Peacemaking In Wartime

Address given by Jim Winkler, General Secretary
United Methodist Board of Church & Society
At the University of Puget Sound
Tacoma, Washington
February 5, 2004

One year ago today I was in Berlin along with Dr. Bob Edgar, the general secretary of the National Council of Churches, to stand in solidarity with senior European church leaders against what appeared to be an imminent, headlong rush to war against Iraq by the United States and the United Kingdom. Our meeting was front-page news across Germany. Following the meeting, we all gathered to watch--with great disappointment—Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security Council in which he the case for war against Iraq.

We felt Secretary Powell was perhaps the best chance within the Bush Administration to open the door to a peaceful resolution to the crisis. We were astonished at the weakness of the case he presented. Unsurprisingly, the United States media, in stark contrast to that of almost the entire international press, fell into line and praised Sec. Powell’s presentation. The Security Council was not fooled.

Later that same afternoon, we met with the Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroder. We thanked the Chancellor for resisting the undue pressure and slander of the Bush Administration for daring to oppose an invasion of Iraq. The Chancellor told us that he is not a pacifist and that his decision to send German soldiers to support the earlier invasion of Afghanistan had been hugely unpopular. Still, he asked us, given the history of the 20th century would not the world appreciate that Germany would express caution about going to war again?

We arranged for American church leaders to travel to Moscow to meet with senior aides to President Putin; to Rome to meet with the Pope; to Paris to meet with the French foreign minister; and to London where a delegation spent an intense hour with Prime Minister Tony Blair. Meanwhile, President Bush resolutely refused to meet with any dissenting American religious leaders choosing instead to surround himself with the likes of Southern Baptist leaders Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Richard Land who were all too happy to tell the president what he wanted to hear because it was in the service of their hatred of Islam and their profound misreading of the scriptures in which they hold up an apocalyptic vision of the coming End Times. The journalist Chris Hedges has noted, “The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.”

We did not just oppose war against Iraq and ignore the cruelty of Saddam Hussein. Under the leadership of the prominent evangelical Jim Wallis, leader of the Call to Renewal, a peace plan was carefully developed in consultation with Clare Short, a senior official in Prime Minister Blair’s government. This plan would have involved the indictment of Saddam Hussein by an appropriate international tribunal for his crimes. Further, we insisted the UN weapons inspectors be allowed to do their job.

We contended that war was not necessary because Iraq did not present a serious threat to the United States. Iraq did not have military forces massed against the borders of any nation nor was it threatening to invade any nation. A college undergraduate engaged in Middle East studies could have pointed out that it was absurd to claim close ties between the perverted socialist, secular Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein and the fundamentalist Islamist movement of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. In fact, 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, whose royal family maintained extraordinary and remarkable ties to the Bush family. Imagine if 15 of the 19 hijackers had been Iraqi! There would be zero controversy about the war today even if it still turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction.

The only possible way war could be sold to the American people was to allege that Saddam’s regime represented an imminent threat to a frightened United States. We now know that plans to invade Iraq were afoot more than a decade ago by a far right band of Washington insiders known as neoconservatives. Their plans were not to remake the Middle East into a bunch of democracies—they really have no objection to several of the royal autocracies and dictatorships in the region—but to ensure Israel could continue to act with impunity against the Palestinian people.

I went to Baghdad in late 2002 on a mission of humanitarian inspections. Yes, Saddam’s regime was horrible and cruel. There are and have been many such regimes and the United States ought to oppose them and work peacefully for their isolation and demise. Far more often, we support such dictatorships as we did with Saddam’s for many years—who can ever forget the pictures of Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam in 1983. But, it is not the job of the US alone—or nearly alone—to overthrow sovereign governments.

