Louisville Seminary Statement

The following statement was sent to me in case I could help to distribute it. I am posting it here in case any of my readers might be interested.

The Wages of War:
A Statement Adopted by the Seminary Council of
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

October 21, 2002

Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, as a teaching arm of the Church, strives to �equip the saints for the work of ministry� (Ephesians 4:12) and to interpret the gospel in an ever-changing world. The mission we are given requires us to attend to the signs of the times, to read carefully cultural trends, and to be ready at all times to give an account of the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15). As members of this Seminary community, we have prayerfully reflected on the national moral crisis with which we are now confronted. We have heard with concern the many calls from President Bush and the current U.S. administration for unilateral military action to preempt a perceived threat from the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. We have been troubled to find that the seemingly inexorable movement toward war has been slowed hardly at all by the few prominent voices urging our leaders to take more time for critical moral reflection. But we are not dispirited, and with confidence in God we offer this message of concern and hope.

The futility of war

We are concerned that the policies pursued by the Bush administration and endorsed by the recent votes in Congress suggest that terrorism won on September 11, 2001. Beyond killing nearly three thousand people and destroying treasured national landmarks the terrorists also redefined our normative rules of engagement. They changed the way we, as Americans, think about responding to evil in our world.

The magnitude of our loss on September 11 illumined our vulnerability to terrorism and quickened our resolve to eliminate perceived threats before they result in further loss. Our anxious concern for safety is understandable. Our plan to achieve safety through unilateral action and preemption reveals that the events of 9-11 were truly cataclysmic in scope. The violent upheaval of that day not only wreaked unprecedented devastation for us but also caused a fundamental shift in our estimate of an appropriate response.

The terrorists win when we lose hope in the efficacy of diplomacy, cooperation, and multilateral action. The Bush foreign policy is premised on the assumption that violence is the only meaningful, appropriate, and effective response to violence�and that an escalation of violence is the best way to demonstrate our might and resolve. But the biblical witness and our Christian faith suggest that we delude ourselves when we presume that military force will stifle the hatred that fuels attacks on America and the West. A violent response, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, begets the very thing it seeks to destroy. That is why God calls us to a more excellent way. When Jesus says �No more� to the impulse of his disciples to attack their adversaries (Luke 22:51), he embodies for us an alternative path. Is it conceivable that such a path might yet influence the moral deliberations of our leaders?

In what ways are the actions toward Iraq weighed by the current U.S. administration distinguished from the actions radical Islamists have taken against America? While we believe that there are significant differences, we are concerned about the apparent similarities. Those antagonists without superior military power use low-tech measures to destroy a World Trade Center. Those antagonists with superior military power use high-tech measures to change regimes. That both have agreed to adjudicate the conflict through strike and counter-strike ensures that the conflict will both escalate and draw other parties into frenzied reaction or smolder for generations. The events of 9-11 have subjected us to a tyranny of perpetual violence and stifled our moral imagination.

The terrorists win when we come to share their idolatrous self-identification with the will of God. Their rationale for violence seems to have become our rationale for violence, namely, an impassioned contention that we alone embody righteousness and they embody evil.

The danger of idolatry

The Bush administration�s relentless pursuit of its goal of regime change through war has elicited charges of arrogance from most of our global neighbors. Arrogance, in theological terms, is pride; and pride is an expression of idolatry�the unwillingness to distinguish our own perceptions and desires from the vision and the will of God (Isaiah 2:8-17). When our leaders ignore the pleas of voices from the Muslim and Arab world not to invade Iraq, when virtually all our closest allies are cautioning us against a premature and wrong-headed military intervention against a sovereign nation, we must ask: Have we alone seen matters rightly? Do we alone possess the moral authority to be God�s sword against injustice? Representing God is a dangerous business and the sword that is claimed in God�s name cuts both ways (Isaiah 13-14, 34:1-7).

We are concerned that the blind determination of our leaders to pursue their policy goals may rob our neighbors�friend and foe�of their humanity. Pride and self-righteousness can easily seduce us into a way of seeing in which we conclude that both antagonists and inconvenient others are easily dismissible parties to the weighty deliberations of war. It matters little what they think who fail to see matters rightly. Be they friend or foe, if they do not see what we see then they do not see clearly. And if they do not see clearly then we acknowledge no compelling moral or legal obligation to consult with them or to act in concert with them. A lack of mutual and careful consideration in matters of joint concern is but the first step on the slippery slope of dehumanization. If we are for God, then those who oppose us or who fail to take our side are not for God. We need not hear their counsel. If they are part of an axis of evil then to hear them is to invite only a devil�s snare of allegation, recrimination, and prevarication. We dehumanize those persons to whom we deny a meaningful voice.

