Today in New Zealand the date is the 11th of September, this date marks the anniversary of a terrible crime, an event where planes were used to incinerate and kill thousands of innocent civilians in order to strike terror into the heart of the local population.
Those reading this will suspect that I am talking of the attack on the world trade towers in 2001. I am not. The event I refer to occurred in September 11th 1944 the bombing of Darmstadt. This was one of several bombing raids performed by the allies against German occupied Europe. What’s less well known was that Churchill under pressure from his ally Stalin, perhaps the greatest mass murderer in history, authorized the deliberate area bombing of civilian cities. Defenders of these actions argued it was necessary to destroy the morale of the German people. The raid on Darmstadt created a fire storm 1 mile high. The roaring firestorm so terrified the population that most people stayed in their bomb shelters leading to them dying of suffocation. In his fascinating monograph Humanity Jonathan Glover notes that over 12000 people died in this raid. Carolin Schaffer a survivor of the raid tells how she and her children were forced to flee through piles of corpses. She covered her children’s eyes for fear that the images would traumatize them for life.
Darmstard was only one of many area bombings performed by the allies. A year earlier between 24 July and 3 of August the city of Hamburg was repeatedly attacked. On the night of the 27th the bombings created a firestorm with temperatures up to 800 degrees. Roads melted and fleeing civilians found their feet stuck in molten tar and asphalt while they were burnt alive. Glover’s account contains disturbing accounts from eyewitnesses, stories of charred women and children, with brains tumbling onto the ground. The firestorm of the 27th killed 40,000 people. Similar things can be said about the fire bombing of Dresden in 1945 which killed 30,000.
Many in the west forget do not know about these events. I talk to well meaning sincere students all the time who know all about the atrocities of Hitler and have no idea that Churchill supported terrorism moreover often when this is pointed out they do not care. After all he was fighting Hitler.
I highlight these events not to engage in the specious reasoning of anti war activists. The invalid tu quoque which states that because the west has engaged in terrorism of this sort in the past that some how means they are mistaken to condemn it now. Such arguments seem to suggest that because we did not do the right thing in the past we should not do it now. Nor do I wish to engage in the facile “Bush is a hypocrite” argument; such reasoning displays a shallow understanding of ethical argument, one that mistakes attacking against a persons character with actually offering an argument against the proposition asserted by the person. Any first year critical thinking or logic class would clear these issues up; the fact that educated University students seriously put them forward is a shame to our education system.
I highlight to say simply this terrorism in all its forms should be condemned. The Christian Just war theory condemns deliberately targeting and killing non combatants in war. It bases this on the sixth commandment “you shall not kill” but notes, following Augustine, that when this commandment is read in it’s context it admits of two specified exceptions; killing an aggressor to defend of the innocent from his attack, and killing a person justly sentenced for a capital crime. The commandment is issued to all human beings. It does not say it’s wrong for the US to do this but Sunni Muslims who do it against America are freedom fighters. It does not say that we should condemn Israel when (and if) they deliberately attack civilians but then agree to listen and hear the complaints of Palestinians when they blow up Israeli women and children and encourage their teenagers to do so. It does not say that we should revile the CIA for dubious actions they have engaged in and yet praise terrorist organizations like Nelson Mandela’s ANC. All forms of terrorism should be condemned. All people, including all governments, are required to obey Gods law.
