Hattip to Holly Scheer at The Federalist.
“When men write about war, then, and say that it is a great plague, that is all true; but they should also see how great the plague is that it prevents. If people were good, and glad to keep peace, war would be the greatest plague on earth; but what are you going to do with the fact that people will not keep peace, but rob, steal, kill, outrage women and children, and take away property and honor?”
Well, even that great heresiarch Martin Luther couldn’t get everything wrong. Of course in regard to war, like much else, he merely lifted just war concepts from Catholicism for his new religion. His quote is interesting however, because it does underline a problem with how many elites in the West, including elites in the Catholic Church, look at war. War is viewed by these elites as something to be avoided at all cost. Lip service is sometimes paid to confronting aggression, but endless excuses are brought up to avoid doing so at all, or doing so effectively.
Why this is the case is usually because it is thought that we can pick and choose our wars and we should always choose to avoid wars. Most Western nations since World War II, if they have fought a war at all, have fought it far away from their shores. The illusion has grown up in the minds of many Western elites that wars can simply be walked away from without consequences. Of course, this is a self-serving falsehood. After Congress, for example, cut off funding for the US military in South Vietnam in 1973, it was the South Vietnamese people who endured Communist rule, with a million of them being tossed into re-education camps, hundreds of thousands summarily executed, and a million boat people risking their lives on the high seas to escape. Refusing to fight is rarely a cost free exercise, it merely means, for contemporary Westerners, that some people we do not know over seas will pay the price. Acting in this manner is usually dressed up in glowing terms of being anti-war, pacifist and non-violent. Perhaps this is a true description for the motivation of some, but I think for most it is simply a deeply cynical assessment that it is not my neck on the line or the necks of anyone that I love.
Of course no nation has the power to right all wrongs in the world and in some conflicts, Syria for example, it is hard to see what good military intervention can accomplish, when all sides seem bad. However, the wholesale abdication by almost all of the West of the responsibility to confront evil abroad will inevitably, and probably sooner rather than later, bring the evils to our own doorstep. 9-11 should have taught us that, but apparently it has not. Perhaps the nuclear 9-11 I foresee in the not too distant future on some Western city, will finally convince the contemporary West that attempting to ignore war, or merely denouncing it with words, makes as much sense as combating a raging fire with similar tactics. War, like many of the evils that confront man in this Vale of Tears, is usually not susceptible to being ignored long term without someone paying a ghastly price.
Amen to every line.
Luther knew what dwells in the hearts of men. And it ain’t pretty. Even within our own hearts.
Of course, as a Lutheran, I’d say that he got it right, much more than he got it wrong. But he wasn’t alone in his staunch defense of the gospel. Many Church Fathers, long before Luther, knew that it was Christ’s work for the sinners, and that work alone, that justifies the ungodly…people like us.
But it was the timing of Luther and the Medici Pope Leo X, that brought necessary reform to a head.
That aside, we must never relent in the battle with Islam. It is a scourge and the devil’s counterpunch to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Thanks.
Oops.
I meant to include these 21 quotes of Catholic Church Fathers, long before Luther:
http://theoldadam.com/2011/06/24/long-before-luther/
They are worth a perusal.
Here is another town on the verge of being executed by ISIS and it’s Shiite and apparently neither a Shiite government nor nearby Shiite Iran can manage to drop them more guns and food or better still strafe the beseigers.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/23/world/meast/iraq-violence/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
60,000 KIA and 150,000 WIA in Vietnam – not to mention the great, lasting cultural wound as it’s legacy. Kind of a big deal.
What’s unfortunate is it took such a great loss of life, suffering, and the injustice of a draft for us to swallow our pride and realize that it Vietnam was an unending quagmire and it was in the best interest of Americans and America to go home.
This chest thumping needs to stop. Don’t rationalize this unending, nationalist, paternalistic desire to rule the world with our faith.
