September 2010 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.

War

The expression, the tipping point, aptly describes all matter of human events which are very serious concerns, approaching a calamity. When they become overwhelming, they must be urgently addressed. Today, we long since passed the tipping point on resources, human and material dedicated to matters of “defense” or war. Military expenditures consume our nation’s resources. The 2010 budget allocates, if one includes all matters related to the military, over $800 billion. The U.S. allocates more money to the military than the rest of the family of nations in total. It’s not even close. China is a distant second with 40% of our expenditures. We have about 800 overseas military installations, almost every where.

Andrew Bacevich, retired army Colonel and author speaks of the futility of our present wars, “No evidence exists – none - to suggest that U.S. efforts will advance the cause of global peace. If, as many suspect, Washington’s actual aim is something more akin to dominance or hegemony, then evidence exists in abundance that the project is a self defeating one.

Critics of U.S. foreign policy questioned the wisdom and feasibility of forcibly attempting to remake the world in America’s image. They believed that even to attempt was to court corruption in the form of imperialism and militarism, thereby compromising republic institutions at home. Representing no one party but instead a great diversity of perspectives, they insisted that America has a mission to model freedom rather than to impose it.” ( Was hin gton Rul es : Ameri ca’ s Path to Permanent War)

The prophet Jeremiah reminded the Israelis of the futility of their plans when they abandoned the life giving waters of God’s vision. “You build cracked cisterns that hold no water.” This episode is a metaphor for the human proclivity to forge idols. For many militarists our idols are weapons to make us secure as we become less secure,

This issue of CPF examines what war is like and how it affects the people who participate or address the needs of the participants, the veterans of war. As one who neither served, much less experienced combat, it seemed wise to defer to those who “were there,” though we all bear the burden of responsibility for the fate of the nation.

As an older member of this generation, we have been at war since my childhood. History reveals we have been at war from our inception, with Native American, the British, the Mexicans, in the Civil War, bludgeoning one another, and in World War I and World War ll against overseas foes. Younger readers can’t imagine the fervor, the passion, the all consuming energy dedicated to the conduct of WW ll, even for a child growing up at that time. Nor can younger readers conjure up the hatred and enmity directed at our enemies, the Japanese and the Germans. It was our daily diet and seemingly no one opposed the war because it was “making the world safe for democracy.” There was a very different attitude toward war than now. Now, vigiling weekly against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, one feels war is not a high priority for most

Americans, for some an after-thought. Be it Bush or Obama, these wars are not primarily about values, freedom, democracy; they are about control, power and the earth’s “resources.” We Americans need to curb our appetites, a touch of

Francis of Assisi’s spirit.

The Vietnam War was a revelatory moment in some American’s attitude toward war. It was a coming of age, a shattering recognition that one did not have to agree with the Commander in Chief: Johnson, Nixon. Indeed one even had an obligation to discern, to hone one’s conscience. There was an equally shattering revelation, for some of us in the Catholic community; there was a tradition within our Christian heritage that to oppose war was a mandate.

Given the heroism described in some of these episodes in this issue of CPF, the giving of life for a brother soldier, we need, as Daniel Berrigan has insisted for decades, to have as deep a passion and courage as the warrior, in our opposition to war.

There is a terrible irony, reading the tale of E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed in the Pacific, in Okinawa, that Christ’s command that greater love no one has than to give his life for another, happens in war. How do we take the human capacity for heroic love and use it creatively?

Fortunately, there are manifold examples. I think of the Palestinian Christians in their recent Kairos document speaking to the Israeli Jews, (5.42) “Our message to the Jews tells them: Even though we have fought one another in the recent past and still struggle today, we are able to love and live together. We can organize our political life, with all its complexity, according to the logic of this love and its power, after ending the occupation and establishing justice.”

Remember this is a people that have suffered grievously, with heart breaking losses of loved ones, their land, freedom of movement, for over 40 years of brutal occupation. There are missionaries to impoverished parts of Africa, religious, and lay, a compassionate presence, “poured out like a libation” to use St. Paul’s expression. There are models, persons who offer a transfusion of life, not death to others.

Joe Bradley

Joe is a member of CPF