In Which Jason Joins the Warmongers
Jason Kuznicki on Jul 19th 2006
But not about that war. Details below the fold.
In the last few days, I have been cheering — yes, openly cheering — for one side in an armed conflict. I don’t do it often, but I have virtually no reservations about the wisdom or justice of this country’s actions, and I look forward to its eventual victory unreservedly. I feel this way even though innocents are in danger. My heart goes out to them, but one side in this conflict must lose, and the other must win.
I’m talking about Israel, of course.
Yes, a lot of fundamentalist lunatics are also cheering for Israel, but I don’t mind them too much. Stopped clock, twice a day, you know the rest. All the hyperventilation about a coming apocalypse can’t change one simple fact: Israel has a right to defend itself. And — oh boy I’m going to peacenik hell for this one — an all-out war may be exactly what this part of the world both needs and deserves.
Make no mistake about it: Israel is fighting for its self-defense. Any government that respects the rule of law and offers basic individual rights to its citizens may legitimately engage in such a war. It need not be morally perfect to do so — and Israel certainly is not. No matter. Israel protects its citizens’ rights far better than any other regime in the region, and thus it acts legitimately when it defends itself.
Yet the justification for the current war with Lebanon goes far beyond self-defense. Indeed, it touches the very foundation of the modern nation-state system. Israel absolutely must win to preserve the integrity of this system.
Israel’s current enemy, Hezbollah, exists as a standing rebuke to the modern principle holding that states alone may exercise legitimate violence. Under the modern understanding of the state — hammered out roughly between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment — private armies are forbidden. In return, we agree that the unified government we have created may only do certain things, that its powers are forever limited. With our modern technology, we would live in a hell on earth if this were not the universal rule.
Even if Hezbollah’s aims were just — which they are not — still the group would have to be destroyed, for its methods would bring us just that much closer to the endless private wars of feudal Europe. Without, however, the limits inherent to fighting with medieval technology.
In the modern world, violence is presumptively an illegitimate tool of political action. Violence against civilians, rather than military targets, is doubly illegitimate. And violence against civilians, perpetrated by an agent that is not a government and has no pretensions of being one, is beyond any excuse whatsoever. This is the enemy that Israel confronts — not Hezbollah alone, but the methods that it uses.
Does Hezbollah complain that Israel has killed civilians? What moral authority do they, of all people, have to complain? If Israel kills civilians, at least it is primarily by accident. And even if Israel killed civilians on purpose (which, arguably, it has done at times) — what of it? In killing civilians, Israel is only acting on the principle which Hezbollah already endorses through its common tactics. When Hezbollah protests against the killing of civilians, it complains only of being beaten at its own game.
Let us imagine a scenario that will bring the principle into sharper relief: Suppose that the Liberal Party of Canada unilaterally declared the U.S. government to be a hostile occupying force, one that had no proper claim over the territory to the south. The Liberal Party begins to import weapons from North Korea. It maintains an army that acts independently of Canada’s official one. It sends suicide bombers across the border to destroy unarmed civilians, including women and children, in our busses and trains, our schools and churches, our shops and restaurants. It speaks routinely of pushing all Americans into the sea; it openly longs for the dark days of World War II, when the United States was threatened with total destruction.
The Liberal Party also runs candidates in Canadian elections. These candidates win seats in the legislature and the cabinet. The members of this party participate in Canadian government and civil society — as if they were not terrorists. Canada doesn’t do anything at all to stop them.
Could any decent person, when faced with this situation, still support Canada?
My hypothetical Canada is indeed the responsible party, because — by definition — a government is responsible for all acts of violence originating in its territory: It must make clear efforts to punish independent acts of violence; those that go unpunished we can only conclude that it supports. That’s how the nation-state works, people. Don’t like it? Then get out of the business.
Charles Bird rather more charitably put it at Obsidian Wings (Bird goes a bit bonkers when it comes to Noam Chomsky, but… eh, whatever):
Israel is doing the work that the Lebanese army should be doing but cannot. The simple answer to ending the current violence between Israel and Hezbollah is to degrade Hezbollah to the point where Israel can hand the keys to the Lebanese army, giving the government full sovereignty over its country.
This is why attacks on Lebanon, in addition to those on Hezbollah, are legitimate. I might add Syria and Iran, too. I’d be delighted to see Israel soundly defeat all of its terrorist-abetting neighbors. I think it can, and I would applaud if it did.
