What if the radical Islamists are RIGHT???

[Bennie_P]

IMHO God does not promote evil nor allow evil to do so called “good”.

I will agree with your first part of your sentence God does not promote evil, but it is for certain He allows it.

With my current understanding of God, Christ, redemption,etc I would, for sure, go to hell if I kill 3,000 people while at the same time commiting sucide.

Though in my mind I see no true justification for 9/11, or any other action that would be similar, the question the OP presents really intrigues me. Though as for the individuals that died that day should be assumed to be innocent victims, but as a nation do we have any responsibilty for what happen? And was this allowed as an act of chastisement for our moral failures as a society and in our international affairs? We see in the OT where God allowed the enemies of Israel to defeat Israel and even enslave Israel for the moral failure within and in its realtionship to other nations. Are we to believe that God no longer allows such chastisement? for if we look at our own nation, where we as a nation play lip service as to being a nation blessed by God, whiile as a Nation we have allowed the murder of millions of the unborn and embraced immorality wholesale in a mutitude of areas? I willing to judge the movements that planned out and promoted 9/11 but I am glad I am not God ( I bet you are too?) to have to judge the individuals that carried it out?

Roman 8:28 - 30 And we know that to them that love God all things work together unto good: to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints.
For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son: that he might be the Firstborn amongst many brethren.
And whom he predestinated, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he also glorified

 

[b_justb]

What if the radical Islamists are RIGHT???

Then I will GLADLY spend eternity in hell.

 

[timotheos]

I know the terrorists are wrong, but what if, in their mind, they actually believe they are doing God’s will? If they really and truely believe this, our merciful God may actually spare them?

Salvation history is based on revelation of God’s will from Adam, through Noah, Abraham, etc, and continuing through Jesus and into the early Church. If one simply had to believe one was doing God’s will, it would seem that much of the story beyond Abel would be unnecessary. The Pharisees would have had it made in the shade.

No, Jesus taught that much more WAS necessary - repentance, humility, love and forgiveness to name a few things. So where can hatred and murder, albeit misdirected, fit into this scheme? In my view, the 911 extremists would have had to, by the last second at least, repent, ask God for forgiveness, and be ready to embrace the “infidels” in love for the rest of eternity.

AFAIK, salvation requires much more than winning a triple-dog-dare contest to prove one’s submission to God.

-Tim

 

[aspawloski4th]

I don’t believe radical Islamists are doing God’s will.
The God that I know in the Bible does not justify killing innocent people, women, children, etc.

But I remember right after 9-11 thinking to myself:

I know the terrorists are wrong, but what if, in their mind, they actually believe they are doing God’s will? If they really and truely believe this, our merciful God may actually spare them?
I wonder what went down between them and God right after they died in the crash?

Anybody have any thoughts about this?

remember they were doing it to get the 72 or whatever vergins in heaven. that in of its self is selfish greed. I rest my case.

 

[Chancellare]

Killing as a means to spread Islam and eliminate “infidels” is allowed in their religion. We cannot argue that outside of their twisted logic. Granting this, the question that each of the terrorists will now answer is:
Did I spread Islam and eliminate the 'Infidels" by ramming those planes into WTC?
If the answer is no, then they should go to hell reserved for Islamic sinners.
If the answer is yes, then they should look for the 72 virgins and stay in an Islamic section in heaven (if there is such a thing).

 

[Sure]

We seem to be forgetting Natural Law. It is written in each man’s heart that killing innocent people is wrong. The men who did this violated the law within their own hearts. How culpable were they after being indoctrinated by a religion founded by Satan? Hard to say.

God will judge them. The question is not “what if they were right?” it is “what if they truly were inculpably ignorant that what they were doing was immoral?”

 

[NoxSineStellae]

Exactly, they would have been SOLDIERS which is exactly the point. And we may have lost the war.

And history would have taken a major shift. Who knows what would have actually happened.

But a civilized, advanced country using not once but twice, a weapon that completely obliterates all life and leaves a huge area in bad shape for decades, killing innocent people? That’s not war, that’s an expensive way to massacre people.

And it’s ironic, the Japanese are wallowing in radioactive fallout, they consume more than 10x more salt than we do, and they are the healthiest nation in the world. I expect we will badly need them one day and they may not feel like helping us out.

Plus, one of the tenets that’s been drawing me to Catholicism is that “the ends don’t justify the means” and that the church teaches that you can never do wrong even to achieve something really really good down the road.

