Blessed are the peacemakers . . .

. . . for they shall be called the children of God. Does that sound familiar? Hold that thought as the war drums are pounding again across the world. This time it is Syria. A few years ago it was Libya. Before that, it was Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to mention occasional air strikes in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and God knows where else. We took sides in the Iran-Iraq war, knowing that our friend Saddam was using chemical warfare. Lebanon was a crapshoot in the early 1980s and again 25 years later. And let's not forget arming bin Laden in Afghanistan to fight former Soviet Union. We paid that evil forward.

Now according to some, many of these wars were justified. Just ask former head of ethics for the Southern Baptists. Richard Land promised God's blessings for war in Iraq six months before we conducted our glorious "shock-and-awe" campaign. The miserable failure of that prophesy should have been a wake-up call but there were no consequences for the prophets.

The just war in Afghanistan produced no good results. We installed a corrupt political leadership that will one day partner with the Taliban. The same militants will soon be able to say they won guerilla wars with the two superpowers of the Cold War.

Vietnam and Korea, two Cold War killing grounds, were considered just by many. The fruits of all that spilled blood have not been terribly sweet.

We know two things before we enter Syria. One is that it will be very expensive, even with using our long distance killing machines. From Matthew Yglesias at Slate:

Today that day has arrived in light of the increasing chatter that the United States government should drop a bunch of high-powered explosives in order to kill and maim a bunch of Syrian individuals while destroying some of Syria's physical infrastructure in order to help other Syrian individuals. One's thoughts naturally turn to NATO's 2011 military intervention in Libya, which proponents of killing-and-maiming as a humanitarian strategy like to point to as an effective kill-and-maim episode that debunked the concerns of skeptics.

Yes, it will frightfully expensive in dollars and half-hearted morality. We are tipping the scale in favor of one murderous group over another. Yippee!

Yglesias frames the issue nicely:

Now, before the kill-and-maim-for-the-sake-of-humanity crowd shoots a Tomahawk missile at me, it's worth conceding up front that none of this amounts to a logically airtight case against blowing up some Syrian infrastructure and killing various Syrian bad guys. It is very possible for a given undertaken to be worth doing without being the optimal policy. But I do think it's worth interrogating the larger political and ideological construct that says that spending a few billions dollars to help foreigners is a thinkable undertaking if and only if the means of providing assistance is to kill some people and blow some stuff up. The explosives-heavy approach to humanitarianism has a lot of unpredictable side effects, sometimes backfires massively, and offers an extremely poor value proposition. So whatever you think about killing some Syrians this summer, please consider throwing a few dollars in the direction of a cost-effective charity of some kind.

The second thing we know for  certainty is that bloodshed will continue for decades after we declare victory for our side. There have been no exceptions to that rule in the Middle East. Sometimes I swear we are deliberately stirring up trouble in what the book of Revelation suggests will be the future site of Armageddon.

As long as we are on the subject of just war, what has been the fate of Christians in these same Middle Eastern countries? They have been persecuted and forced to flee their homes and communities. Many line refugee camps in Syria and Jordan, while their wealthy brethren have fled to the West.

It is not difficult to understand why Jesus said people that pursue peace find favor in the eyes of God. The violent keep the cycle of violence going. Those that live by the sword, die by it sooner or later. Violence, after all, is the antithesis of forgiveness. It is soul-scarring vengeance.

We Christians in America live in a country that has been the biggest arms dealer in the world since World War II. What better way to drum up business than to show off the killing power of our weapons. Perhaps it would be wise for us to take the words of Christ seriously and speak out against violence.

One final question. Where was Saul traveling when he was on blinded on the road and became he became the Apostle named Paul? The Christians being displaced in this conflict trace their faith in Christ to Paul. The side we are helping will make the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Christ living in Syria even greater.

To recap, America and other western countries want to punish the sins of the Syrian government for using chemical weapons by spilling the blood of the Syrian military. The followers of Jesus need to find ways to stop the violence and heal the wounds of those hurt.