Archive for the 'War' Category

Learning to love the uniform — UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 27, 2005
in Aggression and violence, Faith and War
. 61 Comments

It’s a busy day, and I’ve got to get a little run in before it gets too hot.  I hope to have a second post up later today, but am not sure I’ll have time to swing it.

One quick note, after a week of relatively long posts.  Yesterday afternoon, on the way home from the college, I stopped for gas at the Chevron station just across the street from PCC.  Standing in front of me in the line to pay was a young man in Army fatigues.  (We have a military recruiting center a block from the campus.)  I noticed the position of the American flag on his sleeve.  It seemed to face backwards, with the stars on the right hand, rather than the left hand, side of the emblem.  I’ve seen that image on other soldiers’ uniforms in coverage of the war, but never been able to figure out why.

So very politely, I spoke up.  "Excuse me", I said to the fellow; "Can I ask you a question?"  He stiffened as he looked at me, almost as if he were bracing himself.  "Sure", he said, without enthusiasm.  I wonder how many times others have button-holed him in his uniform in gas stations and check-out lines, and then berated him about US foreign policy.  He certainly looked as if he was readying himself for what would have been a familiar tirade.  I hurriedly asked him about the flag, and was amazed at the way in which his face visibly sagged with relief.  "It’s because we always want to be seen as going forward", he said.  "It’s positioned the way a soldier would carry a flag into battle."  (I confess I didn’t get it right away, and had to look it up on the Internet when I got home.)  I thanked him and we parted. (I had no idea what his rank was, I can’t identify military insignia, but I assume with his fatigues and a black beret he was Army, right?)

I left the encounter feeling oddly sad.  I was simply curious, and hadn’t the slightest intention in the world of rattling a man who, from what I understand, has one of the more difficult jobs in the country these days.    But it brought back memories of the  mid-1980s, when I was a freshman at Cal and participating in often-violent anti-ROTC demonstrations.  (The ROTC building was actually burned down at one point, and no, I had nothing to do with that!)  But years ago, I heaped my share of terrible verbal abuse at many a young cadet.  I sprayed more than one young man with spittle as I railed on about whatever the issue was at the time (I think it was opposition to the Contra war in Nicaragua.)  I overturned tables, ran from campus police, and took part in a variety of small acts of criminal destruction of ROTC property that seemed (at the time) to be enormously brave and today seem to me to be colossally juvenile.  Trust me, folks, if I seem gentle today, it’s an act of will and a gift of grace that have made me so.  I could be a vicious hothead when I was younger and filled with more testosterone.

I wonder if I owe some sort of collective amends to the military.  I don’t know how the young men at whom I yelled and whom I called names (unprintable here) reacted to what I did some twenty years ago when I was a teenager. I can’t imagine it was easy for them to remain stone-faced while I — and my fellow upper middle-class self-righteous radicals — directed apoplectic rage their way.  Today, I think what I did back then was wrong and pointless.  Alas, at eighteen  I was at an age when I was indeed "often in error, and never in doubt."   I’m ashamed of my past behavior, even though I haven’t hurled profane opprobrium at any one in uniform since my last protest, which was fourteen years ago at the start of the first Gulf War in January 1991.  (That story of my final protest — and why I’ve never gone to another one — is worth a post all its own.)

So folks, I’m not ready to abandon my Anabaptist pacifism.  But I have decided that I need to do something tangible to make amends for my past behavior.  I was shaken by my encounter with the guarded young soldier yesterday, and I felt overwhelmed by a need to apologize to him for all that I had yelled at men like him many years ago.  (Note:  I could never yell at the very few female ROTC cadets I saw back in the day; a strange mix of simple-minded feminism and in-bred courtliness made it impossible for me to ever raise my voice at a woman.  I simply ignored them and went after their male counterparts.  Embarrassing, but true.)

Folks, I’m open to suggestions.  A batch of cookies? A visit to the recruiters with a word of thanks for their hard work (and maybe a small number of gifts)?  Mind you, I’m not a supporter of this current war.  But I haven’t always differentiated between the cause for which men and women fight and those men and women themselves.  And I’ve got the feeling this morning I’ve got to take some small but tangible action.

I was wrong, and somehow, a debt still hangs over my head.

UPDATE:  Following a suggestion below, I visited Books for Soldiers and made a donation.  It felt good, as donating usually does.  It’s not the end of the amends, but it’s a start.  I still need to do something for my local recruiters.  Would Starbucks gift cards be a good idea?  Or would they worry that it was a joke,with no money on the cards?  Much to think about.

UPDATE #2 (Saturday 10:49AM):  Things seem to have gotten fairly heated in the comments section,  This is understandable, as my account of my own past behavior could be expected to strike many a nerve.  That said, folks, it is vital that you refrain from using profanity here if you wish to have your comments remain.  If you’re enraged by me, so be it — you’re entitled to your anger.  But insulting each other — and using ugly language that demeans entire groups of human beings — simply makes a civilized exchange impossible.   If you really need to spew, send me a private email (dochugoboy@hotmail.com).

Thanks.

Morality, equivalence, and pacifism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 17, 2004
in Faith, Pacifism and War
. 36 Comments

Jonathan Dresner is single-handedly responsible for at least a dozen of my posts.  Today, he sent me this link to a Michael Neumann article in  Counterpunch. Entitled "How We Became Barbarians", it is a provocative op-ed on terrorism, civilian casualties, and collateral damage. It got me thinking about many things, especially pacifism (something I haven’t blogged about in a while).