I’ve been browsing various threads and often come across threads on ectopic pregnancy, and how it’s fine to cut open the mother and remove the tube completely, even though the baby will definitely die (and the mother’s fertility will be greatly impaired), but a grave sin to use a drug to directly end the pregnancy, even though, 100% of the time, both situations = dead baby. You can’t adhere to that belief and at the same time say, oh well, in times of war, the ends DO justify the means, and actively murdering innocent civilians is A-OK with God.

Face to face self-defence is one thing, flattening whole cities from a comfortable difference to prevent possible future suffering is no different that having an abortion because the mother might die.

 

[Liberanosamalo]

The Japan topic is a little more complex than “murdering innocent civilians.” We are talking about a population that worshipped the emporer and was prepared to fight and die for him. We had already spent thousands of lives taking one small island, Iwo Jima. They fought to the death. The millions of Japanese in the homeland were prepared to all fight and die to the last person. I am sure Truman had a Hobson’s choice there. We were not dealing with a culture or civilization that lived and died and believed as we do. I have a relative living in Okinawa now. 100,000 Okinawans died during the war. I think it was about 1 of every three. That was one little island! It was not as simple as “dropping a bomb on civilians.” Who ARE civilians in that instance?

As for the Muslims… there are many schools of thought in Islam, and many of their imams and mullahs condemn the killing of innocent women and children and non-combatants. The terrorists we are fighting, (who target children on street corners, strap bombs to retarded Iraqi children, and kidnap women and children to force fathers to drive car bombs with their hands cuffed to the steering wheel and their feet tied to the brake) are violating their own Koran.

If they don’t even follow their own holy book, maybe they aren’t so justified in what they do.

 

[BlueKnight]

I was across the river when the towers went down.

Afterwards I was praying a rosary while whatching the plume of black smoke go up into the sky and I felt tremendous peace.

The purpose of the towers going down was to drive America into War. Because America and its leadership are far from God, they willingly dove into revenge killing. We focus so much on the evil done by these terrorists, but so quickly forget the continuation of evil that continued from this act.

Do not content yourself so easily into thinking that only terrorists are evil and deserve hell. How many people reading this post are also deserving of hell but are not terrorists?

Blue Knight

 

[Joel_Tunnah]

We can’t forget that God has written his law on every human heart, including the hearts of the terrorists. So at some level they cannot claim, however sincerely, that they didn’t know any better.

This is exactly correct.

 

[NoxSineStellae]

I’m not saying there aren’t well reasoned arguments for the bombings in Japan, that the people that did them are in Hell, or that lives weren’t saved. I’m pretty sure lots of innocents were saved - at the cost of the lives of other innocents.

I’m just saying that from an outside point of view, it is confusing. The ends never justify the means, except when it’s war? When it’s governments doing it, and not individuals? Would it have been okay to time travel back and abort Hitler, Stalin, etc, because of what they were going to do?

I don’t mean to sound argumentative - I’m new here, as you can see, and nervous, but genuinely puzzled by the seeming contradiction and I want to understand as much as I can about Catholicism, because I’ve been feeling a bit of a tug in that direction lately. I understand the difference between the killing of a pure innocent (like a fetus/baby/child) and an enemy soldier, or even grown sympathizer. If the atomic bombs had been some sci-fi super weapon that targeted only grown “guilty” parties and left all others untouched, I wouldn’t have a problem. but I don’t see how all the innocent men, women, and children, some of whom may not have been behind the Emperor (and there were probably more than a few unborn killed) dying can kind of be shrugged off as, oh, that’s war.

Does the church teach that the ends justify the means during wartime?

 

[Liberanosamalo]

I can’t speak for other countries, but I can say that our own military in its training and formation of its officers, studies the morality of war very seriously. I believe the Reagan administration implemented this study training in our war colleges and it has progressed from there. Incidentally, our military is composed of Catholics in a percentage equal to if not more than the US population at large. Our officers are very well taught on the whole topic of the Just War Theory, which is broken down into “jus ad bellum” and “jus in bello.” Which are two different things. The first covers events leading up to a declaration of war, and when that can be justified. The second involves the manner in which war is conducted.

I can’t speak for WWII and how the decision was made with the philosophies and religious attitudes and political pressures on the President then. I think we have learned a lot from that time. Plus as our own weaponry has become more sophisticated, we have been able to conduct warfare targeting combatants more and civilians less. Our own military goes out of its way to avoid striking targets if it involves civilians, a practice the enemy knows about and uses to its advantage by hiding amongst civilians and using them as shields. But then, they target their own countrymen also. The current war has actually been conducted in a very moral manner in that relatively few civilians have been accidentally killed in comparison to the objectives we’ve achieved.