Now here is where I really go off the deep end. Gosh, I may even lose my place at Liberty and Power…
I think a war between Israel and its enemies would do a lot of good right now. We’ve had year after year of a hypocritical “peace process,” which clearly hasn’t done any good at all. It’s time to try something else, even if that something else is a war. What is a “peace process,” after all, except for a slow-motion war that favors the most unprincipled parties in the conflict? A real war would be more destructive in the short term — but it would also be more just, more honest, and potentially more peaceful in the years to come.
A “peace process” is merely a war in which the good guys pull their punches. It is a war in which the chief acts of violence come from terrorists alone, from the people who bomb women and children in schools. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has led to the dangerous misconception that Israel is weak and that the terrorists are strong. Do you want a lasting peace? So do I. So let Israel knock its neighbors down a few pegs and see if it helps.
(Jason backs away from the keyboard, slowly…)
Filed in The Barracks
Your position is the product of moral relativism and cowardice. If the life of your spouse or other family member had been taken by Israeli weapons, your support for that state would crumble instantly. You are taking a position that you have no investment in now or perhaps ever.
Come on, don’t mince words Jason. Tell us what you really think.
Wow. While I am a fairly devote “peacenik” myself, I have to agree with you on at least your primary point if not every detail. Israel has been in the wrong on numerous occasions in the past but they have my wholehearted suport with their cause if not every single one of their tactics in the current conflict.
They certainly do have the right, indeed the responsibility, to defend themselves.
I definitely agree. mostly. :)
Your position, Skip, is an overworked counterfactual. I have no doubt I would be devastated if I lost a family member in a war. But it simply doesn’t follow that I would turn instantly against the war if this happened. I’d think of all the innocents killed in suicide bombings — by people who deliberately tried to kill civilians — and I’d compare it to what Israel has done. I hope I would not be morally relativist enough to say, “oh well, same difference.”
I hope I could draw the distinction — which you refuse to draw — between preserving the nation-state system, and blowing oneself up on a school bus. The two simply aren’t the same.
A true war is not a reorganization of power relationships within a region, but the affirmation of power relationships that already exist, and a shatterer of illusions about those relationships. In constantly bargaining with the weak but despicable, the strong and (relatively) virtuous usually achieve nothing. Usually peace is to be preferred, even for its own sake. Sometimes, however . . .
Bravo!
And nice comments on Tom Palmer’s site, too.
“a bit bonkers when it comes to Noam Chomsky”
I’m not sure what the formal definition of “a bit bonkers” is, but I would suggest that charles I’s position on how prominant protestors should have been handled during the vietnam era (his waffling “update” is completely inadequate) is much more anti-american than chomsky’s praise for people who were in fact struggling in the face of massive air attacks and his quite conventional pro-socialism rhetoric. (charles I does believe in the first A, yes?) many absolutely mainstream americans considered then -and still do - that the US was significantly, if not completely, in the wrong and have been joined in the retrospective position by such left-wing extemist commie symp pacifists as R mcnamara.
having established that he is completely clueless re the vietnam era (more evidence confirming my suspicion that “you had to have been there”), Charles I’s “expertise” on the current situation is called into question, notwithstanding its alignment with that of well-known objective pundit Charles II. not the best sources for supporting the extreme position - right or wrong; I have no idea - that the true road to peace is total (regional) war.
charles III
On Fresh Air a couple of days ago, a NYT bureau chief in the Middle East made an observation I found perceptive. He said that he has been around war long enough to know that being a victim does not necessarily make your opinion right.
That would be my response to Skip.
[Jason, I tried to post this last night (or maybe it was already early this morning) but it didn't go through then.]
Well, that was unexpected.
I can understand how frustrating the status quo “peace process” is, but lashing out into war with Lebanon, Syria, and Iran does not seem like a wise response. It might be more emotionally satisfying, for a while, but it could be much, much worse than the status quo. I shouldn’t need to tell you that wars can be very damaging things, and very unpredictable. They can easily escalate and spiral out of control, or they can create, widen, or deepen lasting antipathies. Sometimes they clear the way for peace, but sometimes they do the opposite. What could happen here? How hard would Israel get hit? Could the US stay out of it? What about other Muslim and Arab countries? What would happen in Iraq and Afghanistan?
