Christians and the Jihad

In the two days following the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon and the Phyrric victory of the heroic passengers of Flt. 93, I made posts to several threads (principally ones with folk advocating turing Afghanistan into "a glass parking lot") posts suggesting that the nuclear destruction of the capitals of nations supporting with the terror attack would probably suffice.

One of my fellow Orthodox Christian Freepers rebuked me privately (as well he should) and asked me to retract my call. Moved by this, and by two sermons by my bishop, I do so now. However, I do so with a heavy heart, and have delayed doing so until this afternoon because I have not changed the underlying reason for those posts.

It was not a desire for vengance, a desire to see "their innocents" die as ours did, which moved me to write as I did, but a dreadful, gnawing certainty that victory against this foe cannot be achieved without horrific bloodshed. A dreadful feeling that, in the long run, to strike hard in the beginning would be more humane and more merciful still haunts me.

We face a foe armed with modern weapons, and cunning enough to beat the plowshares of modern commerce into weapons in the space of a morning. We face a foe whose mind is decidedly pre-modern and alien to what is normal to Christendom either historically, or now in its secular decay. We face a foe who believes that divine help is at their back, and that death in the cause, particularly if one kills the enemy (even non-combattants defined to be enemies) is a great good. We face a foe willing to attack without defiance sent.

The last time we faced such a foe, it was Imperial Japan. The pre-modernin Shintoist ideology motivated the kamikaze, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the rape of Nanking, even as the literalist reading of the Koran motivates suicide bombers who kill non-combattants in sneak attacks today.

We know how that war was ended. On this board, I trust we are all familiar with the ratio between the dead at Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the expected casualties in an invasion of the Japanese homeland. In case not I will remind you: we expected to loose 10 times as many as we killed, and to kill a similar number each Japanese soldiers and civilians to our own losses. Some believe this, together with the fact that these were "defended cities" containing military targets, suffice to justify Truman's action. Others believe Truman was a war-criminal, who went untried because only the loosers are put on trial.

I would invite all Christians coming from non-pacifist Christian traditions, particularly those which venerate some warrior saints (Holy Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism*, Anglicanism) or are strong in nations with a martial tradition (Presbyterians--Scotland, Lutherans--German,...) to discuss appropriate measures for opposing this foe.

*Those familiar with my posts on religious discussions will note that I have dropped my preference for refering to the adherents of the Papal Throne of Rome as "Latins". I will still not go so far as to give them their prefered title of "Catholics", since I profess the catholicity of the Holy Orthodox Church. I will, however, in the interest of the unity of Christendom in the face of the Islamic foe, use the generally used term applied to them by Christians of other confessions.

posts suggesting that the nuclear destruction of the capitals of nations supporting with the terror attack would probably suffice.

And well you should retract your position! The capitols are not nearly sufficient. The terrorist states have had their chance, and they celebrated America's pain. Make no mistake they will, if given the opportunity, murder millions more. It is not merely revenge that must be sought - no, it is a solemn duty to end this evil.

Is a Christian to be rendered impotent and supine when faced with pure and unrepentent evil? Surely not! For Christendom has fought to bring enlightenment to the world for millenia. Sometimes, force of arms is required. Now is one of those times.

Our duty - not only as Americans, but as Christians - is to stop this evil. There is but one way to do so - obliterate the governments and the supporters and defenders of those governments so this will never happen again.

The pictures below were first posted by dcbryan1:

Never forget! Never forgive!

I share your hope for a massive and decisive response against the perpetrators and their hosts, without distinction. (Though I wonder about your private reaction to seeing the President's description of this initiative as a "Crusade"). I do fear for the lives of the innocent, and pray that they may be spared harm, as much as humanly possible, even as Abraham pleaded with the Lord not to destroy the good and evil indiscriminately.

