CLANGLING CYMBOLS A Reflection on War & Peace

A sermon by James Ishmael Ford
2 February 2003

The Text

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Prophecies will come to an end. Tongues will cease. Knowledge will come to an end. We know in part, we prophesy in part. But when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. Now, we see in a mirror, in a riddle. Then we will see face to face. Now I know in part. Then I will know fully. Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

Here we are today, almost certainly on the eve of a new war. So, we need to talk. In the spirit of love, in the spirit of possibility, we need to consider this war and what it might mean for us and for the world. The majority of us in this room have severe reservations about this war. A fair number of us actively oppose it, while a smaller number of us think it is the right thing to do. We need, I deeply believe, to talk.

I suggest at the beginning of a conversation on something so terrible and powerful in its potential to divide us, we start by admitting what we don’t know. We don’t know all the facts. We probably will never know even enough of the facts. And, of course, in that same spirit we don’t, we can’t know what will play out of our decisions. The consequences of our actions are hidden behind a veil.

Such an acknowledgement, however, is not a call to refrain from action. Our most important choices seem always to be made with inadequate information. What we are called to do is to try and know as much as possible and at the same time very critically to know ourselves, and out of that to do our best.

For me one consequence of my experience of looking within myself and at the state of the world; is I am not a pacifist. I truly admire that perspective, and respect those who make nonviolence their path in life. I think the impulse to resist violence is healthy and wise. Our actions always have consequences, and the consequences of violence are almost always more violence. So, I try to make non-violence my first reaction in human encounter.

At the same time while the world is complex and it is always dangerous to try and put people into boxes with labels like evil, there is evil in the world. Of course we need to be humble about this. No one has clean hands, particularly nations. We all do evil things, that is, we each of us commit acts for which the consequences are suffering for others.

Still, sometimes the weight of one person’s or one nation’s actions are so terrible, people do need to stand up against them, to stop them. And I believe, sometimes we need to go to war. To make such choices with as few likely terrible consequences as possible, we really need to be aware of our own demons, to be as sure as we can we aren’t acting from our own grasping or aversion or ignorant certainties.

So, at the edge of this war, just briefly, let’s consider ourselves. On the one hand, I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have been born an American. With hard work and some luck people can do well for themselves, can rise above the circumstances of their birth, a hope that lives as an ideal and frequently as the real deal. It has been true for me. I was born dirt poor. In this country I was able to get an education and a foothold on a life beyond that of my parents.

The likelihood of doing something similar anywhere else, even in Europe or other parts of the industrialized world are not particularly high. And in most of the world it could never happen. The dream of Jefferson and Adams and those others who wove this nation together, lives. The American dream of egalitarian possibility is, for the most part, a beacon in the world.

But that doesn’t mean we’re without faults, and deep shadows. While I think bourgeois democracy is vastly better than any other real political system I’m aware of, we all know it is not perfect. Money speaks louder than ideas. Certainly elections are too often won for reasons other than merit.

Truthfully, the creativity associated with capitalism has been astonishing. What people do when given opportunity to strive is amazing. Still capitalism, as well as the materialist culture that it fosters, can be and often is grasping and brutal. Our culture is marred by racism, a terrible fact which we need to acknowledge. I was able to climb out of poverty. If my skin were another color, it would have been significantly more difficult. Our egalitarian dream lives for many, for a larger percentage of our population than possibly is true anywhere else in the world, but it isn’t true for everybody.

My point here for today is this mixing of much that is good with some that is awful is all part of our culture. Choices need as much clarity as possible. We need to know as best we can our motivations, if we hope to make the best possible decisions.

As we are barreling toward this war in Iraq, we need to think about why and to what purpose? The rhetoric for the first invasion of Iraq was the nations of the world standing against a tyrant who invaded and brutalized a neighboring country. While many felt the deeper motive of our national leaders were in fact oil fields, we nonetheless as a united nations repelled that invasion.

We knew the evils the dictator Saddam Hussein had Perpetrated upon his people, the gassing of the Kurds, the torture of innocents, the murder of whole families for the possible sins of one person. He and his Baathist party were, are, a scourge on the region, nothing less than governance by mafia. But in the name of realpolitik we stopped short of entering Baghdad and bringing down his regime.

Instead we instituted a variety of restraints. Some have proven very good, others have had horrific consequences. In the shadow of the northern no-fly zone the Kurdish people without any additional help from us or anyone else, seem to have begun to weave democratic institutions, have begun the first tentative formation of their own national dream. But, also, our massive embargo of Iraq has proven to be deadly to the people of that nation while not touching the dictator or his own in any significant manner.

