I’ve been trying to develop my thoughts on the topic of Christianity and War for a long time now. And, what I’ve found is that the reasons that I do not support any war for any reason have more to do with probabilities than scripture. On the topic of war the Bible is inscrutable. For instance, our Lord is mostly silent on the issue. And while the Old Testament is filled with war history. It’s simply that. History. There’s little to be found by way of guidance on whether the wars recorded are proscriptive for our own behavior as believers. And further, does it have any bearing on how we respond to wars carried on by modern governments in the church age. For that reason, arguments based on Old Testament references are simply not compelling.

When we consider war, modern American evangelicals, on the whole, tend to support them. They may say that certain wars, like Viet Nam, were ill advised. But, even the criticism of the Viet Nam war tends to be more about errors in prosecution rather than an aversion to the operation of the war itself. You often hear statements like, “we didn’t have a clear goal in Viet Nam.” Or, “we got bogged down.” Or even, “we weren’t committed to winning.” All of these statements may be true. But, they have no relevance to whether Christians should have supported the war itself.

So, why do modern American evangelicals support U.S. led wars in such large numbers? I believe there are two general reasons:

1. More weight is given to the virtue of justice than mercy.
2. The truth about war is obscured in propaganda.

Much can be said about each one of these. But, what I want to point out first is that they are both honest mistakes. There is a strong commitment to justice within evangelicalism, and within Christianity itself. The satisfaction of justice is the entire basis of our need of a saviour. It’s very easy to carry that over into many other areas of life. And, justifiably so. It would be strange for a Christian not to desire justice for something like 9/11.

On the second point, the old saying holds true: truth is the first casualty of war. The average prime time news viewer/newspaper reader is going to be fed a steady diet of highly curated news about war. By the time that news gets into the living room in the form of a news cast or syndicated article, it’s been passed through many filters(political, corporate, ideological) along the chain. Naked truth from the front lines is very hard to come by. Especially in this age of constant media manipulation.

From a thousand foot view, I think these two points are the reason so many American Christians support our wars. What I hope to do next is explain why I believe they are wrong to do so, and drill down into a little more detail on these two points. I’m not going to rely heavily on scriptural references. I’ll just touch on biblical points in passing when making a point that I think is obvious from a “mere christianity” standpoint.

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside. (see photo gallery)

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak. Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.

–Yasmine El-Rashidi, Ahram Online

It seems that after the recent drive-by shooting at a Christian church in Egypt, some in the Islamic community attended the Christian services to deter any more violence against the Christians. They put their lives on the line for their Christian neighbors. But, nobody knows this because the media here in the U.S. buries stories like this because it doesn’t fit their “Muslims hate our freedom and want to kill us” theme.

Islam might have an inherently violent nature to it, but Muslims are still people just like us. They are made in God’s image just like us. And they share in God’s common grace just like us. That means that at their core a vast majority of Muslims want nothing more than to raise their families in peace and be left alone. The fraction that would be suicide bombers and terrorists is extremely small. It’s very much a cult of Islam that preys on the weak, the young and the estranged. A member of an Islamic terrorist group has about as much in common with your average Muslim as a Branch Davidian had in common with your typical Southern Baptist.

Does this mean that I think Muslims and Christians are all hunky dory with one another? Of course not. Their are, of course, major differences that make things hard. What I am saying is this: Christians in the U.S. have to separate themselves from this bloodthirsty neo-con idea that Islam is “evil” and Muslims want to kill us. Islam is not evil. It’s just not true. Believing something that’s not true doesn’t make you evil. It just makes you wrong.

Would we Christians go to a mosque to act as human shields for Muslims if the roles were reversed? I hope so. We should want to bring Christ to the Middle-East, not drones, death and destruction. We weep for the thousands of unborn babies that are killed every year. But, do we weep for the 3 year old Muslim that gets his legs blown off in a drone attack? Or is that just “collateral damage?”

A few months after the war began, Machen wrote that “the enormous lists of casualties” impressed him, “as nothing else has, with the destructiveness of the war.”

In reviewing a book in 1915 by a noted pro-English author, Machen remarked that the book was “a glorification of imperialism.” The author “glorified war” and ridiculed “efforts at the production of mutual respect and confidence among equal nations.”

