Tag Archives: war

Stop supporting the “war” on terrorism

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Cartoon by Glenn McCoy

Some of my Christian friends support war when that war can be defined as a just war. Not everyone who holds this position is versed in “just war theory,”so I guess we can’t expect all wars to meet those criteria in order for them to receive general approval from the Christian community. But I think we need to examine the so-called war on terrorism.

Most recognize that this is not a traditional war. It’s not always easy to define who the participants are. Some would compare it to the war on poverty or the war on drugs, that is, the term war being used to describe something that isn’t exactly war. But this war sure looks like a war. It’s the regular troops being sent out. The deaths are real. The destruction is real.

There are real dangers in allowing something to be “like a war,” without being an actual war. Exceptional powers are being given to those in government, to those in the intelligence agencies and to those in the military, all with the justification that “we are at war.” Such powers would normally be granted until the end of a war; who will declare the war on terrorism to be over?

Ten years ago, Stanley Hauerwas wrote an excellent article on these ideas. Hauerwas wrote:

The good thing, moreover, about the war on terrorism is it has no end, which makes it very doubtful that this war can be considered just. If a war is just, your enemy must know before the war begins what political purpose the war is to serve. In other words, they need to know from the beginning what the conditions are if they choose to surrender. So you cannot fight a just war if it is “a war to end all wars” (World War I) or for “unconditional surrender” (World War II). But a “war on terrorism” is a war without limit. Americans want to wipe this enemy off the face of the earth. Moreover, America even gets to decide who counts and does not count as a terrorist.

Two very important points right there:

  1. There is no defined end to this war. What are the objectives, beyond obliterating the enemy? Who can sign a peace accord for the opposing side? When will the world be able to say, “That’s it… no more terrorism. The war is over.”?
  2. There is no clear definition of who the opponents are. The U.S. government determines who is and who isn’t a terrorist. It defines what nations are state sponsors of terrorism, with those decisions sometimes being made on the basis of other political motives. When one side can decide for itself who its enemies are and continue adding to that list as the war goes on, there’s nothing just about the war.

On that second point, Hauerwas wrote:

Which means Americans get to have it any way they want it. Some that are captured, for example, are prisoners of war; some are detainees. No problem. When you are the biggest kid on the block, you can say whatever you want to say, even if what you say is nonsense. We all know the first casualty in war is truth. So the conservatives who have fought the war against “postmodernism” in the name of “objective truth,” the same conservatives that now rule us, assume they can use language any way they please.

That Americans get to decide who is and who is not a terrorist means that this is not only a war without clear purpose, but also a war without end. From now on we can be in a perpetual state of war. America is always at her best when she is on permanent war footing. Moreover, when our country is at war, it has no space to worry about the extraordinary inequities that constitute our society, no time to worry about poverty or those parts of the world that are ravaged by hunger and genocide. Everything—civil liberties, due process, the protection of the law—must be subordinated to the one great moral enterprise of winning the unending war against terrorism.

Christians who believe in just war need to stop supporting the so-called war on terrorism. There is nothing just about it. It’s just war, plain and simple.

Righting historical wrongs

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As we look at questions of justice on a global scale, we quickly come to see that situations are very complex. For example, disputes over territorial claims aren’t easily resolved. (Anybody remember The Google Maps War?)

To illustrate, imagine a school where the teacher leaves the kids alone at lunch. A couple of the bullies go around and steal everybody’s lunches. The other kids being to fight back, and at that point a teacher comes in. The teacher tells everyone to sit down, stop fighting and eat what’s in front of them. The bullies generously offer to take the food they’ve stolen and sell it back to the other kids. Does anyone think this is just?

Now imagine the same school fifty years later. Every day, at lunch time, the teachers take the food away from certain kids and give it to others. “Your grandparents were bullies who took the food from these kids’ grandparents; now we’re righting that wrong.” Does anyone think this is just?

Silly examples, I know, but to some degree they show how ridiculous simple solutions to historical border disputes are. Look at the United States, for example. We have some land that belongs to us because of signed treaties, treaties that are now disputed by the countries that ceded us that land. (It’s funny to me how few people question why the United States has Guantanamo Bay, for example. It’s not like we’re on good terms with Cuba) The United States also owns land that shouldn’t belong to us because we gave it away under signed treaties. There can be no call for consistent application of “treaty law” without the United States losing a significant amount of land.

Argentina went to war with Great Britain over the Malvinas Islands. Those islands belonged to Argentina until they were taken in the mid-1800s. Britain argues that 150 years of ownership gives them the rights to that land. Argentina, not surprisingly, doesn’t agree and still doesn’t recognize Great Britain’s right to have those islands.

There are myriad stories around the world. If you go back far enough, your land probably belonged to someone else, even in ancient lands like Egypt and China. It’s not easy to sort through all of those claims.

And territorial disputes are merely one aspect of the world’s conflicts. If you live in a country that has benefitted from colonialism, wars, etc., you favor something like the first scenario, where everybody just keeps what they have right now. If you live in a country that isn’t at the top of the pecking order, or if you are one of the powerless people in a powerful nation, you’d like to see past injustices corrected.

An excellent article that looks at the effects that past colonialism still has in today’s world is Why Can’t People Feed Themselves? by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collin. It’s worth a read.

Does Just War Theory bring peace or just war?

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I saw a question asked online the other day which I found to be quite compelling. I read Rex Butts’ blog post on “The Evangelistic Scandal,” which led me to Scot McKnight’s discussion of Lee Camp’s new book.

