2016-07-27
She sailed from San Diego early in January. If she knew her destination she did not share it with her friends. She has been meticulously trained to fly a helicopter. In recent weeks she has mastered the skill of landing this wobbly craft on a ship. She has also engaged in urban warfare training.

Who is this young woman? She is an officer in the United States Navy, the daughter of a very close friend of mine, a person I have known since she was a child and for whom I have great affection. For me she has become the single face who invades the eye of my mind when I think about my nation's relentless march toward war.

Undoubtedly, this young officer is headed for a military conflict. My government has determined that she, along with countless other men and women in our Armed Forces, are to be placed in harm's way. In carrying out her duties she may well be engaged in the act of killing other people. That is the reality of war. She may also become a victim of someone else's military purpose. She might even wind up a prisoner of war. In the culture of Iraq, where women are treated shamefully, this is the specter that fills me with the deepest sense of dread. My knowledge of this young woman has changed the nature of my questions about this war. They are no longer academic. They are now deeply personal and existential.

Is Iraq a cause worth the sacrifice of her life or others? Is war itself any longer a legitimate means for solving political disputes? Can an alternative not be found?

There is something about war today that seems so primitive. It seems to be the activity of creatures caught in an evolutionary time warp, contending over the same bone or defending their clearly marked turf. Human beings seem to sense this irrational quality and feel compelled to develop high sounding rhetoric to justify inhumane actions. World War I was "the war to end all wars." World War II was the war "to make the world safe for democracy." The Korean and Vietnam conflicts were packaged as wars "to contain the spread of communism."

Yet the power of these slogans diminished as the 20th Century rolled on. The Vietnam War could never be properly perfumed. It ended in a sea of disillusionment and defeat. It produced no heroes of note, no political ambitions that would catapult a victorious general into the White House and no romantic songs to promise that someday there would be "Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover." Nations contemplating war today sound like testosterone-filled little boys proclaiming "my old man can lick your old man." Even the guns and canons we use to kill our enemies are but thinly disguised phallic symbols, and the bombs, falling from the mid-sections of B-52s, look like illustrations from an eight-year-old's toilet talk. Human beings now contemplate cloning, genetic engineering and stem cell research, yet we still settle conflicts with childish war games. We clearly have not evolved beyond the mentality where might is assumed to make right.

The buildup in the Persian Gulf continues at a rapid pace, but nothing seems to still the enormous doubt lurking beneath the surface of American life about this proposed campaign. The chair of the United Nation's arms inspection team, Hans Blix, is clearly ambivalent. He chastises the Iraqi regime for not supplying adequate and complete data on their presumably hidden weapons of mass destruction. Yet in his report Mr. Blix also states that his team has turned up "no smoking gun."

The other nations of the world also waver publicly, insisting that additional resolutions from the United Nations must precede military action. As provocative and negative as the Iraqi government has been, people in America note that they have not yet reached the crescendo of announcing plans to build an atomic bomb, as North Korea has done. Political rhetoric, however, still seeks to heat up the passion against Iraq while cooling down the Korean conflict through negotiation. One cannot help but notice the double standard. It makes one wonder if there are unspoken reasons that require Iraq to be the designated enemy. Is a need to restore family honor driving public policy? To admit such a thing would be politically devastating, but does that mean it is not so? Is the current President Bush eager to correct what is regarded as the failure of his father in 1992 to finish the job?

A second unspoken possibility plagues me. Is this war driven by economic need and political desire to secure resources for this oil-thirsty nation? Is the American response to Korea quiet and non-confrontational because Korea has no oil? If military action resulted in the installation of a regime in Baghdad that owed its legitimacy to American military might, would that fact not serve to satisfy our need for oil in the foreseeable future?

Is there a desire in the American psyche to have the satisfaction of a victory against Iraq to ease the pain of self-doubt brought on by the absence of victory in the war on terror? Do we secretly yearn for a war we know how to win? Even the political opposition to this war from the minority Democratic party seems unwilling to raise these questions. Perhaps they sound so unpatriotic and lacking in the ideals that this country has articulated in its 225 plus years of national history, that muteness seems the only proper response. But are these questions not valid if the reasons offered for war lack candor and are left unclear? The stakes are so high that these questions deserve an honest answer.

There is a deeper question yet that I must raise. Is war ever moral? Church leaders facing this question before have generally endorsed military action with moral imperatives. When Rome fell to "the barbarians," the Church justified warfare, as necessary "to defend civilization." During the Crusades the Church actually promoted war, since that effort was directed against "the infidels who held Christian holy places hostage." After the Reformation religious wars were supported "to defeat Protestantism," if one were Catholic, or "to free the world from Catholic domination," if one were Protestant. Either way God was said to favor the conflict.

While these wars resulted in much human carnage, the weapons were actually quite primitive. They were also lethal normally only for the combatants. The sacrifice of life was by and large limited to the soldiers. World War I, however, was the last war in which the casualties came primarily from the contesting armies. Trench warfare, developed in that conflict made the loss of battlefield life so incredible as to define that action as murderous at worst and profoundly stupid at best. Then in World War II history entered a new era in which remote weapons of war rained terror on noncombatants. There was the bombing of English cities like London and Coventry by the Germans and the destruction of Dresden, Hamburg, and Berlin by the Allies. There was also the bombardment of Okinawa and "Fortress Europe" by Naval units prior to invasions and, worst of all, our unleashing of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the capacity to kill increased, war became less moral, less just and less defensible on religious principles. There was a hope, given the terrifying casualties now inflicted on innocent people, that perhaps human beings might evolve to the place where they would no longer see war as a moral option for a developed humanity. But now in the first decade of the 21st century, we see war being embraced as the center of American foreign policy and preemptive strikes being defended as war in the Middle East approaches.

Though I may well be a voice crying in the wilderness, I cannot be silent.

I believe this proposed war on Iraq is an irresponsible mistake of a failed foreign policy. I believe it is wrong. I believe it is evil. I believe this war is being engaged for reasons that are not publicly stated and may not even be fully conscious in the minds of those who pursue them.

I do not believe that this war is in my country's best long or short term interest, nor is it a response to a real threat to America's security. I believe that this war, when successfully completed, will result primarily in increased despair among young Middle Eastern Muslim men and women, which will spawn a generation of terrorists who value their own lives so little that they will be eager volunteers to die in suicidal passion if they can hurt, wound, or kill those they hold responsible for their plight. We will have to learn the terrifying lesson that there is no military power so great, no atomic arsenal so enormous, no economy so powerful that it cannot be defeated by millions of alienated and hopeless fanatics who are willing to become martyrs to their cause.

I believe that a government that would ask our young adults to sacrifice their lives in the pursuit of these ill-thought-out goals has surrendered its claim to both my loyalty and my respect. I raise my voice in protest. I hope I am not alone.

more from beliefnet and our partners
Close Ad