#36 The Art of Government:
Military Servants, Political Masters, ‘The People’
& the Purpose of the Military
– Dr Regeena Kingsley
[Originally published on 9 April 2021 and republished on 28 January 2022]
As I have already outlined in the previous two blogs, ‘#34 Crucial Questions on Rules of Engagement (ROE): (Q1/3) Are ROE Legally-Binding “Military Orders” or Merely Guidelines?’ and ‘#35 Crucial Questions on Rules of Engagement (ROE): (Q2/3) Do Commanders Have Discretionary Authority to Change ROE?’, Rules of Engagement (ROE) are the critical lynchpin, or key interconnecting devices, between the two separate and different political and security spheres of a nation during any armed conflict.
ROE are binding political-military-legal orders given to national military forces by civilian national government officials, which clearly limit or restrict what the military can do on behalf of the nation, and in the name of the government, while actively deployed in a theatre of armed conflict.
Servants & Masters
Consequently, as may be deduced from these statements above, in most countries of the world, national armed forces are the military servants of the civilian masters in government.
As such, and because of the changing nature and short-term tenure of governments of various and often rival political parties and ideologies, especially in so-called “liberal” or “free” democratic countries, national militaries are meant to be strictly – officially and operationally – apolitical and non-partisan.
Military Servants
As the servants of civilian government masters, members of military forces are also not permitted to ever voice their own personal military or political opinions in the public sphere. They are confined only to expressing themselves to their superiors via the official Chain of Command, which leads back to the Ministry of Defence, the Minister/Secretary of Defence, and ultimately to the powerful Commander-in-Chief and Chief Executive of government, the Head of Government – the Prime Minister, President, or, in a few cases, the King or Queen in Monarchy States.
Nevertheless, although this is the general rule, the exception to the rule has sometimes rarely occurred in history, whereby military officers have spoken out publicly in extreme cases – when they believe dire security or military emergencies have arisen that threaten the safety of the national population or the success of certain vital military enterprises in which the nation is engaged. These instances have generally not ended well for the officer(s) concerned, and resulted in punitive demotion of these military servants by their civilian government overlords, or even – fairly or unfairly – the complete termination of the brave-but-outspoken officer’s career.
Consider, for example, the ultimate fate of the exceptional, highly-decorated and famous five-star American Field Marshal of WWII, and Commander of the U.S.-led UN military operation in Korea after North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in 1950, General Douglas MacArthur. After voicing public criticism in 1951 of the “Truman Doctrine” by way of a letter to a Republican U.S. Congressman and Speaker of the House of Representatives (specifically President Harry Truman’s orders to advancing American and South Korean UN forces in Korea that were conducting offensive military operations to retreat from North Korean territory back to the 38th Parallel dividing-line during the Korean War, and additionally to never engage in battle the massive numbers of Chinese forces who had been suddenly deployed into North Korea by China in support of Communism in Asia), MacArthur was quickly removed from command for ‘insubordination’ and ‘risking World War Three’, and forced into ignominious retirement after 14 years of continuously distinguished military service. [MacArthur, Letter to U.S. Congressman Martin, 20 March 1951: ‘Generally [my] views are well known and clearly understood, as they follow the conventional pattern of meeting force with maximum counter force as we have never failed to do in the past. Your view… is in conflict with neither logic nor this tradition.’][1]
‘It is not a question of who wants war and who wants peace. All men of good conscience earnestly seek peace. The method alone is the issue. Some, with me, would achieve peace through a prompt and decisive victory and a saving of human lives. Others, through appeasement and compromise of moral principle, with less regard for human lives. The one course follows our great American tradition, the other can but lead to unending slaughter and our country’s moral debasement.’
– General Douglas MacArthur
Or more recently, consider the curt dismissal of four-star American general, General Stanley McChrystal, the celebrated commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Special Forces units in Iraq (including oversight command of the missions that captured Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein out of his hiding hole in the ground in 2003 and the killing of Al-Qaeda terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006), COIN expert, former Director of the Joint Staff in 2008, and simultaneous Commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and all U.S. Forces in Afghanistan from 2009, who was described by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as ‘the best commander in nine years of US military operations in Afghanistan’. After McChrystal dared to voice public criticism of and personal disappointment with President Barack Obama’s slow, ponderous, ‘painful’, and inadequately under-resourced force decision with regard to the military situation in Afghanistan, made at the conclusion of an 89-day-long ‘Af-Pak’ Strategic Review, in an interview published by the Rolling Stones magazine in 2010 (10,000 troops short of the lowest-possible force strength “surge” number of 40,000 that McChrystal had requested in his official report, which he considered was a ‘bare minimum’ number and absolutely fundamental and necessary for America and its NATO allies to successfully complete the Afghan COIN mission based on security conditions on the ground at that time), he was fired by President Obama and removed from the highest command position and ‘top job’ in Afghanistan for failing to ‘meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general’, and for behaviour that ‘undermines the civilian control of the military that’s at the core of our democratic system.’[2]
As one may see by these two examples, it is an extremely dangerous thing for members of national armed forces to ‘cross the boundary line’ and step vocally from the military sphere into the sphere of domestic national politics, no-matter how high their rank, how important their cause, nor how significant, weighty, right, or consequential their opinion.
Civilian Masters
However, these civilian political masters, who hold power and control over their military servants are, in turn, likewise subordinate to a higher authority – the population or People of each State. They are fundamentally the temporary Servants of the People in each country, and are elected on a time-specific basis to meet the needs of the nation’s population.
In fact, sovereignty – the right, supreme power or authority of a person or entity to control and rule over peoples and their possessed territories, waters and skies – always rests with and fundamentally arises from all the peoples of the land to be ruled.
This means that in Sovereign States, the population of the State – the People – are the true and legitimate power-holders and king-makers of the State. Representative and elected Governments temporarily wield and respect this sovereignty, entrusted to them by the People.
In ‘liberal’ or ‘free’ Democracies, this sovereignty is socially, politically and legally passed or transferred to the elected Governments, who have been periodically and voluntarily chosen as representative leaders by these same people in national democratic elections, to exercise this ‘chiefly sovereignty’ on behalf of all of the citizen peoples of each Sovereign State. Political representatives are ‘chosen’ or ‘selected’ by their people to temporarily enact this sovereignty on behalf of and for the good of the State’s population or People, by winning majority votes by the majority population, regionally and/or nationally.
Key Definitions of Government Types:
Oligarchy
Government by an elite few for the elite few
Plutocracy
Government by the wealthy for the wealthy
Juntocracy
Government by the military for the military
Monarchy
Government by a royal monarch for the good of the people
Democracy
Government of the people by the people for the people
It is for this precise reason that political parties desiring to govern the State in each nation, adopt what they consider to be the best ideas and policies to address the needs of their national population, and during election campaigns seek to intellectually convince the population that their formulated ideas and policies are the best, most reasonable, and most practical and achievable choice of options available to them. The people are thereby informed to make their choice via access to balanced media coverage, access to political interviews, meetings or rallies with the various leader candidates, and respectful but robust national debates between the political leaders – and potential national leaders – of all the viable and competing political parties, which is always broadcast (and also objectively discussed and analysed) on multiple media fronts nationwide.
When the appointed day of elections arrives, these ordinary but powerful, “free”, common people will – using their own judgement, common sense, conscience, past experiences, or understanding of national history, and the record of political behaviour of these parties when in power – vote for the political party they believe will best lead the nation at that time.
Voilà, the beauty that is democracy – “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
In fact, democracy, as a system of government, is both curative and corrective. There is a tendency in human history, as clearly demonstrated in the annals of world history, for national populations to swing from one extreme to the other extreme over the course of passing decades (often due to “over-correction”). Consider, for example, the radical swings in majority views among Nation-States, just over the past three centuries of history until today, from the 1700s to the present: from State Dictatorship of royals with privileged nobles, to State Terror of the People with royal executions and persecuted nobles; from Slavery to Vigilante Emancipation; from Imperialism to Pacifism; from Authoritarian Politico-Religious Fascism to Marxist Atheist Communism; from Statist Communism to Elite Capitalist Oligarchism; from Independent Isolationist Statism to UN-ruled “No Borders” Globalism; from extreme Wildlife and Natural Resource Exploitation to extreme Wildlife and Natural Resource Protectionism; and from Power-Worship and Competitive ‘Nuclear War’ Logic to Planet-Worship and Climate Paranoia & Illogic.
However, in a system of democratic government where the views of the majority population are reflected and represented by their elected political leaders, such extremes in viewpoint are corrected by the experience of reality. The people must suffer with their leaders and ‘live out’ their choices. In other words – and in complete accordance with the natural political law of “Cause and Effect” – bad leaders, bad viewpoints, and bad policies are regularly, over time, exposed to be exactly what they are, through the negative experiences of the population being ruled and governed by them, and by the excesses or crises nationally and internationally that result from them. While, to the contrary, good leaders, good viewpoints, and good policies are confirmed and reinforced as good, by the positive experiences of the population and the beneficial or fruitful national and international results caused by them. And both enter the historical record of the nation and the Nation-State.
Thus democracy has a corrective effect on bad, wrong, immoral, radical or excessive views among the population and their political leaders and “institutional elites” – especially where misinformation is rife in society as a result of unbalanced, unfair, dishonest, and non-objective media outlets and biased academic educators – shifting them from the majority population to minority pockets among the population, or even over time rendering them obsolete. Social, political, legal and judicial experiences sustained over one electoral term will have an impact at the next round of national elections, leading ultimately to more moderate views among the majority population of the nation, and a centering of politics away from radical or extreme leaders and policies and towards more balanced or reasonable leaders and policies. In this way, the nation of the Nation-State – whether a homogenous people-nation or unified but multi-ethnic people-nations – is greatly sieved, tested, benefited, and enhanced, over the course and passage of time, by the democratic process. History is a great temperer and teacher, of both the People and its leaders.
This democratic process clearly demonstrates, moreover, that the solution to radical, unbalanced or overtly wrong views among the population – based on and stemming from small-thinking, shallow-thinking, misinformation or misunderstanding – is not less information through legal gagging, government censorship, the strict control of information, oppression, persecution, or “cancel culture”, but actually the opposite – “more information” – through freedom of speech, robust debates, and the free and frank clashes and exchanges of ideas and facts on various issues and topics of import to the nation and the State, through which melee truth and reason is able to rise to the top and come to the fore within society and among the majority population.
A balanced media is extremely helpful and highly important in this regard, and has a critical role to play in this democratic process of sieving and separating ‘good wheat’ ideas from ‘bad chaff’ ones. Strong Left–Centre–Right media outlets, publishing information throughout the nation, and each attempting to objectively and reasonably debate all the ideas on both sides of any issue, is needed in this regard. Indeed, a balanced media is essential in and to the life, health and longevity of Democracies, even if the State has to fund – with no strings attached – certain media outlets, in order to permanently secure balance in the media that is performing this vital role of informing the population, so that each individual citizen can make his or her own informed choice regarding which ideas are good, right and true, and therefore worthy of their belief and support. “The Truth sets free.”
[This is especially needed now with regard to the issue of the Palestinian people and their lack of genuine, caring, and peace-loving leaders (“Shepherds”) – inhabitants ever since the mass killing of nearly the entire Jewish nation and the forced deportation of most Jewish survivors as slaves from their ancient homeland of the State of Israel (the remaining King-Tribe of Judah, Genesis 32:24-32/Genesis 49:10-12), by the Roman Empire between 70-132 A.D., one generation after the rejection and execution of Jesus Christ the Saviour (the “2nd Greater Exile” of the Jewish remnant after the Babylonian Exile – Matthew 1, Luke 16:10-31, Mark 15-16). The Romans imported Romans, Greco-Syrians and other ethnic groups to occupy, hellenise, and work the emptied land of Israel, which the Roman Emperor Hadrian spitefully renamed after Israel’s former ancient enemies – the Philistines (“Palaestina”, later anglicised to “Palestine”), a name that was kept and applied to inhabitants by later waves of Muslim Arab and Muslim-Christian Ottoman Turk conquerors, as well as by the post-WWI, Christian British rulers of this land.]
