Preparing my lectures for the Bucer Institute this weekend on “America’s Wars” and seeing again the duplicity, naivete, and outright wickedness of our leaders. Breathtaking. Suffocating.
It would be bad enough if their actions merely cost us money or caused national embarrassment. But their decisions costs the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men and uncounted civilians . . . and that’s not even considering the suffering and oppression endured by thousands in the new “peace-time” world that emerged from the rubble.
War is sometimes absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, most of the wars in which we’ve been engaged have been almost completely unnecessary.
The Lord have mercy upon us.
I think the two words you used – Breathtaking. Suffocating. – capture exactly how I feel when I survey America’s wars. About the only subject more breathtaking and suffocating to me is the attachment of 20th century American wars with wall Street, but that’s a whole other subject of its own.
After surveying the wars of history, I have personally concluded that genuine wars, i.e wars fought based upon absolute moral principles, are initiated, fought through, and completed in a relatively short amount of time, kind of like a recession in a free market economy begins, adjusts through difficulties, and concludes in a relatively short amount of time. At this point in my life, I get a little suspicious when I see individual wars, like “the war on terror,” which go on and on and on. I just wish so many lives and callings weren’t sacrificed in all the wars we’ve been in.
These are just my thoughts. I could very well be oversimplifying things. I think you’re article is exactly right though.
I think it’s right to become suspicious whenever our government gets involved in a war against some sort of abstraction, or anything that is not another nation or a group of people.
“terror”
“drugs”
“cancer”
“poverty”
This is a different set of wars than those Steve may be studying, but wars against nations, just or unjust, eventually end when somebody wins or loses. The aforementioned “wars” have the benefit (to the government) of being open-ended by design. Not sure when “drugs” is going to wave the white flag.
I cringe every time I see a young man in our congregations join the military. I am glad I do not have a son for the govt. to use as cannon fodder.
Before I started studying the War of Northern Aggression, I did a bit of reading about World War 2 and some of the personalities involved. The more I read the more I became convinced that we fought World War 2 to make the world safe for communism. If that sounds far out, look at the results. Stalin got all of Eastern Europe and within five years our State Dept. had managed to hand over China to Mao. What did America get out of all of it? We got to pay the bill and to help, in spite of all the Cold War propaganda, to prop up the Communist regime in the Soviet Union until the early 1990s.
And in our “adventures” in the Middle East all we are doing is pulling Israel’s chestnuts out of the fire and making war on those countries Israel has a problem with–after all, in their eyes better that American boys should die rather than their own.
Al Benson Jr.
Duplicity is a good movie and i really love the graphics and the story ~