Biblical Principles Vs Pragmatic Practices

Rev Brian M. Abshire

I am not a pacifist. I have little time (or stomach) for those who want the benefits of liberty but are unwilling to pay the price. I am proud to have worn the uniform of my country (even though my contribution was less than glamorous). Yet as a Christian, I have real concerns about the way our military forces have been, and are being used by our national government. I am not here criticizing the dedication, ability or commitment of the individual soldiers, sailors, airmen or marines, but rather the political and ideological forces that willingly sacrifice the lives of our best and brightest for ungodly ends.

The Bible clearly gives a country the right of self-defense (Deut 20:1ff, Rms 13:1ff, etc.). In a world filled with evil, wars are inevitable, often necessary and when fought for the right reasons and by the right means, can even be called “good.” A nation that values righteousness will fight, but only as a last resort. However, immoral nations cannot resist using their military forces in immoral ways for immoral ends. And since the War Between the States, our armed forces have used immoral means to advance ideological goals, contrary to Biblical principles. As our nation has abandoned faith in an absolute God, we have sunk into a moral relativism where pragmatism replaces principles. And pragmatism usually means whatever policies helps the party in power, stay in power.

During the 1950’s, our government recruited despots and dictators as allies against a common enemy, Communism. The precedent had been set in the Second World War when we allied ourselves with the Communists against the Nazis. In both cases, we made unbiblical alliances with ungodly, pagan powers: just as ancient Israel did with Assyria, Egypt and Babylon. As a result, American troops were sent around the world to fight and die to keep those tyrants in power. In the 1980’s, our government sacrificed American troops in Grenada and Panama in an attempt to be this hemisphere’s policeman. Forgetting the earlier debacle in Lebanon, and emboldened by our success against third-rate nations, we have now decided in the 1990’s to police the world. We have sent Americans to die for “freedom” in Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti and now Bosnia. Thankfully, in the most recent wars, American casualties have been amazingly light. However, hundreds of thousands of others have died who had not warred against the United States, or committed any overt act of violence against us. These people were killed by our bullets, their economies ruined by our boycotts, their cities smashed by our bombs. Don’t get me wrong; if a war has to be fought, I am all in favor of the other guy dying for his country. However, were those wars worth the price that other nations paid? Should we have gone to war against these nations in the first place? What did we accomplish?

A decade after Desert Storm, Saddam is again rearming, again threatening his neighbors, again causing US troops to be deployed. The only lasting result of the Gulf War seems to have been the destruction of the Christian Church in Iraq. After action-reports suggest that Hussain tried to salvage his best military equipment by storing them beside mosques and churches. He shrewdly recognized that the US led coalition would never dare attack mosques lest our Islamic allies be offended. He also thought that since America was a “Christian” nation we wouldn’t risk Christian churches. He was half right. We did not attack the targets placed near mosques, but it appears we obliterated the ones near churches and schools (including the Christian communities surrounding them!). Thus in one of the most one-sided victories in American history, all we really accomplished was to kill Christians to protect Muslims. In the same way, Somalia is still run by warlords and Haiti now has a bizarre, schizophrenic, occultic, Marxist dictator running a country ravaged by its own syncretistic African animism.

Now, after bombing the Serbs into submission, we have committed US ground troops to “keep the peace” in Bosnia, risking another war against people who have never done anything to us, taking sides on issues that are none of our concern. How many people will die this time? And for what? There are no good guys in this war. It seems once the Serbs and Croats got the upper hand they practiced the same kind of ethnic cleansing as the Serbs. These animosities go back for centuries. We will not settle their problems by placing a few troops between them. All we will accomplish is to put American lives at risk to advance the “New World Order.”

Ungodly wars breed endless cycles of destruction, destitution and disaster. Consider the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Otto Von Bismarck engineered a war against France to consolidate the first united Germany. World War I followed in 1914 because the French wanted to recapture the same territory lost to the Germans 45 years earlier. 15 years after that, Hitler rose to power on the promise of returning those same lands to German control! And World War II was declared when Germany invaded Poland, to recapture Prussian territory given to the Poles after World War I! Insanity! And now in Bosnia, the same struggle over land, a struggle that goes back to the Turkish invasion of Europe, is happening all over again. Astute students of history will remember that the fuse that set off World War One happened in Sarajevo.

