On War with Iraq

By Michael Knopf
JTS / Columbia

In the biblical book of Kings, God instructs King Solomon that he may not use metal tools to hew the stones which would be used to build the Holy Temple, because God did not want instruments of war to tarnish God's holy place. The lesson taught is that war, violence, and bloodshed tarnish our sanctity as human beings and God wants no part in our insistent desire to battle one another. In fact, the more I read and interpret the Torah, the more I am convinced that Hillel was correct in stating the Torah is epitomized by the phrase "V'ahavta l'reyakha kamokha" (love your neighbor as yourself) and, to expound on that, by the phrase "tzedek, tzedek tirdof" (Justice, justice shall you pursue).

The whole of the Torah is an attempt to make the Jewish people a peace-loving, tolerant, benevolent nation, focused on eradicating the injustices man experiences such as poverty, hunger, and violence. God wills for God's children to cooperate, to end war and bloodshed, to pursue peace, justice, and righteousness. God wants God's children to love each other. There have been few times and places in human history where the Torah's lessons have not been more poignant than in an America bent on war against Iraq.

As a Jew, one should be particularly concerned about the moral conscience, the soul, of the United States of America. It is the job of Americans who are versed in the lessons of the Torah to help ensure that they are imparted to those who sorely need to learn them. No one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today and for Jewish values can ignore the threat of war.

America's soul can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of people around the world. As Jews and as Americans, we should all have a hope and a prayer of what America can be—a prayer of peace, of justice, and of tolerance—therefore we must end war and work for the health of our nation. War is always a bloodstain on any nation's moral conscience; a war on Iraq would be no different. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., if America's soul becomes poisoned, part of the autopsy will read, "Iraq."

The impending war on Iraq is but a symptom of a far deeper sickness in the American soul, a sickness of fear, of hate, and of violence. If we ignore this sobering reality, the disease will all too quickly consume this country. In the unfolding mystery of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.

As a nation, we have a choice: nonviolent coexistence or violent "co-annihilation." We must speak for peace and justice throughout the world without raising our fists in hate and violence, because they cannot be reconciled with justice, peace, and love. If we fail to act, we will surely be dragged down the long, dark, shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Whenever I think of the impending war on Iraq, my mind shifts constantly to the unfortunate people who inhabit that volatile country, and I cannot help but draw a comparison with a nation of needy people we also plundered and murdered in an immoral war, which was Vietnam. We dropped leaflets on the villages in Vietnam promising peace and democracy, just as we pledge to do in Iraq; but the villages were the very villages that American bombs ravaged.

Even as it became apparent that military action would not succeed in ousting the tyrannical Communist regime in North Vietnam, nor would it bring peace, security, and freedom to the Vietnamese people, the self-interest, hubris, and a general lack of moral responsibility on the part of America's leaders clouded their vision of bringing peace and freedom to the Vietnamese people. Because of this, we not only sent thousands of our own native sons to their graves, but imprisoned, poisoned, and murdered over one million innocent Vietnamese people—most of them women and children, all of them poor and defenseless.

The fabric of Iraqi society is not unlike the Vietnamese society of 40 years ago. The vast majority of the Iraqi people are poor, sick, and hungry. Can war bring them the life that they so sorely need and deserve? No. War can only serve to bring more squalor, oppression, and ultimately, death. War does not bring peace. War does not bring stability. War does not bring freedom.

War brings death, destruction, and oppression. How many people have to die before we realize that war with anybody only perpetuates an unstoppable cycle of violence and bloodshed? Do we have to engage in nuclear war before our leaders realize that violence does not bring about peace, only death and destruction?

We can learn from the lessons of Vietnam in our current situation with Saddam Hussein and Iraq. To be sure, Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who oppresses and slaughters his own people. The Iraqi people would be much better off with a democratic government that cared about the peoples' interests and championed the ideals of peace, freedom, and equality. However, having our finger on the trigger is not going to bring that to the unfortunate people of Iraq. Look at our record in Afghanistan—regime toppling is a much easier task for our government than regime building.

Next, one need only look to the oppressed poor of America, those who grow poorer by the day as the wealthy amass more and more wealth. Only a few years ago, the promise of eradicating poverty in our nation was positive, with our lawmakers and president working on programs to educate our youth and give the poor the assistance they so sorely need to live up to America's promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. How much of that initiative will dissolve into obsolescence as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war? History speaks for itself. During wartime, America never invested the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitating its poor so long as war continued to draw men, skills, and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. Remember, too, that it is consistently the poor, the uneducated masses, who fill the ranks of our armies. War is always an enemy of the poor and as Jews, as voices for the poor of the world, and war must be condemned as such.

Instead of fighting a war on Iraq, let us fight a peaceful war, a just war – a war to eradicate poverty and human suffering at home and abroad. Let us wage a war that does not use warplanes, bombs, and guns. Let us wage a war of love and tolerance. As Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, "There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation" of humans' rights to life, liberty, and happiness. We must with positive, peaceful action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of totalitarianism and dictatorship grow and thrive.

Somehow, this madness must stop before it starts with the United States of America taking a firm stand on the moral high ground, which states that the blood of innocents cannot and will not be shed by our sword. As children of the Living God we have been put on this earth to love one another, to pursue justice and peace without the shedding of blood. As citizens of the world, we must realize and understand that the world stands horrified at the course America is about to take. As young adults who love America, we must say to the leaders of our own nation, in the words of one of its favorite sons: "Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind."

Americans must decide not to allow an unjust war to be fought with their indifference as its support, and they must make a stand at this crucial moment in human history and eradicate war in order to promote peace, love, brotherhood, and helping our fellow man. If America makes the right choice, the tide of this impending moral crisis will turn into a beautiful world prayer for peace; fear and hatred of our current world will turn into tolerance and brotherhood. Not engaging in war will speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when "love and justice flow like a mighty stream" and "peace fills the earth as waters fill the sea" (Sabbath liturgy).

[Posted 3/2/03]