Kim Phuc Phan Ti converted to Christianity following her exaltation as an anti-Vietnam War symbol in her youth. (Photo credit: Haverford College) |
Kim Phuc inspires even the most hard-hearted. She presented her story to the 2011 Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America (BPFNA) at Eastern Mennonite University. After a South Vietnamese napalm strike hit her village, she ran naked through the streets of her village, her clothes burnt off from the flames. What looked like rags hanging from her body was actually her skin. This gruesome image was captured by an AP photographer, winning a Pulitzer prizing and highlighting Phuc as a war symbol for the Communist North Vietnamese. Thankfully, Phuc converted to Christianity, defected to Canada, and now helps children victimized by war. The audience rightly responded with tears at the horror of Phuc Vietnam experience. Their consciences recognized the wrong done to innocent children, so often dismissed as “necessary collateral” by some leaders. Although the audience rightly received Phuc’s message, their program of response is misdirected. Knowledge of this foundation is the key to understanding the Christian Left’s arguments for pacifism.
Stories like that of Kim Phuc serve as the great impetus behind the BPFNA and other pacifist groups. Because such atrocities occur in war, battle can only be an evil. As a documentary video during the session pointed out, the pilots who bombed the area that day thought that the zone was cleared of civilians. Even if the bombing run resulted from a clerical error, the result is the same as a deliberate war-crime: children maimed and killed in a most excruciating manner. This horror occurred in a limited war that (at least sometimes) tried to minimize civilian casualties. In the modern age, war has become more and more total. As Bertrand de Jouvenel pointed out in his 1940s opus On Power, nations and organizations have learned to devote their entire populace to war efforts. Soon, the line between combatant and civilian becomes extremely thin, even worse when locals look to guerrilla tactics. Countries race each other in a spiral to the bottom, making more weapons and more debilitating strikes.
The progressive pacifist’s response to this echoes that of Anabaptists against all forms of combat: war is in and of itself evil. It brings no good. As Hannah Arendt thought, combat lends itself to an endless cycle of violence. A Christian should refuse to fight for his earthly country and just stop the fighting somehow.
But is not justice giving to each his due? Are not some men wicked enough to destroy everything you expect to accomplish with peace? A pacifist must not only leave himself, but his family, friends, particular traditions, institutions, and inheritance on the altar of nonviolence. Maybe political freedom isn’t worth dying for; maybe we should not engage in nation-building; perhaps the U.S. has too many fingers in too many pies. These are worthwhile critiques offered from camps across the political spectrum. However, there is something utterly perverse—even heretically Gnostic—in abandoning one’s own country, loved ones, and carefully guarded inheritance (religious, material, cultural) to the hands of evil doers. Over and again, pacifists dodge the problem of leaving the defenseless in the hands of evil people.
Sin from the Fall curses the world and makes imperfect so much man now comes across. As Augustine pointed out, just because something is affected by the Fall does not mean that it is essentially bad. For example, toilsome work derives from the curse of exertion. Man works by the sweat of his brow. Likewise, childbirth pains the mother. In a similar way, how human beings relate to one another is fraught with difficulty. The broken earth now leaves some impoverished and some prosperous. The divinely-designed ecclesiological structure even falls into error and malpractice. Some of these things existed before the Fall, some resulted afterward. Either way, it is foolhardy to throw out work, family, politics, economics, and the church because sin keeps these from the fullness of their being. The same goes for war; war brings out both the worst and the best in people. Peace is generally preferable to war, but it is not the only recourse. Sometimes it is more wicked to pursue earthly peace as an ultimate end. Human life is not the main thing, whether it is “them” (as pacifists point out) or “us” (as total war apologists emphasize). Neither one’s survival nor his enemy’s override all concerns; rightness and wrongness should direct actions of war and peace. As prudence delineates rightness, justice brings it into actuality. The conservative thinker Richard Weaver discussed this idea in depth. Although he supported limited war, he seriously questioned the thinking behind wars of extermination as well as the problem of weapon technology (especially atomic armament). His books and essays give helpful guidance on the subject.
It has been the contention for centuries’ worth of Christians that some things are worth fighting for. Of course, this same belief teaches that there is also a proper way to fight. Volumes have been written on the subject; some are better than others. As pacifists continue in their arguments and emotional appeals, it is crucial that orthodox Christians pull from this old tradition, which so generously lends the benefit of prudence.
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