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Freedom, Responsibility, and the War in Iraq

Forrest Church • March 23, 2003

Since last we met together in this house, our lives have taken a surreal turn. Courtesy of television, which can’t help but present war as entertainment, the harshest of realities is rendered both intimate and distant, both essential and optional. We turn it on and off, alternating between our workaday lives and what looks at times like a trailer for Armageddon. This unsettling remove from a vicarious reality more vivid than our daily experience leaves us suspended between worlds. Day is literally night, and night, day. Watching a war–our very own war–on television is close to being an out of body experience.

One placard in an anti-war protest read, "CNN, War is not a Game." I understand where that anger comes from, though I must say that the extent to which the press has been–to use the new coinage–embedded in this military operation is far preferable to the more familiar information black out. For me anyway, war is not trivialized when viewed in real time. If anything, the opposite is the case. Watching this war on television, I find myself suspended between irreconcilable emotions. Terror and hope. Outrage and empathy. Anger and wonder. Yes, shock and awe. But I can only sustain such emotional vividness for short periods of time. Prolonged, I find this emotional suspension to be as numbing as the show itself is mesmerizing. When I catch myself mindlessly tracking the moibus loop of scrolling repetitive lines of information, I turn the television off.

I will turn it on again when I get home this afternoon, but this morning I ask you to step back from the television for a moment, first to what might be called the big picture (with its ages old tale of fate, chance, determinism, freedom, and responsibility) and then to where we find ourselves today. Initially, my guiding question is this: Is history personal in its workings, or is it essentially impersonal? On the one hand, if there exists a Deus ex machina driving history’s plot or–the opposite assumption–if the machine drives itself and therefore us through our determined paces, then history is impersonal. We can do little more than watch it unfold, at best understanding its workings and playing our pre-assigned roles as if they were chosen parts. On the other hand, if our Unitarian forbears are right, then history is personal, not only in its impact but, to a degree at least, also in its direction. We remain free to play a role in shaping our future. However small, that role is never insignificant, for it gives meaning to our days.

In the Calvinist worldview, with God both omniscient and omnipotent, the script for the future has already been written. This is a pure form of theological determinism. Some are born to be saved, others to be damned. Those born to be damned can do nothing. Those born to be saved are free merely to recognize their election and live accordingly. This assumption undergirds the thought (and presumably, to some degree at least, the action) of both Islamic and Christian fundamentalists. When President Bush says that no one can know God’s plan, he nonetheless acknowledges that such a plan exists. The believer’s role is to seek God’s guidance and then act in accordance with God’s will, in which case God will indeed be on our side. According to this script, history is the unfolding struggle between good and evil, with Christians (or Muslims for that matter) acting in proxy for God against the Devil, with history itself leading inexorably to a final Armageddon and divine victory. From such a perspective, to compromise with evil is to compromise with the Devil and thus betray God.

If such theology marginalizes free will into freely willing what one is destined to do in the first place, the logic of scientific materialism leads as inexorably toward a kind of cosmic determinism in which free will is at best a functional, or evolutionarily useful, afterthought. Here the script is not determined by the Ghost in the Machine but by the machine itself. Human destiny is driven, fatefully yet essentially mindlessly, by genes and memes. In the words of contemporary philosopher George Williams, "I account for morality as an accidental capability produced, in its boundless stupidity, by a biological process that is normally opposed to the expression of such a capability."

Both Calvinistic determinism and modern scientific determinism declare human history and human destiny to be impersonally driven, either following the fixed logic of God’s plan or the fixed logic of material cause and effect. Expanding the compass of this perspective, other thinkers have rescripted the theological drama they inherited, while leaving determinism in place. Karl Marx, for instance, came up with a story of economic determinism leading to the reign not of God in Heaven but of the proletariat on earth. Even many historians who acknowledge the failed applications of Marx’s theory continue to subscribe to a view of history that unfolds almost inexorably, driven by social and economic forces, in which the apparent direction of individual actors is more an illusion than a reality. Rejecting the "great man" theory of history, they argue that leaders function according to the rules driving history, rather than driving history by setting those rules. As with Calvinistic determinism and modern scientific determinism, economic materialism too delivers history from our own hands into the directive control of inexorable processes.