Some excerpts:

People can get astonishingly sensitive when they discuss moral
issues.

Someone who can scarf popcorn all through *both*
Kill Bills will go hoarse about the killing of innocents in Israel or Iraq or
anywhere suitably distant. Someone who’d cheer a B-52 strike on Baghdad will
murmur feelingly about the perfect little hands of a second trimester fetus. And
everyone hates terrorism with a passion because it victimizes innocent people:
that’s so outrageous!

Really the claptrap about terrorism has gone far
enough. Brutes should at least recognize their own brutality. None of us, left,
right, or center, are all that bothered about the deliberate killing of
innocents. Virtually none of us think it’s that big a deal to tear the flesh off
a child.

Okay, now you’ve got my attention. What Neumann means, of course, is that since the advent of air power, we in the industrialized West have become increasingly accepting of the "collateral damage" (loss of civilian life) that comes with bombing.

The brutalization of attitudes towards attacks on
civilians was and is quite universal. We may deplore some such attacks, but not
all of them. We disagree, not about whether they are ever legitimate, but rather
about whether they should be blatant. Some think it’s ok to kill civilians as
long as they’re not really your target. Others think that they can be all or
part of your target. It’s the difference between dropping bombs you know will
kill civilians and dropping bombs to kill civilians.

Amen. It’s refreshing to see this argument made by a secular leftist rather than by an Anabaptist; Neumann sounds here as if he is  indeed close to the position of most Mennonites around the world.  It’s the refusal to see as morally legitimate the sophistry that he describes so well that led me to embrace pacifism in the first place.  Christian morality ought to be about total and radical congruence between "ends" and "means" — peacemaking can only be done peacefully, modelled on the life of Christ Himself.

But Neumann is not an Anabaptist pacifist. (He’s a Canadian philosopher.)   The central point of his article revolves around the distinction between "expected" and "unexpected" collateral damage.  You’ll need to read that bit carefully. 

But it’s Neumann’s conclusion that is so remarkable:

What, then, is left to us, if we have become so
cruel? We cannot say that two wrongs don’t make a right, or that our hypocrisy
doesn’t justify others’ savagery, because it is the very rules of morality that
we have come to view differently. We really do believe that murdering innocents
is, in the relevant cases, no sort of wrong at all. We cannot reproach others
for terrorism, not because this would be hypocritical, but because it would be
inconsistent. Our own standards allow what we might like to forbid.

Terror, by our own standards, isn’t always wrong.
Neither is the murder of innocent civilians, including children. Excoriating
these practices is nothing more or less than a cynical or pointlessly moralistic
diversion from any serious attempt to prevent them.

Such an attempt can’t attack the practices
themselves for the excellent reason that we have no moral basis for attacking
them. To the extent that they can be prevented, it is only through appeals to
self-interest, not to compassion or a level of decency we quite obviously
lack.

There’s much more.  Like much of what appears on Counterpunch, the rhetoric is harsh.  And I can in no way agree with Neumann’s rather remarkable conviction that this is why Israeli and American atrocities are so
much worse than Iraqi or Palestinian atrocities.

Uh, sorry Mike, you lost me there.  Neumann does a far better job of stripping American military tactics of moral legitimacy than he does of imbuing the intifadas with that same legitimacy.  Consistent-life pacifism is never as concerned with intent as other philosophies are; it is concerned with method.  The Mennonite vision of pacifism (to which I still cling) is one of radical faith that God holds us responsible for our actions, but He remains sovereign over the outcomes of those actions. 

Our limited humanity often sees no way other than violence to accomplish a good end; we are like Peter in the garden on that last night, flailing away with a sword at the guards who had come to take Jesus off to die.  We justify violence because we are, for all of our external piety, mostly "Good Friday" Christians.  We see the world as violent and chaotic, and feel compelled to use the sword to defend the vulnerable and to bring in justice.  Christian pacifism is an Easter theology — it is only when one is convinced and convicted of the absurd and marvelous Good News  of the resurrection that one can contemplate letting go of even the noblest justifications for the use of violence.

A quick note on Veteran’s Day

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 11, 2004
in Christianity, Holidays, Men and Masculinity, Politics and War
. 14 Comments

Not much to post about this Veteran’s Day.  With the day off, I’ve got a bike ride planned for the morning, grading in the afternoon, and a run at dusk.  (I’m starting to taper for the November 20 Saddleback Marathon, so the distances involved today will be quite modest.)

It’s hard for me to blog about Veteran’s Day.  I’m quite confident that others are doing so far more effectively than I; Annika chose to post the "band of brothers" speech from Henry V, which can move even a latte-sipping, bike shorts-wearing, sushi-eating, NPR-listening Episcopalian blue-state liberal to tears.

What I am thinking about is this: within a year or two, my classes will surely be filled with young veterans.  I’ve already had four or five young men who served in Iraq last year; the numbers will surely go up.  For countless ex-GIs and Marines, the community college is the first stop when they return to civilian life.  (In the early to mid-70s, they say, PCC was a veritable haven for Vietnam vets.)  I am looking forward to meeting these young men and young women, to hearing their stories and learning from their perspectives.  It’s easy for me to be angered by war — but I have a healthy respect for those who, often against their will, go off to to fight.  I haven’t done what they have done.