I’d recommend a hefty dose of caution before embarking on something like that. You had better have a clear idea of the purpose of your war, knowledge of the military objectives that would help you fulfill that purpose, and a thorough analysis that shows you have a good chance of accomplishing your goals. “[L]et Israel knock its neighbors down a few pegs and see if it helps” does not meet that bar. “Let’s humiliate these people - then they’ll seek a real peace” is not an especially reliable approach. And Israel’s previous wars haven’t really done the trick. What would be different about this one? As I asked Charles, what makes you think that this is going to work?
War on this scale doesn’t really seem necessary for Israel’s defense, since, as you point out, Israel is strong and its neighbors are weak. Israel is not on the brink of destruction.
Fighting for the principle that only states may use violence is a rather strange reason for a country to go to war. Presumably they would fight, not merely as idealists beholden to this principle, but as pragmatic people trying to make it so that this principle would actually be followed in the future. But a war by a single country against its neighbors, especially a country that is unpopular in much of the world (and would rapidly grow vastly more unpopular precise because it fought for this principle), does not seem like a very effective way to make the principle stick. What’s more, Israel would be violating at least one other longstanding principles of war, proportionality, and they might be seen as violating others as well. Is damage to those principles less dangerous than a weakening of states’ monopoly on violence?
The strangest paragraph in your post, I think, is the one where you dwell on Hezbollah’s lack of moral authority for complaining about Israel killing civilians. I would have thought that the relevant moral fact is that it is wrong to kill civilians, and especially wrong to do so on purpose. Questions about what Hezbollah thinks about Israel’s actions, or what moral standing Hezbollah has to make judgments here, are secondary if they are relevant at all. (Compare: The Baathists have no moral authority to complain about what the US has done at Abu Ghraib. Yes, but who cares?)
I think that you’re misreading Charles Bird. He is being more moderate than you realize. His complaint against Lebanon seems to be that they are unable to crack down on Hezbollah because of their weakness, not that they culpably choosing to let Hezbollah carry on. He wants the Lebanese army to take care of Hezbollah, but he thinks that, in order for them to be up to the task, Israel needs to soften up Hezbollah first. So I’m pretty sure that Charles would say that attacks on Lebanon are not legitimate (unless they can be characterized as actually being attacks on Hezbollah). He also doesn’t appear to want war against Syria and Iran (he recommends diplomacy, albeit “get the f**k out” diplomacy).
I may go back and read some of what you’ve written against Iraq, since this certainly puts those arguments in a different light.
Blar –
First, I believe I offered more than an emotional reason for supporting Israel’s actions. This conflict is about the very principles by which war and ordinary life are separated; nothing could be more important.
No, Israel is not threatened with immediate destruction. Yet protecting its citizens’ lives is justification enough to go to war, even if, without the war, the state itself would not be destroyed. The state exists to protect its citizens, and war is the proper response when foreign nationals attack those citizens.
The strangest paragraph in your post, I think, is the one where you dwell on Hezbollah’s lack of moral authority for complaining about Israel killing civilians.
I don’t mind if anyone else complains about Israel killing civilians. So far as I can tell, though, Israel has not been doing this primarily or as a matter of policy. It is hypocritical of Hezbollah to complain here. And the same applies to those in the west who support Lebanon in this conflict, because Lebanon cannot be meaningfully separated from Hezbollah. Yet.
As to why I think this war will be “different:” I actually wouldn’t much mind if it were more of the same. It would be justified even so. Israel is surrounded by neighbors that would like nothing better than to destroy it. And because they cannot, they instead kill civilians. What would your remedy be, if not to go after the child-killers and those who protect them? Negotiating with them is obscene, particularly when negotiations only serve as a pretext to continue the killing. After so many years, I think must be beyond all question.
Yet there is at least one reason to think that the current war might turn out differently: Lebanon is quite a different place now than it formerly was. Will this be enough? I can only hope so.
Meanwhile, if Charles Bird chooses not to consider how Lebanon has coddled Hezbollah, how it has taken the group into its ordinary political life, and how Hezbollah members now serve in the Lebanese cabinet — then that is his fault, not mine. Lebanon is wrong here, just as wrong as if we allowed one or two members of al Qaeda to serve openly in our government.
If Israel helps the Lebanese people realize the consequences of their actions, and if these people pressure their government, then perhaps we will have change.
