Violence and Our Attitudes to War

Recently I saw the film "The Baader Meinhof Complex," which is a very dark and depressing based on the true story of the 1970s revolutionary terrorist group. There are some very interesting points to draw from the film on the subject of war and violence. The Baader Meinhof group was a group that fought against what they termed "American Imperialism" and they attacked American targets in West Germany with various demands including the USA ceasing military operations in Vietnam. The one rule of this group, as it was very influenced by the ideas of Marx, Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevara, was that its attacks were not against the German people. However, after a series of attacks on American military bases the leaders of the group are captured and imprisoned. Their example inspires many others to join the cause and these new members of the group plan a number of attacks and kidnappings to force the government to release the captives. These attacks get increasingly violent until finally they enlist the help of an Arab terrorist group who capture a plane full of innocent people for them. This completely breaks the rule of not attacking the people. The group fought for a cause, that I had a certain amount of sympathy for, but they decided that their best hope was in violence. As the film unfolds it shows that as they sowed violence they reaped violence. An as they sowed violence they reaped much more that did not obey rules or discriminate against innocent or guilty. This is a principle that we can see today. Fighting hate with hate never inspires love. In both Afghanistan and Iraq the West has approached the "terrorists" with an attitude of hate, the precise tactics being let's kill them all. We are fighting the enemy with his weapons and are then surprised that we are losing. Humans are very impressionable, we are made like this so we can take the impression of our Creator Father, if you surround an English speaker with lots of French speakers over time they will learn to speak French. If you surround the people of Iraq with hate they will start hating. In their book "Jesus For President" Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw tell the story of an American soldier who shot an Iraqi man who was shooting at him. A young boy came out of a nearby house, picked up his father's gun and started shooting at the soldiers, they shot the boy too. This is not a problem that men can solve. In the West we have just about worked out that the war in Iraq is bad but I do not think we in the West have yet grasped just what kind of a problem we have caused in Iraq. There still seems to be this idea that if we go home and leave the Iraqis to their fate that the problem wil sort itself out or if not at least it will be, in the words of Futurama, "a tragic, BUT FAR AWAY, problem." Unfortunately I believe that God will hold us to account for our actions in Iraq until we attempt to reconcile ourselves to all the people we have hurt in the country and repent of our actions. The church in the West needs to pray for and support the church in Iraq as it is the only hope Iraq has left.