My
Memorial Day post was pretty incoherent (I blame a late start and technical
difficulties), but a friend was kind enough to slog through it and get at least
the gist of my intended meaning. His response (lightly edited):
To judge history you have to try to live in that moment. The
decision to fight in Vietnam was in large part noble, and the military and all
the veterans that served there served a good cause, though I can understand how
some believe that we should not have gone in and supported the French. [The
military] actually won the war, but the [politicians] handed the country over to
a totalitarian government during the days after the war was won.
I agree that our government is too big and taking away our
freedoms, but I do not believe that Bruce died in vain; rather, he died for his
country.
I disagree strongly with most of the people you quote. I
signed up for service at the end of the Vietnam conflict.
I also believe that some of the brightest and most
intellectually open people I have known were military men. I have had prolonged
discussions with enlisted and officers, from seamen and privates, ensigns and second
lieutenants to vice admirals. Your characterization of our military is unfair
and incorrect. The reason our military is successful is that we encourage our
non-coms and junior officers to exercise independent judgment and consider the
situation they are in. We have our My Lais and other atrocities, but we strive
for better. I spent years carpooling with a Pennsylvania National Guard captain who
served in Fallujah in Iraq and have a pretty good feel for what happened in
that war. Good men are leaving the military in large numbers as they cannot
live with the political mandates that are being forced on them—these men are
not ignorant vassals.
Our troops are still the finest in the world, and our goal is
to promote freedom. We are not perfect, but I cannot support the comments that
you made being broadcast on Memorial Day – a day to honor those who paid the
ultimate earthly price. For me this like debating our theological differences
during the middle of the Easter service.
If you believe that our freedoms are being threatened—and I
do—have you gotten involved in supporting political candidates and helping to
turn the ship around?
Maybe I should have waited a
day before posting. By posting on Memorial Day I may have broken the resolution
I made that if I were a missionary to a pagan people I would not go into their
temples and smash their idols.[i]
On the other hand, it isn’t
like there’s only one time a year when the troops are honored: every other
highway in this country is named after veterans. Every significant athletic
event begins with a giant flag held by soldiers, a moment of silence, and maybe
a flyover. Veterans Day and the Fourth of July always include a salute to the
troops. If every overpass in the South isn’t named after a “fallen hero,” it’s
only because they haven’t found enough soldiers (or state troopers) to name
them after.[ii]
But maybe that’s like we go to
church every Sunday. We’ve got fifty-one other Sundays to debate theological
differences. Let’s put them down at Easter, especially if (as is the case here,
to follow the analogy) we’re going to deny the resurrection. I hereby confess
that my shock and awe this week was no more effective than Bush’s was in
Afghanistan and Iraq: it provoked a reaction, but not the one intended.
But my correspondent raises
some good questions.
Are “our troops … the finest in
the world,” whose “goal is freedom”?
I would suggest that people are
people: we’re all made in the image of God, and we are all hopelessly twisted
by sin and in need of the blood of Christ if we are to be reconciled to our creator. We all know of men who have lived sacrificially to build churches and
other ministries only to throw it all away for illicit sex. If men of that
caliber fail, how exceptional can the rest of us be? If people “sold out to Jesus” sin grievously, what of US soldiers with no commitment to Jesus?
People who otherwise seek to be
good neighbors can come to believe horrible things. From my own camp Ludwig von Mises, Stefan Molyneux, and Darren Wolfe have
devoted great parts of their lives to speaking out against the evils done
against innocent people and for a neighborliness that comports with any reasonable reading of the last five commandments, yet they believe there is no God. Is it unreasonable
to ask whether sincere evangelicals—yes,
me included—can be deceived?
I consider what is called American
exceptionalism one of the deadliest spiritual plagues ever to hit the Christian
church, cousin if not brother to Hitler’s doctrine of Aryan supremacy, and
certainly an essential ingredient in the current US imperialism. It’s why killing innocent people overseas is considered “collateral damage” and not murder.
If “the finest in the world”
drop napalm and depleted uranium and white phosphorus on women and children,
what should we say about the men who, even though they are hopelessly outgunned,
try to defend their homes and families against “our troops”? Is a man piloting a drone from Arizona
really more noble than the guy on the ground trying to shoot it down? or, for
that matter, a kamikaze pilot?
How can anyone who can see, as
my correspondent does, that our government threatens our freedoms say that the goal
of our current wars is to protect freedom? Of course the politicians will say they’re all about freedom, but does
that make it true? The German populace was convinced they were free people trying to maintain their freedom, and many of the troops who fought for Hitler were good neighbors, otherwise well
intentioned, and all of them who faced death were brave. They all had “GOD IS WITH US” on their tax-financed,
government-issue belt buckles, but how true was that? How can “some of the
brightest and most intellectually open people” not make the connection between
the anti-freedom leanings of a Wilson, a Roosevelt, a Johnson, or an Obama—or
the ominous support of the Bushes for the New World Order—and their eagerness
to send people to kill and die in wars that are of no concern to us?
But maybe I’m not intellectual
enough. If the military actually won the war in Vietnam[iii]
and then the politicians gave the country away, would it not be true that the
politicians’ actions made all the destruction of life and property have gone for nothing?
Of what benefit was all the carnage if the result was the same as (or worse
than) it would have been had Bruce Gustafson and the others not gone over
there? And if there was no benefit, isn’t no
benefit synonymous with nothing,
and dying for nothing the same as dying in vain? What am I missing?
And what “his country” did
Bruce die for? If the Vietnamese ultimately got no benefit from his death, then
I certainly got no benefit from his death, so he didn’t die for me—I must not be
part of his country. As Smedley Butler said so presciently, he died for the
armament makers and the politicians. Some of those “Masters
of War” may end up in heaven, so I need to be careful here, but in earthly
terms they are not my country any more than the Wehrmacht troops were Belgian
after the Blitzkrieg or the US military was Iraqi in 2004.
In a word, to assume, as today’s
US evangelicals do, that “our troops” are truly defending our freedoms, “a force
for good,” or anything close to the good neighbors God calls us to be and to
commend, is to assume what needs to be proven.
I don’t know when the proper time
is for the question of the moral worth of US wars to be raised, but it seems
like every day is the right day for it to be ignored.
[i] I
made an exception to that in the days following 9/11: I desperately wanted to see
a bomb dropped on the Kaaba big enough to break the rock under the shroud into
a zillion pieces.
[ii]
South Caroline is going one better. They even have an interchange named after
Ben “Bankster Bailout” Bernancke.
[iii] I
have never heard this argument before. I’ve heard many times that the military could
have won the war if the politicians hadn’t bound their hands, but that’s not
what my correspondent says. Nor does he say the US won the war (i.e., beat the enemy’s uniformed military) but failed to
win the peace (i.e., control the underground and criminal elements). We used to joke that the army should just declare victory and
come home, but that’s not what he says either. His claim is that the US
military won the war, period.
No comments:
Post a Comment