Where in the world are we? The American poet Amy Lowell was in England at the time of the declaration of war in 1917. Late for an appointment, hindered by the crowds in the street, indignant at the police for not helping her, as she returned to her hotel she burst out, "Don't they know I'm Amy Lowell? And it was this month that my book of poems was coming out here! What attention will it get with this going on? What has happened to England? Why doesn't she simply stop the war?"[1]
Exactly my sentiment. Why don't we just stop the war so I can get on with the important business of my life? Or, on the other hand, we can say with Bob Hope, "I've been all over the world; I've decided to go somewhere else." Like all of us I am trying to get past September 11 and get on with living. Like all of us I'm having a hard time of it. Where in the world are we in the aftermath of September 11th, 9-1-1? The world has suddenly become smaller. Our parochial concerns have become global. The personal has merged with the public in a unique way. My own feelings are dominated by cataclysmic world events.
I confess I feel depressed much of the time. It is far from a clinical depression; it is more like "weltschmerz," a German word for feeling the pain of the world. My sense of empathy causes me to feel the pain of others as my own in ways that debilitate me. I feel for the bereaved in the United States; I feel for the bereaved in Afghanistan. My view of human nature has been compromised as I gaze out upon the field of slaughter. My hope for the progressive transformation of human history has been undermined. With the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh I ask, "Who will be left to celebrate a victory made of blood and fire?"[2]
So many of my interests seem trivial beside the enormity of what has happened and continues to happen on the world stage. How can we care who wins the World Series when bombs are falling? How can we go about the mundane business of buttoning up our homes for winter without thinking of those who will never see another winter, now buried in the rubble of the World Trade Towers? Or of Afghani citizens who face a winter without food or shelter? How can we continue to do our small part to repair the world when it seems so broken?
I become as cynical as Captain Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind: "Most of the miseries of the world are caused by wars; and when wars are over, no one even knows what they were about."
I confess I'm a little bit shorter of temper. The pressure of cascading events plus the normal pressures of the fall have made me temperamentally brittle. I find myself impatient at things that normally would not bother me. I get angry more easily. I almost blew my stack listening to a Pentagon press conference recently.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said after just a few days of bombing Afghanistan that it was increasingly hard to find targets. Then in a moment of presumed levity he said Afghanistan is hard put to find them either - to which the press corps and those assembled laughed - and I was sick - sick to think there could be laughter when talking about the deaths of human beings on the receiving end of American bombs. Perhaps that wasn't their intent, but my mood made me put the worst face on it, and I worried about what this "war on terrorism" is doing to the moral sensitivity of the American people.
I feel more tired than usual - thinking of all the causes in which I believe which have now been put on the back burner as the nation is consumed by the "war on terrorism." My normally energetic pace has become a bit more lethargic. Nobody is thinking about the renewal of welfare reform, which will be far more torturous now that the economy is in probable recession. Will I, will we, have enough energy to advocate for those trapped in its bureaucratic snares?
Health care in our nation is in crisis - federal health care funds for survivors of the victims have been appropriated - taken from a fund providing health care to poor children. And how about New York State school aid, which is an indirect victim of the World Trade Center attack. Does anyone care? Do I have the energy to confront the apathy? Does anyone?
I am overwhelmed at the prospect of our nation addressing international problems that have now been placed in bold relief. Who will rebuild Afghanistan and how much will it cost? What about those autocratic allies in the Middle East and our lust for their oil? Who will challenge a globalization that globalizes capital and trade but not economic justice or political democracy or environmental stewardship? And what about a CIA study that predicts global population growth will overwhelm the earth's resources by 2015?
I feel conflicted. When I see an American flag flying on a car, I am torn between patriotism as an uncritical love of country and patriotism as doing the hard work of democracy - one part of which is dissent. I fear the flag-waving patriotism that says "God bless America" and ignores the rest of the world. I say "God bless the world." America has no unique blessing from God.
