An acquaintance of mine invited me to a get-together today. She said they were going to be ‘singing for peace’. I suspect that she saw something in my eyes, because she almost immediately started mentioning what a long drive it was. I just agreed that it would be a long drive from here (she lives a good deal closer). She never will know how close I came to punching her lights out. I’m not sure whether that is, or isn’t, a good thing.

If she only knew she was dealing with the Commanding General of the Bellicose Women’s Brigade…

You showed admirable restraint, Kathy. And I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not either, anymore.

I’d buy it!

Oh yes, please. I’ll put it next to my “Nuke Liberal, Gay, Whales” and “This Vehicle Protected by Smith & Wesson”. How ‘bout this one: “All Wars are Patriotic, Good, and Protect Us From Our Enemies” You sound scared stupid.

Scared stupid??? I’m pissed off. Big difference, Shep.

I know this won’t be a popular post on this site, but as a devout Christian, I feel a moral obligation to ask: What’s wrong with advocating for peace? In my church, we pray for peace all the time. In my church, we deplore all acts of destroying human life. When Jesus implored us to love our enemies, I take that to mean that killing our enemies isn’t an acceptable act of love towards them. When Jesus drew a line in the sand and said that he who is without sin should cast the first stone of execution, I understand that to be a call to love and forgiveness, and - yes - peace, as opposed to violence, no matter how justified.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that the very human impulse to defend oneself and those one loves against attack is a very strong impulse; and if my family were directly threatened, I don’t really know how I would act. But I do know how I should act, because I have a pretty good ideal from George Bush’s favorite philosopher to guide me. I always come back to the fact that, no matter what “just war” theorists say, Jesus himself took the cross over taking up the sword.

You have your own moral compass for guiding your decision about the necessity and justification for war, and I respect that. However, the hostile anger against people advocating peace and protesting war to the tune of wanting to “punch their lights out” seems very misplaced to me; and as human as that hostility and anger might be for war supporters to have, it doesn’t measure up to my ideal of Christian behavior.

In any event, I don’t think that praying for an end to war or advocating for its end is ever a bad thing.

Jimmy, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with hoping and praying for peace. I pray for peace. The problem I see with these lefty types is that they ignore Ecclesiastes 3, which states without reservation that there is in fact a time for war as well as a time for peace. These folks agitated against self-defense from day one and have never let up. Against the Taliban, they argued for sanctions, which would not only have failed to dislodge the Taliban—it would have left millions under that miserable, brutal rule. They fail to understand that you cannot achieve peace unilaterally. If your enemy (and al Qaeda is in fact our enemy) wants you dead, platitudes and bumper stickers won’t stop them from killing you. Reason won’t stop them either, as they simply don’t accept us in any way, shape or form. You have to fight them, and win, and only then can there be peace. As long as the terrorists are a viable threat, there will be no peace—that’s by their choice, not ours.

So I’m with you in praying for peace. There will be a time for peace. But now, with terrorists who have demonstrated their ability to kill by the thousands and who want to kill even more, is the time for war.

Jimmy, I’m an unbeliever so my answer is only partly valid. But I’d make three points:

1. Nearly everyone wishes for a war to end. The difference is in how you get there. In this case, if we end the war by choosing not to fight, the world will end up totally Islamic, and an Islamic world has no room at all for live Christians or live Jews. You may appreciate the opportunity for total martyrdom, but most folks don’t.

Some wars may be properly ended by stopping the fight, but that’s only morally defensible if the war wasn’t worth fighting in the first place.

2. Bear in mind that this is a nation of Christians, but it is not a Christian Nation. Our government has to make its decisions based on secular principles, which includes an understanding of human nature.

3. Whatever Jesus might have meant by his non-violent advice, he also made it clear that his followers were supposed to be separate from the government, letting it do whatever it found necessary to defend its territory.

Oops, cross-posted with Bryan. But we said somewhat different things.…

Bryan, I would caution against using Old Testament biblical reference as a moral justification for human behavior. It opens up a can of worms that I don’t think you’d really want to contend with. I think the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels that chronicle the life and teachings of Jesus, offers a much more unassailable and clear example of the lives we should lead. Jesus Christ was not an advocate of war on our enemies. He told Peter to put away the sword.

To Ockham’s thoughtful post, I have the following comments: As to your #1, I think your conclusion that without war we’ll have an Islamist takeover of the world is a bit silly and overblown. But even if it’s true, I think a greater Islamist threat to the US comes not from a secularist Iraqi tyrrany, but from other places like Saudi Arabia or Iran. So using this rationale to justify war on Iraq doesn’t make much sense to me. As to your #2, I’m all for keeping religion out of government decision-making and basing such decisions on purely secular considerations. We can keep religion out of this debate and argue whether going to war is in the country’s best interests. Though it wasn’t the purpose of my post, I can imagine a secularist, humanitarian argument against war and for peace as well. For Christian believers, however, there should be the added burden of questioning the morality of taking life based on the examples and moral teachings of Christianity. As to #3, one might interpret Jesus’s “give to Caesar” dictum in many different ways, but I think he meant that we should keep faith separate from the state, not that we should give carte-blanche to our government to do whatever it found necessary to defend its territory. A government can to terribly immoral things in defense of its territory, even to its own people, and one doesn’t need to be a believer to strike moral opposition to it.

That’s all.