In the end, and beneath it all, pure “common sense” among the majority population is the plumbline or centreline against which all leaders, viewpoints and policies are measured, and is the centering and rallying heartbeat and drumbeat of the nation in the State. This common sense of and among the majority population of the citizenry will, ultimately, act as ballast in the Ship of State, enabling the Nation-State to manoeuvre through and survive the chaotic, frightening or even lethal storms in which it finds itself, either as a result of the internal domestic or foreign decisions made for the nation by the People’s elected political leaders, or as a result of externally emerging and influencing global strategic landscapes, situations and crises.
A president (stability) is better than no president (anarchy),
a legitimate president (democracy) better than an illegitimate president (autocracy),
and a good president (moral liberty) better than a bad president (immoral tyranny).
Government ‘Servants of the People’, then, in reverential fear of God and moral respect for Man, must responsibly carry and exercise this sovereignty of the State, by carefully, sensibly, and in good faith and goodwill, formulating, arguing for, passing by additional majority votes, enacting, and enforcing domestic and foreign decisions, policies and laws in Parliament that will safeguard and ensure the ultimate good, safety, prosperity and well-being of their People.
The “People” in each Sovereign State may be ethnically and culturally homogenous, or multi-ethnic and multi-cultural in composition (including a few or many people-nations as in the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland), but by virtue of the people’s National Constitution of their State, the assorted peoples living in each Sovereign State have been spiritually, politically and legally unified into one collective body or nation of equal citizens. They are the true anchor, heart, and essence of the homeland and the State. The People that the State exists to serve and protect.
[If an elected Government forms and enacts decisions, policies or laws that do not help, secure or benefit the majority of the citizen peoples from whom by majority-vote that Government derives all its legitimacy and authority to govern, thereby divorcing or cutting itself off from its own roots and corrupting representative democracy, then that Government has ‘gone rogue’ and become illegitimate and a political opponent and foe of the People they were elected to represent, serve and protect. In such a case, the corrupted, elitist ‘self-serving’ rather than ‘people-serving’ Government must be dismissed from power by the Head of State and replaced by way of new national elections, in order to protect the People and ensure that the historically-proven and semi-sacred system and process of Majority-Rule Democracy is respected and upheld in the State. Or, in the rarer cases of a joint or dual ‘Head of State & Head of Government’ leader, the corrupted Government must be dismissed from power by the Supreme Constitutional Court, by whose authority and rulings even Presidents must abide (unless the Supreme Court ruling is widely considered by the majority population in the land to be biased or corrupt, and is then subsequently ‘struck down’ by the People’s democratic representatives through majority votes in both lower and upper Houses of Parliament). The bottom-line is that no-matter the democratic system of government in place in the State, the will of the People – through democracy – must reign supreme in the Nation-State.]
The Obligations of the People in a Democracy
By mutual agreement, and as enshrined in their National Constitution which provides the moral, political and legal framework of the State, these citizens of each Sovereign State – after electing or choosing their representative leaders to care for them and protect them for a set time-period – live under, and must abide by, the authority of:
(1) the State’s foundational National Constitution (“Lex Rex” – Foundational State Law being the Higher Head of State above the Head of State), usually written with great thought, heart and spirit by experienced, insightful, patriotic, and nation-loving ancestral forebears, for the purpose of protecting the safety and well-being of their future descendants in the land;
(2) the elected Government led by the elected Head of Government – usually a Prime Minister, Premier, or a President – on behalf of the citizen peoples of the State, with the Head of State (a Monarch or a President) also acting on behalf of the citizen peoples of the state as a supervising political and legal authority over the actions or inactions of Governments of the People, to check and ensure that all political activity in Government and in Parliament is conducted for the good, safety and well-being of the People of the State, and in line and accordance with the spirit, letter and intent of the National Constitution which is the “Lex Rex” foundation stone or Foundational Law of each Sovereign State [The Head of State is often able to refer democratically passed and enacted National Laws to the Supreme Court for review and testing for Constitutionality (the Supreme Court also acting as a Constitutional Court), if the law is considered by the Head of State to be potentially in breach of the National Constitution, as is the power and ability of the President in the Republic of Ireland];
and lastly, (3) the existing, passed, enacted and enforceable Parliamentary National Laws of the land, that are policed and enforced by police, legal and judicial Officers of the State, for as long as they are in place, and until:
(a) the adjustment, elimination, or replacement of these existing National Laws by majority vote in newer elected Governments in Parliament, through legitimate parliamentary processes in the Government House(s) of the People;
or alternately (b) the National Law(s) has been ‘struck down’ as unconstitutional by the highest Supreme Court (aka the Constitutional Court) of the land, which, whenever a law is referred to them by the supervising Head of State (or via his/her Representative Governor), acts to ensure that that law is in complete and pure alignment with the words and spirit of the National Constitution.
This is because all existing and enforceable laws that have been approved and passed by majority parliamentary votes over the years, decades and centuries by previous Governments (as Sovereignty-Depositary Authorities) must be constitutional. Indeed, careful attention must be paid to this fact in the drafting of new laws by Governments, and new or potential bills vetted (accepted or rejected) on the basis of its constitutionality. Failure by any Government to do this can result in the nation entering into a stagnant ‘doldrum’ period – or worse, torturous ‘tenterhook’ status – if an important National Law is later referred to the Supreme Court/Constitutional Court to be tested for constitutionality – a process which will take time, cost money from the citizen tax-payers, and delay political, legal, financial, or military action by the Government and its enforcers that is required or even vital to the well-being and safety of the lives and livelihoods of the citizen peoples.
[In addition, like the ancient right of Roman citizens to “appeal to Caesar” for judgment by the highest judge and court in the Roman Empire, Democracies ought now also to include a reserved right of individual citizens, in times of judicial distress and faced with acute injustice, to “appeal to the Supreme Court” for judgment of their case, without a jury, in the highest court and by the most moral, impartial, and experienced panel of National Judges in the land. Such an appeal could be made and accepted by the Supreme Court with State funding, for instance, when a citizen is faced with or suffered a Miscarriage of Justice, that can be proven with evidence, caused by a partial and prejudiced judge, false witnesses and testimonies, false evidence, politically, religiously, ethnically or socially “stacked” or biased Juries of Peers, and/or juries that are not drawn from among the general population. (For example, the recent British government’s “Post Office Injustice” scandal, that from 1999-2015 was knowingly and unjustly committed against more than 700 former and existing Post Office Branch Managers for crimes that they did not commit, and to exact compensation for fictitious and software-generated financial losses the Post Office employees were not at all responsible for, resulting in hundreds of cases (230) of Judicial Miscarriage of Justice including the hounding, smearing, defaming, prosecution, convicting, defrauding, financial destruction, and imprisonment of hundreds of innocent, upright, law-abiding and honest citizens for supposed “theft” and “false accounting”).]
In sum then, national military personnel are low-level servants of the Government, but these government officials are likewise high-level servants of the People, and it is the People who are in fact the true sources of sovereignty and the true power-appointers and king-makers via free democratic elections. However, the People will ‘live out’ their choices, along with their leaders. And ultimately, through the combination of the democratic process, the passing of time, and the practical experiences of reality nationally and internationally following elections, any radical excesses of viewpoint among the majority population will be corrected and modified among the People, and lead to a healthier and more balanced Nation-State at home and in the wider world.
The Institutions of the Sovereign State
The Constitution – the State’s spiritual, political and legal ‘cornerstone’ or ‘foundation stone’, consisting of a foundational National Constitution, usually written and signed into law with great thought, heart and spirit by experienced, insightful, patriotic, and nation-loving ancestral forebears, for the express purpose of safeguarding, protecting and ensuring the safety and well-being of their future descendants in the land, and which is the Highest Head of State over the People in the Nation-State (“Lex Rex” – Foundational State Law being the Higher Head of State above the Head of State).
The Supervisor – the publicly desired and approved of Head of State, usually a Monarch in a Monarchy State or a President in a Republic State, who is the Patriarch/Matriarch figurehead of the State, and can be either (a) passively ‘symbolic as the embodiment of the “spirit of the nation” and commissioned by the National Constitution and by invitation of Parliament to take part in national ceremonial events’ or (b) actively ‘a supervisor of Government in accordance with the National Constitution and on behalf of the People’ (either personally or via his/her representative Governor-General). The Head of State is often a permanent or long-term institutional anchor for the State through political, legal or social storms, national emergencies, and global confrontations or conflicts, by being and acting as a source of continuing balance, morality and stability for the People of the nation, as well as for the State entity that has been politically and legally created to serve and protect the nation.
The Leaders – the Government, in most countries the population-representative political leaders of the Executive Branch of Government that have been ‘selected’ or ‘elected’ by the majority population in free, fair, honest and legitimate national and regional elections, led by the Head of Government (the Prime Minister, Premier or President), whose role is to care for and secure through legislation and policies the needs and desires of the majority population, and lead the nation domestically and internationally.
The Law-Makers – the population-chosen or ‘elected’ parliamentary assembly or council(s) in the Legislative Branch of Government, who regularly meet together in council in Government House(s) of the People consisting of one or two parliaments, in which the population-representative and democratically-elected Political Parties debate upon policies and laws introduced or presented by the Government, and vote in parliament to accept or reject these government laws (“Bills”) as National Laws that will govern and protect the People of the Nation-State.
The Enforcers – (1) the National Police Force, who catch and detain law-breakers of National Laws among the People, (2) the State Legal Officers whose role is to prosecute the law-breaking detainees for offences against National Laws in Regional and National Courts of Law, presided over by an impartial Judge (“Justice is blind” – but not deaf or heartless), and with verdicts, judgment and just punitive sentencing usually decided on by the common sense and judgment of a Jury of Peers (”12 men, good and true”) drawn from the general population in the regional area where the crime was committed; and (3) the State Prison Officers who must supervise the administration of justice in cases of Major Crimes such as executions of those convicted of mass-murder, mass-rape or mass-terrorism, or prison detainment punishments for crimes committed against the People of the land; and (4) the State Parole Officers who must supervise the release and re-entry of prisoners into society, and monitor their law-abiding behaviour for a temporary training period upon release, as well as supervising Minor Crimes punishments determined by State Courts such as Community Service to society.
The Judges – (1) Well-educated and experienced regional Judges in Law, who as people endued with a strong moral compass, preside over regional Courts of Law in the Judicial Branch of Government, for the judging (the exoneration and freeing or conviction and sentencing) of law-breaking crimes committed by (a) citizens or (b) non-citizen foreign persons against the People in their region (entailing two different categories of legal rights for accused defendants based on citizenship or non-citizenship), and (2) National Judges presiding over the higher National Court, otherwise known as “the Supreme Court” or “High Court”, which is the highest National Court of Law in the land, and is usually presided over by a Panel of Judges comprised of the most knowledgeable and experienced Judges in the nation with excellent records of impartiality, respect for the National Constitution, and sound judgment.
The Protectors – The Military, comprised of all branches of Land, Sea, Air, Special Elite and/or Other armed forces, whose role is to be continuously trained and prepared to use lethal force with arms (national deterrence in itself), in order to fight and win wars considered necessary by Government to protect the population of the Nation-State and their vital or critical National Security imperatives.
The Rescuers – The Civil Defence Force (including the Fire Service) formed to plan for ‘worst case scenarios’ in natural events that might affect or threaten the lives or livelihoods of citizens, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, river flooding, wildfires, droughts, insect swarms or crop pests and destroyers (such as locusts), and disease epidemics and pandemics etc.
The Defenders – The National Border Police, who must defend the State’s sovereign land territory, overhead airspace, and maritime territorial coastline (0-12 nautical miles) and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) waters (12-200 nautical miles), and are comprised of a mixture of land, air and/or sea forces, depending on the location and geography of the Nation-State and whether or not the State’s borders are situated on land or sea (some States are landlocked or surrounded by water).
The Guards – The patriotic and lawful foreign information-gatherers domestically and internationally (“Free Democracies do not spy on their own Free People”), geopolitical strategic landscape and foreign threat assessors, informers of Government, and organisers and coordinators of foreign military missions, otherwise known as the Secret Intelligence Services or State Security Services (usually with two main branches, e.g. the domestic ‘countering foreign espionage and threats to the People of the homeland State’ British MI5 or American FBI security entity, and the international foreign information gathering, analysing, assessing, informing, organising and military co-ordinating British MI6 or American CIA security entity).
