No more spinach ... and please pass the dessert!

At a church Men's Forum a few years ago — indeed, it was the "Just War Theory and Iraq" forum, held shortly before the March 2003 invasion — Elder Klaus suggested reading books by people with whom we knew we disagreed, in order to challenge our own thinking with a different perspective.

To that end, last August I finally forced myself to pick up the copy of Darrell Cole's When God Says War Is Right that I'd had around the house. A pro-this-war brother at Emmanuel Covenant arranged a bulk purchase of that title — also right around the time of the Iraq invasion — and I simply never managed to muster the wanna to take it up. But last August, I decided that I must, primarily for the benefit of this weblog.

I think I read two or three chapters, tops. (And managed a couple of corresponding posts, here and here.) But it was like slogging through a cold plate of cooked spinach. I figured it was probably good for me — but I really didn't like it. Cole's style was dry — not at all compelling. To make matters worse, I couldn't shake the suspicion that he was baptizing American militarism with the views of several early church fathers. Now, I don't really have a problem with the views of the church fathers — I'm convinced the Bible sanctions just warfare. But in the few chapters that I'd read (and in some of the peeking ahead) I got the feeling that Cole felt all of America's military engagements have been just.

Then, while I was still choking down the spinach, my lovely bride set some ice cream and hot apple pie out on the table! She'd chanced across The Coming Draft: The Crisis in Our Military and Why Selective Service Is Wrong for America, by Philip Gold, at the public library, and thought I'd probably be interested, so she brought it home for me to look over.

Gold snagged me right out of the gate, for several reasons:

• He can turn a bourgeois-witty phrase — "Conscription sucks so bad, you get hickeys on your brain just thinking about it" — and he's not afraid to use made-up words like "ponderization" and "humongouser" (as in "more humongous").

• While he most vehemently opposes conscription, Gold also "[clings] to the antediluvian belief that every American male should spend some time in uniform as a normal part of life and of citizenship." (Might he be sympathetic to a militia-based national defense?) And while he finds conscientious objection both "personally and politically abhorrent ... were the draft to resume, I would extend the right to everybody, no questions asked." Conscience first, Caesar second.

• Gold's own life actions reflect both his opposition to the draft and his convictions re. duty-based, yet voluntary, military service. While in his senior year in college in 1970, Gold received a draft notice, which he mailed back to the draft board with this note:

Dear Draft Board,

Thank you for sending me this induction notice, which I am returning to you. I have no intention of serving in the United States Army. I will never serve in the United States Army. Please stop wasting my time, your time, and the government's postage.

Sincerely yours,
Philip Gold

PS: I recently joined the Marines

Gold served in the USMC officer corps for 11 years. (Not only that, but he's Jewish, and not afraid to lay the Iraq debacle at the feet of the neoconservatives — yes, he uses the "N-word"!)

Upon attaining his Ph.D. in history at Georgetown in 1981, Gold was commissioned by the Discovery Institute "to do a book on why we need the draft back."

My crest not only fell, it hit the floor with an audible thud. ...

It wasn't what I wanted. But fifty thousand to write a book and a year as a senior fellow in a no doubt prestigious think tank held a certain appeal. And so began what turned out to be a twenty-five year ponderization of two of the strangest ideas that human beings have ever come up with.

First, that a democratic state has the right to tear its citizens away from their homes, families, and private endeavors in order to send them anywhere the government desires to suffer, fight, kill, and die.

And second, that the citizens of a democratic state have the right to refuse.

In short, Gold's stance — "respectful of the military but unimpressed by the uses to which it has been put" — is what motivated him to write The Coming Draft.

After tearing halfway through the intro of the library's copy, I decided that I simply had to order my own from Amazon. (There are currently 30 new & used available from $3.89.) "Of course," I told myself, "you still must finish the spinach before starting dessert." So I gave Diannne the library's copy to take back, and put my own copy on the shelf when it arrived a couple weeks later.

But alas, I simply lost interest in Cole's book. Other priorities, and ... well, you know.

But now my family and I have a meeting with our Congressman, Trent Franks, this Thursday. We intend to ask him to work to eliminate Selective Service registration. (If nobody wants a draft, why do we still maintain the machinery of conscription?) Rep. Franks is a fellow believer, and I intend to first appeal to him with a biblical argument against the draft. But I figure I'd better read The Coming Draft as well, for prep work. (Heck, I'll probably offer to buy him a copy.)

Pass the ice cream and apple pie, please?

Service vs. slavery

The subject under consideration is, narrowly, the draft; more broadly, military service. But broadest of all is the question: Is there, can there be, any morally compelling, rationally structured, and militarily effective relationship between service and citizenship in the world and the age now upon us?

... [I]ssues of conscription and service, although currently atop nobody's list of concerns, will matter again greatly. And sooner than anyone thinks.

~ ~ Philip Gold, from the introduction of The Coming Draft: The Crisis in Our Military and Why Selective Service Is Wrong for America

Good Intentions, meetUnintended Consequences

Good intentions are not good enough, and we should always be humble and accept the possibility of being wrong. The lesson of the law of "unintended consequences" of our previous policies is to realize in our current policies that ends never justify the means.

Pragmatic reasons for any policy must always be consistent with moral rationale. If bad means appear to achieve good ends in the short term, then it is simply that we have failed to appreciate the real costs which in fact outweigh the presumed benefits.

~ Prof. Abdullahi An-Na'im, Emory University Law School, cited

by William Fisher in "Charlie Wilson's War, Act Two"

Turkey, Iraq, the US, and Just Cause

Okay, let me see if I have this straight:

On the one hand, a rebel Kurdish separatist group in Iraq, the PKK, has conducted raids into Turkey.

