From my Blog: Christian Philosopher Activist
Five years ago, the United States invaded Iraq. I remember living in Japan and witnessing the beginnings of a war that I knew would be tragic. I prayed that we would not start a preemptive war against a nation that was no direct threat to our own. My prayers were not answered and the bloodshed and destruction began. I watched President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney full of bluster talk about how we would be greeted as liberators. I knew that things would be bad and unfortunately I was right. Of course living overseas, I had the uncomfortable experience of the anti-American backlash in the face of our naked aggression. "Why did the U.S. invade Iraq?" people would ask me. I would feebly explain that the U.S. government believed that they had weapons of mass destruction. Some Japanese would then ask if it wasn't true that we had been keeping Iraq bottled up with strict sanctions and no-fly zones. I would answer that it was true. They asked me if I believed there were weapons of mass destruction. "Maybe", I answered, but I knew there couldn't be many. Inspectors had searched and searched the country and we had destroyed the few remnants after the Gulf War. But the hardest questions came from my students. "Why does America like war so much?" they would ask. My answers to them were unconvincing. "Why does America want to kill all the Muslims?" they would ask. I told them that it wasn’t true but they did not all believe me. A few even voiced some sympathy with Al-Qaeda. It was a difficult position for an American charged with putting a positive face on America, the English-speaking, and in a broader sense, the Western world and its culture. I did what I could and talked about how I disagreed with the actions of my government. But in a democracy, I told them, that is ok. In fact it is a duty to oppose the government when you disagree with its policies. I tried hard to convey this to a simple rural people who like many people everywhere tend to think that all the people in a country support it's government and all its actions. I knew many people in the U.S. who strongly supported the war and were ready to "Kick Sadam's ass." But I knew enough of the history and culture of the region (which I had studied quite extensively in college and on my own) to know that things were going to become a mess. The British faced a committed insurgency in the 1920s and had to withdraw. The county was a patchwork of Kurd, Shia, and Sunni with some other groups thrown in for even more complication. The Kurds had enjoyed defacto independence - why would they want to be part of a Shia led nation that might only drag them down and steel some of their wealth? What of Kurdish irredentism? There are a lot of Kurds who live in Turkey. Would Turkey get involved to fight against Kurdish terrorists/freedom-fighters (depending on one's view)? As it turned out they did and they probably will again. The Shia are the majority and would naturally gravitate toward friendly relations with Iran (which has happened). The U.S. would not approve and have to fight that. The Sunnis who are a minority in Iraq were favored and ruled the nation through Sadam's brutal regime. They would want to fight to remain in control. Of course the Shia would fight them back. Let's not forge the Shia who rose up against Sadam following the Gulf War with the strong encouragement and promise of support by President George H. W. Bush and were crushed by Sadam's forces. They weren't going to be happy with the U.S. Let us not forget that in the 1980's the Regan administration sold weapons to Iran (who was at war with Iraq) while selling intelligence to Sadam in (what seemed to be) an obvious effort to keep the two nations fighting each other so that Iran would be occupied and Iraq wouldn't attack Israel. Why would anyone in that country trust Americans? Then what did we find out once we invaded - there were no weapons of mass destruction. So the stated purpose of the war was changed. We were there to stop Iraq's connection with Al-Qaeda. A ridiculous claim. A secularist megalomaniac like Sadam had no use for religious extremist terrorists inside his own county, especially when they were regularly making statements denouncing his surprisingly tolerant religious freedom policies. (For example he gave money to some Christian churches.) So the purpose of the war was changed to spreading democracy in the Middle East. That didn’t work so well. Sure elections were held, but is the government functioning? It is divided along ethnic and religious lines and is not working together. So then one of many terrorist groups operating in Iraq decided to become an Al-Qaeda franchise. By pledging loyalty to Osama Bin Ladin. These were not the people who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001; these were other Arabs who wanted the immoral support of the top Al Qaeda extremist. The purpose of the war, then stated by the White House to stamp out Al Qaeda in Iraq - an organization that existed only because the U.S. invaded Iraq! Eventually, they were on the run - in the so called "Sunni awakening" in Al Anbar province in western Iraq. Why were the Sunni fighting