The leftwing forces of “peace” and “tolerance” in our country reject Gods law and find the idea that Governments are under God as absurd. In popular discourse they replace Gods law with the most bizarre unprincipled stance on violence. They say the state should never kill when a person has been found guilty of serial murder. But they slaughter by the thousands innocent children for social, economic reasons in state hospitals at taxpayer funds. They tell us the US should not intervene in Iraq to bring down a brutal dictator and stop his slaughter of thousands of innocent people. Yet they support military intervention in the Solomon Islands to stop riots. It’s wrong to correct disobedient children with force, but they then exhort thousands of dollars of tax payer money out of adults, by threatening force and violence for any social cause they deem worthy of support. This leads to the absurd situation where Journalists on TV tell us that Bush and other American conservatives are the equivalent of Bin Laden and the Taliban. As though a country that executes serial murderers is the same as one that executes women for not wearing a Burka. As though condemning pornographic filth is the same as banning TVs and kites. Their real ethic is clear; violence is good when used by us for causes we like by regimes who oppose those we hate. It should not be used against murderers only innocent tax payers, it should not be used against dictators only against those dictators which the UN ( which is composed of dictators) like. A plane that attacks a military target illegally located within a civilian area and which inevitably but unintentionally hits a civilians ( after ringing the civilians and telling them to leave) is a terrorist because the person who did it is a Jew and supported by the US. However a terrorist who fights apartheid is a hero and Muslim Jihadists they are simply venting understandable frustration at western colonialism.
This is one of the reasons people do not know about Darmstadt, because the Nazis were evil racists, they are the figure the left use to label any person they don’t like, so no one cares about the Germans. People confidently forget or excuse the atrocities committed upon german civilians by the allies. They also minimize the even worse social polices and massacres of Stalin our ally in the war. What is needed is not the pragmatic utilitarianism of the left. But a consistent stance grounded in the law of God. Violence is wrong when intentionally wielded against innocent people. However, to protect the innocent, governments must wield it against criminals and those who engage in aggression against the innocent. This applies domestically and internationally. I say hunt Bin Laden down kill him. Destroy terrorists everywhere and anywhere when they threaten us. Refuse to give in to them or negotiate with them until they denounce terrorism. Execute the evil people who rape and kill children here at home. Arm the police with tasers and when a criminal is threatening the innocent use them. However let those of us who are innocent, whether civilians in other countries or non criminals at home, use our life liberty and property as we please. Stop restricting our liberty appropriating our property and threatening us with incarceration us as means to achieve your social ends. Stop killing unborn children by the thousands to further the women’s revolution while selectively condemning “non violence” and prattling about peace when those who threaten the innocent us are challenged by governments doing the job God instituted them to do. Show us you actually have some moral discernment and can tell the difference between guilt and innocence, aggression and non aggression.
Black is not white and your continual claiming it is does not make it so.
Tags: Bin Laden · Darmstadt · George Bush · Hitler · Stalin · Terrorism · War Ethics · Winston Churchill19 Comments
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
A side issue really, but… Maybe calling George Bush an idiot is an ad hominem attack, but in this case couldn’t it be valid? I mean, if someone’s personal traits (their stupidity, cleverness, whatever) impact on that person’s ability to do their job, or at least people’s faith in that person to do their job (especially when that job happens to be default leader of the west), isn’t that kind of important? Just throwing it out there…
Kate
Yes if you argue [1] A competent leader of the west must be intelligent [2] Bush is not intelligent, therefore [3] Bush is not a competent leader of the west. The argument is valid: there are a couple of issues here though.
First, to be sound [1] and [2] need to both be true and to be warranted in accepting this inference one must have rational grounds for asserting them. Now with regards to [2] that means one needs to have some kind of reliable measure of intelligence and lack their of and show Bush fails on these grounds. And the measure shouldn’t have political issues written into it. i,e one should not assume Bush is stupid because he holds to conservative views on things. Something like an IQ test, formal academic examinations etc would be needed
Second, this argument tells us nothing about whether the war in Iraq is just or unjust. Its conclusion is merely that Bush is incompetent. That’s a separate issue. To show the war in Iraq is just or unjust one needs to argue that it meets or fails to meet certain criteria of a just war. Saying Bush is stupid addresses a completely different question.
“The raid on Darmstadt created a fire storm 100 miles high.”
Surely that can’t be right. It would be outside the earth’s atmosphere.
You are quite right, thanks for pointing that out – I have just now amended that typo to 1 mile high.
Nice post MandM.
I personally believe the MAJOR reason we do not commonly know of the horrific crimes commited by Churchill and co is because we “won the war”. Had Hitler won I would be guessing these events would be commonly known and quoted, and perhaps the death camps less well acknowledged. Human conditioning.
