What we're fighting for: Destruction of evil

By Alvin W. Kamp

Nations at war are frequently asked for a definition of their war aims. In our own history, the most frequent answer to the question "What are we fighting for?" has been that we are fighting for freedom, for democracy, for the American way of life, for the rights of man, for security and for peace.

These are good words, it is true, and they have deep meaning for each of us. But certainly they don't mean the same thing to all people. And they have been so carelessly used that sometimes, and in some place, they may have stood in danger of becoming mere words.

Suppose for a moment we try to simplify the answer to the questions "What are we fighting against" and "What are we fighting for?"

To reduce it to its simplest terms, there is only one enemy in the world that man has, and that enemy is evil. Evil plays many roles and assumes many disguises and makes its way sometimes into the most unexpected places. It isn't always an easy thing to put your finger on it, because sometimes evil appears so utterly respectable.

Perhaps this isn't simplifying the question at all. Perhaps it is complicating it. But the fact remains that our fight must be against evil and for a world and a way of life that will be free from evil, the evil that opposes truth, the evil that gives one man insufferable conceit in his own superiority and an intolerable assurance of the inferiority of his fellows, the evil that beckons to indulgence in forbidden things, the evil that cause a nation or a people to forget its principles and ideals and to disregard the commandments of God.

So-called global war is even more global than we suspect. While there are objectives to be won in well-defined geographic areas, evil is no respecter of geography, no respecter of boundaries. It recognizes no neutrality.

Evil is a cunning strategist. If it is driven to cover by frontal attack, it moves in from the flank and from the rear and is a past-master at infiltration. It is the same evil that the world has always had to fight since the beginning of time, the evil that has written on the pages of history concerning nations that could win a war on a distant front and lose it in their own hearts, in their own lives, in their own homes.

It doesn't matter who or what would destroy us or our freedom. If it would destroy us, it represents evil and is, therefore, our enemy.

So in answer to the question "What are we fighting for?" -- we are fighting for the destruction of evil wherever we find it, and we most no more tolerate it among ourselves than we do among our enemies.

Alvin W. Kamp resides in Jackson.