WHY I AM STILL A PACIFIST
Rev. Robert M. Eddy, M.Div.
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
Panama City, Florida
28 March 2010

READING

“War is a poison. It is a poison that nations and groups must at times ingest to ensure their survival. But, like any poison, it can kill you just as surely as the disease it is meant to eradicate. The poison of war courses unchecked through the body politic of the United States. We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We embrace the dangerous self-delusion that we are on a providential mission to save the rest of the world from itself, to implant our virtues—which we see as superior to all other virtues—on others, and that we have a right to do this by force. This belief has corrupted Republicans and Democrats alike. And if Barack Obama drinks, as it appears he will, the dark elixir of war and imperial power offered to him by the national security state, he will accelerate the downward spiral of the American empire.”
Chris Hedges, © Nov 17, 2008

“When did you become a pacifist?
On August 14, 1945 V-J Day.” On that day I was attending a Methodist Youth Fellowship Institute near Albany, NY. It was there, that I first saw the film of Auschwitz, the “extermination camp” where the Nazi government of Germany systematically – oh so systematically – incinerated over one million Jews. Today we have become inured to those images but then they were earth shaking; especially for a 14 year old,. The day I first saw those stacked emaciated corpses, the 14th day of August, 1945 was the day I became a pacifist.

Before June 14, 1945 I had been a “passive – ist” As a follower of Jesus I believed in turning the other cheek, returning “good for evil, “loving those who spitefully used” me. At least I tried. My mother taught me to “turn the other cheek” My father taught me how to box.

I tried to obey my mother but I was often overwhelmed by rage. I would strike back without constraint. And that frightened me. In fact, to be analytical, my fear of getting out of control may have had more to do with my attempt to be a good “passive- ist”, than any wish to please my mother. But this is not the place for a psychological self dissection.

August 14, 1945 was the day I grew out of passivism “p-a s-s-i-v-e- ism” and began growing into pacifism, p-a-c-i-f- ism”. Pacifism is way of peace different both from violent reaction and passiv-ism. I have a bumper sticker on my car, a quote from A.J. Muste, long president of the Fellowship of Reconcilliation. The bumper sticker says, “Peace is not the goal. Peace is the way.” Pacifism is active, learning how to use “soul force”, learning how to “speak truth to power”, learning how to find the least violent of the real options available when you are required to act, pacifism is learning to accept defeat and suffering rather than abandoning the commitment to non violence. And pacifism is learning how to love one’s adversaries and, yes, even the most evil of one’s enemies. That’s the most difficult learning of all.

Joan Baez, in a recent PBS retrospective was asked how she wanted to be remembered. She said,
“I want to be remembered first as a human being, second as a Pacifist and only third as a singer.”
Joan Baez in her life has exemplified the way of peace. She wants to be remembered as a pacifist.
Pacifism is developing skill-set for dealing non- violently with all kinds of conflict, between individuals and communities of every size from neighborhoods to nations.

Joan Baez is a pacifist. Martin Luther King was a pacifist. I’m a pacifist, not a particularly skillful one. Maybe only a “wannabe”.

President Obama has been accused of being a pacifist. I hope there is more than a kernel of truth in the accusation. Here are some selections taken from Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Lecture delivered on the December 11, 2009.

President Obama said:
“ … I come here with an acute sense of the cost of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other. …”
Page 1 (Pages refer to (Huffing ton Post download)
President Obama said:
“ … I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges … will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago,
‘Violence never brings permanent peace It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”
As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non violence. I know there is nothing weak – nothing passive – nothing naïve- in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. ”
Page 2

…
President Obama said:
“ [W]e do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached –their faith in human progress – must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.
… if we loose that faith [in human progress]– if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace – then we lose what is best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass. … As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago,
‘I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘is ness’ of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘ought ness’ that forever confronts him.’”
page 6 of 6.

Is our President a Pacifist? No. Seconding Martin Luther King doesn’t make Obama a pacifist, but in seeking to drag this nation to a place where going to war will always be the last resort, in bending over backwards to “give peace a chance” he is more of a pacifist than any other man who attained his high office. That’s why he received the Nobel Peace Prize was announced on October 9, 2009. Here’s the press release.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

Many Americans wondered what specifically it was that Obama had done in the 11 months since he was elected. “Nothing”, said his American detractors. But Europeans knew that on the previous April, in a Speech in Prague, Obama had reversed the policy that had guided the Bush – Chaney administration. Americans forgot, but Europeans had not forgotten that on June 13 2002 President Bush announced that he was unilaterally abrogating the … Treaty that pledged the U.S. to work with Russia to reduce the number of nuclear warheads

I wonder if our president read all of Dr. King’s Nobel Lecture. I did this week. It is the speech that should be read on Milk’s birthday. Great as the “I have a dream” speech is, in the Nobel Lecture you hear a truly prophetic voice speaking truth to power. In that address Dr. King said:

“The nonviolent resisters can summarize their message in the following simple terms: we will take direct action against injustice despite the failure of governmental and other official agencies to act first. We will not obey unjust laws or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, cheerfully because our aim is to persuade. We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to become witnesses to truth as we see it.”

