A Neither Just Nor Holy War

I recall a most memorable night in the Washington National Cathedral just six weeks ago. Sojourners and the cathedral had called for a prayer service and candlelight march to the White House on the eve of the U.N. deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. On that Monday night, January 14, American public opinion on whether to go to war was about evenly split. I even remember hearing people say that this might be the first time in history that popular opinion would stop a war before it started.

We hoped for a good turnout, perhaps as many as 2,000 people. But when I saw the gathered crowd, I could scarcely believe my eyes. The seventh largest cathedral in the world was the fullest it had ever been -- so full that the fire marshal had to close the doors.

More than 7,000 anxious but hopeful people filled every available space, and 1,500 more listened to the service piped through speakers outside. Then our seemingly endless stream of candlelight flowed through the dark city, past the Iraqi Embassy, and on to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where we were enthusiastically greeted by 2,000 more people.

From the White House, the flickering candles moved on to Metropolitan AME Church, where we held an all-night prayer vigil. It seemed, that night, that the whole city was glowing in fervent and urgent prayers for peace. The call for an alternative to war had struck a deep nerve in Washington, DC.

That night now seems like an eternity ago. Two days later, the war began. The polls shifted dramatically, mostly, I believe, out of support for the troops; most people found it difficult to separate support for them from support for the war policy. But there was another critical factor in public perception. The war became an instant "success." And success wiped away all questions.

For more than five months before the war began, the American people wrestled with the moral questions of war and peace in an unprecedented public debate, only to have them disappear in the illuminated skies over Baghdad. The media's serious discussion of the issues at stake was replaced by its mesmerizing fascination with the technology of war. An extraordinary congressional debate disintegrated into a collapse of conscience. The intense moral scrutiny of the war option by the churches and others was usurped by the president's official pronouncement of the war's righteousness, quickly agreed to by the White House theological advisers. With the war going so well, nobody wanted to hear the questions.

But the moral contradictions of the Gulf crisis did not go away the day the fighting started. The initial success of the air war only erased them from our television screens. Indeed, the moral questions became even more urgent and alarming.

PRESIDENT BUSH AND HIS religious chaplains asserted that the war in the Persian Gulf is a "just war." Saddam Hussein and his backers claim it is a "holy war." This war is neither just nor holy.

But from the American point of view, it may turn out to be very successful. Since what defines American morality most of all these days is success, dissent quickly became unwelcome, out of style, and out of sight. Indeed, morality and truth became the first casualties in this successful war.

Especially in war, just and righteous causes are in the hands of the victor to declare. Every war in the history of this country has been called "just" by the president who waged it. But each war's morality has been judged by its success. Vietnam dragged on to become a moral "quagmire," while the quick victories of Grenada and Panama brushed aside the moral questions.

Now the ground war has begun in the Persian Gulf. As I write, we are in its second day. Despite early predictions of a bloody and costly campaign, first reports are of yet another great success, due to five weeks of pounding air attacks and the superiority of American technology. "Friendly" causalities are said to be "remarkably light." The thousands of Iraqi civilians and tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers who have already died have not deterred the definition of "success."

To have undertaken the largest aerial bombardment in history is a profound moral issue of yet unknown proportions. This war is inflicting suffering on masses of people who are innocent of the crimes of Saddam Hussein. How does killing them strike at him?

Is it enough to say that we don't intend the killing of civilians or haven't targeted them, when their suffering and death were a foreseeable consequence of the bombing policies and war strategies our military has pursued? What did we expect would be the results of bombing bridges, refineries, power stations, and military targets in densely populated urban areas?

After burning to death some 400 civilians in Baghdad's Amariya shelter (regardless of whether it was also a command and control center) -- on Ash Wednesday, of all days -- it is an utter lack of compassion and responsibility to simply blame Saddam for putting them in harm's way of our "smart" bombs. Perhaps our government leaders should have been forced to carry the charred bodies of children back to their parents and explain why they had to die to protect the world from Saddam Hussein. A much more diligent and honest effort should have been undertaken to find a peaceful settlement of this conflict -- not to save Saddam's face, but to save their lives.

