Warring Madness or Life

Deuteronomy 30:19, Romans 12:4-5, Matthew 26:51-55
Wellington Ave United Church of Christ
July 1, 2012

I call heaven and earth to witness again you this day,
that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.
Choose life that you and your descendants may live.
Deuteronomy 30:19

God of Grace and God of Glory,
save us from weak resignation to evils we deplore;
on your people pour your power cure your children’s warring madness.

“What an extraordinary time to be alive. 

We’re the first people on our planet to have real choice: 

we can continue killing each other, wiping out other species, spoiling our nest. 

Yet on every continent a revolution in human dignity is emerging. 

It is re-knitting community and our ties to the earth. 

So we do have a choice. We can choose death."

 Francis Lappe

Just as the soldiers and authorities laid hands on Jesus and arrested him the disciples responded with violence. In Matthew’s version an unnamed disciple draws a sword and cuts off the ear of a nearby slave, a victim of collateral damage. In John’s gospel Peter is the culprit. In Luke’s gospel, all the disciples ask, “Shall we strike with a sword?” The message is clear in all the accounts however that it is human nature to want to respond to violence with violence. It is human and it is forbidden.

“Put your sword back in its place for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” These are Jesus last words to us. Reject violence. In Luke’s version we get, “ Stop! No More of this!” Those who wish to follow the way are precluded from drawing the sword. There is no such thing as redemptive violence and there certainly is no thing as pre-emptive violence. Violence will beget violence. An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. Killing begets killing. Nukes beget more nukes and now drones will beget yet more drones.

The disciples ran away not only because of their fear of the impending violence from the imperial forces but they also ran to get away from the unarmed nonviolent Christ. And so have we.

We have been running, stockpiling, and now using un-manned robotic aerial vehicles, drones, to do our killing. We can do it from the safety of an airbase over 7,000 miles away--- that’s the distance from Creech airbase in Nevada to Afghanistan. We can do it comfortably by touching a button18 inches from our face. Drones are the ultimate action at a distance weapon as they allow the aggressor to destroy targets in Pakistan in-between sips of coffee.

This high tech warfare allows us to target “threats to our security” without having to send in the troops or even wait for a declaration of war as strikes are not war, or are they? What are the parameters, if any, of a global war on terror? Who are the terrorists? Anyone who claims that military age males are potential threats?

Many people would say drone attacks are targeted assassinations, acts of pre-meditated murder, which is a crime in all 50 states. For people like Elliot Adams, past president of Veterans for Peace and one of my nonviolent trainers for NATO, these extrajudicial killings are in violation of our Constitution and our commitment to the UN Charter. These attacks violate due process and respecting another nation’s sovereignty. By committing civil disobedience at drone airbases across the country he hopes to remind the government and us that the United States government is violating Article VI of the Constitution. He and hundreds of others are filling up our jails as we speak trying to wake us up to horror of this new way of killing.

For others the ethical and legal issue is more about how our Commander-in-Chief has become our Assassin-in-Chief. It’s about how Obama sifts through the kill lists prepared for him each week by his high priests of the national security agencies. The process of nomination is compared to a ritualistic shuffling of a deck of baseball cards presided over by John Brenner.

Writer and fellow Protest Chaplain Bob Koelher in his op-ed piece called the Grim Reaper says “Drones indulge a dark yearning to acquire God like power, to attain omnipotence satisfying an age old lust to play God.” To reign in this dark yearning for power, our forefathers decided wisely that only congress could declare war. This is why Denis Kucinich and others are trying to reign in the President by asking for transparency and accountability. These shadow drone wars need to be brought into the light.

In a recent article leaked to the New York Times a few weeks ago about the use of drones, Obama tried to reassure us, and maybe himself, that these drone attacks follow the basic tenants of Just War theories as developed by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. From his study he has concluded that drones minimalize harm to soldiers and that thus they are preferable over sending troops. He also took to heart that wars can only be declared by a credible authority so he has asserted that the President of the United States has this authority. Therefore it is his responsibility to make these difficult choices of who should live or who should be killed.

