Forgiveness in a Time of War
A Reflection on July 4th, 2007
by Andrew Himes
War and forgiveness. The two concepts seem mutually
exclusive, don't they? How can they have anything to do
with each other? We're told that we're at war, and that
to win a war we must be resolute, we must be stalwart
and certain of the righteousness of our cause, and we
must be clear about our purpose, which is to defeat the
enemy. I don't see how I can disagree with this set of
assertions, which rest in turn on a set of assumptions
based on a number of certainties about the way the world
is shaped. Assuming there are some incorrigibly evil
people out there in the jungle or desert or concrete
canyon or wherever who hate me for some inexplicable
reasons of their own and wish to act on their hatred by
threatening my survival and my family and friends, then
I would be utterly stupid not to try to kill them before
they succeed in killing me. Forgiveness really doesn't
enter this picture, except maybe after I've killed those
evil people, and then only as a practical afterthought,
with the purpose of helping myself to sleep better at
night.
It strikes me, however, that this is the logic of the
battlefield. From the point of view of survival for a
soldier, it makes perfect sense to adopt such
black-and-white categories. You take them out or they
will take you out. Simple as that. Part of the problem,
of course, in a place like Iraq, is that it is so
difficult to know who the enemy is. Who do you target in
order to remain alive? Who do you kill in order to
protect yourself, defend the lives of your buddies,
complete your deployment, and return to your family? Is
it that 12-year-old kid aiming that AK-47 at your head
on a street in Mosul, or is it that teenage girl with a
suicide vest strapped to her body beneath her robe as
she meanders up to a checkpoint, or is it the nameless,
faceless murderer who staged a car bomb at the side of
the road to be triggered by a lethal call to a cell
phone as your Stryker vehicle trundles past, or is it a
black-turbaned mullah in a Baghdad neighborhood
exhorting a gathering of desperately poor and terminally
unemployed youth to drive the American occupiers out of
their country with all available blood and firepower?
Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton created the phrase
"atrocity-creating situation” during the Vietnam War,
and uses it to describe a “counterinsurgency war in
which U.S. soldiers, despite their extraordinary
firepower, feel extremely vulnerable in a hostile
environment,” amplified by “the great difficulty of
tracking down or even recognizing the enemy.” The
built-in logic of being deployed to a place like Iraq
during the current conflict seems tailor-made to
confront soldiers with morally complex choices in
ambiguous circumstances. Who do we blame when things go
wrong and noncombatant civilians are killed? Who do we
hold accountable when a soldier inadvertently sheds
innocent blood in the midst of a firefight? Even more
troubling, who is guilty of criminal misconduct when a
soldier who has been told that "Islam is evil" commits
an act of murder or rape, mayhem, torture or brutality
against a randomly-selected civilian in a Muslim
country?
Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the war
itself, quite apart from whether it was smart or stupid,
honorable or duplicitous, just or unjust to invade Iraq
in the first place, no matter whether Saddam had or did
not have weapons of mass destruction, it seems clear
that prominent among the victims of the war will be tens
and hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the US
military.
Veterans will be paying the price for the service
they undertook voluntarily, on behalf of the rest of us,
for many decades to come. That price will be counted in
millions of nightmares and wasted days, in broken
marriages and orphaned children, in depression,
alcoholism and suicide, in homelessness and poverty, in
crushed hopes and failed dreams.
Is it possible that an alternative logic is available
to those of us who have the luxury of not finding
ourselves on a battlefield? At the risk of somebody
calling me a fool -- a charge that would doubtless be
well-deserved -- I'd like to propose a little mental
exercise. Please join me in considering the words of
General David Petraeus, current US commander in Iraq,
quoted on March 8th of 2007 shortly after assuming his
new position:
"There is no military solution to a problem like that in
Iraq."
I wonder if it might help us to search for the
non-military solutions Petraeus implies are essential if
we found a way to use the non-military technique of
listening to our enemies? If Petraeus is right, we will
have to expend a lot more energy and resources in
conversing with those whom we have deemed enemies than
in destroying them.
And if so, that old-fashioned notion of forgiveness
will come in handy. After all, it's hard to engage in a
sincere and mutual search for peaceful solutions if you
haven't forgiven your conversation partner -- your sworn
enemy -- in advance of the conversation.
 Go
to the essay on the Voices in Wartime web site
http://www.voicesinwartime.org/Home/Article/DisplayArticle.aspx?AuthorID=98039&TypeofContent=Article&ArticleType=2#369894
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Poems from Guantanamo
The following poems are part of a new collection of poetry written by Guantanamo Bay detainees to be
published in late July. For more information about the book, go to
NPR.org.
Is it True?
by Osama Abu Kadir
Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?
Is it true that the flowers will rise up again in the
Spring?
Is it true that birds will migrate home again?
Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?
It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.
But is it true that one day we'll leave Guantanamo Bay?
Is it true that one day we'll go back to our homes?
I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.
To be with my children, each one part of me;
To be with my wife and the ones that I love;
To be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts.
I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.
But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?
We are innocent, here, we've committed no crime.
Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still
Justice and compassion remain in this world!
Shortly after 11 September, Osama Abu Kadir
travelled to Pakistan to perform charity work in
Afghanistan with the Islamic missionary group Tablighi
Jamat. The US claims Tablighi was providing fighters for
jihad in Afghanistan and arrested Mr Kadir near
Jalalabad in November 2001. In his native Jordan, he was
known as a dedicated family man who worked as a truck
driver. In Guantanamo, he is known as prisoner number
651. To read this poem online go to
voicesinwartime.org.
Death Poem
by Jumah al Dossari
Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.
Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.
And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden, before their children and
before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the
"protectors of peace".
Arrested in Pakistan and held in solitary
confinement since 2003, Jumah al Dossari's mental
wellbeing is worrying his lawyers. The 33-year old
Bahraini national has tried to kill himself 12 times
since his incarceration in Guantanamo. On one visit, his
lawyer found him hanging in a bedsheet noose, with a
deep gash in one wrist. In a letter Mr Dossari wrote in
2005, he said: "The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy
people and I have been destroyed." To read this
poem online go to
voicesinwartime.org.
To order the book or DVD, go to
http://voicesinwartime.org/order.htm
Voices in Wartime is a 240-page book containing the most powerful and eloquent
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