While the Turks have fought back in the past, their parliament yesterday voted to officially authorize Turkish forces to cross into Iraq in order to strike PKK targets.

Oh, and George Bush does not approve. "We are making it very clear to Turkey that we do not think it is in their interest to send troops into Iraq," he said.

On the other hand, Saddam Hussein neither co-operated with al Qaeda, nor was otherwise involved in the 9/11 terror attacks; and Iraq neither attacked nor imminently threatened the United States. But Congress and George Bush believed it was in our interest to invade Iraq, depose Saddam and rebuild/occupy Iraq.

Now I'm no diplomat, political scientist or expert in international relations, so maybe I'm missing something here. But it sure seems to me that Turkey has more just cause to conduct military operations in Iraq than we ever did ... but for some reason, George Bush doesn't approve of Turkey's actions.

Why dat is?

Pre-emptive vs. “preventive” war — A vital distinction

In his 1956 short story “The Minority Report,” science fiction author Philip K. Dick considered a future where murders are prevented — and their would-be (but not-yet) perpetrators punished — by Precrime, a system which interprets the visions of three mutant, “precognative” humans or “pre-cogs.” (I've not read the story, but highly recommend the 2002 film adaptaion by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise.)

It's astonishing that while we consider the idea of preventive punishment absurd and abhorrent on an interpersonal level, we readily accept it on an international level.

Today, the United States operates a de facto Department of Pre-War. Since 2002, we claim not only the ability to see into the future and discern with certainty the eventual aggressive actions of our enemies, but also the moral authority to act upon those visions, and to punish the would-be (but not-yet) perpetrators.

Just War doctrine does, in fact, allow for pre-emptive war. If a nation has evidence that they are clearly in danger of an imminent attack, they don't have to wait to be hit first and then retaliate. They can pre-empt the attack with a counter-attack of their own:

Having a sufficient cause is the most important condition justifying war. Historically this has involved (a) self-defense (b) against an act of aggression and (c) used as a last resort. Initiating an act of war violates this requirement, since the only sufficient reason for warfare is self-defense against physical aggression.

The right to preempt an anticipated attack can be extrapolated from the self-defense principle if preemptive strikes meet a high standard of justification: the attack being prevented must be imminent, not merely conjectured or vaguely feared in the long run.

~ George Hunsinger, “Iraq: don't go there — Attack Would Violate ‘Just War’”

But with the advent of the “Bush doctrine,” the US has supplanted the lawful (pre-emption) with the unlawful (prevention). This became crystal clear to me when I read the following [my bold]:

The contributors to Hitting First have criticized the Bush administration's 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS 2002), because it deliberately confuses “preemptive” war, initiated in the face of an imminent threat and thus considered legal under international law, with “preventive” war, which, under international law, is indistinguishable from naked aggression. As Tom Rockmore notes: “It follows that defensive, or preemptive, war, which is intended to respond to a clear and present danger, including an ongoing or clearly looming attack, is moral, hence licit or justified. But what the Bush administration calls ‘preemptive’ war, which is widely regarded as preventive, or offensive, war, designed for a situation when an attack is not clearly in the offing, when it may not ever take place, is immoral, hence illicit or unjustified.” [Ibid, p. 146]

According to Mr. Rockmore, in NSS 2002, “the term ‘preemptive’ is being used, perhaps deliberately, in a nonstandard way that extends and broadens the justification for the United States to wage war against real or imagined adversaries. The consequence is to turn on its head the very idea that military action should be defensive only.” [Ibid, p. 140] Although many Americans might remain confused by such slight of hand, the rest of the world has seen through the ruse.

~ Walter C. Uhler, “Deceit About Iraq: ‘Things Related and Not’” (a review of Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Policy, ed. by William W. Keller and Gordon R. Mitchell)

A preventive war is not a just war for the same reason arrest and punishment to prevent a possible crime is not justice.

While police (or citizens, in fact) may act to pre-empt a crime that appears to be imminent, they may not act to prevent a possible “future” crime. The same principle holds true for nations. They may act in response to an imminent threat; they may not act to “prevent” some possible future act of aggression.

Knowledge of the future is an attribute of God alone. And when the State claims both certain knowledge of the future and the moral authority to act on that knowledge, it is appropriating to itself this divine attribute.

(See also “A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy,” by Wendell Berry, Orion magazine, March/April 2003.)

My coins, but not my sons

Note: My regular readers (all four of them!) have probably read the following piece at my other blog, Rabbit Trails. But it occurs to me that it obviously belongs here as well, so I've reposted it.

— • —

A couple of years ago, our pastor preached on Mark 12. While discussing vv. 13-17, he revealed to me a gem — one of those gems that was right there in front of me all along, yet one I’d never noticed before:

Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words. When they had come, they said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?”

But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” So they brought it.

And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.”

And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at Him.

In contrast to the denarius, an ancient Roman coin which bore both the image and inscription of Caesar, Pastor Niell asked us, “Whose image and inscription do you bear?”

Why, the image of Jehovah, and the inscription of the Triune God, I thought. It suddenly occurred to me that, while all men bear the image of God, it is His people alone who bear His inscription: the mark or seal of baptism.

Pretty basic stuff, yes? But something worth considering the next time Caesar claims the authority to conscript citizens to murder for him. (Which claim, I'm sorry to report, I expect to be revived in the very near future.)

And so, a quick note to you who happen to occupy the chair of former Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt:

Jesus says you can have my pennies and dimes. But neither I nor my children belong to you. God gives you no authority to snatch us up, hand us a rifle, and compel us to violate the Sixth Commandment.

For “whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge” (Acts 4:19).

Can't have it both ways

We can’t expect to have an educated enlisted corps who will be held morally and legally accountable for their actions in war without their having a say in whether or not they will perform those actions.

~ Charles Goyette