catapult magazine

What does being anti-war at this point mean? Now that we ARE at war, are you rooting for Iraq, the “underdog?” And if you are, does that mean you endorse Iraq’s methods of attack, the torture and killing of American soldiers? Do you want America to lose?

If this is the peace movement … what’s treason?

laurencer, bridget, kristin marie — I hear what you’re saying. How shall we then proceed when discussing the war? Now that the war is on, shall we take that as a given? If we believe American aggression in this case cannot be justified, do we nevertheless shut up and try to make the best of it? It feels like we’re being bullied into taking a supportive stance. And I don’t take well to being bullied.

I’m also curious as to why the roles of liberals and conservatives have been reversed. Traditionally it would be liberals who would be interested in international intervention for humanitarian reasons. Conservatives wanted nothing to do with such “bleeding-heart” liberal ideas. Now it’s reversed. Anybody got any comments on that?

Grant, I’m all for US involvement in foreign affairs. I think it’s crucial for US and world security. But Bush’s approach is making enemies of former friends rather than making friends of former enemies. I believe the best way for America to be secure is to have lots of friends. Thus I’m pessemistic for the immediate future, but I hope I’m wrong.

wow, laurencer, you hit it on the nose. you articulated exactly what i’ve been feeling about this war, and haven’t been abel to express. I still can’t believe that we just invaded another nation without them attacking us or one of our allies. This sets a whole new pressident (sp?) for american foriegn policy, and one i really don’t agree with at all. Dan- I here you as well. It seems like Bush just kind of used the popularity he gained after 9-11 to launch a personal vendetta against Saddam. This war is not justified, and think we should not shut up about it. But, we are in it now, so lets just pray that things go well, that there is a minimum loss of life on both sides, and that the whole thing is over soon. I think of it as supporting the troops, not the war.

This war has bothered me a lot more than I even expected. I can’t sleep at night, just thinking about the whole situation. And I agree that any attempts to over-simplify this situation are na?ve and counter-productive. Every time I think I’ve kind of solidified my stance, I run into new people, or new evidence, or new ideas. These are some of the complicating factors that have forced me to re-evaluate my thoughts lately:

Before the Gulf War and the sanctions, Iraq was NOT in a shambles. They had state-of-the-art medicine, a high education rate, clean water, healthy citizens. In short, they were on their way to becoming a developed nation. But that all changed with the sanctions and everything reversed. Because of sanctions restricting just about everything, including necessary parts for the maintenance of water treatment plants, Iraqis have been dying from simple diseases that are carried through unsanitary water and are easily preventable if they had access to basic medical supplies. Basically, I have been having trouble reconciling my idea of Saddam—I know he is a brutal dictator, but why was the quality of life so high before the U.S. got involved? I don’t understand.

If it is so clear that Saddam has so little regard for his own people, why has the U.S. taken the approach it has? Why would imposing sanctions on Iraq help to sway his actions, given that the common people receive the brunt of that? And why is invading the country going to persuade him most, since it is the people in their own homes who are being most devastated? Isn’t there a more direct tactic of taking him out?

Why has the U.S. started keeping profiles of peace activists, and labelling them as exhibiting “extremist behaviour”, and thereby equating them with terrorists? Isn’t one of the virtues of this country free speech? When I was in Russia and visiting a cemetary in Moscow, a man approached me to talk, and when we finished having a wonderful conversation he said, “20 years ago, I would have been arrested for talking to you. KGB members would have been watching me right this minute.” I don’t want that to happen in this country. And I don’t want to have to worry about interacting with either pro-war or anti-war activists, and worry that I’m being profiled or watched. After the protests here in Chicago and the subsequent arrests (and I’m not saying that the arrests aren’t justified, because I think they were—the protests definitely did disturb the peace), my roommate from Ethiopia has been cowering at home. The Chicago police beat protestors up, stole their stuff, and trapped them in one area without telling them they needed to disperse. My Ethiopian roommate is afraid of getting caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, getting arrested, and then getting deported. It hardly feels like freedom, watching her being afraid.

