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Rumors of War
Rev. Sharon Dittmar
February 2, 2003

A sermon on war is not one that I approach lightly or even eagerly.  War can be divisive, not only for countries, but also for congregations.  When I entered seminary in the early 1990's, people were still talking about the Vietnam war, and the effect it had on our Unitarian Universalist congregations.  

Congregations with long histories of civility and spirited open dialogue spiraled into name calling, slander, and the polarizations of ideas and groups.  It seemed that almost every congregation had the "minister who was asked to leave", or the "group of members who left in protest", or those who talked about war every week, or those who couldn't stand to hear the topic in a religious setting.  The topic of war is not one I approach lightly or eagerly.

Yet war, and all the factors that incite war, hate, genocide, economic inequality, violence – these are topics for people of faith.   As Unitarian Universalists we try to live our seven principles, respect for human worth and dignity, justice and compassion in relationships, use of the democratic process, the free and reasonable search for truth and meaning, we try to live these principles in our homes and on our earth.  

That is why we come here on Sunday morning, to educate our children with these values, to challenge ourselves to live into them.  And war challenges every one of them.  Does compassion in relationships include war?  How do you respect human worth and dignity at home and abroad?  In a democratic society how do we articulate our support or protest of war?

Here's the rub.  We are somewhat used to dialoguing with people of different faiths.  In your chairs this morning you may well be seated next to an atheist on your right and a Christian on your left.  But war seems to bring out the worst in everyone, even here where we are used to differences in faith, which is fairly contentious in and of itself.  Wars and rumors of war descend so quickly into platitudes, moralizing, sweeping generalizations, that it becomes almost impossible to discuss war without name calling, slander, and the polarization of people and ideas.

Since war is a topic that must be discussed by people of faith, and we must use our faith to wrestle with decisions, here is what I propose, some ground rules, because I would like First Church to be a sanctuary, a safe space for us to discuss what moves and troubles us the most.  Here are my suggested ground rules; first that we refrain from name calling or slander.  Second, that if you or I have a firm opinion one way or the other, we tread gently, knowing that someone here who we love and cherish has the opposite opinion, perhaps for a good reason.  I do not ask that we lie about our differences in opinion, just to speak kindly and carefully about them.  Third, if we disagree with something we hear someone say, we will respectfully and directly talk with that individual.  With that said I'd like to share with you some thoughts on my mind.  After the service I hope that those of you who are interested stay for a post-service discussion to share your thoughts.

A friend of mine recently said that he believe the myth of WWII ruined us.  The myth gives us the idea that decisions about war are obvious.  Dictators are clearly evil.  Genocides are public and present moral imperatives.  War is black and white.  We think of WWII as the good war, the war that had to be fought to stop Adolph Hitler.  In retrospect I do think we had to fight that war.  It just wasn't clear at the time.

Prior to Pearl Harbor Americans were too divided over the issue, too isolationistic for Roosevelt to declare war.  Rumors about extermination camps were ignored.  Even verified information about their existence was ignored.  Fleeing Jews and others were turned away at our borders, only to return to Europe and murder.  This war and its economic, moral, political consequences wasn't obvious to any majority until American soldiers and civilians were attacked within our country.

Neither was WWII a "clean war", because of course, there never has been a "clean war".  Some towns are always looted, civilians always killed, women raped, soldiers forced to make debilitating decisions about life and death, soldiers who must kill to survive.  There is no "clean war."  There is no obvious war, if there ever truly were.  

In the last fifty-five years, America hasn't engaged in a war.  This may come as a surprise because our armed forces has been active, but not in an official war.  There have been military conflicts in the last fifty years; Korea, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Kuwait, Kosovo, Afghanistan.  None of these were declared wars.  Both Korea and Vietnam were police actions. 

