It is said that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. In the case of NATO’s military intervention in Libya six years ago, both sides of the adage seem to apply.

The First Marine Division’s paragon of virtue, Chesty Puller, upheld the standards of just warfighting and respect, if not love, of the enemy. We pray his progeny leading the defense of our nation today will do the same.

In the Christian view, the normative grounding from which the tradition of just war casuistry springs is the dominical command to love.

Since my commissioning in 1988 as a United States Army Chaplain Candidate, the fundamental purpose of war has changed relatively little: war generally remains a contest of wills to achieve political ends between nation-states employing military force. However, war inherently seems different today, does it not? How so?