On the other hand, I don’t think less of myself because I was never a veteran.  When Shakespeare writes:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day…

I can say, no, my manhood is not contingent upon the willingness to take other human life!  I will not denigrate the character of those young men and women, mostly from less fortunate circumstances than my own, who chose military service.    But while I honor their sacrifice, they are not my heroes.  My heroes are those like my friends in Christian Peacemaker Teams and the Mennonite Mission Network, who go into the same damn places our Marines and GIs go — but they go unarmed save for faith.  If I regret anything, it is that I wasn’t a missionary.

It gets worse in Darfur

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 28, 2004
in Aggression and violence, Politics and War
. Closed

It feels irresponsible to spend so much time wondering about gender when hundreds of thousands are dying elsewhere. The LA Times has this sobering story today:

Humanitarian aid agencies, analysts and U.S. officials all agree that no matter what the international community does to try to prevent the catastrophe unfolding in Darfur, western Sudan, it’s too late: Huge numbers of people will die there in coming months.

But in the face of death, we must do SOMETHING. Rudy Carrasco provided this link to give specifically to the Sudan through World Vision. I’ve sent in a small contribution; let’s all see if we can’t make this something of a priority this week.

Bush, troops, and the ICC

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 24, 2004
in Aggression and violence, People, Politics and War
. 3 Comments

I was pleasantly surprised to read this morning that the Bush Administration has withdrawn its UN resolution to secure an extension of immunity for American soldiers from the International Criminal Court:

The United States bowed Wednesday to broad opposition on the Security Council and announced it was dropping its effort to gain immunity for its troops from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

“The United States has decided not to proceed further with consideration and action on the draft at this time in order to avoid a prolonged and divisive debate,” James B. Cunningham, the deputy American ambassador, said…

American diplomats, who had been confident of obtaining a routine “technical rollover” of the measure, appeared to have miscalculated the impact of the publicity given the American mistreatment of Iraqi detainees.

I wonder how this apparent acquiescence to Kofi Annan and the Security Council is going to play with the more conservative elements of the Republican base. For purely partisan reasons, I do wish that the far-right would put up a fine old isolationist in the Pat Buchanan mold, someone who could rail about the Bush policies on immigration and and the president’s apparent willingness to allow US troops to be tried for war crimes by the ICC.

More on Islam, dress, peace

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 22, 2004
in Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Modesty and War
. 29 Comments

Lately, several right-leaning bloggers have (in the aftermath of recent beheadings) been on quite an anti-Islamic bent. Going through some old articles of mine, I came across one of my favorite Mennonite pieces on Muslim culture: One Face of Islam, by Sonia Weaver, a Mennonite missionary who lives in the Gaza Strip. It’s a terrific essay on gender relations and Islam. Here’s what I (not surprisingly) liked:

In light of the perception that women in the Muslim world are more oppressed than their Western Christian sisters I offer my own limited yet heartfelt experiences in one Arab and Muslim context.

Islamic dress often strikes Westerners as one of the most discriminatory aspects of Islam. After living in North America where women and men of all ages, shapes and sizes unthinking show their hair, arms, legs and sometimes more in public, arriving in a country where most women cover arms, legs and hair in veils and loose fitting garments comes as quite a shock! When women who add gloves and face veils are thrown into the mix, it easy to understand why most Westerners conclude they are dealing with major patriarchal oppression. Given the huge gap in language and culture between North America and the Middle East, a cultural element as external, nonverbal and immediately obvious as dress quickly captures the attention and often provokes the indignation of international guests. I think many of the folks who conclude that the veil and other aspects of Islamic dress automatically denote oppression of woman would be surprised to learn the variety of perspectives that Middle Easterners themselves hold toward these garments.

Virtually all of the many Muslims with whom I have discussed Islamic dress stress that adoption of such attire must be the woman’s own decision. Kifayeh, one of my most devout friends who herself wears gloves and a face veil, believes it is wrong for anyone to force a girl or woman to cover her hair or dress a certain way. She herself has taken on these clothes in order to assert that she wants to be viewed as a person and not as a sexual object for the visual enjoyment of men. Kifayeh pities rather than envies scantily clad western women. To her they are victims of sexual objectification rather than symbols of personal freedom.

I have many friends who have worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams (my second favorite charity behind this one) in Iraq, Israel, and Palestine. Many of them have lived with Muslim families for years. They are adamant that groups like al-Qaeda are generally intensely disliked in the Islamic world. But the experiences of Westerners who live with and among Muslims are drowned out by the rage-filled voices of those who see beheadings and bombings and refuse to separate the murderous actions of a few from the heartfelt beliefs of the many.

Counting the Cost

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 20, 2004
in Blogging, Christianity, GLBTQ, War and Youth
. 9 Comments

That fellow Craig from the Gilligan’s Island show isn’t taking no for an answer. He just left another message on my answering machine at work.

And before I forget, let me plug a new (to me) blog: David Morrison’s Sed Contra. He’s a Typepad guy, and here is his unique “about me” description:

David Morrison is the author of this web log and the book Beyond Gay, which Our Sunday Visitor press published in 1999 and which is still in print.

He is also the found and moderator of Courage Online, an online support community for men and women living with some degree of same sex attraction who wish to do so chastely.