However, the truth has a way of making itself known. The war was based on a series of lies. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no deals with Africa for uranium, no ties to al-Qaeda or the tragic events of Sept. 11. An illegal war of aggression was carried out against Iraq. Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were wasted. Thousands and thousands of Iraqis have died—on top of the hundreds of thousands who died during the cruel decade of sanctions—and thousands of American soldiers have been killed, maimed, wounded, and scarred. The Administration, now eager to leave Iraq, will have much explaining to do if Iraq slides back into dictatorship, particularly a fundamentalist Islamist dictatorship.

As I watch the nightly news, Fox, MSNBC, and CNBC and read the Washington Post and the New York Times—all of whom supported the invasion—the tone they now strike is one of obfuscation: “It now appears all the information the President had was not quite accurate.” David Kay was a bit more truthful when he told us that almost all of the information was wrong.

Remember these statements:

“ Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” VP Cheney, VFW National Convention speech, Aug. 26, 2002

“ Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of these weapons.” President Bush, radio address, Oct. 5, 2002

“ The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.” Press secretary Ari Fleischer, Dec. 5, 2002

“ The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.”
President Bush, State of the Union address, Jan. 28, 2003

“ There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poison and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction.” Sec. of State Colin Powell, address to the UN Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003

“ Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubts that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” President Bush, address to the nation, March 17, 2003

" We should not try to convince people that things are getting better. Rather, we should convince people that ours is the age of terrorism."
- Former Reagan official Kenneth Adelman, who is close to several Bush officials, in The Washington Post, August 22, 2003.

Lies, all lies. When asked by ABC’s Diane Sawyer last month about these inconsistencies, the president answered, “So, what’s the difference?”

The president’s proposed nine-member commission will have zero credibility if it is appointed by the man who bore ultimate responsibility for this catastrophe. Already, his plan to have the commission report after the election makes the whole scheme suspect. Further, the commission is to be populated with the usual suspects—present and former intelligence agency leaders. You know, in other countries the equivalent of our intelligence agencies are referred to more accurately as the secret police. We maintain a polite fiction here that our agencies are above that sort of cloak and dagger stuff as if they wouldn’t spy on people or assassinate and overthrow other leaders and governments,

Psalm 58 begins this way in the Peterson translation: “Is this any way to run a country? Is there an honest politician in the house? Behind the scenes you brew cauldrons of evil, behind closed doors you make deals with demons.”

I believe the President and leaders of his administration must be held accountable for these illegal actions. This was not a failed land deal or an instance of sexual impropriety or the taping of opposition party headquarters. This was unilateral, aggressive war carried out in opposition to almost the entire world. When 10 million people marched against war last winter in 600 cities, I had real hope we could avoid this calamity. The president repeatedly indicated his mind was not made up. Those were false statements. Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, himself privy to the highest discussions of the government, revealed that the decision was made very soon after 9/11.

Marian Wilkinson, Washington correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote last month (Thursday, January 15, 2004) in that newspaper:
“ The weekend after September 11, George Bush's former Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, sat in a leather armchair at Camp David, the presidential retreat, devouring a pile of intelligence documents on al-Qaeda handed out by the CIA boss, George Tenet.
A two-day crisis meeting of Mr Bush's senior advisers had finally wound up. The President had gone to bed. Across the room, the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was singing hymns, accompanied on the piano by the Christian fundamentalist Attorney General, John Ashcroft. Leafing through the CIA documents, Mr O'Neill was astonished to read plans for covert assassinations around the globe designed to remove opponents of the US Government. The plans had virtually no civilian checks and balances. "What I was thinking is, 'I hope the President really reads this carefully', Mr O'Neill said. "It's kind of his job. You can't forfeit this much responsibility to unelected individuals. But I knew he wouldn't."

I know I am speaking strong words that may appear to some to be unpatriotic or angry. I certainly cannot stand accused of speaking in a partisan manner during an election year as most of the leading presidential candidates themselves initially supported the war. The Church of Jesus Christ stands above all the flags and always gets in trouble when it pledges allegiance to a particular nation and ties itself to any leader other than Christ Jesus himself.

