[BelegStrongbow]

I have no argument with anything you just wrote. This civilizational clash hasn’t even gotten started yet. It will take a while to sift out the Chamberlains.

One thing we must always remember: we are bound by our Christian ethics never to make unprovoked war. We must be the ones who were hit first, then we may respond, proportionately (which means if a terror bomb is set off in a US city, we could set off an equivalent explosion in a city of the attacking nation, not turn their capital to glass).

[dfwgator]

We must be the ones who were hit first, then we may respond, proportionately (which means if a terror bomb is set off in a US city, we could set off an equivalent explosion in a city of the attacking nation, not turn their capital to glass).

So did you agree with nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

[buccaneer81]

Wars of attrition are no-win scenarios. If we can prove, say, that Iran provided the materials for a WMD that terrorists use against us, then it's goodbye Tehran.

That's called survival.

[John O]

One thing we must always remember: we are bound by our Christian ethics never to make unprovoked war. We must be the ones who were hit first, then we may respond, proportionately (which means if a terror bomb is set off in a US city, we could set off an equivalent explosion in a city of the attacking nation, not turn their capital to glass).

I don't know where you got that but it certainly isn't in the bible. In the OT God directed His people to utterly destroy His enemies and to not leave one of them alive.

In the case of defending the innocent we must strike before the innocent is harmed. Islam destroys the innocent. The only way to stop islam from sdragging innocents to hell with it is to stamp out islam. The just death penalty, whether for an individual or a culture, is inherently Christian.

[CynicalBear]

>>One thing we must always remember: we are bound by our Christian ethics never to make unprovoked war.<<

Yeah, that’s what Joshua did at Jericho.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I appreciate your statement that it would be wrong to start an unprovoked war: there is a vast difference between a legitimate act of war, and an act of murder, and those who bear arms in our defense ---- good soldiers --- need to be very clear about this.

There are strict conditions for the legitimate use of military force, including these:

• the damage imminently threatened or aready inflicted by the aggressor must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be inadequate or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils graver than the evil to be eliminated
• destructive force must be used in a focused way against enemy combatants, military assets, and military objectives, not against noncombatants and things immediately essential to their survival.

(A good and more detailed summary can be found here (LINK)

Here's where we differ. You said:

"...we may respond, proportionately (which means if a terror bomb is set off in a US city, we could set off an equivalent explosion in a city of the attacking nation, not turn their capital to glass)."

Actually, if an enemy set off a terror bomb in a city, intentionally targeting non-combatants, that would be murder; it would not justify our targeting noncombatants in return, because that would still be murder.

Here's the legitimate response: annihilate their fighters together with all their military assets: wipe put their equipment and supplies, their training centers, their command structure, their communication/transportation networks; crush their ability to carry out aggression.

As for innocents killed collaterally while we are targeting military assets: that's foreseeable and one of the truly ghastly costs of war, but it is not the same as murder.

It is murder, however,if they were killed in a deliberate or an indiscriminate way. "Proportionality" does not mean "planning and carrying out the killing of an equivalent number of innocent persons."