Throughout his career so far David has written on human rights issues, population issues, pro-life issues and chastity issues. In addition to this web log and the writing for his day job, David speaks and writes on chastity and identity issues.

It’s been a while since I’ve waded into the complex world of “ex-gay” and “beyond gay” ministries and counseling. I’ve had a great many friends and acquaintances on all sides of that fascinating issue, and I think I need to work up a post on all that soon.

David Morrison has obviously counted the cost of discipleship. Speaking of counting the cost, the Mennonite Weekly Review has this story about Kidron, Ohio’s Central Christian School:

Amid a wave of patriotism surrounding the war in Iraq, Central Christian School’s practice of not playing the national anthem at sporting events apparently has exacted a high toll.

In the past year, dozens of students have withdrawn. Next fall, resulting layoffs will shrink the school’s staff.

Superintendent Frederic Miller said in the past year the Ohio Mennonite Conference school has lost about 50 students, primarily because of its adherence to Mennonite peace teachings.

This is not an isolated incident:

At Iowa Mennonite School near Kalona, Iowa, Principal Wilbur Yoder said the school has been stripped of its right to host state sports tournaments because of complaints about the anthem not being played there. Yoder said the school hosted a boys’ basketball tournament earlier this year, but only because it had been asked to do so before the anthem issue arose.

Next year, he said, this is sure to change.

If you want to donate (Central Christian is doing heavy fundraising to save staff positions and make up for the drop in enrollment) the link at which to do so is here.

Whether you donate or not, read the whole article. It got my pacifist knickers in a fine old twist, but it made me damned proud to be a Mennonite (even if most Mennonites don’t put “damn” on their blogs).

Men, war, and victimhood

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 19, 2004
in Men and Masculinity and War
. 2 Comments

In a great comment on my post on Feminism and Abu Ghraib, Amy asked:

Hugo, are you worried about what the military will do to men? And if not, why not? If I may ask…

Valid questions indeed! I am always leery of those who seek to protect women from hardship and suffering and war by saying “men are better equipped to handle those sorts of things.” It’s not that I dispute the existence of innate difference! Surely, most young men are physically stronger than most women of the same age. But what troubles me is the denial that men, including soldiers, can be victimized and traumatized. From a pacifist standpoint, war falls short of the mark regardless of the sex of the combatants. From the standpoint of gender studies work, arguing for the exclusion of women from combat because men are somehow impervious to trauma does both men and women a profound disservice. There’s an old bumpersticker: “War is not healthy for children and other living things”. Well, men are living things.

I’m quite insistent on the point that men can be victims. On an only tangentially related note, I ws immensely troubled by reaction to the Mary Kay Letourneau case. (She was the Washington state school teacher who had a sexual relationship with her 14 year-old male student). Time and time again, I heard the same lines: “He (the boy) was lucky”; “He wanted it as much as she did”; “I wish that had happened to me”, and so forth. While we all seemed to be perplexed as to why a married woman in her mid 30s would desire a boy in his early teens, the notion that the boy could have been traumatized and violated to the same degree that a 14 year-old girl would have been by a male teacher seemed ludicruous. Both men and women seem reluctant to see boys or men as capable of being victimized. We minimize male trauma, whether it be inflicted on an adolescent (ala the Letourneau case) or on adult men in combat.

As a feminist man and as a Christian, I am increasingly aware that all humans are complex, vulnerable, broken creatures. Yes, adults must answer the call to be responsible. Yes, Christians must answer the call to take up the cross. Suffering will happen in this world despite our best efforts to avoid it. Those of us who aren’t pacifists believe that sometimes, suffering must be inflicted on a few to prevent even greater suffering from being inflicted on the many. Perhaps that’s true. But let’s let go of our precious illusions about men as invulnerable, and let’s recognize that real war when fought by real human beings scars everyone involved down to the depths of their soul.

Feminism and Abu Ghraib

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 18, 2004
in Aggression and violence, Feminism and War
. 21 Comments

Barbara Ehrenreich and Phyllis Schlafly, two stalwarts on opposite sides of the feminist fence, weighed in this week on the role of the three women guards (Megan Ambuhl, Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman) in the Abu Ghraib scandal. In the Los Angeles Times, Ehrenreich wrote:

The photos did something to me, as a feminist: They broke my heart. I had no illusions about the U.S. mission in Iraq — whatever exactly it is — but it turns out that I did have some illusions about women.

A certain kind of feminism, or perhaps I should say a certain kind of feminist naiveté, died in Abu Ghraib. It was a feminism that saw men as the perpetual perpetrators, women as the perpetual victims and male sexual violence against women as the root of all injustice. Rape has repeatedly been an instrument of war and, to some feminists, it was beginning to look as if war was an extension of rape. There seemed to be at least some evidence that male sexual sadism was connected to our species’ tragic propensity for violence. That was before we had seen female sexual sadism in action.

But it’s not just the theory of this naive feminism that was wrong. So was its strategy and vision for change. That strategy and vision rested on the assumption, implicit or stated outright, that women were morally superior to men. We had a lot of debates over whether it was biology or conditioning that gave women the moral edge — or simply the experience of being a woman in a sexist culture. But the assumption of superiority, or at least a lesser inclination toward cruelty and violence, was more or less beyond debate.