The Role of the Military in every Nation-State
It is a truth universally understood and acknowledged that militaries are a necessary defensive and emergency instrument of the civilian government in each country, with each military existing for the purpose of providing physical security and protection to the nation’s civilian population.
(1) Most commonly the military will be used by the government to guard and protect the nation’s borders, people, government, and vital infrastructure from external, foreign, cross-border crises, threats, terrorism, aggression, infiltration, sabotage, and military invasions of armed forces, as well as – increasingly today – from other State-flooding invasions of foreign, uninvited, unwanted and illegally border-crossing and trespassing peoples.
More rarely, the military will also be dispatched by the government within the nation’s own borders during emergency situations:
(2) to address urgent domestic crises and threats to the stability and security of the State, such as those posed by radical political, religious or environmental domestic terrorists (e.g. Al-Qaeda or ISIS cells, ‘lone wolf’ terrorists, and even to a certain extent aggressive ‘lethal force-minded’ environmental forces), anti-Government armed insurgents (e.g. the Tamil Tigers, the Taliban, Boko Haram, or other globally-affiliated Islamist insurgents), and even violent ‘no-authority’, ‘no-government’, ‘no-order’ and ‘no-borders’ anarchists;
(3) to save lives and mitigate the damage and suffering to the national population caused by impending or sudden natural disasters, e.g. before, during or after hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, flash floods, dam collapses, or landslides, or as a result of national emergencies, e.g. in nationwide or regional delivery and/or administration of food aid during natural or politically “man-made” famines, or of vaccines, medicines or supplies during disease epidemics;
(4) to provide a reassuring protective presence for the public in times of crisis, as a domestic ‘show of force’, or even to form a defensive barrier guarding groups of vulnerable people, or guarding important political, judicial, military, or historical State locations (e.g. the latter occurred earlier this year in America when the National Guard was deployed by the Biden-Harris Administration to guard the historic ‘Capitol’ parliamentary building in Washington D.C., following the spontaneous, angry, public ‘incursion’ or ‘trespass’ there on Presidential Inauguration Day on 6 January 2021, stemming from the sudden dashed hopes and emotional desperation* in a crowd of thousands of politically devastated, mostly peaceful, largely unarmed, Trump-supporting, Republican civilians in the nation’s capital city, who had been slowly progressing towards the Capitol building in protest of uninvestigated electronic and postal ballot electoral fraud, and in support of American democracy and the massively popular incumbent president on this significant day in history);
The People respect their Government Houses
when the Government respects their People.
[*Trump-supporters had had great expectations of Republican Vice-President Mike Pence during the electoral confirmation proceedings then taking place at the Capitol on January 6, that, in the midst of mounting evidence and first-hand eyewitness accounts of widespread electoral fraud being committed in many ways and locations in multiple American states during the 2020 presidential election, Pence would employ his federal constitutional right of the American VP (now legally removed and taken away from American VPs) to send state electoral results back to the states for verification of vote accuracy in terms of all votes being legally cast, legitimately valid and correctly counted. However, despite high hopes to confirm American electoral accuracy and legitimacy – nationally and internationally – these reasonable expectations shared by millions in Washington D.C., America, and around the globe were not in fact met, and the anticipated and appropriate political verification measures expected of VP Pence were not taken. Evidence of electoral fraud in multiple American States was presented to the nation and the world by U.S. President Trump during his January 6th 2021 address – a speech which was later nationally censored and erased from the American – but not global – public record and memory, for questionable political reasons.
‘Character may be manifested in the great moment, but it is made in the small ones.’
– Winston Churchill
The critical question continues to hang heavily over the supposed “Land of the Free”, “Home of the Brave” and “Lighted City on a Hill” ever since the presidential elections of November 2020: IS the United States of America still in reality (a) a dialectical “True Democracy” with a balanced and evaluating Free Press and Honest Judges & Courts of Law, that is governed by truly population-representative and “freely and fairly” elected leaders of a “Free People”, who care more about the will, needs and safety of the American People than maintaining Party power or making a profit from politics, OR is it now in fact (b) a dystopian “Dem-oligarchy” with a biased and unthinking Propaganda Press and Dishonest Judges & Courts of Law, who care more about maintaining Party power and making a profit from politics than the will, needs and safety of the American People, in a country that has departed sharply and radically from its long, splendid and noble democratic history since 1776? Democracy, if fairly and honestly conducted as it is meant to be, is supposed to be a bottom-up, majority-chosen, control-free political process – not a top-down, elites-chosen, control-freak political process. Only one American was killed as a result of lethal force during the Capitol Trespass/Riot – one, unarmed, veteran, citizen, civilian, woman was shot to death by a Capitol police officer because she smashed a window with her fist (seemingly in distress in order to escape still unknown and unnamed agitators crowding around her), a shooting that remains uninvestigated to this day.]
American Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator [God] with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life [the right to live, free from murder and from unjust imprisonment or execution], Liberty [the right to personal, religious, social, cultural, linguistic and economic freedom] and the Pursuit of Happiness [the right – within reason and law – to private movement, interactions, property, and enterprise in a free society and a free, competitive and innovative socio-economic market, formed by and among the free citizen people living on and from this free land].
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers [legitimacy and authority] from the consent of the governed [voluntarily given from the free and legal citizen people of the land by way of free, lawful and legitimate voting in free, safe and accurately counted regional and national elections],
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…[emphasis added].“
The ‘Statue of Liberty’, gifted to the American nation by donations from the French People during France’s more democratic, moderate, stable and long-lasting ‘Third Republic’ State era on 4 July 1884, to represent the spirit of the core, historic, Christian, democratic, multi-ethnic, and patriotic American nation: faith in God, independence, freedom, and equality under the Constitution and American Law – “with liberty and justice for all” her native-born and naturalised legal citizens. [5]
and lastly, the national military will be employed by the government as a critical security instrument (5) to quell – using strictly minimal force only [3] – large, violent and destabilising public protests or riots that the national Police Force is unable to deal with, especially where public rioters are:
(a) aggressively attacking or murdering (individually or in a pack) other innocent citizens of the nation – including not only civilians, but also officers and members of the national Police Force, who are doing their job by attempting to protect the people and the State in maintaining law and order;
or
(b) attacking or setting on fire government buildings, public but vital infrastructure, privately-owned businesses that supply the livelihoods of other law-abiding and non-violent citizens, or priceless and historic civilian objects, monuments, statues, works of art, or places of worship, which constitute the political, cultural or spiritual history and heritage of the nation, (e.g. the months-long, violent and destructive riots – 574 riots in total throughout the summer alone – and opportunistic looting that took place in America throughout the year 2020, by the oxymoronic, intolerant, violent and tyrannical ANTIFA organisation and Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement respectively in major cities across the United States).[4]
[See endnote 5 above for important information and discussion on the inherent danger of politically extreme, Authoritarian-Marxist Far-Left and Authoritarian-Fascist Far-Right political ideologies and movements to the peoples and governments of traditional, freedom-loving and ‘majority-rule’ Liberal Democracies or ‘Free Democracies’. The latter refers to those Nation-States around the world that were founded on, or have later embraced and transitioned to, the core Judeo-Christian beliefs, essential principles, and political governmental, legal-judicial and economic systems that were all developed ‘in the Western European-American world’, during many long and bloody centuries of human history in Britain, Europe and later America since the 1200s (including monarchical rule, quasi-parliamentary rule, socio-economic crises, periods of religious oppression, persecution, and massacres, as well as civil wars internally and foreign wars abroad). These beliefs, principles and structures are together considered by the nations of the ‘Free World’ of Parliamentary Democracy States to be the best, most humane, most free, most fair, most just, most orderly, most peaceful – and therefore also the most secure, stable and prosperous – human system of self-government ever devised by humankind. (For more discussion on these and further points, refer to the Democracy vs. Dictatorship discussion in the ‘Rival Explanations of Russian Actions’ section of NATO APPENDIX: The ‘Ukraine NATO Membership & Nuclear Missile Crisis’.)]
The Use of Force during Public Protests or Riots
During such public protests or riots minimal force only must always be used by the military, because national armed forces of the State exist to protect the population from aggressive and violent foreign and domestic adversaries, not to mistakenly target, kill or eliminate people among the domestic population of the country, with firearms and bombs, as if they were a foreign Enemy
[In fact, minimal force applies even in situations where civilians are temporarily – if violently – protesting and/or causing physical damage to property, as once arrested, they can then be lawfully prosecuted and punished appropriately within the justice system in direct proportion to their actions of having committed:
(i) grave and major felonious crimes of physical harm such as theft, destruction or violence (i.e. arson, robbery, burglary, animal cruelty, assault and battery, aggravated assault, rape, kidnapping, reckless or negligent involuntary manslaughter, or intentional murder, usually resulting in imprisonment of various lengths depending on the gravity, cruelty, and accidental/intentional motive in the commission of the crime(s) committed); or
(ii) less serious and less severe, minor misdemeanours, infractions, or acts of wrongdoing (i.e. possessing drugs, shoplifting, or committing other lawless “criminal mischief” against the State or the property and/or well-being of other citizens, usually resulting in minor punishments or monetary fines to provide restitution/compensation to victims or the injured or transgressed-against parties involved).]
To exemplify, such a blatantly wrong misuse of military force occurred in Syria in February-March 2011 against groups of peaceful Syrian civilian demonstrators in a number of Syrian cities, who were rightly protesting to express both their horror regarding the month-long arrest and torture of young civilian boys exercising mere freedom of speech via trivial graffiti at their local school in Deraa, and their outrage at the utterly obnoxious, uncaring and threatening remarks made by security forces to the children’s parents when the fathers attempted to have their young sons released back home (for more information on these pivotal and cataclysmic events in Syria’s recent history and self-destruction – i.e. the politically-ordered military deeds that put flame to the gunpowder that was the State of Syria – see the documentary below).
As this case amply demonstrates, the behaviour of the military towards the native domestic population it exists to protect matters – as do the kinds of orders or instructions given to the military by power-holding government leaders (‘Masters’), who are responsible for guarding, caring for, and meeting the essential and various needs of the people in the country, who truly comprise ‘the nation’.
A vital and fateful choice:
sacrifice pride for the People
or sacrifice the People for pride.
Indeed, ‘the nation’ is ‘the people’ – living and breathing human beings of either a certain homogenous ethnicity (e.g. China or Japan) or multi-ethnic nationality (e.g. the USA or Ukraine) within a specific territory or State, who require fundamental care and leadership from their leaders. ‘The nation’ is not merely a territorially-defined area of land, full of buildings and vital infrastructure, with guarded borders.
Human beings – the people – are always exceedingly more important than inanimate objects and assets.
The Main Purpose of the Military: To Deter, Fight & Win War
Even with these four added minor roles, however, the main role and the primary foundational purpose of national military forces is, and will always be, to wage war.
Specifically, to ‘deter war, to fight war, and to win war’, or in other words, ‘to deter Enemies, to fight Enemies, and to defeat Enemies’.
In speaking of war, it must be understood then that war is – and always has been throughout ancient and modern world history – an instrument of armed politics.
As the famous Prussian military commander, veteran, theorist, philosopher and strategist, Karl von Clausewitz, once wrote, war in reality is: ‘Not just a political act, but a true political instrument, a continuation of political interaction, and the carrying out of the same by other means…the political object is the goal, war is the means, and this means [of war-fighting] can never even be thought of without a [political] goal’.[8]
‘War is…a real political instrument,
a continuation of policy [politics]…by other means.’
– Karl von Clausewitz
War is therefore neither inherently good or evil in itself. Only the purposes or means for which it is used as a vital and lethal instrument of State, and the manner and method by which war is waged, can determine the morality or immorality of any armed conflict or method of war.
As with most matters in the realms of International Relations and International Security, especially the most difficult ones, political and security matters within States all generally boil down to leadership, the democratic principle of ‘Majority Rule’ whereby – via the electoral ballot box in free, fair and honest national elections and referendums – the choices and desires of the majority population overrule those of the minority population, and to the principle of ‘State Sovereignty’.
