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who has been wronged from the hands of his oppressor; do not exploit the stranger, the orphan, the widow; do no violence; shed no innocent blood".
I think Christ calls his sons and daughters to be peace-makers, but that means justice-makers, since there can be no peace without justice.
But the Christian should, paradoxically, be "aggressively" meek. Not inflicting physical harm on the aggressor, still less an innocent party, but, rather, leading with their chins, so to speak. Most notably, this, I believe, takes the form of speaking truth to power, or like Rosa Parkes, witnessing in some other way, to power.
True strength, Christian scripture teaches is passive. The crucified Christ, who spoke of hmself in prophecy through David in a psalm as "being a worm and no man", was actually the Warrior King, the Great King, whose arrival was so keenly awaited. Of Jesus' Passion (passivity, suffering), Paul makes that extraordinary bold proclamation, that he was, in fact, trailing the powers of evil as captives, behind him, in a triumphal procession.
I was going to say that, personally, I tended to place little store on such arcane information as you cite, concerning turning the other cheek (the often cited Camel's Eye gate, for instance, was a medieval structure), but I realise that it precisely illustrates the point.
The prime example of this heroic witness, of all time, at least that was not hidden from the world, imo, was that given by the Austrian farm labourer, Franz Jaegerstetter, who refused to desist from denouncing Hitler and his Nazis. He didn't have any back up, any network of colleagues, like most of the other heroic German and, presumably, Austrian enemies of nazism. But after he was guillotined, he left behind a wife and two young daughters in what must have been particularly difficult circumstances.
It does, however, even have application for the military.
If it was the effect of servicemen's actions that was the measure of their greatness, the crew of Enola Gay would have been the greatest military heroes of all time; but, in fact, those we honour the most highly are those who put themselves in harm's way, at the greatest personal risk.
As regards military leaders, with the exception of Cunningham in the Royal Navy and your McArthur, I don't think most of the generals and admirals in the UK or the US were that good, and some were downright dreadful. But how Nelson, Zhukov and Rommel, who absolutely led from the front, were idolised by their troops.
There is a story that, when Zhukov noticed that a car full of officers hadn't picked up wounded men he, himself, had seen on the road earlier, and had not been able to pick up, he turfed them out and had the vehicle go back to pick them up, and then turned over to them for their use.
When the first Allied prisoners were brought to Rommel in the desert campaign, he ordered that they should be treated with decency and respect, as honourable foes. And when Montgomery arrived in N. Africa, understandably morale-wise, he had to order the 8th Army to take down and destroy the photos of Rommel, "The Desert Fox" they had put up in their tents.
Ironically, despite the absence of the kind of atrocities perpetrated in Russia, the fighting there was as fierce as in any campaign. I think most of us would consider ordinary battle-field bayoneting atrocious enough. And surely that's true.
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