Posted on 09/10/2010 9:34:15 AM PDT by mbarker12474
I am Catholic, as it happens and resolutely anti-Muslim. I am Conservative, as well, so sliding liberal in there doesn’t stick either.
In first argument, you make the case that the enemy has defined himself verbally. It could be bluster (and would be if we had real men in charge of our government). It could be a threat intended to intimidate, if it could. It’s called poker when you sit around a table and have cards in your hand. In any case, it is all theoretical.
If such an enemy had so expressed himself (and yes, I agree the Muslim nations have done just this, Iran in particular), then I am arming myself just as fast as I can. I have put early-warning systems in place. I have distributed my armed forces to all locations I consider to be especially vulnerable or desirable to my enemy as targets. I have prepared the populace by not sugar-coating these threats, but making sure they are published so everyone is on their guard against a potentially mortal enemy. I may even place forces in provocative locations (off, Yemen, for instance, or perhaps deep in the Persian Gulf) as canaries in the coal mine.
But, I still do not throw the first punch.
Your second point: I am under no illusion that life as a Christian (an Anglican priest, no less) would be any better than the dhimmitude and likely would be killed outright (if they felt merciful for some unprecedented reason that day). I might be offered the option of conversion but probably not. That is why I would be on full-alert against them. I would leave as little opening for them to attack as I can manage. I would be talking up those I might be able to trust as allies to be further threats to them.
I would still not attack them outright.
As to eradicating the initial problem. That seems to require a lot of cities-into-glass as I see it. That will not solve the problem but would certainly precipitate wider war. If we are perceived even tangentially as being morally in the wrong, we would lose no matter how many Muslim cities we flattened. Once again, we must leave no doubt that we are defended, that we are alert and that they are the ones we are watching day and night. They must have no illusion that we will not answer at least as harshly as we are addressed, and perhaps more (proportional does not mean strictly equivalent: we may up the ante, as it were).
But we still don’t strike first.
I am arguing in fact from the theory of war as enunciated by St. Thomas Aquinas with whose writings you may be familiar. It would be novel to suggest he was a satanist. It would be equally novel to suggest it of me
That said, I mean what I say: the USA is founded on principles which are best stated and most deeply ingrained in Christian theology, doctrine and praxis. That the Founders were primarily active Christians was a great advantage in how our governing principles were set up and how the government was structured. Atheists down the ages have tampered with that great structure and it no longer serves the same purposes so well. It was THAT well constructed that it still works better than any other, even in a maimed and defective condition. This is at least partly due to the magnificent vitality, courage and virtue of the American people, who have stood four-square against tyranny in all its forms. It may be we may have to stand against it here at home. But the fact now is that the US is at most a nation populated mostly by Christians. That means that this nation is not strictly bound by Christian ethics and could, should she choose, act as you suggest.
I strongly recommend against it, not least for realpolitik reasons as well as moral and theological ones. The Church never should strike first (even the Crusades were a response and not a unilateral assault), nor should any nation mainly populated by Churchmen and women.
I very much agree. What you say is what I actually meant in terms of response: a nation subjected to terror attack replies with just force, which means only attacking those capable of defending themselves. We are largely in agreement, Mrs. Don-o.
Wow... too perceptive! I had to think a minute before agreeing and realizing that it is probably just as well. Too many seem to think that becoming modern is the thing. It’s like our founders, factual things do not change.
What a joke, the Episcopalian haven’t been a Christian religion for nigh on an hundred years. Liberals in dark clothing, that’s all.
It certainly isn't, but again, you misstate what I said. I only said a moral Christian does not land the first blow. He may well land the killing response and is particularly justified in doing so when his own person, property and family are directly and explicitly threatened. I am not about non-combativeness, just not about pre-emptive war. See my post a few above this for larger discussion on the point.
