The Evil of Bombing Civilians

God's Word condemns innocent bloodshedding. But by slapping the war label on our conduct, we delude ourselves into believing that killing civilians in war is morally acceptable.

How did our nation come to embrace innocent bloodshedding as moral and acceptable conduct by our military?

The history of warfare progresses from hand-to-hand combat, in which the participants were up close and unambiguous, through the development of artillary, rockets, airplanes, and bombs, where the targets grew further and further away, and the ability to discriminate between combatants and the innocent bystanders grew more and more impossible.

It thus became acceptable to kill those persons who posed no imminent threat to the perpetrators of the attack, either because they were armed but a long way off, or because they were innocent civilians.

America turned full-face toward innocent bloodshedding in war during the course of World War II. At the start, our military opposed terror bombing of cities as immoral. By the end of the war, we joined in the mass murder at Dresden, and then in Japan, killing close to a million innocent people by bombing campaigns.

In the past 60 years, America has bombed and killed millions of innocent civilians in Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places.

No doubt such attacks are militarily effective and efficient - yet they violate God's law against innocent bloodshedding. But killing the innocent is embraced because we want to win.

Our Lord Jesus was careful to exclude His people from the horror of the war He fought against Satan. He shielded us from both war and judgment by dying in our place!