A TERRIBLE LOVE OF WAR

Rev. Abhi Janamanchi

March 20, 2003

I am not a pacifist. In fact, as a young adult, I almost enrolled in the Indian military. I have a lot of admiration and respect for professional soldiers. Even as I detest the pestilence that is war, I also feel that there are times when we must take this poison. Without military intervention against the Nazis and later on, in Kosovo and Bosnia, I do not think there would have been peace. Part of the reason why I believe in war as a necessary evil is because I believe that force is and always will be a part of the human condition. There are times when the force wielded by one immoral faction must be countered by a faction that, while never moral, is perhaps less immoral.

Having said that, I was, from the beginning, opposed to military intervention in Iraq. I felt the Bush administration chose to ignore channels of communication and mediation that could've worked and instead, made a flimsy case to connect Iraq to 9/11 and rushed to war without considering the consequences. I felt that going to war against Iraq because people there were crying to be 'liberated' was naive and dangerous and that the administration was not paying attention to the cultural and religious complexities of the region.

Yet, at the same time, I am not one of those who feels that our troops need to return immediately and let the Iraqis deal with the mess. Personally, I think "US out now" as a simple mantra neglects to consider the full range of possible disasters that could ensue. For one thing, there would be an Iraq civil war. Iraq wasn't having a civil war in 2002. And although you could argue that what is going on now is a subterranean, unconventional civil war, it is not characterized by set piece battles and hundreds of people killed in a single battle, as was true in Lebanon in 1975-76. People often allege that the US military isn't doing any good in Iraq and there is already a civil war. These people have never actually seen a civil war and do not appreciate the lid the US military is keeping on what could be a volcano.

It would be highly irresponsible to walk away from Iraq and let it fall into a genocidal civil war that leaves the Oil Gulf in flames. On the other hand, the gradual radicalization of the entire Sunni Arab heartland of Iraq stands as testimony to the miserable failure of US military counter-insurgency tactics. It seems to me indisputable that US tactics have progressively made things worse in that part of Iraq, contributing to the destabilization of the country. One of the most respected independent Iraq analysts, Juan Cole, released a 10 point plan, outlining what he calls a responsible stance toward Iraq. Cole is Professor of History at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He runs a blog called "Informed Comment," which can be found at JuanCole.com. An abridged copy of his plan is available in the lobby for your perusal, reflection, and discussion

*REFLECTIONS*

My reflections this morning are intended to enable us to understand war, to recognize its potent hold on us as a species, and to guard against the myth of war which can render us blind and callous as some of those we battle.

War is the dominant reality of our times. War is organized violence between large groups of people: nations, cultures, races, religions. War is armed strife, the purpose of which is to kill other human beings and destroy their land and property. War is a homage to death. War is the dominant reality of our times. War is also the most perilous reality of our times.

Part of the difficulty in confronting this dominant and dangerous reality is the human habit of despising war until the colors are raised. Then proudly we sally forth to defend our cause in the full conviction that what a brief time before we denounced is now a morally acceptable act. To prevent war we must do more than declare that war is madness and insanity. That knowledge has not been enough to stop war. We must ask ourselves not why evil men make war, but the harder question posed by Herman Wouk in The Winds of War: how is it that "men of good will gave -- and still give -- their lives to war?" Why do men -- and it has been men far more than women -- go to war knowing its dangers and its wickedness?" To answer this question we must recognize that war has been omnipresent in human experience.

The historian, Will Durant, says that in all recorded human history (and, no doubt, prior to recorded history) there have only been twenty-nine years of global peace. Whether on the plateaus of Eastern Asia, in the river valleys of the European continent, on the plains of the Americas, or in the African jungles, war-making has been a part of every culture. War has always been part of human history and human endeavor. The causes of war are then to be found in human personality and human social systems.

John Adams, our second President, noted that power always thinks that it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating his laws. The temptation for the powerful is to assume that their power is a sign of their virtue and that the world therefore needs their rule or their influence. Countries that have great power have shorter fuses than countries with less power. It is not surprising to discover that superpowers like the US and Russia have been engaged in more military conflicts than anyone else in the past few decades. To have power is to find it simple to rationalize whatever one chooses to do because the focus is on who is right rather than what is right.

War is sometimes easier psychologically than peace. As a youth and young adult, it was far easier for me to resolve issues with my fists than try to find a non-violent solution. Yes, I loved to read Gandhi and believed that violence was not the answer but when backed into a corner, my reptilian brain took over and urged me to lash out. Many a time I was both exhilarated and horrified by my ability to hurt others. I guess it is even more tempting for nations drunk with power to flex their muscles against weaker nations. Great power enlarges significantly the dimensions of this reason why so often nations choose war over peace.

The third thing to note is that war fulfills certain very important human needs that normal peacetime life does not usually accommodate. In war there is a sense of mission and purpose, an aura of destiny, and of great decisions affecting the future of the human race. There is a thrill and excitement about war that seems not to be found in any other activity. In war, one is living at the very edge of life, risking one's very existence. War is an adventure in which one feels caught up in something beyond oneself. Even for those not in combat this feeling can still be present.

