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Channing Memorial Church November 9, 2003 READING: From June to August of this year, I was assigned to the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. While there, I assisted with the division's efforts to help the Iraqis recover from the war and decades of tyranny. Shortly after I returned to the United States, I was asked to write a brief reflection on my time in Iraq for one of my alumni publications, The following passage is from the reflection a colleague and I submitted:
[From Princeton Alumni Weekly, October 22, 2003, 14-15.]
The recent war and the continuing difficulties in Iraq raise important questions for Unitarian Universalists. Peace, justice, compassion, liberty and equity (to name but a few of our values) do not always flow effortlessly together. How can we sort through competing values while honoring the right of conscience within our religious community? This is not easy to do. When I titled this "The way forward on Iraq," I had two elements in mind. One is the way forward in trying to figure out what to do about Iraq. The second is to try to better understand the effect of such contentious issues related to Iraq on our religious community and how we can successfully live the ideal that "we need not think alike to love alike." [Francis David] I had hoped to present a brief message back in March about dealing with differences among us. My interest in the topic was prompted by witnessing the increased passions concerning the possibility of war. My assignment to the Pentagon and then to Iraq intervened to postpone it. The circumstances have changed now. The attack has taken place and coalition forces have assumed control of Iraq. Although the passions of the debates preceding the war may have died down somewhat, there are still important aspects of the situation in Iraq that engage us. I entitled this talk "The Way Forward on Iraq" however; I have no intention of setting forth THE way forward on Iraq. I don't have a clear answer for you; in fact, I intend to send you off with more questions. What I do have is suggestions about how to think of what we are facing with respect to the specific issue of Iraq as well as in dealing with our differences as a religious community. I believe in the right of conscience and in the use of democratic processes that can help us to realize, as best we can, the values that we hold dear. For many individuals, the decision about the war was a "60-40" one. For some, 60 percent of their convictions and values were against the war. For others, 60 percent was for the war. The arguments that tipped the balance for individuals reflect the greater weight given to particular values. Those opposed to the war often cited the lack of a direct, imminent threat to the United States that would warrant the harm to people certain to occur during the violence of war. Some of those who supported the choice for war did perceive a direct, imminent threat to the United States. People prioritizing the "inherent worth and dignity" of individual Iraqis were prominently represented in both camps-some weighing the harms of war as too great to justify the benefits to the Iraqis of removing an admittedly heinous regime, others arguing that regime change itself and the long term benefit to the Iraqi people was a sufficient cause for war. For some individuals, a way to reconcile these competing issues was to defer to the United Nations. For these individuals, reference to the collective stance of the United Nations is a useful surrogate for international legitimacy. However, even here, we cannot escape the complexity of values. The United Nations was founded on just war principles. In brief, the just war framework holds that a war is just if it reduces the possibility of violence, is consistent with international law, minimizes impact on civilians, and employs force proportionately to the danger encountered. But exactly what constitutes rationale for a just war? In particular, when is regime change a legitimate objective of war?
Which of these are sufficient by themselves? These and many other complex issues played themselves out in the American and international public debate. The United Nations is just that. A collective group of nations that has ratified a charter. [1] As well-intentioned as its founders may have been, the United Nations is still a product of the nation-state system. States vote in the United Nations and not all of the states are democratic or even modestly representative of their people. The general principles of the United Nations charter favor states. The principles seek first and foremost to respect state sovereignty and territorial integrity. These principles collide with those of human justice and individual rights when confronted with states that abuse their own people. In Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and now Iraq, many advocates for the just use of military force have cited not just the potential direct threat a particular state posed to others but also the egregious behavior of certain governments or groups towards their own people. Hence, with regard to Iraq, the issue can be seen not just as the sovereignty of the state but the welfare of the people. Even while trying to contain Saddam Hussein and his regime, the United Nations sought ways to help the Iraqi people. Today, the situation is similar in that many individuals disagree with the legitimacy of war and therefore consider the occupation force and its mission tainted. The Iraqi people themselves are caught in the middle. The war removed the former regime and relieved a great burden from the Iraqi people. But the mission to stabilize the country continues. So too does the effort to help the Iraqi people realize a brighter future. Arguments over how we arrived at this point have important implications for accountability but they are substantially flawed if