Our position is that recourse to armed force can only be justified as a last resort.
What the words of Lt. Calley teach us about how we see (and don’t see) our enemies.
In this post, Brethren minister Brian R. Gumm reflects on the political & eschatological vision of kingdom come in the movie version of Les Misérables, and suggests that violent revolution should not be conflated with righteousness and work for Christ’s peaceable kingdom.
What do the widespread demonstrations against the anti-Islamic YouTube video “The Innocence of Muslims” teach us about the state of the world at this time in our history? Now that the hype has gone and the dust is beginning to settle around this episode it is a useful time to examine the lessons we can learn from the global Muslim protests against the film.
First, and foremost we need to once again make it unequivocally clear that the loss of innocent lives is to be condemned in the strongest terms. The depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in a negative and profane manner was a clear and deliberate provocation, but the sanctity of human life is a supreme value in Islam and nothing is worth the cost of a human life….
We must guard ourselves against becoming complicit in regarding deaths of innocent Americans or Europeans abroad as being more tragic and senseless than the deaths and killings of innocent Iraqi, Afghani or Yemeni citizens. We should be expressing our outrage equally if not more, at the deaths and killings of the many men, women and children who have lost their lives violently at the hands of US and NATO forces in the ongoing illegitimate ‘wars of invasion’. Under international law those responsible for the mass killing of innocent people must be prosecuted, whether the wars are legal or not….
In the case of Iran, deterrence looks less like realism and more like nostalgia for another era. The limits of nuclear deterrence push us to reconsider how to limit war and act responsibly in a world given to episodes of madness….