Pressing the Fight

Never think that war, no matter how necessary,

nor how justified, is not a crime.

-Ernest Hemmingway

Waging war in the age of video footage and the interweb has got to be a major headache.  I mean, back in the good old days you could just slaughter people with impunity and no one would ever find out.  Now you invade one little contested territory like Gaza, and you have to start dealing with all those questions about whether your right to self defense should really include all those dead children being pulled out of the rubble.

But come on, 3000 or so years ago, when the shoe was on the other foot, Tiglath Pileser used to ride into your towns and build pyramids of severed heads, Amnesty International didn't say squat.

At the risk of sounding too Forrest Gump, when I was a kid, my parents taught me that if I allowed bullies to provoke me into violence, even if I won the fight, I actually lost.  It took me a while to get a grip on that reality, but eventually I saw how it made sense.  Violence never really solves anything.  I know that, but if someone punches me in the face, I'm still probably going to hit them back.

War is serious business, and Hamas is bad people, as are ISIS and Al Quaeda, and the Taliban, and SPECTRE (Sorry, I have to laugh a little or else I'm going to have a rage fit).  But what we have done, Israel, the US, and even our old nemesis Russia, is let these little groups of terrorist/bullies draw us into a fight that we cannot win.  There's this scene in the movie The Princess Bride, where the hero has to fight a giant man named Fezzig (played by Andre the Giant).  The hero is decidedly not a giant and stands absolutely no chance of besting the Fezzig's strength, so he uses his speed and tenacity to get behind the giant and latch on around his neck, cutting off his breath.

Fezzig makes the comment that he's not used to fighting just one person, he's used to fighting gangs of people, he's used to people using different tactics.  The rather absurd and almost insane method of grab, cling and choke, doesn't seem like it poses a threat, until he starts to lose consciousness.  Typical of Goliath, to not be threatened by a boy with no armor and some stones.

The Palestinians are no match for the Israeli Army, but then again, the Afghans were not for the Russians either, nor were the Viet Cong for the US.

The more we master violence, the less effective it becomes.  We use technological violence to inflict massive damage, damage that, by all estimations, ought to "shock and awe" our enemies into submission, except it doesn't.  They dig their dead children out of the rubble and hate us even more, with greater reason, and more determination, we become less human in their eyes than we were before, more deserving of terror and tragedy.

It is the very definition of a vicious cycle.  It is a crime against the light of our Creator.

And it will continue, as long as there are axes to grind and swords to sharpen, as long as someone makes money off of making and selling RPGs and body armor, as long as giants can be goaded into fights they cannot win, as long as we keep burying children under the rubble of our fear and hatred.

At the risk of sounding naive, I would like to ask if we might not try something Jesus suggested: forgiveness.  Maybe the only way to truly break the cycle of violence is to stop being violent.  I know what you're thinking: we just can't afford to play that game, it's too dangerous, it would leave us defenseless, it would make us look weak, etc.  But how do you know it wouldn't work.  Honestly, it actually has never been honestly given a try, other than by very small groups that admittedly rely on the violence of others in society to keep them safe.

What if we beat our swords in to plowshares once and for all?

What if we actually grow up and stop playing war?

Wouldn't it bet worth it to stop seeing people (even people who don't look like us) pull their dead children out of the rubble?