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This sermon was delivered by Michael Melnichak on February 11, 2007 .

War Against War

by
Michael Melnichak

© Feb. 11, 2007

The idea and need for this sermon came to me when I was listening to AM Talk Radio in the car; one of my worst habits. I heard the president express his indignation at his critics who had compared his actions and that of our military to the terrorists.  A flabbergasted Bush emphatically stated that such comparisons were absurd.  According to Bush the comparison does not hold true because, “Terrorists kill innocent people to achieve political objectives!”

While I do agree with the president (did I just say that...?) that comparing our troops with terrorists is not fair, what angered me about his statement is what he left out, but is still implied. He couldn’t say that we don’t kill innocent people, which is obviously not true, but he wants to make a distinction between killing them for political objectives and what, in the Pentagon, is referred to as collateral damage; which means damage and deaths which are unintentional or incidental.  All of which begs the question, “Do the innocent victims and their relatives really care if their deaths were on purpose or on accident?”

It seems to me that they suffer either way.  Historian Howard Zinn has pointed out that the word unintentional is no longer appropriate when discussing civilian casualties; not when there are military accountants who calculate in advance the acceptable number of unintentional deaths on a target by target basis, and not when civilian deaths are an inevitable part of our military actions. By the way, in Iraq if a bomb is calculated to unintentionally kill more than 37 civilians, a high ranking officer must sign a form authorizing the target, but 36 is ok.

President Bush’s comments filled me with a need to discuss the true nature of war, removed from the politics of the day. Many in this church disagree with our current president’s decision to go to war, making a distinction between bad wars and good wars, but the point of this discussion is that there is no such thing as a good war at all. Some of you might be saying that of course there is no good war, but sometimes, as much as we dislike it, war is necessary. In other words, sometimes war is justified. This is one of liberalism's most dangerous ideas and this is the problem that I would like to address.

The idea that some wars are good or necessary stems from the just war theory which has been discussed, and debated for centuries, from Greek philosophers, to catholic theologians, and in more recent times, at international conventions like the famous one in Geneva. The basis of the just war theory is that of motives, means and ends. If the end is just, the means of warfare are considered acceptable. At the same time, the goal is to make the actual war itself as humane as possible through rules like those established at the Geneva Convention. When one thinks of a just war, the most obvious example is that of World War II. So, in order to make the best argument against all war I am going to take a closer look at the war that is often referred to as the “Good War”.

Obviously Hitler was an evil man. There is no question about that but, because this is real life and not a movie, we have to be careful and avoid the assumption that because one side is bad the other is good. History, especially the history of wars, is infinitely more complicated than such a simple good vs. evil analysis suggests. Adolf Hitler wrote Mien Kampf in 1925. He became Chancellor in 1933 and was Time Magazine’s man of the year for 1938. Does anyone know when we declared war on Germany? So did we go to war to stop Hitler?

Hitler had many supporters in the United States, including many wealthy investors who welcomed his stabilizing policies and his rabid anti-communism, literally making Germany safe for investments which increased by almost 50 percent between 1929 and 1940. A rally in Madison square garden where participants were raising their arms in Nazi salute and were treated to speeches given from a podium in front of a picture of George Washington flanked by swastikas drew 22,000 followers. Charles Lindbergh, one of Hitler’s most famous American admirers and leader of the America First group, gave a speech in which he told American Jews to shut up and accused the Jewish owned press of pushing the US into war. Lindbergh’s group was one of dozens which supported Hitler. The historic record is clear then that America was divided over the Hitler question.

Much of the moral claims surrounding the deadliest war in history focus on the allies aim to stop the Nazi Holocaust. More than one year before Hitler took power, and ten years before our entrance into the war, the Munich Post reported that it had uncovered a secret plan that would have worked out special orders for the solution of the Jewish question. Although the article did not discuss the mass efficient execution of the Jews that would eventually become Hitler’s final solution, the horrible treatment of the German Jews was no secret. A telling example that illustrates how many Americans felt about what was happening in Europe can be seen in a non-binding Senate resolution introduced in January, 1934, asking the Senate and the President to express “surprise and pain” at the German treatment of Jews. .....The resolution never got out of committee.

As historian Kenneth Davis explained, “It is clear that Roosevelt knew about the treatment of the Jews in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and about the methodical, systematic destruction of the Jews during the Holocaust. Clearly saving the Jews and other groups that Hitler was destroying en masse was not a critical issue for American war planners.” More specifically, an entire boat load of Jewish refugees was denied entrance to the US. Because our German Immigration quota had already been met, the ship was forced back to Europe where most of its occupants eventually ended up in the death camps. Later on during the war some were urging the American bombers to destroy the camps or at least the train tracks leading to them. It was decided that no bombers could be spared for such a mission which would take away from our total war effort.

