Not long ago, I blogged about my trip to Iraq with fellow God’s Politics blogger Shane Claiborne and later, of my excitement about the upcoming Truth Commission on Conscience in War. The trip taught me much about the human cost of war, as well as the ramifications of the church’s frequent support thereof. In my past contributions to God’s Politics, I have made clear my own position on the question of violence and its use by Christians, but I have also tried to make clear my conviction that people must discern their own conclusions in regard to this very important issue.
Service members of faith, including Jewish and Muslim airmen, marines, sailors, and soldiers, are in the difficult position every day of discerning between the power of the state and the authority of God. I wrote recently that an allegiance to the former is best understood as subordinate to the latter. On my own blog, I also reminded friends that service members are torn between being told that they are “not paid to think” and yet to “disobey unlawful orders.” It is difficult indeed to consider the illegality of any order without being afforded the opportunity to think…
As the U.S. moves closer to the withdrawal of troops from Iraq (and eventually, if history is any indicator, Afghanistan as well), we must not let these experiences simply pass into history. It is my hope that the church in America is able to learn from our mistakes, finding ways to prevent the next outbreak of war in our names. In Iraq, our cause proved unfounded, proportionality has been legitimately questioned from the start, and defense of the innocent has been marginal at best (which is understandable in any asymmetrical warfare, though no less violable in the context of Just War).
Four years after becoming associated with the letter that popularly bears his name, Dr. Richard Land restated in 2006 his own belief in the justness of the cause of invading Iraq, noting that each person has “the right to freedom of conscience.” On this point I would agree with Dr. Land, that the Just War doctrine calls each Christian to discern the justice of each war. In this sense, I encourage any person’s informed appraisal of the morality of war. However, in the land of the free, we have withheld the right of moral maturation from the very people we have tasked with carrying out our collective will.
We must empower those in positions of carrying out our collective will to make sound and conscientious decisions. In the same way that a violation of any single tenet of Just War marks the entire endeavor as unjust, restriction of moral autonomy anywhere in our democracy pollutes the fabric of our civic framework. We learned this in Nuremberg and agreed to it in Geneva, which became U.S. law upon its ratification in 1955. Let us again remember the warning of Rabbi Abraham Heschel that “In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”
By advancing our understanding of the difficulty of exercising one’s conscience in war and considering seriously conscientious objection as religious expression, we will be one step closer to building peace by restraining war. Consider joining us in March to listen to testimony about conscientious objection, Just War, and the moral audacity it now requires for service members to respond genuinely to their consciences.
Logan Laituri is an Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He blogs sporadically and is a co-founder of Centurion’s Guild.
