Sunday's Guns

Despite the pile of work sitting on my desk, I determined that Sunday after church I would invoke the "day of rest" clause and indulge in a power nap. With experience comes competence – I can nap with the best of them. But I woke up with a sense of dread. Justin Raimondo and Joseph Farrah had written last week of the menace of war and despite my best efforts, I was unable to put it out of my mind. Just a bad dream I hope – but what if they are right?

There is no sense pretending our leaders would not start a war just to gain a political advantage. Shattered aspirin factories and dead Iraqi children are a testament to the harsh reality of politics in this brave new world of ours. Why is it one wonders, that with despotism war follows like a slug dragging a trail of slime across history?

During the Kosovo bombing I kept up a correspondence with a Serbian music instructor with whom I shared the common bonds of music and the Christian faith. It got pretty ugly for his family at several points – his wife just missed being eviscerated by flying glass when a near miss sent the windows in his front room flying. He asked me once, how could this be happening? What could I say? My lame response was that when we live under despotic rulers, war was inevitable. I wasn't referring to Milosovic, by the way.

There are large numbers of Americans who have no wish for the government, which ostensibly represents them, to kill without justifying that killing under the auspices of our own constitution which means only in self defense. Never the less, it happens routinely. How is it that we as Americans can tolerate this? How can we allow our government, which like all governments is ultimately responsible to the people, to murder foreigners in our name? Yet when August comes, will the bombs fall again? If late summer means yet another orgy of blood lust, what will we do?

Self defense is so obvious and natural that our founders called it an "inalienable right." To Christians, and to those unbelievers who accept the concept of "natural law," the government is charged with the duty of "wielding the sword" to punish miscreants and defend the people from attack We are however, specifically forbidden to commit murder under any and all circumstances. It should be noted that people do not have to be of my faith to be enjoined under civil and natural law to forbear from taking the life of another.

What Mr. Bill Clinton has been doing is exactly murder! He's been doing it without any constitutional basis and scarcely a murmur from our quiescent and badly compromised congress, and he's been doing it in our name. We as a people share the responsibility for his crimes because we have tolerated it; some who should know better openly encouraged him.

Little more than a year ago we sat silently while our own government propagated a disinformation extravaganza of Hitlerian proportion and used it to justify the bombing of a Christian people to protect a group of Islamic narco-terrorists. For centuries the Serbs have lived on what used to be known as the "military frontier" and have been Europe's first line of defense against the Muslim invaders. History would have been a lot different if those folks had failed in their duty. Clinton murdered them in large numbers and now the churches are burning and terrorism reigns supreme, while thousands of US troops huddle in enclaves, wondering what on earth they are doing there.

We barely raised our voices in protest, while murder was done in our name, under our watch. A government "of the people, by the people and for the people" is one in which the citizens must share in the culpability for the misdeeds of the leaders. It was us; we tolerated murder.

There are out there, many conservatives to whom war is just a matter of foreign policy. Some of them, but I'll wager not many, have actually had a taste of war and are still able to stomach terms like "surgical strike" and "projection of power." For those of you in the great majority, that is to say, those armchair warriors who urge us always to wage war rather than mind our own business, I have a little vignette to share that might help you understand what demons are fluttering their wings against the lid of Pandora's box this season.

"Proclaim this among the nations: prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack." Joel 3:9

The combat team crossed the river into Mozambique and for the next four days was involved in near constant fighting, which seemed to go on so long we couldn't remember after a while, what it had been like before the shooting started. Here is a taste of that…

The radios hum with activity and messages of dire import, our airborne stop groups are caught by mortar fire as they hit the landing zones, motorized infantry units are in contact simultaneously on several fronts; resistance is much stiffer than anticipated – it usually is. Casualties all over the place, and of course some officer shouting into a radio demanding to know "just what the hell is going on!"

The radio begins to emit a curious sound like a symphony recorded in the hell of some science fiction fantasy world, distinctly creepy. Jamming! An air strike goes in with startling intensity. Almost before the roar of the jet engines has passed, explosions blossom in the distance. Anti-Aircraft fire clutches at the planes with fingers of colored tracer, the noise of the bombs detonating reaches the cringing shock troops several seconds later; and a light machine-gun goes off, firing so impossibly fast that it has to be one of theirs. "Contact! Contact!" The signals people have found a clear frequency and are already calling in details. Before they finish, the situation has changed totally. The assault group is in the middle of a vast complex of base camps crisscrossed by trenches and protected by bunkers and heavy weapons nests. Men are jumping off the vehicles and shouting orders, waving their arms and gesturing with their weapons. People are shooting in all directions, the armored vehicles open fire, a rocket shrieks overhead. Enemy machine-gun fire is punctuated by detonations in the distance that sound like mortars, and the anti-aircraft guns are still intermittently sending burning streams of tracer into the sky and the side of a nearby gomel (hill). Casualties are reported by nervous voices over the radio - nobody knows how many yet; numerous still forms on the ground, most of them in the quasi-uniform of the enemy. Suddenly the firing slacks up, continuing in the distance but this skirmish has run its quick, violent course. One mobile fire-team is off to get the casualties to a clearing in the woods where the choppers can get in for casevac. Mop up and move on. That's it folks. Combat...