The interview refers to “Just War Theory.” If you’re not familiar with Just War Theory, the idea is that there should be a set of criteria to apply to any conflict to determine if it is just or not. Proponents argue that Christians may participate in a just war, but not an unjust one. As far as I know, Augustine borrowed the principles from some Roman philosophers, then Thomas Aquinas further refined Augustine’s work. (Someone please correct that in the comments if my history is wrong; this is off the top of my head)

The basic principles of just war, as commonly expressed, are:

  • A just cause is basically defensive in posture, not aggressive.
  • The intent must also be just—the objectives must be peace and the protection of innocent lives.
  • War must be a matter of last resort when all attempts at reconciliation or peaceful resolution are exhausted.
  • A just war must be accompanied by a formal declaration by a properly constituted and authorized body.
  • The objectives must be limited. Unconditional surrender or total destruction are unjust means.
  • Military action must be proportionate both in the weaponry employed and the troops deployed.
  • Non-combatants must be protected and military operations must demonstrate the highest possible degree of discrimination.
  • Without a reasonable hope for success, no military action should be launched.

There is nothing set in stone as THE Just War Theory, but those principles are widely used.

Or are they? The question that was asked in the comments section of the McKnight article was this:

Has there ever been a war that Christians were considering entering into, but applying the criteria for “just war” talked them out of?

That’s a great question. I can’t think of an example. Can you? Has “Just War Theory” ever been used for anything other than justifying participation in conflict?

Does Just War Theory bring peace or just war?

Sleight of mouth

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When I was a kid, I really enjoyed magicians. Even though I knew it was a trick, I still became a part of the illusion.

Sleight of hand, or prestidigitation for those who like using big words, is usually a big part of any magician’s act. A lot of it depends on getting people to look at the wrong thing, on distracting your audience with a diversion while you are doing something else.

I think that we need to create a new term: sleight of mouth. To really catch what’s important, we often have to look at what people don’t say, rather than what they do.

One place where I think this is true is war. There is a natural fog of war that clouds the information process; even those involved don’t know everything that’s going on. There’s also a manmade fog of war, where those involved practice sleight of mouth, saying only what they want people to hear.

One of my language teachers in Argentina was able to illustrate this for me. She was living in Los Angeles during the 1982 Malvinas (Falklands) War between Argentina and Great Britain. She said that she heard news from three sources: the United States (which she could hear for herself), Argentina (which she heard from friends there), and Germany (thanks to a neighbor). The U.S. news consistently presented the news from the viewpoint of Great Britain. The Argentine news was slanted toward Argentina, so much so that when Argentina surrendered, her friends wouldn’t believe her when she called them. (“How can that be? We’re winning.”) In the end, it was the German news that seemed to be the most objective.

What makes me wonder is why it’s so hard to find out civilian death totals from Iraq and Afghanistan. I can understand the difficulty in knowing how many enemy fighters have been killed, but it seems like our government could present a clearer picture of how many bystanders have been killed. Actually, we know that they can: the Wikileaks documents confirmed the numbers that non-government sites have reported.

So why doesn’t our government talk about this? Sleight of mouth. Nobody wants people thinking about the tens of thousands of people who have died. Let’s focus on the three thousand or so that died 9/11 or the four thousand or so U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. Talking about the deaths of over one hundred thousand civilians might dampen the enthusiasm for the war. Let’s talk about something else.

We should mourn those one hundred thousand as strongly as we do the ones who died 10 years ago in the terrorist attacks. That needs to be said time and again. Let’s not be children who are deceived by a magician’s tricks. Let’s not just look where they tell us to look. Let’s look at the whole picture.

There’s a reason why we keep saying we want to “fight them over there.” Because if those one hundred thousand dead were American citizens, this country would look at things in a whole different light.

Honoring the sacrifices of war

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There’s an aspect of the U.S. military’s actions overseas that is continually hidden by proponents of military participation: the cost in human lives in other countries. When discussing the sacrifices of war, so many Christians in America focus on our soldiers and their families. They are to be considered, naturally, but so are the tens of thousands of people affected by those wars we fight. (It’s extremely difficult to get good numbers on that. I have been chastised for referring to the site Iraq Body Count, but the material released by WikiLeaks has shown that, if anything, that site is conservative in its counting.)

One reason that 9/11 impacted this country in such a strong way was the fact that it happened on American soil. We’ve worked hard throughout the years to keep all fighting limited to somebody else’s home, not ours. This morning on the news, as the proposed reduction of troops in Afghanistan was being discussed, people expressed the fear that the fighting might come here. “Better to fight them over there” has always been a popular slogan.

As Christians, I think we’re obligated in such a situation to consider those who live “over there.” Consider the Afghani people. In the late 1970s, the Soviets became involved in Afghanistan as military advisers. The U.S. saw the chance to lure the Soviets into a military quagmire, so operations were undertaken to escalate the fighting in Afghanistan. Once the Soviets invaded, the U.S. began arming Afghani warlords to fight the Soviets (When asked about the dangers, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, responded “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”). When that war came to an end, these armed strongmen continued to dominate the regions where they lived. Then after 9/11, the United States invaded, fighting against many of the same people we had helped arm and train. And throughout it all, the civilian population suffered destruction of property, serious injury and death.

When we speak of sacrifice, do we think of those people? Do we consider the mothers who lost sons, the children who lost parents, the villagers who lost everything? Where are their parades? Who raises memorials in their honor? Where are the churches that send them care packages and stand and clap for them during worship?

But they’re not “our people.” No, of course not… unless you’re a Christian. Unless you believe that there is no “Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free.” Then, of course, those people are as much “our people” as any freckle-faced American soldier.

On Memorial Day, I was accused of not honoring the sacrifice of those who have lost loved ones in war. I respond that I honor many more of those people than do those who march down Main Street and salute the flag.

When we count the costs of war, let’s count all the costs of war.