One of the classic films in cinema history is the 1930 epic
of World War I, "All Quiet on the Western Front." In one scene
some American doughboys are talking and one asks, "Where do wars
come from anyway?"
His buddy replies, "Well, one country gets mad at another
country, and they start fighting."
The first soldier asks, "Do you mean that one piece of land
gets mad at another piece of land?"
"No," the other replies, "The PEOPLE of one country get mad
at the PEOPLE of the other."
The first soldier picks up his rifle and starts walking
away. When asked where he is going, he says, "I'm going home.
I'm not mad at anybody."(1)
It would be nice if it were that easy, wouldn't it? For
whatever reason, our President has decided that we cannot walk
away from Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi regime, and as of a bit
more than a week ago, we are at war. As we well know, this
decision has not been universally applauded, regardless of the
virtual universal distaste for this individual whom almost
everyone agrees is a brutal, barbaric tyrant. As Time magazine
reported this week,
What is unfolding in Iraq is far bigger than regime
change or even the elimination of dangerous weapons.
The U.S. has launched a war unlike any it has fought in
the past. This one is being waged not to defend
against an enemy that has attacked the U.S. or its
interests but to pre-empt the possibility that one day
it might do so. The war has turned much of the world
against America. Even in countries that have joined
the "coalition of the willing," big majorities view it
as the impetuous action of a superpower led by a bully.
This divide threatens to emasculate a United Nations
that failed to channel a diplomatic settlement or brand
the war as legitimate. The endgame will see the U.S.
front and center, attempting to remake not merely Iraq
but the entire region. The hope is that the Middle
East, a cockpit of instability for decades, will
eventually settle into habits of democracy, prosperity
and peace. The risks are that Washington's rupture
with some of its closest allies will deepen and that
the war will become a cause for which a new generation
of terrorists can be recruited.(2)
What are we to think? President Bush has characterized the
conflict in stark terms - good versus evil - giving the struggle
almost a religious cast. The other side has done the same. As
with beauty, good and evil are in the eye of the beholder. All
right. If this is in any way religious, how should we who are
Christians respond? For that matter, how should Christians
respond to ANY war?
I would love to report to you this morning that the answer
is clear and incontrovertible from the pages of holy scripture.
I would LIKE to, but I cannot. To be truthful, depending upon
the passage you choose, you could argue passionately on BOTH
SIDES of the issue and cite biblical support.
For example, in the Old Testament, there are passages that
have God instructing the children of Israel to engage in holy war
with their neighbors and urging a brutality against any
noncombatants - women, children, even livestock - that would make
Saddam blush. On the other side, the Old Testament clearly
presents an IDEAL of a society that lives in peace - as our
lesson from Micah has it, "They will beat their swords into
plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks...Nation will not
take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war
anymore."
The New Testament is no more definitive than the Old. There
are a number of references to political regimes and the fact that
they are divinely ordained as instruments of maintaining order.
There are references to conversations with soldiers, none of
which suggest that they should refuse to fight or find a new line
of work. On the other hand, there are Jesus' uncomfortable words
about loving your enemies and forgetting about the old eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth standard of acceptable retaliation.
After all, following that to the letter would result in a society
that is both toothless and blind. And, of course, we hear him
say, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the
children of God."
As I say, I wish the Bible would be more definitive for us,
but it is not. The result is that the church, through 2,000
years of history has tried to offer helpful interpretation.
In our earliest days (the first 300 years or so), the church
was strongly pacifist. One of the most influential of the early
theologians, Origen, said that Christians "do not go forth as
soldiers." Tertullian wrote, "only WITHOUT the sword can the
Christian wage war: for the Lord has abolished the sword."
Clement of Alexandria wrote "...he who holds the sword must cast
it away and that if one of the faithful becomes a soldier he must
be rejected by the Church, for he has scorned God."(3)
This changed in the beginning of the fourth century with the
conversion of the Roman Emperor, Constantine. Suddenly, the
church was not on the outside of power looking in; the church was
part of the power elite. In the year 314, the Council of Arles
said that to forbid "the state the right to go to war was to
condemn it to extinction," and shortly after that Christian
philosophers began to think carefully about the doctrine of the
so-called "Just War." More about that in a moment.