Then there was September 11th. We were assaulted. A horror was Perpetrated upon our people. So, with some hesitation, I certainly myself was hesitant, but in concert with others, we invaded Afghanistan seeking to destroy the Al Qaeda network, and as a side benefit to bring down the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban terror regime. No one need mourn their passing.

I believe it is within our rights of self-defense as a people to seek out and to bring to justice Osama bin-Laden and others associated with his Al Qaeda organization. This is, I understand, a war that almost certainly will be fought in shadow. It is not a war against nations, but something new and terrible.

But, why is our president not talking about Al Qaeda and Osama bin-Laden, but rather Iraq and Saddam Hussein? He says it is because the dictator Hussein supports terrorists and is actively seeking to create new weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. Only a storm of protest caused him to pull back from immediate plans to invade Iraq and to accept a United Nations call to intensive inspections.

There has never been but the most tangential association between the Baathists and fundamentalist Islam. They’re, as almost all of us know, mortal enemies. While the president hints of terrible things known to the administration about possible Iraqi weapon systems, what they’ve actually been willing to tell us is pretty meager. The dictator has tried to obtain materials that would support the construction of nuclear devices. There are also the raggedy remains of earlier chemical weapons, weapons we had a hand in developing. But that’s it. And not enough for me to even think this invasion could be a good idea.

The president calls us to create a new culture in the Middle East, a democratic wave that would wash through the Islamic world, creating bourgeois democracies throughout the region. And, truthfully, if he were truly pursuing such a goal, I would have to weigh that in my considerations. I am not one who holds to the moral equivalency between democracy and totalitarianisms. But our president has spent his national political life disparaging what he calls "nation building." And the truth of what we’ve done so far, or rather have not done so far in Afghanistan; gives me almost no hope for follow through on any such commitment in a post-invasion Iraq.

As I think of seeing the world as truly and clearly as I can, as I look within myself, as I reflect on our own nation, I say we cannot afford to waste our lives and the lives of so many Iraqis in an invasion that appears to have other motives than those stated by the administration. There is always the stench of oil in the background. And there is the hint of personal vendetta. This is not an action driven by our best motives or to some reasonable goal.

As far as Iraq is concerned, let’s continue to enforce the no fly zones. Let the Kurds flourish in the north. They’re almost certainly better off with that than with what ever might follow an invasion, where there well may already have been deals cut with allies to make sure no state called Kurdistan might arise and think of its oppressed sisters and brothers in Turkey or Iran.

Let the investigations continue. Give them more muscle. They could go on for a decade or more at a fraction of the cost of an invasion. And, so important, let us shift the embargo from those necessities of life that the Iraqi people desperately need and focus instead on embargoing those things which the dictator wants. Let the Saddam Hussein fall from within.

And let us not turn from that other source of boiling trouble in the Middle East. Let us not turn away from the great web of relationships, and the deeper causes of the enmities that bubble below the surface. Let us dedicate ourselves to the protection and furthering of the largely egalitarian and democratic Israeli nation, our natural allies in a world of tyranny; as well as pushing for the emergence of a free Palestinian state. Without both there never will be peace in the region. For the sake of the world let us keep engaging, pushing our friends and making our enemies see the possibilities in being friends.

But most of all as we enter this new era; let us look to ourselves. What is it that we are doing that is wrong? There is no lack of nobility in correcting our own part in this mess. Let us always seek the higher road. Why are we suspending the rights of our citizens and others in the name of justice?

What is the purpose in this legal fiction of "enemy combatant," and following that designation those black holes in which people disappear? This is against all we stand for. Let us object to these things. Let us look to the erosions of our own democratic institutions and object. Let us not fall to tyranny within in the name of protecting us from tyrannies without.

We are no longer in a time when nations should go it alone. Just as the whims of princes are no longer acceptable grounds for war or peace, no nation should think it has interests that are not intimately tied up with the rest of the world. Let us foster and sustain a true United Nations, where our many aspirations can find possibility and fruition. And from there if need be, let us consider actions, even if they must be war. But, let’s do this multilaterally from our best motives, and within our best perspectives, knowing who we are and what we can be.

At least this is my best call. I look within, I reflect, and I share from that perspective. But, our religious tradition doesn’t let it stop here. Each of us must test and think and look, and speak. So, what in the name of the good, of love do you think we should be doing, or not doing? Not knowing with certainty, what are your thoughts today on this matter of the greatest significance for us and for many?

(a time for sharing)

Let me draw our time together here to a close with some words from Dorothy Day. "People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel helpless. There’s too much work to do."

Amen.