War, What Is It Good For?

Back in the sixties we say, back in the sixties. We had another war then, and without a doubt that war colors our thinking about this one. The lyrics of one anti-war song went, "War, hoough, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin'." The refrain is memorable because it's delivered so forcefully. Whenever I heard it, I thought that war is good for some things - some over-simplification is evident here. But in fact this war in Iraq is good for absolutely nothin'. Good men are dying over there, and it's all for nothing.

We need an answer to the question, "Why don't we disengage our troops from the fighting in Iraq right now?" President Bush says that we have work there left to do: hard, nation-building work. You might remember what President Bush said about committing our armed forces to nation-building in his campaign against Al Gore in 2000. He was right then and he's wrong now.

What nation-building goals do we have in Iraq that we've made demonstrable progress toward? Turning over sovereignty and holding an election don't really count as progress when you've started a civil war you can't do anything about. By all the measures that count with normal people, we have not done any of the things we said we were going to do, except get rid of Saddam Hussein, which we did in the first three weeks. Two years later, we've caused a lot of unnecessary deaths, among our own armed forces and among the people of Iraq. We've accomplished some other things, too, most of it in line with the position that this war was wrong from the start.

So we keep asking, "How could people have voted for the leader who started this war?" "People are scared," the answer comes back, and it seems to be true. You talk to people about the war, and it doesn't seem as if they've analyzed it much. People trust their president. Their thinking actually goes beyond trust: they feel that in wartime, they owe the president their support. People don't believe the president could make a mistake this huge. Many Germans suffered a lot of deprivations during the Second World War, but they didn't understand that their nation's leader had made huge mistakes until the Russian forces rolled into Berlin. When China takes over Taiwan and we're the only member of the United Nations to speak against it, do you think people will know that we've made a mistake here? I'm doubtful.

I talked with a colleague over lunch not long ago, and repeated the argument I made in Ugly War and elsewhere. China was destined to take over world leadership from us eventually, but I didn't think it would happen during my lifetime. Now people will be shocked at how fast it can happen. My colleague said without hesitation, "It already has." I didn't think anyone thought that! He explained what signs we have that the transition has occurred:

(1) Ability to force others to do what they might not otherwise do, or to prevent them from doing what they'd like to do.

(2) Ability to prevent others from interfering with your plans.

(3) Ability to get others to go along with you, to support you in your goals.

By all three of these measures, China is doing better in world leadership than we are. We just don't recognize it yet.

I want to finish with a story from this Sunday's worship service at my church. I came late, and noted a young soldier at the rail in the front during communion. He was so well turned out for the occasion: perfect haircut, uniform perfectly pressed, boots as shiny as could be. He was so young, so handsome and sincere. I admired him. When I returned to my seat after communion, my thoughts went to him, and I became sentimental. My eyes teared up. Why? That's what happens when feelings you've repressed come out. Part of it is patriotism, that's for sure. But it's patriotism mixed with such sadness that we've sent our young men over to Iraq to be killed and maimed day after day, and it's for nothing. What a waste. We've asked them to do a job that is not theirs to do. They signed up to serve in order to protect us, and they're not doing that over there.

After the service, I told someone I know in the congregation about my thoughts on seeing the young man in uniform. My friend said that earlier in the service, he received two rounds of applause from all the people there. It turns out that the soldier does serve in Iraq, and that he's home on leave. He'll return to his unit over there soon. He's the nephew of one of the church members. All the people there that morning rightly regarded him as a hero, and they wanted him to know they appreciate what he's doing. I told my friend about my thoughts after communion, how sad it made me to think what this war has done to our armed forces. I told him I'd been in the Navy; he had served in the army reserves. When he understood that my sadness grew from opposition to the war, he looked away, clearly a bit uncomfortable. "Whatever you think about the war," he said, "you have to appreciate what our soldiers are doing over there." Naturally I agreed readily.

But now I need to return to memories of the sixties, and the war we fought then. Why does that war cast such a long shadow? Because we lost it? Because we lost so many soldiers there? Because it took so long to recover from its effects? We don't want to think that we've become involved in another war that's pointless, pointless in light of our best and true interests. Reagan said about Vietnam that in truth ours was a noble cause, and the anti-war people in the seventies gasped. How can this man say such things? Well, he was right in a way, just as our cause in Iraq is a noble one. But a noble cause - good intent - doesn't make something right. It doesn't mean we should do it. Human action doesn't translate like that.

The reasons you have for undertaking an action don't tell the whole story. The moral content of an action encompasses much more than that. It encompasses more than the actual consequences of the action, too. These two areas, intentions and consequences, are the beginning of moral reasoning, not the end. When we clap for a soldier home on leave, or cry, that's good. But don't send that young man so far away from his family to fight a war we shouldn't fight.