It has been really refreshing to see how many people are immediately making the connection between the anti-human and classist/racist dimension of war at its inception. I believe we can no longer speak of any war, particularly any war waged by the United States of America, as anything like a Just War. There are too many reasons for my assertion to be fully developed here but I would like to speak to at least some of the reasons for this claim
1. It is now more evident than ever that the fundamental (and foundational) feature of war is its use as a product to create profit and wealth for the ruling class. Many can speak with all kinds of high sounding words and claim allegiance to high principles but the reality is that those that bring us to wars do not believe in any of their words. The issues in not whether what they say is true, but rather do they say it with the intent to seek justice (right relationship) or create peace (Shalom). I am constantly stunned when I hear U.S. officials speak of needing to ‘punish’ a leader of a foreign country for breaking international law when we have actual war criminals (usually guilty of the exact same international law violations!!) on major cable networks or teaching at prestigious universities. Does anyone really believe that these folks care about ‘rule of law’? I cannot help but think of the old saying ‘Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’. We really must stop this stupidity on our part. I think the brilliantly prophetic and insightful words of Arundhati Roy’s quote is so important to illuminate our contemporary reality. “Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured to sell weapons.”
2. In accepting the ‘Cost of War’ as a normal part of our society we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by the demon forces that makes us compartmentalize social reality. I remember being haunted by the comedian Michelle Wolf’s final words at the 2019 White House Correspondent Dinner. “Flint still doesn’t have clean water”. When we do our calculations for the proportionality of the cost of war, do we calculate all of the deaths and misery which are never even addressed because we have had so many human resources sucked into what Dr. Reverend Martin Luther called the ‘demonic, destructive suction tube.’ of militarism. We must also never surrender to the shallow, and very calculated critique (which is also nonsensical, and frankly stupid) that being against war is being ‘against the troops’. Here again is a case of ‘Fool me once…’. Another calculation that must be brought forth in very explicit terms is the ‘environmental’ cost of a society who has allowed the cancer of militarism to disease its body politic. It is evident that one of the largest contributors to the Climate Disaster is our military.
3. I believe that war has its own logic or ‘power’. This power/logic seems to ‘take over’ virtually all people involved in its execution. The adage that “The first casualty of war is truth” applies to virtually every aspect of this reality. People who are capable of rational thought and critical self-examination surrender all of these faculties along with empathy, historical consciousness among many other things. I find that no matter how much we may wish to create social, physical, intellectual, emotional, psychological spaces of insight, compassion, intelligence etc. The cancer that is the logic of war eventually destroys it all.
4. Let me finally address one of the most common argument which is that there are on this planet such evil and fundamentally ‘flawed’ human beings that we must always be prepared to wage war against them. This argument is absurd at so many levels it just reflects the shallowness of thought that can only occur in a society that has allowed its collective intelligence, and affective capacities to be hijacked by the poison of war. The first (and most obvious) thing to state is that it is utterly remarkable that those that are evil are always ‘them’ and never us. In virtually every war all sides believed that the other side occupied the space of being ‘beyond’ redemption, salvation, reason etc. The other obvious point is that to the degree that in every war there are ‘members’ within the community of the enemy who in fact don’t belong to this ‘lost’ group. In just one example, when the United States invaded Iraq (or any of the other countries in the Middle East) it was, in part, because of how they mistreated their women. What is most interesting is that in virtually every war that we have engaged in we have killed thousands of women, so obviously there is a certain degree of violence against women that we are willing to tolerate, particularly for the supposed good of ‘freeing women’ or improving the role of women in any society. It might be interesting to see if the various dead women (and their families) would agree with our ‘calculations’? The obvious argument is that our killing of these innocent women was not our ‘intention’. I am certain that the Patriarchal leaders of any country also do not see the oppression of their female fellow citizens as an act of ‘oppression’ but merely a ‘necessary’ loss for the greater good. That sounds hauntingly like the logic used by those who invade the country. What is also interesting is how quickly and effectively the other that was formally a ‘friend’ who seemed to possess the intelligence to be on the ‘good’ side of humanity can immediately and with little explanation become the enemy who is beyond redemption. The most obvious example in recent times is Saddam Hussein. When he was on ‘our side’ (the ‘good’ side) he was a fully functioning human being. If he did something wrong, we found offensive we were either able to turn a blind eye or ‘reason’ with him to change his policy. But somehow, as soon as we decided to go to war with him (and his community) they quite magically lost all their reasoning abilities and even their humanity. This also appeared to be the case with the Soviet Union as they were on the ‘good’ side during World War II but somehow in a ‘magical’ moment they lost all capacities to be reasoned with? Not just their leadership but all their people lost this ability. Also, there is a claim made frequently for the need for the availability of the use of force as an option in cases where less powerful communities must resort to violence (and the use of arms) in order to protect from a more powerful aggressor. However, what is rarely understood is that the very need for them to have weapons comes from the inability for the citizens within the most powerful communities to forthrightly condemn their own countries use of weapons. Not to mention that those who ‘profit’ from war rarely cares about the ‘victims’ of war. We can no longer assume (in fact it is stupid for us to think this!) that the owners who manufacture machineries of war care anything at all about creating peace. It is the exact opposite. To paraphrase Brother Mao, we must identify the enemy “precisely” to fight most effectively. The real enemy are all who benefit from war at the cost of our collective humanity and all creation.
There is so much more that can be said but this is merely a brief reflection on this topic. Like all of my entries I hope to elicit dialogue, engagement, and action grounded in deep prophetic love.
Prophetic Ruminations 