My chief prayer is that we continue to be the good guys, lest, even as we achieve a righteous victory over our worldly enemies, we be tricked into serving the death-loving aims of our worst and most implacable Enemy. As St Peter reminds us: "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. "

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

I admire that you wrestle with this dilemma. I, too, wish no slaughter. Human life is still sacred in our thinking -- especially the innocents.

Here is the solution and my rationale:

My solution, though radical, is very sane (as in M.A.D.=mutually assured destruction; it worked for 50 years). But I don't think it will even be considered, because it is deemed "unthinkable". Let me suggest that the "unthinkable" occurred on 9/11 and the taboo is already breached -- so far, it's been a one-way deal. Consider:

I am sorry to say this, but I find Islam to be friendly, cordial, hospitable -- to MUSLIMS ONLY. To the infidels (US), it is vindictive and barbaric. The terrorist attack we have just witnessed was SPAWNED in Islam. There is no shirking or refuting this. It is not only tolerated, it is encouraged, funded, and cheered (most of it secretly for fear of exposure of Muslims for the scurrilous beasts they are). To them, there is no concept of live and let live.

And, far from being anathema to the Koran, the terror we just witnessed could easily be rationalized by such words from the Koran, such as "Kill them wherever you find them; over such men we give you absolute authority"; "strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah..."; "...take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends...whoever seeks their friendship shall become one of their number." I quote. So, don't excuse Islam. It is the milieu in which these bewildered barbarians, who worry because the world has passed their religion by, these anachronistic a$$holes, it is the milieu in which they have hatched terrorism. And, dammit, it works for them, because they are also patient. They will lose war after war, yet call themselves victors for a whole nother century because they downed the infidels' trade center.

It is a good thing I am not president. Since we have no country to fight back against, we are currently frustrated. Not me. I see that our enemy is Islam -- barbaric, intractable Islam, with its atavistic dreams and visions and its fatuous designs on world domination (what a joke!). If I were president (again, luckily, I'm not), my only debate would be between the following two options:
1) announce the need to evacuate Medina (second holiest site for Islam -- Mohammed's burial place [you see, he's still IN his grave, yet he's greater than Jesus? Go figure]) prior to our nuking it; OR
2) DON'T announce it; just nuke it and let the rags fall where they may.
In conjunction with that, since they've given us the excuse, have hated us, do hate us, and always will hate us anyway, have hated Israel, do hate Israel, and always will hate Israel anyway, I would also encourage Israel to take a couple thousand pounds of high explosives up to the #3 holy site -- the Dome of the Rock (aka the in-your-face-Jews mosque) and blow it to smithereens. Again, the tone for this has been set by Islam, as have the terms of the war. Since they hit us in a place calculated to disturb the very core of our belief system, we need to do the same to them -- hit them in a place that would be calculated to strike at a symbol of THEIR core beliefs and values, to produce the kind of distress and angst in their minds as we are suffering, and to give them pause concerning continuing to play this kind of hardball with so formidable a foe as the USA.

Wednesday, our President (whom I dearly love and support) declared war on terrorists, which is a bastardization of the term ("war"), since war is, by definition, a state of hostility between nations. WE SHOULD HAVE DECLARED WAR ON ISLAM, politically incorrect though it would be, because in this case, it is the closest we can come. In fact, everyone on "Talk Back Live" this afternoon declined to admit that Islam was the actual foe. But Farrakhan is right -- it IS a nation of Islam, and they stick together when it comes to Israel and the USA. The street celebrations and their subsequent efforts to minimize and prevent televising them should tell you that.
To any who would say, "Nuke Medina? Wow, that'll make the Muslims mad." I say, "Duh!", the already are mad, and they always will be!". To any who would say, "Wow! That'll make 'em REALLY do terrorism to us!" I say, "Duh!, they already are!" And then I say, "Muslims: better rethink that -- BECAUSE MECCA IS NEXT." In that sense, Mecca, then becomes hostage -- contingent on Islam's good behavior. And the perfect hostage it is, for without Mecca, they have no religion. It is truly a sine qua non that is without parallel in the religious world. Hardball. They threw the first pitch, high and tight. Now, it's our turn. And we'd better not throw some lousy knuckleball.

