Presented by Karl Arruda, November 11, 2007
At 11 am on November 11, 1918, the guns of World War I fell silent, ending one of the worst conflicts in human history. In some countries, today is still remembered as Armistice Day. In the US we now know it as Veterans Day, honoring all veterans of the US Armed Forces.
More often than not, I have leaned more in the direction of pacifism than in supporting military action. I have never even held a gun. However, I recognize military service is a long-honored tradition involving sacrifice, discipline, and loyalty. And so, Veteran's Day is an uneasy holiday.
I remember sitting in a theater after watching Saving Private Ryan and seeing an older man sitting quietly, crying. And I knew that he was a WW II veteran, and that as realistic as the movie was, I could never understand what he went through, and feeling that the service of all veterans was deserving of great respect and sympathy. And I had similar feelings watching the recent Ken Burns documentary, The War, on PBS.
Several years ago, I felt truly heartbroken when my daughter Anna and I were on the town green of Norwood, Massachusetts, and Anna started asking me questions about a statute of soldiers. She was about 3 or 3 1/2 at the time.
"What's that thing he has that looks like a gun?" she asked.
"Well, it is a gun. Soldiers usually carry guns."
"To hurt people?"
"Well, sometimes. Usually, soldiers try not to hurt people, but sometimes they have to stop some other people from hurting them or hurting someone else."
"Oh, so other people might try to hurt the soldiers so that's why they have guns."
"Sort of."
"That's not nice."
"No, it's not."
I didn't mind so much explaining the statue and the guns. It's sad to think I have to teach her that that's part of our history, and humanity has a very bloody history. But what hurt more was that we are still violent people, that we hurt people when maybe we don't need to.
For a long time, I've been interested in what, if anything, can justify a war. In one article I read, the writer explained, that when a leader says, "It is time to kill people," the burden of proof is on that person to explain why.
But why would we need to explain and justify a war? There are some philosophies that are not so conflicted about it.
Militarism is the idea that war can be beneficial for a society:
War was not a question for militarists in Japan leading up to and during WW II. As stated in Wikipedia, they believed the strength of the military is equal to the strength of a nation.
An older example is in the Greek epic poem, The Illiad. We find the various gods on Mount Olympus sympathizing with both sides of the Trojan War. The whims of the gods decide the outcome of the war; the Greeks are victorious but only after being punished for offending various gods.
The story shows equal honor and respect for both sides of the conflict. Although told from the Greek perspective, the Trojans are not demonized or dehumanized.
But this is because war is considered glorifying for all participants. War is the way to resolve a dispute because war is the way to achieve greatness and immortality - even if you lose. And so, the kidnapping of a woman justifies war and the destruction of a city.
Realism is a concept that is skeptical whether moral concepts apply to international affairs. A nation's actions are based on self-interest, and if war is in the nation's interest, then it is justified. Under Marxist ideology, if a war advanced Marxist progress, then it was justified regardless of the cost.
"Power flows from the barrel of a gun," said Mao Zedong.
For the communists in Vietnam, a united and independent Vietnam was of paramount importance, and no matter how long it took or how many lives were lost, they were not going to stop fighting.
War was essential for some of the native tribes in the Mid-west that Lewis & Clark encountered. War was how men became warriors and how warriors became chiefs. How, they asked Lewis & Clark, could they find new chiefs if they stopped making war on their neighbors?
Since the earliest historical times, there has existed an idea that war is inevitable and normal in the sense that humanity is a "beast of prey" as Oswald Spengler wrote. Spengler added, "The one who lacks courage to be a hammer comes off in the role of the anvil."
Then, there are more ambivalent views on war in Judeo-Christian traditions:
In the Jewish Torah and the Muslim Koran, one finds the idea that war is allowed for defense or when God is on the side of a chosen people. And so those wars were carried out in the name of God.
In the Torah, when God commands a war, the Israelites behave as mercilessly as their contemporaries.
But a different emphasis on the Bible comes from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (who's lived in the UK and US): He argues that the Jewish Bible was meant partly as a counterweight to the Greek tradition of glorifying violence and military leaders. He points out that Abraham, Moses and Isaiah were humble shepherds doing the work of God. So, although the Jewish nation could be very violent in the name of God, war was not the path to glory as it was for Greeks.
Isaiah preached that real bravery was attempting to live with each other in harmony. (And there is the excerpt from Micah I shared in the beginning, imagining a world without war.)
Jesus of Nazareth expanded on Isaiah's and Micah's theme of living with each other. While some Jews envisioned a worldly battle between good and evil, the message of Jesus was more a battle of the soul.
Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."
And he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called children of God."
