The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s task force on “Religion, Violence and Terrorism” was asked to respond to the invasion of Iraq. In its judgment the invasion was “unwise, illegal, and immoral”. The General Assembly of the Church concurred and that rejection of the invasion became the Church’s policy. Other mainline churches and ecumenical bodies adopted similar positions. But most of those churches have refrained from rejecting the policies of the U.S. in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The U.S. supported the Northern alliance in a civil war in Afghanistan and assisted in overthrowing the Taliban government. The U.S. was in hot pursuit of an enemy force which had attacked it in New York, in Washington D.C., Yemen, and in African embassies. The intervention seemed to meet the criteria for just intervention developed by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) which were derived from classic just war categories by Professor Ed Long, Jr., and the task force on “Humanitarian Intervention and Just Peacemaking.” Many church meetings criticized rendition of prisoners, secrete prisons, torture, and the language of “war on terrorism.” The administrations justifying facts for the invasion of Iraq were proven false, but the churches refrained from attacking the broad policy of pursuing al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or elsewhere. In light of President Obama’s determination to withdraw from Iraq, and his policy of fighting in Afghanistan, but promising no long term occupation and the withdrawal from the country of U.S. forces, how ought churches respond to his increasing the troop commitments in that beleaguered country? On broader foreign policy issues the new Obama administration polices seemed to correspond to ecumenical and mainline church teaching. The administration wanted to cancel unnecessary weapons systems. It desired through negotiations to reduce nuclear weapons and move towards eliminating eventually all nuclear weapons. It wanted to work multilaterally though allies and in cooperation with the United Nations. It pledged to stop torture and to find legal ways of treating prisoners. It was not at war with Islam, it appreciated Islam’s contributions to the world and its struggle was not with the tactic of terrorism, but with those who used it against the United States, namely al Qaeda. The United States would seek a new position of becoming a fair mediator of the struggle with Israel and Palestine. The building of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land needed to cease. Iran should be negotiated with and persuaded to drop its nuclear program or to insure it was only for the peaceful purposes of nuclear energy. New initiatives toward Cuba could be taken. China and Russia would be worked with to develop more meaningful partnerships even by reducing the placement weapons systems objectionable to Russia and toning down the criticism of China. A mixture of persuasion and coercion would be used to reduce the nuclear threat from North Korea. The reassurance of U.S. allies of U.S. commitments to international law and working cooperatively was announced repeatedly. These were audacious policy initiatives of hope. Certainly all of these steps were sufficient to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize and the President’s lecture was a first rate discourse on the philosophy of international relations. Reinhold Niebuhr could not have done any better. The churches represented in the National Council of Churches will in all likelihood never have had a President whose aspirations so closely parallel their own ethical advice on international policy. Whether these policy outlines will be pushed through to implementation depends on forces in the Unite States as well as events abroad. However, we still have the nagging issue of the expansion of the American role in the Afghanistan-Pakistan struggle with terrorism and the attempt of the Taliban to return to power and with the aid of al Qaeda to destabilize Pakistan. The term quagmire seems more appropriate for Vietnam’s jungles than it does for Afghanistan’s rocky mountains and deserts. The formidable terrain is no stranger to us than the ethos of the tribes’ people who live in those deserts and mountains. It is not our environment for installing representative government or Western human rights. Neither the government in Iraq nor Afghanistan, at this point, as the capacity or will to conduct moderately fair elections. Knowing that the divisive issues go way back to the division of India and Pakistan in 1948 and the unresolved struggle over Kashmir, the conflicts seem no more solvable than the border wars did when Rudyard Kipling wrote of the harsh realities of those places for the British who died in vain there. Those of us who lost friends in Vietnam hesitate to lose our children and our cousins in those deserts even though our family has been involved in those forbidding places in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan and India want different regimes in Afghanistan, and our policy makers are caught in the middle. When I last visited Kashmir and took tea in Muslim homes in the mountains, I was repeatedly told we don’t have religious extremists here, but now they know differently. If we could not teach Americans how to understand the religious issues in Iraq, how would we ever teach our folks what they need to know about the tribal differences in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Foreign policy is mostly determined by the President and the people immediately around him. In 2008 we elected Barack Obama who promised to withdraw U.S. forces in Iraq and to prosecute the war in Afghanistan-Pakistan. The withdrawal from Iraq is proceeding. A withdrawal from Afghanistan is promised, if the strategists near him and the President decide to end this war by fighting for awhile longer, the citizens do not have enough information of the details to overrule that decision. The President and his team deserve time to strengthen the government and its security forces in Afghanistan and to attempt to bring to justice or kill those who attacked the U.S. who apparently are finding sanctuary in Pakistan. It is both a question of time and of information. When the Roman Catholic Bishops considered the immorality of the nuclear deterrent, they argued that as long as the time of the deterrence policy was used to negotiate reduction of arms it was morally tolerable, and so they did not lay down an outright condemnation of the possession of nuclear weapons. Some Protestant churches went further condemning the nuclear deterrent as the clear U.S. choice was to use it in certain circumstances and it could not be used while observing morality against destroying civilians. Today believing that President Obama intends to withdraw the U.S. forces from Afghanistan after a season of strengthening the Afghanistan security forces and encouraging tolerable government in Kabul it seem inappropriate to oppose these efforts. One cannot make detailed policy a thousand miles away from the centers of U.S. power with its greater knowledge and expertise. However, if time proves that the strategic assessments in Afghanistan were mistaken, and the President continues a war of folly further destabilizing the region, and showing no reasonable exit strategy from the killing, then theologically informed people seeking a rough accordance of U.S. policy with common moral standards will have to oppose the President on these issues, and remove him from office. This was our fate as we celebrated the victory of President Johnson over the hawkish Senator Goldwater only to find our hopes betrayed. We pray we do not have to repeat the experiences of the Johnson Presidency. For Christians who consider themselves both realists and peacemakers it would be far better to correlate our work with the peacemaker Obama than to have to engage in resistance to a President who blunders into policies which involve the country in long term wars in inhospitable places in Central Asia. President Obama is divided in himself as are most well informed thinking Americans on this war, which should have been a police action. Time will let us know how we should act within these divisions in our selves and in the country. This writer had a unique look into policy making when I was an International Fellow at Columbia University and a tutor at Union Theological Seminary. Over lunch at the International House near campus, I asked Allen Dulles, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, “What was his greatest problem?” He replied: “By the time the selected policy makers receive our classified analysis of the intelligence situation each morning, they’ve already read the NY Times.” We don’t know enough to second-guess the President yet, but the development of this history and our sources will permit us to make our own moral decisions about the present strategy as it unfolds. We know a lot, but the details that the National Security Council has to consider are hidden from us. The costs of either withdrawing or fighting are high. If the President has really leveled with the public on his approach to these issues, he deserves prudent patience on our part for a while. He inherited terrible situations with U.S. commitments to three hardly tolerable governments in the region and a history of hostility toward Iran. The U.S commitments to Israel further acerbate the problems and nine years of warfare in the region already agitated by Islamic militancy left the new Administration an almost impossible situation. Perhaps the government has information that it really can start Iraq and Afghanistan on the road to responsible, tolerable government, and that both the Taliban and al Qaeda can be quelled. Support of the Obama’s Administration promises and initiatives seems appropriate for awhile. |
ISSN: 17431719