The United States is now fighting three wars concurrently: one each in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. That is correct, Libya. Even though no formal declaration of war exists, the U.S. is at war with Libya and we need moral clarity about that fact and about whether the war is just or unjust.
The twin towers flaming, their haunting shells rising from the rubble broke through America’s collective psychological defenses with the bewildering news that some people hate us, that not everyone shares our confidence in capitalism, that the hearts of many do not warm to the slogan “Truth, Justice, and the American way.” 9/11 was an attack on our national integrity.
Alongside her husband and family, Anna Jarvis was committed to the idea that in a violent time, with the ravages of warfare and industry, the voice of women – in particular, the wisdom of mothers – was the only deciding factor between death and life, between health and rotting away.
How much damage we have done by launching wars, with their inevitable harm and death to non-combatants, rather than using our superior resources to combat a small, clandestine violent criminal conspiracy? What if we had responded to the 9-11 attacks by inspiring our highest American ideals and character rather than our reactive, violent nature?
Bishop George Bell was such an impressive and persistent voice against the “carpet bombing” of German towns — think Dresden — that I wish he were alive today to question America’s use of unmanned drones, piloted from thousands of miles away, to attack targets that are by nature uncertain and sometimes involve targeted assassination from the air.
“From assault to genocide, from assassination to massacre, violence usually emerges from inside the fold rather than outside it.”
There’s an old Christian line of thinking that allows for the moral use of limited violence in certain specific situation. The concepts are usually collected
Are the attacks on Libya an example of “Just War”?
Martin Luther King gave his last Sunday sermon at Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968. Some of that sermon is reproduced below, but we
The court found that “the call to hang gays in dozens tends to tremendously threaten their right to human dignity” and that the tabloid’s act “threaten the rights of the applicants to privacy of the person and their home.”