day no. 17,063: war is a racket

“The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous." — George Orwell, 1984

A just war must have a defined objective. You cannot wage indiscriminate warfare in a godly way. In addition, the objective must be possible to obtain. You cannot in clean conscience send someone else's sons to die for a lost cause. A wise king will count heads and make peace or wage war based on his confidence (Lk, 14:31). Lastly, once the objective is obtained, the war is to cease. There is no moral way to make an attack last longer than necessary. One must pursue their objective to the very end, but once it ends, so must the pursuit. If warfare is ongoing, it is either because the objective was corrupt from the git go in that it was never meant to meet a particular objective (which reveals the true objective was merely to keep fighting,) or because the means of waging war are so ineffective that they delaying a resolution by their incompetence.

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." — George Orwell, 1984

Someone's sons continue to die because someone else's fathers are not involved in the actual fighting. They are not in the foxhole wishing for the war to be over. They are sleeping soundly in their own homes miles away from the fray. That is why they aren't more willing to wrap things up. An end to the war games would put a rap on their net gains.... that is until the next war can be manufactured and marketed.

“War Is a Racket.” — Major General Smedley D. Butler

There is more money in blowing things up and building them back than there is in maintaining and cultivating them. And so, young men die and fat cats get fatter. In the end there are less men to share the pie with and bigger forks in the hands of those serving themselves. But someday God will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. In those days, nations will no longer lift up swords against other nations and neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4).