Charlie Pardue with an excellent post , responding to a YouTube entry from Mike Gravel about soldiers dying in vain in Iraq and Vietnam. The candidates challenged that, based solely on the fact that they’re doing their duty, obeying the commander in chief. How shallow. The “commander in chief” has some sacred power to determine what is worthy to die for?
As a Christian I don’t hold the same assumptions that American soldiers can never die in vain. Some are saying that today we are living in the Pax Americana, or “American Peace,” a notion that America’s military and economic dominance is creating world peace, an idea borrowed from ancient Rome and the Pax Romana. But ancient Christians rejected the Pax Romana as a sad and twisted parody of the peace of Jesus Christ. In the same way, “American Peace” is based upon military violence, war and economic manipulation of the poor. This is a far cry from the peace of Jesus Christ, and so when American soldiers die for the Pax Americana… what in the end are they dying for? When America sends men and women to kill and die for a false “peace” that will be exposed by God and replaced by the real and lasting nonviolent peace of Jesus Christ how can we understand anything other than cooperating with God in the peace of his Kingdom today as anything other than working in vain?
Amen, Charlie.