God’s commandments for lawful war are specifically laid out in Deuteronomy 20. A “Just War” will be one fought on His terms and by His means. First, God reminds His people that it is He Himself who fights for them and they are not to be afraid. This requires that the cause of the war be just and righteous. Otherwise, God’s blessing cannot be granted. A just war is one where God’s principles of righteousness are at stake, not the pragmatic policies of a certain political party. Scripture does not justify wars of conquest, especially to impose humanistic ideological goals. Wars contrary to God’s Law will not have His blessing, and therefore, in the long-term will accomplish nothing but an increase of human misery.

Furthermore, this first principle teaches that our trust is not in our weapons, or troops, but in a sovereign God. Therefore, our military forces can be relatively small. Small forces mean no military adventurism. But if a nation seeks to impose humanist agenda on other nations, a large, expensive first-rate military force is absolutely necessary. A second-class military is the most expensive and useless organization in the world. It drains off precious resources that could be used to the common good. If America were truly an imperialistic power, at least we could justify a large standing military force as a way of increasing our gross national product. Instead, American lives, American money and America’s future are squandered on fruitless ideological goals. A morally bankrupt nation soon becomes economically bankrupt as well.

Secondly, Deuteronomy 20:5-7 allows for a number of exclusions for combat, e.g., those who have just built a new house, planted a new vineyard, become engaged, etc., are automatically excluded from being combatants. The civil government has no right to draft these citizens to fight its wars. Furthermore, the fearful and fainthearted were also given exemptions. Thus, only those who were willing to fight were expected to fight. Some might argue that if these exclusions were allowed today, then most citizens would hurriedly build new houses, plant vineyards and become engaged just to avoid the war. Exactly! Unpopular wars could not and should not be fought. If free men, self-governed by God’s Law do not believe a war to be just and right, they will not and should not support it.

In the two wars we fought with conscript troops (Korea and Vietnam), the military’s performance was less than outstanding (with certain notable differences, mostly among all volunteers outfits). Conscript armies are both forbidden and ineffective (the old Soviet Army had an entire military police force whose sole duty was to patrol behind the front, shooting any solider who did not advance fast enough). Now some might argue that we have an all-volunteer army today. That is a half-truth. We have an all-volunteer mercenary force, a large standing army, drawn increasingly from the under-classes. Our Constitution forbids a large standing army because the founders knew that eventually, that army would be used against its own citizens.

Furthermore, though the Constitution requires Congress to declare war against a foreign power, the executive branch has now sidestepped this by declaring various “police actions.” The military might of the United States has become a de facto personal army of the President. It is a Praetorian guard, used by the President whenever and wherever he desires. It is ironic that when soldiers take their oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, they do not realize that one of those enemies might be the executive branch of the federal government!

A biblical nation will have a small standing army and a large citizen’s militia. The standing army will provide the superstructure that in times of national distress can be quickly filled out with trained volunteers. Some may argue that a small standing army would not have allowed us to fulfill our treaty obligations in Asia and Europe. But that is the problem isn’t it? Why should we have made defensive treaties with those nations in the first place? Let Asia and Europe take care of their own defense. We have bankrupted ourselves in two world wars pulling Europe’s bacon out of the fire. Our national debt could be paid if Europe simply paid back the money we loaned them in past wars, not to mention billing them for the cost of keeping a large standing army in Europe for 40 years. You do not need a large standing army if you do not make ungodly treaties.

Thirdly, Deuteronomy 20:11-12, states that peace is the primary objective. Verse 12 says that war is to be engaged only when the opposing city refuses the peace terms and insists on making war against God’s people. This strongly suggests that the just war is one primarily of defense, not offense. The enemy insists on the war. There is evil in the world and it must be fought. But a godly nation will not engage in aggressive wars of conquest, nor intrude where it has no specific, national interest.

Since defense is the primary objective, money should have been spent developing defensive systems to protect Americans. For example, advanced technology has been available for thirty years, which would have protected us from foreign aggression. It’s called ABM or Antiballistic Missile systems. We stupidly made a treaty with the Soviets not to build these defensive systems against their nuclear missiles; systems that would have protected us from the only earthly power that could have threatened our civilian population. The Soviets have always been good at lying (i.e., the Potemkin or false front village). We were buffaloed into believing the Soviets were our technological equals when all they had were primitive, inaccurate rockets (often topped with nuclear waste because they didn’t have enough actual nuclear warheads) and a radar system that just didn’t work. When the “High Frontiers” concept (popularly known as “Star Wars”) program was finally initiated in the 1980’s, the technological gap bankrupted the Soviet Empire.