Why hasn’t the U.S. been forthright about its mission? Is it Operation Iraqi Freedom? Or is it Operation Get-Saddam-Before-He-Gets-Us? Or is it Operation How-Did-Our-Oil-Get-Under-Their-Sand? The fuzziness of exact motive is what lessens the credibility even more.

Having a few very devout Muslim students in my class, I’ve learned a lot about the nature of Islam this semester. These students have all recently come from India, Pakistan, Egypt and Bosnia. To equate Saddam, even al-Qaeda, to Islam is nothing short of ridiculous. The three have NOTHING to do with each other. I would hazard a guess that if you suggested that they were connected to a Muslim, you would get a swift punch in the face. At the very least, an indignant response.

Last night I had a long conversation with my downstairs neighbour, Mario, who is from Chile. In the early 70s, the socialist leader Allende came into power, and the democracy he instated was world-renowned. However, this was a little too socialist for the U.S., and even worse, Allende nationalized 2 copper mines that the U.S. was running (damn copper—how did it get in their mines?). So the U.S. conveniently nudged Pinochet into power, and thus began more than 20 years of terror. Mario told me how his father was in a class at the university, and police stormed in and slit the throat of one of the professors. Right in front of them. If that is the democracy and freedom that the U.S. promotes, then I want NO PART. After that haunting story, Mario said, “Americans don’t understand why the rest of the world doesn’t like them. But the rest of the world knows why.” I think that if you believe everyone else in the world MUST love the U.S. and if they don’t, then they’re simply ungrateful or jealous or primitive in thought—then either you’ve never been out of this country (and Europe doesn’t count as being out of North America), or else you’ve never had a meaningful conversation with someone from another country. That is all the politeness I can muster on that topic.

50% of Iraqis are under the age of 15. Where do the ideas of sportsmanlike war fit in regarding fighting and killing children? Why has no one talked about this? Given Saddam’s track record, do we really think he will be above sending children to fight?

Having just seen “The Pianist” this weekend, I am reminded again of how evil is most effective when it advances incrementally. For this reason, I am very afraid of how things are unfolding. The war with Iraq seems very huge right now, and it is—it’s monumental. But I’m afraid that we’re not taking the appropriate steps back from the situation and looking at how this event is going to affect the world on a larger scale. I have visions of eventual world chaos and tragedy. I agree that it is high time Christian voices interject and alert people.

Margaret Mead said:

I feel that is particularly relevant for Christians at this point. I just don’t know how to reconcile my conscience right now.

Wow. What an excellent summary of the situation at hand!

This is the way I’ve been dealing with some of these issues in my own thinking:

The Bush administration recognizes that sanctions on Iraq were a failure. Therefore, it has taken a new step toward more involvement in foreign affairs. The Bush administration did not assassinate Saddam because in Saddam’s absence, a worse leader might take control with even worse methods of governance. America’s past half-hearted attempts at foreign involvement (supporting Iraq in the Iraq-Iran conflict, giving Bin Laden money and weapons, the example you cited in Chile etc.) now must be rectified by becoming much more involved and by having more control over the future. Bush wants to make sure Iraq has a better chance at being a strong democracy and knows that this requires full control of Iraq by the U.S. military for a certain amount of time.

About the potential for a loss of “freedoms” in the U.S.: I too am very concerned about how difficult it will be to maintain a “free” society after something like September 11. I suspect that Bush feels “taking the war to them”, i.e. making structural changes in the regions that seem to breed terrorists, is the best alternative to hunkering down in the U.S., keeping a tighter than tight grip on our borders, setting up surveillance cameras everywhere to prevent terrorism etc. It was quite a wake-up call yesterday when Chicago’s Mayor Daley tore up the runway at Meggs Field, an airport for private planes located on the lake adjacent to downtown, in the middle of the night. His justification was a fear that terrorists would use it, and so he wanted to avoid all the complications of media and protestors by doing it while everyone was sleeping! That doesn’t sound very democratic, but it makes me wonder what more will be done in the name of fear.

