Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today is Veterans Day, so this episode will be dedicated to that topic. Might seem a little bit weird on a pacifistic podcast to hear about honoring veterans. It might sound like it's kind of contradictory, because, you know, honestly, as a pacifist, my honoring of veterans is not really done for the action of them doing military things. Right?

I think it's it's problematic to argue that Christians should carry out executions in any form, which includes in the military. I I find that most, if not all of our conflicts, so even even if I would adhere to a just war, just war theory, I find that most of our conflicts, if not all of them, have been severely compromised and unjust, and most of which have broken at least two of the just war tenants, if not if not all of them, other than perhaps just authority. So, yeah, as a as a pacifist, I can't get on board with with the whole military thing. If if you don't really understand that position, definitely check out season one, which is on Christian nonviolence. You can also check out the Memorial Day episode from back in May, which kind of explains a little bit more about, you know, even if you adhere to Just War, how are any of our our wars in The United States just?

We go through kind of our a little bit of our terrible history. And then, of course, you can check out the Just War series which talks about more problems with Just War, not just specifically to The United States, just as a theory in general. My hope is that if you check all of those things out and and hear a a hopefully well rounded, thoughtful take on on my position, even if you disagree with it, you'll understand, hopefully, why I have come to the conclusions that I've come to. And and so I'm caveating this episode because I don't want people to listen to this and just dismiss me as, well, you're just unpatriotic. Because I've talked about a lot of a lot of things, not just theology but also philosophy, politics, and just how things play out practically.

You know, what is honestly, okay, you can say that the fruit of war is is needed, but what fruit has it born? And so we talk about a lot of those things. So with all that in mind, I I honestly want to come to today and and truly honor veterans. As I said, not because of their their actions in war but in in spite of them. You know, all veterans are human beings with value who live in a corrupt world of conflict where we're all trying to figure out how to resolve that conflict and where others are trying to manipulate us to do their bidding, governments, businesses, whatever.

So today, my my goal is to honor veterans with truth, not by glossing over the futility of war, but by facing it head on. And while acknowledging the futility of war might be seen as undermining the sacrifices that soldiers make and and the reason that most people honor soldiers, I think it's gonna uncover a way that we can value them them far more. And again, the Memorial Day episode is is a a great one which kind of talks about the sacrifices of of soldiers and how that all plays out. That's just an episode that I think would be worthwhile listening to if if you're struggling to figure out how I could honor soldiers while disagreeing with them and how truth, the truth of the horrors of war and and what war truly is, could be an honoring to them. In in summary, I I feel that by addressing what I believe the truthfulness of war is, what it really is, what nobody wants to acknowledge, is actually going to honor veterans by helping to free them from a false and unhelpful narrative of what we Americans think of as our superiority and our benevolence towards the world.

Before I get into the topic, I do wanna just do a quick rundown of resources that I think would would be helpful for you. I've already mentioned a number of the episodes that I've done, which I'd also throw in the July 4 '1 on American imperialism. That's gonna be an important one for for Americans who are ultra patriotic and and maybe don't have a an accurate sense of American history and world history, but only a a kind of propagandist, like, positive affirmation of everything that America has done. If you can't think of some, more than slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, if you can't think of more than that as being problematic in American history, then go ahead and and check out the July 4 series because the July 4 episode because that's gonna be important to help you understand a little bit more where where I'm coming from. But to get away from just the things that that I've said and compiled, for for this episode, I am going to be referencing a lot of old resources that we've mentioned throughout the the series.

And these resources, I think, are going to be more influential than than my voice because many of the resources are done by people who were or are, I guess probably were, in the military. A number of them are not pacifists, but and the resources are just gonna be be very important for understanding this episode. So, On Killing by David Grossman who was in the military and still works with with cops. And he wrote a book, On Killing, which is very good that helps you to understand the psychology of killing and and how big of a problem that is. And he goes around, he tries to help cops kind of get over their their having killed somebody.

So he's not a pacifist at all. He thinks that violence is necessary, and he but he still is able to to acknowledge kind of the psychological impact that killing has on people and what that looks like. His goal is just to help people figure out how to kill without that remorse of sorts. So, same evidence, way different conclusion than me. The Body Keeps the Score is another really good book and that's it's about trauma in general, so it's not gonna be about soldiers specifically.

