In March of 2007, less than a month after I had turned twenty-two years old, I was deployed to Afghanistan with my engineer unit. I would remain in Afghanistan, with the exception of twenty day’s vacation in January of 2008, for the next fifteen months. At that point in my life my faith was quietly growing from a very important part of my life, to the most important part of my life.

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Watch Chaplain (Capt.) Paul Weberg from the Illinois National Guard as he ministers to the troops in the field as Southern Accord 2012, a joint humanitarian and aeromedical evacuation mission. 

HEBEPHATSHWA AIR BASE, Botswana (4Aug2012) – U.S. forces traveling to the Republic of Botswana Aug. 1-17 for Southern Accord 2012, are under the spiritual care of Army Chaplain Capt. M. Paul Weberg from Aurora, Ill., and chaplain’s assistants Sgt. Vincent N. Guzman Sr., and Spc. David Huerta, all from the 405th Brigade Support Battalion out of Chicago.

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 And if I thought that war as such was really as wicked as wife-beating as such or cannibalism as such, I should certainly join with those who resent the rifle class and the cadet corps. Even here, as in so many other questions, the most fanatical position is really the most reasonable. Even the man who thinks war wrong and objects to rifle corps is not so mad as the man who thinks war wrong and does not object to rifle corps. Only to those who disapprove of all war I would add this reminder: Their only conceivable meaning is that they disapprove of bodily violence. In that case they are bound to disapprove of government as much as of war. Surely there is something quite repulsively mean in saying that force must not be used against a conqueror from abroad, but force may be used against a poor, tired tramp who steals chickens. A Quaker has no right to be a soldier; but neither has he any right to be a magistrate. It is not only war that is an appeal to violence. Peace is an appeal to violence. The order and decency of our streets, the ease of exchange, and the fulfillment of contract all repose ultimately upon the readiness of the community to fight for them, either against something without or against something within. Every city is a city in arms. As you and I and the rest of the respectable Londoners walk down the street we are all clanking with invisible weapons. We have taken the essential responsibility which is involved in war in merely being citizens of a State; we have declared war in favor of certain practices which we approve and against certain practices which we disapprove.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(excerpt from Chesterton on War and Peace, 28-29. Illustrated London News, October 6, 1906.)