That is, until and unless the sovereignty of one State is ‘out-ruled’ by the weight of the ‘combined sovereignty’ of a group of sovereign States acting in concert against a ‘highly and unacceptably threatening’ rebel or aggressive State in the international system, that is posing an urgent and imminent threat to world security. In these rare cases the group of sovereign nations may act in concert either in the form of a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ or as a military operation sanctioned by the UN Security Council led by either the UN itself, another IGO such as the regional NATO or African Union organisations, or an individual Lead Nation among the acting sovereign States, in order to uphold or enforce adherence to the highest international principles best expressed in the UN charter. The various wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and against ISIS in Iraq-Syria are good examples of this.
Legal & Illegal War in the 21st Century
Indeed, it must always be remembered that war between sovereign States for the purpose of self-defence or the protection of allies is not in or of itself illegal, nor morally wrong, nor even spiritually sinful (see the following endnote for a full discussion of these latter points). [7]
As one may plainly see by the inter-State wars since the early 20th century, sometimes war by one State against another State is necessary for defence or protective purposes – even though war is inherently an ugly, violent, brutal, and fear-inducing instrument of destruction, death, displacement, deprivation and horror – for which reason war is usually retained by governments as an armed politics ‘instrument of last resort’ in their internal or external security affairs.
Nevertheless, politicians in leadership positions in government must always be very careful and truly driven by necessity in resorting to the use of lethal force in the management of the State’s external foreign and security affairs, because war is extremely costly and destructive in terms of human lives, State infrastructure, cities, businesses, homes and livelihoods, with a severely depleting and detrimental impact overall on the national military, the national economy, and the social and psychological health of the nation of the State as a whole – both for the State waging war and the State or States who are being fought against.
Therefore, to exact such a high price from nations and States, and before commencing war operations, leading politicians must be certain that the war to be waged is necessary, just, and solidly and enduringly justifiable.
LOAC DEFINITIONS: THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS OF 1949 & ADDITIONAL PROTOCOLS OF 1977
International Armed Conflict (IAC)
Defined in ‘Common Article 2’ of the four Geneva Conventions I, II, III and IV as:
(a) ‘All cases of declared war, or of any other armed conflict, which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties [Signatory States], even if the state of war is not recognised by one of them’; or
(b) ‘All cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party [Signatory State], even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.
Non-International Armed Conflict (NIAC)
Alluded to briefly in ‘Common Article 3’ of the four 1949 Geneva Conventions I, II, III and IV as all other armed conflict not conforming to either of the IAC definitions above, and defined in Additional Protocol II of 1977 in Article 1(1) as:
Armed conflict ‘in the territory of a High Contracting Party [Signatory State] between its armed forces and dissident armed forces or other organized armed groups which, under responsible command, exercise such control over a part of its territory as to enable them to carry out sustained and concerted military operations and to implement this [Additional] Protocol’.
Breaches of the Laws of War known internationally as the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) in the midst of just warfare, however, are illegal. Any military orders or actions that do not respect or uphold the LOAC, and are therefore manifestly unlawful and illegal orders under the LOAC, often resulting in atrocities (a) against individual civilian non-combatants, (b) against segments or the entirety of the civilian non-combatant population, (c) against non-combatant-used civilian objects that have not been compromised and lost protection from attack as a result of the presence or activity of combatants at these civilian sites, (d) against Armed Forces legal combatants in terms of the use of illegal weaponry, tactics, or unlawful/mass-death targets (e.g. dams, dykes or nuclear reactors), or (e) against Armed Forces legal combatant Prisoners of War held in custody, equate to “war crimes”.
For an overview of the LOAC and its most important laws in wartime, refer to these earlier blogs ‘#24 Laws of War Brief (Part 1): What is the Law of Armed Conflict & Customary International Law?’ and ‘#25 Laws of War Brief (Part 2): The Protections, Rights & Obligations of Civilian Non-Combatants & Military Combatants under the LOAC’.]
Only aggressive war for ‘the love of war and joy of conquest’, conducted for the greedy and selfish purposes of increasing State power by means of the resource and population gains achieved by forceful, military, warring, territorial State-expansion, is illegal under current International Law, namely Chapter VII (Articles 39-43) of the UN Charter written following WWII. The most obvious and dramatic example of this kind of illegal, aggressive, greedy and State- or Empire-expanding warfare from modern history is of course the Austrian-born, Chancellor-President of Germany, Adolf Hitler, his Marx-based, racially-defined and war-worshipping National Socialist (Nazi) ideology, and his leadership as the self-declared dictator of a German “Third Empire”, which led to the invasion and destruction not only of many European States – sparking the global conflagration of World War II – but eventually also to the entire destruction and division of the German State itself and especially the German seat of government in Berlin. Hitler’s hellish experiment in Germanic militarization and war ‘for the love of war and joy of conquest’ between 1933-1945 came at the great and inestimable cost of an estimated 40-50 million human lives, not to mention the robbery or destruction of the personal property of these and further millions, and the political, economic, energy and social infrastructure of the invaded Sovereign States of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Ethiopia (see total ‘Human and Material Cost’ of World War II here).
Other examples from this same time-period also include: Fascist Italy’s earlier invasions of Ethiopia and Greece between 1936-1940, under the leadership of the self-declared Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who sought to resurrect the ancient “Roman Empire”; the Communist Soviet Union’s invasions/part-annexations, under the leadership of the conquest-loving and Georgian-born, Soviet dictator Josif Stalin (Ioseb Dzhugashvili), of East Poland, Finland, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, East Germany and Manchuria between 1939-1945; and Junta-ruled Imperial Japan’s military offensives against and/or subsequent invasions of Manchuria, China, American Hawaii, the Philippines, Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), and Burma between 1931-1941 in a similar quest to create a ‘Greater Japan’ or ‘Japanese Empire’ in the Pacific.
For information and footage of these tragic 20th century events, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of military personnel and civilians around the world, refer to the WWII documentary series ‘World War II in Colour’ here.
Major Warfare: War at Home & War Abroad
There are three kinds of major warfare that are usually engaged in by States on the world stage, in the foreign and security affairs of nations, on behalf of national peoples. These include:
- firstly, war at home in order to defend the sovereign State, its government and its population in a self-defence capacity, either from foreign invading forces or from domestic warring insurgents within the State;
- secondly, war abroad in order to defend critical national security concerns and interests of vital importance to the existence, survivability and viability of the State in being able to serve, protect, and meet the most basic needs of its own nation of people short-term and long-term into future decades; and
- thirdly, war abroad in order to defend foundational and crucial principles, concepts and beliefs, such as in support or defence of allied democratic governments or in offense against national, regional or global enemies such as government-extorting and government-hijacking terrorists.
These three forms of major warfare will be presented in more detail below.
(1) War at Home: To Defend the Sovereign State and its Population in Self-Defence
This is a prime military activity that, in the record of world history from the distant past to more modern times, usually occurs at home to defend national sovereign territory, the people of the nation, and its perimeter borders.
Such wars of self-defence have historically been waged against either:
(a) external, aggressive, invading, foreign forces waging conventional ‘total war’ against the State; or
(b) internal, warring, insurrectionist, native militias or insurgencies – at times also receiving external help, funding, fighters and support from foreign States, entities or organisations.
[For example: (i) the complex internal matter in the current ‘regional’ or ‘twin’ Ruthenian-Cossack State of Ukraine, immediately following the explosive, bloody, cataclysmic, civil war-starting and State-dividing event of the violent, anti-Russian and pro-EU ‘Euromaidan Revolution’ of 2013-2014 in and from Maidan Square outside the national parliament in the Capital Kyiv – which ousted from office the legitimate, nationally-elected, and pro-Russian, Ukrainian president (see videos below), of ethnic-Russian, Russian-speaking and pro-Russian “Autonomy, Independence or Secession” separatists among Ukrainian citizens within Ukrainian State borders (first in independence-seeking Crimea leading ultimately to its annexation and secession into the Russian Federation, and then subsequently for 8 years in the two independence-seeking Luhansk and Donetsk areas of the eastern Donbas border-region nearest to Russia), who have been receiving external support from Ukraine’s immediate, eastern and permanent Russian neighbour from 2014 until the present day, in their armed fight for independence or secession, and against the post-Euromaidan Interim and Kyiv governments’ anti-Russian political view of – and non-representative EU ambitions for – the current Ukrainian State;
(In reality, and as a result of Ukraine’s complicated history over many centuries, there are in fact “Two Ukrainian Nations” that have been unhappily co-existing and clashing within one Ukrainian State, over the three decades since the Ukrainian SSR became a Sovereign State independent from the Soviet Union U.S.S.R in 1991: one mono-lingually and mono-culturally ‘Ukrainian’ and fiercely pro-European and pro-‘European Union’ in North-West Ukraine (aka “The Known Ukraine” or ‘Ruthenia’), and the other bi-lingually and bi-culturally ‘Ukrainian-Russian’ and fiercely pro-Russian and pro-‘Russian Customs Union’ in South-East Ukraine (aka “The Other Ukraine” or ‘Cossackia’). See this vitally important article (linked below) to better understand the two dominant but utterly conflicting Ukrainian identities within the Ukrainian population, and their stark, internal, linguistic, cultural, religious, political, economic and loyalty divisions and aspirations for their own people and land respectively, which requires a lasting political solution of Statecraft to resolve.)
‘Any kingdom that is divided against itself is being brought to desolation and laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will last or continue to stand.’
‘…Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king [who is responsible for ensuring the protection, peace and prosperity of his people]. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace…
Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.’
– Jesus Christ of Nazareth, True Head of the Christian Church of Christ-following people in every nation worldwide (Ephesians 1:15-23), The Holy Bible (Amplified), Matthew 12:25 & Luke 14:31-32, 35.
and (ii) in past and recent history, Pakistan’s massive and non-stop political support, military aid, and strategic and operational guidance to the Pashtun Taliban in Afghanistan from 1994-2021, in support of two different insurgencies from 1994 until its final success in 1996, and again from 2002/3 until its final success – thanks to NATO’s unwise and premature withdrawal from the country – in 2021].
As Tucker Carlson so neatly expressed in recent weeks, the military is ‘our last line of defence against hostile foreign powers’.[6]
[For examples, see the WWII ‘Pre-deployment Soldier Education’ series for American soldiers called “Why We Fight” here.]
‘To secure peace is to prepare for war…
[Peace through Strength/State-to-State Deterrence & Self-Defence].
…Self-reliance is the best defence against the pressures of the moment.’
– Karl von Clausewitz
It is clear by this that national perimeter borders are extremely important. Not only do national borders determine what threatening entities, groups or events are ‘external’ or ‘internal’ to the nation, but – even more vitally – borders delineate each State’s sovereign land territory, maritime territorial (0-12 nautical miles) and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) waters (12-200 nautical miles), and natural resources from those belonging to other sovereign States and national peoples beside, around or near to them.
In other words, national perimeter borders determine what the sovereign State is, in comparison with other States, and what is or is not the sovereign homeland of the State to be protected, guarded, and defended.
‘Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity.’
– Karl von Clausewitz
(2) War Abroad: To Defend Critical National Security Interests & Concerns
However, war is also sometimes threatened, and then subsequently waged, in foreign fields, seas and skies beyond the nation’s own sovereign borders, if necessary, in order to defend critical national security interests to the security, safety and well-being of the nation. Or in other words, to defend the State and its national population from foreign threats stemming or coming from abroad.
9/11 & the War on Terror: Two Offensive Wars to secure Critical American and Global Security Interests in Afghanistan and Iraq
The recent long wars prosecuted in in Afghanistan from 2001-2021 and in Iraq from 2003-2011, both taking place in the wake and reassessed strategic threat landscape of Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 terrorist attacks on the American homeland, are both good examples of this.
“Terrorism” – A Definition
The tactic used by ‘terror-ists’ of planning and conducting unlawful, criminal and cruelly-indiscriminate acts of armed violence, especially against the weakest members of society – non-combatant, unarmed and vulnerable civilian men, women and children (mass-murder) – in attacks that are coldly calculated and designed to cause local, regional and national panic and terror among the targeted civilian population, as a means of intimidating, manipulating and applying sudden, unearned and extreme pressure on States and their legitimate governments in the pursuit of the terrorist group’s own desired political and even theological/atheist aims.
