This initially started as a very long post on X but I ended up deleting it shortly after posting because I wanted to think about it some more. You’ll understand why as you read: it is a difficult thing to write about and no human being – if they have any wisdom at all – wants to presume too much. I worked into Book X of the Mirrors series (coming out later this year but it might slip to early next year) a bit where Fred is asking for a direct answer to what is going on from someone he’s certain knows: she gives an equivocal answer but rather than getting angry, Fred quotes Job 38:4, Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. And Fred, like Job, is comforted by this answer to all true Mysteries, continuing on with part of 2 Corinthians 12:10, for when I am weak, then I am strong. It is important, always, to be humble. To not be too sure and to ultimately rely on God, who’s judgements are true and righteous altogether. That said, I think this is important to say.

I was reading a post from a Catholic priest – a good priest, let it be noted – who was upset over the story that IDF soldiers were deliberately targeting Gazans coming for food aid. I noted that the story is almost certainly a lie – that its primary source is the Gazan health ministry, a known purveyor of fabrications. In jumped a Hamas-nik to deflect away from that indisputable fact to chime in with claims that the IDF routinely commits war crimes. Went back and forth a little bit there until it was certain the man was entirely wooden headed and would never think for a moment. But the whole interaction got me thinking about the concepts of justice and mercy. What, in fact, does love require we do here?

War is, of course, a nasty business. All we can learn of Our Lord tells against going to war. How can we love our neighbor as ourselves if we war upon him? On the other hand, the greatest – St John the Baptist – when asked by soldiers what they must do to enter the Kingdom merely replied – in essence – that they should be good soldiers. He didn’t say desert the army. This is pretty crucial if you ask me. That being in the military and carrying out your duties is pleasing to God. This indicates to me that Fallen Man is not going to stop being Fallen – and, of course, he isn’t. He still needs, every day, a Savior. Once we enter the Kingdom that is different – but until we do, we are prey to all the troubles of the world and war is one of those troubles.

That being said, it all comes down to why and how a person fights if war occurs. Naturally, no Christian may deliberately start a war. We are always to seek a peaceful resolution of differences and only engage in fighting if attacked or if an attack is so obviously pending that prudence dictates we strike the first blow. The only defensible war is a war of defense. Once a war starts, we are to act like Christians. We are not to be needlessly cruel to the enemy. We are to apply the necessary force to bring the conflict to its swiftest resolution, but no more than that. Nothing gratuitous. And these requirements are not just required of Christians – nobody wants as a result of war their own people to be massacred and despoiled. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu what have you, nobody wants that to happen to their side. And as they know they don’t want it to happen to them, so they know they must not do it to others. All human beings are morally obligated to be as decent as possible at all times, even the most difficult. So, in essence, there should be no war as nobody should attack unjustly and there should be no war crimes because everyone who engages in warfare should be as merciful as possible.

But what do we do in the face of the unjust attack? And, furthermore, what do we do in the face of an unjust attack accompanied by monstrous cruelty?

Naturally when attacked unjustly we are permitted to fight back in self defense. And the response must be proportional to the needs. In other words, if peace may be obtained by ten bombs then you shouldn’t drop ten thousand. But now we need to think a little bit. To consider just what we’re dealing with – and what response is proportional to it.

World War One morphed from a fracas in the Balkans into a World War for one reason and one reason, alone: the Germans unjustly attacked Luxembourg, Belgium and France. There was no reason for this German attack. Not the slightest justification can be made for it. The Germans did it because they thought they would win quickly and gain total mastery of Europe in six weeks. And the Germans, when they did it, knew they were doing wrong – because they wouldn’t want another power to invade Germany out of the blue in a bid for European mastery. They would have considered such an attack upon themselves as an outrage against all decency. And yet they went ahead and attacked France. They were in the wrong, totally.

By immense exertions and loss of lives, this German attack was defeated. The German army was forced to withdraw and enter into an Armistice before the German army was totally destroyed in the field. Germany then had a peace treaty imposed upon her designed to prevent a recurrence of the just-defeated attack. Germany’s army was limited in size and her economy was burdened with reparations payments designed to not only repay the offended parties, but to cripple Germany’s economic ability to wage war. This was an entirely just peace treaty given what had happened.

