War Is Not a Path to Peace

Our leaders say, "There is no other way. We must take the war against terrorism to those who are responsible."

In recent weeks, we all have heard this said more than once. I suppose that this is similar to the words used to get the people in Jonestown to drink that deadly lemonade. "There is no other way." I also suppose that this is also what the Germans were thinking when they confronted what they saw as the "Jewish Problem." "There is no other way."

In my opinion, this is a very arrogant statement. To say "There is no other way" is to place oneself above all argument and thus assume the position of an Omniscient God. Since I have yet to find anyone on the face of this earth who has demonstrated such omniscience, I cannot accept such a bald statement without any examination or discussion of alternatives.

I have heard, and read, and listened to many discussions - over the Internet, television, radio, and in other forums - that talk of many alternative paths to security and peace. Therefore, I do not accept that the path our government has chosen is the only one. Neither do I believe that it is the one that has the highest probability of leading to the kind of peace we wish to attain for ourselves and everyone else around this blue-green ball that floats in the blackness of space.

Many years ago I was an active member of a movement called "Beyond War." As the name suggests, we believed that because a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States threatened the human race with annihilation, war as we have known it is obsolete and we needed to create a world beyond war.

One of our principles is that "we are one." We are all of one human race and we are one with the entire universe. The poem I read by Thich Nhat Hanh reflects this same thought. We talked to many groups, including this church community. We worked at uncovering both the frightening reality of a Nuclear Holocaust and the wonderful reality that we all live together on one single blue green globe spinning in the black vastness of space. I still see this as the one unifying reality that has yet to fully sink into the consciousness of the world.

However, I felt that we were at least partly successful when I heard diplomats around the world reflect the thought that war, in the traditional sense, is obsolete. What we were not able to achieve was to establish what is possible in a world "Beyond War." We were not able to bring to life the potent understanding that we are truly one.

Yes, war has occurred since we ended our efforts many years ago. Yes, we do not live in a world beyond war. But you must also acknowledge that none of those wars achieved the peace we all wanted. Every violent confrontation into which we have entered has failed to achieve the peace we desired. You know them so well I don't even have to list them. I say again, war cannot achieve peace because pain and suffering remain in its wake. Let's review briefly the history of the last century.

The after effects of WWI made it clear that peace was not achieved by war. To put it succinctly, the allies won the war and lost the peace. The outcome of WWII also made it clear that winning the war did not win the peace. Enormous pain and suffering remained. Cities lay in ashes. Nations were economic disaster areas. What won the peace was winning the minds and hearts of the peoples we defeated.

We assisted the new leadership in those countries that were the losers in the war. We gave them money and technical assistance. The result of these efforts has been that Germany and Japan - those two axis powers that we defeated in WWII - are now our trading partners. Exactly how we were able to achieve this is also written into the history books. Look under the title "The Marshall Plan."

The point I wish to make here is that whatever modicum of peace we have experienced since WWII, it was not won by our victory over our enemies. While it is true that the war we fought in the 1940s made the peace of the second half of the century possible. It is also true that we cannot expect that the outcome of war will be peace. To do so is to delude ourselves.

This is especially true when one considers the character of the present "war." It has been said that it is a war to gain the minds and hearts of the people. But this is being said about the very people we are attacking. How do we expect to be able to win the minds and hearts of a people when we are attacking them? The following is from the Associated Press just yesterday.

"With all respect," Mohammed Arif, the administrator of a private Afghan relief agency, tells the Associated Press, "this is nonsense. You bomb on one hand, and drop food on the other. What are these poor people supposed to think?" The uneducated peasants who learned the hard way to fear Soviet land mines dropped from the blue will run from the strange cartons of food and medicines now falling from the sky. Medicines retrieved from the packages are likely to be misused by Afghans who can't read.

We can say that we are doing everything we can to avoid collateral fatalities but does that change what we are doing? Targeting errors kill, just as surely as if they were intended. We can say that we are not at war with Islam. We can say that the radical rhetoric of Osama bin Ladin does not represent the true character of Islam or the Koran. But this sounds a little hollow when his rhetoric is reflected in a large number of groups throughout the Middle East.

As some wags have pointed out, to say that bin Laden does not reflect true Islam is like saying that Jerry Falwell does not represent Christianity. Of course he does not represent most Christians but he does represent many of the more radical ones.

My point is that it is not possible for us to judge what is right and what is wrong. Speaking about Omniscience, we are not omniscient either. Therefore we cannot assume to judge what is, and what is not authentic. Those who are the adherents to a particular interpretation chose to accept it for their own reasons and purposes. And, because theirs is a free choice, we cannot deny them their choice.