Did our opposition to the war make any difference? I have always felt in my heart that it did. It gave moral strength to the peace movement. A year and a half ago, I met with a coalition of organizations including the National Organization of Women, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, labor leaders, and civil rights organizations to create the Win Without War coalition. One after another, the secular organizations said that no matter what, religious leaders had to be part of the steering committee because they were the backbone of the antiwar effort.

War is inherently evil. War is contrary to the will of God. Period. That doesn’t mean, I suppose, war cannot be somehow justified but don’t claim that God supports it. It was curious to me how angry a number of people became when I stated I do not believe Jesus Christ supports the invasion of Iraq. I think that anger represents a primordial human instinct to claim that one’s God supports actions taken against one’s enemies. It may be instinct but it ain’t Christianity.

Six weeks ago, I had lunch with Fr. Elias Chacour, the famous Melkite priest from Galilee. The first thing he said was to thank others and me for standing up against the war. “You saved thousands of Christian lives in the Middle East and the Holy Land by opposing the war.” “How did we do that?” I asked. “Because it proved to Muslims that not all Christians supported war. When President Bush called for a crusade after 9/11 tensions soared and Christian lives were in danger. But we were able to show our Muslim brothers and sisters that most Christian leaders were against the war.”

Today, we are indeed less safe than we were before these wars and, in fact, we may well be facing the dark future of endless war outlined by the president in his National Security Strategy. The United States has set in motion a potential chain of events that will likely bring pain and suffering and death not only to many people around the world but to our own populace as well.

I am here today to assert to you that this need not happen. The starting place, the beginning point, the central, undisputable, inescapable, absolutely necessary foundation of a Middle East peace is the end of the twin illegal occupations maintained by the United States and Israel of Iraq, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. All else flows from there. There will be no peace until those occupations end. These two nations, superpowers each in the region, must take the first and unilateral steps of simply withdrawing their forces and personnel from those areas. Will that automatically and for all time end violence in the region? No. The United States requires no compensation, no promises, no givebacks, no guarantees, and no concessions from the people of Iraq in return for leaving that sovereign nation. As citizens, we must also be on guard in order to demand our nation establish no permanent military bases in Iraq. And Israel must first completely withdraw before any framework for peace can be established. Because following withdrawal they will have to work with the Palestinians and the international community to address in some way the right of return to Israel for refugees, to remove the terrible Wall they are building, and to settle the disposition of Jerusalem, among other matters.

What can we do to make peace in a time of war? American church people must insist to their elected officials and President Bush, as well, that these steps toward peace in the Middle East be pursued. The New York Times has said, “There are two superpowers: The United States and world opinion.” We can stand with both of these superpowers.

We must also demand the insane doctrine of preventive war be scrapped. There are and will continue to be many dangers in the world. There are bad leaders in a number of countries. There are not too many world leaders right now who have invaded other nations. Our example of preventive war may well encourage India or Pakistan or China or Russia or Israel or other nations to consider invading another country on the grounds it is an action necessary to prevent a potential attack upon themselves. It is not helpful for the United States to belittle and attack the United Nations. An African proverb reminds us, “If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together.”

The United States must take the lead in ending weapons sales in the Middle East and around the world. Thirty years ago, we sold more grain to the world than weapons. Not anymore. The United States must lift up a vision of a world without any weapons of mass destruction. To date, I am not aware of any stated interest by our national leaders in ever giving up the most dangerous weapons the world has ever known.

We must reject plans for new, ‘mini’ nuclear weapons being proposed by Washington. There is no such thing; it is simply another means of delivering death.

We must speak to our elected officials. I encourage you to make use of UMPower, the advocacy tool available on the website of GBCS at www.umc-gbcs.org. This will enable you to contact your representatives and the president very quickly.

Forty-two years ago, in his farewell speech Dwight Eisenhower prophetically warned of the dangers of allowing a military-industrial complex to become established in our nation. Those words have gone unheeded. Here are more words of caution from another past president: "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." That statement comes from President Theodore Roosevelt on April 19, 1906. This problem goes way back in our history.

