Comments on: u.s. troops drag 8 children from their beds in the middle of the night and kill them

By: Ronald King

Ronald King — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:36:23 +0000

God Bless You Ann Miller, as Digbydolben often states.

By: ann miller

ann miller — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:26:57 +0000

Thank you so much for posting this article. As someone who works with war-injured Iraqi and Afghani children through No More Victims.org in an effort to get them medical care and to advocate for Peace, I’d seen this report and it is not at all a surprise. We’ve killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of children in both Iraq and Afghanistan (and are doing the same in other parts of the world). Make no mistake; these are innocent civilians of countries that have been invaded and destroyed by US! “Insurgents” are most often people fed up with having their doors kicked in, their homes destroyed, their hospitals bombed, and their families slaughtered. If WE were invaded, would we not try to fight back?

Until we understand that we don’t make our country safer by attacking others, and that there is no justification for the slaughter of others; until we understand that we are all one human family put on earth to love one another, not to hate and kill, we as a nation, are not safer, and slaughters like that of these children will continue by people trained to think that others’ lives are somehow “less” than ours. Those children, and all of the others who’ve been killed, are truly the human face of collateral damage.
And just as important as our children.

By: digbydolben

digbydolben — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:23:14 +0000

I know a bunch of you think Pat Buchanan is a racist, but I don’t and I think you’d better take seriously what he is saying here:

http://www.takimag.com/article/why_are_they_at_war_with_us/

By: Ryan Klassen

Ryan Klassen — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:19:41 +0000

Thales;
I appreciate your thoughtfulness and willingness to dialogue. It’s been fun.

By: Thales

Thales — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:43:46 +0000

Ryan and digby,
Thanks for the thoughts. I have to do some more thinking, but I’m not convinced that modern military training as a whole, is entirely dehumanizing (and immoral) as you suggest. I still think there has to be place for training that goes beyond mere law enforcement (if that means only, keeping the peace), and goes to methods on how to lethally subdue someone – and that this can be done in a manner that recognizes the humanity of the opponent and doesn’t teach “hate of the opponent.” I admit that this type of teaching may be difficult in the particular, but as an ideal, I think it’s possible. At any rate, I need to think about this some more. Thanks again.

By: digbydolben

digbydolben — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:13:43 +0000

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kreca/kreca2.1.1.html

By: grega

grega — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:58:06 +0000

Ryan,
I really did not mean to accuse you of anything –
Regarding worrying all about Russia/Communism while missing the cancer in the middle of Catholic heartland I was referring to for example the Fatima story -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Secrets_of_F%C3%A1tima
But this is really long gone history – the more interesting questions for us are the ones we have to answer now – How do we for example face the various challenges to our way of life by religious extremist?

By: Ryan Klassen

Ryan Klassen — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:00:58 +0000

David – I agree that there are winners and losers in war, and it makes a difference for the winners (and for the losers). But who are we to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die? And yes, WW2 was not fought against the abstract notion of dictators – it was fought against an actual dictator. But the result of using violence against one dictator was simply to establish another dictator who did the exact same things (albeit to different people). So if violence failed to achieve the ends that are said to justify it, that means that it is not justified at all. I don’t want to judge if it would have been better to be killed by Hitler or by Stalin either, but I have yet to hear the victims of either one wish they had been killed by the other.

By: David Nickol

David Nickol — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:47:17 +0000

My point is that if the goal was to free Europe from dictators and prevent the slaughter of citizens by their government (the two most commonly quoted goals of WW2) then WW2 was an abject failure.

I don’t think World War II was an abject failure from the viewpoint of, say, England, France, Greece, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United States. And even Italy, West Germany, Finland, and Japan wound up being free when the war was over. Certainly it was a tragedy for those formerly free nations who wound up dominated by the Soviet union. But World War II was fought against Germany and Japan, not for the abstract goal of being free from dictators. And would it have been better for all of those occupied by the Nazis to have stayed under Nazi control rather than wind up under Soviet control? I would hate to make a judgment either way.

By: Ryan Klassen

Ryan Klassen — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:58:31 +0000

David – Yes, it is a simplified version of what happened. Containment and nuclear deterrence certainly played a role in the fall of Communism in Europe. But the goal of deterrence and containment was not to end Communism in Europe. The goal was to maintain a stable status quo, with the West and the Soviet Union holding sway in their respective spheres of influence. It was religious leaders and non-violent protesters who brought the Berlin Wall down. Very few people realize the influence that Christian churches had over shaping the opposition to Communism in Communist countries.

Grega – I’m not Roman Catholic, so the accusation of Communist phobia doesn’t really apply. My own tradition (Anabaptist) has a strong Christian communistic influence. I don’t know what the outcome would have been if the Allies had really worked non-violently to oppose the Nazi’s. But remember, non-violence is not appeasement – it is a third way between violence and doing nothing. And there is always a third way to oppose evil without disobedience to the gospel. My point is that if the goal was to free Europe from dictators and prevent the slaughter of citizens by their government (the two most commonly quoted goals of WW2) then WW2 was an abject failure. Couple that with the fact that the overthrow of the dictatorships that resulted from WW2 was done without that kind of violence, how can you not admit that there could have been a non-violent solution to the problem of Hitler that would have been more effective than war?

By: digbydolben

digbydolben — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:25:07 +0000

Nate, Ronald and Matt, God bless you.

By: Matt Talbot

Matt Talbot — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:18:10 +0000

The best way to change the world, and the Church, is to become a saint.

Amen.