If Brent blogs about the war in Iraq, the terrorists have already won.

Admit it, Brent. There’s some part of you that isn’t comfortable with the lovefest that’s usually on your blog, so you’re prone to break it up every once in a while. :o)

Seriously though, I’m having a bit of trouble understanding what you’re driving at or advocating. I think some of the confusion is because the scriptures you cite are relating to the “micro” situations of our personal lives, not the “macro” realm of states and war.

For instance, we are told to turn the other cheek and to return kindness to our enemies in the micro realm. However, let’s say that after 9-11, President Bush quoted those verses and refused to attack the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It would be a travesty since God has called leaders to prosecute justice.

Similarly, I’m reading much of your analysis regarding the fear of man as a non sequitur. If a President identifies a gathering threat and most of the world’s intelligence communities agree with the assessment, what is he supposed to say about it? When a nation receives explicit threats to our lives, should we not gear up for war because it’s “giving into fear”? I’m not trying to be rhetorical here. Your post is really confusing me.

The events of Virginia Tech are another opportunity to test our thoughts on fear. Criticism of the college administration is starting, saying that they failed to notify the campus quickly that a murderer may be on the loose.

Or what about Katrina? Were the federal, state, and local authorities violating some biblical precept by telling residents of NOLA to get out because their lives were at risk?

On another level, I think it’s too broad to say that fear is automatically “disbelief of God” and “sin”. Were the students at V-Tech heaping sin on themselves and disbelieving in God as they attempted to flee and barricade the doors to their classrooms? I think not.

I think that the larger issue is when we have fear, where do we go with it? Do we let it rule us in a permanent way and stop us from doing what God has called us to do because there will be consequences from other men?

I read many of the passages about fear and anxiety as God tenderly comforting us in our frailty rather than condemning our wickedness.

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:5-7

I think the critical difference between the VA shootings, Katrina and Iraq was our use of pre-emptive military force. That’s the main issue I’m wrestling with. There are many Christians who argue that the invasion does not meet the criteria set by traditional “Just War” theory which prompts the question (at least for me) of using fear as a motivator in actions that many Christians not only question but oppose.

I’m still not seeing what you’re proposing that a leader of a country should say instead? You’re posing the question:

it ever appropriate for a Christian, no matter his role, to use fear of military attack as motivation?

What other rationale could be used to build the case for war, other than fear of attack? None of us would say that conquest for territory and wealth is a legitimate motivator. If you don’t have another motivator that you consider valid, then shouldn’t your question be, “it ever appropriate for a Christian to lead a country to war?”

I think President Bush has actually not gone far enough to depict the ideology we’re up against. He didn’t use the phrase “Islamic fascists” until August 10, 2006, almost five years after 9-11. Instead, his language had been rather soft up until that point, maintaining that Islam is a religion of peace.

If President Bush has been avidly crafting an environment of fear for the last 5 years, where are the signs? Our brave military families have made sacrifices to defend us, but the rest of us are hard pressed to name even a single way our lives have been altered.

I think that we often forget that nations like Britain and France also had very troubling intelligence with regard to Iraq’s WMD’s, and Saddam had, we all know, openly, heinously used these before (on his Khurdish population). Countries which opposed our pursuits with regard to enacting justice duly authorized by the UN, like France and Russia, were unethical trading partners with Iraq, at least partially motivated by greed.
Bush’s rhetoric, which uses fear, is as sloppy as much of his communication, but in his policies and actions he was not acting alone. Britain, Italy, Spain, Australia, Denmark, Japan, and several other nations were involved in this along with us, and the issue is perhaps more complex than we often discuss. We often forget to remember our long involvement in enforcing UN mandates against a constantly in-violation Iraq, which led to this war. For instance, during the Clinton Admin. Iraq had been repeatedly bellicose after the Kuwait liberation, blocked inspectors, etc. With that in mind, it really isn’t, perhaps, as much Bush’s War as we might sometimes think.

I agree with Jim about the home front being free of fear. I am sad to say this, but when I weary of watching news for a few days, now and then, in such times I have no real sense at all that my country is at war. I think that it is a profound Bush failure that I can honestly write such an observation. Sun Tsu advises one to know one’s enemy, but this administration has dulled our awareness with political correctness, status-quo-consumerism-at-all-cost, etc. (A similar dullness on a spiritual level has been happening among we Christians).