There are a lot of stories in there about soldiers and PTSD and such and what trauma does to our minds and how that plays out. So that's a it's a really good book just in general, but included for this topic as well. Killing from the Inside Out is more of a theological look, as well as philosophical at killing throughout history and and what it does to our our emotional and mental states. War and moral injury, if you want stories from people who are in the army or were in the army, it's a compilation of essays and and things from soldiers who kind of recount what what just wore on them emotionally and and what either killing or using violence or seeing that done kind of has has done to them. So war and moral injury.

War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler from World War one. He was a general in World War one. Got out of the army in, like, 1930 in the thirties, and he just wrote this scathing book about how corrupted the system of war is. And, so major general writing this way back in the day before you had all these hippies and pacifists and things, and that to me gives Major General, the Major General a bit of credibility. So War's Racket, it's a really good short book that gives you a little bit of insight just into into basically World War one and our ulterior motives for getting into that.

And then finally, Steal My Soldier's Hearts by David Hackworth, Colonel David Hackworth. This book doesn't really deal with moral injury. It doesn't deal with the effects of of killing per se. It's really just an expose on the Vietnam War. The reason I I include this here is because I think I think seeing how people on the inside can recognize the futility of of conflict and and just the way that people are abused and manipulated in the army.

I think I think it gives you a very good perspective on just the futility of things and and the horror of things. So that it's not really making any point that I that I'm necessarily seeking to make here like some of the moral injury books I just recommended, but it's gonna kind of help you to to get inside of a war and see what it looks like in there. So check out some of those references either before this podcast or after this podcast. I'll list them in the resources below, in the show notes as well. So as I get into this topic, I I recognize that many are probably going to come to this episode with your defenses high.

My goal isn't bringing truth to light in order to judge and condemn, and so you can kind of lower your defenses there. It's not pointing fingers. I've already made the case for for nonviolence elsewhere. But rather, my goal here is to bring, truth to light in order to help free people. Now in the memorial day episode, I referenced a Harwas article which talked about the language of sacrifice and war and where that language originated and the origin of giving medals and in in building a high fence around the military so that its actions couldn't be questioned.

To question actions, especially ones which we've already taken, right, actions of previous wars, for example, is to dishonor those who gave their time, their blood, their bodies, or their lives. And to say, should we really have been in Vietnam is to say, well, the the people who died in Vietnam died for nothing. We don't want the sacrifices of our friends, our family members, our countrymen to be in vain. We have to insulate our nation and military from criticism so that their sacrifices can be upheld and so that we can honor them. Our cause has to be benevolent and just.

And and so we can't we can't court the idea that we might have been wrong or bad. I mean, on on the surface, that's such a skewed view because, you know, that that's a a fine thing for Americans to do because we think that we're benevolent, we're right, the words that we get in are are just. But as Christians, if we're omninational, multinational, that should raise some red flags for us that that especially my conservative group, you just you can't say anything about the military. You know, I could I could raise some significant theological questions and probably be okay. But if any of the churches who if I can think of at least one or two of the churches that supported us, would ever hear this episode, they would probably drop us just because of this.

Like, you know, the things that we've been talked to have not been theological, talked to about have not been theological issues. They've been political issues, national issues. So we should have red flags as big K Kingdom Christians, who are in The United States who have this military that can't be questioned because what does that mean about the other militaries across the world? Is it just that our government is the benevolent military and all of these other militaries that might have views and actions contrary to ours are just not good? Or is it possible that it's a bit more complex than that?

It should also raise some red flags that our military is an authority or an entity which doesn't want to be questioned and wants to be infallible. Evangelicals, especially, have problems when with papal infallibility, but we're willing to give our military infallibility. That seems to be a bit of a problem. I'd I'd be more apt to believing in papal infallibility than I would be in any one country's military infallibility. So with these caveats and resources and concepts in mind, I want to explore the vanity of our most recent conflict in Afghanistan.