–Laurence Vance on Machen

 

So, why the change in recent decades? Why do we hear christians say things like, “we should turn that whole place into a parking lot”, when speaking of the Middle East. Well, I think it’s at least partly because perpetual war has been so well funded by our inflationary central bank, the Federal Reserve, that it allows us to wage endless wars in far off lands without any consequences back here at home. After all, better to have the brown people’s children get their legs blown off by drone attacks than ours right? As long as it doesn’t interrupt my morning latte’ from Starbucks.

But, it wasn’t just Machen that opposed war in far off lands. Take this quote from Spurgeon:

War is at all times a most fearful scourge. The thought of slain bodies and of murdered men must always harrow up the soul; but because we hear of these things in the distance, there are few Englishmen who can truly enter into their horrors. If we should hear the booming of cannon on the deep which girdles this island; if we should see at our doors the marks of carnage and bloodshed; then should we more thoroughly appreciate what war means. But distance takes away the horror, and we therefore speak of war with too much levity, and even read of it with an interest not sufficiently linked with pain.

–C.H. Spurgeon, Sermon 196

 

We should heed these recent pillars of our faith and return to a default anti-war stance. Just because someone is muslim doesn’t mean they aren’t God’s precious creation. We should be praying and sending missionaries to that land – not bombing and sending drones.

Even the most cursory reading of world history will make one fact crystal clear: war is expensive; very, very, very expensive. In fact, it’s the most expensive thing a country will ever do. Historically, most countries that engage in large scale war eventually bankrupt themselves in the process and are forced to stop. Take the war of 1812 as an example. The U.S. was forced to sell $69 million in public bonds to finance that war. It took almost 25 years to pay off that debt – just from one large scale war. It was this debt load issued through the Bank of the United States and all of the shenanigans that followed it that directly led to the panic of 1819, as I’ve discussed here before.

The Mexican-American war in 1846 again forced the issuing of $63 million of public bonds. That was roughly equivalent to the entire federal budget. They hadn’t even made a dent in it. And, of course, all of this public debt issuance led directly to another bubble/banking panic known as the Panic of 1857. By the time the War for Southern Independence rolled around in 1860, that debt was still hanging around.

It’s also a fact of history that Napoleon sold Thomas Jefferson the Louisiana territory (Louisiana Purchase) to fund his war with England. That should demonstrate the amount of cash needed to fight a large war. He was willing to sell us almost an entire fifth of the North American continent in order to get enough gold to fight the British. And, this isn’t atypical. It’s entirely normal. As I said, war is really, really, really expensive. The cost of sending thousands of men and machinery across the globe to fight a war is just enormous.

All of this leads to the real issue I want to address. How is it then, that the United States apparently can continue to wage war multiple times per decade in seemingly endless fashion and not have any trouble paying for it? One answer: inflation. Massive, massive inflation. That’s the only way that this type of thing is possible. Robert Higgs calls inflation “death fuel” for this very reason. The only way to make war affordable for a country is to inflate it’s currency through debt creation, which then gets monetized by the Fed. That debt then goes to fund military endeavors quickly, before the money has lost it’s buying power. In this way, we are funding war by lowering our purchasing power on a daily basis. At least the selling of war bonds is an up-front way of accounting for the costs of war. Funding it through inflation is more insidious, since nobody sees it happening. It makes killing seem “free.”

Think inflation isn’t driving war? Take these figures:

• The first gulf war cost about $61 billion.
• The Iraq war currently stands at $700 billion.
• Afghanistan is currently at around $200 billion.

I’d say that those numbers show some serious inflation happening. When your government can spend almost a trillion dollars on something and you don’t even notice it economically, you can bet that there are some major inflationary games going on. Just for perspective, by the time we conclude the Iraq and Afghanistan wars(if we ever do), we will have spent more on them than the entire balance of the Social Security Trust Fund(if there was one). That means that we spent more in 10 years than the balance of a program that has been accumulating money since F.D.R was president. That, my friends, is inflation. Also, known as death fuel.