“What other rationale could be used to build the case for war, other than fear of attack?”

This is why the whole notion of pre-emptive attack is extremely questionable if not outright rejected by Just War Theory.

What rationale? An attack. Not fear of an attack, which can be just about anything (see Iraq), but an actual attack.

But doesn’t that mean that we might get hurt? Yes. But then, a pre-emptive attack also might mean we get hurt, right?

It’s not a safe world we live in. We can’t use fear as a deciding factor in implementing military force.

What rationale? An attack. Not fear of an attack, which can be just about anything (see Iraq), but an actual attack.

War is always about removing fear of a future attack. Its objective must be the devastation of an enemy’s ability to threaten our life and liberty, not just lobbing a few retributive missiles after they’ve already wiped out a significant number of our countrymen. If we forget that fact, war will always be futile. This principle is true whether we have merely identified the threat or if it has already materialized.

This is not fear in the sense of a personal, subjective emotion. This is a nation’s aversion to seeing its citizens slaughtered by enemies that have declared their support for the destruction of the United States and have pledged themselves to that end.

This is the reason why America has been steadfast in its historical rejection of the No First Strike doctrine. It is why Republicans will continue to dominate the Presidential races. While liberals have made peace with the notion of us absorbing an attack, the rest of us aren’t going to let them risk our lives and families like that.

“This is the reason why America has been steadfast in its historical rejection of the No First Strike doctrine.”

? We’ve rejected the notion of No First Strike? I’d say that this is something that Americans embrace and part of why people have so soundly and across the board rejected Bush’ preemptive attack on Iraq.

The conservative notion of prudence tells us that we are limited in our genius and not sure of what results our actions may have. And therefore, JWT and classic conservatism reject this notion of No First Strike.

When have we ever embraced a First Strike approach before this invasion? I suppose Reagan’s support of the Contra war in Nicaragua might fit that scenario, but there again, you have a widespread rejection of what Reagan’s administration supported in Central America in the 80s.

Thanks for interacting, Dan. Forgive me for muddying the waters with the introduction of a Cold War nuclear term into our discussion of this war. (see more at wikipedia) I�m referencing how for decades the USSR and China were willing to declare no-first-use, but the USA would not do it officially. Even the Clinton administration would not give China a no-first-use guarantee when it signed a non-targeting agreement, meaning only that the nukes were not coded to hit each other, though they could be reprogrammed in a matter of minutes.

The comparison I’m making is that we don’t agree to absorb nuke attacks before responding with nukes (hence no-first-strike in its nuclear context).

I was saying that we need to appropriate that mindset not just for nukes, but for non-nuclear warfare in an unprecedented type of conflict where a global network of enemies are sometimes sponsored and hosted by governments like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Thanks for the clarification.

Nonetheless, I reject that notion as horribly immoral. I fully understand that reasoning (we don’t want to be devastated) but war is too serious to go around first-striking based on our best guess of someone else’s intent.

We’re just too fallen in our nature to safely do so. Either out of plain ignorance or stupidity (”We THOUGHT they might attack us…whoops! We were wrong”) or out of malice (”If we nuke them, then we’ll have more clear access to OUR oil”), there’s too much likelihood that first strikes would be abused.

I don’t trust gov’t enough to give them that sort of leeway. And I believe that the majority of the US is with me on this - which is why Iraq has been such an unpopular war. We clearly think it morally wrong and logically wrongheaded.

Seems to me.

I am not a politician nor a soldier. Some think I am not a Christian. But I am a man and unfortunately I have some personal experience with fighting. Hard experience teachs one to avoid fights. Hard experience also teachs one that if a fight is about to occur, don’t wait for Marquis and Queensbury to read the rule but sieze the initative and strike as your first opportunity will be your best. Fight hard and fight to win. That is the best way to end things quickly with the least number of injuries to the least number of people. Fighting is about winning because getting beaten behind a warehouse or on the battlefield is bad for you and bad for those who depend upon you. There is no “just” war. There is just war. If we could have destroyed the Japanese navy at anchor in Toyko harbor before they set sail for Pearl Harbor the entire world would have been much better off. Maybe being squeemish about doing hard things is a luxury those responsible to lead can not afford.