By Mark Tooley @markdtooley
Jim Wallis’ Sojourners magazine has a cover story on “Drones for Christ: How the world’s largest Christian university became an evangelist for drone warfare.” It targets Liberty University in Virginia, founded by Jerry Falwell, so it offers Sojo’s liberal readers lots of opportunity to relish how Christian “fundamentalists” are stereotypically militarizing the Gospel. Liberty’s School of Aeronautics has 600 students, training “Christ-centered aviators,” including future drone pilots, for which a concentration was added in 2011.
Incredibly, Liberty has 12,000 on campus students and another 60,000 online, making it the fourth largest online university anywhere. More than 23,000 online students are in the military, Sojo reports.
The article mentions the “vast percentage” of drone pilots are training for war. But there is also increasing law enforcement use of drones, as well as use by farmers, private businesses, and even environmentalist groups, including animal rights advocates wanting to monitor abuse.
Liberty’s dean of aviation, himself a retired U.S. Air Force general, told Sojo that there is no moral distinction between manned and unmanned aircraft. Drone students told Sojo that government is instituted by God and sometimes ordained to kill when justice demands. The quotes are not very theologically precise and no doubt disturbing to many Sojo readers inclined towards Sojo’s pacifism. But the quotes are still largely articulating what is historic Christian teaching.
The article’s author is a former “Occupy” organizer, ACORN employee, and press secretary for liberal Congressman Dennis Kucinich who has written several anti-war books, the latest of which touts the 1928 international treaty that aspired to abolish war. As events a few years later evinced, that treaty was not successful. Clearly the author is pretty hard left and disapproves of any military force, drone or not.
Accompanying the Liberty article is a column by a “senior policy adviser” for Sojo, who explains: “What’s Wrong with Drones?” Acknowledging both pacifism and Just War, the article insists drones are immoral because they are “targeted assassinations outside of legally declared wars,” violate national sovereignty, offer little transparency, set a “dangerous precedent,” “foster a perpetual state of war, “kill innocents,” “promote the concept of a global battlefield,” and “undermine U.S. security” by creating enemies.
These arguments fail to admit that drones are deployed in areas typically outside the control of legitimate governments, often with the tacit consent of the local regime. Drones for all their errors are also more precise and less likely to harm innocents than most alternatives. Their very precision also contains rather than limits the spread of warfare, in contrast with conventional bombing for example, or an armed incursion of ground troops.
Jim Wallis and nearly all Sojo writers and activists are pacifists who disapprove any lethal military force in any situation. So the ostensible arguments targeting drones as immoral are really just more of the same arguments against all force and advocating instead for “peaceful” alternatives. It’s almost never specified what the “peaceful” means are for neutralizing murderous terrorists hiding with impunity beyond the reach of legitimate authority. And even if a sheriff could deliver a subpoena in the kind of legal process that pacifists advocate, they would still disapprove the sheriff relying on any weapon, instead insisting on reliance upon moral persuasion only, presumably.
These sorts of legalistic arguments by religious pacifists who aren’t fully showing their hand are disingenuous. They advocate as public policy a vision of utopian lalaland that has no roots in historic Christian teaching, which is always profoundly interested in the real world. There may be thoughtful Christian-based arguments against some aspects of drone warfare, but they are not found in Sojo.
“These arguments fail to admit that drones are deployed in areas typically outside the control of legitimate governments, often with the tacit consent of the local regime. Drones for all their errors are also more precise and less likely to harm innocents than most alternatives. Their very precision also contains rather than limits the spread of warfare, in contrast with conventional bombing for example, or an armed incursion of ground troops.”
Sorry, but this isn’t right. The only major study on drones (conducted by researchers at NYU and Stanford Law) indicated that U.S. drones hit just 2% of high priority targets. Not only that, it’s been common knowledge for several months that the Obama administration counts any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates as a “militant.” Just follow the articles–as soon as you get beyond the realm of mainstream American corporate media “militants” become “suspects” or even “civilians.”
Not only that, Pakistan has dealt with several major protests against drones. In fact, the country’s prime minister recently demanded the U.S. to end drone strikes in their country–for the 9th time!
Even if you had the story straight, it still wouldn’t mean that drone warfare is ethically permissible for Christians. Go ahead and dismiss secular and “utopian” pacifism, that’s just fine. John Howard Yoder, however, changed this conversation long ago by introducing a robustly theological (and non-utopian) account of pacifism. A similar argument for pacifism is also presented by Stanley Hauerwas. Let’s talk about that, yeah?
How does loving, blessing, and praying for your enemies translate into killing them?
Pacifism is like mental acne, something you will outgrow, and you won’t miss it.
Jesus’ words about nonresistance were directed to individuals, not to nations. Any nation practicing nonresistance will end up being conquered by another nation. What is there about this that liberals find so hard to grasp? One aspect of love is protecting those you care about. I don’t keep a gun in our house because I relish the thought of killing anyone, I keep one because there are bad people in this world and I can’t allow those bad people to harm me or my family. A nation has the same obligation to protect itself. Pray that your own home is never invaded, since burglars aren’t easily put off by soothing words.
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Yes, maybe Sojo’s view is utopian. But plenty of Christian pacifists have no utopian delusions, e.g. D.L. Moody and Charles Spurgeon http://spurgeonwarquotes.wordpress.com/
Humorist P. J. O’Rourke opined that, if there were any justice in the awarding of Nobel Peace Prizes, the US military would win every year. Is Wallis too stupid to grasp the concept of “peace through strength,” something our ancestors understood and practiced? Let Wallis go back to his Old Testament and observe that the long and peaceful reign of Solomon (whose name means “peaceful”) was due to a HUGE military establishment that kept enemies at bay and rebellions in check. Weakness in a nation invites predator nations to move in. Is that too hard to fathom? Let Wallis and his wussy tribe stop and consider that a well-trained and well-armed military allows them to love in relative security instead of in a totalitarian society where nay-sayers end up in gulags or graves.
Pure pacifism is a moral evil. Turning the other cheek is insults, not physical attacks, and even if it wasn’t it is cowardice to turn the other cheek on someone else’s behalf when you can and should protect them.
Yes, Sojo wants utopia. But anyone who wants that needs to repent, believe in Jesus , and then hurry up and die. Because they won’t get it here on earth in this life.
“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” (Matthew 5:39). You may reject Christ and His admonitions. But please, don’t proffer your mendacious interpretative contortionism. We have Supreme Courts for that. This has nothing to do with the general argument of this article, but with rancid dishonesty.
There’s nothing remotely “mendacious” in what eMatters said. Matt 5:39 was addressed to US, i.e., Christians, not to heads of state, and the Sermon on the Mount was not intended as a blueprint for politicians or armies. Nonresistance on a political level is suicide. I don’t happen to agree with eMatters that “pacifism is pure evil,” but I don’t think it is THE Christian position by any means, especially given the long history of Augustine’s valid “just war” concept. Also, if you read the Gospels, soldiers came to John the Baptist for baptism, and he didn’t instruct them to give up their profession (Luke 3:14). If you want to be a pacifist, that’s your choice, but quoting Matt 5:39 doesn’t cut it. In a world of terrorist nut jobs, turning the other cheek is an option only for cowards. And what exactly does the Supreme Court have to do with drones?