Evidence of mass killings mounting in Kosovo. Such headlines are repeated over and over again in newspapers and magazines across this land. This carnage is, unfortunately, not unique, as we end this most bloody and war-plagued century. Repeatedly, we human beings unleash our savagery on an innocent population, this time against the Albanians in Kosovo. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom in that we kill for pleasure, sport, or political and economic gain.
Ethnic cleansing, terror and rape have become accepted tools of war, and humanity is mostly content to sit by and watch the slaughter. We tell ourselves that it is none of our business or that we have no pressing reason for getting involved; it is an internal matter of a sovereign state. If we have nothing to gain and have no vested nor strategic interests in the area, why should we risk American lives? You know the litany; you have heard it before.
Is it any wonder that Elie Wiesel, one of the great moral exemplars of our age, is called to wonder at the latest tragedy in Kosovo? He asks, with great sadness, whether "This is the lesson of our outgoing century - that it is human to be inhuman."
My answer is a resounding "No!" I believe that our common humanity calls us to be our brothers' and sisters' keepers. We do have a moral responsibility, insofar as we can, to leave this world a better, more justice-filled place when we depart. For us Unitarian Universalists, it is an act of faith to translate our principles into a daily practice. If we truly believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all peoples who live in this interconnected web of existence, we can do no other. The tragedy in Kosovo has presented us all with a moral dilemma. Speaking for myself, I oppose war as a means of settling disputes between individual and nation states. Yet I support NATO's intervention in Kosovo. My sense is that when ethics and moral imperatives collide, we are challenged to adopt a lesser evil to prevent the greater evil. As Elie Wiesel points out, the human tragedy in Kosovo fits that description. As a presidential envoy to Kosovo, he is again the witness to deep tragedy. What he experienced in Kosovo surely must seem like a nightmare, dredged up from his own personal hell, fueled by his heartbreaking experience in the concentration camps. It must seem to him that the holocaust is happening again. The story he relates to us is all the more poignant for his experience as survivor. He writes, "What does one say, what can one do, when a man's emaciated face resonates ancient wisdom and pain, who describes a scene whose horror invades the soul?"
The stories related to him began to unfold, slowly and hesitantly at first, barely a whisper. A man tells of his imprisonment and of being forced by his jailer to beat, and be beaten by, his son while under the threat of death. With sad eyes and faltering voice, an old man tells of surviving the massacre of two hundred prisoners, his son among them. Women and babies, the infirm and physically challenged did not escape their executioner. The goal of the Bosnians was to physically and mentally humiliate and torture. The ultimate goal was to deprive the survivors forever of their dignity and hope, in the same manner as the Nazis before them. All this was done not by strangers, not by an invading army, but by neighbors who, before the ethnic cleansing, worked the next farm over and were merchants in the local town. These were former friends now fallen into depravity. A story is told of a police officer taking his five-year-old son into the prison to choose which prisoner would be beaten that day. Is it any wonder that the people of Kosovo support wholeheartedly the NATO invasion of their land, regardless of the destruction and loss of life it causes? These people are not unlike the people of France and the other countries of occupied Europe during World War II who welcomed, with open arms and hearts, the allied forces that liberated them. The victims welcomed those who used force against force, who committed evil to rid the world of the greater sin of Nazi domination and their final solution.
Yet I am more than just uncomfortable with the use of force to settle disputes. Violence - physical, emotional and mental - scares me. It brings up a savage anger in me that wants to strike out in kind. I will not be a victim. Never again! There are times when I react out of my fight or flight left-sided brain, quickly leaving reason behind. At times I wish it weren't so , because in those moments, I know that I, too, can hate, and that frightens me.
What a conundrum, for I know anger can lead to hate which can easily slip into violence, especially in response to violence. I will not be anyone's victim. Never again. As a Jew, I understand that the holocaust can happen again, evidenced by the killing fields of Rwanda, Cambodia, Chiapas or Vietnam. The list is endless, and I don't quite trust the world enough to let down my guard completely. Yet I don't want to fight with anyone and I don't want to be paranoid or defensive in my relationships.
Even as I actively opposed the war in Vietnam, I reluctantly went to my draft physical. I honestly do not know what I would have done if I had been drafted. During the Gulf War, I was much clearer about my son becoming involved in that conflict. When he informed me that he wanted to join the Air Force so that he could fly jets, I very firmly helped him understand the connection between flying jets and the killing that would happen on the ground. Until then, he had never connected the act of flying with dropping bombs and killing unsuspecting and often innocent people. After a lot of conversation and appeals to our Unitarian Universalist values, he finally made the connection, and was profoundly changed by that realization. I would not have wanted to risk the life of my son - not for that war.
