The Problem of War, Part 4
By George Templeton
Gazette Blog Columnist
Editor's note: This is the fourth in a 5-part series by Gazette Blog Columnist George Templeton entitled "The Problem of War."
In part 3, I wrote about WW 1, the war to end all wars, and opposing viewpoints about the nature of war and its science. WW 1 was the first truly modern war, with machine guns and aircraft. There was more to come. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, quoted the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first nuclear explosion. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” “We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.” When we deny the evil within ourselves, we dehumanize ourselves, and we deprive ourselves not only of our own destiny but of any possibility of dealing with the evil of others.
There are many theories of war. In part 4, I turn to Christian thinking about it. Christianity provides a kernel for contemplation. The Rules for war come from Catholic orthodoxy and G. H. C. Macgregor’s 1954 book, The New Testament Basis of Pacifism. They are about what war should be. But technology changes quickly. It introduces new material into the fabric of war.
Incongruent Rules
1) The only just wars are those endorsed by governments that fight for approved political reasons.
We make a sharp distinction between individual moral conduct (thou shalt not) and duty (commanded war). We want an intermediary between us and God and that is government. Many people do not have the knowledge to make their own critical decisions.
Can we force justice on others? You will not find justice when a much stronger party prevails over a weak one. Total power is not altruistic or wise. It is fearful. Justice becomes revenge. It is often selfish and whimsical. The truth shields lies.
Does the individual conscience have to subordinate to the government? When does it become fascism? Mussolini said, “Nothing against the State; nothing outside the State; everything for the State”.
Do we have a moral duty to submit to an undesired dictatorship? What happens when the demands of the state clash with a duty to God? What if terrible orders clash with your self-concept? What is the purpose of government? Does it serve the people or must the people serve it? The former is democratic. The latter is autocratic.
Heretical Liberal Christianity believes that people are good. It believes in self-actualization, that you should be all you can. The government's role is to give its people equal opportunity, not identity. Nature believes in competition.
Conservatives say we are fallen in sin and need salvation. God instituted government to punish evildoers. He institutionalizes capital punishment. It comes from His “holy perfect justice”. But when does justice become revenge? "Good behavior does not fear its government, only evil does!" What about Hitler, the Jews, and Auschwitz?
Germany was angry because of its loss in the war to end all wars. It wanted revenge. It needed a leader who would confirm the myth of Aryan superiority. The people did not want to feel guilty or responsible. They were patriotic and better than those “others”. Hitler was their hero. Arthur Neville Chamberlain thought that Hitler would go no further than the Rhineland. The first man to fly across the Atlantic, Charles Lindberg, sided with him. Is Government God’s restraining grace protecting the weak and defenseless? Autocratic governments can manipulate their people to believe and accept anything.
God speaks for conformity and the sovereignty of religion. There are more than 100 Christian denominations. They do not agree and each of them is “right”. It started with the emperor Constantine and the Roman Catholic Church in the fourth century. Church and State combined. Heaven and hell are more important than political policy, so the Church was powerful.
Secular humanism in the West increased over the years because state policy had little religious content. The State tried to deal in the measurable cognitive domain. The Church focused on the affective domain of feelings. It meant that Christians are sometimes subservient to a semi-Christian State.
Many churches mix our flag with guns and the cross. Nationalism has been an actor in the world's greatest atrocities. The Christian version wants to teach it in public schools. But it is not about country or comparative religion. It comes from white power and prejudice.
Luther taught that the spirit of Christ alone is our being. Unfortunately, the New Testament and Old Testament differ on war, leaving us with a double standard.
The Church has lost the moral leadership of the world. There remains a lot of “goodwill" towards America. What will it cost us if we abandon our responsibility to the world and our commitment to friendly democratic governments?
2) Religious war is evil!
In the next breath, Christianity appeals to its faithful to “engage more fully in evangelization and not be shy about it. “In Christ alone, and in his Church will true peace be found.” Is Christian identity American? What about the Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim engineers on my team?
