Main Feature
What Was War?
Len Desroches, Toronto
Volume 33 Issue 10, 11 & 12 | Posted: December 20, 2019
What to do when you find out a local factory is building parts for weapons of mass destruction? In the eighties, a few of us sat across the driveway entrance to Litton Systems, manufacturers of the electronic ‘brain’ for the Cruise Missile, a nuclear weapon capable of destroying entire cities.
Charged with trespassing, we end up in a courtroom. When I explain to the judge the moral reasons for our action, he tries to give me a lesson in obedience to the law: “If anything was wrong, the authorities would have taken care of it.”
What to do when you find out a local factory is building parts for weapons of mass destruction? In the eighties, a few of us sat across the driveway entrance to Litton Systems, manufacturers of the electronic ‘brain’ for the Cruise Missile, a nuclear weapon capable of destroying entire cities.
Charged with trespassing, we end up in a courtroom. When I explain to the judge the moral reasons for our action, he tries to give me a lesson in obedience to the law: “If anything was wrong, the authorities would have taken care of it.”
A while later I get a personal letter from Hamburg, Germany. In it, Ulf Panzer describes how he and 19 other judges blocked the entrance to the U.S. Army missile base at Mutlangen in protest against nuclear arms. Here is part of his statement as he appeared before Judge Mayerhoffer: “You believe in law and order. You do not believe in justice. Finding us guilty, as you intend to do, means legalizing a crime. German judges have a long history in legalizing crimes. But I guess you don’t have the courage to say NO! to injustice. You have my understanding, Mr. Judge. It took me a long time to find that courage.”
It Has Never Been Easy to Challenge the Institution of War
In the early part of the 20th century, a prophet in Canadian politics challenged cultural assumptions: “…we should decide whether or not an armed force means or makes for peace…I recognize that the policy which I have advocated would involve risks, but the present policy involves not only risk but almost certain failure. Why not take those risks which are incident to the development of the new means of protecting our nation?” These are the words of J. S. Woodsworth (1874-1942), a founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation party (CCF) and a mentor to Tommy Douglass, Canada’s most beloved politician. Woodsworth was referring to what was then more directly (more honestly?) named the Department of War.
Are Woodsworth’s ideas just a politician’s easy words? French general Jacques de Bollardière, after thirty years of warfare – WWII, Algeria, Vietnam – eventually renounced the very Institution of War: “War is but a dangerous disease of an infantile humanity painfully trying to find its way.”
“New Means of Protecting Our Nation”
What other way is there of settling differences? What is this “new means of protecting our nation” that Woodsworth so prophetically pointed to?
One way of answering this is by asking, “What do we want when confronted with serious international conflict?” If we want victory – the endless destruction of our designated enemies – then we definitely do need the war machine and its endless arms race: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen,…
If, instead of victory, we choose to aim for reconciliation, then we need to financially support, develop and activate the soulforce of active nonviolence. Reconciliation? What’s that? It is the healing of broken relationships. The seasoned German politician, Angela Merkel, made a very insightful observation during the Armistice Day ceremonies of 2009: “We cannot wipe out the past, but there is a force which can help us to bear it: the power of reconciliation.” We urgently need politicians like Merkel who understand that reconciliation is literally a force – the end goal of the soulforce of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The healing of broken relationships.
Rabia Terri Harris of the Muslim Peace Fellowship (USA) put it succinctly: “Whether aspiring champions of religion are motivated by private ego or by that collective manifestation of ego known as empire, the results are likely to be the same. Power is not a magic trophy to be fought for, but an infinite spiritual resource.”
Department of Peace
To be concerned about war is far from irrelevant for Canadians! Compared to so many states that are mired in a grotesque military industrial complex, we are in a most special position to build a genuine alternative that would be a practical inspiration to other nations: a Department of Peace.
