I confess that it is incongruous for a peace theorist to recommend that people go to see a flag-waving war movie. The contradictions of this notwithstanding, I hope that people will go to see Red Tails, the movie about the Tuskegee Airmen produced by George Lucas and directed by Anthony Hemingway. I urge people to see the movie so that it will make money and thereby take away one Hollywood excuse for why it does not make more movies about African-American heroes and sheroes. If this movie makes money, perhaps it will be easier to get big-screen movies or television movies or mini-series made about people such as African-American diplomat Ralph Bunch or activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune and others.
George Lucas spoke with Jon Stewart about the difficulty in getting Red Tails made. African-Americans are supporting the movie; however, this is an important movie for everyone to support.
First, I say and say again that war is the worst crime that humanity perpetuates against itself. Mahatma Gandhi was correct when he called war organized murder. Former French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin was also right when he said “war is always the sanction of failure.” When the first projectile flies, we see a failure of imagination, communication and diplomacy. Just peace theory hopes to make the principles of just peace accepted universal principles that will guide the moral thinking and political commitments of people across the globe.
When people ask me the wolf at the door question – what does the world do with people such as Hitler and regimes such as the National Socialists in Germany when they threaten the world’s security? – I say that peacemaking is a day to day work and that the logic of peace ought to make the logic of war unthinkable. We stop the wolf before he gets to the door. The world is not there yet.
For those who follow the Christian tradition, Christmas is a time of hope and promise in the unlikely person of a child. It is a time of celebrating the birth of the one spoken of by the prophet Isaiah and heralded by Handel as the “Prince of Peace.”
Yet religion and war have become so grotesquely interconnected that we can scarcely tell them apart. Indeed, to suggest that war is antithetical to the message of Jesus is to risk accusations of treason, heresy or both.
Most people are unaware that for the first few hundred years of the Church, Christians were total pacifists. For example, St. Martin of Tours refused to fight against the Gauls in 336CE because of his faith. In spite of the Church’s history of complicity and the downright instigation of war, a vein of this ancient ethic has persisted throughout history.
In the dominant culture, religion and war have become so enmeshed that some areas of the military have become evangelistic recruitment centers. Politicians and ministers alike fawn over our military as if war and religion were made for one another. Military commanders have become aggressive in promoting a “weaponized Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Steven Green, the soldier who raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl before murdering her and her family, says that he “didn’t think of the Iraqis as humans.” While our troops include many good people whose consciences would be repelled by Green’s deeds, the reality is that we must desensitize ourselves and dehumanize the enemy in order to go to war and in order to kill.
One military training cadence shows the perverse nature of training for war: “Bomb the village, kill the people/throw some napalm in the square/do it on a Sunday morning/kill them on their way to prayer. Ring the bell inside the schoolhouse/watch those kiddies gather round/lock and load your 240/mow them little mother f….s down.” (See the movie The Ground Truth - its trailer follows.)
Tomorrow, Wednesday, November 10, 2010, the Truth Commission on Conscience in War will release its groundbreaking report on the “moral injuries” of veterans in a Washington, D.C.press conference. Will you be in the D.C. area this week? Consider attending the press conference and its accompanying events (below).
The Truth Commission on Conscience in War is a national coalition of over 60 religious, veterans, academic, and advocacy groups. The Commission’s report calls for greater religious freedom and protection of moral conscience in the military, citing “moral injuries” suffered by veterans, and announcing next steps. Dr. Rita Brock, Chair of the Commission Planning Committee, Rev. Herman Keizer, Jr., veteran, former Army chaplain and host of the Truth Commission, as well as five veterans will speak.
The Commission report draws on testimony from veterans, theologians, ethicists, physicians, and other experts at a public hearing in New Yorklast March. Among the veteran testifiers, Logan Mehl-Laituri revealed the need for further protection of a soldier’s religious freedom: “If I could serve our country without killing, I never would have been a conscientious objector…Christ bid me drop my weapon, and I had no choice but to respond.”
Three years ago, Sen. Barack Obama was sharp, forceful and eloquent in his questions to Gen. David Petraeus about the failure of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In a congressional hearing on Iraq, Obama did not mince words with the general:
This continues to be a disastrous foreign policy mistake. And we are now confronted with the question: How do we clean up the mess and make the best out of a situation in which there are no good options, there are bad options and worse options?
Sen. Barack Obama questions Gen. Petraeus during Iraq hearings, 2007. (Go to 3:00 of this 9:45 minute video for above quote.)
This same candidate Obama was also confidently talking about withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months during his 2007 interviews. He defended a pull-out to two New York Times reporters, saying it would not “backfire” and discourage the Iraqis to find a political solution involving all sides of the conflict, as the critics claimed.
Journalism about biology often tells us more about our cultural assumptions and prejudices than about the science itself. Nicholas Wade’s most recent article in the New York Times about chimpanzees is no exception. After introducing us to John Mitani, the main chimp researcher in his piece, Wade says
Most days the male chimps behave a lot like frat boys, making a lot of noise or beating each other up. But once every 10 to 14 days, they do something more adult and cooperative: they wage war.
