The Hypocrisy of Modern Warfare

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 27, 2025

Moses warns: “Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him.” (Dt. 8:5-6)

Many years ago, after celebrating a funeral Mass, I spoke with an elderly man outside the church, separated from the crowd. He was of my dad’s generation, so I asked if he served in the war. He had. Which theatre? European. What Army? The Third Army. I asked him if his family knew about his exploits. No. Stunning. He was one of the drivers for General George Patton.

In a couple of weeks, I received a copy of a photo he took outside a concentration camp with several officers, including Patton and Eisenhower. He said Patton was furious and told his troops, “You see what these [SOBs] have done. I don’t want you to take any prisoners!” Eisenhower objected, but Patton said he said what he said. Despite the rumors during the war, sometimes we must witness injustice up close and personal before we feel the outrage.

Most of us viscerally object to murder. We sense the moral difference between the horror of soldiers fallen in battle and the twisted and maimed bodies of civilians caught in the crossfire. Killing soldiers in a firefight is not murder, nor is the unintended killing of non-combatants. But just as we find it difficult to define pornography—but “know it when we see it”—we may say the same thing about the killing of civilians in war. We know the difference between battle scenes depicting the inadvertent killing of civilians and the mass murder of indiscriminate killings. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam is a horrible blot on our history.

Since the Battle of Agincourt (1415), with its innovative long-range crossbow battle tactics, mass killing from a distance became a battlefield norm. The anonymous killing has become customary for technologically advanced nations who kill enemies using artillery, airplanes at 20,000 feet, missiles, and a whole array of killing machines operated by technicians in air-conditioned command centers. Culminating in WWII, the exponential increase of civilian deaths has been the result: London, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

Here in America, we haven’t seen the effects of foreign war on our soil—except the violence of Pearl Harbor and the World Trade Center attacks. As a population and a nation, we haven’t been up close and personal in response to the results of indiscriminate attacks on non-combatants. Most Americans justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki as “necessary to win the war.” (Although, after the war, prominent leaders like Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur and Admiral Leahy disapproved of the bombings.) A corollary to the cliché, “to the victor belongs the spoils,” we may say, “to the victor belongs the moral high ground.” Without objection, we have accepted a new cliché to justify violations of the Fifth Commandment: “No moral equivalence!”

The slogan cleverly blurs the application of the Fifth Commandment to every person and nation. In this fallen world, God permits us to wage just wars (where killings in battle are not necessarily murderous). But He does not allow deliberate indiscriminate killings.

The ongoing war in the Middle East provides a provocative example to Americans who live across the Atlantic Ocean from the hostilities. Like Patton and his soldiers during WWII, we are mostly unaware of the carnage taking place against civilians.

We’re inclined to apply the Fifth Commandment condemnation—and our outrage—only to terrorists and others who have not mastered the art of anonymous mass murder. Terrorists are at a perpetual disadvantage. Their asymmetrical tactical killings are almost always up close and personal, unlike the masters of technological warfare.

Occasionally the truth of exploitation and injustice becomes more evident to outsiders. But the terrorists refuse to learn the art of public relations; so they blow up discotheques, kidnap hostages, and torture captives. The doctrine of “no moral equivalence” unleashes retribution that vastly exceeds the Old Testament rule of restraint, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

Accompanied by highly lethal weapons, the new rule is “A thousand eyes for an eye and a thousand teeth for a tooth:” If the terrorists seek refuge in civilian centers, that’s unfortunate, but the civilians are bringing the carnage on themselves. The doctrine of “no moral equivalence” shields the gods of war from the Commandments of the one God and honest negotiations.

Statesmen and diplomats invoke international law and condemn ethnic cleansing and genocide. But men of faith are not embarrassed to invoke God’s laws. Indiscriminate attacks on non-combatants not only violate international law; they violate human dignity and God’s law. From the point of view of the Ten Commandments, “moral equivalence” applies to everyone.

In the 1960s, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council solemnly issued the following declaration (Lumen Gentium, 80):

Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation. The unique hazard of modern warfare consists in this: it provides those who possess modern scientific weapons with a kind of occasion for perpetrating just such abominations; moreover, through a certain inexorable chain of events, it can catapult men into the most atrocious decisions.

In nightmares, I imagine traveling to the Middle East and, like those Americans liberating concentration camps, I see for myself the terrain, the structures, and the people scarred by high-tech war. And if I evaluate all parties by the Fifth Commandment—Thou shalt not murder—I pray I experience the same horror felt by General Patton outside that concentration camp—but restraining the “take no prisoners” passion for vengeance.

We just witnessed the annual March for Life. The display in defense of innocent unborn human beings makes every good Catholic feel proud. We stand up for life. We know silence in the face of evil is shameful.