they ignore the commitment to the Iraqi people themselves that was important before the war and just as important if not more so now. In this regard, consistency with pre-war posturing can be unhelpful or counterproductive and comes at the expense of the Iraqi people. The way forward on Iraq would seem most appropriately focused on helping the Iraqi people. In time, treasure and lives, the costs of fighting the recent war should be redeemed by commensurate improvement to the lives of the Iraqi people. This is a significant bill to pay to provide a just and proportional redemption of the harms of war. The Iraqis themselves are intent on realizing the better future many have endorsed. We have seen it throughout their country in their steady perseverance in the face of hardships and in the face of resistance from some. Pride of authorship in assisting the Iraqis to achieve this goal should not be allowed to impede the inclusion of others in this worthy endeavor. As Abraham Lincoln said in the closing days of the Civil War, "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." [2] There is another important aspect of the situation surrounding the recent Iraq War that troubled me and is pertinent to our sense of community. That is, the war exposed dramatic, emotional differences within our congregations. The way forward in how to deal with Iraq became a concern to me in the sense of how to deal with the differences among each other within our UU congregations. As a member of the armed forces, I found myself questioning the compatibility between military service and being a UU. On an email list for UUs in the military, it was not just an abstract concern. Several service members gave examples of anti-military treatment, reminiscent of the Vietnam era, that made them feel unwelcome. I'd like to make a brief digression to describe my personal journey. I feel very comfortable in the identities that I have and the manner in which they fold together. I take great pride in my profession and in my identity as a member of the American military. I also take great pride in my identity as a Unitarian Universalist. I did not discover Unitarian Universalism until 1993. I have been a UU ever since and claim-as I have heard many other members say-that I was a UU in spirit many years prior to finding the denomination and realizing that there was a religious home for me. I have been an active member of UU congregations in New Jersey (while attending graduate school), New York (while I was teaching at West Point), Tennessee (while I was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division) and now Rhode Island (where I'm assigned to the faculty of the Naval War College). My military background goes back even further. I am an Army brat (that is my father was in the military). I was born in a U.S. Army hospital in Germany during the Cold War. I lived in a variety of military communities throughout my youth until I entered the United States Military Academy at West Point and began my own military career. I have been on active duty with the US Army for over 19 years to include service during combat in the 1991 Gulf War (Desert Storm) and during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Individuals prioritize values differently. It seems to me we should be able to accept differences of reasoning that are nevertheless fully compatible with our UU principles. This may lead some to support particular policies of our government while others oppose them. But, I believe differences on important political issues is possible without compromising our religious principles grounded in "Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth," "A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;" and "The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large." Speaking in February 2003, Reverend Forrest Church, minister of Unitarian church of All Souls in Manhattan noted,
At times over the past year, I was troubled by what I perceived as an overly pacifist tilt in a variety of UU settings that had made me feel unwelcome and uncomfortable. Not that I didn't think that I was still a UU at heart and not that I felt in the least uncomfortable with the principles and heritage of Unitarian Universalism that had attracted me to the denomination many years ago. Rather, it was the manner in which the principled stance of others suggested that there was no room for a different view. In the months preceding the war, I read the news closely as did many others. I also participated in e-mail lists for Rhode Island UUs on issues of peace and social justice as well as participating in a UUA-sponsored list for UUs in the military. Other military UUs and I perceived a shift from reasoned discourse to anti-war declaratory judgments bordering on the doctrinaire. Moreover, as with Vietnam, discourse and disagreement over policy decisions of the government were directed at military members sworn to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States and obey the orders of the civilian leaders placed over them by our democratic process. This led me to revisit the heritage of our denomination. The nature of our denomination as undoubtedly peace-loving but it is also not pacifist. I further submit that it should not be pacifist. That is, just as war is an instrument of policy and not an end in and of itself, peace describes a condition that should not be confused with the quality of the condition. I believe that our principles make it difficult to rule out the possibility of war entirely. Acquiescence to aggression, surrender to tyranny, acquiescence to genocide, and surrender to other forms of grave injustice could all preserve peace. But is peace really the highest end that we seek or do we seek a particular quality of peace? UUs have generally accepted the Just War framework I mentioned. In short, there are times, heavily circumscribed, when war is just. Quite