Reflection on 6th anniv of invasion of Iraq

This first post is from March 19, 2009 at a prayer service. Its not outdated yet.

So, lets start this reflection and prayer with gratitude, as prayer should always start. It gives us a ground to stand on, especially if we've got some heavy lifting to do. We share gratitude for life, for each other, for all our interactions, for the love that we have and the hopes that we share. I do not believe in a God of thunderbolts and vengeance and fear. I believe in a God who is a loving parent--full of compassion and forgiveness, and sternness sometimes, but above all one who shares our struggles.
Prayer in the context of injustice, violence, and death-dealing requires looking at reality, reflecting on how we have contributed to that reality, making basic choices about life and death, and designing tools to say no to death dealing and yes to the building of life. This process is not for the faint hearted and can be very emotionally wrenching. The bottom line, however, is how we humans deal with each other.
Pope John Paul II said war is always a failure.
The invasion of Iraq was an act of aggression. Acts of aggression are against international law, in fact, according to Nuremberg, they constitute the supreme international crime, encompassing all the other crimes of war. The Saint Patrick's Four tried to testify to this in court and were denied. Iraq did not threaten our territory, only our interests. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/ll. They had no weapons of mass destruction--the UN and the Peace Movement tried to tell America that, but we went unheeded. The US, in 1990 and 1991 in Desert Watch and Desert Storm had already bombed Iraqi electrical generation and transmission systems, water treatment plants and systems, telephone and radio systems, food processing, storage and distribution systems and markets, infant formula and beverage plants, animal vaccination and irrigation sites, railroads, bus depots, bridges, highways and highway overpasses, and repair stations, trains, buses, public and private vehicles, oil wells, and pumps, pipelines, refineries, oil storage tanks, sewage plants, civilian factories, historical markers and sites, commercial and business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, civilian government offices, and residential areas. The most draconian set of sanctions ever imposed up until that time continued throughout the nineties, resulting in deaths of at least half a million children and others because of lack of adequate medical supplies, or supplies to repair the infrastructure such as water filtration plants, and the collapse of the Iraqi economy. In the invasion of 2003, the US did the bombing all over again, under the name of "shock and awe". The invasion and occupation has since resulted in over 1.2 million dead, 2.6 million made homeless inside the country, and another 2.5 or so made to flee elsewhere. 60% of the population has no access to clean water, 70% have no sewage treatment, electricity is only sporadic and violence is down mainly because one major faction declared a cease fire and others have been enlisted, by bribery, to fight Al-Queda in Iraq. Al-Queda in Iraq was not there before 2003. In reality, the war has been almost twenty years of the US warring against the people of Iraq. And of course, the US has lost over 4259 service people, thousands injured, and many with post traumatic stress syndrome and traumatic brain injury. In January, 2009, there were between 128 and 143 suicides among service people and veterans, more than were killed on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan that month. We are spending our sons and daughters. We are paying the price too
As John Paul II said, war is always a failure. And now we have to look forward to another nineteen months of US occupation, with no guarantees even then. The US offers no apologies to the Iraqi people, we offer no reparations, and we move on to Afghanistan and Pakistan to blunder and bludgeon our way in there again. What is wrong with us?
Robert Fisk, a noted British journalist and war correspondent, told the following story on Alternative Radio a few weeks back--- He tells of being in Baghdad in April 2003 doing his reporting when an Al Jazeera crew arrived in BBC headquarters. They had videotaped the results of the British artillery bombardment in Basra. The victims were mostly civilians, with some soldiers of course, but mostly civilians. They had appalling scenes of dead children and women with terrible wounds, body parts hanging out, people screaming, etc. They were there to relay the tape under a syndication system. I'll quote from Fisk's talk here---
"I knew the crew. There were two Lebanese and one Syrian, and they were feeding their tape of the Basra horrors to London, to Reuters. After about a minute, I heard this voice come down the satellite from London: “You know, there is not much point in showing any more of this. People are going to be having tea and dinner tonight. They can’t watch this.” And the poor old crew said, “Please, please. We’ve been in great danger today. We’ve got this film. Just watch a bit more. This is what is happening,” by which time my notebook had come out, because this was going to be my report for the next day’s copy of The Independent. They went on showing this appalling film. And a voice came down then: “This is the obscenity of war, this is pornography. We can’t show
this.” They said, “But please, please, just watch a little bit more. This is the reality of what we’ve just seen.” And the film went on. Blood was all over the floor of this hospital. And then the voice came back—this time my pen was skidding over the page—and it said, “You know, we can’t show this because we’ve got to respect the dead.” We didn’t respect them when they were alive, we didn’t respect them when we blew them to pieces, but when they’re dead, by God, we respect them so much."
Thus far Robert Fisk. BBC did not show the tape.