These two, separate, America-led, offensive, ‘punitive’ and ‘pre-emptive self-defence’ wars respectively, against the Al-Qaeda-protecting Taliban regime in Afghanistan (refer to blogs #28 and #29) and the terrorist-supporting and terrorist-assisting Saddam regime in Iraq (refer to ‘The Global War on Terrorism’ section and endnote 27 in blog #24), were conducted by two, separate, U.S.-led, multinational Coalitions of the Willing. At first they were waged against the terrorist-supporting, terrorist-sheltering, and terrorist-protecting government regimes in a conventional war capacity, and then subsequently, following initial victories in this conventional warfare capacity, against various, resistant, and pro-terror native and foreign Islamist terrorist and insurgent groups in an asymmetric, Counter-Insurgency (COIN) capacity (for more information on COIN warfare refer to the three COIN appendices here).
Although the security situation in Iraq was finally stabilising and bearing fruit for a Democratic Iraq between 2008-2011, especially following the Iraqi civilian ‘Sunni Awakening’ against the hellish bloodbath caused by foreign and homegrown terrorism on the streets and in the homes and businesses of their own country (leading to the hopeful and pro-democracy ‘Arab Spring’ movement), and the security situation was no more or less than a stalemate in Democratic Afghanistan after 20 years of warfare under U.S./NATO/U.S. leadership, both wars ended in strategic defeat and failure after the United States prematurely led military withdrawals from both countries, one decade apart in 2011 and 2021.
In the power vacuums that followed the withdrawal of the Coalitions, Iraq and its neighbour Syria were partially swallowed by the the new, ex-‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’ and Saddamist-remnant ISIS terrorist entity – causing a new Coalition of the Willing to be formed and war to be waged anew on the same ground and for the same cities won previously at such high and bloody cost, and Afghanistan was militarily retaken by exultant, Pakistan-supported Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other death-loving and mass-murderous Islamo-fascist terrorist and insurgent forces of Islamist extremism.
Both events occurred to the great shame of the United States, the NATO Alliance, the UN Secretary-General and Secretariat, the national government and regional governors of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and the entire Western-model world of Afghanistan-supporting, freedom-loving, majority-rule, population-representative, democratic nations.
The partial or total collapse of the two, multi-ethnic, egalitarian and majority-rule democracies were also the profound and painful regret of millions of people around the world ever since, just as the loss of Democratic South Vietnam to the Soviet Russian- and Chinese-funded and equipped Communist Viet Cong forces in 1975 also was, for tens of thousands of veterans and civilians in earlier generations during the Cold War ideological confrontation (refer to blogs ‘COIN APPENDIX 2 – Counter-Insurgency (COIN) Warfare: Definitions, Political Nature, 5 False Expectations, Necessity & Lessons from Vietnam & Iraq for Afghanistan’ and ‘#39 Farewell Fallen Friend: Democratic Afghan Republic, 2001-2021’).
And most certainly, above all, the two failures have resulted in the unimaginable and untold suffering of millions of military and civilian citizens involved at the ‘ground zero’ frontline of the global struggle against mass-murdering Islamic terrorism in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Critical “National Security” Categories for Every State:
(1) physical military security (military capacity and ability to protect and defend from foreign attack/invasion or native anti-government insurgencies the State’s borders, population, land, sky, and waters, the latter usually and globally encompassing ‘territorial waters’ that extend 12 nautical miles from land and ‘Economic Exclusive Zone or EEZ waters’ which extend up to 200 nautical miles from land (with unusual exceptions in rare and disputed cases, e.g. Ukraine’s southern territorial and EEZ waters on the Black and Azov seas either side of Crimea, and Turkey’s extremely and oddly limited territorial and EEZ waters vis-à-vis neighbouring Greece, even around islands in close and very close proximity to the Turkish coastline, i.e. the island of Kastellorizo only 2 kilometres away);
(2) political security (institutions, processes and honest “free and fair” elections and referendums – refer to the definition provided in the Glossary);
(3) energy security (taken from natural resources continuously created within or on the earth or derived from the land, waters and air of the earthen atmosphere, such as crude oil, petrol, diesel, dirty and clean coal, natural gas, and electricity generated from nuclear powerplants, hydropower dams on lakes or rivers, solar power, or wind power);
(4) border security (control and regulation of legal and illegal immigration that would overwhelm the State, its institutions, its security, its economy, and its legal and tax-paying citizens);
(5) people security (the safety of the domestic population of the nation from violent attacks or destabilising acts by terrorists, anarchists, criminals, gangs, or “extremist” political radicals) [Refer to the excellent speech below given recently by Winston Peters of New Zealand or Aotearoa in Maori (Or more historically and accurately, Nu Tirani – the land of the 7-canoe migrants from Hawaiki (Taiwan), as per the foundational 1840 Treaty of Waitangi Agreement between the British Crown and Confederated or Independent Maori tribes of this land, mediated by genuine, concerned, experienced and mutually-trusted Christian missionaries who had been living and working in pre-colonial, revengeful, inter-warring, enslaving and devouring New Zealand from 1814-1840 (e.g. see the Maori song “Te Harinui” and “Tarore’s Story” and its nationwide impact from 1836-40 – God’s love (agape love – more an action than a feeling) is more powerful than hate, even ancient hatreds, and peace is preferable to war). In a spirit of true sincerity and honesty, the agreement was translated, read, understood and signed by leading representatives of both British and Maori peoples (39 Chiefs) in the year 1840, in order to ensure a shared, peaceful and just future for their descendants in this land. The Treaty is in essence a spiritual, political and legal ‘Covenant’ or ‘Compact’ for fair and equal treatment and rights for both peoples under a single New Zealand government authority, under the overall Sovereignty, power, provision, protection, and careful ‘parental’ supervision of the British Monarch (via the Governor-General). It was the first joint agreement of its kind in human and European history, forged between two migrant peoples to ensure future waves of migrant settlement to the land remained peaceful and respectful of the needs and rights of existing inhabitants. The Treaty forms the spiritual, political and legal foundation of the New Zealand State to this day, and the day of its signing is celebrated each year on February 6th as a historic national holiday equivalent to ‘New Zealand Day’, for being a landmark and foundational event in New Zealand history, whereby two strong and combative peoples were pacified and united by means of an official and long-lasting Peace Agreement for harmonious living side-by-side throughout the land. Young New Zealand’s independence as a self-governing Dominion of the British Empire (adolescence) was achieved on 26 September 1907, and full New Zealand independence as a Sovereign State in the British Commonwealth or ‘Family of Democratic Nation-States’ (adulthood) was attained following WWII on 25 November 1947.
As referred to earlier in the ‘Servants and Masters’ section, sovereignty – the right, supreme power or authority of a person or entity to control and rule over peoples and their possessed territories, waters and skies – always rests with and fundamentally arises from all the peoples of the land to be ruled, who are the true and legitimate power-holders and king-makers of the State. In New Zealand, ever since voluntary and mutual British-Maori consent was given and signatures enshrined in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (the State’s Foundational Law or National Constitution) and even more so since full Independence was attained from Britain in 1947, sovereignty is now socially, politically and legally passed or transferred to the elected Governments of New Zealand, who have been periodically and voluntarily chosen as representative leaders by these same people in national democratic elections, to exercise this ‘chiefly sovereignty’ on behalf of all of the citizen peoples of New Zealand. Representative and elected Governments temporarily wield and respect this sovereignty, entrusted to them by majority vote of the citizen peoples, by carefully, sensibly and in good faith and goodwill, formulating, arguing for, passing by additional majority votes, enacting, and enforcing domestic and foreign decisions, policies and laws in Parliament that will safeguard and ensure the ultimate good, safety, prosperity and well-being of the New Zealand people: the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural – but by Treaty/Constitution spiritually, politically and legally unified – nation of equal New Zealand citizens living in this land.)];
(6) economic security (e.g. embracing an economic ideology founded in reality – both historical and current – and supported by true facts and trend statistics nationally and globally [see the extremely important historical and factual address by the current President of Argentina at Davos 2024 below], promoting and ensuring sufficient and smooth imports and exports into the country of vital foods, energy supplies, raw materials and goods required by the citizen people, promoting economic stability to assist in securing needed investment, a valuable and stable national currency, a solid and secure banking industry, and a free and true-value stock market, i.e. the American ‘Wall Street Crash’ of 1929 caused an economic national and global ‘Great Depression’ worldwide over the next decade until the start of WWII in 1939);
(7) fresh water security (for drinking, crop irrigation/horticulture and farming/agriculture, including via desalination plants creating fresh water from sea water as in Israel and Egypt);
(8) food security (homegrown and imported from abroad) [Refer to the ‘political Waterwolf’ videos below with regard to massive food insecurity, agricultural sector insecurity, horticulture sector insecurity and, on the whole, national insecurity more broadly for the little country and all its Dutch people living in the lowlands/netherlands of Holland, in northwest Europe. This truly existential crisis for the country and people of Holland has been gradually but deliberately caused by the State-undermining and citizen-betraying ‘Parliament of Pain’ currently holding office in the Hague, led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, which is the Dutch people’s own, elected, supposedly ‘pro-Majority-Rule Democracy’ and ‘country-loving patriotic’ government, charged under Almighty God, the Constitutional Law of the State of the Netherlands, and His Majesty the King as Head of State to act as ‘Servants of the People’. Also see ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ Series 1 & 2 for modern examples of ridiculous, nonsensical and self-destructive government regulations inhibiting national food production as well as the lives, livelihoods and private property of agricultural farmers in Britain, stemming from decades of membership in the European Union (increasingly an International, Socialist-Radical, Liberal-Globalist U.S.S.E.? See ‘Moderate State’ vs. ‘Extreme State’ in the Glossary) and aligning with the Brussels Suprastate Executive Commission’s agricultural and horticultural policies designed for the European States of the European Continent. The frustrating and agonising realities faced by farmers all around Britain today, in England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland is undoubtedly a very far cry from the robust and effective model of self-sufficient food production for the four British nations of people in the United Kingdom achieved under the heroic, country-rescuing, life-saving and world-liberating Christian-Conservative leadership of Prime Minister Winston Churchill during WWII];
(9) health security (medical facilities, supplies and staff, including vaccines during epidemics); and
(10) cyber security in both the public ‘people-serving’ government (peoplenot pride- or stubbornness- or personal profit-serving) and private ‘society-serving’ and ‘individual-serving’ business sectors (including private power companies, private hospitals, private banks, private research institutions, and private internet companies and providers which all provide essential services to citizens within the State).
Noble dreams come with heavy price tags, the greater the vision the higher the cost in human effort and resources to make it a reality.
The ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ of 1962
An illustration of the ‘threat of war’ on these same grounds of defending critical national security interests or concerns, which despite the intensity and gravity of the situation did not actually end in open warfare, is the United States of America’s serious concerns, heightened threat-perception, realistic fears, and its subsequent threatening behaviour regarding the Russian placement of nuclear weapons on the neighbouring Communist ally and independent sovereign State of Cuba during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet nuclear missiles had been placed there in close proximity and a very short missile-flight of 2-3 minutes to America’s homeland (the island being situated only 103 miles or 166 kilometres south of the American state of Florida at its closest point) during the overall context of the ‘Cold War’ confrontation between the two, ideologically-opposed, nuclear-armed superpowers Democratic America and the Communist Soviet Union.
This extremely tense and ‘knife-edge’ nuclear crisis was the closest the world ever came to the apocalyptic nightmare scenario of nuclear-armed States initiating an all-out nuclear war of ‘instantaneous mass incineration’ of millions of human beings (multiple holocausts), during the period of the ‘Democracy vs Communism’ Cold War confrontation between two opposing Superpowers in a bipolar world between 1945-1991.