But it turned out that it didn’t punish the Germans enough. It left them intact enough to very swiftly rebuild their military might and try again – which they did a mere twenty five years after the first try. And this time their attack was accompanied by the most monstrous cruelty ever done by the hand of Man. People murdered by the millions. Rapes all over German occupied Europe. Massive looting not just of food and tools, but the very artwork of the conquered peoples. Meanwhile, over on the other side of the world, Japan had launched a totally unjustified war in 1937 – attacking China quite ruthlessly with the Rape of Nanking being a horror that would have made Attila the Hun sick to his stomach…an orgy of rape, murder and looting. And then, later, Japan just continued this in all the lands they occupied as World War Two became global.

War and cruelty go together. After all, even under the most honorable of circumstances, you are still seeking to end the lives of the other side. Who can say what lies and threats got that enemy soldier into uniform? Yet the soldier must kill – swiftly and without remorse. And in the heat of combat – with fear and hatred rising – at times even the most honorable of soldiers can commit acts which, in the cold light of reason, can only be described as barbaric. Of course, when such acts occur decent military organizations do seek redress. If for no other reason than to ensure good order and discipline in the ranks. But, often, because it is just the right thing to do. We understand why our boys might go too far at times and we want to be merciful to the man who may have been pushed too far…but right is right and sometimes we have to punish our own. But what the Germans and Japanese did in World War Two went far beyond this.

It is one thing for a soldier, or a few soldiers, or even a whole company of soldiers to go off their heads. At the Siege of Badajoz in 1812, Wellington’s army had to carry out an exceptionally difficult assault against an alert and entrenched enemy and the fighting was quite ferocious with no quarter asked or given. Those men were brave and disciplined British soldiers…but the cost of the assault seems to have set those men off their heads…once they had won they disregarded their officers from Wellington on down and went on a rampage of looting, rape and murder in the town. It was totally unjustified. A horrific blot on the honor of the British army. It took days for Wellington and his officers to regain control and turn their mob back into an army. It was horrible but not ordered by the command, nor sanctioned by the government, nor justified in any way by any British patriot. What the Germans and Japanese did was different from this.

What was done at Nanking and Babi Yar was the considered policy of the respective governments. The soldiers were ordered to carry it out. And they carried it out. As time went on and the monstrous cruelties increased in scope whole support systems were put into place so that Germans and Japanese could kill ever more people…and with ever more attendant cruelty, including torture and looting. Japanese soldiers didn’t go berserk at Nanking. No more than German soldiers went berserk at Oradour-sur-Glane. They carried out orders. And orders they knew were wrong as they carried them out because not one German or Japanese soldier wanted those events to happen in their home towns to their own people. Basic human decency required them to refuse to obey…but they obeyed. It doesn’t, in the end, matter why. Cowardice or cruelty or any combination of human failings – they were still responsible adults who knew better. And the sheer scale of the atrocities of Germany and Japan required that the whole populations of each country become intimately involved in them. After all, the guy who drove the train full of Jews to Auschwitz couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what he carried…nor that he never carried people away from the place. He knew. And so did his wife and children. Did they approve? It doesn’t matter: they went along with it when they knew they shouldn’t have.

You can excuse it and try to explain it away but the bottom line is that death is preferable to participation in such crimes…even the death of you and all you love. It just isn’t worth it if life requires you to participate, even second hand, in massacres. You think about the endless number of German families who just quietly went along – and then the Ulma family of Poland which harbored eight Jews and, when caught, was massacred down to Mrs. Ulma’s unborn child. The Ulma’s knew the risks – and think of Mr. Ulma, dedicated to the safety and happiness of his family. He could easily have said, “I hate the Nazis and I want to help the Jews, but I have my wife and children to think of” and done nothing. But he truly thought of his wife and children – and did what had to be done. It is when things are worst that we are supposed to do our best. The Germans and Japanese, in the whole, did not do this (and all honor to the few in each country who did do the right thing).

Now on to the really difficult thing to consider and I pray to God I don’t get this wrong – I do not wish to lead myself or anyone else astray!

As the children of Poland, China, Philippines, France, Norway, Burma, Russia, Greece and so many other nations were martyred by German and Japanese cruelty, did not their cries for justice rise up to heaven? They spoke in a multitude of languages and they had often very different ideas about God, but all of them were human beings and all of them were caught in a welter of cruel slaughter they in no way deserved. Surely out of their mouths and hearts went up the cry: my God, save me!

