our borders–along with there being troops of the threatening entity already within the confines of those borders. No longer, however, is it realistic to bleat to ourselves that we don’t ‘belong’ in the Middle East; The Middle East is coming for us, no matter that we delude ourselves into believing that we can lock ourselves in behind imaginary national boundaries and thus achieve relative safety. Since the Middle East is the seat of the power controlling the actions of radical Islam, the nest from whence the vipers emanate, there is where our power needs to be projected.
It also does no good to delude ourselves that what is happening to us, and the rest of the Western world, is factually a result of our incursions in other peoples’ arguments; That time is past. Islam does not need the excuse that we once interfered in their intra-national squabbles, or insulted their territorial integrity, or affronted their sense of pride. Islam doesn’t CARE about any of that trivia, although our Liberal Progressives think that they do: Islam is coming for us because it intends to subsume us, because it loathes our existence, because to them it is the only right, proper and Holy thing to do.
No matter what mistakes our ruling classes make when they import in wholesale quantities the human instruments of our destruction, our enemy IS Islam, by its very nature as a form of governance combined with religious fervor; The problem, worldwide, IS ‘Muslim children.’
In every totalitarian doctrine, it has always been imperative for the adult leaders to inoculate the young with the fervor of the movement: In Nazi Germany, the hope for the survival of National Socialism was Hitler Youth. In Stalin’s USSR, the Komsomol and Young Pioneers were the larvae to guarantee continuance of the State. In Mao’s China, the Red Guard was the spearhead for violent change. In the US, the current ‘young’ Democratic Party, the BLM movement, and the ‘students’ running rampant on college campuses are merely the latest manifestations of youth being inculcated with Liberal Progressivism acting as the open, visible arm of the shadowy radical Left and its own brand of totalitarianism, an entity that is working in the background to destroy the America with a ‘c’ that we once were.
With Islam being what it is, given that its doctrine requires ‘Jihad’ against all infidels wherever they may be found, we ARE indeed at war with every true adherent, young and old. To be brutally cold about the matter, ‘nits make lice.’ It is not our fault that our enemies choose to infect their offspring with their deadly disease; We aren’t going to be able to separate out the individual Jihadis from their support group of fellow Muslims if those Muslims refuse to denounce their violent brethren and eschew (perhaps even with GOOD violence) the use of BAD violence as a means of ostensibly serving a deity while forcibly making sweeping societal change. If our way of life is to survive, such niceties are going to have to be disregarded in large measure. There will necessarily be, no matter how careful we are, collateral damage of presumed (by Western standards, at least) innocents. We will, necessarily, inspire and breed MORE Jihadis by merely defending ourselves, and they in turn will have to be destroyed–unless they suddenly see the error of their ways and decide to behave as human beings and not as weapons of war on innocents who have made no other transgression than to either believe in another deity or, perhaps, none at all.
With you, and people like you, having the attitude that ‘Amerika’ is manifested in its government and not in its people, with your implication that the true complexion of our country is revealed in what emanates from DC and not from the American heartland, you are not helping things.
On November 24, 2015 at 7:21 am, DAN III said:
Yes, John Shore, I consider myself an anarchist as defined by myself and not defined by you. Amazing how you consider me a Leftist. But again, you think perhaps your excusing the “ruling elites” makes you a political conservative is laughable.
Odd, how you attribute fUSA’s wars of aggression as having “mistakenly on occasion, entered many distant military conflicts….”. “Mistakenly” ? “On occasion” ? Your beloved fedgov ruling elites have intentionally involved, not “mistakenly” as you would want the “American Heartland” to believe, the citizens of fUSA in armed conflicts more than 19 times since the end of World War II. Each “war” was engaged without Congressional scrutiny and without a formal Declaration of War. Thus, a haphazard policy of imperialism by fUSA on a never-ending global scale ! “On occasion” indeed. ” Mistakenly” ? Wow ! Do I have a bridge to sell you !