When I read those sentences, my mouth dropped open. My definition of cooperation doesn’t encompass war. In fact, cooperation and conflict are opposites as far as I can tell. And if I were a “frat boy,” I would have some difficulties with Wade’s initial comparison. In fact, as an adulthuman, I have a problem with all the assumptions that undergird Wade’s article.
By dismissing McChrystal, did President Obama reassert civilian authority over the military, pull his “national security” team together, and enhance the power of our democracy? So it would seem. But in fact, the dismissal provides a classic example of what Marxists used to call ideology: it represents reality in an inverted form. The truth is that the dismissal of McCrystal is another giant step in the defense establishment’s control over American policy. Let me explain.
The key thing is to understand the Rolling Stone story. The news accounts have provided a series of speculations concerning “how this could have happened” including the role of alcohol, hardworking military men unwinding after 18-hour days, or (my favorite) the Icelandic volcano that supposedly trapped McChrystal, his team and the reporter (Michael Hastings) in a Paris hotel for a week during which the General and his aides let their guard down.
In fact, nothing like that occurred. Duncan Boothby, McCrystal’s PR man who has since resigned, carefully arranged for the story. From the moment that Hastings arrived he was shocked at how open and candid McChrystal and his aides were about their vituperative opinions. According to Eric Bates, Rolling Stone‘s editor, every insult in the piece including the view that McChrystal found Obama distant, uninformed and intimidated, and the slams at Eikenberry, Biden and Holbrooke were repeatedly run by McChrystal for approval, which was forthcoming. Many other things that were said were off the record, and none of these were printed. In other words, this was no careless thoughtless loose talk. McChrystal and his aides deliberately planted this story, pretty much as it was written. The question is what were they thinking?
by: Megan Dowdell on March 19th, 2010 | Comments Off
On Sunday, March 21, 2010, a diverse coalition of veterans, scholars, and faith leaders will hold a public hearing for the Truth Commission on Conscience in War, bringing the public an opportunity for lament and interfaith dialogue on moral conscience in the military. Testifiers will offer their stories and expert testimonies on the issues of conscience facing U.S. service members in war and a group of commissioners will reflect on their contributions in order to promote further dialogue and advocacy.
The public hearing of the Truth Commission will open up a national interfaith dialogue on the moral decisions that each military service member faces. Held at the historic Riverside Church in New York City, the public hearing begins at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday and is free and open to the public.
Founder of Faith Voices for the Common Good and long-time anti-war activist, Rev. Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock has dedicated much of her scholarship and activism to inter-religious education. As chair of the planning team for the Truth Commission on Conscience in War, to be launched this Sunday, March 21 in New York City, she has turned her attention to Conscientious Objection regulations and the realities of military service during times of war.
To create the Truth Commission, Brock has worked with the filmmakers behind “Soldiers of Conscience,” an Emmy-winning documentary film that follows several soldiers through their moral decision-making on whether to fight in the war in Iraq or apply to be Conscientious Objectors. In her piece, “Moral Conscience in War: Small Acts of Repair,” Brock tells the stories of her father’s US Army service, including two tours in Vietnam. She explains how her father’s stories and the influence of veterans she has grown to respect have shown her how opportunities for repair and healing during war can come in many sizes.
Moral Conscience In War: Small Acts Of Repair
By Rita Nakashima Brock
My father Roy, from rural Mississippi, was barely 18 and had an eighth grade education when he joined the U.S. Army in 1941. He was captured in North Africa and spent the rest of the war as a POW. A career enlisted man, he served two tours in Vietnam as a medic who ran a battlefield aide station.
In the days before cell phones and email, my father sent us cassette tapes and letters. As the oldest child of three, I received my own tape.
There weren’t very many American Jews stationed at Dachau during the war crimes trials after the camp had been liberated. Odd duty, to say the least for a Jew, guarding German officers who had tortured and killed so many Jews, escorting these Nazi officers from their cells to the courtrooms, listening to the testimony about their crimes.
So, it turns out that the fabled “total reexamination” of Afghanistan strategy is another by now all-too-familiar example of the Obama shell game. Why can’t leftists, progressives, and critical intellectuals face what a fraud this man is, and how snookered they have been?
Obama’s strategy toward the left is obvious. He cannot ignore the left, which after all secured him the nomination. He knows that if he simply follows his obviously rightist and neo-liberal policies, eventually there will be an explosion from his left. So periodically he arouses the left’s hopes by floating the possibility of a really progressive shift, a change in “mindset” as he put it during the campaign for the nomination. Examples of this include “the public option” and “the Biden strategy in Afghanistan.”
I’m praying today for the “Bonhoeffer Four,” a group of four Christians who are playing a game of “hide and seek” on a military base in Australia in order to disrupt war games. Read the story here.
Good one, Bill! This letter to a local paper argues that it puts an intolerable burden on nineteen-year-olds to be ordered to fight an illegal war. The range of comments for and against show where we are at as a country right now. Bill Distler is a vet working tirelessly against our current wars. He was a guest on the Tikkun Phone Forum (scroll down to his name on that page to listen to the audio).
