It is Christmas time and across the world hundreds of thousands of men and women will spend this celebration of the arrival of the Prince of Peace separated from family and friends.  Some will die in Afghanistan or Iraq or maybe in some place we haven’t heard of yet.  With the loss of thousands of our own and the deaths of over a hundred thousand human beings in target nations it cannot be denied that war is an ugly blight on humanity however just it may be.

I was sharing the Lord of the Rings trilogy with my children this past week and these movies are of course rife with battle scenes.  My 11 year old made note of the fact that the Kings of the people fought in the front line and even in some cases gave their life.  I can’t help but wonder if we might not see more peace were our own leaders to put more on the line than their reputation when sending our children into battle.  While we at home are encouraged and inspired to throw parades and celebrations of our sons’ and daughters’ heroics, I note that no war hero I have ever met found anything the least bit glorious about his service.  I remember the tears in an elderly Marine’s eyes as he visited Parris Island.  A young and naïve recruit, I asked him was it true that the Marines in Chosin left none behind.  “Honey,” he said quietly as he laid a hand on my shoulder, “We carried out arms.”

I think of the old video of a World War I survivor.  A British soldier who had taken part in the legendary Christmas Day Truce told of the Germans burying their dead in the frozen ground.  “Für Vaterland und Freiheit” they marked the graves; “For Fatherland and Freedom.”  “Hier Rest im Gott” (Here Rest in God) they prayed for their fallen comrades.  And the realization dawned that here in the trenches the German’s too believed they had a just cause, that they died for God and Country; that in their hearts these soldiers were not much different than British, Belgian, or French.  It reminds me of the refusal of the Pennsylvania Colony Quakers to fight against the French, Spanish and Indians in 1739.  Governor George Thomas demanded of the Assembly to know why a Quaker would kill a burglar but would not kill an enemy soldier.  The reply came that a burglar knew he was wrong but a soldier likely believed in the righteousness of his cause.

I offer no opinion on the righteousness of our war on terror or the righteousness of our leaders in waging it.  Only God knows the hearts of men.  But some things can be known.  War separates families.  War kills fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters.  It changes forever the mind and heart of those who survive its atrocities.  It should never be forgotten that war is entered by leaders who sit far removed from its stench of death but is fought by real people on both sides; people who sometimes must look  into the eyes of a life they are about to take.  May we never allow the idea to take hold that war is glorious however justified or that the people we are actually fighting are less than human.  If we do, it is our own humanity that will be lost.

Please keep in your hearts this season those separated by war and those standing in the heart of danger for its purposes.  When celebrating the birth 2000 years ago of the man Christians revere as the Son of Man and God come to save, remember He was also the Prince of Peace and pray for the time when that peace shall reign.  I encourage you to view the video below.  It is only a few photos of the Christmas Truce, when men defied the will of their leaders to fill the “No Man’s Land” between enemy trenches with men of goodwill and common desires.  The audio is the real gem; this song will touch the hardest heart with sympathy for those sent afar to fight.  And here is a firsthand account from a soldier in the trenches:

On Christmas morning we stuck up a board with ‘A Merry Christmas’ on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one. Platoons would sometimes go out for twenty-four hours’ rest – it was a day at least out of the trench and relieved the monotony a bit – and my platoon had gone out in this way the night before, but a few of us stayed behind to see what would happen. Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans done the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench.

Buffalo Bill [the Company Commander] rushed into the trench and endeavoured to prevent it, but he was too late: the whole of the Company were now out, and so were the Germans. He had to accept the situation, so soon he and the other company officers climbed out too. We and the Germans met in the middle of no-man’s-land. Their officers was also now out. Our officers exchanged greetings with them. One of the German officers said that he wished he had a camera to take a snapshot, but they were not allowed to carry cameras. Neither were our officers.

We mucked in all day with one another. They were Saxons and some of them could speak English. By the look of them their trenches were in as bad a state as our own. One of their men, speaking in English, mentioned that he had worked in Brighton for some years and that he was fed up to the neck with this damned war and would be glad when it was all over. We told him that he wasn’t the only one that was fed up with it. We did not allow them in our trench and they did not allow us in theirs.

The German Company-Commander asked Buffalo Bill if he would accept a couple of barrels of beer and assured him that they would not make his men drunk. They had plenty of it in the brewery. He accepted the offer with thanks and a couple of their men rolled the barrels over and we took them into our trench. The German officer sent one of his men back to the trench, who appeared shortly after carrying a tray with bottles and glasses on it. Officers of both sides clinked glasses and drunk one another’s health. Buffalo Bill had presented them with a plum pudding just before. The officers came to an understanding that the unofficial truce would end at midnight. At dusk we went back to our respective trenches.

…The two barrels of beer were drunk, and the German officer was right: if it was possible for a man to have drunk the two barrels himself he would have bursted before he had got drunk. French beer was rotten stuff.

Just before midnight we all made it up not to commence firing before they did. At night there was always plenty of firing by both sides if there were no working parties or patrols out. Mr Richardson, a young officer who had just joined the Battalion and was now a platoon officer in my company wrote a poem during the night about the Briton and the Bosche meeting in no-man’s-land on Christmas Day, which he read out to us. A few days later it was published in The Times or Morning Post, I believe.

During the whole of Boxing Day [the day after Christmas] we never fired a shot, and they the same, each side seemed to be waiting for the other to set the ball a-rolling. One of their men shouted across in English and inquired how we had enjoyed the beer. We shouted back and told him it was very weak but that we were very grateful for it. We were conversing off and on during the whole of the day.