Most of the civilians killed have been as a result of internal insurgencies in those countries and being targeted by others.

That can be contrasted, for instance, with our conduct in WWII when we bombed Dresden. That instance failed to meet the criteria for “jus in bello.”

But we fought that war with the equipment and knowlege we had at the time.

So the short answer to your question is that the ends DON’T justify the means. And war is never the first choice. But with our fallen human nature and the extent of evil out there, whether it was Fascism, Nazism, Communism, or murderous Islamic extremism, doing nothing does not look like a viable or moral option either.

Governments are held to the same standards as the individuals who must carry out those orders. Our own military is told they must never follow an illegal order. When our own troops commit “atrocities” which happens rarely, they are punished. One could put forth a position that our own military is the most moral and restrained that history has known. And it’s because our commanders do ask themselves the questions about what should be allowed in war, versus what is expedient or right. Believe you me, this current war would have been over long ago if we had used WWII fighting and bombing tactics. We even debate over whether bombing critical infrastructure that would leave civilians without the necessities of life is allowable. Our own soldiers take increased risks so as not to endanger the local population. That too has slowed the progress of this current conflict. In past wars, we would have bombed a house from which we were being attacked. Now our guys go in and clear it room to room so as not to endanger any civilians who may be trapped in there too.

As for aborting Hitler and Stalin… no that is not permissible. Actually, both men had the capability to be very holy and very good leaders at one time. They used their incredible talents for evil. But it is not for us to decide that before the fact.

You ask very good questions that are being debated to this day. There are many others. Would it have been moral for us to bomb Auschwitz? Should we have bombed the train tracks into there? Should we have turned Jews away from our shores as they fled Nazi Germany?

It is recognized during war there is always “collateral damage.” We seek to limit that. But we didn’t enter WWII until we were attacked and war was declared on us. And innocent people were already being killed then. And Japan was not a country without blood on its own hands. (Read up on the Rape of Nanking) The Japan of the 1930s and 1940s was a very different country than our great trading partner today. Their treatment of our POWs and the experimentation they did on them was as bad if not worse than anything in Germany (which surprisingly treated our POWs much more humanely.) I just know my FIL was very relieved when his ship was not going to be involved in an invasion of the Mainland. They had already endured kamikaze attacks. They knew what the enemy was all about. When confronted with the choice of two evils, sometimes one is forced to choose the lesser evil. Ironically, we ended up bombing the two most Catholic cities in Japan.

I hope this doesn’t confuse you more. Welcome to the forum, and we don’t bite. (much. )

 

[BlueKnight]

excellent post Liberanosamal.

A sword is still a sword however, regardless how sharp and well used it is.

If your going to draw it out of the scabbard and use it, be sure that you know why and how to use it and be prepaired to accept the consequences of using it. If you do not know what the consequences are, you should not use it.

Also, what other things could have and should have been done by the US government before its use of military force in Iraq?

And, the common foot soldier non-officer, who faces many more moral dilema’s then the officer, interestingly enough has less moral training on how to survive the moral dangers of war in my opinion.

As for the clever use of American technology, all I can say is I’ve heard that the radioactive bullets used on the Warthog is causing thousands in Iraq to have health problems and birth defects.

Finally, you have no idea the number of illegal, imoral, and evil covert ops the US engages in outside of governmental review. To have a military at all means you have the whole thing, unfortunately. And that is dangerous.

 

[Liberanosamalo]

I won’t go into detail on “illegal, immoral, evil” covert ops. You have no idea what I know or don’t know about that subject. I’ll just ask, is having a sniper going in and picking off an Osama bin Laden less moral than having to invade a whole village and risk injury to innocents? If we could have picked off Osama in 2000 and prevented 9-11, would that really have been “illegal and immoral and evil?” Is going into an Afghan village and quietly eliminating the Taliban fighters who are holding it in a grip of terror really “immoral and evil?”

An enemy is an enemy, and self-defense is self-defense. And liberating the oppressed is not immoral. And I think our non-coms are pretty clear over what is and isn’t allowed. Our military doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Most of our troops have an innate sense of honor and decency (call it Natural Law) that is finely honed and reinforced by their compatriots. In most countries, we historically have been the ones giving out candy and food and medical care, not raping and stealing and butchering as we went through a city. (Research: Russian army atrocities.) To the point many turned themselves over to the Americans because they knew they would receive humane treatment.

