Who here gets more riled up against a rat than they do against a person who hurts someone they love? HUMAN evil is what makes people mad, not stupid animals doing what they do by nature.

It seems to me that maintaining the humanity of your enemies (reality) is not only truer, but more effective, than pretending they’re inhuman. When does fantasy ever serve better than reality?

I’ve not looked at the Marine Corps reading list but I remember what used to be on the Air Force Chief of Staff reading list. Some of it was excellent and some of it was modernist dreck.

We’ve never waged war against “subhuman vermin.” But we have waged war against fallen humans whose evil is such that exposure to its deeds could make one physically sick. Ask the men at Malmedy how they would describe the men of the Waffen SS.

Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, author of Achilles In Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, found that dehumanizing the enemy during the Vietnam war caused psychological damage to American troops:

Restoring honor to the enemy is an essential step in recovery from combat PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). While other things are obviously needed as well, the veteran’s self-respect never fully recovers so long as he is unable to see the enemy as worthy. In the words of one of our patients, a war against subhuman vermin “has no honor.” This in true even in victory; in defeat, the dishonoring makes life unendurable. (Achilles, pg. 115)

The book is on the Marine Corps professional reading list and the view is widely shared in the Corps. But what do the Marines know compared to the armchair general Stuart Koehl, right?

Amen, David. When I hear drivel about not “dehumanizing” our enemies or describing monsters as monsters, I can only think of Uncle Billy Sherman saying, “Tell such to the Marines, but not to me, who have seen such things”.

In World War II, Dwight David Eisenhower was seriously concerned that the American GI would not have the capacity to hate the Germans intensely enough to allow them to do their job–which was, of course, killing Germans more efficiently than Germans could kill Americans. And to a large extent he was right–Americans kind of liked Germans (well, not those SS guys, but the ordinary soldiers were OK), in fact liked them a lot more than our “allies” the French. German civilians were a lot more like Americans–clean, industrious, polite.

It was not until we began capturing concentration camps that the attitude began to change. Ike was just coming out the gate after visiting one camp, when he saw a young GI, ashen-faced after having tossed his breakfast on the ground. “Hate ‘em enough now?”, Ike asked. The GI just nodded.

Sometimes the enemy is inhuman. Sometimes men can be monsters. Inability or unwillingness to recognize this simple truth disarms the righteous in the face of evil.

“After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out,

‘Hallelujah!
Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
for his judgments are true and just;
for he has judged the great prostitute
who corrupted the earth with her immorality,
and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.’

Once more they cried out,

‘Hallelujah!
The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.’”

Revelation 19:1-3 (ESV)

The same Scriptures that teach we are not to hate, but to love our enemies also teach that the saints will rejoice and praise God when He delivers just judgment on the wicked. Somehow we must reconcile the two. We are not Marcionites who may throw out the verses that don’t suit our own vision of who God should be; we are orthodox Christians who must come to understand and praise who God is. We must not hate our enemies, yet it is good and proper to celebrate when justice visits the wicked. Both are clearly presented in Scripture. It is our obligation to figure out how to reconcile both and not to pick and choose which verses we accept and which we reject.

I believe God delivered His temporal judgment on Osama bin Laden by the hands of the Navy SEALS. I am thankful to Him for doing so and rejoice. Whatever eternal judgment He chooses to deliver is between Him and bin Laden. Whatever He does will be a perfect application of His grace, mercy, love and justice and I will rejoice in that as well.

These sort of questions explain a good deal of the sterility of modernish Christianity.

God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy and it is all grace and all good. But I tend to believe him when he describes how he will do it. It has nothing to do with my preferences.