At the end of the 19th century, Carl Schurz, then a Senator from Missouri, quoted the phrase Stephen Decatur coined 90 years earlier: "Our country right or wrong." The Senator added: "When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right."[3]
I feel lonely, as a dissenter to our nation's military policy. It is a dissent that is muted because of the unique complexity of the situation. I wrote a long letter to President Bush, Senators Schumer and Clinton and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter in which I admitted I was part of a dissident minority. I do not believe this massive retaliation is morally justified. Already innocent people are being killed by bombs for which I am paying with my tax dollars. Already there is dangerous unrest in the Arab world, and it is not only peaceniks who warn of the danger, but hard-headed policy experts.
I do not accept the idea of a "war on terrorism," I said, for that term attempts to justify war-time limitations on civil liberties and falsely raises expectations of a "victory" at some point in time. Terrorism is a condition not amenable to that kind of triumph. Americans are impatient people; they will demand dramatic results and in the near term. Politicians will respond. And what kind of a war is it when our "sacrifices" are accepting yet another tax cut and encouragement to go out and spend money? Perhaps instead we should roll back the tax cuts and invest in our nation's internal security, rebuilding our cities, caring for our needy and combating the world's poverty - which is a seed-bed for terrorism.
I fear a Pyrrhic victory, after Pyrrhus, of Epirus in northwestern Greece. A daring general, he was invited by the Greek cities of southern Italy to help them against the growing might of Rome. In 279 BCE the invading Greek forces under Pyrrhus met and defeated the Romans at the battle of Asculum in Apulia. The engagement, however, cost Pyrrhus many men, including some of his closest associates. One of the Greeks congratulated the king on his victory. He replied, "Another such victory and we are ruined." Hence the phrase "Pyrrhic victory" for one that costs the victor too high a price.[4]
I continued my epistle, noting my agreement with much of current policy: increased security measures at airports; more effective intelligence to break up terrorist networks; a strategy of "draining the swamp" by freezing assets belonging to terrorists; diplomatic efforts to isolate terrorists by engaging other nations in that effort; indictment of Osama bin Laden, making public proof of his complicity and small-scale military probes to apprehend him and try him under international law; a foreign policy that places more emphasis on US involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian issue and greater efforts to reduce poverty and encourage democratic governance in other parts of the world.
I said that I worried about our policy of increased isolationism - backing out of or refusing to sign international treaties on landmine removal, global warming, an international court of justice, the ABM treaty and more. We have ratified only 4 of 21 UN treaties on human rights and only 10 of 31 environmental treaties.[5] Apparently only when we are attacked do we become an active international player and eagerly invite other nations to the table.
Then I asked a series of questions - some raised by a book by Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, based on a recently declassified CIA paper. "Blowback" is used as a metaphor for the "unintended consequences of the US government's international activities that have been kept secret from the American people."[6] It was first used to discuss installing Shah Phalevi of Iran whose 25 years of oppression led to the Ayatollah Khomeneini revolution and the taking of American hostages. It could also be applied to our training and funding Osama bin Laden when we supported the mujahedeen against the Russians in Afghanistan. In simpler terms we can say that foreign policy is a lot like playing pool. You hit one ball, but it may set off a negative chain reaction you could not easily have anticipated. There can be no moral justification for the September 11 attacks; there are reasons for it in American policy.
I asked these public servants how much more "collateral damage" they were willing to accept in this bombing strategy, especially in the wake of bombed out UN and Red Cross buildings, the latter clearly marked with a red cross on the roof? How many civilians are we justified in killing to conduct this "war on terrorism"?
How much starvation would they tolerate in Afghanistan with this bombing campaign? Is not dropping food along with bombs a very mixed message to people on the ground? The World Food Program has already complained that it has to suspend food shipments; supplies are dwindling and winter is approaching, but, despite requests, there is no indication of a bombing pause. The Taliban are also disrupting food aid to the needy and the Afghani people may well be worse off than before. How do we justify the bombing in light of this problem?