Idolatry has political consequences. We glorify our nation; our cause is an unquestioningly righteous one. We dehumanize our adversaries; their claim against us is a patently false one. Warfare, then, becomes a simply conceived matter. Yet we are blind to the true costs of war.

The costliness of war

A calculus of the costliness of war must account, minimally, for human, political, and moral costs.

i.Human cost

If the first casualty of war is a loss of innocence then the second casualty is a loss of life. The language of modern warfare obscures this cost. Our war language bespeaks surgical precision, localized anesthetics, and noninvasive procedures. We speak of �dual-use targets,� �smart bombs,� and �collateral damage,� but these terms belie the troubling truth of the matter: sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, soldiers and civilians, young and old are going to die. They will die because they went to work or to school or to shop on a fateful day. They will die because they lived near a bridge or a power station or a tall building that was deemed to be a crucial target. They will die because they boarded the wrong bus or plane. They will die needlessly because they are the enemy and our cause is a righteous one. They will die regrettably in a proximate and temporary measure to redress an intractable problem of contentious self-interest. They will die because we choose war. Ironically, we will die as well because the enemies we make today will not simply prostrate themselves before the altar of American might. They will take their revenge on us tomorrow. And so it goes.

ii.Political cost

When events began spinning out of control in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy issued a stern warning that should caution us today as we discern our role and responsibilities toward Iraq: �the situation may get out of control with irreversible consequences.� Indeed, newly declassified documents reveal that we came terribly close to a nuclear war in the western hemisphere in October of that year when � a U.S. Navy destroyer dropping depth charges almost accidentally hit the hull of a Soviet submarine carrying a nuclear warhead.� i Today, we sail in equally perilous waters atop highly contentious and combustible interests in the Middle East. As we drop our political depth charges on Iraq, let us be mindful that even an accidental miscue can precipitate a chain of events leading to outcomes no less severe in scope and intensity than those we narrowly avoided forty years ago.

The burning political question of the hour is not whether we will rally to the cause of defeating genocidal regimes around the world. The question before us is how we will respond to the political challenges imposed by our fundamental commitments to personal liberty and social justice. A corollary question that is beyond the scope of this appeal but that merits our careful consideration nonetheless is which genocidal challenges to liberty and justice appear on our political radar screen and command our immediate attention.

To pursue a course of independent action, in self-imposed isolation from the shared commitments of our allies and deaf to the impassioned critique of our enemies, is to court further political crisis in the region and solicit aggressive reaction from those adversaries who decry the United States as an international Goliath. An alternate choice, however, is available to us: a choice that builds upon the best of our democratic ideals. Democracy demands the participation of the many as a restraint against the tyranny of the powerful few. To pursue a course of mutual action response, in concert with our allies and responsible to the criticism of our adversaries, is to cull meaningful opportunity from a minefield of lesser political options.

A course of mutual action response is not merely a euphemism for a kinder and gentler form of cold warfare. It is a political blueprint for managing international crises that is drawn on the template of international diplomacy, law, and consensus. The wisdom of this response is borne out in the testimony of General Wesley Clark, U.S.A. (Ret.), Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (1997-2000): �through greater legal, judicial, and police coordination, we need to make the international environment more seamless for us than it is for the international terrorists we seek.� ii At the crossroads of either multilateral or unilateral response, we are concerned that the appeal of unilateral response, a mirage of political expediency and regional control, will lead only to greater peril.

iii.Moral cost

The moral cost of warfare is measured in half-truths and squandered opportunities. Reinhold Niebuhr was on to something when he wrote, �the selfishness of nations is proverbial.� iii We deceive ourselves if we expect that our actions in the world are motivated more by altruism than by self-interest; if we expect that our moral judgment is less partial and our moral vision is less myopic than the judgment and vision of other peoples with whom we share the world; if we expect that the moral justification for our political position on Iraq is free from the taint of hypocrisy; or if we expect that national interest has not already compromised our moral authority in the world. We are not less sinful as a people than the people against whom we would wage war. All people fall short of the glory of God.

We have an opportunity to choose a better way. It is a way less traveled. The well-traveled way squanders opportunities for a more stable international order. The way less traveled presents a genuine opportunity to build community.

