It is disturbing to see that the Springfield Center Baptist Church
has on its sign board, instead of the usual messages expressing God’s
love, “The cost of war is the price of freedom.” It is unseemly, to say
the least, for a Christian church to be in the business of promoting
war.
Perhaps church officials would say that their duty as patriotic
citizens overrides their duty as Christians, although this is
questionable. But in this case, in blindly espousing a war that, it is
now widely known, was begun on false pretenses, they are failing in
what the founding fathers said many times was the patriotic duty of
American citizens: namely, to engage in an informed way in the
political process.
Blind allegiance to the President, who is an elected official, not a
king, utterly fails to fulfill the expectations of the framers of the
Constitution.
A majority of Americans now know that the reason Bush gave for
attacking Iraq – that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction –
was a lie based on deliberately fabricated intelligence. Many also know
that the justification the administration shifted to – bringing
democracy to Iraq – has not been fulfilled in a meaningful way, despite
the elections that have been held there.
Democracy consists of far more than just elections, and the Bush
administration has seen fit to ignore the fact that the overwhelming
majority of Iraqis, as expressed in last January’s election and shown
in poll after poll, want the U.S. troops to leave.
In the recent election, the voters split along sectarian lines, and
many experts on Iraq fear that the election will only foment sectarian
violence as the Sunni minority fears and reacts violently to reprisal
by the Shiite majority, something that is already happening.
The elections are proving to be a bitterly divisive factor in Iraq.
At the same time, the Shiite victory has also been a victory for Shiite
Iran and for clerics intent on creating a theocracy in Iraq. Already
women’s rights there are being eroded, Taliban-style.
As for the claim that the war in Iraq is a front line in the war on
terror, based in large part on the administration’s other big lie
concerning the nonexistent connection between Saddam and 9/11, it is
clear to many observers, including many in the military, that Iraq has
become the greatest recruiting and training ground for terrorists that
they have ever had.
Al Qaeda operatives are flocking to Iraq to gain experience that
they will use in terrorist operations elsewhere. Terrorist acts
worldwide multiplied approximately threefold last year over the
previous year, as resources are diverted from fighting terrorism to
Bush’s sorry adventure in Iraq.
Many religious leaders have made it perfectly clear that the Iraq
war is an immoral war. The U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops recently
issued a call to bring the troops home as soon as responsibly possible.
From reading the speeches of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., we
can guess what he would say about the Iraq war.
King provides us with the true Christian viewpoint on war. In one
speech in which he condemned the Vietnam War, he predicted that unless
this country undergoes a revolution of values, we will be condemned to
fight an endless series of futile and unjust wars. He said:
“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, extreme materialism, and militarism are
incapable of being conquered . . .
“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 hand on the world order
and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This
business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s
homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate
into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from
dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically
deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation
that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. . .
“This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern
beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an
all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft
misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed .
. . as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity
for the survival of man.
“When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and
weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional
bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have
seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key
that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.
“This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate
reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
‘Let us love one another (Yes), for love is God. (Yes) And every one
that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth
not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in
us and his love is perfected in us.’ Let us hope that this spirit will
become the order of the day.”
Cathy Mason is a resident of Springfield.
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