“What’s unfortunate is it took such a great loss of life, suffering, and the injustice of a draft for us to swallow our pride and realize that it Vietnam was an unending quagmire and it was in the best interest of Americans and America to go home.”
Of course that is a complete misreading of the history. In the 1972 Year of the Rat offensive US airpower alone aided the South Vietnamese in fighting off the North Vietnamese offensive. Congress cut off funds when victory was in our grasp and the people of South Vietnam abandoned to their fate. Of course, judging from your comment, the South Vietnamese were of no consequence as far as you were concerned.
And we couldn’t bomb certain enemy air bases and anti air craft batteries of the enemy according to President Johnson…nor could we bomb Hanoi of Haiphong. One of my relatives was over there and wrote back to other relatives not to come over because one hand was being tied behind our backs by the president:
” Though Rolling Thunder attacked strategic targets such as electric plants and fuel storage facilities, the limited number of these targets and restrictions against bombing near Hanoi, Haiphong, and the Chinese border made interdiction its prime focus. Throughout the campaign, American pilots clamored to “go downtown” (bomb Hanoi), but President Johnson, who approved and sometimes picked the targets, constantly turned down these requests. He believed the threat of more intensive destruction implicit in limited, incremental bombing would have a greater impact on Hanoi’s willingness to negotiate than an all‐out terror offensive. He also believed that this gradualist approach would stave off possible Chinese intervention.
For pilots, the most frustrating aspect of the bombing restrictions was that most North Vietnamese fighter bases and surface‐to‐air missile (SAM) batteries fell within restricted areas. To cope with these defenses, the services developed elaborate “strike packages” consisting of fighter‐bombers, fighter escorts, electronic warfare aircraft, search and rescue planes, and airborne command and control aircraft. Yet North Vietnamese air defenses claimed over 900 American aircraft during Rolling Thunder. Most of these aircraft were downed by simple 23–100 mm antiaircraft artillery. The North used high‐altitude SAMs to compel American aircraft to fly low, thereby bringing them within range of their guns. Russian‐built MiGs were used sparingly, generally making just one pass before retreating home. These “guerilla” tactics yielded meager results: only seventy‐six planes shot down during the war, or about 7 percent of U.S. fixed‐wing losses over the North. On the other hand, such caution made the U.S. kill ratio just 2.5 to 1 from 1965 to 1973; consequently only five Americans qualified as aces (with five or more “kills”).
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/u-s-air-operations-in-the-vietnam-war#ixzz3BIyTtV38
Donald McClarey: “Of course, judging from your comment, the South Vietnamese were of no consequence as far as you were concerned.”
.
I read that, too.
If we fought Hitler and Tojo the way we fought Ho, Hitler’s grandson would be ruling the Third Reich, which would run from GB to Siberia, from the Arctic Circle to the Indian Ocean. The Japanese would control the rest of Asia and Australia, possibly the west coast US.
.
The Vietnam thing ties in to the PC rewrite of American History post.
.
The Vietnam lies (based on US VC sympathizer and Comintern propaganda) were being written as the war was fought.
.
Right! We knew the1970 mining of Haiphong harbor worked b/c the US subversives went ballistic. The Spring 1972 NVA offensive was a disaster for the NVA/VC, as ARVN and US air power murdered the mass murderers when they came in the open. Also, The Christmas 1972 bombing in two weeks proved LBJ wrong. NV broke the 1973 Paris Peace Accords and the US did nothing. If in 1975 the post-impeachment VietCongress had sent (they 24/7 airlift resupplied Isr in the 1973 Yom KIppur War) any military supplies, the ARVN with US air power would have again killed the NVA in May 1975.
.
But, the gravest lie was told by Conkite (burning in Hell) when he lied about the immense NVA/VC defeat in Tet 1968.
