I have been holding off on this post so as not to offend some people’s views of that holiday. My friends at Red Letter Christians have spurred me in thoughts once again. This time it is about Memorial Day. I have always found it strange that we as a nation celebrate our wars. Some even seem obsessed with them. To me war is the failure to accomplish our goals in a Christ-like manner of peace. “Bound together by Christ, not nationality” is a real but seemingly pretty naive thinking in today’s world but that is my reality. I know I am … Continue reading Memorial Day Is Not On the Church’s Calendar

President Bush’s use of drones and elevated them to an extreme level. We are told that the innocent lost of life because of these drone strikes are one of the primary reasons so many hate us in that part of the world.  They strike so quietly and devastatingly to strike terror into innocent citizens of those Middle East countries. Yes, we are known by some as terrorists in that part of the world. If only we could have admitted our mistakes as soon as they happened we might be in a very different place in our world.  But given the … Continue reading U.S. Reveals Death Toll From Airstrikes

I think I heard somewhere that the U.S. has more than a thousand military bases throughout the world and I suspect many of them are located in the Middle East. We as a country seem to be so fixated on telling others how to live that we spend huge amounts of money and our citizens’ lives trying to do just that.  Here are some words about that: Every year the United States seems to be torn between further retreat from the Middle East and deeper military involvement in it. Over the past four decades, America has bombed pharmaceutical plants in … Continue reading How America has waged an eternal war in the Middle East

From the title it is hard to determine where this post is going. We can be wrong about almost anything in this life and there seems to always be someone around to alert us of that fact. If we get something set in our minds that just isn’t true then we are the worst kind of wrong. But… that is not where this post is going. :) Finally, here is the full question,  were we wrong to separate from mother England, especially through  violence? Looking back with hindsight it is always easy to judge the past by today’s criteria.  I … Continue reading Were We Wrong??

It’s an incantation repeated among Obama’s neocon critics: the Iraq surge worked; things were going swimmingly until we withdrew; the same thing will happen in Afghanistan if we pull out completely. Let’s assume it’s true, that we could keep peace and order in these countries if we kept tens of thousands of troops (or more) on the ground. Here’s my question: Why on Earth would we do such a thing? How does it serve American interests to spend vast quantities of blood and treasure serving as a national police force for countries on the other side of the globe with … Continue reading Obama’s Neocon Critics…

a world that is boiling over in violence and cut-throat theocracy makes me nostalgic for the days it was merely “simmering in resentment and tyranny Source: How the refugee crisis is teaching us the value of Hussein, Mubarak, and Gadhafi Don’t we all wish for the “good old days” when Saddam ruled with an iron fist and as a result kept the lid on the Middle East.  Yeah his bravado rankled many but we for the most part just ignored him. He did kill thousands of his own people to maintain control but millions have been killed in the aftermath … Continue reading The Good Old Days…

This post is a continuation of my story about my father and his early years. I know there there millions of families that have been seriously affected by all the wars we have been involved in during my lifetime. Some grievously damaged, some to a lesser extent. I see too many people who are still living with the wounds of my generation’s war and that is Vietnam. They can’t let go of their feeling and seem to live them almost daily. To what extent my father’s war time experiences effected the family is hard for me to grade. Dad graduated from … Continue reading War and Families…

If it were challenged by Russia, how important is Estonia’s sovereignty to you? Would you kill and die for it? Send your children to do so? Would you risk the nuclear annihilation of your civilization? Is your gratitude for use of Estonia’s airspace during the war on terror that great? SOURCE: Don’t save Ukraine – The Week. The publication “The Week” is becoming a favorite of mine. It is from a British organization so it lends a different viewpoint than most traditional U.S. sources.  It seems to have the same contrarian philosophy as me. When we take away all the … Continue reading Is It Worth It???