You will recall that Just war theory was developed during Constantine’s reign when Christianity became the religion of the state. Previously Christians would not pick up the sword and fight. A theological system had to be developed that would allow the Christians to fight as a last resort and if certain conditions or principles were adhered to. The first principle is that wars can only be fought for self-defense and not vengeance or retaliation. Another principle is that there be minimum collateral damage to civilians. And lastly the aggressive act must not overwhelm the positive result. This is the principle of proportionality.

Some would say that most of these conditions have not been met. The main problem is that there seems to be a great disparity between how our government counts civilians. It appears we believe that all young men who are of military age are all combatants in a strike zone. This means that their deaths are not counted as civilian collateral damage. They are guilty until proven innocent after they are dead or until “intelligence posthumously proves them innocent.

What kind of Orwellian rabbit hole have we crawled into you might ask or if you are the psalmist, “What kind of pit have we made for ourselves, what kind of web are we caught in and still weaving where you are guilty until proven innocent, where your death does not count?

In Pakistan over 2,000 civilians have been killed over the course of over 285 drone strikes. Some of these civilians were members of a wedding party, while still others were mourners at a funeral. Some report that for every one militant 50 civilians are killed. Pierre Sprey, an air force strategist, says that you also “get 5 to 10 as many recruits for each Taliban as you’ve eliminated.” Some would even say that the drone strikes have replaced Guantanamo has the largest recruiting force. How does this match with the principle of proportionality if we are creating more terrorists or hostile civilians for each strike?

And then there are the “signature strikes.” These are strikes not aimed at an individual but rather at suspicious behavior or ‘signatures of Al-Qaeda activity or behavior patterns. My friend and fellow faith activist Joe Scarry says that this is a form of bearing false witness against ones neighbor for it is a way of labeling people as terrorists or would be terrorists if they fit a certain profile. It denies them both their personhood as well as due process. Furthermore he adds isn’t this what the crucifixion was, a “signature strike?” Wasn’t Jesus’ behavior like that of other known enemies of the state? Wasn’t this the reason why Pilate kept trying to get him to admit he was the king so he had something to charge him with?

Let us put away our swords then this July 4th in celebration of global interdependence. “Let us pledge allegiance to the earth and to all beings who inhabit it and to the planet for which it stands, one world under love, indivisible, with peace and liberty for all.”

Let us remember with some remorse that our forefathers and mothers practiced all kinds of direct action before they moved toward war and let us remember sadly or ironically that King George III was indicted for abuse of power that very much resembles what we have until now unquestioningly permitted our government and President.

Let us acknowledge that to the world and especially those who have been attacked or tortured by us, we are the redcoats, soldiers of an unjust empire.

However, we are also followers of the Way, the nonviolent Jesus and therefore we must put away our swords before we cut off any more ears, destroy any more lives---targeted or otherwise.

As followers of the nonviolent Jesus who acknowledge that we are all members of one body, one global interconnected and relational world we can do something about drone warfare. We can join the rising global peace and justice movement to put the brakes on or end this form of warfare. We can join our sisters and brothers in their demonstrations. We can also do something together as a church, something I think Wellington is very familiar with which is to demand that the leaders of our United Church of Christ take a stand on this issues. We are not the church of NATO and we do not condone or support the use of drones.

We can write to our President Geoffrey Black a letter encouraging him to speak out on our behalf. We can follow this up with a resolution to the Illinois Conference so that a resolution can be brought before the whole church body.

These are things we can do but before that we must hold onto the fires of truth so that the powers and principalities are held accountable for their deceptions and lies: all males of military age are not combatants; targeting people is murder; targeting people based on behavior is a form of racism and Islamaphobia; and collateral damage is never permissible.

Eternal Scream by Micael Schwartz

I end with these words from the seminary-trained journalist Chris Hedges who spent many years covering US wars in the Middle East:

Hope has a cost.
Hope is not comfortable or easy.
Hope requires personal risk.
It is not about the right attitude.
Hope is doing something.
The more futile,
 the more useless,
the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is,
 the vaster and more potent hope becomes.
Hope never makes sense.
Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd.
Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness,
the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state.
Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor
 is an injustice visited on all of us.
Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good.
 This is the secret of hope’s power.
Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves.
Hope does not separate us from them.
Hope sees in our enemy our own face.




See this article by Glen Greenwald about drone pilots
Bravery and drone pilots

To hear this sermon please click here:

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