Today, countering all three forms of determinism, a number of outspoken academics have traded the logic of fate for that of chance. In certain (though certainly not all) so-called post-modern writings, pure relativism replaces determinism. Rather than the story of history unfolding like a fairy tale to its fated conclusion, here the fairy tale is fractured, with every telling different and therefore no moral possible. Moving from absolute objectivism to absolute subjectivism, freedom is restored but at the expense of meaning. The Ghost within no longer drives the machine. Nor is it self-propelled by purposive yet impersonal power. This new machine, without purpose or direction, is simply haunted–haunted in such a way that all reality is illusion and all illusion reality. Though no longer impersonal, by such a reading history becomes mad.

Whether any of these warring philosophies actually comes close to solving the puzzles of life and history, most of us, even a majority of those who subscribe to the above principles, live as if none of them were true. Whether illusional in so doing or not, by consciously exercising freedom in making moral choices we write our own script, tacitly rejecting an omniscient, omnipotent God and also the gyro of a materialistically determined destiny. Here we follow the evidences of our senses. Common sense suggests that history is nothing if not personal. If not the great man theory of history, then at least the mere man (and woman) theory of history remains firmly in place. Take the War in Iraq. From one perspective, Operation Iraqi Freedom might instead be called Fathers and Sons. But however you look at it, this war was not inevitable, not pre-determined, not unavoidable. By their actions, our leaders and the leaders of Iraq have chosen this war freely.

Freedom comes with a distinguished price. If we are indeed free to act, we are therefore accountable, or responsible, for our actions. To say as much is to preach the Unitarian gospel: deeds not creeds. In the early 19^th century, Unitarianism emerged as an alternative to Calvinism. Basing their faith on freedom of belief, our forebears rejected the logic of determinism. With this comes a consequent burden. If we are not free, history takes us off the hook. We are pawns on the chessboard, moved either by a distant unmoved mover or by the vagaries of fate. To reject that view is to accept responsibility, not only for individual but also for collective deeds, our deeds as a nation for instance. To posit moral freedom entails responsibility for the consequences of our acts.

Which brings us to the war in Iraq. Stepping out from its shadow, we can fulfill our responsibilities, especially our responsibilities as citizens, in a variety of ways. Yesterday an estimated 200,000 New Yorkers, including many from this congregation, marched in witness to their opposition to this war. There is nothing immoral or unpatriotic about such an action. If we are fighting in Iraq to protect our freedoms as the President claims, freedom of speech and assembly are among the very freedoms we are fighting to protect.

To honor our troops, who are risking their lives in the service of their country, and to limit the number of Iraqi innocents who will fall victim to the ongoing firestorm, with those who march in protest I too call for an end to war. That said, with the war now begun, I did not choose to march. Having opposed military action, I deeply regret the course our leaders have chosen. I continue to believe that such an action impedes rather than advances the international campaign against terrorism. And I lament our nation’s growing isolation at a time when fledgling progress toward international E pluribus unum might be strengthened through patient diplomatic leadership by the very nation that first posited this vision as essential to the establishment of justice and freedom. Nonetheless, having commenced, this war will continue to its conclusion. We are left to weigh a new set of options based on a new set of realities. Whether we welcome the war in Iraq or regret it, all of us must pray that the violence will end as swiftly as possible. With the ultimate outcome all but certain, the end will be expedited more certainly by Iraqi submission than by an imagined American withdrawal. I don’t believe that American protests will delay that submission, but certainly they do nothing to advance it. At this point, my immediate hopes are therefore invested in a swift and conclusive American victory in Iraq.