What we have learned from Abu Ghraib, once and for all, is that a uterus is not a substitute for a conscience. This doesn’t mean gender equality isn’t worth fighting for for its own sake. It is. If we believe in democracy, then we believe in a woman’s right to do and achieve whatever men can do and achieve, even the bad things. It’s just that gender equality cannot, all alone, bring about a just and peaceful world.

In fact, we have to realize, in all humility, that the kind of feminism based on an assumption of female moral superiority is not only naive; it also is a lazy and self-indulgent form of feminism. Self-indulgent because it assumes that a victory for a woman — a promotion, a college degree, the right to serve alongside men in the military — is by its very nature a victory for all of humanity. And lazy because it assumes that we have only one struggle — the struggle for gender equality — when in fact we have many more. (Bold emphases are Hugo’s)

Meanwhile, dear old Phyllis Schlafly opines:

The pictures are stark illustrations of the gender experimentation that has been going on in the U.S. military. The images have lifted the curtain on a subject about which the public has largely been kept in the dark.

When he was still in office, Former President William Jefferson Clinton made clear his contempt for our military, but the Clintonista feminazis were more focused in their disdain. They were determined to give us a gender-neutral military or, as one of their representatives said, an “un-gendered” military.

That goal means masculinizing women and feminizing men… The result is a breakdown of military discipline and a dramatic coarsening of women and of men’s treatment of women.

I suspect that the picture of the woman soldier with a noose around the Iraqi man’s neck will soon show up on the bulletin boards of women’s studies centers and feminist college professors. That picture is the radical feminists’ ultimate fantasy of how they dream of treating men. Less radical feminists will quietly cheer the picture as showing career-opportunity proof that women can be just as tough as men in dealing with the enemy.

The gap between Phyllis’ expectation of feminist reaction and Ehrenreich’s more accurate understanding of the feminist response was too good to ignore! What I appreciated most about Ehrenreich is her proclamation that feminism cannot ever be satisfied with mere “gender equity.” Simply integrating women into male-dominated systems of power will invariably produce the Megan Ambuhls, Lynndie Englands and Sabrina Harmans. Ehrenreich concludes:

What we need is a tough new kind of feminism with no illusions. Women do not change institutions simply by assimilating into them, only by consciously deciding to fight for change. We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say no — not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds herself.

In short, we need a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert them.

It is not enough to be equal to men, when the men are acting like beasts. It is not enough to assimilate. We need to create a world worth assimilating into.

Ringing words indeed. (And let me plug, in passing, Camassia’s post on the subject). And while I am of course much closer to Ehrenreich than to Schlafly, I don’t think that “infiltrating” and “subverting” the military is either a viable or a morally acceptable answer for the women’s movement (even if it were possible to raise sufficient feminist consciousness among young American working-class females). As easy as it is to poke fun at Phyllis Schlafly, there is no denying that while the military may not feminize men (that seems absurd) it does coarsen women, because coarsening human beings of either sex is what the military does in order to accomplish its goals. Or perhaps it’s just the pacifist in me that leads me to be unable to rejoice when women rise in the ranks of any branch of armed service.

Nick Berg, anger, and pacifism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 13, 2004
in Aggression and violence, Christianity, Pacifism, People and War
. 25 Comments

Yes, it’s a bit of a rant. No, it’s not on porn or modesty or Christian historians, so that ought to be moderately refreshing:

In the aftermath of the terrible Nick Berg beheading video, I’ve been struck by the visceral shock and anger of so many of my fellow bloggers. Both Candace and Annika wrote lengthy and impassioned posts about the murder of this young American at the hands of Al Qaeda. Annika remarked:

Sadly, the liberal bloggers that i read regularly have all chosen to ignore this atrocity. It’s not a matter of left vs. right, Bush vs. not-Bush. Nick Berg was an American. How can anyone ignore his murder?

I can only speak for myself, but I haven’t ignored Nick Berg’s murder. I haven’t seen the video on the internet, either (only the images in the newspaper). What I have read about the murder makes clear that this was an appalling act of brutality, utterly without justification, an offense to human decency as well as to the essential tenets of Islam. I grieve for the family of this young man, and I am physically sickened by the details of his murder. And though I am also sickened by the images from Abu Ghraib, I am not going to make an indefensible argument that what was done to the folks in that prison is morally equivalent to what was done to Nick Berg. Is that enough, my conservative friends? Did you imagine that liberal silence on the subject indicated sympathy for Al Qaeda, or perhaps just ideological discomfort?

Look, I’m a Christian pacifist more than I am a “liberal”. My pacifism is not situational. And it is not rooted in idealistic illusions about human nature, either. Before the Nick Berg video, I was not under the impression that the boys in Al Qaeda were nice, reasonable folks, who just needed to be shown the love of Christ in order to bring them around to civilization. Real pacifists have no doubts about the reality of human depravity! Human beings do awful, disgusting, beastly things to each other — they’ve been doing those things for centuries; only recently have they insisted on filming themselves while they do it. So no, I haven’t “changed my mind” about anything as a result of being presented with video evidence of barbarism.

