In memoriam

There is a longstanding “rule of war” that says that you do not attack people who do not pose a threat. If you truly think that the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki posed a real threat then you must also say it was completely proper for the Germans to bomb London like they did, or for the US/Britain to firebomb Dresden, or if the Japanese had decided to level the entire Hawaiian islands because certainly each of those could qualify as “threats” under such a standard. Are you willing to give all of them the same absolution as you seem willing to give the US military for using indiscriminate weapons against civilians?

Like the Anabaptists or 19th century Churches of Christ, I condemn all war as contrary to the will of the Prince of Peace. My writings on this website should show this consistently. But even on the morally aberrant standards of statists who say that war can be OK, they fail to live up to their own rules. Surprise, surprise…

Dear Porkchop: I don’t believe it is contradictory at all. Accepting
self-defense as valid is not the same thing as condoning war at all. Rarely
is the point of a war to “defend your country from another.” It could be
possible for defensive action to escalate to a war (such as the
Revolutionary War), but I sincerely and consistently believe that *aggression
is morally wrong*.

The 9/11 attacks were not one country attacking another. Iraq had nothing to
do with it. Afghanistan, the country itself, had nothing to do with it. If
you want to know why it happened, you have to look at the history of
AMERICAN interventionism and war, INITIATED by the USA, in the Middle East
since the end of WW2. Take a look at the articles I have written on these
topics.
http://libertarianchristians.com/2009/01/18/simple-arguments-against-iraq-war/
http://libertarianchristians.com/2009/04/02/cost-of-interventionism/

My views on war have changed completely over the last five years. My record
on this website should be a major testament to this. I look back on things
that once I defended, now with contempt, from the contemporary wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, to Desert Storm, to Vietnam, to atomic bombs, and to pretty
much every president the United States has ever had. The United States
hasn’t been merely “too liberal” in the use of military force, it has been
the greatest aggressor of the last 50 years.

And while the Middle East is a sticky situation, there is only one solution:
LEAVE NOW. They don’t want us there. We can’t afford to be there. Give them
their land back.

You are right that we live in a country that is pushing God out. But guess
what: that’s what governments do. Where it cannot coopt religion for its own
use, it removes it. The government has coopted evangelicals and has used
them to support evil — wars, bailouts, etc. 1980-present consistently shows
this. But it also sets up internal conflicts that distract people from the
real issues. So long as the State can dupe Christians into supporting wars
against imagined enemies and distract them with the evils of “liberals”
while they get to do whatever they want on the sideline, Christians in the
United States will make no dent at all against the culture.

The only answer is to stop supporting the State, period. We must quit
looking to the State to solve the world’s problems. We must expose the State
for its evils. We must tell people that God is their salvation, not the next
government program. We must stop condoning aggression because we like the
result it gets for us.

In other words, we begin thinking that the Kingdom of God is enough, and
that no other kingdom is worth our allegiance. Done.