Back in 1967, when I was a Jesuit novice, I undertook, under direction, the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius--The Long Retreat. The First Principle and Foundation might be helpful here. The language lacks feminist and ecological sensitivities, so we were taught to translate the language as needed, so bear with me. The first meditation was on the nature of God, whether vengeful or loving. Then we contemplated the following--"Man was created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. The other things on the face of the earth were created for man's sake, and in order to aid him in the prosecution of the end for which he was created. Consequently, man ought to make use of them just so far as they help him to attain his end; he ought to withdraw from them just so far as they hinder him."
My point here is the "just so far as." This implies conscience. This implies judgment. Each of us and all of us together has the responsibility, and the freedom, to use our best judgment at all times. In all matters. This is something that applies to many facets of human life, of course. When it comes to the political, military, and legal aspects of life, it says that all systems, all policies, all human actions must come under judgment, continual unremitting human judgment. And what is the standard of judgment?--How do we treat the poor, the vulnerable, the voiceless, those perceived as enemy, those whom we don't understand, those who are different?
Rabbi Abraham Heschel, in his study of the Prophets of Israel, tells us they were about using words and action to engage in a "ceaseless shattering of indifference." Heschel went on to say that--"To us a single act of injustice--cheating in business, exploitation of the poor--is slight, to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence; to us an episode; to them a catastrophe, a threat to the world."
We know that Jesus went out to heal those around him, and to engage those who harmed those around them, whether by design or neglect. He and his followers made real a future where we all embraced each other in love and dignity by doing so We know that this threatened the authorities. And their response was deadly. And here's the good news-- the response was, in the end, a failure.
As Christians, we know that Jesus is the nonviolent one. And we know that we compromise with this all the time. We live under the myth of justified violence. It is our civil religion. As Archbishop Romero said, the twin idols of our culture are private property and national security. I'm no expert on Oscar Romero, but if I understand this correctly, it means that when we pursue private property and national security to the detriment of other human values and relationships, reality gets skewed. Warped. Our neighbors become our enemies, we become selfish, paranoid, and violent, and God becomes a creature of thunderbolts, vengeance, and fear.
No! People of conscience and sensitivity need to go in a different direction, with the assumption that Christians do not kill, because every human being is a potential temple of the divine. If the just war theory has any use at all, it is to lay out very stringent conditions which leave the burden of proof for using violence entirely with those who would use it. So, we should never apologize for refusing to kill. As one of my Jesuit teachers said, good does not need to be justified, evil does. I submit that justifying war today an impossible task. We've had enough experience of wholesale slaughters in the past few centuries, and it is only getting worse, for all of us to rise up to reject war entirely. War is the ultimate naiveté. War is the ultimate injustice. War is the ultimate lie. War is always a failure. And we need to BE the alternative.
How? We make it up as we go along. We create a language of nonviolence, grammar and vocabulary, in the public arena, based on the nonviolence we already practice or try to practice in our homes, schools, workplaces and churches. We experiment with ways of telling the truth. We do civil disobedience when appropriate. Getting arrested and going to jail on occasion is good for the soul. Believe me. We build human relationships. We teach our children that GI Joe, Batman, and especially Jack Bauer are not heroes. We reclaim the concept of service, and duty and honor for that matter, from the warrior culture and send waves and waves of people to, for example, rebuild New Orleans. We sacrifice our luxuries and get out of our comfort zones. We are a people of peace. We need to become more so.
Actually, these tools have been our heritage all along. We just need to use them. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers have had as their organizing slogan for a long time--"Si, se puedes!" The young man who now sits in the Oval Office says it now too--"Yes, we can."