The “true complexion” of what once was the United States of America is INDEED manifested within the confines of District of Columbia. My scoundrel federal representative, a Republican, once told me in a face-to-face confrontation over his voting record, that “you don’t know how things are done in Washimgton !” So much for your belief that Amerika is manifested in the people of the heartland. Rather it is controlled by what you term in the inanimate sense, “government”. For government are people in place to control the masses through ever burdensome laws, taxation and armed might to keep us “anarchists” in place and to pacify the
sheeple such as yourself.
The Muslims are not the problem. As I wrote earlier…the war are the politicians and the 4th branch of “government” emanating and oozing like a draining pus sack from the bowels of
Washington District of Columbia.
Oh, and as an aside….it is neocons like you who never wore the uniform of the Armed Services who are all about spilling the blood of more Amerikan youth in undeclared wars of impeialism. In the meantime, for now, you sit on your azz comfy and cozy, thinking you’re safe while your “government” schemes and connives and condones open borders and unfettered access of Muslims and Hispanic invaders who will NEVER assimilate. Don’t believe that remark ? Just look at the scoundrel barry barak hussein soetoro-obama.
The fUSA is in it’s death throes today, courtesy of John Shore and indifferent, ignorants citizens such as youself.
On November 23, 2015 at 8:01 am, Haywood Jablome said:
“I prefer to speak of non-combatants rather than “the innocent.” In the entire history of warfare, notwithstanding whether non-combatants were targeted, no war has ever been fought without non-combatant casualties. The question is whether they should be targeted.” This was the best two lines of a very well thought out essay.
The commenter, BS 1956 (how appropriate) has obviously never spent a minute perusing your site. Although you and I don’t agree all the time, I cannot remember a single post that has not been well thought out. It is also easy for anyone with an IQ over 15 to discern your opinions from fact. Thanks for being a site that actually makes me engage my brain a bit.
PS. Prayers continue for a full recovery for your son.
On November 23, 2015 at 6:10 pm, John Shore said:
The idea of not intentionally targeting ‘non-combatants,’ or even striving to avoid it, in itself poses a quandary; The horrible reality is that, if only a SMALL number of non-combatants become casualties, the opposing force suffering those casualties can shrug the losses off, and take inspiration from the losses for righteous revenge and renewed vigor in fighting for their cause. If a LARGE number of non-combatants are killed, the opposing force may no longer disregard the losses, and can become despondent and disheartened, with soldiers at the front more concerned about their loved ones at home than in fighting. Of course, the reverse may occur.
The actions of our military in WWII, in some instances, DID target populations widely considered to be ‘non-combatants’ on the theory that such destruction would destroy the enemy’s will to fight, and did so with some success.
WE look at it as a nasty business; Our adversaries, being zealots, may not see things the same way: THEIR compunction against striking at non-combatants seems to be nonexistent.
On November 23, 2015 at 9:16 am, MattBracken said:
The only silver lining to this approaching storm cloud front is that Europe will be hit first and worst, providing us with an example of what happens when you permit millions of Muslim “Hijradeen” into any non-Muslim country.
I believe that Europe is being set up for a “Tet Offensive” on steroids in 2016.
On November 23, 2015 at 11:19 am, Parnell said:
The very idea of non-combatants ended with the first aerial bombing of WWI, never mind Guernica or later, WWII. The Allies may have used the German invasion of Belgium as a pretext to paint the enemy as savages but any colonial expedition mounted by a European power brought death and destruction to native populations in Africa and Asia. The ROE’s of today must take into account the homicide bomber, regardless of age or sex. THhe soldier does not forfeit the right of self defense because he wears a uniform. Our politicians must remember this.
On November 23, 2015 at 11:47 am, Karl Ushanka said:
Great post.
I’d suggest we start referring to Islam as a “Marxist Totalitarian Political Movement” rather than a religion. Their actions speak louder than words and justify this change.
Of course, the question re: the infant remains the same: The infant has yet to adopt Islam regardless of whether it is a religion or a political movement.