I wonder if we’ll look back on Baghdad and Falluja and accuse Blair and Bush of Churchills crimes in a similar way one day… Probably not if we (the west) actually ever wins that war, but that looks most unlikely.
BTW, your words… “A plane that attacks a military target illegally located within a civilian area and which inevitably but unintentionally hits a civilians “….. leads to an interesting question; Who decides that a military target located by a government of a sovereign nation within its own borders is illegal in it locality? Whose rules are you judging this government by and what right do you have to do this? Should they locate military hardware beside a childcare centre; surely that is for them to decide on. We can judge it unethical by our standards, but illegal?
Murray
Thanks for your comments.
As a Christian I use the word unlawful in a moral sense. This is because I believe there is a moral law which governs peoples behavour.
Hence when I state that its unlawful to locate military targets in a civilian area, I am stating that its wrong to do this even if the law of the nation in question allows it.
Matt
I have read a statement by a paratrooper who landed on D-Day and was ordered to not take prisoners for 8 or 9 days. Apart from anything else this is a breach of the Geneva Convention to which Britain was a signatory. My point is that states are always evil.
Almost everyone thinks that Churchill was the good guy, but it’s not often mentioned that he was just as much a eugenicist as Hitler was.
Eugenicist beliefs are totalitarian in that they assume that someone knows who should be allowed to have children and who shouldn’t, therefore I conclude that Churchill was essentially as totalitarian as Hitler was.
Have you ever heard a eugenicist stating that his genes are inferior and therefore he should not have children? You won’t hear such a thing because eugenicists are always the elite who assume their own superiority and fitness to rule, and because eugenics is simply a means of justifying their desire to control others. The hypocrisy of eugenicists is illustrated by the fact the Hitler espoused the Aryan ideal but he was nothing like that ideal, as was most if not all of his inner circle.
As an aside, the Family Planning (Family Banning) movement is directly related to the eugenics movement.
Click on our eugenics tags for where we document Family Planning’s ties to the movement.
This thread brings to mind the current Israeli invasion and the massacre of innocent children and civilians.
Funny how the word terrorism is used as propaganda buy those who wish to justify their actions.
If someone invaded your country illegally would’nt you fight back?
The problem is that the Plaestinians only have rockets and stones and are up against the money and the might of America and the U.K.and a Zionist enemy intent to ironically irradicate them.
Now that I have to argue is hypocrisy.
Oh the arrogance and the ignorance of power where humans are concerned. Who says history never repeats?
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“The leftwing forces of “peace” and “tolerance” in our country reject Gods law and find the idea that Governments are under God as absurd.”
-Which God are we in NZ supposed to be under? How about one of the Hindu gods?
“They say the state should never kill when a person has been found guilty of serial murder. But they slaughter by the thousands innocent children for social, economic reasons in state hospitals at taxpayer funds.”
-Who are these children getting slaughtered? A child is between the ages of 5-12. Are you just trying to jazz up an anti-abortion rant?
“They tell us the US should not intervene in Iraq to bring down a brutal dictator and stop his slaughter of thousands of innocent people.”
-It was WMD first, then they changed the reason and some people believe this excuse. It was control of oil and land. (no, I do not think Saddam was innocent)
“Yet they support military intervention in the Solomon Islands to stop riots.”
-No I don’t, we should sort out our own problems here first
“It’s wrong to correct disobedient children with force, but they then exhort thousands of dollars of tax payer money out of adults, by threatening force and violence for any social cause they deem worthy of support.”
-If you are trying to accuse me of not hitting kids and helping poor people, then yeah, you got me here.
“This leads to the absurd situation where Journalists on TV tell us that Bush and other American conservatives are the equivalent of Bin Laden and the Taliban.”
-Who’s killed more people and caused more suffering? Bush vs Bin Laden? USA vs Taliban?
