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(Part 2 in an occasional series. Part 1 can be found here.)
One of the most important elements of waging war and gaining a country’s support for war is propaganda. Wikipedia defines the word as “Propaganda is a specific type of message presentation directly aimed at influencing the opinions of people, rather than impartially providing information.” Although the word is usually used negatively, all governments and all peoples use propaganda when waging war.
Can you imagine an Army general reminding his troops before battle that when they encounter the enemy, they should remember that it might be someone’s father or son or brother or husband? We don’t want our government leaders to paint our enemy as someone who could be a part of our family or our next door neighbor. It’s a lot easier to support a war and fight a war when the enemy is characterized as an animal.
Engaging war requires the savvy use of slandering the enemy, of painting the enemy as sub-human worthy to either be destroyed or saved. And as a country, it becomes our moral obligation to engage in this war because we are purging our world of these people who are not really human.
While I accept that war might be an appropriate option to engage international conflict, slandering the enemy dehumanizes people who (whether we like to or not) are still created in the image of God. In Matthew 5, Jesus teaches,
43 “You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
I will provide thoughts on this passage during a future posting, but what I notice of this passage that is relevant here, is that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. When I dehuminize my enemy, I do not necessarily have to fall under the call to love (since my enemy is no longer human). But to love my enemy, is to love him as I love myself or my family.
I think that those who subscribe to pacifism (of which I am not a proponent) understand that war is not just about soldiers and civilians dying, but that as a nation we begin to believe certain things about our enemy to make it easier for us to support the war and/or for soldiers to engage in the war. For the rest of us, we need to struggle with the characterization of our enemy. When we are in a season of war (as we are right now), we need to check our prejudices and whether they warrant the continued support of the war.
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Eddie,
While I totally agree with your rationale about the slander problem, the rationale doesn’t seem to hold up to anything other than a pacifist view of war. If we are to not dehumanize our enemies, then how does the horror of war ever become justified? As one who sits somewhere betweeen pacifism and “just war,” I’m curious.
I’ve observed that there tends to be two kinds of responses to war. There are those who tend to have no remorse for war or its effects or the long-term implications of the war. The people in this category seem to trump any criticism of war as “not supporting our troops” and as far as they are concerned, the goal is to win at all costs. The other group (whether they support war or not) tend to see war as the most difficult decision anyone can make, and they mourn that we have come to this.
I wonder if we need to learn how to mourn when it comes to war, especially Christians. While I don’t know if I can hold that standard to the rest of society, I think the Church in general needs to mourn the implications of war. I think someone can probably support war and practice mourning (for all sides of the conflict), recognizing that “it has come to this.” If we are to only mourn our losses, we miss one of the core tenets of the gospel that calls us to love our enemy and our neighbor as ourselves. Also, in Philippians, Paul articulates that his citizenship is not of this world. As the Church, our values and solidarity does not stop at our national borders.
Perhaps the practice of mourning would keep us in check when it comes to either believing in or propagating slander.
I like this post Eddie. Sometimes it does come to this. But far less often than recognized. I think the safest route for believers is to take a practically pacifist position and then adopt a hard core show me stance in justifying a war. Very, very few wars would get through that filter. That’s what the original just war stance was trying to do in my understanding.