In a perfect world, BlueKnight, we would need no military at all. Before I blame Warthog bullets for Iraqi medical issues, I’d look at other causes that preexisted our advance over that border. I won’t argue that topic either. Something tells me we wouldn’t agree.

 

[Sure]

It is recognized during war there is always “collateral damage.” We seek to limit that. But we didn’t enter WWII until we were attacked and war was declared on us. And innocent people were already being killed then. And Japan was not a country without blood on its own hands. (Read up on the Rape of Nanking) The Japan of the 1930s and 1940s was a very different country than our great trading partner today. Their treatment of our POWs and the experimentation they did on them was as bad if not worse than anything in Germany (which surprisingly treated our POWs much more humanely.) I just know my FIL was very relieved when his ship was not going to be involved in an invasion of the Mainland. They had already endured kamikaze attacks. They knew what the enemy was all about. When confronted with the choice of two evils, sometimes one is forced to choose the lesser evil. Ironically, we ended up bombing the two most Catholic cities in Japan.

I hope this doesn’t confuse you more. Welcome to the forum, and we don’t bite. (much. )

Someone should probably start a thread on the bombings in Japan if it is desired to continue conversation. It should be noted that there are ZERO moral theologians in good standing with the Church that make a case for the atomic bombings in Japan. The only moral theologians who can reconcile such an action are proportionalists like Curran and McBrien. If you believe what the Church teaches on intrinsic evil, there is no space for a moral bombing of civilians.

 

[fnr]

Most of the civilians killed have been as a result of internal insurgencies in those countries and being targeted by others.

I think it’s too simple to just draw the boundary of moral concern around the person pulling the trigger. Sure, they’re the ones who are committing murder, but there’s more than that. Statistically speaking, it’s very predictable that certain military actions will destabilize regions. It’s actually been the basis of certain U.S. policy, particularly in the late 1990s after the first Gulf War. There was widespread expectation that the Iraqi regime would be easily toppled by the long-suppressed Shia. The Shia rose up, but weren’t by themselves able to overthrow Saddam’s regime. However, the expectation of post-conflict chaos was key to George H.W. Bush’s exhortation to the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam.

In the current conflict, there are numerous scholars (e.g. Neal Ferguson) who forewarned that removing/withdrawing a regional hegemony inevitably leads to bloodshed and instability in the ensuing power vacuum. Even the CIA had some analysts who warned of this possibility. However, there are indication that U.S. and U.K. government officials went out of their ways to hear only from the sources who told them information that supported their point of view (e.g. the Pentagon “Office of Special Plans” under Douglas Feith). That seems to be pride of the type that leads to other sin.

If someone today were to commit some catastrophic act, such as bombing the water supplies of New York City, say the water lines that lead from the lakes in the Catskill mountains to the city, you could probably come up with a reasonable range of impacts, including a range of likely violent deaths that occurred as short-term desperation set in. If the bomb didn’t hurt anyone directly and only damaged property, the bomber in my eyes would still bear some responsibility for the chaos that might ensue.

When a military action destabilizes the hegemonic power of a region, it’s almost inevitable that a few innocent lives will be lost. The moral actor will at least consider the indirect impact of his actions, even if it’s tribal rivalries and local insurgencies that actually do the killing.

And war is never the first choice. But with our fallen human nature and the extent of evil out there, whether it was Fascism, Nazism, Communism, or murderous Islamic extremism, doing nothing does not look like a viable or moral option either.

War may not be the first choice, but it certainly is a choice. For leaders to assert that their hand was forced into a “defensive” war that involves oversea deployment is really very common. Sadly, war is an extension of politics, by other means, as they say. Far too many view it as the only course of action.

 

[NoxSineStellae]

I hope this doesn’t confuse you more. Welcome to the forum, and we don’t bite. (much. )

Thanks for the kind welcome and in-depth post! You’ve given me a lot to think over

Only one quick comment for now (started coming down with an awful cold after dinner but I have read a lot about the Rape of Nanking - but feel that just because the Japanese nation commited atrocities, doesn’t make it ok to commit atrocities towards them, you know? I know I’m probably hopelessly naive in this regard, but I really feel like war will never end unless people start turning the other cheek. And yes, you may wind up dead because you did so, but isn’t that what Christianity aspires to? To be true to something so much more important than this short physical realm?

 

[Liberanosamalo]

You are right that the morality of someone else’s acts don’t dictate what we do. We are responsible for our own morality.

