Religion News Service provides us with some comments by the experts on the ethics of intervening in Syria (HT: UM-Insight). Now I am neither a theologian nor an ethicist, so I wouldn’t claim to be able to parse all the issues in deciding whether an intervention is just. In fact, I find many of the…
It’s 9/11 and the events eight years ago are on most people’s minds. Many Christians will be praying today, as my wife wrote in her devotional. What will those prayers consist of? What is a Christian response? Shortly before the second gulf war began, I wrote an essay simply titled Revenge! I want to quote…
I’m pretty fond of moderation, even calling myself a passionate moderate, but in that very phrase, you might get the idea that I’m even moderate about being moderate. My moderation is not centrist, in the sense of trying to find middle ground on each issue. Rather, I believe in trying to examine all the options…
Irrespective of one’s view on war, I think we should strongly support our troops and those they leave behind. While I was in the military I was single, but I had close friends who were married and left children behind. One of my best friends was away for the first gulf war for about three…
I’m an opponent of the Iraq war, but I oppose it on strategic grounds. Even now, I believe that we have gained very little, and are in fact worse off than when we started. After a period of time we will find that Iraq has become another haven for terrorists, perhaps not as bad as…
Rossini said of Wagner that he had great moments but bad quarter hours. I’m paraphrasing this as a short post-mortem on President George W. Bush. I think that several times during his presidency, George Bush showed the potential for greatness, but only for a moment. The way in which he has handled the transition, for…
I was reminded this morning that it was Veteran’s Day, not that I had forgotten, because I got an early note of thanks from my wife, who regularly thanks me for me military service, defending, as she always notes, her freedom. At the same time, I will either read or hear from some Christian friends…
By January 2013, at the end of my first term as president, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won and Iraq is a functioning democracy. The threat from a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan…
. . . is what the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, Air Force Colonel Colonel Morris Davis informed a court there he was told by superiors, according to the Washington Post. I do believe that we will need some special options for dealing with terror suspects taken in war. Many are not recognizing the…
I have thought since 2004 that if John Kerry had managed to appear to have an actual policy on terrorism, a strategy for how to make a safer United States and world, he would now be president. As it was, he was perceived to be proposing pretty much what Bush was doing only less of…
