Put Up Your Sword

John 18.
¹⁰ Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear; and the slave’s name was Malchus. ¹¹ So Jesus said to Peter, “Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”

³³ Therefore Pilate entered again into the Praetorium, and summoned Jesus and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” ³⁴ Jesus answered, “Are you saying this ^[j]on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?” ³⁵ Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?” ³⁶ Jesus answered, “My kingdom ^[k]is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not ^[l]of this realm.”  

"....Contrary to conventional wisdom, the biggest doves in Washington wear uniforms.  This is because our military leaders have seen the cost of war and its unpredictability, and they have too often sent their troops in harm's way to execute ill-defined or unrealistic presidential objectives, with thin political support that evaporated when the going got tough or the fight became prolonged....

...There is one final lesson abour war that we too often forget.  We are enamored of technology and what it can do because of advances in precision, sensors, information, and satellite technology.  A button is pushed in Nevada, and seconds later a pickup truck explodes in Mosul. A bomb destroys the targeted house on the right, leaving intact the one on the left.  War has become for too many--among them defense 'experts,' members of congress, executive branch officials, and the American public as well--a kind of arcade video game or action movie, bloodless, painless, and ordorless.  But as I told a military audience at the National Defense University in September 2008, war is 'inevitably tragic, inefficient, and uncertain.'   I warned them to be skeptical of systems analysis, computer models, game theories, or doctrines that suggest otherwise.  'Look askance,' I said, 'at idealized, triumphalist, or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to upend the immutable principles of war, where the enemy is killed, but our troups and innnocent civilians are spared; where adversaries can be cowed, shocked, or awed into sumission, instead of being tracked down, hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.'  I quoted General William T. Sherman that 'every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.'  And I concluded with General  'Vinegar Joe' Stilwell's warning that 'not matter how a war starts, it ends in mud.  It has be be slugged out--there are no trick solutions or cheap shortcuts.'

Robert M. Gates, Memoirs of a Secretary at War, pgs. 591, 592