At the other extreme, a few hundred years down the road, the
church said, not only was war morally justified, in certain
situations it was an absolute necessity. An example would be the
crusades of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries that combined
religious zeal with economic expansionism. Those were built on
the Old Testament model of Holy War.
A middle ground between the pacifists on the one extreme and
the crusaders on the other is found in the "Just War" tradition
that goes back to Greek and Roman philosophers in the ancient
world and was given a Christian spin by St. Augustine in the 4th
century and St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Aquinas
said, "Among true worshipers of God those wars are looked on as
peacemaking which are waged neither from aggrandizement nor
cruelty but with the object of securing peace, of repressing the
evil and supporting the good."(4) The tradition spells out when
and how force may be used, not with the intention of justifying
wars but to prevent them by setting stringent criteria which must
be satisfied before taking up arms:
- There must be a Just Cause: force may be used only to
correct a grave, public evil, (for example, naked aggression
or some massive violation of basic human rights); force may
also be used to provide self-defense.
- The conflict can only be called by a Legitimate Authority:
Wars can only be justly waged by duly constituted
governments, not aggrieved individuals or tribes. No
vigilantes need apply. This would also classify as Unjust
any sneak attacks such as Pearl Harbor prior to a
declaration of war.
- The war must have at its heart a Right Intention: force may
be used solely for the just cause, where the goal is to re-establish peace, specifically a peace that is preferable to
the peace that would have prevailed had the war not been
waged. Nations must be careful in not confusing right
intention with simple self-interest.
- There must be a Probability of Success. No one goes to war
figuring to lose, but common sense says do not go into a
conflict which would exacerbate an injustice rather than
eradicate it. Going to war for a hopeless cause may be
noble, but it is not ethical.
- There must be Proportionality. The overall destruction
expected from the use of force must be outweighed by the
good to be achieved. In addition, there is an understanding
that injury to non-combatants is to be kept to the absolute
minimum.
- And finally, war is always to be seen as a Last Resort:
force may be used only after all sensible, non-violent
alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted.
Now the question becomes very specific: is THIS war a "Just
War?" In a recent letter to President Bush, five prominent
religious conservatives, including Charles Colson, the founder of
Prison Fellowship, and Bill Bright, who started Campus Crusade
for Christ, gave their full approval to a war effort. To bolster
their argument, they pointed to America's experience in World War
II. "How different and how much safer would the history of the
twentieth century have been had the allies confronted Hitler when
he illegally re-occupied the Rhineland in 1936?"
On the other side of the fence, some 70 American and British
church leaders, including Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the Stated
Clerk of our Presbyterian General Assembly, recently signed a
document declaring current plans to attack Iraq to be "illegal,
unwise, and immoral."
Consider the current situation in light of the standards for
engaging in a "Just War." First, is there a Just Cause? Some
say yes, Saddam is a despicable dictator who should be taken down
because he is a danger to the world. Some say no, Saddam is
indeed a despicable dictator and a danger, but not to the world,
rather to his own Iraqi people. We have no right to go in and
depose him any more than we have the right to go into North Korea
or China, two more despicable regimes, both with REAL weapons of
mass destruction.
Number 2 - the question of Legitimate Authority. This one
is relatively clear. President Bush does occupy a position as
head of government that allows him to make such a move. Those
who say that he needs the permission of the United Nations
Security Council, even though that would have made this conflict
much more palatable in the eyes of the rest of the world, are
asking more from the Just War standards than is actually
required. So saying, as a member of the UN, we are bound by that
charter, including Article 2.4 which says that "all members shall
refrain in their international relations from the threat or use
of force." Sadly, this invasion of Iraq is the first time the
United States has ever unilaterally violated that provision.