I think if we had today’s weapons and equipment, our conduct of the Pacific campaign in the 1940s would have been different. Just as WWII was different than the horrible and bloody trench warfare and use of mustard gas in WWI. There is another instance where a “new weapon” was used and later condemned.

I think the question about Japan was whether a whole nation that vowed to die for the emporer could be classified as “combatants.” It’s a whole different thought process than we know here, where we can’t get three people on a street corner to agree on the color of mud.

but I really feel like war will never end unless people start turning the other cheek. And yes, you may wind up dead because you did so, but isn’t that what Christianity aspires to? To be true to something so much more important than this short physical realm?

No, I fear war is to be expected until the end of time, because of our fallen nature. So our choice is always to be victims, or to defend ourselves from aggression. Because there will always be an aggressor, especially the kind that acts when it perceives the peaceful people around them as being “weak.”

Should we “turn the other cheek” even if it means we end up dead? We spent the time of the Cold War refusing to do that. Refusing to just let Atheistic Communism make martyrs of whole nations. I personally don’t think Christianity aspires to victimhood. I don’t think being true to Christianity is incompatible with self-preservation. The doctors of the Church, especially St. Thomas Aquinas, have written much on the Just War Theory about a country’s right and duty to defend its citizens.
The soldier dying so his fellow men might live is very much in keeping with Christian principles. Is it a virtue to let evil override whole countries and outlaw Catholicism and destroy churches and assassinate priests? Yes, they will go to Heaven, but why give evil that victory? It just encourages more evil.

Christ Himself did not condemn the military man. He found faith in him. He even used the imagery of the sword in His teachings. He knew His teachings would be a cause for conflict. He didn’t tell us to run from it. He didn’t order us to die for Him without a fight.

Just my own thoughts on the subject…

 

[Sure]

You are right that the morality of someone else’s acts don’t dictate what we do. We are responsible for our own morality.

I think if we had today’s weapons and equipment, our conduct of the Pacific campaign in the 1940s would have been different. Just as WWII was different than the horrible and bloody trench warfare and use of mustard gas in WWI. There is another instance where a “new weapon” was used and later condemned.

I think the question about Japan was whether a whole nation that vowed to die for the emporer could be classified as “combatants.” It’s a whole different thought process than we know here, where we can’t get three people on a street corner to agree on the color of mud.

No, I fear war is to be expected until the end of time, because of our fallen nature. So our choice is always to be victims, or to defend ourselves from aggression. Because there will always be an aggressor, especially the kind that acts when it perceives the peaceful people around them as being “weak.”

Should we “turn the other cheek” even if it means we end up dead? We spent the time of the Cold War refusing to do that. Refusing to just let Atheistic Communism make martyrs of whole nations. I personally don’t think Christianity aspires to victimhood. I don’t think being true to Christianity is incompatible with self-preservation. The doctors of the Church, especially St. Thomas Aquinas, have written much on the Just War Theory about a country’s right and duty to defend its citizens.
The soldier dying so his fellow men might live is very much in keeping with Christian principles. Is it a virtue to let evil override whole countries and outlaw Catholicism and destroy churches and assassinate priests? Yes, they will go to Heaven, but why give evil that victory? It just encourages more evil.

Christ Himself did not condemn the military man. He found faith in him. He even used the imagery of the sword in His teachings. He knew His teachings would be a cause for conflict. He didn’t tell us to run from it. He didn’t order us to die for Him without a fight.

Just my own thoughts on the subject…

Even if we knew beyond any uncertainty that invading the Japanese mainland would cost 50,000,000 soldiers it would STILL be immoral to kill civilians like we did with the Atomic bombs because it is never moral to do evil even though great good may come of it.

Here is what Pope John Paul II had to say on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

“We cannot forget that your country is one of the symbols of peace, as you have just emphasized, since the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a message to all our contemporaries, inviting all the earth’s peoples to learn the lessons of history and to work for peace with ever greater determination. Indeed, they remind our contemporaries of all the crimes committed during the Second World War against civilian populations, crimes and acts of true genocide which we thought were for ever in the past but are still being perpetrated in various parts of the world.”

 

[Liberanosamalo]

Again… what is a civilian? If someone not in a uniform takes up weapons against US soldiers, are they civilians, or a militia? We had that problem in VietNam, and in Afghanistand and Iraq. When you have non-uniformed persons who shoot and then disappear into the crowd, is that fair to say they are mere civilians?

We were about to turn several million people into Japanese soldiers. I wonder how many Japanese people who were not killed by the bomb were sort of glad deep down that they would not have to fight to the death.