How To Make War

How to Make War (or How to Make War Impractical)
Deuteronomy 19: 1- 20: 20

Last night at dinner, a friend of mine was hopping mad about a meeting she had attended the previous night, when an ex-marine who had become a pacifist was lamenting the wrongness of the war in Afghanistan on the basis (she said) of a confused understanding of recent history and of U.S. policy and self-understanding. “Not that I am simply for our being at war in Afghanistan,” she said. “The situation and the background and the policies just require a lot more understanding than this guy showed.” One of my colleagues has a sticker on her door that reads, “I guess when Jesus said we are to love our enemies, he probably meant we aren’t to kill them.” There is a place for such straightforward, no-nonsense statements and simple commitments that make a witness to the rest of us as well as a role for people who let themselves be killed for these statements and commitments. But these differing perspectives need to be combined with insight into complexities and ambiguities...