Of course it did. And I can’t imagine God not listening. Not seeing their tears. And while God gives us the free will to do as we wish God is also just and merciful and His will is always accomplished. The fact that the Germans and Japanese were utterly defeated is an obvious example of God’s justice operating in the world. That people so depraved were not able to win is just and merciful. And how were they not able to win? By being subjected to such ferocious punishment that total destruction resulted.

Much is said these days about the strategic bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan. From right after the end of the war, it has been derided as a failure. The advocates of strategic bombing swore up and down that it, alone, would destroy the enemy and compel peace. Clearly, it did not and so it must have failed. This, I think, was based upon a faulty understanding of just what happened in the strategic bombing campaigns.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the Germans and Japanese were forced to expend enormous resources fighting against the bombings. Every plane, every soldier, every bullet and shell shot up into the sky at Allied bombers was that much less they had on the battlefield against Allied armies. Each bomb that dropped in some manner hampered both nations in the conduct of the war…even the fact that craters had to be filled in to get the roads open took time and manpower and so there was less power to apply on the battlefields. In short, without the bombings the fighting on the ground would have been far more intense, lengthy and bloody. Maybe so much so that the Germans and Japanese could have prevented the total defeat of their nations.

In addition to that, Allied bombing power was still growing in 1945. It was only in 1944 that the Allied air forces could really be certain that a bombing raid would seriously degrade the selected target. It was all a matter of getting sufficient planes, sufficiently skilled crews and learning the difficult task of hitting a relatively small target from a great height. By 1944 the Allied air forces were nailing this down – and the destruction went from bad to absolutely horrific. We’ve all seen the pictures of the ruined cities taken post-War but they don’t really capture what it was like – meaning for the Germans and Japanese on the ground. To be absolutely helpless as a thousand enemy planes leisurely pass overhead dropping tons of bombs was likely one of the worst sensation any human being has endured. Small wonder that very often downed Allied pilots in both Germany and Japan were lynched on the spot by outraged people. Had the Germans and Japanese been able to keep us away – prevent Allied invasions of their own territory – then the bombings would just have gotten worse. Even absent the atomic bomb! Just worse and worse and worse. By 1945 Allied planes were ranging at will over Germany and Japan and Allied factories were turning out planes, bombs and aircrews at an increasing pace…suppose, for instance, that the Battle of the Bulge pushed us back to Paris and that the Germans had defeated the Russians January, 1945 offensive in Poland…so much the worse for Germany as the number of bombs dropping would have simply increased – perhaps to the point where it was simply impossible for the Germans to live (seriously: by 1945 even ox carts were being strafed).

And here’s the interesting thing I want to say: is it at all possible that Arthur Harris and Curtis LeMay were instruments of God’s justice? That with all the cries to heaven for justice, it was those two men – and their intrepid air crews – who delivered the redress? I don’t know. But I can suspect. And I can definitely say that given what the Germans and Japanese were doing – as peoples – the bombings weren’t unjust even if not an expression of God’s justice.

What can we say? For the Germans this was round two. They had started a totally unjust war in 1914 and were totally defeated…but didn’t accept their defeat and so tried again in 1939 and this time were unbelievably cruel. So, too, the Japanese all over Asia and the Pacific…just simply mean and cruel…killing, raping, looting…both people lording it over the conquered even in the smallest ways. Simple military defeat in the manner of 1918 didn’t work…and so there was absolute crushing defeat on every level in 1945. And that did work. Nobody fears that the Germans or Japanese will ever try it again. So, just maybe the result of 1945 was totally just? Could be. This doesn’t excuse anything the Allies did which was actually wrong (like the behavior of Russian soldiers regarding German women), but the basic operation was just – it burned out of the Japanese and German populations any desire to carry on with their imperial and racist ambitions. And then we have God’s mercy working even for the Germans and Japanese: because of this massive application of power against them, the war ended before they were all killed and everything was totally destroyed. They, too, cried out to God for an end to it…and their prayer was granted.

And now lets go forward to today – the aftermath of 10/7. First and foremost, nothing can justify 10/7. Suppose Israel is guilty of every crime charged to her, there is no way to justify what was done on 10/7. First off, it was an unjust attack – there was no attack happening or pending on the people of Gaza. That they didn’t like the political and economic situation they were in doesn’t constitute a justification for war. To justify war you must be attacked or an attack is so imminent that you must attack to thwart it. Nothing like that was going on in Gaza on 10/7.