If the terrorists succeeded at redefining the normative rules of engagement, leading us headlong into hopelessness, unilateral action, preemption, and an endless cycle of violence and retaliation, we are hopeful that we can realize new and vital forms of the justice and peace that God intends for humanity. We do not claim the sufficiency of this hope for securing global justice, only its necessity.

Where do we go from here?

One of the widely touted responses to the perceived threat from the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein proceeds from a Christian tradition of justifiable war theory. The idea that war can be justified has roots in early Christian thought, going back to the writings of Augustine, and has been reworked since then in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and many other Christian authors. A current formulation of justifiable war theory, adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), holds six principlesiv:
All other means to the morally just solution of conflict must be exhausted before resort to arms can be regarded as legitimate.
War can be just only if employed to defend a stable order or morally preferable cause against threats of destruction or the rise of injustice.
Such a war must be carried out with the right attitudes.
A just war must be explicitly declared by a legitimate authority.
A just war may be conducted only by military means that promise a reasonable attainment of the moral and political objectives being sought.
The just war theory has also entailed selective immunity for certain parts of the population, particularly for non-combatants.

If we, as a nation, accept that war against Iraq is a case of just war, then the Bush administration has more public work to do in making that case on principled grounds. It is not at all clear that the conditions for a just war against Iraq have been met.

We, as members of the Louisville Seminary community, question the premise that a vigorous and principled war can be an instrument of a lasting peace. If war is necessary, surely it must be a last resort and not a preemptive strike.

The biblical tradition tells us that humans are created for community, each a part of a larger whole (Genesis 1:27). Sin tempts us to imagine that we are not really bound up with others; that we are not simply a part of God�s creation but the favored part of God�s creation; that we alone are entrusted with the divine authority to change regimes at will. But the Bible also tells us that God does not abandon us to our sin, but calls us into a community of justice and righteousness. Christians believe that God commissions the church to tell this story of God�s call. As The Confession of 1967 of the Presbyterian Church (USA) puts it, �God�s reconciliation in Jesus Christ is the ground of the peace, justice, and freedom among nations which all powers of government are called to serve and defend. The church, in its own life, is called to practice the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace. This search requires that the nations pursue fresh and responsible relations across every line of conflict, even at risk to national security, to reduce areas of strife and to broaden international understanding.�v

Our hope, as a Seminary and as a teaching arm of the Church, is that America will hear the story the Church has to tell and that it will pursue a just peace and not a just war. Just peace is not a stopgap measure to restrain the flow of evil after events have spun out of control. It is a community building process grounded in mutuality, reciprocity, and the arduous work of cooperation to achieve social justice. The wisdom of just peace is in the centrality it accords to justice. Truly, there will not be peace without justice. International justice is not gained by unilateral military action to rid the world of evil. That idea did not work for the terrorists. It will not work for us. Instead, let us choose to build justice in concert with our neighbors, open to the criticism of the adversaries, with candor and confidence that God holds tomorrow.

Conclusion

Keep your eyes on the prize, America, and hold on to the freedom that God alone has provided to break our bondage to cycles of perpetual conflict that follow from interest against interest (Galatians 5:1). Of course we will not end conflict in the world, but we can choose to respond to global conflict and international threats in a manner that does not merely recapitulate age-old patterns of violent action and violent reaction. Let us not esteem warfare as the moral heirloom we bequeath to our children and grandchildren. Let not the deep psychological wounds to our national ego that we suffered in the aftermath of September 11th tempt us to cloak vengeance in the language of unilateral action. The wages of war are legion. The promise of peace is eternal. The choice is ours.

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i:This statement was adopted by a unanimous vote of the Seminary Council on October 21, 2002. It was written by an ad hoc committee of Seminary faculty and students.

Robert Kennedy, quoted in �Soviet sub almost fired nuke in missile crisis,� by Anita Snow, Associated Press, in The Courier-Journal, Sunday, October 13, 2002, page A11.
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ii: General Wesley Clark, �An Army of One?� in The Washington Monthly, volume 34, number 9, September 2002, page 22.
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iii: Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, New York: Charles Scribner�s Sons, 1932, page 84.
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iv: Ronald Stone and Dana Wilbanks, editors, The Peacemaking Struggle: Militarism and Resistance. New York: University Press of America, 1985, page 191. This volume contains essays prepared for the Advisory Council on Church and Society of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
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v: The Confession of 1967, 9.45, in Book of Confessions: Study Edition, Louisville, Kentucky: Geneva Press, 1996, page 328.

Posted by JoKeR at October 22, 2002 09:28 PM | TrackBack