Wasn't in a position to take a stand, actually: I'm only 56, but I do support those bombings. This whole discussion has been about first-strike issues. Hiro/Naga were LAST-strike issues, the killing blow intended to end hostilities with an enemy which had proven itself incapable of coming to any kind of armistice and would need to be bludgeoned into submission. Given the alternative (millions of Japanese dead and mutilated, hundreds of thousands of Americans), the act was merciful. It was horrific for those in those cities.
Ah Ha! I got ya!
I still differ a little though I think. I think the first strike by a society that has specifically expressed a desire to destroy the US is enough to at least destroy those that are active in that endeavor.
I am conflicted on what constitutes a threat to some degree but I believe that the threat as expressed in the Koran could be construed to be enough to demand that they strictly adhere to our laws.
Bottom line for me is that every Muslim who has threatened the US is fair target.
Thanks for your gracious response. It’s not an easy subject.
That’s fine. What I said amounts to saying that what the US does is a matter of its secular policy and not something over which the Church has a veto power. If the US decides that certain nations or even rogue individuals constitute a clear and present danger, then it is probably moral okay from a secular point of view for the US to attack them pre-emptively. If the activity is going on in a place where we’re already engaged in war, such as Afghanistan, we needn’t even be this picky. I personally support widening the Rules of Engagement to permit our soldiers to pre-emptively consider any Afghan a potential enemy and engage with that assumption in mind. I don’t believe those are the current rules.
People don’t know it goes back to the actions of Abraham towards wife Sahra and handmaiden Haggar. Long story but Mohammed came out with the short en of the stick.
I think that's true. It's like in a criminal conspiracy case: as soon as they take steps toward the commission of the crime (getting the components for explosives, drawing up a detailed map, etc.) they must be stopped by force. They've already started their "course of action": you don't have to wait until they actually complete it.
"The only way to protect the innocents is to make him incapable of harming them."
Again correct. Your whole strategic plan is to make the aggressors themselves incapable of action. Target their fighters and crush them to the ground.
"That's why we have prisons for people and war for cultures."
Yes, with this clarification: "culture" is too broad a term. It includes all the humans of a group, and their entire way of life: families, food, music, homes, land, law, literature, etc. etc., the good and the bad, all mixed together. We don't make war on cultures. We make war on something more limited: the aggressors and their military assets.
"The core instructions are in the Decalogue: thou shalt commit no murder. That does not mean that, if provoked or threatened, you may not kill."
That's also true. The absolute prohibition is: you do not, in a directly intended manner, slay noncombatants or--- another way to put it --- those who are not deliberate accomplices in acts of aggression. The Bible calls this "shedding innocent blood" and the Lord declares that He "hates" this, and says it is an "abomination to My soul". Here in this literal Bible translation (Link) He says it a dozen-plus times. God apparently thinks this point requires ongoing and insistent reinforcement. You can see why.
And that's the Old Testament. This gets even stronger in the New Testament.
"Is it moral to eradicate a culture that attacks you?...In fact, it is immoral not to eradicate them."
Once again, you are required to use physical force, even lethal force, to stop a determined physical aggressor. As for an aggressor culture, it's more complex. If the culture has hell-bent features, you can attack those features via other means, for example by legal suppression of its financers and enablers, by argument, education and media campaigns, by exposing its elements of ugliness, evil, and futility, or by appealing to conversion to a better standard of love and reason.
That goes for toxic elements of our own culture, too; not to digress, but we are among the world's major cultural exporters of filth, e.g. sodomy, pornography, and child-murder.
I hate the despotic and Christ-defying system that is fully-developed politically-empowered Islam.
As for Muslim people: I think God wants us to treat them discerningly as fellow human beings. Some are perpetrators, most are victims.
It is not unusual for these urban churches, Episcopal and others, to have joint events and worship with other world religions every once and awhile. It does bother maany folks when they hear of and see pics of some of the off-beat stuff going in what once was a beautiful, holy house of God. Smaller, out of town churches seem to stay with the faith much better.IMO
I beg to differ.
