Is opposition to the war, and to the empire- thinking that lies behind it (in both senses of that verb), now defeatism? And is belief in the legitimacy of the election proof that freedom will triumph and end terrorism, justification for America to continue both to talk loudly and use the big stick? What ever happened to the more diplomatic-sounding, walk softly and carry a big stick; you will go far? Or is even that still triumphalism, the delusion of so-called Realists who dream only of power and forget that pride goeth before a fall?
Theodore Roosevelt used what he called an East African proverb first in a January 26, 1900 letter dealing with New York politics, but then made it a theme in his often belligerent foreign policy. Actions speak louder than — as Alex says in “A Clockwork Orange.” What kinds of power does the idea of a big stick invoke? (Hint: A military band spelled out those two words on the deck of an aircraft carrier.) Joseph Nye, a well-known political scientist at the Kennedy School of Government, invoked Roosevelt’s phrase in his book of last year, “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics.” Nye warned the unilateralists who run our government that you can not run the world solely on military might, and that no one can run it solo. Yet he spoke too softly.
The mainstream Christian position on the war remains based in John 3:16, the unity of God’s motive and action, means and ends, in the work of Jesus Christ. On this second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Christian opponents of that war need to stick to their principles, for those principles are the biggest of sticks and have been vindicated throughout both of the sorry wars we are actually engaged in. Any Christian critique of the Iraq adventure or the larger war on terror (which was lost at Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay) begins with love of the people you fight or struggle for. Consistent empathy with other people—Samaritans, Jews, Greeks, women, Muslims—remains the best source of intelligence and guide to policy. Unless you so love people that it shows, you have no right to seek to change them.
This article can not review the Iraqi election in detail. Voting is good, hope gives bravery, and however many were in fact intimidated in the Sunni triangle, Iraq overall is less under American occupation. Nationalism can never be underestimated, as the Neo- Conservative realists like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle, and their pupils like Condi Rice, have consistently done. Freedom is not generic. It comes with love of one’s own country and one’s own people. Our conduct of the war in Iraq, for whatever reasons now being spun, does not show much real concern for the Iraqi people, or even for our own over-stretched and underprepared troops. The costs of the war, moral and financial, have been consistently concealed once the outright fantasies of Chalabi and true-believers like Wolfowitz were disproved: the idea of an easy pacification funded by Iraqs own oil.
Certainly Saddam Hussein talked loudly and carried no stick, except mainly retail cruelty to his own people, as most governments around the world recognized. The UN inspections and no-fly zone worked. Among the delusions of the Neo-Conservative Realists was that they would get other countries to pay for our mistakes. It is certainly not clear that the American people know how much they are paying for their mistakes. The falling dollar and relative economic stagnation begin to tell that story. What kills me metaphorically is that the deaths of our soldiers do not touch our hearts. Is it that they are mainly poor people from red states? I am somehow pleased that we are at least counting the dead Iraqis now, perhaps because its the bad guys who are killing more of them.
As for the well-marketed war on terror: Bill Clinton had a far better one, directed by the man whose warnings Bush, Cheney and Rice blew off: Richard Against-All-Enemies Clarke. But Clarke, a real Realist, does not believe in the transforming power of love-as-justice the way a Christian foreign policy would. He recognizes that our country needs to respect human rights (part of love-as-justice) if it is to be respected, and he knows that respect translates into international cooperation. But his methods are fundamentally those of aggressive police work, not rehabilitation or reconciliation. Even the good police work of the CIA is more in jeopardy now, with John Negroponte (smooth face of the Contra War) likely to politicize our surveillance and disinformation operations further as Homeland Security czar.
It is not defeatism to recognize that even the 3 Rs of foreign policy: rights, respect and realism, can not justify wars corrupted by the unequivocal (or unilateral) belief that America is a good empire, a form of American exceptionalism that ignores the core of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian Realism. Manichaeism remains a heresy. And Augustine, who said that kingdoms without justice were mere gangs of robbers, remains correct. America is not, unfortunately, the city set on a hill. The light of America’s ideals, to pun badly, is being hid under a Bush-ill.
One Neo-Conservative justification for the current Iraq war was that it would change the subject to democracy across the Middle East, once the force of elections began to spread. No Christian, who believes in God bringing good out of evil, can not hope that some good will come—even from the blowing of an ill wind. Yet Seymour Hersh, one of the few investigative journalists remaining, warns us strongly that Cheney, Rice and company (or companies) are actively planning ways to hit Iran with a big stick, maybe using Israel to bomb a reactor or two. Those Neo-Con Realists fantasize (again) that Iranians would welcome outsiders pushing around their mullahs, but so far they have not dreamed of trying (again) to sell the UN an imminent WMD scare.
There are more practical Christian concerns about the use of force to spread democracy. First, Afghanistan and Iraq suggest that our democratic rhetoric does not match delivery of security beyond green zones, contractor-protected politicians, and warlord-stabilized fiefdoms. Second, beyond security, people need food and shelter and actual development. Most of the Third World will tell you that the US is not interested in sustainable agriculture, fair terms of trade, more-than-token foreign aid. Gross inequality remains the mother of terrorism and the enemy of democracy. Will moves toward freer elections in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and Egypt address those concerns, or will they unleash an aggrieved, Muslim sense of justice and struggle for power we see under the surface in so many countries?
Palestine’s election shows the power of hope among the powerless, even as Israel continues to build a wall-like barrier in ways that give new meaning to the words hard line. Sure, Sharon will give up control over the underdeveloped and less educated Gaza area while keeping a chokehold on resources and travel. Most of the strategic settlements … he helped build, and we helped subsidize, are on Israel’s side of the line. Palestine is the democracy test case for the Muslim world, not only in terms of electoral form but socio-economic substance. Most Europeans know this. Most Presbyterians, it now appears, would love to see the triumph of democracy in Palestine, even if it means the defeat of an occupation enabled by generations of Holocaust-guilty US Christians. (In this context, our Secretary of State’s recent effort to shame Hosni Mubarak by not visiting Egypt even as he takes a step or two toward elections may prepare us to cut that money we have been giving them since Camp David. That billion to Egypt justified a matching billion of the two-three billion we give Israel annually.)
The war in Iraq is not over, but it is not defeatism to want to end it. Does the end goal of an election justify the means of a war? What if that war leads to many elections? Again, elections alone do not democracies make, and democracies can be quite poor. Moderate New York Times Neo-Conservatives like Michael Ignatieff and Thomas Friedman, supporters and justifiers of the Iraq War, still believe in American power and empire, especially when it comes to keeping the global Muslim street in line. Wise Christians do not want America defeated, but we also do not want America to be an empire. Triumph for us is justice for all, naïve as that may sound. War itself is the Trojan Horse of politics, perverting creativity, destroying cities and conscripting conscience to nationalism. It is not defeatism to say: count the cost, acknowledge the suffering, and don’t support the war until you are willing to pay the price yourself. We follow a man who walked softly and carried a big cross.
CHRISTIAN THOMSON IOSSO is pastor of the Scarborough (N.Y.) Church. He served on the General Assembly staff and taught college while obtaining his Ph.D. at Union Seminary (N.Y.)
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