The situation reminded me of a statement by Benedict XVIth that he made on his vacation from Roma earlier this week. Please read the following from zenit.org/english:

"In this moment I cannot help think of the situation, ever more grave and more tragic, that the Middle East is going through: hundreds of dead, many wounded, a huge number of the homeless and refugees; houses, towns and infrastructure destroyed; meanwhile, hatred and the desire for revenge grow in the hearts of many.

These facts demonstrate clearly that you cannot re-establish justice, establish a new order and build authentic peace when you resort to instruments of violence.

More than ever we see how prophetic and altogether realistic is the voice of the Church when, in the face of wars and conflicts of every kind, it points out the path of truth, justice, love and liberty (cf. encyclical "Pacem in Terris"). Humanity must also cross this path today to achieve the good desire for true peace.

In the name of God, I appeal to all those responsible for this spiral of violence, so that they immediately put down their weapons on all sides! I ask governing leaders and international organizations not to spare any effort to obtain this necessary halt to hostilities and so to be able to begin to build, through dialogue, a lasting and stable concord for all the people of the Middle East.

I appeal to all people of good to continue and to intensify the shipment of humanitarian help to those populations so tested and needy. But especially [I ask that] every heart continue to raise the hopeful prayer to the good and merciful God, so that he grants his peace to that region and to the whole world."

First, we have to recognize the direct repudiation of the official US doctrine of pre-emptive war as a means of peace in this statement. Instruments of violence do not build security or peace. The US regime stated policy runs fundamentally counter to traditional Christian teaching. Christians cannot support this regime as long as it pursues this policy, nor any other national regime that pursues such an agenda.

Second, the Pope's appeal to work for an immediate cease-fire has been directly repudiated by the President of the United States without real challenge from any political opposition. The US continues to supply weaponry to Israel and rumors persist that certain forces in the US have encouraged Israel to expand the conflict to Syria. The US remains the largest political force that seeks to establish peace through violence, against all empirical evidence to the contrary.

Finally, there is guidance here for us: to engage in humanitarian aide for all those in Israel and Lebanon who are suffering from the violence and to pray. This has gone on long enough. We need to accept the "realistic" "voice of the Church" in finding ways to work around the politics of statecraft that only know of their own means of peace through violence, and thus never know peace. We need to find ways ourselves of being the church, of building creative institutions that do not seek to influence the violence of states, but work for peace.

It might even be that such "terrorist" Islamic groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah can give us some clues on how to organize options to the liberal nation-state. Yet as Christian, of course, we cannot accept such group's use of violence and coercion to reach their ends of opposing nation-states. By adopting violent tactics, such groups merely duplicate the nation-state at its worst point -- in the process legitimating the liberal nation-state to those already committed to it.

Yet it seems to me that Christians have much to learn from such groups. We need to develop international networks as "non-violent radical Christians" to call into question the legitimacy of such liberal democratic regimes, to start forming means of works of mercy and justice within such societies that do not depend on the ideology nor the patronage of the civil and political structures of the state. We need to do this especially as resident aliens of the United States, persons whose citizenship is in heaven, not in the perpetual violence of the state.