To have put infinitely more energy and will into a military buildup than into political diplomacy in the Gulf crisis is a moral issue. This is not a war of "last resort," as the president has claimed. The many days and miles of shuttle diplomacy to which he has referred were overwhelmingly directed toward building a military coalition against Saddam Hussein and authorizing its use, rather than a serious attempt to deal with the underlying disputes and grievances at stake in the Gulf and, indeed, the whole region.

From the beginning, ultimatums substituted for negotiations, and mutual threats preempted substantive dialogue. Without compromising on the bottom line that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait, there were alternatives to war that addressed the most important issues.

The outbreak of war reveals a profound failure of political leadership on all sides. Both sides were intransigent, both sides blocked potential solutions. The massive Western military mobilization in August scuttled potential Arab solutions that were in the air, and the fall re-buildup hardened the lines and increased the momentum toward war. Saddam's belligerence caused him to miss many opportunities, and the U.S. snuffed out potential openings for a political settlement.

Bush's rejection of the last-ditch Soviet peace effort was especially tragic. NBC commentator John Chancellor observed that Saddam Hussein had been trying to give up for five days. The Soviet proposal had secured the essentials of the U.N. resolutions: Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait and subsequent restoration of Kuwaiti sovereignty.

Each hour brought Iraq closer to the U.S. demands for the terms of withdrawal. But George Bush couldn't wait. A date had already been established for launching the ground war, we later learned.

Did the U.S. really plunge ahead just to make Iraq pay reparations to Kuwait, leave more tanks behind, or give the allies post-war leverage over Baghdad? I don't think so.

THIS WAR REQUIRED total victory for the U.S.-led forces and total defeat and humiliation for Saddam Hussein. How else do you begin a new world order guaranteed by Pax Americana? Certainly not by allowing the Soviet Union to play a peacemaking role.

As we go to press, Iraq has announced its withdrawal from Kuwait, but the U.S.-led coalition is continuing to press the war. That the demand of complete surrender and the utter vanquishing of Iraq might cost even more lives or lead to unforeseen consequences seems not to matter.

The United States dictating the terms of a post-war new order is not the moral equivalent of "establishing stability." To justify the carnage of this war by claiming the failure of diplomacy is sheer hypocrisy.

To have unleashed the demons of war in the Middle East is a moral issue. We do not yet know the longer-term consequences of our short-term success. A mostly Western war against an Arab tyrant carries great risks for engulfing the region in volatility, bitterness, and a cycle of violence and political instability that could be the harvest of this conflict for years to come. To assume that the United States can play a major role in putting the region back together, as has already been suggested, and can now safely maintain a greatly expanded military and political presence is, at best, highly dubious, and painfully reminiscent of the old world order.

The evil of Saddam Hussein does not make us good. Nor does everything we do in the name of fighting him become morally acceptable.

Saddam is such a plausible villain for a global superpower eager to reassert its own righteousness and authority. He is the perfect enemy. Hating him can make us feel better about ourselves. Fighting him can unite us and help us forget about our problems at home. Demonizing him demonstrates our moral superiority. Beating him makes us feel strong and powerful again.

Saddam is a made-for-TV bad guy who is proving enormously useful to the nation as it seeks to put the moral taint and paralysis of Vietnam and its "syndrome" finally behind us -- and as it tries to cover up our internal unraveling (which is more and more apparent), silences the critics who question the righteousness of our role in the world, and outflanks our economic competitors and enlists them in the new world order under the banner of American leadership. We needed Saddam Hussein, for our rehabilitation and redemption as the world's number one nation again.

Saddam is helping to save Pax Americana. But to have backed ourselves into the corner of war with a dictator as dangerous, brutal, and as capable of terrible atrocities as Saddam Hussein -- rather than to have contained, undercut, and defeated him in other ways -- may eventually turn out to have been a serious political and moral miscalculation.