And by looking at what our our veterans have been subjected to by our government, my hope is threefold. First, I hope that it makes us become critical of our government and military, which should prevent us from going as quickly into conflict, which in turn, I hope would save more lives, both American and foreign. By critical, I'd of this conflict, don't mean critical in the Vietnam era sense of like spitting on soldiers and things like that. I I mean, like, a logical critical. This is a a critical, at the decision making level.

Like, what what can we do in the future to fix this kind of thing? What can we do to really question our military decision making process and support for it in terms of supporting it going abroad, supporting its use. Second thing here is I've spoken with several veterans who have acknowledged the stupidity of this current war. And when you read books like Steal My Soldier's Hearts by by Colonel Hackworth, you see all of this as as he put it, chicken shit. And, what it which just means, I mean, kind of this futile process, this these futile actions.

And I hope that by being able to acknowledge this truth that it it can be freeing. And Jesus does tell us that the truth is freeing. I don't think he's talking about this truth in particular, but I do think that it's a general statement. And when darkness has light shined upon it, the darkness dissipates. It's it's freeing to confess sins.

It's freeing to be able to acknowledge truth. And moral injury is the biggest issue that our veterans face, not enemy combatants. The number of veterans committing suicide and the number of veterans on antipsychotic medication is just insane. It's it's horrendous. And this moral injury is compounded by the fact that nobody wants to address the the real issues.

We heap praises on veterans and laud them all the time, not wanting to bear in their burden of the knowledge of war. We don't want to experience that, and we really don't wanna hear about it and and be a shoulder that they can lean on. We keep them in darkness by our refusal to acknowledge what's done behind the veil, and we do that largely for ourselves, for our purity, and for our sanity. We get to keep our hands clean while they go and do the dirty work. So our job is to encourage them and prop them up, and their job is to just deal with it and and not unleash that burden on us.

And I think that acknowledging all of these truths without condemnation can be an important step to freeing those trapped in their moral injury. And I think part of the reason that we can do this without condemnation of soldiers is because we, the people, are the ones who send the soldiers to do the work. It's they are representative of us. And so our culture, our governments, the way that we vote, all of those things, we have people in Afghanistan killing other people and dealing with violence because of me, because of of us. And sure, we have different levels of culpability.

I voted for Bush, twice, and so my level of culpability might be different than somebody who took different actions, different course of actions. I don't know. But the point is that we're we're in this all together, and I can't really, look at veterans and and judge them because they are representative of of me and my people. And to bring these truths to light can be done without condemnation and is important to be done to be freed. That brings me to my third hope here, which is that in this episode, we'll reinforce all of our discussions on pacifism and the just war theory so far.

Recognizing the lack of foresight and creativity and conflict resolution, as well as the high cost of war should lead us to consider pacifism as a more feasible option. I do plan on doing future episodes or a series on positive nonviolent action as an alternative to war, which I think will help to round out this whole case because a lot of people just can't envision what does nonviolent action look like. You know, you you know MLK or Gandhi, but, you know, two two cases of it being implemented in the last century doesn't make it very compelling. So I'm gonna do do a series on that and highlight a lot more cases because I I think that was pivotal in helping me to see the feasibility of nonviolence, of how it's not just escapism, but it is it is brave and and doing something. Alright.

With that twenty minute introduction and all of those caveats finished, let's go ahead and dive into the episode proper. There have been a recent pile of documents released on the war in Afghanistan. There's a link to an article summary in the show notes if you wanna go ahead and check it out. But the internal documents basically show that the war in Afghanistan was and is a fiasco. There were no clear objectives throughout the two decades war or few objectives, clear objectives.

You know, Bin Laden and toppling Al Qaeda were accomplished, they were supposed objectives, but the war rages on a decade after that. Even with Bin Laden, the war on terror has purposefully vague objectives, giving the government overreach on things like the Patriot Act, and we're we're not anywhere closer to the end of the war. Like, there there's no objective that would win us the war, which is part of the just war theory, right, to have these these clear objectives. Killing Bin Laden didn't reduce the threat of terror. It actually increased the threat of terror because we're occupying an Islamic country, and that's just food, fuel for the fire, with with Islamist extremists.