If we can just let other people alone and let them do their own fighting. When you get into trouble 5,000 miles away from home, you’ve got to have been looking for it.” – Will Rogers, 9 February 1932 Thanks Will for reminding us what common sense, which seems to be a rare commodity these days, sounds like…. My Republican friends like to say that they are dismantling the country’s safety net in order to rescue those trapped in it. That is the reason many give for cutting so many programs to the poor.   Well I say we need to … Continue reading Let Them Do Their Own Fighting…

While Tertullian emphasized the negative aspects of the military to Christian discipleship, Origen pointed out the positive vision of a life of Christian peacemaking. He criticized the army as a society of “professional violence,” pointing out that Jesus forbids any kind of violence or vengeance against another. “We will not raise arms against any other nation, we will not practice the art of war,” he wrote, “because through Jesus Christ we have become the children of peace.” To him the spiritual life means rejecting all forms of violence, and “absolute pacifism.” A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of … Continue reading Early Christians and War….

I saw a statistic  somewhere that said that 68% of U.S. citizens are war weary.  I am certainly one of them.  Neither party seems to shy away from sending our kids and/or our dollars to fight in this or that conflict. After twelve years of constant war costing us thousands of our kids and $trillions I am war weary. Do we really need to be the policemen of the world even if it bankrupts us? Our war machine has cost us enough! Continue reading “I am War Weary…….”

Source: Recent email from FCNL (Friends Conference on National Legislation – Quaker) Do your members of Congress and candidates know what you think about Pentagon spending cuts? What they hear from you now could influence their decisions this December and into next year. Urge them to support Pentagon cuts of $1 trillion over the next 10 years, as recommended by experts from across the political spectrum.1 39 cents out of every one of your federal income tax dollars is going to feed the Pentagon and its contractors, and the Pentagon budget has nearly doubled in the past decade. This is a bad investment for our … Continue reading Do Members of Congress and candidates know what you think???

Source: U.S. News – Historic battleship USS Iowa to become museum in Los Angeles. “There’s no more ships like this in existence in the active navies anywhere in the world,” said Robert Kent, president of the Pacific Battleship Center. Thank the Lord there are no more ships like this in existence.  When you take a massive explosive shell and launch it from up to twenty miles away there was little chance that it will hit exactly where you intended. It could just as easily hit a small town of 800 as it would a military complex. Anyone who has read much … Continue reading Historic battleship USS Iowa to become museum in Los Angeles

Here is a rather straight forward graph showing military spending by country. Are you like me and see a very basic problem here? If we look at is per citizen it is even more skewed. No wonder our budgets are in so much trouble. No wonder the world always comes to us to solve their problems. We are taking on massive debt to be the policemen of the world. When will it end???? Continue reading Military Expenditures by Country…

Source:  NYT: Risks of Afghan war shift to contractors – World news – The New York Times – msnbc.com. This is a war where traditional military jobs, from mess hall cooks to base guards and convoy drivers, have increasingly been shifted to the private sector. Many American generals and diplomats have private contractors for their personal bodyguards. And along with the risks have come the consequences: More civilian contractors working for American companies than American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year for the first time during the war. American employers here are under no obligation to publicly report the deaths … Continue reading The Uncounted Deaths of War…..

During my extensive three-year study of Christianity one of the things I learned was that during the early years of Christianity when a Roman soldier wanted to be a Christian the first thing he had to do was to find a new occupation. Early Christians believed that the collected words of Jesus, their founder, and being a warrior were not compatible. There are many places in the Bible where Jesus commented about soldiers. The most prevalent one was “Those who live by the sword die by the sword”. Jesus just did not condone violence in those around him. I know there are … Continue reading Early Christians and War….

I was eight years old when I gave my best friend a black eye over some dispute that I can’t even remember. Immediately after that incident I was totally devastated over the violence I had done. I promised myself that I would never strike or injure another person in that manner. I have lived up to that promise in the fifty odd years since then. Along these same lines I have always felt that the various wars we have been involved in were totally against God’s will. The Quaker belief that God is in each of us and therefore if … Continue reading Nonviolence