This 7-day Cuban, global and human world crisis from 22-28 October 1962 was only resolved when the leader of the Soviet government, Chairman and First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev, announced that the Soviet Union would agree
(a) to stop all work on the medium and intermediate ballistic missile launching-sites it was developing for the defence of Soviet Ally Cuba against American attack/invasion and
(b) to remove (publicly) and return all of its nuclear-armed ballistic missiles already deployed on the island of Cuba back to the Soviet Union,
in reciprocal exchange for America, then led by Democrat President John F. Kennedy, agreeing in turn
(a) to never invade the Communist island of Cuba (thereby removing Cuba’s need for defensive ballistic missiles) and likewise
(b) to remove (secretly) its own American nuclear-armed missiles from NATO Ally Turkey, located in similarly “danger-close” proximity to the south/southwest of the U.S.S.R, which America had deployed there in previous years to defend Turkish territory from Soviet attack/invasion.
The deal was accepted by the Kennedy Administration and the agreement was struck. Both Superpower sides acted and delivered on these pledges during the following weeks – overtly and covertly – thereby fulfilling their State promises to prevent nuclear war and preserve global peace, and so the crisis came to a diplomatically-attained and peaceful end one month after it began.
The ‘Ukraine NATO Membership & Nuclear Missile Crisis’ of 2022
One could argue that it is extremely similar serious concerns, heightened threat-perception, and grave fears now, 60 years later in 2022, regarding the future potential for NATO to extend membership to Ukraine and subsequently one day to place nuclear strike systems and missiles there, especially along Ukraine’s border with the Russian Federation, that has created the current ‘Ukraine NATO Membership and Nuclear Missile Crisis’ today.
Indeed, in my view, these very realistic and very grave national security and global security concerns comprise the root causes driving the politico-military behaviour, demands and threats made by Russia during the current, extremely concerning, tense, and hugely consequential Ukrainian Crisis in Eurasia.
For an examination and discussion of the most critical security issues that have caused this giant clash between the Russian Federation and the EU/NATO blocs of Europe in the land of Ukraine, refer to the following: ‘NATO APPENDIX: The ‘Ukraine NATO Membership & Nuclear Missile Crisis’.
‘People are walking away from this war for good reasons… I don’t think most Americans can make sense of this at all. And that’s one of the reasons people have said – not because they know anything about Ukraine, most Americans don’t. If they knew anything about the history of Eastern Europe, they would all say ‘GET OUT!’ Because the wars, and the blood, and the hatred, that has been characterized in that part of the world for hundreds of years, is something we can’t sort out. We can’t fix it. We shouldn’t try to arbitrate it. We don’t know anything about it. We shouldn’t be in this is the bottom-line. I think Americans have figured that out.
But now they are beginning to look at the numbers and the figures and they say, what happened to ‘consent by the governed’? Instead we have ‘contempt for the governed’. Whatever the governed want, they don’t get. Who gets it? Well, the donors get what they want. You know, somebody was joking the other day and said, ‘You know Doug, if the donors were cannibals, they’d feed the American people to them’. That’s the attitude in Washington D.C.: ‘What’s the donor want? Give me more money.’
It’s a catastrophe. It’s the destruction of our whole Republic. I don’t think people realise how far gone we are. A lot of Americans sense it. And I think we’re on the path to some kind of national “Come to Jesus” moment. Where we’re tired of being ‘the contemptibles’. We want to have a say in what our government does. And we really don’t have it.’
– Colonel Douglas MacGregor, Interview with Tucker Carlson, 22 August 2023
(3) War Abroad: To Defend Foundational & Crucial Principles, Concepts & Beliefs
Alternatively, war is sometimes threatened, and then waged in earnest, to protect or defend fundamental, and firmly-held, international principles, foundational concepts, or core national beliefs.
In addition to preserving the national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of existing States, and thereby also continue to uphold the international system and order founded on the 1648 Westphalian concept or principle of ‘Sovereign State entities’, many States around the world and situated far from the actual theatre of conflict contributed military forces to fight during both the First World War (1914-1918) and the Second World War (1939-1945). The regional and global fight was joined by these States on the basis of defending and protecting the cherished ideals, principles and political realities of democratic self-government and individual freedom, against imperialist, aggressive, expansionist and ‘empire-building’ Prussian (under the Kaiser), Nazi German (under the Chancellor), and ‘Junta’ Japanese forces (under the Emperor) of totalitarianism or ‘total government control’.
Despite their remote location from the main theatres of war, many countries of the British Commonwealth, especially Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, contributed massive national force deployments, given their respective population sizes, to the Allied fight against the belligerent Central (WWI) and Axis (WWII) powers of the two global wars, as did the United States of America at a later date (after a belated entry to the world wars – both times).
‘The empires of the future are the [ideological] empires of the mind.’
– Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in a speech given to Harvard University, 6 September 1943
Many of the armed conflicts and wars that took place during the Cold War superpower confrontation, between the end of WWII in 1945 and the fall of the Communist ‘Iron Curtain/Wall’ empire that had divided the heart of Europe between 1989-1991 (marked by the domino-style collapse of the U.S.S.R’s Moscow-controlled ‘Satellite States’ in Eastern Europe and then of the poor, exhausted, depleted, and bankrupt Soviet Union itself), also belong in this category of wars waged on the basis of defending firmly-embraced, ideological principles or beliefs (e.g. proxy wars between the Soviet-led bloc of Communists and the America-led bloc of Democracies in the countries and for the people of Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan and in many States across the continent of South America to name a few).
‘Nor can we accept the doctrine…that all States are sovereign, but some are more sovereign than others.’
– Prime Minister Boris Johnson, articulating Great Britain’s continuing support for the critical political and security concept of ‘State political and territorial sovereignty within national perimeter boundaries’ as the bedrock foundation of the entire international system of Nation-States, in an apt paraphrase in modern times of the famous and revealing statement originally made by George Orwell in his exposé allegory novel on the reality of life within Communist States ‘Animal Farm’ (“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”), during a speech in the Westminster parliament House of Commons, the United Kingdom, on 26 January 2022.
Additionally, the current armed conflicts waged against Islamist terrorist forces in nations and States all around the world right now, in what has been called the Global War on Terror (GWOT), are being prosecuted – in part – to protect, defend, and uphold such fundamental, firmly-held and cherished beliefs and realities of democratic self-government and personal religious and political freedom, in addition to the more urgent priorities of both (a) militarily, politically, economically and legally protecting the State, the government, and their nation of citizen peoples from violent attack and terrorist-inflicted mass-murder and (b) safeguarding critical national and global security interests.
‘Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our [9/11] grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done…The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate.
…Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated…We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. Our nation has been put on notice, we’re not immune from attack. We will take defensive measures against terrorism to protect Americans…
They [the terrorists] hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble, and disagree [peacefully] with each other. They want to overthrow existing governments…These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life…We have seen their kind before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism…
[In] our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depends on us. Our nation, this generation, will lift the dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage…But our resolve must not pass…
I will not forget this [9/11] wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people. The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.’
– President George W. Bush, in a momentous presidential address following the heinous and murderous 9/11 terrorist attacks, planned and committed by the central cell of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organisation based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, which killed or wounded thousands of American and international civilians living and working in New York City, together with additional scores of civilians and military personnel killed or wounded in the American Capital of Washington D.C., to a Joint Session of Congress and the American nation, 20 September 2001.
‘On my orders the United States military has begun strikes against al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime…
More than two weeks ago, I gave Taliban leaders a series of clear and specific demands: “Close terrorist training camps; hand over leaders of the al Qaeda network; and return all foreign nationals, including American citizens, unjustly detained in your country.” None of these demands were met. And now the Taliban will pay a price…
Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader. Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril…
We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfill it. The name of today’s military operation is Enduring Freedom. We defend not only our precious freedoms, but also the freedom of people everywhere to live and raise their children free from fear…
There can be no peace in a world of sudden terror. In the face of today’s new threat, the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it…Since September 11, an entire generation of young Americans has gained new understanding of the value of freedom, and its cost in duty and in sacrifice. The battle is now joined on many fronts.’
– President George W. Bush, in a televised speech from the White House to the American nation, a month after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the American homeland which killed nearly 3,000 people, to announce the start of the OEF ‘Coalition of the Willing’ war campaign in Afghanistan, in order to remove the determinedly obstinate and unapologetic terrorist-supporting, terrorist-sheltering and terrorist-protecting Taliban regime, 7 October 2001.
In a nutshell, the 20-year War on Terror is a violent confrontation, taking place in multiple, regional and national theatres of conflict around the globe, between two diametrically opposed ideological worlds, ‘empires’, sets of values and beliefs, and ways of life and daily living.
The Islamic Extremist terrorists want to rule the people of their societies in a top-down, strictly authoritarian, slavish, violently forced, brutally-imposed and controlled, death-venerating, and radically totalitarian way (‘total control’ of civilian society), rather than have the people of their own societies rule themselves in a majority-rule, non-violent, voluntary, life-venerating, democratically self-governing, and free way – but within the confines of the laws made by majority votes of the population-representative parliaments of each nation’s ‘freely and fairly’ elected governments (‘Law & Order’).
Citizens living in countries or areas of the Islamic Extremists’ ‘ideological empire’ must show complete obedience to extreme and merciless religious decrees, or else face draconian punishment, harsh imprisonment, or even death by various cruel methods of execution – as occurred within the brutal ISIS caliphate (meaning “empire”) established in Iraq and Syria following the American-led withdrawal of multinational anti-terror forces from Iraq in 2011 ordered by President Obama.
By contrast, “free will and free choice, before God, and within reason, in compliance with the national laws of each State” is the rule of thumb or ‘heartbeat’ of all of the nations belonging to the Democratic ‘ideological empire’.
Indeed, in direct and stark opposition to the arbitrary, random, savage, merciless and hard-hearted administering of “law and justice” in the Enemy ‘Terror States’ (aka man-made and terror-filled ‘hells on earth’), all God-fearing, moral, freedom-loving but law-abiding governments of Democracies strive hard – though sometimes unsuccessfully – to achieve proportionately just but also merciful reparations, protections and punishments after crimes have been committed by individual citizens or foreign non-citizens in the State, through:
(1) court-decided financial reparations to victims (from the criminal perpetrator’s existing financial assets, or otherwise from the criminal’s earnings from State-delegated work until completion of the debt repayment to his/her victim(s)), and/or State imprisonment “corrective punishments” of law-breaking, immoral, and especially ‘unrepentant and hard-hearted’ criminals; and
(2) perfectly just, rightful but mercifully quick State executions, on behalf of the people of the nation and to preserve their good, safety and well-being, of the very worst criminal categories of
- (a) mass-rapists (repeat ‘stealers of female and/or male honour and degraders of their human bodies’ for personal gain, advantage or revenge – women and children are NOT cigarettes to be used, abused and discarded at whim, just as men likewise are not),
- (b) mass-murderers (repeat ‘stealers of lives’ for personal gain, advantage or revenge), and
- (c) mass-murdering terrorists and terror-using insurgents (hardened ‘repeat stealers of lives in illegitimate, illegal and immoral warfare against civilian human beings in order to target and control leading politicians’ and thereby violently influence and perversely hijack political decisions of a Nation-State, to act for the interests, beliefs and advantages of the terrorist group and against the genuine beliefs, interests and well-being of the actual people the Government and the State exists to represent, serve and protect),
respectively, with executions usually carried out either by hanging, lethal injection or collective firing squad.
The ongoing Global War on Terror is hence essentially a violent, high-stakes, life-and-death, ‘clash’, ‘struggle’ or ‘confrontation’ in many nations between the Islamic Extremist, pro-terror, extremely violent, and excessively harsh ideological empire of ‘Fear and Tyrannical Control’ (Slavery), and the Democratic, anti-terror, peaceful, and moderate ideological empire of ‘Freedom and Tolerance’ (Liberty) where due respect is given to:
(1) God the Creator;
(2) equally to men, women and children – including child babies inside or outside of the womb – as valuable and individual human beings (each one believed to be an eternal living soul uniquely created and “made in the image of God”); and
(3) the existing and enforceable National Laws of the ‘Sovereign State’ (since the world-changing 1648 Peace of Westphalia Treaty at the end of the ’30 Years War’), that have been (a) drafted and vetted (accepted or rejected) to be in strict accordance and agreement with the spirit, word and intent of the written, foundational and often history-derived National Constitution of each State, and (b) agreed to and passed by a majority vote held among all of the elected representatives of population-representative governments of free peoples, in legitimate parliamentary processes in Government Houses of the People.