I asked what kind of a government would there be in a post-Taliban period. The Northern Alliance is infamous for civil rights abuses. There is an 86-year-old king in exile. There is an impoverished nation suffering from decades of war; a government which we supported and armed against the Russians, only to walk away leaving the nation ripe for takeover by religious fanatics. Candidate Bush rejected the role of the U.S. in "nation-building." So what now?
Assuming some kind of invasion, what is the level of casualties acceptable to apprehend Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network? Upon his arrest, would they advocate his being tried in an international rather than an American court? Could he receive a fair trial here?
I asked what further restrictions on civil liberties would they advocate to increase domestic security? Do we protect freedom by curtailing it?
I asked if they were worried that vital domestic issues like social security, re-authorization of welfare reform, a patient bill of rights, health care for the uninsured, a recessionary economy and other priority issues would be casualties in our obsession with this "war on terrorism"? How did they propose to balance these needs against the almost-total focus on terrorism?
Finally, I asked what other nations they believe the U.S. might attack in light of the remarks of our UN Ambassador who said we might have to attack other nations to end terrorism. Will we once again destroy a nation in order to save it?
These are just a few of the questions that came to mind, questions that ought to have answers from anyone supporting present policy. I have not yet been convinced they have been thought through enough to justify it. Military strategy has far outrun diplomacy.
I know I am not a self-appointed unpaid national security advisor. But I am a citizen with both the right and the obligation to speak out. As a religious person I feel mandated to raise the ethical dimensions of public policy. As a born Universalist I have always identified with the wider world. Universalism as a faith counters any sense of parochialism. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."[7]
If we as citizens and as religious people do not raise these questions and get on with the hum-drum work of democracy, it might be said that all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely drama critics. In that 1970 review of Joseph Heller's play, We Bombed in New Haven, critic Walter Kerr raises the question about our response to public policy through actor-audience intimacies. Actor Jason Robards was stunned when the audience took his plea to intervene not rhetorically, but seriously. These audience members were not going to let the killing continue. Exasperated, Robards exploded. 'What do you want me to do?' he cried. 'I'm only an actor!'"
Precisely the point. We are actors, historical actors, agents of change. If history is to veer off its suicidal courses it will only be because of actors who take time seriously, who link learning and action because they are inseparable. Joseph Heller's point was that while actors always wind up safe in their dressing rooms, persons can be killed. In actual warfare there are no actors, only people. Kerr concluded, "Our silence was to indict us, our refusal to act in the theater was to become our refusal to act in life."[8]
That narrative has become for me a powerful parable of spiritual and ethical life. No matter what happens; no matter what horrors befall us; no matter how depressed and discouraged and confused we get, we cannot refuse to act in life. Each of us will act in our own way in responding to 911. Some of us will fly flags to identify with our country now assaulted - with the victims and those who have performed heroically in this catastrophe; some of us will support the president; some of us will give blood and treasure to help the victims; some of us will simply need to be patient as we wait to board airplanes for our journeys; some of us will be moved to exercise our civil liberties and question public policy - even protest it.
The point is that we must not allow this tragedy, horrific though it was, or our national response, violent though it is, to stifle our spirit, to prompt a "refusal to act in life."
I'll get through this, and so will you. While 9-1-1 now seems overwhelming, the human spirit has survived such onslaughts and worse through the centuries. I can remember how defeated I felt when John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated. We grieved and we went on. Time does not heal all wounds, but we learn to live with them. We must keep on keeping on. We can do it.
There are slivers of hope, symbols of inspiration. I learned only this week that the United Nations building in New York City was built on the site of former slaughter houses - a metaphor worth noting.
During the Gulf War a member of our congregation gave me a most unusual vase, standing over a foot tall, with graceful, curving lives, and a very heavy base. She had purchased it at a rummage sale as a flower container. Later she had picked it up and read the inscription on its base: "105 millimeters, M 14, lot 12c B Company, 1944. It is an artillery shell casing beaten into the shape of a flower urn. "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruninghooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more." So may it be.
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