There’s an op-ed worth not only reading but praying about in the New York Times today by Phil Klay, a Marine and novelist who teaches at Fairfield University:
In lieu of careful analysis of the campaign’s legality, detailed rationales for the boat strikes and explanations of why they couldn’t be done with more traditional methods, we get Mr. Hegseth posting an image of himself with laser eyes and video after video of alleged drug traffickers being killed. The cartoon turtle is just one example in an avalanche of juvenile public messaging about those we kill. I suspect the question the administration cares about is not “is this legal,” “is this a war crime,” “is this murder” or even “is this good for America,” but rather, “isn’t this violence delightful?” . . .
The Trump administration’s celebration of death brings us far from discussions of the law of armed conflict, the constitutionality of the strikes or even the Christian morality that would eventually push Augustine to formulate an early version of just-war theory. We’re in the Colosseum, one brought to us digitally so that we need not leave our homes to hear the cheers of the crowd, to watch the killing done for our entertainment and suffer the same harm that injured Alypius more than 1,600 years ago.
This wounding of the national soul is hard for me to watch. Twenty years ago, I joined the Marine Corps because I thought military service would be an honorable profession. Its honor derives from fighting prowess and adherence to a code of conduct. Military training is about character formation, with virtues taught alongside tactics. But barbaric behavior tarnishes all who wear, or once wore, the uniform, and lust for cruelty turns a noble vocation into mere thuggery. “The real evils in war,” Augustine said, “are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power.” Such lusts, he thought, drove the pagan world’s wars. We’d be fools not to suspect that such lusts drive some of us today.
Do we like violence against supposed “garbage” people?
What does that mean for our souls?
Klay writes:
In “The City of God,” Augustine distinguishes between a people bound by common loves and those ruled by a lust for domination. A president who wants to lead a nation bound by common loves might offer up something like Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which sorrows over war, indulges in no bombast, accepts that both sides in a conflict have sinned and declares that we must fight “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” For a nation devoted to the lust for domination, a president needs to foster a citizenry that thrills in displays of dominance and cruelty. Hence this administration’s braggadocio about death, its officials’ memes about suffering, their promises to inflict pain on America’s enemies followed by scant rationales for their own policies.
He concludes:
Given that we are all, every day, imbibing madness, how do we guard our souls?
Read the whole thing (gift link) here.
And consider writing a letter to the New York Times in gratitude for running it.