And the battle-lines of this global conflict, between human beings and their ideologically-opposed and incompatible beliefs and ways of life, are clearly drawn and clearly visible, among the people-nations and their representative and protecting governments and Nation-States all around the world.
‘The fact is that Pakistan has been ‘Ground Zero’ for international terrorism for a long time. The Americans will admit in private that the world’s biggest financier of jihadism is Saudi Arabia and the world’s biggest sanctuary for international terrorists is Pakistan. But these two countries are labelled as “allies” by Washington. So the fact that Pakistan for such a long time has gone unpunished tells a lot about the way the [U.S.-led] War on Terror has been waged. It also tells us a lot as to why this War on Terror has gone off the rails.’
– Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies, Center for Policy Research, stated in a televised interview with Oksana Boyko on RT’s geo-political analysis show Worlds Apart, aired on 20 September 2021.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is clear that although the military serves the civilian government in the latter’s quest – while it is temporarily in power – to meet the needs of the population and the country, the military is not primarily a political organisation.
The military is fundamentally a security instrument, held and wielded in the hands of the elected, civilian, government authorities or leaders, which exists for the express purpose of physically and robustly protecting or safeguarding the lives and well-being of the people of each nation.
Peace through Strength (political, military, economic and moral)
& Self-Reliance (politically independent and stable, militarily secure and capable, economically secure and prosperous, and possessing a sound moral compass)
creates its own rewards:
the simultaneous deterrence of Enemies & attraction of Friends and Partners.
* For information and analysis on the issue of Rules of Engagement (ROE) “national caveats” and their impact on the effectiveness of multinational military operations, conducted in the interest of establishing and maintaining international peace and security, see Dr Regeena Kingsley’s original doctoral research in Defence & Strategic Studies (2014) entitled: “Fighting against Allies: An Examination of “National Caveats” within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Campaign in Afghanistan & their Impact on ISAF Operational Effectiveness, 2002-2012”.
Dr Kingsley’s full Thesis and its accompanying volume of Appendices can be viewed and downloaded from Massey University’s official website here:
http://mro.massey.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10179/6984
Endnotes:
[1] ‘Douglas MacArthur’, Famous Generals [documentary series], 1963, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwQUz2JbLKo; D. Clayton James, ‘UN Command in Korean War’, in ‘Douglas MacArthur, United States general’, Britannica, 1 April 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Douglas-MacArthur.
[2] ‘Stanley McChrystal, United States general’, Britannica, 1 April 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stanley-McChrystal; ‘US Afghan commander Stanley McChrystal fired by Obama’, BBC News, 24 June 2010, https://www.bbc.com/news/10395402, (accessed 20 May 2021).
[3] New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), Directorate of Legal Services, ‘Annex A to Rules of Engagement, Draft-Rules of Engagement Manual for the New Zealand Defence Force’, ‘11.0 Rules of Engagement’, in NZDF Operational Law Companion, May 1999.
[4] All peoples and all governments, especially those of traditional, freedom-loving and ‘majority-rule’ liberal democracies, need to be keenly aware of the dangers presented by extreme political ideologies of the Authoritarian-Marxist Far-Left and Authoritarian-Fascist Far-Right, and do all they can to keep their States strongly “centered” within the political spectrum by embracing and supporting the moderate political philosophies of the Moderate-Socialist Centre-Left*, Centre (Liberal Centrists), and Moderate-Conservative Centre-Right** (see definitions provided below).
* CENTRE-LEFT: Either (a) the ‘Traditional Political Left’ of modern socialist liberalism advocating ‘Big Government/Small Citizen and Market Freedoms’, usually leading to the establishment and nurturing of a “Welfare State” or “Nanny-State” that provides continuous ‘hand-outs’ to large segments of an economically-dependent population; or (b) the ‘New Political Left’ of modern social liberalism, focused on promoting a free and independent population, and helping society by creating opportunities for free citizens and then providing access to these opportunities on the basis of merit (a “Meritocracy” where social and material rewards or freedoms are granted or distributed on the basis of proven or potential individual ‘ability and effort’). Central tenets or beliefs of the Centre-Left are: Idealism, Individualism, Freedom, Reason, Equality, Toleration, Consent, and Constitutionalism. [For more information refer to the writings of the British politician and philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) and the British politician, economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)].
** CENTRE-RIGHT: Either (a) the ‘Traditional Political Right’ of modern social conservatism advocating ‘Small Government/Large Citizen and Market Freedoms’ in addition to the preservation of traditional social and religious values, and gradual and cautious reform of ‘change in order to conserve’; or (b) the more economically-minded and business-focused ‘New Political Right’ of modern neoliberal-neoconservatism which seeks a ‘Strong but Small State’ while fully promoting and experiencing the benefits and costs of a ‘free market economy’. Central tenets or beliefs of the Centre-Right are: Realism, Tradition, Pragmatism, Human Imperfection, Organicism, Hierarchy, Authority, and Property. [For more information refer to the writings of the British politician and philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) and the British politician/statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke (1729-1797)].
Liberal Socialists are often referred to as simply “The Liberals” because they are morally liberal on a personal level, including on the issues of sexuality and the “abortion/termination” of unborn, non-pain-feeling, inanimate, and so-called senseless, tissue-cell “foetuses” in the womb, and staunch advocates of feminism and women’s rights and treatment. Similarly, Liberal Conservatives are often referred to as “The Conservatives” because they are morally conservative on a personal level, including on the issues of sexuality and the “killing/execution” of unborn, pain-feeling, animate, and danger-aware human being “babies” or “children” in the womb (babycide of future adults), and staunch advocates of equality and equal gender rights and treatment (https://www.liveaction.org/news/powerful-images-show-humanity-first-trimester/, https://www.liveaction.org/news/stunning-photo-of-noah-miscarried-at-12-weeks-will-amaze-you/). Whereas “Liberals” speak of animal rights, human rights, and female or women’s rights, “Conservatives” speak of human rights, male and female rights, maternal and paternal rights, and animal welfare. (To better understand the true realities surrounding the widespread practice of abortion worldwide, see the following true story as recounted by a former abortion clinic director working for “Planned Parenthood” in America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBLWpKbC3ww.)
Reasonable and moderate bipartisan foreign and security policy – if through much effort it can be achieved – is an additionally beautiful thing in politics, as it not only brings unity and builds bridges between politicians of various and usually disputing political parties, but also brings greater stability, harmony and peace to the State, by making the government of the nation strongly “centered” in its external policies and relations with other nations and intergovernmental entities on the world stage.
This means that when the ‘great political pendulum’ swings back and forth along the political spectrum over time as a result of periodic but regular national popular elections (in which the people choose their own rulers based on the professed, debated and well-argued beliefs and policies for the country promoted by politicians from among the people wishing to lead in government), the foreign and security policy of the State will not radically and frighteningly swerve from one extreme to the other between government tenures as the political leadership pendulum swings – like the ticking of a Grandfather Clock – between the two political ‘sides’ of the national political spectrum and their often starkly oppositional ‘Captains’ of the ‘Ship of State’, into future, always unknown and unchartered, national and international seas. In short, State stability, as well as the State’s security militarily, politically and economically, is created, advanced and ensured.
This bipartisan continuity in ‘deep and rational thinking’ for the State by the alternating Government and Opposition parties, given its strategic, geopolitical, energy, economic, demographic and social realities and position in the world, bears fruit domestically and internationally. Firstly, it results in ‘rational and sensible policies’ for the State on behalf of the People as chosen by successive national governments from either side of the political spectrum (in what could only be called a bipartisan ‘Triumph of Common Sense’ for the continued well-being of the national people and the State in the world). Secondly, it creates a higher level of international trust, respect for and understanding of the State in terms of the direction or principles held and advanced by that nation of people in the world – in spite of the continuous alterations in leadership after the passage of several years, usually between elected Left-oriented and Right-oriented governments.
[The popular change in leadership choice comes mostly, it must be said, as a result of the national people becoming ‘weary of the familiar’ and voting for different parties to acquire variety, freshness and change, rather than – as it rightly should be – as a result of the national people being well-informed of competing policies and ideas via national and local political debates, and then deciding and voting following a true, frank and honest assessment of not only the value, advantage and realistic feasibility of the policies promoted, but also each political party’s historical and factual performance record in terms of successes and especially failures when holding power in government previously. As the old saying goes, “Actions speak louder than Words”.]
In a stable, rational, debate-driven, tolerant-within-reason, and “freedom-loving” liberal democratic nation, ruled by governments ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’, extreme groups or political parties of any description – be they Far-Left Marxists, Far-Right Fascists, White Supremacists, Black Supremacists, Brown Supremacists, Blood-Purists, ‘Blood-based’, ‘Ethnicity-based’ or ‘Colour-based’ Racialists/Racists, Extreme Environmentalists, Anarchists, or indeed the new Radical Liberal adherents to the ruthless, irrational, history-ignorant and system-overthrowing “Revolutionary Woke” political-religion or political cult – that by their extreme nature have a tendency towards committing acts of political violence in pursuit of their own radical, biased, one-eyed, intolerant, hateful and fanatical political goals, are not only incredibly dangerous to the stability and security of any State, but also to all innocent and law-abiding citizens living in the country within State borders.
Because of the inherently extremist and violent character of such groups and political parties or factions, it is the continuous duty of successive elected governments of the State to do all in their power to render and keep such groups illegal under national law. This is so that the radical, destabilising, persecutory and even murderous narratives of these extreme groups or political parties are silenced, and their propaganda made inaccessible to those potentially susceptible, uninformed or gullible individual citizens in the public population, who might be easily indoctrinated and/or recruited for action into these superiority- and hate-based ideological groups or parties of toxic extremism.
In America, specifically, the Far-Right presently consists of extremely small pockets of Neo-Nazi White Supremacists, who are rejected and despised by all current American political parties, and nearly all of the entire American population of approximately 332 million people. By contrast, the Far-Left currently consists of the reverse-racist “pro-black, anti-white”, reverse-sexist “pro-female, anti-male”, and overtly Marxist ANTIFA and BLM organisations/movements, which – under the pretext of advancing equality, tolerance and equal treatment for all American ethnicities, colours and religions of citizens in America (an aim that in itself is absolutely noble, right, fair and just) – are solely responsible for widespread, anti-Government, State-sabotage and State-destruction across America throughout 2020 in both:
(a) committing countless, grievous, intolerant, aggressive and violent attacks, robbery and killings of other law-abiding American citizens or their private property, including the reckless/negligent manslaughter or intended murder of U.S. Police Officers, and the injury of hundreds of others, who were valiantly attempting in the chaos to do their mandated jobs by restoring ‘Law and Order’, in riotous, disintegrating and often burning major cities across America (reminiscent of war-zones to global onlookers);
[Due in large part to the ‘demonization of police’ in America, that has led directly to ‘a horrific year for law enforcement’ across the U.S. during 2020, a staggering total number of 296 American police men and women died in the line of duty in 2020, compared to 148 the year earlier in 2019. A total of 311 American Law Enforcement Officers were also shot by American civilian legal citizens and illegal non-citizen aliens during 2020, a shockingly high rate that has dramatically risen by 29% from levels previously sustained during 2018. A further 103 Police Officers have additionally been killed in the line-of-duty during the first four months of 2021 alone, between January-April, among them 93 men and 10 women, at an average of 50 years of age and nearly 20 years of experience in policing (‘Line-of-duty police deaths surge in 2020 as coronavirus, calls to ‘defund’ pose challenge to officers’ safety’, Fox News, 31 December 2020, www.foxnews.com/us/police-deaths-on-duty-surge-in-2020, (accessed 24 April 2021); ‘Honoring Officers Killed in 2021’, Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), 2021, www.odmp.org/search/year, (accessed 24 April 2021).)]
and
(b) carrying out the intentional desecration, destruction, burning, razing or looting of government buildings, court houses, privately-owned businesses, sacred and treasured buildings consecrated as places of social congregation and of worship of God, and priceless historical monuments of importance and significance as markers of various eras, events, battles, and ‘Great Lessons Learnt’ that once took place – and of heroic political and military figures who once lived and won acclaim in the American homeland – during the passage of 400 years of time in the history of the disunited/united colonies and states of the American nation.
