The MSNBC teletype flows across the bottom of the screen. Here’s the flow: Obama leads nationally by 9%, Jimmy Carter will meet with Hamas in Syria, Catholics happy with Pope Benedict’s leadership, Dalai Lama speaks of vision of hope in Seattle but does not mention Tibet, Chinese leaders call Nancy Pelosi most hated person in China for stance on Tibet, Chinese arrest monks allegedly using a homemade bomb at a government building in Tibet, A bomb kills at least 12 and injures over 100 in a mosque in southern Iran, A roadside bomb in Baghdad kills another American soldier capping the bloodiest week of the year for US troops in Iraq, 15 killed in US raid on Sadr City.
How appropriate a name—SADr City. And how macabre that we should celebrate deaths, the more of them we kill, the further along the road to success we apparently are.
This concept really got me to thinking. What is truth? Does the death of some people truly lead to a better state of affairs on earth, indeed does it get us closer to “doing on earth as it is in Heaven?” One need only look at the world’s bloodiest war in history, WWII, to see that at least for that war the answer is a resounding “YES!” That is, the mounting deaths and attrition of the Nazis and the Japanese led to the eventual end of that horrible war. If there truly is such a phenomena as morality, as “right or wrong” then WWII was a perfect black/white example of it.
The Nazi and Japanese warlords were truly evil. The allies were the white-knighted saints, forced into battle by the evil side’s aggression. WWII was a literal battle to the end. There was no compromise, no truce, no arrangements possible except the utter destruction of one side or the other. The Greatest Generation is termed so because they recognized the stakes they were called to defend, they did so eagerly with little thought to their individual, selfish ways, instead melding as a unit for the defense of not only their country, but for freedom everywhere.
To me, a very self-oriented, life-of-leisure liberal, idealist romantic, such heroism and sacrifice is the apex of service. I would hope beyond hope that if I were in their shoes I would have readily traded them for boots and so rise to their level of dedication. Looking back it seems such a tremendous effort that I can only be honest by saying, “I don’t know that I would.”
While today’s battlefields are no less bloody, they are fought over causes with far less moral clarity. Starting with Vietnam and now Iraq an objective and neutral observer might very well see the United States as not only the aggressor—that is undoubtedly true—but also one without just cause, making this aggressor “the bad guy.”
If so, what must we therefore make of the deaths we now inflict?
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