Obviously President Obama is not committing the U.S. military to non violent resistance. Not even India, the land which Gandhi believed had the potential to do that, has not abandoned conventional military doctrine. Pakistan and India seem hell bent – literally – on repeating the Mutually Assured Destruction policy of the U.S and S.U. during the cold war.

No, Obama is not a pacifist but what Obama has done is to move the United States away from a policy of Unilateral and Pre-emptive war the policy of the Cheney-Bush administration after 9/11.

No pacifist could be elected to the Presidency of the United is States. But Obama is, I believe, committed to searching in every instance for the least violent response to every threat to the security of the United States.

He has damped down
“ The chain reaction of evil — wars producing more wars”
and moved us at least for the time being
“ away from a calamitous path into “the dark abyss of annihilation.”

I believe that we have escaped from the road to Armageddon and have returned to a path closer to the pacifist way. I am hopeful!
There are four reasons I am hopeful:

I am hopeful because last October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech celebrating the 25th anniversary of the creation of the US INSTITUTE OF PEACE in Washington, D.C. Did you know there was and is such a government agency? It’s not large but it is significant and growing more so. The USIP charter says,
“The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress to increase the nation’s capacity to manage international conflict without violence.”

If you go to their website you can see some of their constructive work. On the bottom of each page in the website are pithy quotes on the need for peaceful conflict resolution, including the one I just quoted delivered at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, at Christmas, 1957. Martin Luther King wrote it while in jail for committing nonviolent civil disobedience during the Montgomery bus boycott. It’s worth repeating:
“ The chain reaction of evil — wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
.
A second reason I am hopeful comes, from my own experience.

Almost exactly 49 years ago, on Palm Sunday 1961, I was leading a “silent witness” outside a newly completed Nerve Gas factory outside Newport Indiana. For a week we stood in silence outside the plant, non violently asking with our signs, “If nerve gas is good, what is evil?” Following Gandhian techniques I had met with the director of the plant and the head of the security staff to explain exactly what we were up to. Soon after that conversation the director came to my temporary office and said he had gone to his pastor – a Presbyterian – and been reassured that making nerve gas was ethical as a deterrent. Remember these were the days of “Mutually Assured Destruction” policy. We were developing all kinds of horrendous weapons of mass destruction not only nerve gas, but biological weapons like anthrax and even plague on the theory that no one would dare use them. Mad, mad, mad mad.

Now, forty nine years after the opening of that nerve gas factory the nerve gas made and stored at Newport, is being destroyed. Chemical and Biological warfare are no longer considered acceptable military options or deterrents. Soon, I hope the whole mythology, as ancient as Rome, “if you want peace prepare for war” will be recognized for the “downward spiral” that it is and always has been.

A third reason I am hopeful:
We’ve heard the world “reconciliation” a lot these last few weeks. It’s been used to denote the parliamentary maneuvering that the Democrats used to counter the Republicans’ maneuvering to stop action in the Senate – and which the Cheney Bush administration used to decrease taxes for the super rich. But the word is also used for non-violent resolution of grievances as developed in South Africa where Bishop Tutu led a program of reconciliation which avoided the blood bath everyone expected after the black majority obtained power. Similar techniques are being used today in Burundi and Rwanda, in Chile, in cities where teen aged gangs emulate international relations by retaliation for killings. Reconciliation is a well documented successful alternative to “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

A final reason I am hopeful:

The American people are beginning to learn from experience that most wars, perhaps no wars accomplish the ends for which they were launched. The wars accomplished neither the stated ends nor the actual ends. This is clearest in every war since 1945. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq to name the most expensive in life and treasure. But I think eventually we will realize that not even “the last good war” didn’t achieve the goals of the Atlantic Charter. The American people are beginning – just beginning – to realize there are no “good” wars. Every nation looses when war erupts – yes, that’s the word – war erupts from the unconscious drives that made us the dominant species on this planet. Those same drives now threaten to obliterate not life, but a better life for all of humanity.
The American people are beginning – just beginning – to realize that WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER.

That’s why I’m hopeful and why I am still a pacifist.