Europe would not have remained Christian if it wasn’t for Christians fighting & defeating the Muslims 500 years ago. (The Pope released his own army)
READ the following 2 EXCELLENT books on this subject matter by Roger Crowley:
“1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West”
and
NYTimes Bestseller: “Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World”
The Pope still has an army. It’s called the Swiss Guard. He makes his pacifist statements as he, personally, is well protected by it. I’m still trying to figure out how IS is supposed to be stopped without dropping bombs.
mommy3 wrote, “Europe would not have remained Christian if it wasn’t for Christians fighting & defeating the Muslims 500 years ago.”
In 1690, a group of London Quakers obtained permission to establish a trading post or “factory,” as it was called. Having conducted negotiations with the Grand Vizier, Fazıl Mustafa Köprülü, he submitted their petition to the Sultan Anmed II Halife, in which they uncompromisingly declared declared their Christian principles: “All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world.”
The Sultan wrote a hatt-ı hümayun or handwritten rescript on the Vizier’s petition, giving them his protection, together with settlement and trading rights throughout the Ottoman dominions. Six years later, they obtained a firman from Sultan Mustafa II Halife, allowing them to establish a second factory at Alexandria in Egypt.
Later, they obtained similar privileges from the Mughal Emperors of India.
they continued to enjoy these rights until the outbreak of WWI.
I should have said the first factory was at Constantinople (present-day Istanbul)
I am sure the Royal Navy ruling the roost in the Mediterranean, and John Company, and then the British Raj, doing the same in India, had a wee bit to do with the Quakers being able to profit securely from trade in the East. The Quakers have been fortunate that they almost all live in powerful nations where they never suffer the consequences of their embrace of pacifism, due to the willingness of others to do their fighting for them.
Benjamin Franklin noted this irony and told this story of William Penn:
“The honorable and learned Mr. Logan, who had always been of that sect . . . told me the following anecdote of his old master, William Penn, respecting defense. It was war-time, and their ship was chas’d by an armed vessel, suppos’d to be an enemy. Their captain prepar’d for defense; but told William Penn and his company of Quakers, that he did not expect their assistance, and they might retire into the cabin, which they did, except James Logan, who chose to stay upon deck, and was quarter’d to a gun. The suppos’d enemy prov’d a friend, so there was no fighting; but when [Logan] went down to communicate the intelligence, William Penn rebuk’d him severely for staying upon deck, and undertaking to assist in defending the vessel, contrary to the principles of Friends, especially as it had not been required by the captain. This reproof, being before all the company, piqu’d [Mr. Logan], who answer’d, “I being thy servant, why did thee not order me to come down? But thee was willing enough that I should stay and help to fight the ship when thee thought there was danger.””
“I being thy servant, why did thee not order me to come down? But thee was willing enough that I should stay and help to fight the ship when thee thought there was danger.””
Smart answer and a saver. Thank you Donald McClarey. I would have loved history more at school if I had known there was so much wisdom there. Better late than never.
T. Shaw: Hitler had every intention to enslave the U.S. Britain was only his stepping stone. Hitler’s was world domination and I often wonder what Hitler and Tojo would have done when they met.
The question of whether the US could have “won” the Vietnam War is a strawman argument.
Meddling with politics and then fighting proxy wars in the Third World is hardly charitable, no matter how you church it up.
Lets not confuse cases of legitimate defense with white flag operations, political wag-the-dog, “conservative” social engineering, and the interests of the military industrial complex.
“The question of whether the US could have “won” the Vietnam War is a strawman argument”
You obviously know little about strawman arguments. You, erroneously, said we were in an endless quagmire and I provided facts, to which you did not respond, that indicated otherwise. You also fail to make any comments about what happened to the South Vietnamese people after Congress cut off funding for US military operations, supporting my contention that you couldn’t care less about what happened to them.
Donald R McClarey wrote, “Perhaps the nuclear 9-11 I foresee in the not too distant future on some Western city…”
I certainly accept that that is a real possibility. At the same time, I would lay any odds that that city will not be Lisbon or Prague, Lima or Caracas.
Now, why do you suppose that is?