REFLECTIONS ON THE WAR IN IRAQ

by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given March 23, 2003

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

I come to you today at a sad time in the history of our country. This is a hard sermon to preach. It is hard because of the way I’ve been feeling lately, and I know it’s the way many of you have been feeling: frustrated, discouraged, sick at heart. I’ve noticed that I’ve been taking lots of warm baths and showers since the war began. I’ve wondered why. Perhaps I’m trying to find some comfort in water, the source of life. Perhaps I’m trying to be clean. I know I’m a part of all of this.

A day or so after the war started, I spoke to a man who came to do some work on my house. He greeted me with a hearty, cheerful voice: "How are you?" he said. I could only respond. "Well, we’re at war." We talked about the war for a while. Like many people, he’s ambivalent—but strangely detached. At the end of our conversation he said, "Well, I can see you are taking this personally." Well, yes, of course I am, I thought. I am an American citizen. Like all citizens, I am responsible for the actions of my country. How can I not take this personally?

I know that people in this congregation are all over the map in terms of your judgments about the war, and this church needs to be a safe place for everyone to be exactly where they are on this issue—or any issue. I have no expectation that all of you will agree with my words today, but as your minister I am obliged to tell you what I’m feeling and thinking. That is my job.

I need to tell you that I am not a pacifist. I heard Daniel Berrigan speak a few years ago at our General Assembly. What a beautiful man! How gentle and wise. He is a pacifist who has been speaking out against war and practicing civil disobedience since Vietnam. I was almost converted to pacifism. But truthfully, it is not my nature to turn the other cheek. I’m a fighter. If one of my loved ones or I were attacked, I would defend myself with all my strength. I do believe there is such a thing as a just war. But this is not one of them.

A congregant who disagrees with my stance on the war asked me recently, "Do you support our men in uniform?" I replied that I have a son who surprised me by up and joining the army. My son said that he wanted to serve his country, that he would be willing to die for his country. That was laudatory, but it was also scary. He was young at the time, and didn’t know anything about our foreign policy, though I had tried to enlighten him more than once. Dying for his country was one thing, but dying for Exxon was another, I said. "If you inform yourself, you’ll agree with me," I told him. Well, of course, that made matters worse. He didn’t want to believe that the United States could act in an undeserving way. I was worried the whole time he was in the military—he just missed being sent to Kosovo. I told this congregant that I am so very fearful for our soldiers—and apparently one of our pilots is now a prisoner of war—and I am fearful for the Iraqi soldiers, who are conscripted and may not at all want to be fighting to defend a tyrant like Saddam Hussein. And I fear for the civilians. Yes, I support our soldiers. I want them back home. My son is safe. I want all mothers’ sons to be safe.

About patriotism. Some people are questioning the patriotism of those who are against this war. But what is patriotism? Is it, my country right or wrong? No, it is my country that must be set right when it is wrong. If I love my country, just as I love my children, I must insist on moral behavior.

In a fascinating book called War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges, a former war correspondent for the New York Times for 15 years and who has seen it all, reminds us that the myths we embrace in order to fight a war have been unchanged for centuries: the enemy is cruel whereas our officers are just carrying out policy; our people are the embodiment of goodness whereas the enemy is evil. Nationalism pulls a nation together and sells flags, but its danger, according to Hedges, is that it can suppress intellectuals and social critics, and it can turn the masses into uncritical followers. But when a war loses its mythic stature, as in the case of Vietnam, the war is doomed to fail.

The myth of war becomes the reality of war for those who actually experience combat—the grand words, the abstractions quickly take on a fleshly form. The veterans know. Here this voice from a veteran of the Gulf War. "I fear for the troops. Hearing about the loss of five of our Marines, I felt that loss. What did their lieutenant feel getting the body on his truck, out of sight of the troops? I find myself reliving missions in the desert. I am deeply saddened by the suffering that is occurring, the suffering of the Iraqi people and the suffering of our own troops. Don’t shower for three weeks and see how good you feel. Stop sleeping for a week. Eat bad food, quickly, as you drive through clouds of dust. Never be outside of an arm’s reach of a rifle. I have done all of that. It is not fun. Add to that the dead bodies, the fear in your own heart and in the eyes of the people you know. Fear that each shell you fire could have been mistakenly aimed at a friend. See buddies crying, being hurt, or ripped apart by shrapnel. This is the face of war."