And then what the Gazans did: they didn’t enter Israel for a stand-up fight with the IDF: they came to rape and murder. Their primary method of warfare was to attack the helpless and treat them with inhuman cruelty. Even if someone did that to your people, you are not justified in doing it to theirs. Once again, as you do not want it to happen to you so you must not do it to others. And, of course, Israel has never sent in IDF units to rape and murder the helpless. What the Gazans did was a monstrous crime – something which hadn’t happened since the Germans and Japanese were doing it in WWII. And when the rapist/murderers returned to Gaza – often dragging their victims (living and dead) in their wake – the overwhelming mass of the people of Gaza cheered.

Cheered.

They cheered rapists and murderers bringing home the victims of their crimes.

They knew precisely what those men had done and they were happy about it.

Now, did every last person in Gaza approve? Almost certainly not. But the number disapproving is very small. It took years to develop the rape/murder squads. To get people to think that it is good to do these things is not something you just whistle up in a weekend. You have to mentally condition people to do it and approve of it. The Germans were all “oh, Hitler went mad in 1943!”…as if it wasn’t insane to deny Jewish humanity with the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Sure, a basic Gazan on the street might not have known ten years ago that it was specifically leading to 10/7, but that Gazan knew – knows and always has known – that propaganda denying the basic humanity of Jews is wrong. They know it because they would be aghast at propaganda which held that Muslims aren’t human. Bottom line, given what Hamas was doing in Gaza from the get-go, nobody could have the slightest illusion that very bad things were going to happen. The Gazans just hoped they’d only happen to Jews.

So, what is the best thing to do here? A ceasefire? You mean a pause until the next round? How is that good? What does that accomplish? Indeed, wouldn’t a ceasefire seem in the minds of the Gazans a victory? That they stood up to the IDF and forced them to quit? And what of the mindset of the Gazans – the mindset that approves the rape and murder of helpless people? Which, by the way, doesn’t just happen in Israel…you can see it happening all over Syria right now, as well as in Sudan and other places in the Muslim world where violence is becoming endemic. There is a mindset at work here – a belief system – which sustains such cruelty. Ceasefire with it? To what purpose? Negotiate a peace? What’s the half way point between rape and no rape? What’s the compromise position? A little murder?

Or is it time to emulate Arthur Harris and Curtis LeMay? That is, apply such ferocious force on these people that they fully understand what they’ve done is wrong and they’ll never do it again.

Honestly, I am not certain. But I can’t see the use of going on like we have. As if, perhaps, we are the bad guys – that there is some justification for what the enemy is doing, or maybe we should feel guilty about Dresden and so we’d better hold back going forward. All I know is that the only bad thing here is a continuation – letting this go on and on and on. It is time to end this – and unless we want to end this via our surrender, we’re going to have to get very stern in action. And true justice might require us to act sternly. After all, what would we say of the cop who let a murderer go, only to have that man kill again? We’d be pretty furious – and justly so. If we go soft on Hamas and Hezbollah and the other fanatic groups of killers, then all we’re ultimately doing is ensuring that some poor innocent at a later date gets killed. And innocents on both sides, it should be noted; some poor kid in Gaza who is killed by a bomb or a stray bullet didn’t deserve to die…and I’d prevent that if I can.

To get back to the genesis of this post, suppose the story of IDF soldiers taking pot shots at Gazans lining up for food is true. Well, I have some bad news for you: the only way to ensure it doesn’t happen is the total defeat of the Gazan people. If you take the position that the way to stop it is to punish the IDF soldiers and impose a ceasefire, then all you’re doing is making sure other innocent people are killed later. And I mean its as definite as Euclidean geometry: you are definitely, consciously deciding that some poor sap will die next week, next month or next year…and you’re doing it because you just want people to think you’re the good guy, today. The problem isn’t the IDF soldier taking the shot – the problem is that the IDF soldier is there in response to the 10/7 massacre. Had 10/7 not happened then no need for Gazans to line up for aid and thus no possibility of an IDF soldier going off his head and taking a shot at the Gazans. Get to the crux of the matter, people. The problem is an anti-human ideology which holds that Jews aren’t people and may be raped and murdered at will.

If we want an end to this then what must end is the ideology which generates the actions. An ideology of peace and brotherhood is very unlikely to start a war. An ideology domination is highly likely to start a war. Hamas’ ideology – like similar ideologies – is one of domination. Rule. Masters and slaves. It has to go. If you can think of a way to talk them out of it, I’m all ears. But I believe that its going to be necessary to burn it out of them. To let them know they’re just plain and simple wrong. That God has not decreed they be Masters.