Have you heard the saying, “if you’re not growing, you’re dying?” Well, that’s ultimately what offensive war is about. It’s about empire building. It always has been, and it always will be. We can’t kid ourselves and pretend that Iraq somehow was a defensive war. It wasn’t. It was an attempt by us to set up a puppet government in one of the major countries in that region. Afghanistan wasn’t defensive either. It was no more of a defensive war than the Japanese invasion of Manchuria was. And, of course, the Japanese had their version of 9/11 too, in the form of the Manchurian Incident. Empires always find a pretext(however small) for invading small countries. England did it, Japan did it, Russia did/does it, Austria-Hungary did it, and we(the U.S.) do it too.

How can I say that Afghanistan wasn’t a defensive war? Imagine that you are a kid that gets bullied every day at school for years. One day you work up your courage and decide that you aren’t going to take it any more. When the bully walks in the room and starts taunting you, you sock him square in the nose. The only problem is that he is five times bigger than you, so your punch makes his nose bleed, but it didn’t really hurt him that much. What does he do in response? He beats you black and blue, rips your shirt off, chokes you with it and then throws you in the mud. And later he claims it was self-defense because you hit him first.

What will the people say when they wake up and realize that all of these wars that they have financed through taxes and inflation for decades have been just the empire building whims of ego-maniacal presidents?

US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.

The claims were made as Nato admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night. It had initially claimed that the women had been dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies.

“Despite earlier reports we have determined that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale, a Nato spokesman. The coalition continued to deny that there had been a cover-up and said that its legal investigation, which is ongoing, had found no evidence of inappropriate conduct.

–Jerome Starkey, Times Online

This is the “new tone” that Obama brought to the world stage. This is how he restores “respect to America’s image in the world.” Just a few more children that will grow up without parents thanks to the whims of an American president. God help us. Christians love to rail against abortion, yet they actively worship at the feet of a military that just killed two pregnant women. And, yes, I said worship and meant it. Have you been to the Lifeway book store lately and seen their military section with paintings of soldiers kneeling at the cross? It’s sickening.

War is one of the most effective tools that the state uses to grab large amounts of power for itself. It’s the perfect excuse. Human nature longs for security and safety, but also bravado and pride. War touches on both of those base human desires. One understandable, one sinful. Anti-war is fully and totally consistent with a free-market, free-trade, pro-liberty ideology. If you don’t trust the state to run health care, why in God’s name would you trust it to kill people?

Firstly, he’s wrong about a lot of the economic stuff that I thought he was right about. He’s always been a Milton Friedman-ite. And, while that’s better than being a Keynesian, ol’ Milton has plenty of his own problems. The so-called monetarist school that he comes from is way too friendly with the Federal Reserve and big government monetary policy. Rush thinks that guys who call for a return to hard money, like Ron Paul, are kooks. He’s completely wrong about this. A return to the gold standard would solve a great many problems we face in this country right now. Like I said, he’s not a wacko, but he just isn’t seeing things correctly. He’s got his economics down and he isn’t willing to dig any deeper.

Secondly, and more importantly, his penchant for the military has gone over the top. Case in point is his latest opinion that we should bomb the living hell out of Iran:

Now, the Iranians are denying this story, but it’s in multiple sources here. “The deputy minister, Mohammed Haj Mahmoud, said Iranian troops seized oil well No. 4 Thursday night in the al-Fakkah…” gotta pronounce that carefully “…oil field, located about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. The oil field is one of Iraq’s largest.” However, as I say, the Iranians are denying this. Now, ladies and gentlemen, as far as Iran is concerned, let’s be blunt here. The only way to stop them is to destroy the Iranian regime, the mullahs, and that can only be accomplished through war. And by war I don’t mean ground troops, I mean massive bombing raids intended to destroy every one of the key targets. The question is whether we have the will to do this anymore. Danielle Pletka, from I think AEI, had a column on this in the Washington Post earlier this week basically stating our policy is one of containment and how erroneous and dangerous that is. It’s a leftover containment policy, mutually assured destruction that we had with the Soviets.

…

So if we don’t pound Iran into submission at some point they are going to get the bomb, they’re bragging about it, they’ve told us, they’ve shunned the inspectors, and they laugh about it all. If Israel doesn’t attack ‘em the world will be forever a hostage to an Islamic regime that could fire midrange and eventually long-range nuclear missiles when it chooses. Now, we know that Obama will not take effective military steps to stop Iran so if Israel doesn’t it will in fact become a nuclear regime. Obama will not do it because he doesn’t like the concept of victory, he’s uncomfortable with it, and he’d rather send letters to North Korea and to Tehran and have all kinds of meaningful dialogue. Economic sanctions in Iran will not work since the mullahs and ayatollahs are unaffected by it, they don’t care what happens to their people.