“As though a country that executes serial murderers is the same as one that executes women for not wearing a Burka. As though condemning pornographic filth is the same as banning TVs and kites.”
-I’ve never made those comparisons, I’ve never heard of anyone making those comparisons. I agree with you there. Unless the kites had pornographic pictures on them.
“Their real ethic is clear; violence is good when used by us for causes we like by regimes who oppose those we hate. It should not be used against murderers only innocent tax payers, it should not be used against dictators only against those dictators which the UN ( which is composed of dictators) like.”
-Sorry that’s not my ethic, again I’ve never heard that.
“A plane that attacks a military target illegally located within a civilian area and which inevitably but unintentionally hits a civilians ( after ringing the civilians and telling them to leave) is a terrorist because the person who did it is a Jew and supported by the US.”
-Are you suggesting the ‘terrorists’ come out into the open so the fighter jets have a clear shot? Perhaps we can offer that as a suggestion to the them, maybe request they wave a special terrorist flag so we don’t get them mixed up with good family folk.
“However a terrorist who fights apartheid is a hero and Muslim Jihadists they are simply venting understandable frustration at western colonialism.”
-Yip, thats what I think, if you are fighting racism and colonialism you are a victim and have a right to fight. If you are colonizing people against their wishes, or are raciest, then you are in the wrong.
• Sep 14, 2009 at 11:53 pm
-Which God are we in NZ supposed to be under? How about one of the Hindu gods?
I think its clear from the context, but I could put the same argument regarding laws justified by some secular ideology, which laws should we adopt , socialist ones, libertarian ones, utilitarian based ones, Kantian ones etc. If Pluralism creates problems for theological rationales it creates problems for secular ones.
-Who are these children getting slaughtered? A child is between the ages of 5-12. Are you just trying to jazz up an anti-abortion rant?
I was referring to feticide, but if you want to suggest that killing 2 year olds or 4 your olds and other forms of infanticide is not child killing then that’s fine, it puts abortion and infanticide in the same category.
-It was WMD first, then they changed the reason and some people believe this excuse. It was control of oil and land. (no, I do not think Saddam was innocent)
Actually it wasn’t WMD first changed only after they found none, that what opponents of the war assert, some of us with unhealthy interest in ethics however have better memories than that and were following the arguments being used prior to the invasion and hence we now that the reason I refered to was being used from the beginning. But your points are actually irrelevant if there was a good reason for the war, the fact that other bad reasons were offered does not change the fact there was a good one.
-No I don’t, we should sort out our own problems here first
Yes but your not the left leaning government that was in at the time I wrote this that did apparently think foreign intervention was both good and bad.
-If you are trying to accuse me of not hitting kids and helping poor people, then yeah, you got me here.
Nice rewording and ignoring the context, actually you by helping the poor you mean support helping the poor by threatening to throw people in jail if they don’t donate 30% plus of their income to state run charities. ( you can help the poor without supporting this) but you oppose a parent threatening minor force to get a child to not swear at his sister. In other words your position on force is all over the place.
“This leads to the absurd situation where Journalists on TV tell us that Bush and other American conservatives are the equivalent of Bin Laden and the Taliban.”
-Who’s killed more people and caused more suffering? Bush vs Bin Laden? USA vs Taliban?
That might be valid if the only relevant moral factor in such assessments I how many died. But of course by that reasoning anyone who built public roads would be worse than the Inquistion as more people died as a result of public roads than were killed in the inquisition. Anyone however who reflects a little can see that this is not the only factor that’s relevant and analysises based on the contention that is are somewhat superficial.
“Their real ethic is clear; violence is good when used by us for causes we like by regimes who oppose those we hate. It should not be used against murderers only innocent tax payers, it should not be used against dictators only against those dictators which the UN ( which is composed of dictators) like.”
-Sorry that’s not my ethic, again I’ve never heard that.
If you read the post you’ll see this was a conclusion, I inferred this from stances they do believe and I think its accurate, you admitted above you support the state threatening tax payers ( which is what tax laws do) you however oppose force against Sadaam.