Christians and Jews don't go out and slaughter people wholesale if those people do not see God the way we do.We both are inheritors of the covenant with Abraham.Christians and Jews share the same belief that life is sacred given of God and taken by God.Whereas Islam is a death CULT,by no means having anything to do with the God of the universe and everything to do with the one who was cast out of Heaven because of PRIDE.
When the last moslem dies, the war is over. Until the last moslem dies (or the last non-moslem dies) the war continues. The koran leaves us no other options. Die or be killed or enslaved. We can surrender this world to satan And sentence all the innocents in it to hell, or we can fight to win.
If we are perceived even tangentially as being morally in the wrong, we would lose no matter how many Muslim cities we flattened.
The war continues until the last moslem dies. Once the last moslem dies, there are no longer any moslems left to fight against us. They will have fulfilled the koranic command to fight until they (or we) are dead. But we still don’t strike first.
So you continue to advocate sacrificing innocent lives and souls to hell. Their blood is on your hands.
I am arguing in fact from the theory of war as enunciated by St. Thomas Aquinas with whose writings you may be familiar. It would be novel to suggest he was a satanist.
Not satanist. Just not biblical. Thomas Aquinas may have had some very good writings. But they are not scripture.
That the Founders were primarily active Christians was a great advantage in how our governing principles were set up and how the government was structured.
And these founders fought against the british, firing the first shot in the revolutionary war.
Yes, with this clarification: "culture" is too broad a term. It includes all the humans of a group, and their entire way of life: families, food, music, homes, land, law, literature, etc. etc., the good and the bad, all mixed together. We don't make war on cultures. We make war on something more limited: the aggressors and their military assets.
The problem with islam is that every moslem is an aggressor. The koran commands it. The only way to end the war is to end islam. the war ends when the last moslem dies.
That's also true. The absolute prohibition is: you do not, in a directly intended manner, slay noncombatants or--- another way to put it --- those who are not deliberate accomplices in acts of aggression.
Every moslem supports islam. Every moslem supports jihad. They must if they are to follow the koran.
The Bible calls this "shedding innocent blood" and the Lord declares that He "hates" this, and says it is an "abomination to My soul".
Is a person who supports the political/religious system that is designed and commanded to fight against, slave and kill all people's not under that system innocent? I don't think so.
"Is it moral to eradicate a culture that attacks you?...In fact, it is immoral not to eradicate them."
Once again, you are required to use physical force, even lethal force, to stop a determined physical aggressor. As for an aggressor culture, it's more complex. If the culture has hell-bent features, you can attack those features via other means, for example by legal suppression of its financers and enablers, by argument, education and media campaigns, by exposing its elements of ugliness, evil, and futility, or by appealing to conversion to a better standard of love and reason.
This is true. After pacification of the more aggressive components you can eradicate the culture by a long program of supression and conversion. That is, every copy of the koran must be destroyed, every mosque must be razed, no moslem should be allowed to practice islam. All should be converted to Christianity and once their children or grandchildren are proven to have no knowledge of the koran then when that first generation of converts dies off, the war will be over. Unfortunately a moslem can never be trusted even if he says he converted since islam allows them, nay commands them, to lie if they can gain advantage from it.
The war ends with the death of the last moslem.
That is right. Christianity teaches there are three Persons in one God that make up the Trinity. This concept is anathema to Muslims. Therefore, the God of Christianity cannot be the god of Islam.
Then you promise us perpetual war because what you advocate is total extermination. Now, if the plan is to defeat the rogue states that are Muslim and which adhere to the Koranic injunction to destroy or convert, then we have an agreement: I agree that such states are a permanent threat to security, even within the Islamic world. But even there, the project of conquering every active Muslim state is a huge one. And besides, it will not be possible to eliminate every Muslim. Even the Black Plague only killed a third of humanity and that is probably the record for human death from a single cause.
Beleg: But we still don’t strike first.