So why do we keep calling it war?  We are not going to have a war with Iraq.  We might have a rumor of war.  We might have a military conflict.  We will not have a war.  Bush will not go to Congress and ask them to declare war.  It will not happen.  In the meantime, our sloppy language oversimplifies the political, social, cultural situation, the complexity and price.  It is easier for all sides to respond in fear and hatred, to demonize one another.

I have been challenged when listening to most politicians as well as pacifists speak about war.  The language is simplified, situations moralized, enemies clarified, answers presented as clear.  "Bomb them all."  "No oil war."  "Axis of evil."  While looking for opening words for this service I struggled to find something that did not irritate me.  After a while a clear pattern emerged.  I could only bear the words of veterans and civilians subjected to combat.  Only these words had the depth, complexity, sincerity, and full expression of potential loss, to help me think.

I chose the words of a soldier at war rather than others.  (letter from former President Theodore Roosevelt to friend - that Americans need "every molly-coddle, professional pacifist, and man who is 'too proud to fight' when the nation's quarrel is just, should be exiled to those out of the way parts" -  Helen Keller writing to support Eugene Debs going to jail for protesting WWI "Oh where is the swift vengeance of Jehovah that it does not fall upon the hosts of those who are marshalling machine-guns against hungry-stricken peoples?  It is the complacency of madness to call such acts "preserving law and order.")*  I admire Helen Keller so much, but the sweeping generalizations pain me - can't talk - situations more than molly coddle pacifists and hungry stricken people.

I always remember one of our former members now dead, Brunner Dickman, talking about the German soldier he saw in the woods.  When I met Brunner, then in his late eighties, he was a calm, peaceful, reflective man who loved yoga.  Fifty years earlier he stood in the woods, watched an unprotected German soldier going to the bathroom, and wondered what to do.  Ultimately he chose not to kill him, and then wondered if this man would someday kill him or others in return.  I have a similarly clear memory of listening to Ben Graziani, a veteran of the Korean conflict talk about finding a decapitated body.  Fifty years later his horror, disbelief, and outrage was palpable.

In President Bush's recent State of the Union address he documented torture that takes place within Iraq.  He cleaned up the facts for a general audience (and he had to, the details are shocking).  He concluded this section of his speech saying "If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning."

Evil.  If the definition of evil is torture, and certainly torture is wrong relationship, then I know that evil takes place all over the world.  As a former member of Amnesty International I wrote letters to different countries, Chad, Turkey, Argentina, protesting state supported torture.  The torture was well documented, the details horrifying.  

Saddam Hussein has been in power for over twenty-five years.  The New York Times estimates that within that time 200,000 people have disappeared.  One of the currently known Iraqi prisons, Abu Ghraib is a documented torture center that recently housed an estimated 20,000 prisoners.[1]  

Before invading Kuwait, Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein declared war on Iran, and under cloak of ethnic cleansing murdered thousands of Kurds.  This was in the early and mid 1980's.  During this same time period, in 1983 Donald Rumsfeld, then envoy for President Reagan, now Secretary of Defense, met with Saddam Hussein for purposes of information exchange.  There is a now famous photograph of this event.  

It becomes difficult to remember, but at that time Iran was our bigger enemy.  Over twenty-five years one thing remains the same, Saddam Hussein.  Since 1959 he has engaged in murderous violence, both in a quest for power in Iraq and the Mid East.

This is why I believe that in this shifting context, evil has no meaning.  Evil is an important word and concept currently used as a variable tool to sway popular opinion.  I don't think it furthers the dialogue about what is really going on.  If torture means so much to us, if we are a country that stands against the evil of torture we would not have actively supported the overthrow of Chile's democratically elected President, Salvador Allende, which threw that country into chaos and torture in the early 1970's, we would not be allies with Turkey today, we would have intervened in 1994 before the Hutu majority in Rwanda rose up and murdered 800,000 of their Tutsi neighbors in 100 days.  