Most Christian pacifists throughout history have held to their pacifism in the face of incredible ugliness and persecution. I am tired of the accusation that Christian pacifism is a position of the “comfortably naive”, while just war theory is the position of the (apparently) “responsibly wise”. Pacifism flourished in the persecutions of 3rd century Rome, in 16th century Europe, and in 20th century South Africa. Sometimes the patient endurance of suffering impressed the oppressors so much that they rethought their oppression (the British in India), but most of the time, a lot of nice pacifists just got killed. I am a pacifist not because I believe that “love can change the world”, but because I believe that God can and does act dramatically in human history to change what we cannot. I believe that to follow Christ is to foreswear the use of weapons, even in self-defense. I believe that the victory over death and evil has already been won by Christ, and my only job is to follow Him.

Look, these are the musings of a childless man. (Pacifism, I’m told, gets a whole lot tougher when you have little ones). But despite what some of my more conservative and hawkish friends say (and they are truly friends), I am not a pacifist because I fail to comprehend the enormity of human wickedness, nor am I pacifist because I am a coward. I am a pacifist because my lord tells me that even while I grieve Nick Berg, and feel nausea and sadness and, yes, rage at his death, I must pray all the harder for the men who killed him. I must respond even to this unspeakable ugliness with love. If Nick Berg had been my brother, could I write those same words? In the short run, no; I would surely be overcome by an anger so intense that it blinded me. But in the end, no matter what my human emotions may be, I know the only way forward is forgiveness, and that, as my Savior taught me and as my church teaches, that forgiveness must be expressed in action. And responding to Nick Berg’s death with violence is incompatible with that understanding of forgiveness.

Prisoners, porn, feminism, domination

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 10, 2004
in Feminism, Porn and War
. 5 Comments

With the home computer busted, I sure do miss a lot when I am out of the office. (I have ordered a new desktop system from Dell, and will finally get broadband at home — soon.)

One thing I missed was the discussion that began late last week about the prison scandal in Iraq and feminist comparisons between the Abu Ghraib photographs and porn. Ralph at Cliopatria posted about it on Friday, linking to several articles. Through HNN, I read this terrific piece by Donna Hughes (a Gender Studies prof in Rhode Island) in the National Review. Excerpt:

Why are we shocked by these images from Abu Ghraib, but when the victims are women (or gay men) the images are called pornography or “adult entertainment”? Why can we easily see the violations of human beings in one set of images, but miss it in others? What if the Iraqi men had been forced to smile, could we be convinced that there was a newly formed “publishing and film production” company in Baghdad instead of sexual abuse and humiliation being perpetrated?

President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have condemned the acts and the abuse of the Iraqis. They said that these acts do not represent American values. I want to believe that is true. Yet, I see the common themes and methods used by other types of perpetrators on different victims. These similar images are what the young American soldiers from the Internet generation have grown up with and learned to call “adult entertainment.” Did they become desensitized to the harm of doing such things to people by seeing multiple images of similar abuse to women? Did they learn how to violate someone by being a voyeur to abuse, and in Abu Ghraib they had the chance to become perpetrators — and pornographers? Did they fully comprehend the harm they were doing?

Cliopatria then linked to a Clayton Cramer, who offered this response to Hughes:

I completely agree with her that a lot of pornography is degrading to the people involved–I see examples often enough in my in-box. There is one rather dramatic difference between the pictures from Abu Ghraib and the vast majority of commercial pornography–the question of choice. Unless there’s something that Professor Hughes knows about Abu Ghraib’s detainees that the rest of us don’t know, every single of them was there against his will.

One might be able to make the case that economic necessity “forces” some people to make pornography today–but only in the same sense that economic necessity “forces” me to work for my current employer, instead of doing what I would prefer–blogging all night, and haunting university library stacks all day.

And then my esteemed fellow Cliopatriarch, Jonathan Dresner, rebuts Cramer, saying that ol’ Clayton is

splitting hairs when (he) attack(s) the pornography argument, because the bulk of Hughes’ argument (which Cramer accepts) is about the connection between sexual humiliation and enslavement (sexual, political or otherwise), and the fact that there are “voluntary” (within the limits of social choice) subjects of pornography and “voluntary” prostitutes does not in any way rebut the existence of involuntary participants. Moreover, the inability (or unwillingness) of consumers to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary participants means that the sexual product/services marketplace is clearly tainted. The connection between political repression and sexual humiliation is even more powerful, and that’s clearly a way in which we should be loudly and clearly distinguishing ourselves from Iran, etc., not making excuses for diving (not falling) to that level.

Dang. Between Donna Hughes and Dresner, all the money quotes have been taken!

I agree completely with Jonathan that one of the most troubling aspects of pornography is that we eroticize the absence of consent. Those of us who are most disturbed by the porn industry recognize that the harm done to its perfomers is not the greatest of its sins, though the harm it does is deep and enduring to thousands (Hughes’ piece goes into details). The most destructive aspect of the porn industry is the harm it does to the culture by presenting images of degradation and domination as “fun” and “entertaining”. (Like many, I am fascinated by the role of American women guards in these pictures from Abu Ghraib. I don’t doubt for a second that they — like virtually every other American young adult — had seen plenty of porn that depicted women as victims in their lives. One cannot help but wonder if the opportunity to “turn the tables” as it were, and force men into traditionally female positions, was too irresistable to ignore. )

One of the most common subgenres of American porn is the “facial”, which features men ejaculating onto women’s faces. The recent New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib makes it evident that Iraqi prisoners were compelled to do just that with one another. “Facials” are something young Americans in Iraq have grown up with on the Internet, and I haven’t any doubt that many of the postures and positions they forced upon their captives were inspired by pornography. Porn was the text from which the torturers learned their techniques; what is normally done to young and vulnerable women was now done to imprisoned, vulnerable men. But beyond that, there isn’t a heck of a lot of difference.