Number 3 - is this war entered for a Right Intention? Some
say yes, to disarm a madman from his weapons of mass destruction
which he refuses to admit having and the relief of the suffering
of the Iraqi people. Some say no, if it were not for all the oil
under the Iraqi sand, we would not bother. Others are saying
this war is nothing more than a smokescreen to cover the
administration's domestic failures, the same thing that was said,
by the way, by the other side when President Clinton bombed Iraq
in 1998.
Number 4 - Probability of Success. I suspect most folks
would say yes to that. We do possess utterly overwhelming
military strength compared to Iraq. We do have weapons of mass
destruction and we have been using them in ways the world has
never seen before. Militarily, we should prevail. But at what
cost?
Which leads to Number 5 - Proportionality. Does the
eventual benefit from overthrowing Saddam justify the cost in
human life, both military and civilian; the cost to any positive
American influence around the globe in the face of the largest
anti-war protests in the history of the world; the cost to our
domestic needs here at home? Fifty years ago, President
Eisenhower, obviously no pacifist, in an address to the American
Society of Newspaper Editors, said, "Every gun that is made,
every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the
final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those
who are cold and are not clothed."(5) Does this war meet the test
of proportionality?
Finally, Number 6 - war must always be a Last Resort. Is
that the case here? Some say yes, Saddam would not respond to
anything else. Others say no, this administration never had any
intention of allowing diplomacy to succeed, and as news reports
this week attest, the president has been planning this invasion
since March of last year. Hmm.
So. Is this a Just War or not? I leave you to draw your
own conclusions. My own are well known.
Lewis Smedes, who taught ethics at a seminary in California
for many years, has written a prayer: "Oh Lord, once I was smart
enough to know a just war when I saw it, the kind of war you
would approve of. I am not so smart anymore. Every war looks
evil to me now. And even the war well begun becomes evil before
it's over. So let us have no more of just wars; they are the
worst kind. Now, at last, give us a just peace. It's time,
Lord. Past time. Time for Shalom. Shalom for our breaking
hearts. It's time."(6)
As you may know, I am a Rotarian, and one of Rotary
International's priorities is the elimination of polio around the
world, a goal that, I am pleased to tell you, is almost achieved
now. I once heard a story about a family that was discussing the
work of Dr. Jonas Salk. "Who is he?" asked one of their
teenagers, and the response was that he was the man who developed
the vaccine to prevent polio. The youngster then asked, "What is
polio?" By the grace of God, one day it would be wonderful if
our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will look up at us and
ask, "What is war?"
On April 19, 1951, General Douglas MacArthur made his
farewell address to a joint session of Congress. Most folks
remember his conclusion that "old soldiers never die; they just
fade away," but what he said before merits remembering even more.
Listen:
I know war as few other men now living know it, and
nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated
its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on
both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means
of settling international disputes.(7)
As Christians sit in worship this morning, no question that
there are wildly divergent opinions on this war with Iraq. But
there are also some things on which we all agree:
- we all want the very least possible human suffering and
death;
- we all want comfort for those who mourn;
- we all want good to come out of this conflict, not evil;
- and we all want this war over!
One of my friends suggests this war is like the coming of
the Kingdom of God. The outcome is not in doubt, only the
timetable. There WILL come a time when swords will be melted
into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks...no more war.
Glory, glory, hallelujah; God's truth is marching on.
Amen.
1. Herschel H. Hobbs, My Favorite Illustrations, (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990)
2. Michael Elliott and James Carney, "First Stop, Iraq," Time, 3/31/03, p. 173 ff.
3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/war - an excellent web site that presents a balanced
view of the ethical questions involved in waging war.
4. Summa Theologica II, II, ae, 40, 1
5. Simpson's Contemporary Quotations, compiled by James B. Simpson. Copyright © 1988
by James B. Simpson. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
6. Quoted by Rev. Linda Hoddy , sermon, "Can War be Just?" May 23, 1999
http://www.saratoga-uu.org/Transcripts2.cfm?TN=serv9921
7. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurfarewelladdress.htm
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