DARK HEARTS AND BODY COUNTS: Defining the true enemy in the War on Terror

The numbers are staggering.

By conservative government estimates, around 1,500 innocent civilians were killed in the initial bombing attacks on Afghanistan that commenced in October of 2001. Most independent sources place the count much higher, somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000. “Collateral damage,” was the response from the Department of Defense, which recently released a report that placed the number of our U.S. Military casualties in Afghanistan at 278. Now let’s move to Iraq. The US Military body count in Iraq has now surpassed 3,000 and continues to rise. The Iraqi civilian body count, even by the most conservative estimates, is around 40,000 men, women and children. This “War on Terror,” the Bush administration’s response to the tragedy of 9/11 which killed just under 3,000 innocent Americans, has now claimed—by extremely conservative estimates—just under 45,000 more innocent lives (I’m intentionally excluding the combatant deaths on both sides).

This “War on Terror,” which ostensibly was launched to prevent the taking of more innocent lives by terrorists, is now directly complicit in the violent deaths of fifteen times more innocent people than the number of innocent people who died on 9/11 at the hands of the terrorists. And the end is not in sight.

Go ahead. Do the math, and then explain to me why you think the war is still logical. Explain to me on what planet, in which universe, this war makes good sense and should be continued at all costs.

The truth is that we’re looking at a situation that contains not one ounce of logic or common sense. It’s a situation that’s so flawed from the start that any attempt to explain the war in rational terms only leads deeper into the madness that drives it. What we’re looking at is a world gone mad, a world that believes that striking back with devastating, murderous force is the best way to achieve its means (and this description applies to the folly that drives both the terrorist organizations and our own US government).

But let’s get back to the number of deaths. Measured purely in the number of innocent people currently being killed in an effort to prevent the future killing of innocent people, the math alone shows the colossal failure of using force to achieve such a questionable victory. If you do the math, it’s immediately obvious that the “War on Terror” is not winnable, and was in fact lost from the very moment it was conceived. But that’s just scratching the surface. The most horrifying fact of all is that so many American Christians are still in full support of this madness, and view it as the forces of Good striking a mighty blow against the forces of Evil, an Evil that must be suppressed at any cost, no matter how ridiculous that cost may be. That Christians can allow themselves to feel this way is only a sign of good marketing and good PR, but not good sense or sound faith.

And it’s right here that we start getting into the really thorny issues.

To effectively combat an enemy, it must first be clearly defined. More than any single element of the broad “War on Terror,” there’s been a failure of massive proportions in the area of defining the enemy. From a secular perspective, the United States government has suffered from a lack of clarity in defining its terror enemies abroad, tending to lump them all together and selling them to the public in one neat package. From a Christian perspective, which should focus on the spiritual side of the equation, many Christians suffer from the same problem as the United States Government. Both camps tend to view the situation as “us against them, good versus evil,” and therefore a necessary battle that must be fought at all costs, which in this case means accepting the violent deaths of nearly 50,000 innocent people abroad (with many more deaths on the way) as a means to ensure that more Americans aren’t killed by terrorists on our home soil.

And that, my friends, is a cold, hard fact. That is exactly what the U.S. government is telling you, only not in those crystal clear terms.

The government, with its focus on the ever-present need to spin the situation to its own advantage, wants us to see it as a simple issue of good versus evil, and if anyone dissents, they’re shouted down as “morally and intellectually confused,” as Donald Rumsfeld recently stated. But Christians who are supportive of the war and the current administration’s policies are in dire need of a wake-up call. They need to realize that what’s taking place is completely unacceptable, not only because of the deaths to date, but because we’re fighting a war that isn’t winnable, a war that will only perpetuate the evil that’s taking place. We’re contributing to a greater body of death and destruction than was present in the original act for which we’re now retaliating… and worse, many who call themselves Christians seem to be okay with that. How did they grow so blind?

As a Christian, I already know that my personal response must be a non-violent one. I cannot repay violence with violence. I cannot repay evil with evil. Any action I take must be consistent with Christ’s message to turn the other cheek. The only way to expose true evil is to turn your back to it, to avoid engagement. When you repay evil with evil, you join forces with it. This is a bitter pill to swallow for many people of faith largely because they’ve allowed their faith to become secularized and blended into their patriotic love of country. It feels so good to talk about God and country, but so many of the demands of patriotism are at complete odds with Christ’s calling. You cannot call yourself a follower of Christ and then disobey what He’s called you to do as a follower. If you’re a Christian, please read this passage (1 John 2:4-6) and try to justify repaying evil with evil, which Christ very clearly commands us not to do.

The man who says, "I know Him," but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys His word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.

Whoever claims to be a Christian must walk as Jesus did… or be a liar.

Now let’s take another shot at defining the true enemy, and this time from a spiritual perspective. The true enemy we’re fighting here isn’t another person or another culture.

The enemy is within all of us, within the darkness of our own hearts, even the hearts of those who claim to be followers of Christ. If we don’t walk in His footsteps, we’re liars. We’ve surrendered to the evil that drives the need for revenge, the evil that allows us to justify killing, the evil that allows us to demonize a person as a way to harden our hearts so that we might kill him without feeling guilt. We’ve surrendered to the evil that allows us to justify the violent deaths of 50,000 innocent people as a fair price to pay for making sure 3,000 more Americans don’t die. We’ve surrendered to a callous, pedestrian evil that says it’s okay for any number of innocent people to die violent, bloody deaths just as long as they don't do it in our back yard.

It’s time we recognize the fact that the enemy resides within us all, and start to deal with it. Until our politicians (and the Christians who support them) change their approach to fighting evil, the body count will continue to climb.

And we will all be diminished by it.