Why-War: A Letter To A License Plate

[In honor of the Memorial Day which we in America generally celebrate with a three-day weekend, parades and solemn assemblies, I submit a short series of essays regarding war, the military and "turning the other cheek", among other things.]

Dear "Why-War",

I saw your Subaru wagon the other day zip through town. You were just about to escape my attention when I spotted your license plate, Why-War; and I realized that it's too bad such plates don't come with punctuation marks. For surely you mean to ask a question, "Why war?" But it is possible that your little plate is for you an answer to a rhetorical question, like "Why do we care about the Middle East?"

"Why? War."

Or perhaps it's "Why Dash War", about hastening to do battle when you'd prefer restraint.

But I doubt your diminutive statement is so nuanced. It is no doubt a form of protest, a skeptic's query into the futility of war; a pacifist's shaking of the head; a Quaker's bending of the knee.

It's amazing how something as terse as "Why war?" requires for an answer something the size of a book. When one hears, for example, that "the war in Iraq is all about oil", one is struck with not merely the uselessness of trying to answer the statement in like length ("The war is not about oil"), but with the daunting fact that rebuttals to such claims may require volumes. If I say that "I am a descendant of the sexual union between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene," which is a rather small statement, there is no short and easy answer for even the most gifted Christian apologist to posit against me. Moreover, if I should say that President Bush is a liar, and leave it at that, my respondents might take months to tear down my assertion.

So, too, with your little "Why war?" There is no easy answer.

But like a fool too eager to take on any challenge, I shall run in headstrong; like an untrained man runs into a burning house to aid his neighbor, and I shall answer your query.

There are two reasons to "war", and they are that war is natural, and that war is loving. Do you doubt me? I should think you would. But I think that you would be wrong to hold fast to that doubt.

That war is natural is as plain as biology. Just read "Fecundity", the priceless chapter in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and you'll understand the claim. For every cell on this planet is in a battle against other cells; every species bears within its cytoplasm the power of defense and attack; the power of parry and lunge. Darwin knew this intimately, though not with the mystical force of Ms. Dillard. Life is struggle, if it is anything.

Right now, in each human body, masses of cells fight to keep the masses of cells alive, swarming and devouring enemy cells with so much pus and pugilism, white blood cells swirling down highways of vein and artery, blue and red lights a-flashing. There is no peace in the human corpus, until it is a human corpse. Even when the human body fails to protect itself from invaders, outside mercenaries come with hypodermics and knives and radiation and chemotherapy, with all restraint cast to the wind to rout out and destroy enemy strongholds. And all this without even flinching about collateral damage, as organs are chopped up and limbs chopped off to stop the cancerous, gangrenous, infectious flow.

If the human body can be so violent, and the doctors who protect it, then why not the body corporate, the collective humanity of nations, as they fight to rid the world of infection and disease? No doubt some, yourself included, might retort that humans are not cancers, that some regimes are not infections, and that to excise them is improper. But surely you agree that not all ideas are equal, or else you'd not be a pacifist, would you? And surely you agree that there are such things as bad ideas, ideas like "The Jews Must Die!" or "Long Live Tyranny!" Well, if there are bad ideas, such ideas do not live in a vacuum. They live in a host, whether it be one sick ruler, like Hitler, or one sick group of people. For there are people who believe bad ideas, with all their heart. Are the carriers of bad ideas not a threat, particularly if their idea is "Kill the infidel Americans!"?

OK. So you might accept that some people are bad. But do I hear you complain about preemption, about attacking that which is not a threat, at least not yet? Oh, what to say to that.

Perhaps something personal. My own mother, a small tumor in her breast, awoke from surgery to discover her entire breast was gone, her pectoral muscle (much of it) and her lymph nodes chiseled out, with but a scar left, all in a preemptive strike of the surgeon's scalpel. Preemptive strikes happen all the time in this world, every minute, and it is as common as bees swarming and stinging to death (including their own death) a threat that is no threat at all, but is only so perceived. Why war? Why sting?