We were relieved that evening at dusk by a battalion of another brigade. We were mighty surprised as we had heard no whisper of any relief during the day. We told the men who relieved us how we had spent the last couple of days with the enemy, and they told us that by what they had been told the whole of the British troops in the line, with one or two exceptions, had mucked in with the enemy. They had only been out of action themselves forty-eight hours after being twenty-eight days in the front-line trenches. They also told us that the French people had heard how we had spent Christmas Day and were saying all manner of nasty things about the British Army.

1915 on Christmas day
On the western front the guns all died away
And lying in the mud on bags of sand
We heard a German sing from no mans land
He had a tenor voice so pure and true
The words were strange but every note we knew
Soaring o’er the living, dead and dammed
The German sang of peace from no mans land

Oh silent night no cannons roar
A king is born of peace for evermore
Alls calm, alls bright all brothers hand in hand
In nineteen and fifteen in no mans land

They left their trenches and we left ours
Beneath tins hats the smiles bloomed like wild flowers
With photos, cigarettes and pots of wine
We built a soldiers truce on the front line
Their singer was a lad of twenty one
We begged another song before the dawn
And sitting in the mud and blood and fear
He sang again the song all longed to hear

Oh silent night no cannons roar
A king is born of peace for evermore
Alls calm, alls bright all brothers hand in hand
Midst gas and rusty wire in no mans land

And in the morning all the guns boomed in the rain
And we killed them and they killed us again
With binit, bomb, bullet gas and flame
And neither we nor they at all to blame
There was heavy fighting right throughout the day
For one night’s peace we bloodily did pay
At night they charged we fought them hand to hand
And I killed the boy that sang in no mans land

Oh silent night no cannons roar
A king is born of peace for evermore
Alls calm, alls bright all brothers hand in hand
And that young soldier sings
and the sound of peace still rings
Tho the captains and all the kings build no mans land

Sleep in heavenly peace
Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child.
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.

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The great quandary of government used to be “guns or butter.”  Would the resources of the state be put to feeding or fighting?  The issuance of fiat paper money has supposedly rendered that question moot.  Now we are told we can have both, and furthermore, that we must or else the world will fall apart without our global governance.

Within the Tea Party there are a wide range of beliefs on this subject from the Ron Paul non-interventionists, to the George Bush pre-emptive warriors.  A good deal of debate on this issue has been set aside because arguing over it will distract from the domestic agenda.  But with said domestic agenda including such goals as cutting spending, lowering taxes, and ending the inflationary printing of fiat cash on Congress’ demand, the military budget has come into question.

John McCain, RINO-extraordinaire, has lashed out at the incoming Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) for his ‘isolationism’ because Paul has said that even the military budget should be examined for cuts.  Speaking at DC think-tank Foreign Policy Initiative, McCain told the conference, “I think there are going to be some tensions within our party.  I worry a lot about the rise of protectionism and isolationism in the Republican Party.”  McCain would have us believe that the military budget cannot be cut without endangering our national security.  This assertion is ludicrous.

First, the U.S. has around 1,000 military bases in over 100 countries worldwide.  Is it ‘isolationist’ to imagine these may not all be necessary?  It is interesting to note that in 2004 Donald Rumsfeld suggested closing several hundred overseas bases allowing 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members to come home to the United States. Rumsfeld estimated then that closing 200-300 bases would save $12 Billion per year and in 2004 ‘billion’ was still a big number.  That does not take into consideration the return of the 170,000 people to communities where they would be gainfully employed and spending their income in their own towns rather than overseas.

Second, while there is no denying that our troops in most cases are brave and honorable young men and women who risk life and limb on our behalf, this treatment of the military per se as a sacred cow in conservative circles is dangerous.  It plays right into the hands of those who would commit malfeasance unchallenged.  The military, like every other collection of human beings on the planet, is going to have good people and bad people.  The Department of Defense, like every other government-run agency, is a monopoly in its market with no competitors to force efficiency.  It is guaranteed to be rife with corruption, embezzlement, waste, and cronyism just like every other government office and if we allow people like John McCain to convince us that questioning military spending is unpatriotic or an insult to our troops than we will be played for suckers.

If we expect to see drastic reductions in spending we need to be looking at every aspect of that spending.  We need to be willing to be wise in our plans and we need to be willing to live in reality even when that reality is uncomfortable.  In short, we need to be willing to choose once again between guns and butter.  As an example, the debate over a domestic missile shield is being framed in terms of whether or not we will add this expense to our budget.  Why is the debate not being framed in the context of replacement?  If this missile shield is effective than shouldn’t we be able to drastically downgrade our overseas presence?  Might we not be able to exercise the wisdom of Jefferson who advised “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none?”

With the specter of increased intervention in Iran and North Korea we need to ask ourselves whether we are able to carry on as the playground monitor.  Surely there are good arguments for a wide range of opinions on whether, or how much, we should be participating in overseas feuds, but with over $100 trillion in unfunded domestic liabilities, military spending accounting for another trillion per year and the additional trillion-plus spent so far in Iraq/Afghanistan; the question is no longer even what we should do but what we can do.  When big government RINOs like McCain start fear-mongering what dangers await if we just cut spending on the military, we should remind ourselves that we will have no military at all to defend us if the printing presses finally give out and the dollar collapses for their reckless refusal to live within our means.

Conservatives have no problem admitting that this is a fallen world when we talk about the problems associated with poverty and the fact that government cannot give us a perfect world with a social safety net.  We need to acknowledge that government also cannot provide a world of perfect security, no matter how many bases, shields, troops, treaties, or embargoes.  Our security is paramount, yes, and defense is one of the few functions government should provide, but we mustn’t allow propaganda from the likes of McCain to trick us into leaving the defense budget entirely unquestioned.  No government expenditure should be considered so sacred as to be untouchable because wherever the sacred cow is, that’s where their corruption will best be hidden from we taxpayers who bear the true cost.