To underscore this point, I quote here from a recent article in the New York Times by Andrew Sullivan. The title of his article is "This is a Religious War."

"The religious dimension of this conflict is central to its meaning. The words of Osama bin Laden are saturated with religious argument and theological language. Whatever else the Taliban regime is in Afghanistan, it is fanatically religious. Although some Muslim leaders have criticized the terrorists, and even Saudi Arabia's rulers have distanced themselves from the militants, other Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere have not denounced these acts, have been conspicuously silent or have indeed celebrated them. The terrorists' strain of Islam is clearly not shared by most Muslims and is deeply unrepresentative of Islam's glorious, civilized and peaceful past. But it surely represents a part of Islam -- a radical, fundamentalist part -- that simply cannot be ignored or denied."

I want to shift back to history for moment. But, in order to fit this historical reference into the present context it is first necessary to note that, Politics and Religion are often so intermingled that they are virtually inseparable. Both of them grab the minds and hearts of their adherents. Given this, I propose that we could learn from studying the war in Vietnam. Because, in that war, it was not religion but a political/social/economic system of government that was the unifying cause.

I was personally involved in that war. I piloted Air Force C-130 Cargo planes on Combat Support Missions in Vietnam in 1968. I was witness to the corrosive influence that our presence had on the people of Vietnam. They did not feel liberated. They saw themselves between a rock - the will of the U.S. Politicians and we who were their military agents - and a hard place - the implacable Vietcong.

We lost that war, just like the Had we learned from history, we would not have even thought of entering into Vietnam. Recall that the French lost in their attempt to hang onto their Southeast Asian colony. At Dien Bien Phu, they were defeated by an unstoppable foe, the guerrillas of the Vietcong.

In spite of this history, we entered into the fray in Vietnam. And, predictably, the Vietcong won against all the might and power we could throw at them. More that 50,000 service men lost their lives and those that made it back were spit upon when try returned home.

We lost our national pride and they won theirs. They won because they were, as the had French learned decades before, the ultimate guerrillas. They could not be stopped because they made themselves a part of the landscape and blended in with the populace.

Last Sunday, we entered into another conflict that is, at its core, a guerrilla war. To validate this contention, I quote CNN reporter Kamal Hyder who is presently in Afghanistan. In this interview, he is responding to a question as to how the Taliban is bearing up under the present attack. Mr. Hyder said:

"It must be remembered that the Taliban is not a conventional army. They don't move their armor and artillery, or move in organized formations. They are guerrilla forces, they are peasants from the rural areas. They intermingle with the local population, disappear into Afghanistan's rural landscape.

"So they are not a conventional army, and when you're not a conventional army, it's very difficult to hit these targets. So what the Americans are hoping to hit are big sites which are already destroyed. Considerable destruction has taken place, so it's very difficult to be able to identify troop concentrations."

Up to now, I have been speaking about war and how wrong-headed it is. Now, I wish to begin to follow another branch of this multifaceted problem we call terrorism, and our "war" against it.

Another principle upon which the Beyond War movement is based is that violence is the avoidance of conflict. Any and all violence to whatever degree is traceable to a need to avoid conflict. This may sound strange but it makes sense when you look at situations like that of Northern Ireland. They have been avoiding conflict - that is to say they have been violently attacking and killing each other - for decades. When they were finally brought to the negotiating table to confront their real conflicts, they could agree to reasonable solutions and peacefully end it all. Of course, there are holdouts. Some people just can't stand the idea of possibly living in peace with people who were their enemies. These holdouts wish to remain steeped in their animal hatred.

Violence is the avoidance of conflict; and conflict is inherent in the nature of life. The nature of our being requires us to interact in social groups while maintaining our own individuality. This makes conflict absolutely certain. If there are any absolutes in our lives they are birth, death, conflict, and change. The tragedy lies in our predisposition to avoid conflict by resorting to violence. In our culture, it has become an almost automatic reaction that conflict is avoided by resorting to violence. "Shoot first and ask questions later."

We obviously have a big conflict with those who follow the teachings of Osama bin Laden. But instead of identifying, describing and then attempting to resolve our conflicts we immediately resort to violence. "Shoot first and ask questions later."

I don't know with whom we might have spoken inside of Afghanistan before we started bombing. I suppose that we have spoken with the leaders of the "Northern Alliance." But I wonder if we have really spent time trying to learn what is really the lay-of-the-land in that country. My suspicion is that we did not. If we have spoken to many Afghans about it, we must not have been listening very well. The reason I say this is because of what I heard on the PBS broadcast of the News Hour with Jim Lehrer last Tuesday evening.

