How American Christians Get Fooled Into Being Pro-War: A Few Ways

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  1. God is a warrior; therefore war is good. But warriors don’t think all war is good. When Joab was ordered to get Uriah the Hittite killed in war, he followed orders but he didn’t like it. When Saul tried to get Jonathan executed for violating orders in a war their fellow warriors got in the way and told Saul to back off and back down. The fact that God is a warrior no more makes him pro-war than the fact that God commands capital punishment makes him approve of Charles Manson. The question is always: Which war are you talking about? In the US other than a rare Teddy Roosevelt or a veteran, many wars are promoted by people who have not only never seen military action, but who were careful to avoid it.
  2. War is good because we have to defend America. When? Mostly that has been done adequately by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. One noticeable exception was Pearl Harbor. But in response to a few thousand people in a military target, we laid waste to all of Japan, indiscriminately killing both civilians and soldiers together, bombing major cities. (This is all in addition to the nukes we used when they were asking for surrender terms.) The fact is Japan had no resources to seriously invade us. War as a reprisal and demand for satisfaction was amply justified. War as a crusade refusing to give terms of surrender was not defense. The War wasn’t in self-defense; it was the excuse everyone acknowledges that FDR was looking for in order to re-make the world. One other time we got attacked from overseas, on 9/11/2001, we decided to invade and occupy a country that had nothing to do with it, and left it much worse off than it was before (Really. Just do some basic research). So, in theory, a war could be justified on the grounds of defense, but when has that ever actually happened to us?
  3. War is right because pacifism is wrong. Other than to recruit enough weirdos to continue the movement, pacifism exists to legitimize imperialism and murder in warfare. Think about it. If all war is equally and always immoral, then killing civilians, murdering children in mass numbers with fire from the sky, etc is the same as killing soldiers (thus, again, our response to Pearl Harbor, as one example). By being pulled into this stupid dichotomy Christians end up supporting all sorts of homicidal atrocities because they are not pacifism and we all know pacifism is wrong.
  4. Without war there would be no civilization. Civilization merely survives war; it is war that depends on civilization. It is production and trade that provides the food and tools and men that war requires. War relies on civilization; civilization never relies on war. Yes, specific groups need defense from other specific groups. But that doesn’t mean that war gets the credit. When someone uses this argument they are typically doing so because they want to justify aggression and conquest. For an argument the supports national self-defense, it is overkill.
  5. War is right because God wants the government to defend the people. Sure, but God also specifically prohibited any king from building up a standing army or assembling a war machine (remember horses are tanks and F-16s). Yes, the people were supposed to defend themselves, and the government could lead and help in that process, but the people themselves were supposed to fight. No one was supposed to rely on a standing army and a peacetime arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Nor were they supposed to be transported to the other side of the planet in the name of an infinitely elastic definition of “the national interest.”
  6. I should defend my neighbor when he is attacked; so our country should go to war to right wrongs. First of all, if your neighbor is being attacked by an enemy you can do something about, then yes, you should help. But I don’t think you are obligated to go on a suicide mission that will only get your whole family killed. Secondly, the whole point of modern war is that it is far away from any personal knowledge or influence. You are told that they were killing preemie babies by taking away their life support units to leave them gasping and dying. You are told they have weapons of mass destruction they can bring to our Eastern seaboard by unmanned aircraft. When you can’t see for yourself what is going on the people who want your money and your blood are able to lie to you and make you think the country is facing a simple situation akin to seeing a neighbor attacked. Don’t let your real duty to love your neighbor be baited and switched into support mass slaughter overseas.
  7. We must go to war to prevent the use of WMD. Say citizens of the only country on earth to use the worst of them. (Perhaps I’ll make this its own post some time soon. Obviously, there is more that could be said).

 This is only the beginning. What would you add to the list?

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