To Fight or Not to Fight? The Bhagavad Gita and the Iraq War

Qualified violence is an unavoidable reality of this world, even when we view the world from a religious perspective. Everyone embraces the principle of qualified violence on some level. Any sensitive person can feel, however subtle, the spirit of violence behind even the peace protestor's outrage as they chant for peace or denounce those in favor of war.

We live in the human drama at the cost of others. One living being is food for another. In this plane we must kill in order to live, however politely. To do so politely only when absolutely necessary is the religious course of action. Beyond this, the spiritual path leads to the land of the soul proper and absolute nonviolence.

Those noble souls who seek complete nonviolence must look beyond the material world, and even the religious world, to this realm of the soul to realize their ideal.

In the Gita, Krishna instructs Arjuna on these two levels: the religious and the spiritual, with the former leading to the latter.

From the

point of view, in which one sees oneself as a member of a world belonging to God under whose guidance one should live, Krishna tells Arjuna that there is a place for violence when diplomacy fails. Krishna also says that there should be a class of men and women who at such times engage in the unsavory task of dealing with inappropriate aggression. Arjuna was a member of this military class. Thus it was his duty to stand up militarily against aggression and tyranny.

From the

point of view, in which one sees oneself as categorically different from matter--a particle of consciousness and thus not identified with any particular class, nation, religion, etc.--Krishna tells Arjuna to declare war on his material ego, his identification with matter. Only by following this instruction of Krishna will Arjuna realize absolute nonviolence, transcending all varieties of exploitation.

Ultimately, the task that the Gita lays before us is to slay our attachments and extinguish the material desire that generates the human drama. It asks us to die an ego death if we are to live without struggle--to be free from violence and all forms of exploitation. Our identification with matter, our material ego, must die if our soul is to have a life of its own.

This is what Krishna asks of Arjuna: to slay his material ego. Arjuna, due to his material attachments, first hears Krishna asking him to fight against his own relatives. But ultimately he understands that Krishna is asking him to slay his attachments and thus free his soul from the material sense of reality, in which violence is unavoidable.

If indeed Iraq has weapons and its people are suffering from horrendous violations of human rights under Saddam's reign, it seems justifiable--based on the teachings of the Gita--to take steps to rid the country of weapons and to free Iraqis. The Gita opines that, should diplomacy fail, violent means are justifiable.

The Gita, however, speaks only in principle about qualified violence. The current world crisis is far too complex to expect the Gita to provide a specific answer on how to proceed, militarily or otherwise. Scripture does not provide pat answers for every human circumstance. It provides revealed knowledge--as to the nature of God, the self, and its material predicament--that can help individuals make decisions about every aspect of human existence by considering the nature of ultimate reality.

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