Should the U.S. Attack Syria?

    At the last report President Obama was going to ask Congress for a resolution supporting a planned military strike against Syria in retaliation for that government's use of chemical weapons in rebel held areas. The president says that the proposed strike would be limited in nature, would not involve ground troops, and would not be aimed at producing regime change. Nevertheless, it is our conviction that Congress should vote "no."
   

Bashar al-Assad

 There is little reason to doubt that the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used poison gas, and that numerous civilian casualties resulted. And there is some weight to President Obama's argument that the world cannot afford to stand idly by while a brutal tyrant commits war crimes against his own people. The use of poison gas creates a dangerous precedent with repercussions for all humanity. Yet a unilateral military strike by the U.S. would be a terrible mistake.
    First of all there is the fact that Syria is a sovereign, independent state, and that a military strike, no matter how limited in scope, amounts to nothing less than an act of war on our part. Syria has not attacked the United States, and is not a direct threat to us. The chemical weapons attack took place within the confines of Syria's own borders. The U.S. simply does not have the authority unilaterally to attack another country with which it is not at war.
    Secondly, a limited military strike is unlikely to change anything inside of Syria. Assad will still be faced with an insurrection, and he will continue to use any means at his disposal to survive. Short of a ground invasion of his country to remove him from power he is unlikely to change his tactics. If anything, a "limited strike" by a foreign power will only cause his supporters to rally behind him.. It would risk life and property without achieving a positive result.
    On the other hand, a military strike by the U.S. could have far-reaching and potentially catastrophic results. What if Syria decides to retaliate by firing some missiles into Israel? What if Iran decides to enter the conflict on behalf of the Assad regime? What if Russia decides to intervene? Wars often have unforeseen consequences because the outcomes are determined by factors other than logic and justice. What is, at the moment, an internal conflict within Syria could easily mushroom into a regional conflict instead.
    Nor do we want to appear to be supporting Assad's enemies, either. The civil war in Syria is rapidly assuming the aspect of a sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, with the mainly Sunni rebels receiving support form elements of Al-Quida. Why defeat the Islamic extremists in Iraq only to support them in Syria? It is not the proper role of the United States government to adjudicate the competing claims of two opposing factions of Islam. And yet that is exactly how it is likely to be perceived in the Middle East.
    The use of poison gas does create a dangerous precedent for humanity. But so does the notion that any country is free to attack any other country at will. The proper forum for addressing crimes against humanity is the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and any military action against Syria should only be taken under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council.
Human life is sacred. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" underscores a basic moral principle. Under the classical just war theory a war must have both a just cause and a reasonable chance of a positive outcome. It is not clear that either of these are present in the case at hand. We therefore conclude that that proposed military action is morally unacceptable.

Other posts in which you may be interested:
American Militarism 
You Shall not Murder 
Peace on Earth 
"Blessed are the Peacemakers"

David Bercot on the Church and the World

David Bercot

Review:
    The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down
    David W. Bercot
    Scroll Publishing, 2003
    268 pp., pb.

 
    David W. Bercot is a thought provoking writer if nothing else. He is a practicing attorney who spent most of his adult life in Texas but now resides in Pennsylvania. He has written a number of books, and his vision of radical Christianity is sure to challenge the modern American Christian who has grown comfortable with the popular blend of Christianity, patriotism and middle class prosperity. Mr. Bercot takes us back to the early church with its strong emphasis on the moral and ethical teachings of Jesus. It is a book that will no doubt shock and disturb many.
    And it is a message that sorely needs to be heard. We are far too complacent and far too ready to compromise our beliefs. We pass all too lightly over the ethical passages of the New Testament. But when Christ returns His assessment of the modern church may not be as comforting as we would like to think.
    Nevertheless we feel that Mr. Bercot's work, as valuable as it may be at many points, is marred by several serious flaws. First and foremost is his black-and-white treatment of church history. For Mr. Bercot the Christian church can be divided up into two opposing camps: those who advocate what he calls "the Constantinian Hybrid" (the alliance between church and state) and "Kingdom Christians" who advocate what Mr. Bercot calls the simple kingdom gospel of Jesus. Chief among the former were St. Augustine and the major Protestant Reformers. Included among the latter are such groups as the Anabaptists, Mennonites and Quakers.
    Mr. Bercot's tendency to see everything in black-and-white, either / or terms leads him into a series of false dichotomies. He tells us at one point that Jesus "didn't come to preach a message about changing governments and kingdoms of the world. He sought to transform individuals, not to transform the world" (p.115). But the Great Commission calls us to disciple the nations. By transforming individuals we transform the world. Likewise Mr. Bercot tells us that "The banner of Jesus' disciples wasn't 'God and country!' It was God or country" (p. 120). But if we are to love our neighbor and let our light shine before men, would that not include a care and concern for our country?
    A major issue for Mr. Bercot is non-resistance. At one point he has a quote form John Calvin to the effect that, in Calvin's view, if God permitted even good kings in the Old Testament to wield the sword, why would He forbid Christian believers from serving in the government or in the military (p. 249; cf. Calvin, Treatise against the Anabaptists). Mr. Bercot criticizes Calvin on this point, saying ". . . in Calvin's mind, nothing had changed with the coming of Christianity. Everything – except theology and ordinances – was just the same as it had been in Israel" (Ibid.).
    But Calvin raised a legitimate question. One of the Ten Commandments said, "Thou shalt not kill." The sanctity of human life has always been a basic moral principle right from the very beginning. Yet when taken in the context of the Mosaic legislation as a whole, the commandment obviously did not preclude either capital punishment or just war. In fact, long before Moses or the birth of Israel as a nation it was laid down as a basic principle that
        "Whoever sheds man's blood,
         By man his blood shall be shed;
         For in the image of God
         He made man." (Gen. 9:6; NKJV).
The word translated "kill" in the Sixth Commandment is used only to refer to the shedding of blood by a private individual, whether it be murder or manslaughter. It does not apply to acts of war or judicial punishment. (The Hebrew Bible has different words for killing in those contexts.)
    So does the situation change in the New Testament? There we are told specifically that "the authorities that exist are appointed by God," and that the civil magistrate is "God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil" (Rom. 13:1-6). So if capital punishment is specifically ordained by God, what prevents a Christian from serving in the capacity that God has ordained? Mr. Bercot would have us to believe that the fundamental principles of God's moral law have changed over time; that God forbids in the New Testament what He specifically enjoined in the Old. And while there are some things which doubtless pertained only to the theocracy of Old Testament Israel, the New Testament makes it plain that civil government, per se, is an institution ordained by God. It is hard to see how Mr. Bercot's position can be squared with Scripture when taken as a whole.