appropriately, the debates leading up to the recent war were very much related to the overall societal and government decisions concerning the justness of the war. As former UUA President John Buehrens noted, we are a denomination of both pacifists and pragmatists. He wrote, "Some Unitarian Universalists take personal and principled stands against all use of military force, even in response to aggression and terror. There is a long tradition of such witness among us…Yet we have never been a "peace church" like the Society of Friends (Quakers), the Mennonites, or the Church of the Brethren, in which rejection of military service or national defense has been normative for church members. Many Unitarian Universalists, while deeply committed to peace and justice, have been willing to take up arms…in defense of principle." [4] Before and during the war of American Independence, Unitarians were particularly well represented among those who sought a break from Great Britain and accepted that war might be necessary. Prominent Unitarians who participated in the Revolution included: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, Paul Revere, and Benjamin Franklin. [5] In the decades following independence, Unitarians and Universalists were outspoken opponents of slavery. Many joined the Union cause in the civil war. Many of you may have seen the movie Glory. The movie portrays the creation and eventual entry into combat of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment--the first African-American combat unit to enter service with the Union Army during the Civil War. The regiment was led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick's character in the movie). Colonel Shaw was a Boston Unitarian who is honored, along with the rest of the 54th Massachusetts in a bas relief sculpture across the street from the Massachusetts state house and a few feet down from UUA headquarters. The complex dynamics of peace and justice are reflected in Unitarian Julia Ward Howe who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic for the civil war and then led the effort to recognize a Mother's Peace Day-later to become Mother's Day-as a statement against war. Prominent UU Adlai Stevenson, as Ambassador to the UN during the Cuban missile crisis provided the smoking gun briefing to the Security Council of Soviet missile deployments in Cuba (oft cited in comparison the Secretary of State Colin Powell's brief to the UN before the recent war). The two most recent Secretaries of Defense prior to Secretary Rumsfeld were UUs. William Perry, 1994-1997, oversaw US military actions in Bosnia. William Cohen, 1997-2001, oversaw US military attacks against Iraq in 1998 and the Kosovo war of 1999 (both of which, by the way, were undertaken without UN Security Council endorsements). There are many notable UUs with military service in their background: To name a few from the UU web site: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Paul Douglas, Eliot Richardson, Whitney Young, and Kurt Vonnegut. One UU military chaplain recently estimated that there are about 600 UUs currently serving in the US armed forces. They have been involved in military operations in Haiti, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and now Iraq (some, like me, for the second time). Two days from now we will celebrate veterans' day. Last week we had Election Day. These two events serve as useful bookends. As we recognize and honor veterans, American soldiers continue to serve in Iraq. These soldiers recognize and honor their commitment to society. The elections of the past week and opening stages of next year's presidential election are a reminder of the mechanisms that govern how our military forces are used. In our hymnal, reading 583 is from Archibald MacLeish and is titled the Young Dead Soldiers. In part it reads:
As with any war, we cannot take sacrifices and costs lightly. Our political process provides the means to select and empower the leaders-executive and legislative-to decide national policy. There is no mystery that any important decision like war will expose significant divides among people. Just as our denomination does not endorse particular creeds or doctrines, it is similarly hard to declare particular values to be unquestionably more important than others uniformly and across time. The process to reconcile these differences is democracy within our congregations and society more broadly. I am comfortable with this process as the one I swore to uphold in defending the Constitution and agreeing to obey the orders or our leaders that flow from this process. Our UU principles similarly recognize the centrality of this process as a means of reconciling competing values in our community. It is a process of approximating and weighing our communal sense of justice, equity, compassion, freedom and other values at particular moments. But the specific answers of the process are not immutable or irrevocably sealed. It is a process that requires our continued engagement and collective effort. Recall the principles we have affirmed:
Quoting John Buehrens again, "Unitarian Universalism can be a healing presence in society to the extent that we model listening patiently to one another's perspectives, speaking temperately, and respecting one another's ministries and rights of conscience. We are not a peace church. We are not a war church. We are a religious community of both pacifists and pragmatists, taking different spiritual paths toward a common goal: a world of greater justice and peace." [4] I leave you with the thought that we may not have all the answers, but I think we know a lot of the right questions and have strong principles to guide us as we search for answers. *The views expressed in this message are the personal views of the author and do not reflect official views of the Department of Defense or the United States government. SOURCES AND FURTHER READINGS: |