We don’t hear plain-spoken language like this from the media, though, do we? The news is sometimes crazy-making. The administration tells us that we are bombing for peace. We hear that we are enforcing international law, but we are engaging in preemptive war, a violation of international law. George Orwell’s Big Brother is alive and well. This may be the only war in history which has been fought to kill one man. The news reports will say, "How long will it take to defeat Saddam Hussein?" Or "Saddam Hussein launched another scud missile." You notice we never say, "George Bush just dropped another round of bombs on Baghdad." Euphemistic language removes us from the reality and responsibility of war. "Collateral damage"? Perhaps we should just tell the truth: like we mistakenly bombed a wedding party in Afghanistan and killed 40 people. "Friendly fire"? That means somebody killed a buddy by accident. Most U.S. casualties have been from accidents, the latest from a misdirected Patriot Missile.

On television we see the explosions from the "smart bombs," the guided missiles hitting military targets so cleanly. We do not see—nor would I want to see—what happens when metal tears into flesh. And yet I do want to know a lot more than the corporate media tell us. This reporting is thus far so sanitized that it looks as though no one is even living in Baghdad. Most of the reporters are now "embedded" with the troops, making identification with those troops much more likely. It’s only human. But reporters need to have a measure of objectivity. Also, reporters are allowed to use only material "on record"—that is, information that comes with an identified source. They are not allowed to print anything that comes to them "off the record," by people who could inform these reporters, but can’t afford to identify themselves.

Censorship is all too common in the world of the corporate owned media. During the Gulf War, how many U.S. citizens found out about the hundreds—some say thousands—of Iraqi soldiers buried alive in the sand by our tanks, while they were trying to escape? How many U.S. citizens heard about the bombing of the Amriyah air raid shelter? A women’s and children’s shelter in Baghdad? Over 400 women and children were huddled there. Only 17 survived. One woman, who had left briefly to prepare a meal for her family, came back to find that all of her children were dead. When I tell people about this, they invariably say, "Where’d you hear this. Why didn’t I know about it?" Such stories rarely, if ever, get on national TV. How many people know about the economic embargo we have placed on Iraq that is directly responsible for half a million deaths of Iraqi children, from lack of food, medicine, and clean water? I would wager not one in a hundred of our citizens knows this. Why is our news so heavily censored? Well, for example, how free can NBC be when it is totally owned by General Electric, a company which received nearly 2 billion dollars in military contracts for systems employed in the Gulf War effort. I can’t help wondering what’s really happening in Iraq right now, and how much we will be allowed to know.

The citizens of our country are compassionate and caring and generous. They love their country. They want to do the right thing. But they are fed the myth of war by this administration and by the corporate media. They need the whole story, they need the truth, so that they can count the cost, the real human cost, and make the decisions that they need to make so that they can demand that the government be as good as its people.

I am concerned about the aftermath of this war. The administration has done little planning for reconstruction. And the effort and the expense will be up to us, since this is our war, and the Brits’. By the way, how have we done with reconstruction in Afghanistan? On January 2 of this year, the NY Times reported that half a million returning refugees do not have a house to rebuild in Afghanistan. Many of the urban poor were made homeless and had to face the freezing winter with completely inadequate shelter. For all the reconstruction efforts in the last 12 months, the Times said, not a single house has been rebuilt with international assistance. Will we do better for the Iraqis?

Speaking of putting the country back together, I am concerned about the financial burden that we have taken on. The estimates for the war and for reconstruction vary widely—anywhere from 200 billion to a trillion dollars. At the same time, Congress is poised to cut taxes, insuring a financial deficit that will likely be passed on to the next generation. What will the cost of these policies be to the most vulnerable in our society? Despite being the richest nation on earth, we suffer from higher rates of poverty and infant mortality, and from greater economic inequality than other advanced democracies. What has happened to our social contract? Have we abandoned what used to be called ‘the common good," traded fairness for economic flexibility—for economic freedom, with little regulation?

What have we done to our relationship with our allies? We had so much good will from all over the world directed to us after the terrorists attacks of 9/11. Let me tell you a heart-warming story. Kimeli Naiyomah, a member of the Masai tribe in Kenya, was studying in the U.S. when the terrorist attacks occurred. He returned to his people, who didn’t have TV, and told them in the oral tradition what had happened to us. Through his stories, the tragedy became real. They wanted to do something. So in a solemn ceremony, they blessed 15 cows to give to the United States, cows held sacred by these people. William Brancick of the U.S. embassy seemed tentative, the paper said, as he held a rope given to him by a Masai elder, a rope that was attached to a rambunctious bull. What an amazing gesture! We are not alone in this world. We drive cars made in Japan. We drink—yes, we do—French wine. We could switch to Vodka from Russia, but the Russians don’t like us either. Even the fireworks that we use to celebrate the Fourth of July come from China. We are interdependent as we have never before been. But we have frittered away most all of the good will shown to us by other nations.

Perhaps most of all I worry about the moral integrity of our nation. How will our children grow up to believe in our ideals? When we try to teach them about honesty and justice and compassion and the opportunity that all people in this country are supposed to have, how can they believe us? How can they hear us when they are surrounded with half-lies and manipulation, not only by the daily deluge of advertising, but from the highest offices in our land?