On November 23, 2015 at 1:34 pm, John D said:
Perhaps making it a practice to remove their infants, turning them over to the millions of childless couples waiting for a non drug addicted infant of their own to adopt. It could serve a three fold purpose. 1) Save the infant from being raised in pauper conditions and being programmed at a young age to hate “other”, and giving deserving ppl the chance to be parents 2) reduce their population by removal, rather than death 3) long term study of nature vs nurture.
On November 23, 2015 at 4:27 pm, Archer said:
You have to be careful with policies like that. If children can be removed from Muslim parents because they’re Muslim, then they can be removed from Christian parents because they’re Christian. And placing the children in purely secular homes (because that’s really the only remaining government-approved option) would be just as disastrous in the long term.
Politicians of all stripes lately have been forgetting one of the cardinal rules of law-making: Never pass a law that you aren’t willing to have enforced against you. (Really just a variation of Alinsky’s Rule #4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”) In voting themselves more power, they’re forgetting that when the opposing party takes over (and they eventually and inevitably will), they’ll be on the receiving end of the power they once wielded.
On November 23, 2015 at 5:05 pm, Fred said:
You have well described the problem we face. Repubs do bad, vote Dem, Dems do bad vot Rebup. Meanwhile we get ground down by the National (repub) Socialist (dem) right left right left right left. I forget who said “It matters not to the person with the boot on their neck if it is a right boot or a left. I can’t think of one instance where they undue the laws passed by the other.
On November 23, 2015 at 6:47 pm, Archer said:
I forget who made the analogy, but it described the Left and the Right not as polar opposites tugging in opposite directions, but rather as the left and right feet of a gargantuan beast, moving alternately in the same direction. Each must keep up with the other, lest the whole monster trip and fall.
With neither side even attempting to repeal the other’s admittedly bad and unworkable laws, I find this an accurate depiction. (Case in point: When Dems controlled the Senate, we had 47 attempts to repeal Obamacare. In the full year since the 2014 elections, when the Repubs took both chambers, we’ve had … crickets. That tells me the Repubs aren’t serious, and have never been serious, about repealing it.)
On November 29, 2015 at 3:43 pm, John D said:
This is not a law we are talking about, it is in their savage lands, spoils of war so to speak.
On November 23, 2015 at 5:26 pm, John Shore said:
That would be wonderful–but, without massive insertion of ground troops and inevitable mass casualties of the very young we would desire to save, impossible.
On November 29, 2015 at 3:43 pm, John D said:
Not necessarily, but then, suspension of most ROE to get the job done would be necessary.
On November 23, 2015 at 5:23 pm, John Shore said:
Cruelly, though, if the infant can survive only with the support of a Jihadi mother and a terrorist father, and cannot logically be separated from them, what is to be done to save the illegitimate-target infant from the legitimate attack on the parents? Our enemies are not leaving us very much choice, no matter how much it offends our Western sensibilities on such things–which, I will add, are considerably more healthy and constructive in the long run.
The quandary can only be rectified by disregarding the ‘collateral damage’ aspect of this kind of war; Our enemy has set the rules, and victory can only come if we operate by the dictates they themselves have established.
“It’s a big sh*t sandwich, and we’re all going to have to take a bite.”
On November 23, 2015 at 1:50 pm, Fred said:
If God sees two sides fighting with hate in their hearts guess who will lose? Both.
By the law of nature and of nature’s God righteous self-defense is not hate. If we are to win we must be right. Not right in eyes of men, not right relative to other groups, not right according to the laws of man, but right by the Natural Law of God. We must be the good guys.
Love God, love your family, love thy neighbor, love liberty, love your country and fight like a caged animal when the time comes my friends. We fight because we love. If we are to win we must be the good guys in the eyes of the LORD.
Sir, Thank you for your thoughtful and thought provoking articles.