The author was a participant in that fire fight and can say that from the time the first machine-gun opened fire until the thirty odd enemy troops were wiped out was probably five minutes at most. A very intense five minutes indeed. There was no concept of time while this was going on, many things were transpiring simultaneously, tracers were flying all over the place, and the decibel level was at the threshold of pain. Both metaphorically, and literally, it was apocalyptic. This contact was one of several occurring simultaneously within a seven square mile area. The fighting continued through the night and it just went on and on.

Take a seemingly significant fracas like that skirmish at Chomoio and consider that in World War II this level of intensity would have been noted in the communiqués as a quiet day at the front...

Another consideration of combat is the sheer lethality of modern weaponry. Merely being in the vicinity of combat troops puts you at risk. Moving large numbers of vehicles, ordnance and people inevitably, and consistently, involves casualties from accidents. The numerous people killed in accidents are just as dead as those killed in a firefight. Shouldn't it at least count for something?

Perhaps the scariest part of it is the fact that in war, you always have to go against your natural instincts, ignoring common sense and offering up your body to the blood lottery. Killing other men… It feels so stupid some times, so insane, to simply shut down your brain and walk straight into an area where you know there are snipers and booby-traps and land mines... Miserable stinkin' mines - some just blow your foot off, some jump up in the air and spit shrapnel in your face... Should they miss you the first time around, no problem. They just sit there, waiting, patient and lethal. Somebody will show up eventually.

Sound like fun to you, Mr. neo-conservative?

Why do I pick on the conservatives? Maybe it's because they should know better. Conservatives and others on the political right talk a good constitutional message yet I see no real organized opposition to the death machine. Where was the outcry when we bombed the Serbians or the Iraqis? Where was Congress? Where was Dubya? I saw no declaration of war, nor was I aware of any danger to the United States. What legal justification was there for the murder of the people killed there by our armed forces?

Will those on the political right in America speak out if Clinton opens the party again? Probably not, based on their track record. All we hear from them is admonitions to "hit ‘em harder," and "keep friendly casualties down." Are they not in collusion with murder?

We will not consider those who claim to be centrists. That particular fantasy is spun by people who have no core beliefs and merely hope that everything will turn out all right. It is not upon such political lightweights that history turns. Their role seems to be to whine, and to be used by the left (or in Nazi Germany, the right) to form temporary coalitions while building a movement. They are worthy of our contempt, but not much else.

What of the left? Nobody pretends any longer that the Democratic party is anything but a front group for the cultural Marxists. The results are in; it's not even a controversial topic of conversation any more. That Bill Clinton will murder other human beings is not a debatable topic either. Yet his supporters will jump on any bandwagon required of them, in exchange for their thirty pieces of silver – in the form of a little sexual depravity here, some dead babies there – not a problem – we're all having a ball.

Who has spoken out for the rule of law? Well, partner, it wasn't the Republicans…

I'm sorry, but we have no political party in America that stands for the constitution of the United States. We have no party that stands for peaceful non-aggression and a strong defense. We have no party that will even support the fundamental duty of securing our own borders. Our military is no longer geared toward defense, we are arming down to "fight light" which means an endless progression of "peace keeping" missions, sticking our collective noses in other peoples business.

So what is going to happen in August? Will that appalling Albright woman get her way and spread an ugly war from Kosovo into Montenegro? Will Clinton decide he hasn't killed enough Iraqis yet and up the ante there? Or will they invent some new playground for their mayhem, some new terrorist mastermind who "must be stopped." Remember that what those people are peddling is not just politically unsound, it is plain stone evil! So yes, they will do literally anything to stay in power and advance their hideous agenda.

The real question is simple: how much longer are we going to tolerate these criminals in positions of power? If we wait too long, as the Russians did, we might lose too much. There is a point of no return. Some say we have reached it already. God forbid.

I invite you to join me this summer in praying for peace. Pray that God will frustrate the efforts of the warmongers and send them confusion. Pray that we don't travel so far down the highway of death that we can never get off. Pray that He will forgive us for mocking Him, for murdering our neighbors, for murdering our children, and for our ingratitude. Pray that this inestimable gift of freedom that our fathers bequeathed us, and which we thoughtlessly squandered; is there for our children.

July 18, 2000

Mr. Peirce fought with the Rhodesian freedom fighters (the Ian Smith side, of course).

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