I do not know what opinions the Greek Church may have of the events at Fatima (the same name as the daughter of the Prophet, BTW. Hmmm.) in 1917. But I think this element of the so-called "third secret", though particularly apt, has not received the attention it deserves:

"After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'.

Because justification and grace can never proceed from evil, there is no way that the moral failures of the West can have justified the terrorists' acts of last week. Similarly, the horror of their crimes in no way cancels or justifies our pre-existing guilt in a way that would license us to wreak indiscriminate destruction on other innocents.

I have been reading Jeremiah this week. Jeremiah was not a team player. In the hour of crisis, Jeremiah declined to play the booster. He did not preach "Don't worry; be happy"; instead he condemned the sinful ways of God's people, and was for his trouble was deemed a traitor. Even though the Lord eventually saw to the destruction of Babylon, in his wisdom and providence he did not forbear first to employ them as a chastisement to a people gone astray. Looking at this week's pictures of a desolate lower Manhattan, I could not dismiss from my mind the biblical Lamentation for the desolate Jerusalem.

My bishop is hardly "whacked-out". Bishop Basil of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese comes from a family whose ancestors lived in a part of Syria whose Arabic name means "The Valley of the Christians". The valley has been holding out against the Jihad since it began. His sermon included a reminder that we as Orthodox Christians will bless our soldiers as they go into battle, but that should sad necessity involve any of them in actual killing, their spiritual fathers will give them an epitemia (penance).

Our goal should not be vengance, but victory. We must fight a righteous war (the notion of a "holy" war is a Muslim lie), but how?

Two thoughts have come to me since I repented of my wish to see Kabul (and Baghdad--I am still convinced Saddam Hussein is in on this) obliterated:

The first is to prosecute the war as follows: move troops into proximity with an objective, but beyond the effective kill range of a nuclear device large enough to obliterate the objective, then demand complete surrender within a specified time (by radio, leaflet, and by loudspeaker from drone aircraft). If the inhabitants do not come out unarmed as per surrender terms, or if they do, but resistance is met upon entering the area, in which case our troops retreat immediately, we obliterate it with a nuclear strike.

The second is a recollection of Basil II: he left every 100 prisoners from the Bulgar army with one eye among them, and sent them home. (Note: blinding as a substitute for execution in circumstances where other medieval nations would have killed the enemy or malefactor was an Eastern Christian form of mercy--the blind can still live out their lives "in peace and repentence" and die Christian deaths.) The Bulgar Khan died of horror. Due to the Geneva Convention we cannot emulate Basil. But with lasers, we can blind our enemies while they are still combattants.

Besides the humaneness of giving them time to repent, the blinded adversary is more militarily desirable than the dead: he needs care. Thousands of blind Taliban dependent upon their womenfolk would be a wonderful form of justice. (Quite frankly, I think blinding bin Laden and keeping him in prison, alone, except for visits some Christian soul who would volunteer to read him the Psalms in Arabic and discuss theology with him, would be bettern than bin Laden dead.)

I applaud your soul searching and must say that you are not alone. It appears that there is a growing sense in this nation and around the world that it would be a great travesty to hold all Muslims accountable for this disaster.

It's becoming apparent that Muslims and their governments around the world are being held hostage by Radical Islam. While there may be cause for resenting the U.S. and it's allies, most Muslims would rather seek peaceful redress of grievances through negotiation and compromise.

Unfortunately, Muslim countries around the world have been unable to successfully control their radical fringe. Some have lent govenment support and encouragement to radicals with deadly consequences, both to their "enemies" and their own populaces.

I don't know the answer to our dilemma. There is great difficulty in striking just the Radicals without hurting innocents. Whatever action our government chooses, I sincerely hope that it is done with a desire for justice and is not just an angry elephant stamping on an ant hill .

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