| I learn to ask questions
Of all the things I learned over the next several years through my involvement with the peace movement, two lessons stick out in my mind: the sad history of Christianity's fall from nonviolence, and the ugly story of American foreign policy in the last half of the twentieth century. Though I was a "cradle Catholic," I had never really understood how central the principle of nonviolence was in the teachings of Jesus. He lived at a time when the Jewish people were seething about the occupation by the Romans, and many were seeking violent ways to expel them. Jesus rejected that option. He preached about peace, about loving the enemy, about creative nonviolent responses to oppression. The earliest Christians took that nonviolence seriously and declined to serve in the Roman legions. One Christian leader in Rome, Hippolytus, taught that that no one who has embraced professional killing could become a Christian, and no Christian should volunteer for military service. If drafted, he argued, Christians should refuse to kill. That attitude lasted for nearly 300 years. Then, in the year 312, a Roman leader named Flavius Valerius Constantinus, preparing for the pivotal battle at the Milvian Bridge, thought he saw a vision of a cross in the sky. In the vision, he saw the words "In hoc signo vinces," meaning "Under this sign, you will win." Unfortunately, he did win, and soon became the emperor Constantine the Great. The year after that battle, he made Christianity the state religion. From that day to this, Christians have clung to the poisonous embrace of the state. Instead of rejecting military service entirely, Christians now join enthusiastically, providing not only the soldiers to kill in the name of the state, but also the chaplains to bless the bloodshed. Here's a hideous example: Just before Thanksgiving 2001, President George W. Bush appeared at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, before troops of the 101st Airborne Division, whipping them into a frenzied anticipation of battles yet to come. A Christian chaplain closed with a prayer for the commander in chief, and the troops answered the prayer with a resounding: "Air assault! Amen!" That blasphemous blending of prayer and battle lust now makes me ill. In years gone by, I wouldn't even have noticed. The other pivotal lesson for me was my stunning and much-belated discovery that an idea internalized by all Americans is false: We are the good nation, the only indispensable country, the one that helps people all around the world, the one that stands always for freedom and democracy. To disabuse myself of that simplistic and dangerous view, I only needed to read one 1948 document, written by George F. Kennan, then director of the policy planning staff in the State Department. Though a few have construed Kennan's meaning benignly, his actual words accurately describe an American attitude that has not really changed since those early Cold War days: "We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only about 6.3 percent of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." Ever since Kennan wrote this description of American policy, the government of the United States has constantly trumpeted those "idealistic slogans" in public, citing "freedom" and "democracy" and the "threat of communism" to justify a variety of military actions. But the real reason is essentially the maintenance of the "position of disparity" that Kennan described. That basic approach to the world guides our profligate military spending. It inspires a hair-trigger willingness to use American power in bloody interventions, such as Grenada and Panama. It constantly puts America on the side of the rich and corrupt and against the poor, in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. For fifty years, American administrations, Democratic and Republican, have done whatever was necessary to keep strong regimes in power in Latin America's developing nations. That's in keeping with another Kennan dictum. Just a few years after writing the earlier document, he told a group of U.S. diplomatic officials in Latin America that "we should not hesitate before police repression by the local government. It is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal government if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by Communists." I learn to ask questions |