Isn’t there something lazy and hypocritical about our passive dependence on the U.S. war machine while doing almost nothing to develop our own independent “national security” linked to real “global security”? And isn’t it precisely because we don't have nuclear weapons that we should be taking a far greater leadership role in the urgent global disarmament movement? We are not protected by the nuclear arsenal of the USA. Nuclear war will not spare Canada! Yet the Canadian government continues to meekly acquiesce to the U.S.A.’s insistence that we not sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Robert Acheson, of the Canadian Peace Initiative, pointed out in 2009: “Canada is a nation at war. Thousands of Afghans have been killed or injured, the nation is in disarray, the role of the Taliban insurgents has been greatly strengthened, one hundred and twenty-five of our soldiers have lost their lives and hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent every month by Canada in a conflict that by most reckonings is a futile endeavour…This war is but a symptom of a larger problem: the militarization of our nation. Increasingly, the Department of National Defence is determining Canadian foreign policy, deeply entrenching us in NATO and focused on the Security and Prosperity Partnership with the United States. Without any public debate Canada is quickly becoming more integrated with the US in its military-industrial dimensions.”
(It’s important to note that at least 62 Canadian soldiers who served in the Afghanistan war killed themselves after returning home.)
I do agree that we need some organized force to defend ourselves in case of invasion. I’m also utterly confident that if the force of organized nonviolence is given at least the same financial, cultural and political support as the Department of War (aka the Department of Defence), Canadians will eventually discover it as a force with which we are fully capable of defending ourselves by Civilian Based Defence (CBD), as just one part of a Department of Peace. But even at their most “progressive” none of the Canadian political parties has ever been prophetic enough to at least seriously explore J. S. Woodsworth’s challenge to develop “new means” towards lasting national and global security.
To be clear, I don’t consider the issue of a Department of Peace to be more important than care of the Earth. Nor do I consider it less important. Rather I am saying that they are utterly interconnected. For example, the urgency related to the immediate need to deal with the climate crisis is the exact same urgency related to the building of a Department of Peace. In both cases, we can’t keep going in the present direction. In both cases the consequences are global and permanent. In both cases, time is of the essence.
It is important to acknowledge that, as 22 scientists recently wrote to the United Nations, “…military conflict continues to destroy megafauna, push species to extinction and poison water resources.” Taking better care of the Earth and of each other urgently demands that we live much more simply and that we learn to cooperate – to face up to our obsession with consuming and to mature far beyond mere competition. We all have various choices we can make. My choice to live in a housing cooperative, to use a car-sharing network (and a bike), to use cooperative banking (credit union) are all very basic choices, but they are all directly linked to the hard, yet energizing work of care of Earth and resistance to militari$m.
Cooperation is urgent not only at the local level, but also in the global context. After the horrific massacre of WWII, the United Nations was created in an attempt to learn to cooperate as nations, far beyond the extreme international competition that necessarily leads to war.
What About the Nazis?
If I accept that we had to use military force against the Nazis, it’s not because I think this force is more powerful than the soulforce of active nonviolent resistance, but because the soulforce of active nonviolence was not understood, let alone financially supported, developed or activated. Instead, evil and injustice were allowed to grow and fester – all legally. Only military force was supported and developed.
And since doing nothing in the face of great evil and injustice is not a moral option for humans, the only force available to confront Nazism was military force.
Where the soulforce of active nonviolent resistance was activated, it was powerfully effective. In the small village of Le Chambon in Nazi-occupied southern France, approximately 5,000 Christians saved the lives of approximately 5,000 Jews in an embrace of friendship – fully aware that by their illegal nonviolent resistance they were risking their lives.
The parishioners of Le Chambon lived with the awareness that, as Rabbi Abraham Heschel put it, “The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.”
The White Rose Movement of German university students used the simple but very powerful nonviolent tool of the leaflet (before the internet) to expose the lies of the legally-elected government. They were so effective that the Nazis had to create a special police unit to hunt them down.
Caught and faced with execution, Hans Scholl cried out “Long live freedom!” His sister, 21-year-old Sophie Scholl, wrote in her diary just days before her beheading: “With all those people dying for the regime, it is high time someone died against it.” When her mother visited her on the eve of her execution, they both tried to give each other strength. Her mother said, “Remember, Sophie, Jesus.” With uncommon strength Sophie replied, “Yes, but you must remember too.”