At its core, porn is less about pleasure than it is about power. Most women spend their young adulthood trying to “show just enough, but not too much”. Most young men are denied total and unrestricted visual access to the bodies of their female peers. Lots of young men, who hear endless “nos” and experience numerous rejections, fantasize about dominating and controlling the very young women whom they cannot physically possess. Porn offers these young men — and older men too — an alternative world where women’s legs are spread instead of crossed, where their bodies are receptive instead of closed, where a “no” can always be overcome and ultimately, no woman can hold back her own ecstatic “yes!” Porn doesn’t just make its consumers feel sexy, it makes them feel powerful. And when one suddenly finds oneself in a position of total power over another human being, is it any wonder that one might be tempted to force them to recreate the very images and act out the very scenarios that made one feel so wonderfully, near divinely, strong?

Trail running, Chinchillas, Pat Tillman, and country music theology

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 24, 2004
in Athletics and Fitness, Chinchillas, Christianity, Music, Pacifism, People and War
. 56 Comments

The weather in Southern California has been breathtaking the last two days. This morning, we did a thirteen-miler run up in the hills behind Monrovia, just east of Pasadena. My body is now well-recovered from the near-disaster of April 3’s 50K. No big races ahead on the schedule, just some easy running.

The fact that it is hot means the central air conditioner must be on full blast all day. Chinchillas do not do well when the temperature gets over 75, and can die rapidly once it climbs over 80. It will be a very expensive next few months, making certain that my little 1.5 pound Matilde is kept cool in the swelter of a Pasadena late spring and summer!

I passed 20,000 hits sometime early this morning; I know that doesn’t mean 20,000 unique visitors, but it still is a lot of folks coming here since mid-January. Thanks. I’ve decided to add a sidebar of a few of my most popular posts.

Okay, here’s Saturday’s rant which will no doubt infuriate one or two folks:

Annika had a touching post yesterday about the death of Pat Tillman (the NFL player killed in Afghanistan). I disagree with Annika’s politics, but I confess I was quite moved by what she wrote. But then, alas, the little pacifist theologian who lives in my head got mad. Annika quoted the song “American Soldier” by country singer Toby Keith, which included these lines:

Oh, and I don’t want to die for you,
But if dyin’s asked of me,
I’ll bear that cross with honor,
‘Cause freedom don’t come free.

One of the things that many Christians who believe in the efficacy of war have a tendency to do is to confuse “dying” with “killing”. This goes all the way back to Julia Ward Howe’s ringing final lines of the Battle Hymn of the Republic: “As He died to make men holy, we shall die to make men free.” Stirring it may be (I love that hymn, I weep whenever I sing it) but it’s poor theology.

Jesus himself died for us on a cross; last time I made my way through the Gospels, he didn’t kill for us. Soldiers have but one life to give for their country, but their real usefulness, alas, lies in their willingness to kill for their country. American forces, everyone agrees, have done most of the killing and relatively little of the dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have no desire to see American lives lost. I am sorry that Pat Tillman died; he seemed to be an unusually intelligent and thoughtful man. But it is troubling to me that those who grieve his death compare the sacrifice of an armed soldier to the non-violent sacrifice prescribed in the New Testament.

We are all called to the cross. Jesus says “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” The Christian life is not always one of joy and happiness; it can be and perhaps even should be one of pain and sacrifice. If suffering was all that soldiers did in war, then a Toby Keith could claim that they were truly taking up the cross. For those of us within the pacifist Anabaptist tradition, inflicting suffering — even upon one’s enemies — is antithetical to the spirit of the cross. Our soldiers may be good men engaged in a noble cause, but their methods are not those that Jesus or his disciples used. Jesus, Stephen, Peter, Paul; they and others after them went to their deaths willingly. But they darned sure never took anyone else’s life along the way. Though it may serve the songwriters to do so, connecting the martyrdom of the doves with the sacrifice of the hawks is bad history, bad politics, and bad theology.

In the countless talks and arguments I have with non-pacifist Christians, I am always keenly aware that there are indeed good men and women of sound theology who defend the compatibility of war and faith. I respect the “just war” tradition, even as the historian in me is convinced it is a 4th century construct designed to placate the Roman Empire. I need to say yet again that I grieve all of those who die in war, including those who die in combat. But I cannot equate the profession of soldiering with Jesus’ command to take up His cross, and even in a time of sadness, I am troubled — and angered — by the appropriation of that sacred image to honor men who die with blood on their hands.

I have a twin…

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 19, 2004
in Blogging, Politics, Vanity and War
. 6 Comments

… and her name is Christy at Dry Bones Dance. Writing about Iraq. she describes herself thus today:

I’m a political independent who skews heavily Green. I’m a pacifist, “seamless garment” type pro-lifer, with a strong respect for grassroots action and a community’s right to self-determination. I believe power corrupts, or at least gives corruption the space to move around, so I believe that it is our responsibility as citizens of a democratic society to hold the politically, economically, and religiously powerful accountable for their actions and policies. I’m an ecumenically-minded evangelical who believes that all of us are created in the image of God, and our policies and methods of governance should respect the dignity innate in all of us. Just to clarify, I was not being sarcastic when I said that I genuinely hope I am wrong about my opinion of Bush’s actions in Iraq. If I were to hope for more death and bloodshed just so I could gloat over the downfalls of a President whom I don’t like very much, then I should hand in my pacifist credentials immediately.

