The disjunction between the flow of books and articles that are critical of the military, war, and warriors and the continued trust and respect Americans have for the armed forces is interesting, because it shows a fundamental flaw in the way books like this one attempt to argue for their conclusions. Keeler’s book attempts to argue with the world on its own terms rather than offering new ones. He has accepted the idea that the way to convince Americans that idolatry is wrong is to show them that the military and its service members are not worthy of worship because they are ineffective or corrupt. The problem with this assumption is that it presumes that were the military better at fighting wars, less prone to tolerating abuse, or more adept at recruiting young Americans without dangling economic incentives in front of them, that this sort of “near-idolatrous worship” might be the appropriate response. This approach fails to wrangle with the deeper, abiding issue: that the United States’ politics of war remain so convincing.
This is where the Church can contribute to the conversation about war and peace.
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