But surely a little child shall lead them. I got an e-mail this past week from Cecilia Kingman Miller, one of our congregants who is in seminary. Her son Isaac, now 11, begged to stay out of school and go to the antiwar protest in San Francisco. He had been quite distraught, says Cecilia, over the bombing, and so she agreed. He made a sign, and off they went. She wore her clergy stole, and he wore his sign and his spiky red dyed hair. San Francisco was really crowded, with protesters blocking all the main intersections in the Financial District. Isaac was one of the few kids there, Cecilia said, and all day people kept asking if they could take a picture. Cecilia finally figured out—it was the sign. It said, "Books, not Bombs. 6^th graders against the war!" Later, he reminded his mother that he is a part of the "Fix It Generation." Thank God for youthful faith and enthusiasm, she said.

I have been led to ask myself a question in recent days—what must I do? What must I do that I haven’t done before, to bring change? My heart went out to those young protesters in Portland who were still sitting in the middle of Burnside, with arms linked together, after midnight last Wednesday. They had been marching and then sitting over eight hours, without so much as a chance to go to the bathroom. Why is it always the children who take the brunt of making change? The high school and college youth were the first ones at the march, and the last to leave, the last 50 hauled away by the police.

But their tenacity and their sacrifice made me wonder—I’ve written, I’ve spoken, I’ve marched—but what else must I do? Perform civil disobedience? Become a tax resister, so my money won’t support the killing that is being done? What would have integrity for me? I don’t know. But in my frustration, I’m considering the question.

There are things that all of us can do. If you are as distraught as I am, the first thing that we must do is to take care of ourselves. Yesterday I began to feel weak, and I wondered why. Then I remembered—I had forgotten to eat anything all day. We are likely to be distracted, as anyone in grief will be. So eat, sleep, talk with friends. Have a massage. Bring home a flower, and put it in a vase.

Though we become weary, and we have to turn off the radio because we can no longer listen, we do need to inform ourselves, to seek out alternative news sources, to try to get a more accurate picture. Here at the church we have lectures and teach-ins. That’s something else we can do—making time and creating space for learning, for ourselves and for the larger community. We must break the myth that this is a just war. We can act politically, in whatever way seems right for us. The Peace Action group has provided outstanding leadership for us here at the church, with all kinds of suggestions for action.

And we can try to embody peace in our own lives. That is perhaps the most difficult part of all, when we are sad and angry and frustrated. To practice forgiveness, though, is not to abandon justice, it is not to abandon right action—it is to hold in your heart a terrible wrong, while you attempt with all your heart to correct that wrong.

In spite of the discouragement many of us feel, truthfully, there is great reason for optimism just now. Think about it. When, ever before in history, has there been a global voice speaking out against war? God bless the internet. No matter what happens in Iraq, our world will never be the same. Too many people are stepping out and witnessing. All kinds of people, all over the world—young and old, professionals, working people, intellectuals, old radicals, and people who have never before protested anything. They will be noticed. We will be noticed. Who could not help wonder why 18- and 19-year olds would block the main artery of a major city for hours, and risk going to jail? No more "business as usual."

I listened to the nations’ responses both times after Hans Blix made a report about the weapons inspections in Iraq. It was thrilling to me to hear the clear and measured statements by various United Nations delegates. One after the other, one more eloquent than the last, saying "no war, no war," standing up to the one remaining superpower, and saying "no war." The present administration says that the UN looks weak and ineffectual. I say that the UN acted with integrity, and it is the United States that looks like the world bully. We cannot carry on this way. We are too interconnected with the rest of the world.

One day—and I acknowledge that it may not be in my lifetime or yours—but one day, children will be reading their history books, and they will sigh and shake their heads in disbelief when they read that at one time nations settled their differences by killing the young males of other countries, and sometimes killing families who just happened to be in the way, and despoiling the land. It’ll be the same way we think of slavery now—how could they? Couldn’t anyone see how wrong it was?

Our part is to keep working in that direction. Work with faith in our hearts. Know that larger purposes are at work, than we can know of. Know that the time schedule for change is not in our hands. But know that what is today, will not be forever. I promise you that. One day, one blessed day, war will be no more. So be it. Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we call for life this day, in the midst of death. We pray that we may be given light—and courage to do what we must do, to save our own souls and the soul of our nation. Give us strength to keep going when we are weary and long to give up. Forgive us when we are unforgiving. Place in our hearts a deep and unwavering desire for peace in ourselves and in our world. Amen.

 BENEDICTION

As you leave this place today, keep hope safe inside—there will be a new day. Go in love and go in peace. Amen.

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Copyright 2003, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.