Much of our terror incidents come domestically, and while nine eleven was horrendous, the war in Afghanistan has only exacerbated conflict, internal and external. We've spent I think now it's about $2,000,000,000,000 and counting on the war. I mean, our interest on the war alone is is tremendous. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan compared to the few thousands of civilians killed in The United States by terror. I mean, even if you include all of the soldiers killed and the people killed on nine eleven, I mean, the the number of innocent civilians killed in Iraq alone, and we we were only in Iraq for a short period of time, it it just pales in comparison.

Hundreds of thousand well, I guess in Iraq, think it was if I remember correctly, don't quote me on this, but I think it was a 80,000 civilians. And what we've had maybe about 10 to 15,000 people, including civilians and soldiers, are occupying forces who have been killed. With our actions, we've destabilized politics, and we basically created ISIS or or are responsible for for the circumstances circumstances which led to the formation of ISIS. We've been pumping money into Afghanistan, which has fostered and financed the tremendous amount of corruption there. Opium was significantly decreased as a cash crop in Afghanistan prior to our invasion.

And when our when, we put our presence there, opium sales just boomed and skyrocketed there in Afghanistan. We've wasted money on items we never used or could never use in Afghanistan, in part because our government of our government corruption and wanting to line the pockets of favored contractors or as favors for lobbyists and and friends of people in in high positions. And all the while, the public has been lied to about the progress in Afghanistan, while internally, everyone knew it was a fiasco. That's just the the those are just the main points pulled out from from some of the articles and research that I've done. But the war in Afghanistan, the two decade long war is just a fiasco.

I'm sure we'll get to it more later, but, you know, that's one of the ironies of of people saying that nonviolence doesn't work. You know, you you almost never have trained nonviolent nonviolent groups. So for instance, you know, we're talking about this war in Afghanistan is done by the most powerful nation on earth, by the strongest military, the most the best financed military. We have we pump more money into our military than the next seven countries combined. I mean, this is the best of the best, and we spent $2,000,000,000,000, all of this money, all of all of this time, two decades, and it's it's absolute garbage.

And we've got the biggest hammer in the world, and we can go around smashing things, and that might be fun and easy to just see something and smash it. But as far as effectiveness goes, you have to wonder if if we were able to pump that money into training people, on nonviolent methods, if we were going to try to pump that money towards peacemaking and creative alternatives, which again, you might think is just ludicrous because you don't have any framework for that. So come back in a few months and and hopefully I'll be able to have a season on examples of nonviolent efforts. But $2,000,000,000,000 in two decades and this is what we get. It's just appalling.

And to say that war works better is just insane because, arguably, the mess that we're in after $2,000,000,000,000 in twenty years is much worse than it was before. There's more government overreach. Afghanistan's way worse off. We've got a lot more people, including a lot of innocent people dead. And what do we have?

Nothing. We killed Osama bin Laden. Whoop de doo. We created ISIS. So in in summary here, the war in Afghanistan was a war which boils down or is a war, I guess, you could say, which boils down to a desire for retribution and has been an opportunity to expand government power both at home and abroad, as well as an opportunity to put money in the pockets of large corporations and lobbyists, like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etcetera.

Rather than build up defenses at home, we have invaded a foreign country and maintained an occupation force there for two decades, an action which was not only far more costly financially, but also more costly strategically as we destabilized governments, created power vacuums, increased corruption, pumped money into corrupt governments, increased anger and aggression towards us, undermined many of our relationships with allies, increased the national debt, killed innocent civilians, and left hundreds of thousands of veterans dead or wounded in body or mind, more so wounded because we don't have that many casualties in terms of life directly lost in the war. Rather than thinking about long term peacemaking solutions, we chose power and immediacy, which have ironically ended up being long term actions which have weakened us. So think about that summary. Our veterans are the ones who have been put most directly through that. They've had to endure hardship and manipulation by being pawns for political and financial gain, as well as for the plain old vanity of just wanting to exact vengeance and exhibit power and dominance in the world.