And what of the deaths of people like Franz Yagerstatter, the Austrian father and farmer who was arrested and executed for refusing to fight for Hitler (from prison he wrote, “God gives so much strength!”); the two German Jesuit priests, Max Josef Yetzer (“War itself is a lie. We have to organize for peace the way men have organized for war.”) and Alfred Delp (from prison, “All these hard weeks have had as their purpose a training in inner freedom.”)? All their deaths continue to not only inspire but also to instruct, strategically and spiritually – as do the deaths of people like Martin Luther King and bishop Oscar Romero from El Salvador.
Neither the force of organized violence nor the force of organized nonviolence can unleash their full power unless those involved are ready to freely give their lives if necessary. “We live by that power that even death cannot destroy,” asserted Romero.
Is the lesson of the Nazi era to continue to spend the people’s money and Earth’s resources on armaments – nuclear and other? Or is the lesson to respond to the urgency of learning, supporting, developing and activating the lasting soulforce of active nonviolence?
By its very definition, the soulforce of active nonviolence makes impossible the rise of a Nazi-type movement – let alone a government! How? Immediate, life-risking non-cooperation with injustice and evil is part of the very fabric of this soulforce.
Gandhi insisted, “Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen. He dare not give it up without ceasing to be human.” Rudolf Höess, commandant of the fully legal Auschwitz concentration camp, confessed, “The thought of disobeying an order would simply never have occurred to anybody.”
Disobedience to and non-cooperation with evil and injustice need to be taught to young people – in schools, parishes and homes – as much as they need to be taught to obey and cooperate with goodness and justice. Just as we learn obedience and its spirituality, so too must we learn disobedience and its spirituality.
Doesn’t this necessarily involve unlearning false obedience? In the context of the spirituality of nonviolence, it seems we move from a sense of the very sacredness of obedience to a sense of the equally sacred reality of disobedience to evil.
Young people need to be taught that if part of living fully and freely is giving one’s life to protect community and justice, then this is far better than not living fully and freely in an attempt to protect one’s physical life. “Don't be afraid of those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” The depth of Jesus’ words is revealed in situations such as Nazi Germany: keep your soul fully alive and free.
“Something Big Needs to Happen!”
Young people need to have a real choice when it comes to risking their lives for their country. As General Jacques de Bollardière put it: “This strategy is accessible to the masses…at its worst, this struggle without arms and without hatred would not provoke the same massacres as violence, would not accumulate the same ruins, would not lower the level of civilization…As an officer I have constantly asked young men to accept to be killed. And they accepted, often without understanding, simply out of obedience to a discipline, because they were trained for that. Why would not young people today accept to sacrifice of themselves for something that they understand and believe in?”
Young people are vividly aware that, as a human race, we can actually commit global suicide – either gradually by climate neglect or as suddenly as the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945.
When the mayor of Hiroshima was in Montréal in 1986, he reminded us that, “To remember the past is to commit oneself to the future.” Young people know that their future is at stake and that we can’t just continue to make minor adjustments. They know, as Greta Thunburg voiced it before the international community, “Something big needs to happen!”
Just as we need to radically limit our use of carbon fuels, so too do we need to renounce the Institution of War’s deadly, endless global arms race and begin to build a Department of Peace for every country on Earth. We need to pull away from the Perpetual War Economy. Do we not need to build an economy that actually embraces the hungry child and the homeless elder – in Canada as well as in Yemen?
The Perpetual War Economy – Militari$m
As the movement World Beyond War explains: “The entire body of work of the United Nations, including peace-keeping and the sweeping social and economic operation of 40 specialized agencies and programs, costs $30 billion per year. That’s a lot of money. That's also less than 2 percent of what the nations of the world spend on armaments – $1.7 trillion.” That’s the Perpetual War Economy – militari$m.
The United Nations has declared the war in Yemen to be “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” More than 70,000 people have died since the beginning of 2016. Between 8-10 million Yemenis go hungry every day – on the brink of starvation. Yemen is suffering the worst cholera epidemic in recent history: more than 2,500 people – 58 percent children – have died.
Three million people have been displaced. Saudi Arabia leads a war coalition in Yemen that's involved in war crimes. (Even at home, Saudi Arabia is guilty of very serious human rights abuses.) Yet, credible evidence reveals that Canadian weapons sold to Saudi Arabia are being used in Yemen. Over half a billion dollars worth of armoured fighting vehicles have been exported through the Port of Saint John to Saudi Arabia in 2019 alone. Drones made in Ontario, or in the United Arab Emirates by a Canadian-owned company have been used in Yemen.