As to Iraq, my views have not changed in the least. Israel was directly attacked by a de facto agency of the Lebanese government; we were not similarly attacked by anyone tied to Iraq.
You got it absolutely right Jason. First time, no changes. : )
The quote from Charles Bird: “Israel is doing the work that the Lebanese army should be doing but cannot. The simple answer to ending the current violence between Israel and Hezbollah is to degrade Hezbollah to the point where Israel can hand the keys to the Lebanese army, giving the government full sovereignty over its country. ”
The Lebanese Army should be bombing their own airport, and bombing/shelling Beirut?
Barry, your question is absurd. I wonder if I should even bother answering it. But I will, perhaps for the others’ sake more than for your own.
By declining to punish Hezbollah and by allowing it to become a part of ordinary Lebanese society, the government of Lebanon has incurred responsibility for the group. If it does not wish to bear this responsibility, then it should fight Hezbollah and destroy it. There is no other meaningful alternative.
Because the government of Lebanon has chosen to look the other way as Hezbollah — an entity operating inside Lebanese borders — engages in a private, non-state war, Lebanon becomes a party to the conflict. If the Lebanese do not wish their airport to be bombed, well, I sympathize. I wouldn’t like it either. But the way to prevent this would have been to destroy Hezbollah.
Airports are legitimate targets in warfare, and, so far as I know, only precision bombs have been used in populated areas. This is exactly how it should be.
I’d ask if you had any questions, or if this all made sense to you, but, by the tone of your post, it’s pretty clear that you don’t really care. Anything to attack a liberal democracy, I guess.
Jason, first, calling my comment ‘absurd’ is bit much, considering your position. Second, have you noticed that the people of Lebanon are trying to put things together back together after 30 years of civil war, and don’t have full control in a centralized state? In Iraq, the US would love to be in that much control, is spending (IIRC) $10 billion per month, and failing miserably at it.
Third, your position pretty much justifies every act of terrorism commited against Israel - both on the ‘dual-use’ criterion, and on the ‘hold them responsible’ criterion. On the last criterion, blowing up a few civilians in Israel is far more justifiable - Israel is a democracy, which has been pursuing an ethnic-cleansing policy for decades now, no matter what their surrounding countries do.
Jason, first, calling my comment ‘absurd’ is bit much, considering your position.
Suggesting that a country bomb its own airport is absurd, regardless of my position.
have you noticed that the people of Lebanon are trying to put things together back together after 30 years of civil war
Including Hezbollah in their government is a funny way to do this.
Third, your position pretty much justifies every act of terrorism commited against Israel - both on the ‘dual-use’ criterion, and on the ‘hold them responsible’ criterion.
My position justifies no terrorism against Israel whatsoever: There is an enormous moral distinction between attacking legitimate military targets (while sometimes accidentally hitting civilians) — and attacking civilians on purpose, as a matter of explicit policy. Israel has done the former, and — under just war theory — Lebanon may reply by attacking Israel. But only in kind: That is, by attacking Israel’s military resources. Blowing oneself up in a shopping center doesn’t count.
As to ethnic cleansing, this is a simple lie. Yes, Israel has done wrong in the past. But if Israel showed the same systematic disregard for Palestinian lives as Hezbollah and Hamas show for Israeli lives, there just wouldn’t be anymore Palestinians left by now. Israel has been a model of restraint, both in the present conflict and in the past.
Great job, Jason. I’m glad to hear a voice of reason coming out of the libertarian camp on this issue. I just can’t read Liberty & Power anymore … to me it seems like some of the folks over there are not so much in support of liberty but against government and government action in any form whatsoever. Libertarianism is about the non-initiation of force–not the complete rejection of any use of force. There are legitimate uses of force, and Israel’s use in this situation is a perfect example. Thanks!
Jason, I didn’t mean to suggest that your warmongering is based on unthinking frustration. You obviously have analysis and arguments in addition to emotion. It’s just that your arguments and analysis mostly just establish why the status quo (as of a few weeks ago) has been frustrating, unacceptable, bad, and so on. They say a lot less about why war is the appropriate response to these problems. It is, at the very least, extremely irresponsible to advocate war without thinking through what you’re getting into, and what is actually going to happen once the war has started (cf. Iraq). Would war actually make things better, and not make things worse?