IN ADDITION TO establishing George Bush's new world order, the control of oil supplies was central to the causes of this crisis from the beginning. Going to war for cheap oil was such a dubious moral justification that the president stopped talking about the need to "protect our way of life" -- a way of life in which 6 percent of the world's population consumes more than 25 percent of the world's petroleum supplies.

The lack of an energy policy in the West that honors our responsibilities to both justice and the environment is a moral failure. For the White House to announce, in the heat of war, an energy policy that perpetuates the same patterns that led us into this conflict is a clear indication that nothing has been learned from this crisis.

If there were not a sea of oil beneath the Kuwaiti sands, would we have gone to war in the Gulf? The United States has not acted out of President Bush's "conviction to oppose injustice" in myriad countries around the globe, from Central America to South Africa, from Haiti to Cambodia, in fact, in many cases, the United States has not only refused to oppose tyranny and aggression, it has been both a passive and an active supporter of repressive regimes -- including Saddam Hussein's.

Should we have declared war on China and begun bombing Beijing for its crushing of the democracy movement and its brutal occupation of neighboring Tibet? Should we bomb Moscow for the Soviet Union's violent repression of independence movements in the Baltic republics?

After we have finished with Saddam Hussein, will we then remove the military rulers in El Salvador who have killed tens of thousands of their own people during the last decade? Apparently not; during the distraction of the Gulf war, George Bush quietly sent more military aid to San Salvador.

The massive U.S. response to aggression and injustice in Kuwait, while virtually ignoring or even supporting such activity in so many other cases, is a moral double standard. In particular, to have so long accepted and supported the injustice done to Palestinians through 23 years of brutal occupation by Israel underlies this conflict and is a moral issue. Just because Saddam Hussein has sought to use the Palestinian question for his own self-serving purposes does not diminish its importance on its own moral grounds. To delay further the legitimate grievances of Palestinians in order not to "reward Saddam Hussein's aggression" is morally unacceptable.

Turning away from the non-military instruments of sanctions, diplomacy, and multilateral political resolve in favor of the technology of war has, in fact, forestalled the hope of a genuinely new world order by again affirming the principles of the old world order -- that "might makes right." Despite the claims of our political leaders, our options in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait were not simply inaction or war, appeasement or conflagration. This war has been created by political leaders with limited vision and abundant technology. And a last-minute just war defense is merely a cynical replacement for persistent diplomacy and moral reflection.

PAX AMERICANA IS NOT a new world order. A world dominated by one superpower, instead of two, is neither safer, freer, nor more just -- especially for those on the bottom. Are the world's poor to simply trust the strong to rule with compassion toward the weak, as the president of the United States has suggested?

It is now abundantly clear that George Bush and the American power elite saw the end of the Cold War not as an opportunity for peace and new cooperation, but as the chance for singular dominance. What many hoped would be a fresh hope for reducing military budgets, re-building our own communities, and establishing new relationships is quickly turning into a new world order made safe only by the continued ability of the United States to inflict massive violence on "outlaw" nations.

And the American world policeman gets to define the law. The same United States that today speaks in such reverential tones about United Nations resolutions felt free to ignore the World Court's condemnation of its covert war against Nicaragua, U.N. resolutions against the U.S. invasion of Panama, and many resolutions regarding the self-determination of the Palestinians.

The United States even gets to define language. With its coalition partners including feudal kingdoms, fabulously wealthy sheiks, un-democratic Arab elites, and a terrorist nation, the United States will restore an autocratic royal family to power in Kuwait by evicting a rival regional tyrant -- all in the name of freedom.

The imposition of Pax Americana is the ultimate purpose of the war in the Persian Gulf and has been since the beginning. It is the moral context in which this tragic war must now be placed. The credibility of the new world order of which George Bush now constantly speaks is the central issue in this war. That new world order will be enforced and controlled by the military supremacy and political direction of the United States. "There is no substitute for American leadership," says the president.