American Militarism

The United States is currently the world's greatest military power. In 2008 alone we spent a total of $693 billion on defense, more than the next 29 most heavily armed countries combined. Compared with our six most heavily armed NATO allies combined we have almost as many tanks, more submarines, more aircraft carriers, and more than twice as many warplanes. We have at least 1,000 troops each stationed in thirteen different countries around the world.

    The Founding Fathers would be appalled. While they did give the Federal Government the power to raise and maintain a professional military, they were well aware of the dangers of a standing army. Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist Paper #8, noted that standing armies "bear a malignant aspect to liberty and economy." War, he said, creates "a progressive direction to monarchy. It is the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority." How a modern president can create an "imperial presidency" and send American troops into combat without a declaration of war, and still call himself a "conservative," is utterly beyond us.

    It should be obvious that war is a gravely moral issue. The sanctity of human life is grounded in the fact that human beings are created in the image of God. After the Flood God told Noah: "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man" (Gen. 9:6; NKJV). It is noteworthy that this text forbids murder but enjoins capital punishment at the same time. The two, in fact, go hand in hand. The punishment is the measure of the gravity of the crime. It is also apparent from other legislation in the Torah that a just war is also permissible. But what exactly makes a war just?

    The basic premise behind the just war theory is that killing is justifiable only when absolutely necessary. That means that in order for a war to be just several conditions must be present:

1. There must be a just cause. The adversary must be guilty of a crime worthy of death, i.e., the adversary must be guilty of armed aggression or of the gross violation of human rights. Moreover, war should be undertaken only as a last resort, after all diplomatic and political solutions have failed.
   
2. The good must outweigh the bad. We must have a good intention, there must be a reasonable chance of success, and the good to be achieved must be greater than the destruction caused by the war itself.
   

Moreover, moral considerations are involved in the way the war is conducted well. It is manifestly not true that "all is fair in love and war." War crimes are never justified. Even in the actual course of war itself we have a moral obligation to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. In particular,

1. We must avoid killing civilians and other non-combatants.
   
2. Deadly force should be used only in proportion to the objective. For this reason weapons of mass destruction are almost always immoral by their very nature, because they involve the massive and indiscriminate destruction of human life.
   
3. Ideally, military strategy should be aimed at disarming the enemy (i.e. destroying his capacity to wage war) and at maneuvering him into surrendering (i.e., cutting supply lines, routes of escape, etc.).
   

It should be apparent from all of this that foreign wars are especially hard to justify. If we have not been attacked here in our homeland, the war generally cannot be considered defensive. Trying to export democracy to a non-Western society is often an exercise in futility, and projecting military force to achieve some sort of geo-political balance or hegemony is positively immoral.

    Unfortunately, if we honestly evaluate each of the wars in which the United States has been involved, we would probably have to conclude that the majority of them were unjust. Our current position as the world's leading military power carries with it an awesome responsibility and a good deal of temptation. The blood of every person we needlessly kill will be required of us by the righteous Judge of all the earth. "The also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence." (Gen. 6:11).