When we throw around slogans and catch phrases about torture, evil, oil, liberation, and civilian casualties we mask inconsistencies.  The irony being that all of these issues are vital, do go into decisions about military force, foreign policy, humanitarian concerns.  Yet they are applied so randomly I'm not sure how much we talk about the depth of what we contemplate.  How can we make good decisions about life and death on such a superficial level?  Polarized people just reinforce one another.

At home my husband and I talk about the reality of weapons of mass destruction.  Last night he asked me if I thought a weapon of mass destruction would be used in our lifetime.  While I considered this, he paused and said "I guess they already have been.  There's the anthrax from fall 2001."  Obviously we are not certain where that anthrax came from, but currently it seems American, home grown, sent by an American, and Americans died. 

Anthrax, nerve gas, weapons of mass destruction, these are living realities.  If on September 11, 2001 19 men had boarded planes and one or more of them carried with them a brief case full of nerve gas or anthrax, as the dust of two towers and humanity descended on a city, so would have particles of death.  This isn't just a James Bond script anymore.  It is a potential.

This reality sets the seriousness of the situation. But the seriousness doesn't make the response to the situation any more obvious.  To say "bomb them all" isn't useful because it doesn't insure the peace.  To say that one person is the axis of evil isn't useful, because the axis keeps moving - Iran, Iraq, N. Korea.  This is no time to resort to sweeping generalizations.  The axis keeps moving, and the weapons remain.

What about Kazakhstan, Kurzekstan, Uzbekistan?  The Soviet Union is not the Soviet Union anymore.  It is Russia and many other poor, unstable countries with potentially, the former Soviet Union's arsenal of weapons.  As a human being on this planet it would be kind of nice to know what happened to the former Soviet Union nuclear weapons program.  It could kill me.  It could kill you.  

Last night I created two lists, one of countries with weapons, the other of countries that either actively engage in terrorism or unintentionally host it.  Countries with weapons of mass destruction are; the United States, Russia, France, England, China (they don't call these 5 the UN "Security Council" for nothing), Pakistan, India, North Korea, we assume Israel, maybe Libya, Iran, and Iraq, and some countries of the former Soviet Union.  

Countries that host terrorism: United States, Russia, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen (and they're an ally state, but why do they have scuds from N. Korea), Spain, Italy, Iran, Iraq.  These two lists are long and the overlap has me concerned.  

In a recent article by Thomas Friedman that Dot Christenson circulated on the listserv, Friedman writes "We can oust Saddam Hussein all by ourselves.  But we cannot successfully rebuild Iraq all by ourselves."  Here is another concerning scenario.  We can win the war but lose the peace.  Friedman also maintains that "bats and demons may fly out if the U.S. and its allies remove the lid.

"Arab Germany" or "Arab Yugoslavia"

            Last weekend the New York Times ran an article entitled "The Quarrel of Iraq Gets Ugly."[2]  The article explains why Americans need to be concerned with European opposition to military involvement.  The article maintains that with no "Communist threat" to hold American and Western Europe together, a rift at this point could have serious future consequences for the world.  A world with genocide, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction needs a functioning United Nations, UN Security Council, and American/European coalition.

 "The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others."         —State of the Union Address 2003

 "We will consult.  But let there be no misunderstanding:  If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm for the safety of our people and the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him."                                —S of the U 2003

 afraid coalition will be Britain.

I don't have any answers to wars and rumors of wars.  I have but one inkling, that we don't know what we are talking about, literally.  I am not certain that we know the questions to ask. 

What I believe is that I need your help to figure it out.  I need to listen to concerns about oil, torture, foreign policy, civilian casualties, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, nation building.  I need to listen and weigh the dialogue in order to understand the real questions, the real stakes, what to ask others, what to ask myself, what to ask our leaders. 

God help us, we don't know what we are talking about and we need to figure it out soon.  I hope each of us will have the courage to speak honestly, kindly, and clearly, unafraid of difference and willing to change so that we may find a way through the maze of rumors of war and modern weapons of mass destruction. 

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