On November 23, 2015 at 5:35 pm, John Shore said:
Sir, ‘our’ God most likely does not care (assuming that He exercises his doctrine of Free Will, as He always does) if His children on any side of a killing fest are ‘right’ or if they are ‘wrong;’ He does not really care of we hate while we are killing our fellow men, women, and children, or if that hate is righteously inspired by great wrong done to one side or the other. He probably doesn’t care if our human enemies worship a different manifestation of Him, which instills in them the belief that THEY are ‘right,’ that THEIR brand of righteous hatred and killing can be forgiven. If anything, I expect that He is dismayed with how both ‘sides’ use Him as an excuse to destroy His creations, while blasphemously using His name.
What we do here on earth, the horrors that we inflict upon each other, are all, selfishly, for our own human-centered benefit; God acts in His own way, incomprehensible to us, for His own means, and certainly doesn’t need our help.
Let’s not read God, or any other Deity, into any of this; What we do is on our own account, and we all will answer for it when the time comes.
On November 23, 2015 at 7:44 pm, Fred said:
If you’re right then why not hate God while you’re at it? Evil loves war because he loves death and destruction and fear and hate. Evil collects all those unbelieving souls from war. War is evil’s finest hour. Do we fight because we hate someone or do we fight because love someone or something.
Sure God cares if we hate. When asked “what is the greatest commandment” our LORD boiled it down from 10 to 2.
Matthew 22:37-40 (KJV)
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
I insist that “We fight because we love.” What is in our hearts is what matters. In fact it is all that matters since we can never be good enough.
Get right with God. Get right with family. Get right with those you owe. Get right with your health and dental. Get Ready!
Thank you for the opportunity to expand on my point.
On November 23, 2015 at 4:40 pm, Mitch Rapp said:
Those people will never learn to take care of themselves unless they are forced to take care of themselves. And the violent, homicidal part of their bible has to go and be re-written.
On November 23, 2015 at 7:02 pm, Kerry said:
May I humbly suggest to our host and commenters here the book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind, by Robert R. Reilly. One can also watch and listen to him speak at the Institute of Catholic Culture, online. He is terrific. The book documents the choice made by Islam in the 11th century to abandon reason, (they do not believe in cause and effect), and go with a god who is will alone. And as a result, with no cause and effect, everything is direct, first cause intervention of Al-ah. The Christian God is Trinitarian, the Logos, (In the begining was the word), and all loving. Mohammedism is a Christian heresy which grew up outside of Christianity, (per Hillaire Belloc), and never faded. They do, however, (if I understand it correctly), believe in the Virgin birth of Christ. In the opinion of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, that is how Islam may be converted to the One True Faith. “In hoc signo vinces”.
On November 24, 2015 at 3:52 am, Daniel Barger said:
In war you kill the enemy….period. If that enemy hides among women and children so be it.
Islam kills non muslims without regard to age or gender. Why should we consider Islamic women and children as innocents to be spared. I don’t care if the rattlesnake is young….I kill it anyway.
I wouldn’t care if the zombie was a toddler…BANG…right through the head.
One must do what
is required if survival is to be assured. Islam has declared war with all of humanity. It’s us or them. No quarter, no mercy. Either we fight to win…..and that means the elimination of islam
or we lose. This isn’t rocket science. It’s not pleasant but it’s not complicated….and it is
THEIR CHOICE.
On November 25, 2015 at 8:22 pm, Joseph P. Martino said:
I addressed a similar question just over 20 years ago in my book on the morality of the use of nuclear weapons. First, deliberate attacks on noncombatants are immoral. Second, even in attacks on legitimate targets, due care must be taken than damage to noncombatants is minimized. However, one has to ask, are the noncombatants supporting the government waging war against us? If so, to that degree they lose their noncombatant immunity against attack. They still may not be attacked intentionally, but the degree of effort to avoid damaging them can be reduced. In particular, the attacking forces do not have to take as much risk to avoid damage to them. For instance, an attack on a legitimate target in an enemy-occupied portion of an allied country would require more care to avoid damage to (allied) noncombatants than would at attack on a legitimate target in the enemy country.