“A plane that attacks a military target illegally located within a civilian area and which inevitably but unintentionally hits a civilians ( after ringing the civilians and telling them to leave) is a terrorist because the person who did it is a Jew and supported by the US.”
-Are you suggesting the ‘terrorists’ come out into the open so the fighter jets have a clear shot? Perhaps we can offer that as a suggestion to the them, maybe request they wave a special terrorist flag so we don’t get them mixed up with good family folk.
Yeah I am suggesting that a terrorist follow the principle of non combatant immunity and not engage in attacks from within civilian areas. Your response is revealing apparently the principle of non combatant immunity is only binding on Americans, which was my point, <
“However a terrorist who fights apartheid is a hero and Muslim Jihadists they are simply venting understandable frustration at western colonialism.
-Yip, thats what I think, if you are fighting racism and colonialism you are a victim and have a right to fight. If you are colonizing people against their wishes, or are raciest, then you are in the wrong.
I disagree, I think that its wrong to target and kill non combatants regardless of wether your cause is justified. That’s part of the normal rules of war btw you know the ones you constantly attack Bush for allegedly violating. Good to see that again you are proving my point.
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Usually to achieve peace you have to let bygones be bygones, the alternative method of achieving peace is genocide.
It makes me real sad to see my Lord and Savior used as a justification for hatred and blood lust and revenge.
You say that “violence is wrong when intentionally wielded against innocent people.” Where are these innocent people you speak of? Our Lord said – there is no one who is good apart from the Father – do you seek to disagree? Are we not all slaves to sin? You say “hunt Bin Laden down kill him.” Then Matthew I humbly suggest you hunt me down and kill me too. I am not innocent either. Christ died a criminals death for both me and all my sinful brothers.
And please – what is this “Christian Just war theory?” When did Christ suggest killing our enemies. I recall we were commanded to love our enemies – and to pray for those who abuse us. Not to kill them. Perhaps you have got a little confused about who the Lord is, how he lived, and how he died. (“Augustinian Just war theory”‘ may I suggest?)
You say to “destroy terrorists everywhere and anywhere when they threaten us” – and they say the same about the West. You say “refuse to give in to them or negotiate with them until they denounce [their ways]” – and they say the same. One side must be humble and renounce violence as the path to follow. I suggest that those who follow the Lord who went to his own death for the sake of those who disdained him should be the one’s to take this first vital step.
If you insist that Christians must continue along the path of violence – I will pray for you my friend. I really will.
“Christ died a criminals death for both me and all my sinful brothers.”
So no criminal should suffer any penalty? What about non-criminal offences. Can we scrap those too?
“So no criminal should suffer any penalty? What about non-criminal offences. Can we scrap those too?”
No – I did not say that.
I am not sure what you mean by a non-criminal offences.
It is a matter of attitude. As Christians confronted with violence and hatred should our response be one of violence and a policy of kill them all until they see things our way – or one of humility and giving.
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I agree with what you have written here Matt almost totally. I disagree on a point you made towards the end, “stop killing unborn children…”… I am not pro abortion. I do however believe and hold the strong belief that should a female become pregnant from a criminal act against her, then she must have the right in those first 6 weeks to say whether or not she wants a termination. In this day and age, I would certainly hope that most people would think this to be a fair resolution, should she decide that that is what she wants. I do feel very strongly about this. I am adopted, and was told when I was 20 and found my birth mother that she had tried to “self abort” many times… she is not one of the females I was talking about though, I am here because of the result of a one night stand. It has taken me to get to 40 where by I can even say what I have said about “termination options” for those women who became pregnant out of unlawful unions… but I do strongly belief they have the choice, under those circumstances.
Dale very few women find out they are pregnant before 6 weeks, much less are able to organise a termination.
Setting aside your argument for abortion on the grounds of rape, which I grant is trickier than a lot of pro-lifers often concede, why do you draw the line at 6 weeks? What is it about the fetus that changes after that point that no longer justifies it being killed on this ground?