Was this a moral war to fight racism; the idea that one Aryan race is better than any other? Remember that our armies were still segregated by color and so was the Red Cross’ blood. Back home, many African Americans could still not vote and in general were given the lowest paying and most dangerous jobs. Some African American soldiers were not even allowed back into the country for having violated misogyny laws when they married white European women overseas. We might also ask the question about racism to the Japanese Americans who were forcefully detained in our own prison camps.

When a discussion like this occurs, one obvious question is “what is the alternative to war?” I am not in any position to answer that question. I am not a policy maker, and it is not my purpose for this discussion to present alternatives. Rather it is my belief that alternatives do exist, that war is not necessary. It seems that those who are in positions of authority to make war and claim that they are reluctant to do so yet there are no alternatives, are the same ones whose policies have led us to the brink of war in the first place.

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 should not be thought of as a surprise in the same way that collateral damage mentioned earlier is not really unintentional. For several years prior to the attack, our generals had been discussing the looming war with Japan over contested areas of economic influence. Prior to the attack the allied countries had placed an oil embargo on Japan. Diplomats and generals at the time believed that the Japanese would take this as an act of war. According to one diplomat a year before the attack, “It was increasingly clear that we are bound to have a showdown with Japan”. This is not to say that anyone knew when and where they would attack, but a surprise is hardly the right word.

As I stated earlier a “good war” depends in part on just ends, but what about the means? If the ends are noble, are any means also justified, ......even the dropping of two atomic bombs? One trend throughout the twentieth century has been that as military technology advanced, so did the number of civilian deaths. Early strategies of precision bombings quickly gave way to the strategy known as area bombing, fire bombing and eventually the two atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One popular justification for such destruction originally stated by President Truman himself is that the Atom bombs actually saved lives by preventing a mainland invasion. Killing lives to save lives, not unlike our current president’s approach of cutting down trees to save forests.

Truman’s argument and justification is well known. The number of potential saved lives varied from speech to speech, and gradually climbed higher and higher. However, a military report from Japan after the surrender found that Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. History does not allow us the luxury of playing the “what if” game, but again it seems clear that there were alternatives. One problem in dealing with Japan was that the US demanded an unconditional surrender without compromise, while some were arguing for a surrender that would allow the emperor of Japan to remain as a figure head. Some historians have also argued that the use and timing of the bomb was also meant to keep Russia out of the war and to show the Russians what we were capable of since they were going to be the next enemy.

The reason for dropping the bombs might be unclear but their destructive power and death toll is not. This goes to the heart of my argument. No matter what moral justifications our politicians use, the justifications of war are pliable, shifting this way and that depending on the situation on the ground and on public opinion. The only guaranteed aspect of war is the destruction; almost half of the casualties from World War II were civilian. In this context, victory becomes an archaic concept; no one wins except perhaps people like John McCone who, during the war, made 44 million dollars on an investment of one hundred thousand dollars.

It is estimated that since 1945 there have been 150 wars with 20 million casualties. Again with this in mind it becomes clear that it is the technical aspect of war today that is the evil regardless of political factors. It is sad to see how in so many countries’ citizens have been led to war by the argument that it is necessary because there are tyrannies abroad, evil rulers, murderous juntas. But to make war is not to destroy the tyrants, it is to kill their subjects, their pawns, their conscripted soldiers, and their subjugated civilians.

In the face of the obvious unpredictability of social phenomena, all of history’s excuses for war and preparation for war, self defense, national security, freedom, justice and stopping aggression can no longer be accepted. Massive violence, whether in war or internal upheaval, cannot be justified by any end, however noble, because no outcome is sure. Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desirable, are uncertain, and the means are horrible and certain, those means must not be employed. We have had a war to end all wars, to stop aggression, make the world safe for democracy, defeat fascism, and on and on.

None of these ends were achieved. Wars did not end, aggression continued, fascism did not die with Hitler. In short, the traditional distinction between just and unjust war is now obsolete. The cruelty of the means today exceeds all possible ends. No national boundary, no ideology, no way of life can justify the loss of millions of lives that modern war demands. The standard causes are too muddy, too mercurial to die for. A war against war is not, as Adolf Hitler said, undisguised cowardice. Saying no to war is not the same as saying no to justice; just as saying no to spanking is not the same as saying no to discipline.

All of us, therefore, face an enormous responsibility: How to achieve justice without massive violence and war. Whatever, in the past, has been the moral justification for violence, whether defense against attack or the overthrow of tyranny, must now be accomplished by other means. As Howard Zinn said, “This is the monumental moral and tactical challenge of our time. It will make the greatest demands on our ingenuity, our courage, our patience and our willingness to renounce old habits...., but it must be done.”