To me, there seemed to be less of a moral imperative; yet that conflict also had similar elements to Kosovo. An ethnic minority, the Kurds were consistently under attack, and Kuwait was invaded in an ugly demonstration of naked aggression. The question arises: How do any of us distinguish between a "good" war, worthy of our support, and an "evil" war, to be condemned? Certainly, each situation plays on our conscience, but on what basis do we decide what type of conflict to support or condemn? The non-violence of Gandhi or Martin Luther King offers an alternative vision for change and evolution. They, too, are moral exemplars of our century, and, like Eli Wiesel, have a claim to our attention. Do they not call us to another kind of moral action, that of passive resistance to oppression? History alone will determine whether confrontation or non-violence is right or wrong. The question is as old as time itself. It is a question of religious importance flowing out of both the Old and New Testaments and, in fact, out of the traditions of other faiths. Our Old Testament biblical heritage depicts the Jews as God's chosen people, holy warriors called to conquer the Canaanites and to spread God's word. Early Christian theology faced the same dilemma. As early as the fourth century, Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo were advocating the use of force, when necessary, to serve the needs of their innocent neighbors under attack by assailants. Unfortunately, Augustine also managed to get over his moral indignation at the use of force, if it was used to convert the unwilling to Christianity. Forced conversion would serve the cause of saving souls in the afterlife. An interesting moral sleight of hand, using force and torture to convert people to the one true light. Accept God's peace or die. What an ironic contradiction!
The line between force and faith became even murkier as the Christian climbed into the ruler's bed with the Roman authorities. Christianity became the defender of the empire when it began to crumble and decline. With the decline of the empire, the church was forced to confront a new issue of what constituted a "Just War." Much of church theology and policy would be determined by the outcome of this debate. Events made it imperative for Christians to answer the question, "When is it permissible to engage in violence?"
By the Second Lateran Council of the Middle Ages, a coherent policy was emerging. The "Peace of God" was invoked to protect innocent victims and an attempt was even made to ban certain weapons. A cultural consensus was forming that the use of force should be a last resort and should be proportional to the evil remedied. The use of force should have a strong hope of success, in the end, that would contribute to a new state of peace. Aquinas later spoke of a "just use of war" linked to right intention and right authority.
The idea of proportionality, of specific means to specific ends, entered the equation. It became important to balance the immediate and long-term consequences of any action. The concept of a just war is compelling to me, particularly as a Jew who believes that if our country and its allies had been able to overcome their anti-Semitism and respond to Hitler, millions of us might have been saved.
If we had responded to Milosevic with a measured and proportional early response, we might not have had to begin our air campaign. Unfortunately, my experience tells me that a bully only responds to an equal force. This is not a game for people like Milosevic, who proved over and over again that he was an expert at exploiting our lack of resolve in combating his plans for ethnic cleansing. Our unwillingness to respond firmly after negotiations failed or agreements were broken led to this sorry state of affairs in which we found ourselves.
An argument for a just war is, I think, appropriate here. J. Philip Wogamen contends that the "idea of a just war is based on a presumption against war." Peace is considered the norm. Only with that understanding and under exceptional conditions can the peace be broken. There must be a realistic expectation that more good ultimately will be gained by making that exception, than by remaining faithful to the presumption of peace. In this process, no moral laws must be broken.
The issue of war is: Which is the lesser evil, allowing the ethnic cleansing to continue to its logical end, or intervening? My personal ethic is that we had a moral duty to stop the killing, even if I find the means of doing that repugnant. Augustine said war is a tragic end to be avoided. How right he was. War is evil, but as Augustine said, that evil is a frustration of the good, and not a sin, which is the turning away from God. With that understanding, I think our intervention, however justified, was evil, but not sinful. I think we acted for a greater moral good which does not rise to the level of sin that Augustine describes.
To quote Augustine one final time, this time from the City of God, "A just war is justified, by the injustice of the aggressor, and that injustice ought to be a source of grief of any good man, because it is human injustice."
We now come back full circle to Elie Wiesel's question, "Is the lesson of our outgoing century, that it is human to be inhuman?" Such suffering as he witnessed is not acceptable, period. Such barbarity, such inhumanity, is not acceptable, period. The slaughter of the innocents is not acceptable, ever.
In human terms, it is very simple. It should be unnecessary for this church community to take in refugees in order to save their lives. The fact that it is necessary and you have responded to the need is a blessing to these refugees, and you do honor to yourselves and this community. We all are called to make it possible for these people to return to their homeland if we are to fulfill the prophet Micah's (4:4) words, "to beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more: They shall all sit under their own vines and under their own trees, and no one shall make them afraid." As the Jewish proverb says, "From your mouth to God's ear." Let it be.
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