Society runs on belief. It is much stronger than morality. Trust implies belief. No society can function without mutual trust. Repeated lies tear at the web of truth. Bigger lies become necessary to support the little ones. It is one thing to be dishonest to your brother, but worse to be dishonest to yourself.
3) War is not justifiable when there is little chance of winning.
Did our Congress let us know what success was for the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq war? Twenty years later religious violence between the Sunni and Shia in Iraq continues. The 20-year Afghanistan war left the Islamic Fundamentalist Taliban in charge.
4) Just war theory requires all-out intense focus to provide an immediate and decisive victory.
Isn’t justice the idea that cruelty is horrific? Technology wins wars. It depersonalizes us. The pilots who dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos during the Vietnam War could not see the people they were hitting. We cannot prevent war by building more destructive machines. We will find the solution in human psychology.
5) Wars must have clear objectives.
What happens when a war has religious, cultural, and economic dimensions? How does one measure this? What is your priority?
We have a “will to live” and a “will to power” which we apply to Christ’s ethics. Consequently, human collectives are less moral than the people that comprise them.
We are mistaken when we think of countries like people having similar moral claims. Individuals have value in themselves. They should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to an end. A morality that is all about producing the right kinds of consequences fails. The problem is that people discover that they were mistaken about what mattered most to them.
Science does not concern itself with ethics. Objective management wants concrete results which are measurable at a time and place. Managers map human emotion and intention into the fabric of their employee measurement. Intention is a conscious input and emotion is its consequence. But both things go on simultaneously. The output feeds back to the input. Depending on its amplitude and phase, our response can have improved fidelity, instability, or even self-sustaining oscillation with no input. With simplification, everything in the universe obeys electronic feedback.
Will you measure the Vietnam War by the two million civilians and 1 million Vietnamese soldiers killed? Sixty thousand Americans died and 150,000 were wounded. The dominos did not fall.
Rigid dogmatic belief creates an alternative universe with its shared perspectives. However, truthfulness matters. We are entitled to our opinion, but not to our own facts, as Senator Patrick Moynihan used to say.
6) A just war seeks prudent goals.
Conservatism traces its origin back to Edmund Burke. He was not a fan of abstract principles. Tradition, historical heritage, and property ownership were more important than philosophy, culture, and values. He was a “Rino”, Republican in name only. Rinos are cautious, wanting order, decorum, and slow change.
7) A war is comparatively just when the enemy's actions are morally wrong and yours are right.
War should not attack children, schools, hospitals, innocent civilians, and religious minorities. The charismatic aggressor said, “They made me do it. It was their fault. If I can’t have the thing I want, nobody will.” He persuaded his cult that their failure to support his cruelty was akin to Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus. It was better to destroy everything than to be humiliated. It was morally correct to stop the Holocaust, but it took the firebombing of Dresden to stop Hitler!
8) Wars are “just” if all other peaceful means have been exhausted.
It is a little bit like writing music. When do you know you are done? Music, a peaceful means, not only sets the mood, it defines the situation. Like the 38th parallel determining the dividing line between North Korea and South Korea, music determines the expectations of a scene in the movies.
9) The force must be appropriate and should not lead to greater violence.
We don’t know what will happen once a war has started. They are easier to initiate than to conclude. Was the nuclear bombing of Japan in WW II appropriate? When is nuclear war inappropriate? How will we end a war? Does it matter if we think we are winning or losing?
10) The doctrine of double effect, both good and bad, allows foreseen but unintended “collateral damage”.
Intent is a hard thing to measure. It has no explanatory power. How much intent and whose intent? What about hatred?
11) “If he has come to kill you – kill him first!”
It allows you to start a war, but it requires the enemy to intend to kill you. Was it immoral to kill 26 civilians to stop a shipment of heavy water that Hitler would have used to build an atomic bomb that could kill millions?
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