–Rush Limbaugh, 2009.12.18

I’m not going to go off pointing fingers and acting self-righteous because I used to be just as on board with all things military as he is. As recently as two years ago I would have said “Heck yeah man. Let’s bomb ‘em. Right on.” My recent studies have changed my mind though. And, I want to emphasize “my studies.” Not my feelings. Not my politics. Not my theology. It was my study of the historical facts about government and war that changed my mind on the military. I just can’t, in good conscience, support this stuff any more. It’s so obviously political. The whole Iran situation has been so hyped up that it’s nuts. Just like every other conflict we’ve been in or started. The facts never match the propaganda.

I want to ask one question. Why do we get to say what Iran does? Isn’t that Iran’s business. Don’t knee-jerk that question. Think about it seriously for a little while. What, exactly, is it that makes bombing Iran moral? Why do we get to make decisions on what they do on their own soil? Rush’s answer would be that if they complete the building of a nuclear bomb they will use it on us and/or Israel. Is that a fact? Is that an absolute fact with no reservations? Of course not. As a matter a fact, it’s probably the least likely scenario that there is. Why in the world would Iran launch a nuclear missle at us or Israel? As soon as they hit the freakin button there would be about 20 nukes in the air coming right back at them and they know that. They would have to not only be insane, but also suicidal. And, not just Amedhenijad. The whole upper cabinet of Iranian government would have to be suicidal maniacs, and I find that hard to believe.

But, that’s what happens when you take an attitude of pre-emptive war. It makes you see everyone as a bogeyman. Here’s a thought. Maybe the reason Iran wants a nuke is because Israel has had nukes for 40 years and they are tired of being at a disadvantage. I could absolutely be wrong about that and I’m willing to admit that. But, if I’m right and we go ahead and bomb Iran anyway then I’m afraid it’s going to be us who are the insane ones.

I think the real problem with Rush has to be that he’s just too isolated. I know that it’s always easy to play the “out of touch” card with someone who is so wealthy, but that’s not what I’m trying to say. I think he’s secluded himself from the public (with good reason by the way) so much that he’s lost the pulse of what’s going on under the surface. He knows that what’s coming out of big media is a bunch of hooey, but he’s missing what’s actually going on in the real world. This Republicans vs. Democrats thing is dead in the mind of many Americans. Many, many people see it all for what it is now. A big shell game where politicians pick their favorite big-media moral issue to whip up their constituency and then laugh about it over cocktails afterwords. Rush still actually believes that Republicans and Democrats are different. That’s his big mistake.

• Send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
• Continue drone bombings on Pakistan border regions.
• Impose gasoline sanctions on Iran.

I guess that pretty much proves every libertarian’s point that there is no difference between the two parties when it comes to war.  They both love it.  Democrats like to pretend they are anti-war, but when someone who is really anti-war and not just showboating for the camera shows up they get all flustered and the real man comes out in the open.  Take Mr. Bill Moyers for example.  Moyers was a constant critic of the Bush wars, but listen to how flustered he gets when Lew Rockwell won’t take his “America is justified in policing all bad guys” bait:

The most recent imposing of gasoline sanctions on Iran is particularly disturbing. Remember, just like all taxes ultimately flow down to the individual, so do sanctions. All these gas sanctions are going to do is drive gasoline prices through the roof for the average Iranian and therefore solidify their support of ever-more radical regimes. Cutting off the free flow of trade is the most sure fire route to war. Like the saying goes, when goods can’t cross borders armies will. America can’t police the world. It’s not our calling to be an instrument of justice to the whole globe. And when we try, it backfires every time.

Evidently Obama doesn’t remember our oil embargo against Japan that led to our entry into WWII. Or maybe he does. Maybe he’s finding out that absolute power, and specifically the power to wage war comes in pretty handy in politics sometimes.

The Brittish got their butts kicked when they invaded Iraq in WWI(1915) at the city of Kut. The middle-east has been meddled with and invaded by the west for years, and we still wonder why they hate us so much. When are we going to learn to leave those people alone and mind our own business.