Just War, All the Time

if a man die for the true faith, or to save his country,
or in defense of Christians, God will give him a heavenly reward.
--Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas
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Replace "Muslims" for "Christians" in the above, and you get the idea. Wars are based upon myths and downright lies. Just whose "just war" are we talking about?

The genesis of this approach was founded by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, which asked and sought justification for the big questions, like whether it is lawful for clerics to fight, and whether you can go about warring on holy days.

He found reconciliation with his Just War theories, hence, killing Saracens and Protestants got the papal Good Housekeeping, warfighting seal of approval. This opened the god-sponsored floodgates, allowing the Papally-supported and divinely guided monarchs to pursue military ventures pretty much with reckless abandon. Those who did so were thenceforward dubbed Holy Warriors by the Pope.

Many who think they are fighting today for St. George Bush, are actually on the side of Pope Innocent, hailing as they do from a long tradition of legal and theological contortionists seeking Jus Ad Bellem.

The Vietnam war was based on the lie that all of Southeast Asia would fall to communism if South Vietnam succumbed to that ideology. Countries-as-shaky-squares-of-dotted-wood theory. History has disproved the myth, and in the meantime, 58,000 American soldiers are still dead.

In fact, not only are they still dead, the Vietnamese Communists have become major trade partners with the U.S., enjoying the fruits of capitalism, too. Why just this holiday season were a plethora of Vietnamese New Year - Tet cards being hawked online, wishing "Chuc mung nam moi."

We wanted to print one to share with you but unfortunately these were not like the thousands of free and open-sourced holiday graphics -- these babies were protected, and you had to shell out the money for them before you could grab the graphic. Which by the way, were nothing special other than a series of cards with the above text printed on them. But definitely, they were not being shared in a true communistic spirit. So the achievement of that odd communistic / capitalistic gryphon is why they died?

The myths that led the U.S. into the Vietnam war were understandable from an historical perspective. However, the current crop of lies that support the Iraq War are blatantly false and unforgivable.