Note that in the case of Bosnia and Somalia, there are no American interests at stake, apart from bolstering up the reputation of a failing president. It is a horrible tragedy for all the suffering people in the former Yugoslavia. But God is sovereign; the causes go back for centuries. We will not stop it simply by placing our troops between the warring factions. At best, we can impose a limited cease-fire, but how long do we stay to enforce that cease-fire? How many of our troops do we sacrifice in the meantime? The only thing that kept the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians from each other’s throats for the past fifty years was a tyrannical, Communist State. The problems there will not and cannot be solved until there is regeneration and reformation.

The real reason for sending US troops to fight in foreign wars is the vain attempt to build a new tower of Babel; the recurring desire for man to impose his own one world government, on his terms and for his purposes. And just as God confounded the builders of Babel, so also will He confound the “United Nations.”

Fourthly, Biblical warfare is to be conducted against the men of the city (i.e., their troops), not against women and children. God forbids His people from attacking non-combatants. The Law even extends to the protection of fruit trees (vs. 19-20). God’s people are not to wage war against the land, because the land belongs to God. The fruit trees strongly suggest that the economic infrastructure is also not to be destroyed. It is one thing to defeat your enemy in battle, it is quite another to make the land desolate, destroying future generations ability to feed and clothe themselves.

Yet most of our modern practices of warfare are ungodly, both civilians and the land are devastated. And those practices have and will bring God’s judgment. American general Sherman is often credited with the modern concept of “total war” in his infamous march through Georgia during the American War between the States. Sherman cut a fifty-mile swath of utter destruction in an attempt to bully the South into submission. He burned farms, slaughtered livestock and left them to rot and spread disease. He drove women and children from their homes, and caused unimaginable suffering, all in the name of “military necessity.”

But Sherman was not really an innovator here. The ancient barbarian Mongol hordes used these same techniques. The Mongols diverted rivers to make fertile cities into barren deserts, leaving mountains of skulls as their only memorial. What makes Sherman so significant is that a supposedly Christian nation, with 18 hundred years of Biblical heritage, renounced God’s Law and adopted pagan principles of warfare; principles that others quickly followed.

In the First World War, civilian populations were bombed as much as technology allowed. This was supposedly to demoralize the enemy and attack his economic ability to wage war. The common solider was lined up and forced to charge machine guns (with horrifying results) while poison gas shrouded the land. In the Second World War, technology allowed indiscriminate firebombing of civilian population centers, murdering hundreds of thousands of non-combatants. Churchill initiated this policy by bombing Berlin to get pressure off his airfields during the Battle of Britain. Later, in retaliation for the bombing of Coventry, the RAF totally destroyed Dresden, a German city of no military value. By sacrificing civilians, Churchill saved the RAF and won the battle, but lost the British Empire after the war. God will not be mocked.

Most Americans do not know that we never defeated the Japanese army on the battlefield, but we did destroy their homeland. We sent flights of B-29s over Tokyo with high explosive bombs to blow up the buildings, followed by waves of bombers with incendiaries creating a firestorm that killed more people than at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Undoubtedly nuclear weapons won us the war, but we now find ourselves in economic slavery to the vanquished (as per Deut 20:11). Has God not judged the Western allies?

For thirty years, we adopted a national policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) where the Soviet and American governments held each other’s civilian populations hostage to nuclear weapons. Now that the Soviet Union has fallen into anarchy, third world nations and terrorist organizations appear to be doing some discount shopping for the most “bang for the buck.” I have nightmares about some tin pot dictator sailing a cargo ship into a US harbor, crewed by religious fanatics, armed with a nuclear weapon and setting it off. Sadly, this is not just a nightmare; but a very real possibility.

Christians must demand that their national governments fight wars according to God’s Laws and not Man’s. A nation cannot receive His blessing, if we violate His righteous standards. A Biblical nation will only fight when the issues are clear, the people supportive, and God’s principles obeyed. They will not commit atrocities against noncombatants out of “military necessity” because it is not our guns, tanks, planes and bombs that give us victory, but God’s blessing. They will not involve themselves with ungodly alliances with pagan kings. God will not be mocked, whatever we sow, we will reap.

Christians in this country tend to be the most supportive and patriotic of its citizens. We have been the first to rally around the flag when the call to arms has gone out. But maybe it is time for us to be a little bit more skeptical and a lot more biblical in our thinking about when, where, how and whom we fight. America is not now, the nation it once was. God will judge us. And one of those judgments will concern whether our wars were just. May God grant us grace, mercy and repentance.