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Cost of the War in Iraq
For more details, visit costofwar.com.
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Choose Life!
Week of Monday August 30, 2004
Lectionary Readings
Jeremiah 18:1–11
Psalm 139:1–6, 13–18
Deuteronomy 30:15–20
Psalm 1
Philemon 1–21
Luke 14:25–33
Christians are biased people, or at least they should be. The lectionary text from Deuteronomy 30:15–20 crystallizes this bias in just two words. Followers of Jesus "choose life" (30:19). We have a general predisposition to favor all that promotes human life, health, wholeness and peace (Hebrew shalom), and even more so a special bias toward helping the poor, the weak, the marginal, and the vulnerable for whom such simple hopes are only a distant dream. Conversely, we lament and deplore all that promotes death, destruction and human degradation.
That, in a nutshell, is why I am deeply discouraged about the war in Iraq. Last week we visited our son in San Diego, and when we went to his church on Sunday I tried to pay attention to the sermon, but instead I jotted down a dozen reasons why I oppose the war. Here is what I scribbled on my bulletin at Community Bible Church in northern San Diego.
(1) I cringe when I hear our president, who claims to follow the "Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6) who said "blessed are the peacemakers" (Matthew 5:9), boast about being a "war president." (2) Our government prohibits the media from showing coffins coming home because the graphic reminders of the human cost of war are horribly real, deeply painful, and very controversial. So far, almost 1,000 Americans have died and another 6,000 been wounded in the Iraq war. Christians, since they love all people equally, lament every bit as much the 5,000 Iraqi soldiers and 10,000 civilians who have perished.1 (3) The financial cost of the war now stands at $130 billion, with no final price tag in site. I dream about such monies being spent on life-giving alternatives like education, scientific research, health care, housing or the poor. I find this especially galling given tax cuts, Republican claims to be fiscal conservatives, and record deficits of about $500 billion that have replaced record surpluses. (4) Our pre-emptive war has radicalized Muslim extremists, destabilized the region, and played into the hands of those who hate us. During the Cold War we feared strong states, but now, having destroyed a sovereign nation's government, military, economy, social life and culture, we have learned a bitter lesson about how volatile weak states can be. Colin Powell was surely prophetic when before the war he warned Bush of the Pottery Barn maxim, "you break it, you own it." (5) The war has polarized our country, our churches, and our neighborhoods. (6) When I recall how people of France, Iran and other countries publicly mourned for us after the 9–11 attacks, and contrast that with world opinion today, I am saddened how we have ostracized ourselves from the world community. (7) My stomach churns when I see the glorification of war so common today, even among believers. Shock and awe is a cause for repentance, not celebration. Read the books by Swofford (a Marine sniper) and Hedges (a war correspondent) if you are not convinced. Think about prison torture and landmines, and you realize that war is another name for death and destruction. (8) We have cast the players of the global drama into characters with white hats who are good and for us, and black hats who are evil and against us, declaring, "either you are for us or against us." Stated in a more Christian nuance, we have demonized our Middle East neighbors. (9) Waging pre-emptive war set a horrible precedent. To wit, the New York Times recently ran a story in which Iran claimed it too had the right to wage a pre-emptive war against Israel and/or the United States if it felt sufficiently threatened. Violence begets violence. (10) From a historical or political viewpoint American "exceptionalism" makes some sense, but from the stand point of a Christian who worships a God who does not show favoritism but loves the whole world ("red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight"), exceptionalism feels more like hubris. (11) Our administration admits it has no exit plan or benchmark for success in Iraq, only the vague promise that we will stay in Iraq "as long as it takes to do the job." Several military experts have estimated that this means we must occupy Iraq for a minimum of another two to four years, with all its attendant human, political, and financial costs. (12) Calling to mind Reagan's famous question, "are we better off today?," I believe that because of our pre-emptive war our world is worse off, not better.
When I see the pictures of our slain teenage soldiers honored on the nightly news, and consider our country's specious rationale for its pre-emptive war (no WMDs, and no direct link between Al Qaeda and Iraq or 9–11), I ask myself whether I would send my own 20-year old Matthew to liberate Fallujah or Najaf. I would not. I also hope that you would not ask him to go for this cause.
So, do I think Kerry or Nader would do better at "choosing life?" Well, it is easy to imagine a different president not having gone to war, and that would have been very much better. But now that we are in Iraq, I think the answer is maybe Kerry would do better, probably not, and it is impossible to predict a possible future. There are three reasons why I'm not optimistic about hoping for better from a different party. First, I care about a whole host of geopolitical issues for which, ideally, I would like to "choose life." I want to care for creation because I believe that somehow God created it and called it "very good" (Genesis 1:31). I favor life for unborn children, the elderly, and the mentally retarded. I am biased against alcohol and tobacco companies who peddle death to our kids. I lament the culture of death and exploitation of women that characterizes so much of the entertainment industry. Gun violence, unemployment, underemployment, and poverty deal death, not life, so I deplore them too. Global HIV-AIDS demands our compassionate action, as do those 2 billion people in the world who have no safe, dependable water supply. Practically speaking, no single party captures all of these "life" issues.
Second, I find it difficult to translate broad moral ideals like "choosing life" into specific domestic and foreign policies on complex issues that represent all 280 million Americans in some equitable way. I honor all the many public servants who with bright minds and good will have done their best, even though in the end they sometimes propose radically different alternatives. Honorable people can disagree.
"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." President Dwight D. Eisenhower |
Finally, I believe that individual politicians and nations generally act out of self-interest and expedience rather than from moral ideals or principles. Even worse, if Robert Kaplan is correct, political leadership demands just such a "pagan ethos." Politicians of all parties clearly do anything to stay in power. In her Pulitzer Prize winning study of American responses to the world's many genocides (Armenia, Jews, Rwanda, Cambodia, Kurdish Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and we could add Darfur), Samantha Power shows how our country stood by passively because of national self-interest rather than intervene in these genocides because of moral ideals. Similarly, the disheartening conclusion of Daniel Ellsberg's memoir of the Vietnam war is that five—five!—successive administrations from both parties lied to us about that war. So, I tend to be pessimistic about either party enacting policies that "choose life" across a broad spectrum of issues I care about.
When I was in San Diego I asked my son how he and his friends engaged the political process. "Most of my friends," he said, "are discouraged and think all the politicans are the same, just a bunch of bums." Christians should eschew such forms of pessimism and fatalism. Our choices count, decisions matter, things could be different, and history take a different course. As people biased toward "life" choices, let us pray as Lincoln did, not in hubris assuming that God is on our side, but in humility that somehow by His grace we might find ourselves on his side.