The two main justifications that you cite are the protection of Israeli citizens and the principle of states’ monopoly on the exercise of legitimate violence. But, as I said before, it seems doubtful that an Israeli war against Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran would actually achieve these goals, and it could easily undermine them. It’s not easy to wipe out an enemy in asymmetric warfare, especially if your acts of violence increase their popular support. A unilateral attack by a party to the conflict does not seem like an effective way to establish the Weberian principle. War with Iran, Syria, and Lebanon would put Israeli citizens at immediate risk of violence and could also increase their long-term risk by further antagonizing these countries and their people.
Then there are the costs of war. Some costs are predictable. The current bombing campaign has already killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians, dislocated tens of thousands from their homes, and destroyed a lot of infrastructure, and a war against three countries would obviously be much more damaging. There are also many risks that are less certain, like the war escalating to involve Iraq or the United States, further radicalizing the Middle East, increasing the perceived legitimacy of Hezbollah’s claims to be a resistance force, increasing recruitment for al Qaeda type terrorist organizations, undermining the transition towards liberal democracy, dealing a blow to the global economy because of oil shortages, or inspiring countries (and non-state entities) to strengthen their military capabilities as much as possible so that they could stand up to modern militaries like Israel’s (cf. Iran’s nuclear ambitions). The war could be disastrous even if only one or two of these risks are realized.
You ask what my remedy is, and the obvious answer is that I don’t have one. Some problems don’t have “remedies”, and the existence of violent non-state organizations like Hezbollah may be among them. The assumption that there is a remedy can be a dangerous one, because when nothing is working it can inspire people to favor escalating to more violent, more dramatic approaches since surely that will fix things.
The changes towards democracy and away from Syria that happened in Lebanon last year are a hopeful sign, at least, which suggest that it might be possible to move forward without war. Part of Charles Bird’s point is that the Lebanese government is too weak, and Hezbollah too entrenched, for the government to eliminate Hezbollah even if it was a top priority. Do you agree? It is also true that the Lebanese government has not been acting as if eliminating Hezbollah was top priority. That also needs to change, but I wouldn’t recommend rushing off to war to force the change, especially not before spending some time putting pressure on the young government to change, trying diplomacy, and involving international organizations like the UN. They haven’t shown much active support for Hezbollah’s military agenda, which is another good sign.
Israel can also continue to use violent means to try to weaken Hezbollah, but they should try to keep the violence narrowly targeted. There are lots of moral and strategic factors for them to balance, and that’s one of the more important ones.
Jason: “Suggesting that a country bomb its own airport is absurd, regardless of my position.”
Jason, I thought that you understood sarcasm; I’m obviously mistaken. I was going to restate my case a bit more clearly, for better comprehension, but I think that that effort would be wasted in your case. Suffice to say that you’re now in the same camp as Ward ‘Little Eichman’ Churchill, and Osama Bin ‘The American people are responsible for the actions of their government’ Laden.
Jason, I thought that you understood sarcasm; I’m obviously mistaken.
It is possible to be absurd and sarcastic at the same time. I don’t believe I denied this.
But if you want me to take the bait, here goes: To the extent that we are a democracy, the American people are responsible for the actions of their government. But this does not make us legitimate targets in a war.
Meanwhile, an airport is a perfectly legitimate target; the Geneva Conventions do permit the destruction of airports, even if this means that civilians will suffer. Let us not be naive here: A war cannot be conducted without some incidental civilian casualties. There is a world of moral difference, however, between hurting civilians in pursuit of legitimate military ends — and hurting civilians because you want to hurt civilians.
If you cannot see this, then no, there is no point in discussing.
Jason,
Here’s where I’m confused. You lay ultimate responsibility for Hezbollah at the feet of the Lebanese government. But so far as I know, Israel has not killed anyone in the Lebanese government. They have killed between 25 (according to Hezbollah) and 100 (according to IDF) guerillas (whose deaths I do not mourn) and in the neighborhood of 300 civilians.
Now, a hawk might say that yes, it is mostly civilians paying for crimes that are the responsibility of their government, but ultimately they are responsible for their government, so they’re getting what they deserve. But you explicitly reject this logic:
To the extent that we are a democracy, the American people are responsible for the actions of their government. But this does not make us legitimate targets in a war.
So how do you figure military action on the scale of the Israeli response is morally justified?
Oh, and on practical grounds, let’s not forget that Hezbollah formed in response to the Israeli invasion of ‘82 to cleanse southern Lebanon of its PLO terrorists.
