A 'Necessary' War?

I appreciated reading today Peggy Noonan's concerns about the state of our political will and acumen with respect to the Afghan War. I especially appreciate her reminder of how Lincoln dealt with his generals in comparison to what appears to be confusion on the part of the Administration as it considers our next steps as the nation responsible for that war. However, the ethical question for Christians is not, as Noonan suggests that Obama believes, whether or not the war is necessary. For Christians, the ethical question begins and ends with our working out of what it means to receive the grace of Christ as command in our lives. And that begins by taking the Ten Commandments much more seriously.

The president, as almost all have noted—and for once, almost all are correct—has not distinguished himself in this matter. Afghanistan is a necessary war or not, we'll see. He famously talked to Gen. McChrystal only once in the latter's first 70 days in Afghanistan. He is meeting with advisers, considering options. Would that he'd begun earlier.

At the moment he seems a sort of anti-Lincoln. President Lincoln was early on damaged by Gen. George McClellan's leaking to his friends in the press, but Lincoln every day was focused on one thing, the war, and took no offense. He knew what was urgent. For Mr. Obama, many things are urgent. But when many things are urgent, nothing really is urgent.

Mr. Obama reportedly began intensive meetings on the future of Afghanistan in the past few weeks. Lincoln used to go to McClellan's house down the street from the White House and wait in the parlor for a chance at deliberations. One night when McClellan wasn't in the mood, he came home from a party and sent a servant to say the general was too tired. Lincoln, being Lincoln, laughed, and left. He'd take anything from someone who might win. And when he concluded McClellan couldn't win, he removed him, with no malice and complete coldness.

One senses Afghanistan has been waiting in the president's parlor. Now that's he's focused, and deliberating, why not include the public?

What is said might box in the president, and Congress, but only because they've left a void. Hearings would illuminate issues, air differences, broaden the picture, and make clear the stakes. And all of those things would help spur decisions that spring from a thing badly needed, consensus.

via online.wsj.com

I've been teaching the youth of our parish the Ten Commandments. Recently we've just begun to reflect on the implications for Christians of the second table of commandments, beginning with the most simple of all, the one that is often translated "Thou shalt not murder." We often forget that the point of that commandment is not really the negative one of proscribing the killing of others as much as it is to issue an invitation into a joyful and peaceable life with God in which killing can never be seen as 'necessary.' 

 The key to understanding the fifth commandment is not the verb but the pronoun implied: "You shall not kill." The commandment reminds us that death belongs alone to God. Moreover, the context and historic reception of the commandments reminds us that we are to receive the fact that we are not to kill as a great blessing made possible by God's decision to be with us in spite of our tragic estrangement from God and each other. In other words, we are to see "You shall not kill" as a means of grace that we are to share with the world so that all the nations are brought into the blessings that God intends for all creation. This is the eschatological hope and reality declared by Isaiah:

In days to come
the mountain of the LORD’S house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
3 Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. 

(Isaiah 2:2-4 NRSV)

Our refusal to kill because of our Christianity grows out of our conviction that Christ has conquered death on the Cross and that God has in the Incarnation already ushered in the time in which the lamb lies down with the lion, a time that is both here and not yet here. It is this faith, this refusal to believe that taking human life is ever necessary, that gave moral courage to the martyrs of early Christianity. Their deaths were their witness to their faith that the politics of domination in which the world subsists has been and must be replaced by the politics of Jesus, a politics that turns the world upside down through its embrace of Christ's gift of peace.

So the question that Peggy Noonan raises here, evidently the question raised by our President in recent comments, ought to be problematic for Christians. The question before us right now is not "is this war necessary?" And it really is not a question of two hells, though I think Noonan helpfully illuminates the chaos that may ensue if we were simply to abandon Afghanistan now that we have grown weary of our war there. We are responsible and accountable for what happens next. 

However, the moral issues at stake here are not illuminated for Christians simply by asking if the war is necessary. Rather the question we Christians must prayerfully consider is, "Now that we are engaged in this war and have taken by virtue of our position of power as a nation-state responsibility for the consequences of our actions, what ought we do now so that our actions embody the grace of God that it is our vocation to embody? What ought we do now so that our actions point all the nations to the reality, envisioned in Isaiah and revealed in the gospel accounts, that the kingdom of God has drawn near?"

Asking those questions won't reduce the complexity of the decisions before us.  There seems to be no easy resolution.  But wrestling with these questions will certainly make it more likely that whatever course we steer might coincide with the path of faithfulness to the politics of our Lord.