The Canadian government is presently involved in an arms deal with the Saudi kingdom, worth approximately $15 billion. It refuses to cancel the deal, even though Denmark, Finland, Germany and Norway have all suspended Saudi arms transfers. As Andrew Cash sings in Murder: “Murder equals opportunity. You can make a lot of money selling weaponry.” Militari$m.
The amount of our money that the government has set aside for the military budget is roughly $20-billion per year. Imagine using $20-billion of our money to support groups such as Peace Brigades International, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Médecins sans frontières, Amnesty International, and so many more – including not-yet-functioning groups related to issues such as Civilian-Based Defence (CBD). Imagine what could get done! Imagine! Imagine, in order to begin to insist on how we want our money to be used.
War Traditions
Every culture in the broader world community has a warrior tradition – ancient and not-so-ancient.
In Jewish scripture, the author of the Book of Numbers talks, in chapter 31, of the “holy war” against Midian: “Yaweh spoke to Moses and said, 'Exact full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites’…They waged the campaign against Midian..they put every male to death…killed the kings…set fire to the towns…”
Then there were the “holy wars” of the Christians and the Muslims – terrible massacres. (Francis of Assisi's 13th century encounter of friendship with Malik al Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt, is all the more astonishing since it took place in the midst of a horrific “holy war.”)
On the west coast of Turtle Island there was the Makah tribe whose warriors captured slaves from enemies such as the Quileute and Klallam.
Later came the bloody colonial wars between my French ancestors and the English. (Pitifully, it was warfare that determined the fate of what became Canada: in September of 1759, British Major-General James Wolfe won a swift victory over French commander Marquis de Montcalm’s forces on the Plains of Abraham at Québec city.)
Historically, we are all confronted with the same choice: to perpetuate the Institution of War or to begin a global apprenticeship in the other more lasting force.
Muriel Lester (1883-1968), secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, declared, “War is as outmoded as cannibalism, chattel slavery, blood-feuds, and duelling…” We must evolve – become more mature in love. This is what General Jacques Bollardière alluded to when he insisted, “War is but a dangerous disease of an infantile humanity…”
What About All Those Enemies?
Do we not need to become far more spiritually mature – individually and collectively? Martin Luther King challenged mainstream spirituality when he asserted, “Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one’s enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival.” This world-changing reality is far beyond emotionally “liking” one’s enemy.
Right after challenging us to love our enemies, Christ invites us to be as “mature” in love as God is. Most of the translations use the word “perfect” rather than “mature.” But as farmer and revered scripture scholar Clarence Jordan pointed out, the original word had more to do with maturing, as a fruit grows into maturity:
“To talk about unlimited retaliation is babyish; to speak of limited retaliation is childish; to advocate limited love is adolescent; to practice unlimited love is evidence of maturity.” To become mature, to become free, is to renounce violence – and the fear and greed and illusion of control that drive it. Ah, the illusion of control!
Of course, there is a less spiritually demanding, more seductive response to violence, exemplified by Donald Trump in one of his pre-campaign speeches: “If somebody hits you, you’ve got to hit ‘em back five times harder than they ever thought possible. You’ve got to get even.” Don’t millions of people adhere to such a spiritual immaturity vis-à-vis their neighbour, next door or across an ocean? Isn’t that the spiritually immature cry of war?
Yes, developing and sustaining the soulforce of nonviolence is a far more demanding spiritual discipline than building and using weapons. Yes, it is also far, far more secure, life-giving and lasting.
Relentless Persistence?
I’ve worked hard all my life – roofing, plastering, painting, repairing, exposing and resisting militarism, giving retreats and workshops, parenting, writing, preaching, cooperating. Now I am an elder. I could concern myself with simply a comfortable retirement – tending the garden and reading.
But I am still deeply drawn by the very real potential for the human race to mature in love, to become a true global family, taking much better care of each other and of this small, sweet Earth. I share the courageous hope of the poet Eve Merriam who boldly declared, “I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?’”
The Sword and The Cross is Len’s book on this subject matter.
(Len with son Luc)
Len Desroches, Toronto