It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
-Voltaire
While the epigram above perfectly explicates the dire moral contradiction involved in war, it was some other verse by Voltaire I encountered in reading an English translation of his La Pucelle d’Orleans, a kind of racy fantasy on the life of Joan of Arc, that inspired today’s installment:
Sister of Death ! inexorable War !
Who from Alecto claim'st thy hated birth ,
Who driv'st o'er heaps of slain thy whirling Car ,
Whose direful rage depopulates the Earth:
Sole law of those we falsely Heroes name ,
What torrents of salt tears to thee we owe?
Thro ' seas of blood thy Vot'ries wade to Fame ,
And plunge Mankind in agonizing woe.
War is deadly in more ways than one! As we shall now see, modern war constitutes an amalgamation, a coalescence of many different deadly sins forming a single excrescence. Modern war is usually instigated over resources, the desire to gain control of another country’s natural or human assets. The right way to gain these things would be through industry and trade. Instead, war aggrandizes through force of arms. Here we see the deadly sins of envy and sloth lurking in the fomentational stage of war. Once things heat up, we find war’s inseparable companions: rapine and plunder-- the deadly sins of lust and avarice running amok. The deadly sin of wrath is the very essence of war propaganda, and is encouraged among its partisans. Finally, then deadly sin of pride is in evidence as the vainglory of military might and victories infect both its partisans and the general public, who are treated to an endless narrative that military conquest is right, good and necessary, not to mention the source of national salvation, and thus what boosts morale in wartime is ultimately demoralizing from a Christian perspective.
It might surprise some Americans who have grown up ensconced in our permanent war economy that this is all inimical to the clear intent of our founding fathers as well as to America’s first century of existence. War was not the purpose of government, it was an evil to be avoided and which the government was to direct, when all efforts to avoid it failed, and put America back into a peacetime economy. But America has not enjoyed a peacetime economy since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It was military spending that ended that long economic depression, and which has served as the great flywheel of American political economy ever since. It has always seemed to me that the idea of a private, permanent war industry is itself obscene. Common sense tells us why: the military-industrial complex, against whose political influence President Eisenhower sternly warned us on leaving office, has but one product: the means of war; munitions, weaponry, etc. And ultimately these things have no value if there is no war, or at least serious fear of the possibility of war. Therefore, peace is out of the question for their industry to be profitable, and they must promote war, and government subsidy for the industry that produces the means of war. They have their politicians (“Neoconservatives” and “Neoliberals” who do nothing but promote bellicose policies). It’s a nefarious business, challenging to the humanity of the entire citizenry, impossible for those with a Christian conscience.
Once again we point out the ubiquitous nature of this obscenity, that those who have grown up in its milieu do not realize how wrong it is, and how antagonistic to Christian moral values. Martin Luther King put it like this: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” This prophet in our midst, like Eisenhower’s dire warning, deserved to be absorbed and acted on by the people of the United States. Instead, we have followed the dictates of warmongers who lurch from one international crisis to the next, all of which are of their own making. It’s a very sad state of affairs, but as Christians we cannot but see it for what it is and refuse it our support at every step. The Kingdom of God is ruled solely by the Prince of Peace, never by the Masters of War.