Now, where’s my “Mission Accomplished” banner?
AMW –
I find the Israeli response justified, to the extent that I know about it, because it appears that these acts are being done to eliminate a threat to a legitimate and mostly rights-respecting state. If civilians are harmed — and I acknowledge that they have been — then that is a shame and a tragedy. But they cannot lay the blame on Israel; it lies with their own government and with the Hezbollah sympathizers among them.
As to the events of 1982, I don’t see how this changes anything. Lebanon was wrong then; it is wrong now; broadly speaking, Israel acted properly in both cases.
[...] Jason Kuznicki made one of the best, most important points that can be made about this war’s meaning. Hezballah and its ilk poses an existential threat to the nation-state system. Iran is using the West’s humanitarian impulses (namely, not killing civilians and limiting war) to game the nation-state system. They fund Hezballah, Hezballah attacks Israel, and Israel has no one to strike back at. Iran’s too far away and the attacks aren’t coming from Iran. Lebanon shrugs its shoulders and blames it on Hezballah, and then complains when Israel attacks Hezballah-controlled portions of Lebanon. Hezballah itself has no seat of government at which to strike, no cities to capture. The media portrays the citizens in southern Lebanon as “innocent.” So who does Hezballah represent? It is, as Jason pointed out, something of a return to the private armies of the middle ages, except with rockets. [...]
Just a comment, but as a former Marine with 6 years in the service, we were taught three things:
1. “Crush the enemy and seek the lamentations of the women” - no, actually that is an old Conan movie quote :) , but for real: (U.S. Marines are shock troops that should destroy enemy resistance and hold a position until US ground forces can reinforce them. We were never trained to be “cops” or to worry about civilian concerns, other than to avoid combat with non-combatants. Pretty simple, eh? Needs to be for young men and women that are in the line of fire trying to secure an objective when they are always facing superior numbers on enemy soil. There are no “committees” during a fire-fight.)
2. The objective of warfare is: “To remove the capability of the enemy to inflict harm on the opposing force.” This is really simple - take away their guns, support structure, transportation structure, ability to communicate and leadership and they will no longer be able to wage war on you. This does not mean that you kill everyone you can, it means you inflict harm to the above structures to stop the conflict.
3. Behave in according with the Code of Military Justice and US law (during war). Set an example for other Marines and the opposing force in exercising mercy and in giving aid to civilians when appropriate. This means that I help wounded enemy forces and by-standers when I can, but I do not let this interfere with my objective. I.E., you don’t stop during the fire-fight to help enemy wounded and civilians, but after it is over you sure as heck will do so.
I served with some fine folks during my time, and never experienced issues with guys and gals that sought to kill needlessly. THEY ALL sought to make peace and go home as soon as they could.
I believe the Israeli soldiers are no different than any other soldier (that obey the Geneva Convention), and being mostly reserve forces, probably have no desire to be in Lebanon and would rather be back with their families and jobs, just like NORMAL PEOPLE all over the world all do.
I do not believe that the Hamas or Hezballah fighters are NORMAL PEOPLE - that are fanatics seduced by an early meeting with their God through martyrdom brought on by their “supposed” sacrifice by killing non-Muslims.
Where in the Bible does it say that all Christians must crusade the world and eradicate all non-believers? Don’t know that it says that in the Koran, either. In fact, in our faith, we are taught to reach out and spread the word of the lord, and nowhere does it say that we should penalize those that do not accept it.
So, bottom-line: Let’s hope Israel makes some headway and stops the terror, although I think it will be short-lived, and if we want to seek answer to the longer term question, we should consider that economic answers are the ONLY reason for warfare and the only solution to problems like these.
Also - Hezballah is indeed part of the Lebanese government.
They hold 7 seats in parliment, this was because it was deemed impossible to disarm them after the 89 re-election following the civil war:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=16600
Cheers!
NotAffiliated –
Thank you very much for some expert commentary. Since I have never been in the military, I value your perspective on these issues. Welcome to the Positive Liberty commentariat; I hope you’ll stay around.
As to the Bible, I’m quite sure it doesn’t demand forced conversions through conquest. As to Islam, I have not read enough of the Koran to have an informed opinion about it. I confess I found the Koran nearly unreadable, both in its repetition and in its fascination with divine punishment and divine reward. My mind just doesn’t work that way, I guess.