Reflections on peacemaking and militarization

Who pays for the military which blocks the Reverend Father John Dear's Road to Peace?

we do.

Egypt, following the Israeli state is one of our biggest recipients of foreign aid.

What is happening in Gaza no one wants the world to see?
Shall we suspect it Auschwitz?

And, who provides the security necessary to allow Fr. Dear to pursue his "Road to Peace"? The United States military. And whose sacrifice and vigilance keeps the United States and her allies free and keeps the enemies of freedom at bay? The United States military.

You see, no reasonable person can be said to oppose the idea of peace. However, peace is not something that we can just "wish" into existence, nor is it something that we work toward in a vacuum. Rather, we have to be aware of the real world, warts and all, and we have to work within those boundaries.

The real world is a world in which there are real enemies of freedom. There are people who are willing to murder innocent men, women, and children, without remorse or regret. There are people who want to kill as many people as they can in order to make a political statement, they are wiling to murder innocents at marketplaces and shopping centers, airports and schools, buses and planes and trains, daycare centers and retirement homes and amusement parks. They do not care who they kill, all they care about is killing as many as they can until they themselves are arrested or killed. These people will kill their own, strapping bombs to themselves and to their children, and sending them to murder innocents and kill themselves in the process.

Now, I know it is fashionable to claim that these people are just misunderstood, that they are just responding to provocations from the West (in their worldview the West is always the evil doer) and if we simply let the Arab nations invade and overrun Israel, wipe it off the face of the earth, and kill as many of its citizens as possible, we would not ever have to worry about terrorism again.

But, of course, people who live in the real world understand that such is not the case, and evil does indeed exist. They understand that there is some good in this world and it is worth fighting for (to paraphrase "The Lord of the Rings"). They understand that we are in a fight for the very survival of our way of life, and the way of life of our allies and all free peoples on earth, and as such we must fight. They understand that we are defending the lives of innocent people, Americans first (after all, the US military and the US President is charged with defending Americans first and foremost), but also hundreds of millions of innocent men, women and children all over the globe. In defense of human life, there are times when it is morally obligatory for those in power to use that power.

The United States has defended freedom since its foundations. We defended ours from Britain, the rights of slaves to be free, the right of Jews to be free and to live. We defended the right of all men to determine their own destiny during the Cold War and we defend the right of all people to be free and to live without the fear of terrorism.

Despite the naivete of some, despite the simplistic worldview they espouse, the fact is that there is evil in this world, and we are obligated to oppose that evil, even if it means taking up arms against it, in defense of freedom; freedom, which is God's gift to all mankind.