John O: So you continue to advocate sacrificing innocent lives and souls to hell. Their blood is on your hands.
That is irresponsible. I do not suggest simply lying down and dying, which is what your post implies. I argue that we are not to simply launch a crusade on the premise that nits breed lice (a quote from an American general while fighting the American Indians, if memory serves). Once attacked, we respond with vigor and full intention to conquer the attacker and reduce the attacker's ability to attack again, if not convert that attacker from 14th Century Islam to 21st Century Christianity. That is always a good choice for anyone (it's just not an easy one intellectually). Does this mean that there will be initial casualties? Probably, but that means that we all stand up and prepare, so that we do not permit the enemy another chance to attack us on the sly. Beyond that, we play God to say we are unilaterally in the right and may dispose of others as we deem fit.
Just not biblical. Thomas Aquinas may have had some very good writings. But they are not scripture.
By this I am beginning to infer that you mean "not Old Testament" when you say "not biblical". You are free to suggest NT quotes which support your position. I'm coming up empty on that. As I have said, the closest I can find is Luke 22:35,38-39. If we agree that Jesus is the Christ, the only-begotten Son of the Father of the same substance and fully sharing the full Godhead with the Father and the Holy Spirit, then we ought to be ready to take His word for what policy we should pursue as Christians, yes? And His prime dictum was that in the Kingdom of God which He proclaimed, the First Commandment is that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. He said the Second was like unto it: we shall love our neighbors as ourselves. I take that to mean that we begin our contact with the presumption of good intention.
It does not mean we hold that presumption regardless of how others treat us, because as I pointed out in my first post in this conversation, we know our neighbor because he shows us mercy. Not much mercy being handed out by Muslims, so they are forfeiting their status as neighbors we presume to be of good will. Hence, we prepare for war against them. When they strike, and I believe they intend to strike soon, we strike back, as hard as can be justified.
Of course, as I've pointed out, the USA is founded on Christian principles, it is not ruled by Christian theocrats nor governed directly by Biblical principles. If the decision is made that an enemy poses a clear and present danger and that attack is imminent, then the US is probably free to attack. The stance will not be impeccably moral but only from a Christian perspective. Liberals use our Christian principles against us all the time. I'm sure they'd be very happy to use them against the US, though it would be only marginally appropriate.
And these founders fought against the british, firing the first shot in the revolutionary war.
It is my recollection that the British landed soldiers in the colonies, established barracks in private homes, spied on the inhabitants, passed laws particularly onerous to colonials which did not apply to anyone else, forcibly contracted trade deals which intentionally impoverished colonial traders and generally looted the landscape and the populace. I am aware that colonials then began plotting and some amassed weaponry, which they tried to secrete. The British found out about this and decided to confiscate the weapons. A certain Paul Revere and his companions found out and warned the colonials, who then massed to defend the armory. The British arrived and tried the confiscation. Somebody fired on somebody at that point. Is this what you mean by the "founders...firing the first shot"? If so, it looks a lot more like my principle of playing your enemy into firing first (by breaking their own law about possession of personal firearms in order to confiscate weapons they decided were a threat to their rule). I'd say that was shaky ground to base a policy decision on if granting that firing the first shot usually makes one the culpable one.
In my estimation, Muhammad was a delusional charlatan, a lecher, and a man of blood, as recorded in the hadiths. Follow any path in the writings by him or about him, and they all veer off into perversity.
It's an exceedingly dangerous situation, because you have people with a transcendant belief in a hell-bent system. However, "kill them all" is a hell-bent system in itself. I caution against becoming what you are fighting,
Here's the Wiki version of it, and here's the music video, which I think is pretty good. The English subtitles were done in the UK.
I know what some people will say ("Taqiyyah!") but you can't discount the fact that the Muslim world is divided and in turmoil about violent jihad, some for it and some against.
"For" and "Against" are still opposites, a difference that has been written in blood, and it is unjust to fail to distinguish between the two.
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