In my own humble opinion, all human beings are and should be equal under God and before the Law – regardless of the ‘shade’ of their skin on the beautiful human colour spectrum. Moreover, I personally believe that it is not outer skin colour, but inner character that counts in life, and it is actions not words that speak volumes regarding the kind of character any human individual has in the world at any one moment in time.
[5] Modified image taken from ‘Statue of Liberty: Jump queues and save time with simple hack’, Escape, 8 July 2019, https://www.escape.com.au/destinations/north-america/usa/new-york/statue-of-liberty-jump-queues-and-save-time-with-simple-hack/news-story/23626b27f62a4546568e396e70498644, (accessed 22 November 22).
[6] T. Carlson, Interview with Colonel (COL) Doug MacGregor (Ret.), ‘Tucker Carlson’, Fox News, 15 March 2021 [aired 16 March 2021 in New Zealand].
[7] “War” is not in or of itself a spiritual sin: In ‘The Ten Commandments’ of Exodus 20:1-23, given directly by God to Moses on Mt Sinai in Midian (Mt Jabal al-Lawz in Saudi Arabia) , the commandment in verse 13 is actually “You shall not murder” (רָצַח – Numbers 35:10-34). However, the word was wrongly mistranslated from Hebrew to English for multiple centuries as “you shall not kill” (e.g. kill in wars between nations, in self-defence to protect your own life from violently lethal or murderous attack, to defend vulnerable family members, friends, innocents or individuals needing protection from violently lethal or murderous attacks, or have the right to carry, train with, and use weapons for these right, just and lawful purposes described above), including in the first published Hebrew/Greek to English Bible translation, the King James Bible of 1604-1611, commissioned by King James VI of Scotland & I of England, Ireland, Wales and France.
This mistranslation led to a wrong and false belief, along with an accompanying sense of guilt among many civilians and military personnel, over many centuries, and throughout the United Kingdom, the English-speaking British Empire/Commonwealth, and hence the English-speaking world at large, that civilians killing attackers in self-defence and soldiers killing each other in war as ‘servants of the State’ was somehow sinful in God’s eyes.
Needless fear, worry, and guilt regarding this idea has consequently plagued millions of human souls all around the world since the early 17th century – even despite the obvious recorded contradictions in Holy Scripture to this false belief or wrong interpretation of the commandment throughout the Biblical Old Testament (Hebrew “Tanakh” – including the Mosaic “Law”, Prophets, Writings on Godly Wisdom, Psalm Praise Songs, and Historical Accounts of Ancient Israel), both before and long after the blood-ratification of the Old Testament “Law” covenant at the foot of Mt Sinai in Israelite history.
As one prominent example, consider David’s multiple and extremely blessed/successful war campaigns against the Philistines in the 11-10th centuries B.C., as first a shepherd-turned-warrior (tactics), then a commander of men (operations and strategy), and finally the King of Israel (campaigns), who, despite his involvement and leadership of many warring activities and campaigns was described by God as “a man after My own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14/1 Samuel 16:1, 7, 11-12/Acts 13:22) and even honoured by God in being chosen to be the forefather of the awaited Messiah-Saviour (2 Samuel 7:16), who had been earlier promised to humankind by God to Adam (Genesis 3:15), Abraham (Genesis 12:3), Isaac (Genesis 17:19-21), Jacob/Israel (Genesis 28:14) and to the Israelites via numerous successive prophets from Moses in the 16th century B.C. (Deuteronomy 18:18-19), to David in the 11th-10th centuries B.C. (Psalm 22/Psalm 69), to Isaiah in the 8th-7th centuries B.C. (Isaiah 53), to Daniel in the late 6th century B.C. during the Babylonian Exile (Daniel 2:1-49), to Haggai in the early 6th century B.C. after the Exile (Haggai 2:6-9), and to Malachi in the 5th century B.C. (Malachi 3, Matthew 21).
Moreover, God Himself is a ‘God of War’ as well as a ‘God of Peace’, because He is simultaneously Just as well as Merciful (spiritually Holy/Whole/Healthy). See Exodus 15:1-19; Warrior-King David in 2 Samuel 22/Psalm 18; David’s son “King Solomon the Wise” in Ecclesiastes 3:1-17 and in 1 Kings 8:22-61/2 Chronicles 6:12-42; the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 45:7; the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 22; the prophet Micah in Micah 6:8; the Messiah-heralding prophet John the Baptist to the soldiers in Luke 3:14; and Jesus Christ the Messiah to the Roman Centurion commander in Matthew 8:5-13, and more generally regarding conflicts in life in Matthew 5:43-48 and Luke 6:27-49.
For Christians (the name for people believing in Jesus as the promised Saviour-King of God, dating from early believers in Antioch during the 1st century A.D., as recorded in Acts [of the Apostles] 11:26), JESUS CHRIST in Greek – or YESHUA HA-MASHIAC in Hebrew – is the long-promised and awaited “Messiah/Christ” (Anointed One/Holy One of God [Genesis 1:1/26-27, Proverbs 8:22-36, 1-22, Job 38-42, Psalm 40:6-10, Psalm 89:1-37, Ezekiel 34, Psalm 2], “Prophet like Moses” [Deuteronomy 18:18-19], and “Son of David” [Matthew 1:20-25, 2:1-23, Luke 2:1-20, 21-40, 41-52] foretold and prophesied about by all the prophets on more than a hundred occasions in ‘Old Covenant’ Holy Scripture. In other words, Yeshua the Messiah/Jesus the Christ is the God-sent mediator and blood-ratifier (God’s innocent “Lamb of God” sin-sacrifice or “Great Martyr”) of a new and better spiritual covenant between God and Man – the ‘New Testament’ – based not on the former Law and ‘good works-for-salvation’, but rather on the spirit and individual faith from the heart, like Abraham “the Father of Faith” (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:1-3, Hebrews 11:8-10, Galatians 3:6), the natural result and good fruit of this ‘salvation-by-faith’ being good works.
[Important dates (please refer to the seasons, times and dates revealed in the amazing ‘The Star of Bethlehem Revealed’ documentary by Rick Larson): Yeshua /Jesus was miraculously conceived in the womb of a young and virginal Jewish maiden from the ancestral bloodline of King David in 3 B.C.; was born in Bethlehem the hometown of David in 2 B.C. (aged 1 in 1 B.C. and 2 in 1 A.D.), where as a newborn baby he was heralded by angels and lowly shepherds, and much later on 25 December welcomed and worshipped by 3 ‘Magi kings’ from the East; he began a 3-year teaching and healing ministry throughout the land of Israel from 30-33 A.D.; was arrested, tried and condemned to death by the Jewish leaders of that generation and era, and handed over to be killed-by-crucifixion at the hands of the Gentile Roman occupiers at the age of 33 years; was crucified and died on the Holiest Annual Jewish Feast of “Passover”, suspended between Heaven and Earth, on Friday 3 April 33 A.D.; was resurrected-to-life again by God after spending 3 days in a rock tomb (Friday-Sunday), located in a garden near the Roman crucifixion site of Golgotha outside Jerusalem, on Sunday 5 April 33 A.D.; reappearing to his disciples and crowds of his followers on multiple separate occasions in Jerusalem, Emmaus and in Galilee during a period of 40 days in April-May after his resurrection to life, as testified to by many eye-witnesses, after which he miraculously ascended back to Heaven.]
Christians believe that the Mt Sinai ‘Old Covenant’ or ‘Old Testament’ was a divine training-regime designed for the Israelite nation of largely God-ignorant and holiness-ignorant people, whom God had powerfully rescued from approximately 112-144 years of slavery, murder and mistreatment in Egypt of the Pharaohs following the death of Vizier Joseph (spiritually children). In contrast, the Hill of Calvary/Crucifixion ‘New Covenant’ or ‘New Testament’ is firmly believed to be a new, divine, “Justice AND Grace (=unmerited or ‘gifted’ good will and loving-kindness from God)”, Covenant treaty between God & Man for the, by now, after the passage of 14 centuries of history (and 3 x ‘14 generations’ sets since Abraham as detailed in Matthew 1:17), very well-informed, trained, disciplined and drilled Israelite nation (spiritually adults) – as well as for ALL the other God-ignorant nations of the non-Jewish “Gentile” world, living in every part of the earth (Isaiah 9:1-7, Luke 2:30-32, 1 Corinthians 13:11, Hebrews 8, Titus 2:11-14, 3:3-8, Acts of the Apostles 15:1-35, Romans 3).
Accounts of “The Gospel” (“Good News from God”) message of Jesus Christ and what His coming means for humankind (John 3:5-21, Luke 6:17-49, Matthew 6, Ephesians 3, Titus 1-3) can be found in the Gospel Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Together these books detail the miraculous conception, humble birth, childhood, baptism, desert testing/tempting to disobey God by the Devil, teaching, healings, deliverances, miracles, arrest, trial, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, multiple reappearances, and final ascension to Heaven of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
These four Gospel accounts were recorded by three of Jesus’ Israelite, eye-witness disciples and one Greek medical physician and scholar:
(1) Matthew, a former Tax-Collector for the occupying Romans (Book of Matthew – ‘Jesus as King’);
(2) John, Jesus’ youngest and closest disciple, formerly a fisherman, and the only disciple of the 12 to risk death by publicly standing at the foot of the cross during Jesus’ 6-hour agonising death on the cross, at the Golgotha (“Place of the Skull”) execution site outside Jerusalem, as well as the only original disciple/apostle not to be killed by execution for his faith in Jesus Christ, who instead died a natural death in current-day Turkey/Turkiye (Book of John – ‘Jesus as Divine’);
(3) Simon Peter, also formerly a fisherman before Jesus called him to follow Him as a disciple, recorded by means of his evangelist assistant John Mark (Book of Mark – ‘Jesus as Servant’); and
(4) the non-Jewish/Gentile, Greek physician, historian, investigator and interviewer of other living eye-witnesses of Jesus’ life and miracles, Dr Luke (Book of Luke – ‘Jesus as Man’).
For more information refer to any of these four Gospel Books, as well as to the letters written in Greek by the Syrian Jewish-Christian scholar, Saul/Paul of Tarsus (of revelation “Light from Heaven on the road to Damascus” fame), to early Jewish-Christian believers in Jerusalem and to Gentile-Christian believers in Rome, Ephesus and many other ancient cities, as recorded in the New Testament of the Holy Bible (literal word-for-word Hebrew-English and Greek-English translations here).
The “Two Greatest Commandments” from God that “fulfil all the Law and the Prophets” (God-ward and Man-ward +):
(1) to revere (holy fear) and love our Good God above all; and
(2) to love your neighbour as much as you love yourself (in the same way as God loves you, and with the same regard and standards that you do apply and would apply to yourself if in your neighbour’s situation – NOT as much or in the same way as your neighbour currently loves/hates you in a tit-for-tat, “evil-for-evil”, negative hate spiral – Jeremiah 22:3, 16-21 & Jeremiah 23:1-7, 23-24 – BUT instead “overcoming evil with good” as it is written in Romans 12:16-21)
[refer to Matthew 5:17 and Matthew 22:33-46].
*The 2nd Greatest Commandment (“Golden Rule” from God) – “Loving your Neighbour (near-person/brother or sister) as Yourself”: see also Matthew 9:12-13, Matthew 12:7, Galatians 5:13-26, 6:2-10, 1 John 4:6-12, 20-21, and 1 Corinthians 13.
Faith from absorbing the heavenly dew of Holy Scripture is the root that allows the pure lily of Love to blossom in our hearts for God & for Man. +
[8] Own translation from German: ‘…dass der Krieg nicht bloß ein politischer Akt, sondern ein wahres politisches Instrument ist, eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs, ein Durchführen desselben mit anderen Mitteln…die politische Absicht ist der Zweck, der Krieg ist das Mittel, und niemals kann das Mittel ohne Zweck gedacht werden’ (C. von Clausewitz, ‘Erster Teil. Erstes Buch’, Vom Kriege – Hinterlassenes Werk, Ungekürzter Text’, Berlin, Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH & Co. KG., 1999, p. 45.)