Policing the Road to Jericho

 

 Everybody--well, almost everybody--wants to be a Good Samaritan.

 

    That's a good sign in a troubled world.

 

 

But somebody still needs to go back to the road and deal with the muggers.  

Nobody is rushing forward to claim that job.

 

The world is a dangerous place. At the level of imago Dei, we are all children of the same One Presence/One Power, expressions of the Christ within. But do I have to point out to anybody the existential fact that some people use their divine energies to do ungodly damage to others? The application of force to prevent (or end) acts of atrocity remains a distasteful option for people who recognize the value and dignity of every human life. Military action has not always been popular, especially after protracted conflicts.

 

I am reading a three volume biography which spans the late 19th through mid-20th centuries, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill by William Manchester and Paul Reid. Although the circumstances were vastly different, the tendency of war-weary Europe to avoid further armed hostilities kept the democracies from confronting the threat of fascism. Unchallenged, the menace grew strong on the blood of the weak and finally turned to larger prey. Churchill's England had been mauled and nearly decimated by World War I. During the rise of fascism the anti-war sentiment in the United Kingdom was so powerful that in 1931 the Oxford student union, at the most British of all schools, voted on the proposition "that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country," It carried by 275 votes to 153.

 

Jingoism is a perennial danger for great powers. No nation is immune to the wiles of chauvinistic patriotism. In its quest for righteous payback, the United States attacked Iraq after an attack on our shores, which a Hitler-esque Saddam Hussein did not arrange or sponsor. Removing Saddam was a good deed, but arguably it should have been accomplished by the Iraqi people rather than foreign intervention. It has taken us a decade to recognize the difference between police actions and military invasions. Our response to 911 should have been a police action, to find and bring to justice the people responsible for this act of unquestioned terror. You don't need to send a Roman legion into the hills to attack every camel caravan loping along the road to Jericho. Find the bad guys, bring them to justice.

 

But what if the bad guys are in power and turning their military might against the innocent within their borders? All governments have the internationally recognized right to fight insurrectionists, but to what extent? Heavy artillery, air strikes, napalm, chemical and biological warfare, nuclear detonations? The world community has drawn certain red lines--yes, red lines--and declared certain kinds of weaponry are too terrible to tolerate. Presently, it includes chemical,  biological and nuclear attacks. I would argue other classes of weapons should be added--napalm, anti-personnel mines, and a variety of small arms munitions designed to mutilate. Ideally, the list would continue to expand until all we have left are boxing gloves and paint guns, but all this is just a tension-relieving fantasy.

 

CBN weaponry is the issue before the world community today, and unless someone holds the holders of WMD arsenals accountable, we shall see them deployed repeatedly, sooner or later against friends, allies, or ourselves. The military questions separate only slightly from political considerations. Can we do anything worthwhile in a strike against a nation which has deployed WMD inside its borders? There is a caption floating around the Internet at this moment which says: "Let me see if I understand--you want to kill Syrians, because Syrians are killing Syrians?" It is a distasteful joke, but contains a profound insight: When has violence, applied against violence, made any contribution to peace? The answer is not a slam-dunk. Gandhi-quotes notwithstanding, there have been wars worth fighting. Think about the fate of European Jews, gays, and others deemed unworthy to exist in the Third Reich had military power not toppled the Nazi holocaust. Still, the tension between the "just" war and wars of expedience or exploitation must continue to be a subject for public debate if we are to move this bloody, beautiful world forward to a Roddenberry-esque future of unity and peace.

 

So, if President Obama is reading this--which I seriously doubt--let me offer my prayers and hopes that you will find a way to move America toward a peaceful world where children are not gassed by their leaders, in Germany or Syria, without causing more destruction than you seek to prevent. This week is Unity's World Day of Prayer (September 12). The peace of the world will be high on the list for many of us as we turn to God with faith, hope, and love.