Whether Republicans or Democrats are in control in Washington, the madness of militarism has proceeded. Kennedy came to power asserting there was a nonexistent ‘missile gap’ between the US and the USSR. LBJ fell from power after wasting millions of Vietnamese and American lives based on a fallacious ‘domino theory’ of history. Richard Nixon degenerated into paranoia because his presidency lied repeatedly and tried to cover up the truth about the war he prosecuted in Southeast Asia. Some $13 trillion dollars was spent on the military and intelligence agencies from 1945 to 1989 in a Cold War against a phantom superpower.

The so-called intelligence community—the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, etc.—serve their masters well. Iraq is about oil which is about money. Not only did John Kennedy find 40 years ago that there was no ‘missile gap’, after he learned the Soviet Union possessed one untested missile he still ordered the production of 1000 nuclear weapons. Vast, untold wealth has been created by these ‘intelligence’ failures. We live in the midst of a permanent war economy.

We are currently in the King season—that period between Jan. 15, MLK’s birthday and April 4, the date of his assassination. It also encompasses Black History Month. You will recall Dr. King’s prophetic reminder that a nation that spends more money year after year after year on weapons and military might than on programs of social uplift approaches spiritual death. That’s us.

Imagine what a world we could be living in if this treasure had been spent on a world with health care and education for all and a clean environment. I daresay we would be approaching paradise today.

The prophet Habakkuk said: “For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.” (Hab. 2:3)

I tell you I am sick of war and I haven’t even been to one. Nevertheless, my lifetime has witnessed the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terrorism, and I’ve probably overlooked a few. George Orwell wrote in his novel 1984: “War had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war…The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil.” War is not an accidental metaphor in our society. The United States was born, in a sense, of war. How can it be otherwise for those of us who live in a land stolen from its native people and built on the backs of slaves?

What we really need is a national truth and reconciliation commission. I commend to you Chris Hedges’ book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He writes, “Historical memory is hijacked by those who carry out war. They seek, when the memory challenges the myth, to obliterate or hide the evidence that exposes the myth as a lie. The destruction is pervasive, aided by an establishment, including the media, which apes the slogans and euphemisms parroted by the powerful. Because nearly everyone in wartime is complicit, it is difficult for societies to confront their own culpability and the lie that led to it. But societies that do not confront the past remain trapped in an Oz-like world, a world whose most important truths are felt—then repressed—every day, a world where official lies are perpetuated by a vast bureaucracy.”

Fundamentally, we must place our trust in God and not in nations and flags and SUVs and Wal-Mart. I believe people want to live holy lives. Sister Joan Chittister: "Our ministry must be not only to comfort, but to challenge the state, community and church," she said. "Not just to attend to the pain, but to advocate for change; to be not just a vision, but a voice; not simply to care for the victims of the world, but also to change the institutions that victimize them." Needless to say, this act of challenge and accountability is profoundly uncomfortable for many of our members. We have named three powerful, profoundly unchristian myths and it is not easy for people to hear their myths unmasked. Those myths are:
*The myth of male superiority;
*The myth of white supremacy; and
*The myth of Western, particularly American, exceptionalism.

I work on Capitol Hill. Washington is now an armed camp with black-uniformed troopers armed with automatic weapons and guard dogs patrolling morning, noon, and night examining the visiting high school youth on their annual trips to Washington. The Department of Homeland Security is keeping careful watch over each and every one of us. John Ashcroft’s Patriot Act permits surveillance tactics heretofore unknown in the United States.

The cost of this war will remain with us for generations. Countless suicide bombers and terrorists have been recruited for future mayhem and hatred. We are less safe than we were. The church must continue to speak out. Things can change. They must. With God’s help, we must be the agent of change. The prophet Isaiah reminds us, “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. ”