Report #13 - Trusting God More and Our Military Less

by Jerry Levin

Birmingham, AL

March 15, 2003

Our nation is on the verge of making a precipitous policy leap from containment and deterrence to waging preemptive war against Iraq. Because of that possibility CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) has been standing with helpless Iraqi children, women, and men who will inevitably be caught in the crossfire in order to try to witness God's boundless love for our threatened brothers, sisters, and cousins there. And early next week, Sis and I will be on our way to also stand with them.

We hope in our small way to be able to help counter the hateful indifference to life, which is putting them in harm's way: a hateful indifference exemplified by a concept with which you probably are familiar-the concept of "necessary evil." In Iraq "necessary evil" will be further euphemized into "collateral damage," as it has been for the past twelve years there.

But I cannot accept the notion of "collateral damage," an essentially egocentric derivation of "necessary evil," any more than I can accept the disingenuous concept that good can come from evil. The ideas of "necessary evil" and "good coming from evil" are the heart, or I should say heartlessness, of the rationale used to justify the terrifying results of the all out war the U. S. apparently is planning on waging against Iraq.

Good may come about despite evil, but the evil indiscriminate sowing of death, which is bound to happen in Iraq and which is happening every day in Palestine and quite often in Israel is still too high a price to charge anyone who has no say in how a struggle supposedly on his or her behalf is to be waged. Although Christians will tell you that Jesus died for all our sins, thousands of innocent Iraqi people frozen like deer transfixed by automobile headlights very soon may be made to die for the sins of both Sadaam Hussein and George Bush. And that must not happen.

Despite my objections to what I perceive as worrisome zealotry with respect to actions the United State is trying to launch, I nevertheless believe it is very important to be loyal-loyal to the intent and universal appeal of the American dream-the American ideal-as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. But that dream and its appealing ideals for too long have been turned inside out by too many of our leaders-perched on top of our social and political pyramid-and their elastic morality. They are intent on making the world safe-not necessarily for democracy-but too often for tyrants and despots willing to accommodate our profligate and voracious consumer appetite for products, no matter what the impact on the poor and/or the oppressed anywhere.

So I am not convinced that this time we will get it right, because at the beginning of this new century, the United States is picking up where the old one left off. It is seeking-as the President's national security memorandum put it-to enlarge the community of market economies, by extending the benefits of freedom everywhere. (Even if it takes a so-called preemptive war to do it!)

Presumably, in furtherance of that policy, the U. S. is quite possibly poised-despite repetitive polemics about democratic nation building-to turn oil rich Iraq into a modern day equivalent of the many Central American banana-rich or coffee-rich oligarchies and other strategically significant nations elsewhere whose chances to become democracies too often-over the past one hundred or so years-were not really helped by our overt or covert violent interventions there.

So at a time when our nation should be examining and reexamining its fears and trusting God with them more and our military with them less, we are on the verge of bombarding the Iraqis closer and closer to the stone age from which they may well have been the first people on the earth to emerge.

With respect to our specific faith, Sis and I believe that the times do not call for any more Christian soldiers. Instead the times cry out for Christian and other peacemakers, who are willing to risk proactive nonviolence by-like CPT-standing in the way of violence. But sadly they are in short supply.

However, that doesn't mean that we should not support the young men and women and the not so young men and women of our military. I think that we should support them, because, given the mythological war brings peace drumbeat to which they apparently are being inexorably ordered to march, they do need our support. But, I think the best way to demonstrate our care for them is to tell our leaders: Don't do it! Tell our leaders: If you are so intent on war, let George do it! By himself!

Well, naturally these days when I express such revisionist concerns about violence and war, I am inevitably challenged by some who will argue that nonviolence is not and cannot be a practical solution to the issues facing all of us right now, either as individuals or as a polity. My answer to the challenge goes something like this: The problem is that nonviolence has never really been given a chance to prove itself as a creative and altruistic alternative to war. Violence on the other hand has had a several thousand years old head start to do that, yet it certainly hasn't proved either its practicality or feasibility.

I think that there is a huge qualitative and quantitative difference between just peacemaking and so-called just war or jihad. And the difference is lives: not just the lives of so-called bad guys but, equally important, the lives of so-called good guys too.

Of course, for arguments such as these to register these days, they have to be able to penetrate the static created by charges against their makers of unamericanism, of being a Sadaam collaborator, of being treasonous, and-because of the proximity of the Israel/Palestinian issue-of being anti-Semitic. Naturally, such charges are discomfiting; but we are reminded that God's love is for everyone, even those who belittle our motives and try to stampede us into silence and inaction.

So-despite the barbs-we try to shrug them off. And we do that because, as my fellow hostage, Presbyterian Missionary Benjamin Weir, once told Sis and me, "Being a peacemaker is never easy. But can you think of better work?"