Hear, hear, hear, hear, hear.

Too many anti-war lefties whom I know are positively gloating over the rising body count in Iraq, applauding anything (even loss of life) when it brings discredit to this administration. I confess I’ve had to struggle within myself to avoid the terrible sin of rejoicing in death; no greater evil could possibly lurk inside me! I would rather be proved wrong and have the president be re-elected (heavens forfend) than to lose any more lives on any side. I’d rather be thought a fool than to be proven right by rivers of blood.

Go give Christy some link love.

“Never allow our youngsters to die in vain”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 14, 2004
in Christianity, Politics and War
. 16 Comments

I watched the tail end of the presidential press conference yesterday, and was struck by these words (the full transcript is here):

One of the things that’s very important, Judy, at least as far as I’m concerned, is to never allow our youngsters to die in vain. And I made that pledge to their parents. Withdrawing from the battlefield of Iraq would be just that, and it’s not going to happen under my watch.

That phrase “die in vain” is an old one, and one with an interesting history. A little playtime on the Internet revealed the following:

In particular, I would like to say a word to some of the bravest people I have ever met-the wives, the children, the families of our prisoners of war and the missing in action. When others called on us to settle on any terms, you had the courage to stand for the right kind of peace so that those who died and those who suffered would not have died and suffered in vain, and so that, where this generation knew war, the next generation would know peace.

– Richard Nixon, January 1973

Ten years earlier, in a very different context:

“And so my friends, they did not die in vain.”

– Martin Luther King Jr., speaking at the funeral of the young victims of a church bombing, 1963

And exactly one century earlier, the most famous use of the phrase to most Americans (one hopes):

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain…

– Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863

Lincoln probably got the phrase from the King James Version of Galatians 2:21:

“I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.”

Someone will no doubt correct me if I am wrong, but I am assuming that that is the earliest use of the phrase in English. The phrase is never used elsewhere in Scripture to refer to anyone else’s death, only Christ’s. It seems to me that it’s a heck of a jump that Lincoln made — to go from Christ’s death on the cross as not being “in vain” (a phrase the literate and faithful Lincoln knew likely by heart) to the deaths of soldiers. It’s clear what Paul means — Christ’s death is liberating for the world. It is clear to my emotions what Lincoln meant, what King meant, what Nixon meant, and what Bush meant. It sounds good — largely because it sounds so comfortingly familiar.

I’m not here to judge the merits of our War between the States, the Vietnam War, the deaths of the Civil Rights Movement, or Iraq. I am here to question the real meaning of the phrase. If not “dying in vain” refers to Christ’s efficacious death on the Cross, then to use the same words to describe the deaths of other folks is borders on the sacriligious.

Trying to honor the dead by giving meaning to their deaths precedes Paul, of course. One thinks instantly of Pericles’ funeral oration. But it’s the use of the phrase “in vain” — the one thing that jumped out at me from Bush’s words last night — that sticks with me today.

Mercenaries and contractors

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 2, 2004
in Politics, Traveling and War
. 3 Comments

In the aftermath of the widely publicized deaths in Fallujah, Mother Jones re-posted this story from last year about private military contractors in Iraq. I noted this particularly troubling bit:

The Pentagon has become so dependent on private military companies that it literally cannot wage war without them. Troops already rely on for-profit contractors to maintain 28 percent of all weapons systems, and the Bush administration wants to increase that figure to 50 percent. In most cases, private military companies can legally withdraw their employees if faced with danger in a combat zone — an escape clause that worries many military officials. If contractors flee when the shooting starts, it could sever supply lines, ground aircraft, and leave soldiers to run complex weapons systems they no longer have the skill or know-how to keep in working order. “There are some weapons systems that the U.S. military forces do not have the capability to do their own maintenance on,” concedes David Young, a deputy commander at the Defense Contract Management Agency.

Emphases are mine.

I met some men whom I’m fairly sure were private military contractors last summer in Colombia. After a week of not seeing any Americans at all, we suddenly heard American voices while staying in the Dann Carlton Hotel in Bucaramanga (northeastern Colombia, near but not in a combat zone). My gal and I were having dinner in the hotel restaurant when we saw three 30-ish men make their way to the bar, chatting away with obvious Yankee accents. Since Bucaramanga is a place no tourist would normally want to go, I couldn’t resist the chance to go up and chat with them. I walked up, introduced myself, and said how nice it was to hear American voices. I asked them what had brought them to Bucaramanga, and I got a cold, fixed stare and a one word reply: “Work”. I didn’t push it further, but the men then began to pepper me with all sorts of questions about our presence in Colombia. It was most unnerving. Once they had satisfied themselves that I was not a journalist (which seemed to be their biggest concern), they were reasonably friendly. I later overheard them talking about helicopters, and how Colonel so-and-so was a complete idiot… it was altogether unnerving. I did not need to see any identification to know more or less precisely what they were doing in Bucaramanga; next time, I’ll keep my whole “hail-fellow-well-met” act to myself!