{"id":37063,"date":"2024-04-04T09:47:54","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T16:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=37063"},"modified":"2024-04-01T09:50:27","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T16:50:27","slug":"the-cognitive-dissonance-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-cognitive-dissonance-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cognitive Dissonance of War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Then he rose, grenade in hand. He was pulling the fuse. He cocked his arm back to throw\u2014 and then he saw me looking at him across my rifle barrel. He stopped. He looked right at me. That\u2019s where the image of his eyes was burned into my brain forever, right over the sights of my M- 16. I remember hoping he wouldn\u2019t throw his grenade. Maybe he\u2019d throw it aside and raise his hands or something and I wouldn\u2019t have to shoot him. But his lips snarled back and he threw it right at me.[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n

This account in chapter 5 of The Good Kill<\/em> took me back to a chapel service at Wheaton College that took place only a couple of weeks into my freshman year. The guest speaker, I have no idea anymore who he was, recounted a remarkably similar story of looking an enemy soldier in the eye as he pulled the trigger. At 18 years old, having grown up in an anabaptist tradition, at the time I firmly believed that all true Christians were pacifists, and I was genuinely horrified to hear this speaker\u2019s story.<\/p>\r\n

Fast-forward to November 2015 when 130 people died in coordinated terrorist attacks across 3 separate locations in Paris. Suddenly the atmosphere was charged with fear, and public spaces were flooded with police presence. And guns. Large guns walking right past me and my children ALL THE TIME. But this time I didn\u2019t feel the same revulsion when I thought about the military police using their weapons. Mixed with the fear (I\u2019m not proud of it, but I was honestly afraid) I felt a sort of comfort knowing that the police were there and ready to act if the worst should happen. I felt something else mixed in with the fear and the comfort. I felt a lot of cognitive dissonance. I still did not want to admit that I would be ok with someone being killed, even if they were attacking innocent people.<\/p>\r\n

Fast-forward again to this semester and Marc LiVecche\u2019s book The Good Kill<\/em>. This book takes us on a winding journey through historical and current thought regarding pacifism and just war theories. LiVecche weaves together so many diverse voices that it almost becomes overwhelming to follow his line of reasoning (in the best sense because it is just so complex).<\/p>\r\n

The powerful voices he draws on highlight some general principles:<\/p>\r\n

For Timothy Kudo, to be willing to wage war \u201cyou have to recalibrate your moral compass.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\r\n

For Reinhold Niebuhr \u201ckilling is wrong, but in war it is necessary.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\r\n

And of course, Aquinas who wrote about \u201cthree conditions necessary for the just resort to force\u2014 sovereign authority, just cause, and right intention.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\r\n

LiVecche lands on the idea that Christians are called to love our neighbor and sometimes that can look like \u201cloving harshly\u201d[5]<\/a> especially if it is in defense of other neighbors who are innocent. He goes on to discuss \u201chow to love a man even as you kill him\u2026 The first answer is the obvious one: with something akin to regret.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Later he puts it another way: There is no \u201ccontradiction in hoping for peace but engaging in war and weeping over it after the fact.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\r\n

We seem obliged to live with cognitive dissonance. A purely pacifist stance is too idealistic and not tenable in the real world (\u201cBut, look at Costa Rica[8]<\/a>!\u201d my 18-year-old self would have said). Even if we adopt a Just War theology, it is doubtful that any war past, present or future could truly be said to meet all the necessary criteria. Even as LiVecche aims to relieve soldiers and veterans of their feelings of guilt, Martin Cook argues that it is psychologically difficult if not impossible.[9]<\/a> It seems there is plenty of cognitive dissonance to go around.<\/p>\r\n

I will conclude with one intriguing thought from LiVecche and then one more thought of my own. He says, \u201cWhile pacifism remains a Christian option, it is one only in a way broadly analogous to something like the call to celibacy\u2014 an exception reserved for those few possessed by a very particular divine vocation. It is the pacifist, not the soldier, who is the exception to the Christian norm.\u201d[10]<\/a> However in his conclusion he points out that \u201cin the United States less than 0.5 % serve in the profession of arms.\u201d[11]<\/a> So could it be that to become a just warrior is also a very particular calling, a vocation that God bestows on only a few, the exception to the Christian norm?<\/p>\r\n

_________________________________________________________<\/p>\r\n

[1]<\/a> Karl Marlantes, What It Is Like to Go to <\/em>War (New York: Grove Press, 2011), 29.<\/p>\r\n

[2]<\/a> Marc LiVecche, The Good Kill: Just War and Moral Injury<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021) 17.<\/p>\r\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 39.<\/p>\r\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 86.<\/p>\r\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 73.<\/p>\r\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., 109.<\/p>\r\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid., 177.<\/p>\r\n

[8]<\/a> https:\/\/www.unesco.org\/en\/memory-world\/abolition-army-costa-rica#:~:text=Since%201949%2C%20Costa%20Rica%20became,of%20Costa%20Rica’s%20political%20life<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

[9]<\/a> Cook, Martin L. Issues in Military Ethics. <\/em>(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013) 115.<\/p>\r\n

[10]<\/a> Marc LiVecche, The Good Kill: Just War and Moral Injury<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021) 95.<\/p>\r\n

[11]<\/a> Ibid., 183.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Then he rose, grenade in hand. He was pulling the fuse. He cocked his arm back to throw\u2014 and then he saw me looking at him across my rifle barrel. He stopped. He looked right at me. That\u2019s where the image of his eyes was burned into my brain forever, right over the sights of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2489,3098],"class_list":["post-37063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-livecche","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37063"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37112,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37063\/revisions\/37112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}