But we are more than bees, or so we believe, and we have more to learn from gods than we do from white blood cells. Or so you might claim?

Fine. Let's take a look at the greatest of all religious founders, at least to those of us in the West, Jesus the (alleged) Christ. For in his teachings we find, or so it goes, the clearest and simplest moral codes, particularly as it relates to violence. "Turn the other cheek" to your aggressor; "Those who fight by the sword" shall die by it; "Love your neighbor as yourself." Ahh, yes, the refreshing simplicity of Jesus' teaching!

But, please notice, dear sir, that Jesus does not really teach us anything about conflict. Yes, he tells us to find our accuser and make peace with him, or to make peace with the magistrate before he presents his case in the court, but Jesus tells us nothing about how to behave if our accuser or judge loathes making peace.

Here's what Jesus does not help us with at all. Imagine you and your son are sitting at table Sunday morning enjoying sticky buns and tea. Suddenly your neighbor barges through the door wielding an ax, blood dripping from his arms and hands. He raises his ax over his head and steps toward you.

Stop the scene! Now ask yourself, "Who is my neighbor?" Is it the man with the ax, or your son, or both? Both, right? So, if we take Jesus' words to heart, you must turn your cheek to your neighbor, right? Which neighbor? Oh, yes. The aggressive, murderous one. And now imagine if that is what you did (start the scene!), that you, having the power to stop the man with the ax, turned in deferential love to him your silky cheek, and permitted him to cleave your skull.

Stop! How is this act of selfless pacifism loving your other neighbor, your son? How is he LOVED by your submitting to murder, and, how is HE loved by you leaving him unprotected from the murderer's hands. Moreover, how is "turning your cheek" loving at all, when it is unloving for a father (is it not?) to knowingly and willingly leave his son fatherless?

OK. Start the scene again. This time, instead of the ax-man coming at you, he turns to kill your son, or your other neighbor, Mr. Jones, who has just dropped by. You are not going to shout to your son, "Just turn the other cheek, Jimmy!" or to Jones, "Turn that cheek of yours, Jonesy!" are you? How is this "loving your neighbor as yourself"?

You see, Jesus does not help us here. Nor can he. For your son is your neighbor, and you must consider his well-being. What then is the loving thing to do? The loving thing is to protect your son and the madman; your son from violence and being orphaned, the man from committing a crime from which he may never recover. So, you leap to your feet, fight the man with fury, and you protect your son. In fact, you kill the ax-wielder, if you must, in order to keep him from sinning further, which is an act of grace and love.

But more importantly, here is a lesson Jesus does not teach: You not only must turn the other cheek to aggressors, you must FORCE everyone around you to do the same. In other words, Jesus did not teach that it is your mission to make everyone pacifists, but that only you should turn the other cheek. Hence, it is not Jesus who teaches that we should protest the defensive manuevers our neighbor across the street decides to take when he or she feels threatened.

So, in short, Jesus does not really help us understand war. He gives us little to go on.

Think of war, politically, in this way. If a woman has a right to choose to have an abortion with the blessing of the Supreme Court, then why doesn't your neighbor have the right to defend himself with all the force of the military? After all, if you're pro-life, it's not YOU who's having the abortion. Nor, if you are pro-peace, is it you bombing Baghdad. You see (surely you do), that this is all about freedom, about people having the liberty to defend themselves, or to stop aggressors from offending others, as they see fit: That is how THEY LOVE THEIR NEIGHBORS. And you, all pacifist and concerned in your Subaru, can go about your day loving and fighting and turning the other cheek as you see fit.

Sometimes loving one's neighbors requires that you stop them in their tracks from hurting your other neighbors, and by hurting themselves should they continue their violent ways. Stop a man dead before he kills a man, and you've stopped him from committing a crime. It's an odd grace, but it is a grace nonetheless.

I hope this answers your "Why-War" license plate. Do you know, by the way, that such plates are known as "vanity plates?"

Perhaps you do.

Peace, always.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: War On Terror, Pacifism, Christianity