Veterans were fed lines about their honorable purposes, many of whom discovered that such was not the case. There's so many articles, stories, and documentaries out there that you could could check out in regard specifically to Afghanistan. One of my favorite is The Team. And The Kill Team is is essentially a documentary about how soldiers were trained, what life is actually like in Afghanistan, and then how they kind of compensated. And essentially what what happened was you've got these people, soldiers who are trained to kill and trained for action, who go over and sit around and do practically nothing all day.

And then they go out and they encounter civilians who they don't know if they're enemies or not, but essentially they start to get bored and frustrated, and so they have these things called drop weapons where they they carry with them and so they start shooting innocent civilians and putting weapons there to make it look like they were enemies. And from the the documentary, you realize that, okay, I'm sure not every soldier did this and probably not even the majority of of soldiers did this, but this isn't just like a one off case. This is something that is is strongly implied goes on with some frequency. And even if certain soldiers don't do it, they probably know of other soldiers who do. But it's a good look at just some of the mental stresses and and things that go on with the way that we train soldiers to kill and with kind of the frustrations and pressures of war.

And I can I can empathize or sympathize with their plight, and that echoes back to episode four or five from season one where we discussed how the military trains to desensitize? It goes to it goes to the book on killing, which was which was just very eye opening to me. So in conclusion, Afghanistan may be the worst conflict in which we've ever engaged in in terms of resources, not lives lost of course. But it seems largely representative to me of war in general. Take a look at at at various sources throughout the centuries from Thoreau to king to present.

And and you'll see that war by by great minds, even some of our maybe more popular wars or when we think that our country maybe was in a pure form was was still tainted. I mentioned War Is A Racket by a major general, Smedley Butler. That's definitely good to to look at. But as you start to look at some of these resources, I think that you realize by and large, we enter conflicts for non benevolent reasons. A lot of times with financial incentive there.

There's almost always some sort of vested interest, which is why we don't usually assist in African genocides unless our oil is threatened or we're helping an ally out or something. Well, are all kinds of costs to war. One of the greatest costs is the loss of life experienced by veterans. And I I don't just mean loss of life in terms of, like, dying. I mean, loss of life is in coming back and having this moral injury, which is is the term that they're using now.

The veterans see how the sausage is made, so to speak, meaning that they they not only get their hands dirty doing violence, making tough decisions, and having their consciences seared by the way that that they're trained to objectify enemies, but they also see the insanity and futility of it all. So in this Veterans Day, I want to mourn with all those veterans who have peeked behind the veil of sanity to see the insane frivolity of war, lusting for power and money, killing enemies, and all of that. They got to see it firsthand. We sent them there. And I wanna shine light on that darkness so that, hopefully, someone else acknowledging the truth can help to set veterans free.

I think when veterans are able to be honest with themselves about what they've seen and done, been trained to do. And when we are able to not prop up this facade that makes them be these hero philanthropists who have done all of this great good in the world. I think when we're we're able to acknowledge with them that, man, our world is messed up. Our government is messed up. Humans are messed up.

We are seeking power. We seek to assert dominance. We have all these these terrible motives even if when we do have good motives, the execution of things is is terrible. I think when we're able to acknowledge those things, I think we're able to mourn together. And so on Veterans Day, a lot of times what I see people doing is propping up this facade and and buying into this narrative, which isn't truthful and therefore isn't helpful.

And so I view Veterans Day not as a day where I am super happy and lifting everybody up and praising and praising and praising. It's a it's a day where I I say, I know that this sucks, and I'm gonna speak the truth, and I'll mourn with you because I'm an American, and, I'm in league with what America does, and so I'm responsible. Hopefully, that makes sense, and hopefully, there aren't a lot of ticked off veterans out there who like the facade propped up, and want to kill me now because they definitely could kill me. They are better trained and not pacifistic. But anyway, regardless of whether you believe me or not or agree with me or not, I do strongly suggest that you check out some of the resources that that I'll link, some of the books that I've mentioned, and look into the statistics of of suicides and psychoses in in veterans.

It's it's terrible. It is it is a big, big problem. And even if you don't agree with my ultimate conclusion, being honest with our veterans and addressing moral injury is something that's needed. And hopefully, some light was shed on on that need today. That's all for now.

So peace, because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.