The new order will be financed and supported by the other rich nations who, along with the United States, will be its primary beneficiaries. Its cultural and spiritual values will be shaped by the same media giants that have brought us this war and who represent the corporate economic power that is the strongest global force in the world today.

The war in the Persian Gulf is not only against Saddam Hussein. It is also a war against all the soldiers who will be sent to their death, and their families and friends who will grieve their loss. It is a war against all the young people who entered the military as a door to the future, only to have it open on to a killing field.

It is against all the civilians who get caught in the crossfire or who become expendable as "collateral damage" in military operations. It is a war against the earth, which will be left scorched, polluted, and contaminated. It is against all those whose hopes for a better life will again be deferred by the costs and consequences of war, those whose violation and victimization will be covered up by the world's distracted attention, and those whose lives will become caught up in the bitterness, hatred, and cycle of violence this war will unleash for generations to come.

Ultimately, this war is a sin against God, in whose name and with whose self-righteously claimed blessing it is carried out against God's children and God's earth. And it is to God that we will all answer for this war.

WHAT WILL BE THE aftermath of the war? We must hope that it ends quickly so that more lives aren't lost. But the faster it ends, the more the war policy will be vindicated. Success will become the proof that this war was a moral venture.

If the American casualties remain low, the war will be portrayed as not only successful and moral, but also as relatively cost-free. Unlike the terrible human cost of both World War II and the Vietnam War, which shaped earlier generations, kids growing up today will believe that video war games match the real thing.

War itself may gain a new degree of respectability and appeal, while enjoying the protection of an unreal world. Most of his congressional critics will say the president was right all along. The press will be even more tame and timid to challenge the government. And the peace movement will be popularly discredited for having been "wrong."

But we weren't wrong; we just didn't win. There is, however, a more important thing than winning. The Bible calls it being faithful. Those of us in the churches who spoke out strongly against the war will come under attack, and indeed, already have.

In the religious debate over the war, some things have become clear. In the churches, there are those who identify their religion with the expansion of Pax Americana to the rest of the world; and there are those who identify their faith with the victims of Pax Americana, both at home and around the globe. That will now become the decisive issue that divides Christians in the United States and throughout the world. Is the new world order something to be embraced, or to be resisted? Are the cultural values of a newly revitalized, American-led West really Christian? Or is the survival of Christian faith in the West dependent on its becoming more explicitly countercultural?

This could well be a time of testing, to know what we believe and why. It might also turn out to be a critical moment for clarification and even purification of faith. A re-examination of our relationships -- to the culture, the state, our work, our churches, our families and communities, and ultimately, to the gospel and the one we claim to follow -- could be one result. If that occurs, we could be entering a difficult but potentially very redemptive period.

It seems appropriate to me that this war is taking place during the season of Lent, which, in the Christian faith, is meant to be a time of repentance. Perhaps the most radical act we can now undertake is to call for national repentance and to ask for forgiveness from those we have hurt at the very time the nation celebrates its victory in this war.

When I was in Canberra, Australia, for the World Council of Churches Seventh Assembly, I felt compelled to begin a fast on Ash Wednesday. Upon returning, I discovered that friends around the country had been led to the same action. Some of us are taking only water and/or juice, others bread and water, still others skipping regular meals or fasting a day a week, or cutting back on other things. All have expressed a desire to focus, clarify, clean out one's heart and mind, and go to a deeper level of response, given the war and what is happening to the country.

A scripture passage kept recurring in the letters that announced the fasts. It was the story from Mark's gospel of Jesus' disciples failing to heal a young boy possessed by an evil spirit. His father pleads, "Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief." Jesus says, "All things are possible to those who believe." When Jesus casts out the evil spirit, his disciples ask, "Why could we not cast it out?" And he says to them, "This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting" (Mark 9:29).

The Persian Gulf war will change us. The country won't be the same. A new spirit may come over the land. And how we discern the spirit of the age will be central to Christian discipleship.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.