From these teachings has come a pacifist viewpoint in Christianity arguing that resisting evil with violence is never acceptable. But since strife and pain are so intrinsic to the world, the solution to violence for pacifists has often involved a renunciation of the world and its life.
So, then we come to St. Augustine who lived in the 4th and 5th centuries.
Augustine hated the militarism of Rome, and he realized that in Jesus' life, when he faced the power of Rome, he did not resist. But neither did Jesus specifically say that being a soldier was wrong. Augustine asked the question, how does one live and govern in the world as it is? In some ways he was a realist.
For Augustine, war happens because people do sinful things. So, when everything else fails, one can resort to force in the name of protecting human life and key human values. In other words, war can be just.
So, what does a just war require?
First there must be proper authority. For Augustine, political leaders are answerable to God for the welfare of their states in a way that no private citizen is.
and 2nd is proper cause. War was a tragic necessity, it was not for revenge, restlessness, or domination. This has been refined to say that all other means of putting an end to aggression must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
After Augustine, people have added to this concept:
There must be a Reasonable chance of success: even with a just cause, you cannot just send people out to die if the cause is hopeless.
Next is Proportionality: the harm caused in one's response must not exceed the harm caused by the aggression in the first place. So, in this view, destroying Troy to avenge the kidnapping of Helen would not be proportional.
This framework offers what I think a useful way to think about conflict in the world. Even within this framework, in the real world, can a war ever meet such criteria?
Sometimes I feel the idea of Just War doesn't make sense. War is a human tragedy, and maybe it's inevitable but it is not just. Is there such a thing as Just Poverty or Just Hunger? They might be inevitable in today's world, but that doesn't justify them.
War seems so costly and so painful. I take seriously the UU Principle that all people have an inherent worth and dignity and so shouldn't be killed, at least not without a very good reason.
WWII might meet the Just War standards, but maybe WW II is the exception that proves the point that war cannot be just. As the greatest cataclysm in human history, defeating the Axis powers may have been justified, but it shows how terrible it is to use violence to achieve goals.
I remember listening to people discuss the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Most of these people were young during the Vietnam era and completely opposed to that war, and grew up feeling war was basically unjust. Then, they were confronted with ethnic cleansing and the suffering of Bosnians and Kosovars. And they felt torn. War in general felt unjust but leaving these people to suffer and be bullied by another country or another ethnic group just felt wrong, too. Not acting felt unjust.
And I think people have had similar feelings towards the conflict and suffering in Darfur.
To reconcile these feelings is difficult, maybe impossible. I could argue that violence doesn't work any better than non-violent movements. There are several shining examples of successful non-violent movements.
One of Pope John Paul II's accomplishments was helping the peaceful collapse of communism in Europe. When the Solidarity movement developed in Poland and then was repressed by the government, he rejected the need for violence, insisted upon non-violent protest, and that helped Solidarity have the strength and the courage to remain peaceful, and that allowed Poland and the Soviet Union to respond mostly non-violently. This allowed Solidarity and its dreams, to survive.
Gandhi and other Indian leaders created a mass non-violent movement to confront British colonialism and lead India to independence.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the other leaders of the civil rights era insisted upon non-violent protests to show the absurdity and violence of segregation.
These examples show that we can choose to promote a cycle of non-violence instead of a cycle of violence. I have to conclude that non-violent action is almost always better, but I can't completely rule out that on rare occasions, the use of military force may be a tragic necessity, as eloquently described in the Tao te Ching.
My ambivalence somewhat mirrors the UUA's situation. Historically, UUs have accepted the Just War concept, but the UUA has consistently supported peace movements in over 80 resolutions since 1961. This is now a Study issue for congregations.
The official question from the UUA is this: "Should the UUA reject the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between peoples and nations and adopt a principle of seeking just peace through nonviolent means?"
This question is up for discussion for several more years before any official position is taken.
Whether war is inevitable or not, just or not, cultivating peace is the task of all of us. An article from the Brethren Church (small Protestant denomination in the Baptist tradition?), had some very insightful comments about peace and peacemakers:
A peacemaker is one who seeks to bring harmony and reconciliation to those who are estranged.
The Hebrew word "shalom" is full of meaning relating to peace. It is like saying, "I wish for you the absence of strife and evil, and the presence of all good things."
So, peace does not mean just the absence of hostilities. If underlying problems are not addressed, there will not be peace. Addressing those underlying problems can cause strife, but then true peace is achievable.
In the Book of James in the Christian Bible, the author argues that people go to war with their neighbors because they are not at peace with themselves, and they are not at peace with themselves because they are not at peace with God. However you understand God and the universe, I think this is an important point that the fundamental issue of peace is the spiritual condition of the human soul.
Peace must start within each of us before it can be manifest in the world.