That said, we all should welcome evidence of a newly engaged citizenry. For too long, the great majority of Americans have acted as if the rights and privileges of freedom came with no attendant duties, including the duty to engage in the national debate. It must be obvious now to everyone that our choice of leaders matters profoundly. That almost two thirds of those eligible to cast their vote in the last national election didn’t bother to do so is a national sin. Signs of a new American activism point to a more promising future. And the international focus of this activism may engage more of our citizens as world citizens as well. Here I have real hope. In the near future at least, the great national debate that has only just begun will engage us all, regardless of our opinions, to play a part in shaping our common destiny.

The war in Iraq charges us with another responsibility, in this case as a nation, not merely as a divided country. I speak here of our responsibility to the people of Iraq. Whether we, as individual American citizens, opposed this war or supported it is now less consequential than how we, together, move to insure that this new burden be carried responsibly. Should our forces prove victorious (as almost everyone predicts they will), by this action we assume full, if temporary, responsibility for the well-being, protection, and enhancement of the Iraqi people. One might dismiss such presumed responsibility as an arrogant sham, given the havoc we have wreaked there. Or one might counter that by liberating the Iraqis from Sadaam and destroying his weapons of mass destruction (should we actually find them), we have already performed a self-ratifying deed. There may be truth, considerable truth, in both statements. But if any meaning is to be wrung from this invasion of Iraq–if we are to look back on it any differently than we look back on Vietnam–we will have to invest as much ingenuity, passion and money into winning the peace as we have to date in winning the war.

What does that have to do with us, here in this sanctuary? Well, I am perhaps old-fashioned enough to believe that, to one extent or another, we are all, as Americans, in this together. Our nation has been responsible for many historic moments for which today we can be justifiably proud, including the ancestors of those who tried to stop them from happening. At the same time, this nation has been responsible for many acts for which even the ancestors of those who perpetuated them are today justifiably ashamed. Whether time places the war in Iraq into the former of these two categories (which I must hope) or into the latter (which I fear), as an American act its consequences become an American responsibility.

The United States–and that means all our citizens–inherits the responsibility first to rebuild Iraq, and, then, if we are to be true to our principles, to free its people to govern themselves as soon as may prove practicable. This, by the way, is going to cost a great deal of money. And it will be exasperatingly difficult. So be it. The notion that an individual (or a nation) can act freely without consequent responsibility is morally reprehensible. Whether one is outraged or pleased by what our nation is now doing, to pretend that we as American citizens have not together signed on for an extended period of moral and financial obligation would be unconscionable. And to fulfill this obligation will entail sacrifice. Sacrifice is one inevitable price for freedom, including misdirected freedom. Only by being honest about the real cost of our actions can we assume individual or national responsibility for them.

I echo President Bush’s sincere admiration for the courage of those who are risking their lives to do their duty as American soldiers. He must now call on the rest of us to sacrifice, at dramatically less risk but sacrifice nonetheless, to fulfill our newly embraced responsibilities as a people. Had such sacrifices and costs been made clear before this war commenced, many fewer Americans might have supported it. But today, that is irrelevant. All that is relevant now, once the soldiers fulfill their responsibilities as citizens, is that we fulfill our responsibilities as citizens. Once we have deposed our unsavory neighbor from the head of his household– whether we were justified in so doing or not–it becomes our responsibility to rebuild the house and support the household. Each of us must pay his or her part of that bill, and I can’t believe that this will happen through a tax cut. It will entail felt sacrifice, including the sacrifice of domestic services already being attenuated by cutbacks. But we are not children, whose resistance to immediate gratification is not yet tutored by the experience of consequence. Taking full responsibility for our actions, whatever their consequence, is a burden we must carry.

Part of me would prefer instead to turn this war off forever as soon as it is over, the way the nation (though not the soldiers) did with Vietnam. But if we are indeed free and wish to be moral, that is no longer an option. Some will continue to witness in protest against this war. This privilege, again, is an American birthright and must be honored and respected. More, for a time at least, will continue to applaud the president’s decision. Most will harbor at least some ambivalence. But all of us must now join together as one, first to pray for a swift conclusion to the carnage, and then to shoulder the burden, however heavy, of paying without discount for the pending peace. Not to do so would be to succumb to determinism, a choice, paradoxically, for which we, as a people, will rightly be held responsible.