Chris Hedges, former New York Times War correspondent, Harvard Divinity School graduate, UU, and author of War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning says:

The soldier is often whom we want to become, although secretly many of us, including most soldiers, know that we can never match the ideal held out before us. And we all become like Nestor in the Iliad, reciting the litany of fallen heroes that went before to spur on a new generation. That the myths are lies, that those who went before us were no more able to match the ideal than we are, is carefully hidden from public view. The tension between those who know combat, and thus know the public lie, and those who propagate the myth, usually ends with the mythmakers working to silence the witnesses of war.

Think of what dominates television programming these days. It's called "reality TV." It astounds and depresses me that even the major networks, in prime time, feature people swallowing worms and wriggling grubs, diving into pools filled with ice, or being buried in a box full of snakes. How desperately empty, how incredibly pointless does a life need to be for someone to allow himself or herself to be subjected to such mindless degradation? And how vacuous are the lives and the minds of the millions who sit and watch, and, by their watching, encourage more of the same? No wonder seventy percent of Americans approved the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. For many, if not for most, it was the only event of note that had happened in their lives in a decade -- perhaps ever. Reality TV. Hour after hour of real guns, real soldiers, real death, destruction, and devastation.

Wilfred Owen wrote a poem of the First World War. It's called "Dulce et decorum est:"

If in some smothering dreams,

you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,

If you could hear, at every jolt,

the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitter as the cud of vile,

incurable sores on innocent tongues,

--My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

The old lie '––it is sweet to die for one's country.'

War deals with absolutes and certitudes. And, patriotism provides the blessing. Soldiers are sent to kill and die with the message that they are doing for a greater glory, for a New World, for peace. In war, there are no grey areas. Absolutes rule the day. Either you are with us or against us. In such a climate, dissension, questioning of purpose, exposure of war crimes and ill-treatment of prisoners of war carried out by those fighting on our behalf are deemed dangerous, unpatriotic, and, even, seditious. Dissidents who challenge the goodness of the cause, who oppose the premise of war, who pull back the curtains to expose the lies are ridiculed, reviled, silenced, or ignored.

War is an addictive, potent drug that resides in our blood. "It is peddled by mythmakers -- historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists, and the state -- all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty. It dominates culture, distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it, even humor, which becomes preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death." It inures us to death and desensitizes us to the grim realities of violence.

War exposes the suicidal nature of humanity. Since the 1990s, a million died in Afghanistan; 1.5 million died in the Sudan; some 800000 were butchered in ninety days in Rwanda; a half million died in Angola; a quarter of million died in Bosnia; 200000 died in Guatemala; 150000 died in Liberia; a quarter of a million died in Burundi; 75000 died in Algeria; more than 25000 civilians and 1800 US soldiers dead in Iraq; and untold tens of thousands died in the fighting in Colombia, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, Kosovo, the first Persian Gulf War, and Kashmir. Hedges reports that in the wars of the twentieth century not less than 62 million civilians have perished, perhaps twenty million more than the 43 million military personnel killed. Through the medium of war, we as a species have figured out our own extinction!

War breeds war because war demands a war culture. Most people want to live in peace. Ratcheting up and sustaining a martial spirit require a sophisticated campaign of distortion and fear. But even after the war ends, the distortion and fear remain, like buried warheads leaching their toxins into the groundwater. Trying to end war with war is like trying to clean an oil stain with a rag filthy with oil. On the road of war, peace shimmers on the horizon but remains always, always out of reach. Mahatma Gandhi understood this. "I object to violence," he said, "because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."

A. J. Muste understood this. "There is no way to peace," he said. "Peace is the way."

Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this. He said:

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Violence has become our global addiction. The only way to break an addiction is to quit.

Violence is always a failure of creativity, a failure to imagine other solutions. We are becoming more and more creative -- not yet creative enough, still we begin to glimpse more and more the potential of nonviolence.

Am I sure? No. I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything. Am I afraid? Yeah, I am afraid. But I realize what I fear will not go away and that I need to deal with that fear and move forward towards the future with hope.

Robert Wesson in his poem, “Not By Compulsion,” invites us to take the risk and believe in the future:

Let us dare to believe in the future;

A future when people shall have learned to live by freedom And not by compulsion

By love and not by fear,

By adventure and not by jealously guarded security.

They shall live in peace and shared respect And "none shall make them afraid."

They shall be continuously hungry for knowledge,

And none shall say it is forbidden them;

They shall live in trust, and none shall do them hurt.

They shall explore without fear of what they may find,

And the difficulties they meet shall be the stepping-stones upward.

Though this be slow in coming,

Though it appears that all this may never be universally shared,

It will be open to all on the condition that each chooses individually.

None shall create barriers between a person and the fulfillment of the Human spirit

Which the person may not alone overthrow.

It is the barrier we build against others Which holds us, ourselves, back;

The defenses we painstakingly establish Become our own fetters.

This could be the future of humanity of we dare:

The people seek to master themselves instead of others, And rejoice in the fruits of disciplines

They choose for themselves. Perhaps our religious communities will give us the vision to find a 'moral equivalent of war.' Perhaps our religious communities, in searching for their meaning, can be at least among those places in our cultures where we learn to no longer need to find heroism in violence, no longer need to rise above our station, no longer need to make war to find more meaning in our lives. Perhaps our religious communities can, in some far off day, take us beyond war by truly setting before us possibilities for lives of meaning, value, purpose, and excitement in the wonders of daily life.

May all that we say and do lead us further into peace.

Chris Hedges - War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

Poems and quotes excerpted from a sermon on war by Roger Bertschausen