fellow Sunni, in this case local tribes vs. Al Qaeda in Iraq? Ostensibly because they were tired of all the collateral damage and the U.S. counter attacks. But of course they had been fighting the U.S. too - but money talks and it talked them into opposing Al Qaeda in Iraq. They were happy to take money and weapons from the U.S. government. At the same time we were and are supplying money and weapons to the Shia government in Baghdad. I cannot stress this enough. We have supplied weapons and arms to the local Sunnis in Al Anbar. At the same time we gave money and weapons to their main opposition the Shia dominated central government in Baghdad. You think Iraq is a civil war now - wait until this one plays itself out. Not to mention the Kurds and the Kurdistan Worker's Party which carries out terrorist attacks in Turkey. This war is a mess and there is nothing to do but walk away. There are no good options. The U.S must cut its losses and have "victory with honor" or "Iraqization of the war", "strategic withdrawal" whatever euphuism once wants to use. Whatever we call it, the U.S needs to get out of Iraq. Five bloody, destructive and costly years later, the situation is a mess and I fear there is worse to come no matter what we do. I suggest we get out of the way before we get caught in the middle of a real full-scale civil war and before we become entangled in the spillover into Iran and Turkey. My wife and I are currently watching "Vietnam: A Television History" the excellent PBS documentary from PBS. I am struck by the parallels to that conflict and the one we are involved in Iraq. That conflict was a mess to start with - we leaned no lessons from the French defeats, tried to impose a domino theory of global communism on a conflict that many there saw as an anti-colonial fight, and were drawn into spill over conflict in Laos and Cambodia. It was a mess, millions died as a result and America's image and potential to do good in the world was diminished. We should see the parallels for what they are and end this current conflict as quickly and carefully as possible. At the same time, I honor the service of the American soldiers, sailors and marines who have had to endure the very worst in life. They are doing what they see as their patriotic duty and their service is exemplary. It is because of their dedication to America that makes their sacrifice to a vain cause all the more tragic. I wish them all the best and keep them in my thoughts and prayers as I also do with the people of Iraq.
We need Barack Obama - someone who has opposed the war from the beginning and who is commited to withdrawing our troops as quickly and as safely as possible.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak... ...Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam... ...There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population... ...for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent...
...Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:
"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.
The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways....
...It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."... ...A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just."...
...America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood....
...These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain (sic) and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."...
...We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately (sic) for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today...
From my blog: Christian Philosopher Activist
Dear Vice President Gore, I am an ardent admirer of your work. I applaud your efforts to bring attention to global climate change and other important issues of our time. When Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, I was a strong supporter - in no small part because I wanted you to be our Vice President (And I hoped next President). It took me a long time to recover from the traumatic results of your 2000 winning run for the Presidency. The nation and the world have suffered as a result. This brings me to my reason for writing to you. The nation and the world are in peril. You know this far more and I. We need a leader who will bring this shattered, demoralized, and abused nation back together in common cause. We need someone who will look to the future with hope and inspire others to change. We do not need a continuation of the Bush administration's quasi-fascist policies, that much is clear. But we also do not need a return to the partisanship and cold calculation that was the dark side of the Clinton administration. (Don't get me wrong - I admire the work done under the Clinton-Gore administration, but there were some aspects that were less than desirable.) That is why I am urging you to endorse Barack Obama for the democratic nomination. He is a strong, smart, and compassionate man with a real eye on the future. I see much of your values and goals in his words and ideas. Please endorse Obama and help put this country back on track. Thank you very much Mr. Vice President.Best Wishes and Sincerest Thanks,Matthew R. Klempner
From My Blog: Christian Philosopher Activist