About U.S. forthrightness in times of war: Even though I also don’t buy the current title for U.S. military operations in Iraq, I do believe, and have been arguing on this website, that the Bush administration has been clear about their objectives. It is clear that some U.S. companies will benefit from the rebuilding of Iraq, but this is consistent with Bush’s belief that a big company’s profit is profittable for others as well. I believe Bush when he says the oil fields belong to the Iraqi people. If he goes back on his promise to restore Iraqi’s government and resources for the people of Iraq after the war, I will definitely have a reason not to trust him again. Until then, I see no reason to look for hidden motives and deceitful treacheries when there’s plenty to argue about concerning Bush’s own clearly stated goals and publically pronounced vision for the future.

As an American, I do not demand that everyone love the U.S. The U.S. has slowly become “the great Satan” in the minds of many people in the world, but this seems just as one-sided and blind to the complexities of things as an American belief that the U.S. equals God’s Will. I am not convinced that this slow shift of world opinion is entirely connected to the failures of U.S. foreign policy. I wonder if many of the U.S.‘s failings become glaringly obvious, rather, because there has been a shift in the way people think the world ought to look. The anti-globalization spirit that continues to grow casts the U.S. in an unattractive light and calls previously unobserved U.S. practices into question. It’s good that such wrongs have come to light, but as a believer in the “reformational” spirit, I don’t see how it’s helpful to encompass everything American as evil. We have to be more careful about what is to be kept and what is to be thrown away in the U.S.‘s involvement with other nations (unless you’re saying that the U.S. shouldn’t be involved at all, which is something we tried for awhile without success, thankfully enough for the Jews in WWII Europe).

Part of the polarization thing comes from the Bush Administration setting itself up as the good guys and setting up the Iraqis as the bad guys. A Christian understands that sin runs through everything and that there are some moments when God’s grace shines through the activities of the U.S. military and also times when God’s grace shines through the iraqui side. Likewise, both sides are sinful and have memnts of greed, self interest and so on.

I know I am echoing several people here, but what the Chrisitan needs to do is try to see through all this stuff and discern the right course of action. I this case, I, personally, and guardedly supportive of the Bush administrations goals to liberate the people of Iraq. I am also supportive of those people who protest and the journalists who investigate stuff. To trust our government without reservation is foolish. To abandon our government whithout question is likewise foolish.

Way back toaward the beginning of this discussion, Mrsanniep said something about how it is the soldiers on the front lines who fight for our freedoms. I’d go along with that. But I’d also say that the lawyers and protesters stateside who are trying to safeguard the civil rights of those darkskinned people we have locked up without explanation, they are fighting for American rights too. And they will never get a parade.

true true.

I’ve heard other Christians use this “everyone’s a sinner” bit to make Saddam’s sin equal to the U.S.‘s sin though, and that puts us into dangerous territory. I’m really struggling to find a way to articulate the distinctions between the sins without dealing in degrees of sinfulness (a shady business). If I look at history, I may find countless examples of badness, but this history does not need to undermine any kind of moral justification for what the U.S. is doing now. Dragging up dark incidents from America’s past does not necessarily prove the U.S. is just as bad as Saddam. That kind of an argument might lead us to rebuke Canada as an evil regime because of the way it treated its aboriginal peoples or the Japanese during WWII, but what good would that do us? Even though all nations have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, we must be able to make judgments about whether one nation is taking a proper course of action, despite its sinful past.

Can someone please explain some things to me? Dissent has been virtually extinguished in America since the war began. What has changed for all those who oppose the war? How can an American who was firmly against this war, have stopped speaking out against it because the troops are now fighting? If the military is doing something you oppose, how can you endorse what it’s doing?

I’ve been wondering the same thing, and would also like to have this explained to me. I think, at some level, I understand what is happening, and as with every situation, there are many complex factors. But this is the one concrete thing I’ve been able to put my finger on: for those protestors who were arrested here in Chicago the past few weeks, the ones who were international students were deported. Immediately. Watching the effects of that on my roommate and also on my own students, I’ve determined one thing: there are certain segments of the American population who have simply been forced into fear, and thus no longer feel free to have their voice heard. I think this is very sad. And very, very, very wrong.

Theodore Roosevelt really captured something there.