Elizabeth Farnsworth was interviewing three people all of who were natives of Afghanistan who are now living in the U.S. They were up to date on the events occurring within their country and spoke quite knowledgeably. One of the interviewees, Mr. Askraf Ghani, is a former professor at the University in Kabul and is now an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University. When asked about his earlier statement that "The political process is too far behind the military process," he said this.

"Yes, it is, because military action was not welcomed by most Afghan groups. They were taken aback by it because the consensus that is required to pick up the pieces after the Taliban have been scattered is really not in place.

"Secondly, the commitment of the international community to the reconstruction of Afghanistan is still in generalities rather than in specific forms like a trust fund to which major commitment would be made to give the Afghan people a sense that this commitment would be there."

What is clear from this interchange is that the decision to start a bombing campaign was made without consulting the people in that country who were still engaged in dialogue. They still are engaged in political activities that are aimed at recovering a self-rule that would be acceptable to all Afghans. It is also clear from recent press reports that we are now going back and trying to clean up the mess.

This is made clear in a New York Times article this Sunday morning. In the lead paragraph of his story, David E. Sanger, says "In at least two meetings in recent days with his National Security Council, President Bush has begun discussing how the United States and its coalition partners could help Afghans quickly form a new government." It is clear that this administration has followed the "Shoot first and ask questions later" policy to the letter.

In the weeks following September 11, while the coalition forces gathered in the Arabian Gulf and we were all waiting for an attack against Afghanistan to start, I was still hopeful. I was hopeful that we might just stand outside and rely on the sheer size of our forces to threaten them. In fact, the news I was receiving led me to believe that the Taliban was in the process of disintegrating with each passing day. But then we started dropping bombs.

I retired from the Air Force over 25 years ago. I am a retired Regular Officer in the U.S. Air Force and subject to recall. However, at this point, I can not possibly imagine that there would be any reason to recall me. I expect to be an outside observer of this war; but I can still feel the ache and pain that go with my memories of Vietnam. War is not a noble enterprise. It never has been. We have yet to learn this. War is also unnecessary. Conflicts can be addressed without resorting to violence. We are stubborn in our refusal to learn this.

In spite of the shouts that went up for the blood of those who are responsible for those terrible crimes on September 11, 2001, there are some who recognize the wrong-mindedness of this reaction. To demand retaliation for these heinous crimes is to slip into the mind-set of the terrorists.

When we react like hurt animals we become like them. For the past few weeks our Wayside Pulpit quotes Mohandas Ghandi as saying "An eye for and eye only ends by making the whole world blind." I cannot think of any clearer way of pointing to the uselessness of violence.

War is not a path to peace. I believe that the events of the past month validate that premise. It is too early to tell what will happen as a result of our actions, but they will not lead us toward peace. Already we are hearing of the confusion that is happening inside of Afghanistan. The tussling between the chiefs of the various groups is leading us into the role of nation builder. This is precisely what the present administration said we would not do. It is also exactly what happened after the Soviets left. History can repeat itself.

Yes, we all feel pain. We all feel traumatized by what happened on September 11, 2001. But to react out of our pain and to violently strike back at those who attacked us is to behave as simple dumb animals. We are not simple animals. Please let us stop and use the higher faculties we have. Let us seek to follow our highest aspirations.

Part of the pain we feel is the realization that we are not safe. The truth is we never have been as safe as we have believed. It is simply that no one before September 11 had succeeded in puncturing our fantasy. The terrible truth is that an open society cannot be completely secure. On one of the granite buildings in our nation's capitol, it is written in its stone façade that "The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance."

Throughout my homily, I have talked about a peace as though there was a path to it. In truth, there is no path to peace. There can be no path to it because peace starts inside of us. If we are not at peace with ourselves, we cannot be at peace with anyone else nor can we create peace.

Since peace is either within us or it is absent, let us seek with all our might to follow our highest aspirations. Lust for blood is not one, neither is hate or war. Love is our highest aspiration. Love is what can lead us to peace within ourselves and in our world. Let us follow the lead of love.

I conclude with a quote sent by Van Caldwell just yesterday to all of us who are on the UUCSS e-mail group. It is a quote from Richard Rohr in "Hope Against Darkness"

Don't waste any time dividing the world into the good guys and the bad guys. Hold them both together in your own soul -- where they are anyway - and you will have held together the whole world. You will have overcome the great divide -- in one place of spacious compassion. --