Sermon: Supporting the Troops with Peace: Memorial Day, 2008

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Supporing the Troops with Peace: Memorial Day, 2008

By Charles Rush

May 25, 2008

[ Audio (mp3, 6Mb) ]

this chapter in Matthew, Jesus sends his disciples into the world with some general admonitions on how they should behave. There is a gritty realism in his advice that goodness in the social realm is like sending sheep in the midst of wolves. However, pure our intentions, they founder on the embedded interests of money and power that are subtly but deeply sown in the processes that make up our body politic. Jesus doesn't so much tell us what to do as give us a demeanor and freedom for thinking about our world and our role in it as spiritual people. We are ‘in' this world but not entirely ‘of' this world. We are committed to the Kingdom of God but if we aren't able to make that commitment relevant for the kingdoms of men in which we live and breath, our spirituality isn't very helpful. Jesus sums that up by saying that we need to be as wise as serpents, the ancient symbol of crafty understanding of the full range of human motivations noble and base, but also innocent as doves, having ideals that transform our social world around us, as compromised and difficult as that always will be. Balancing both is quite difficult and it is with that humility in mind that we think together about the state of our world this Memorial Day Weekend.

I was riding my bicycle through the swamp the other day, when a pickup truck passed by with a hand-painted message on the back. It said, “I am alive and free today because of a Veteran… Thanks Dad.” Those things always catch me off guard with a wave of emotion that is surprising in its depth.

I remember being in Manhattan just a couple days after the attack on our city. I happened to be standing with a few big, grown men. All of a sudden we heard the roar of a jet which got everyone's attention. It was two F-15's flying up the East River and the Hudson River. One of these big burly guys burst a couple tears before he could control himself. Another one waved like he was going to spontaneously salute. We were all thinking, “Man, I'm glad to see you guys… and thanks.” None of us ever thought we would live to see the day that Manhattan needed a fly-by… and thanks.

I had a picture that I used to keep on my wall of one of my sons. I love this photograph, partly because I am proud of this boy and he was always on my mind when he was in the service. So I kept it in a place that not many people could see it but I could. And I also kept it up there because… it made me feel safe. He is taking a break after being on patrol. It is up in the mountain passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was a scout in the Army and they were supporting Special Forces that were hunting for Osama Bin Laden and the other Al Qaeda leaders.

I have to tell you though, that the day I saw the guy in the truck with the hand painted sign… after a few seconds went by I thought to myself, “I am alive and fee today because of a Veteran… Thanks Son”. That is a much more complicated sentence. Among other things, I will never be able to utter that sentence without an enormous wave of guilt. This is not the type of guilt that you can probably work through with a change of perspective. No this is the type of guilt that you have because it is really real.

I am grateful to live in freedom. I deeply honor the sacrifices and the genuine heroism that our soldiers exhibit day in and day out. I just can't bow my head at a public prayer moment without immediately connecting with these sentinels that are always on duty somewhere so that we can be doing what we are doing now. And that is why I feel a heavy moral gravitas to make sure that we are giving these women and men a mission they can do, the support their families need to during their time of service, and a well earned opportunity to return to health and education after their service so they can lead at home.

I've had the opportunity to hear a few of our Colonels speak about what is happening in Iraq. It is impressive. You won't read about most of this in our papers, not because they aren't sending out press releases, but because our media is so driven by crisis and conflict that the opening of a school just doesn't sell papers, so it isn't news.

I believe our soldiers had been in Fallujah, this was a couple years ago. The place had been overrun by Al Qaeda operatives and they were being protected by the local Sunni Sheiks. So the Army had to clear the area block by block, which is extraordinarily dangerous. In fact, they were constantly being attacked by IED's, so they were really on edge. And clearing these areas is very hard on the local people, as the Army is basically looking through all of their homes, which creates tremendous resentment and fear.

And in the midst of all that fear, a couple of the officers in that unit, not only kept their head, they started looking around for ways that they could ease some of this tension creatively. It is an amazing moral capacity that I don't think is taught in most other Armies around the world. They started to ask the locals why the kids weren't in school. They got the answers. They brought the teachers and the principals together, asked them what they needed. They got some equipment from the provisional American government. They got the buildings cleaned up. They repaired some stuff. They wrote their spouses back home and their spouses contacted their Churches and other groups and mailed over tons of school supplies. After a few months, when they had finally secured the area and were able to leave, all of the soldiers were asked to assemble at the school with the officer corps. When they got there, the teachers and all the kids came out to sing to them. They had prepared a presentation to thank them for their new school.

This Colonel is telling me this story, showing me these pictures… I'm thinking to myself, ‘So what have I done, really Reverend, in the past few months to improve humanity with what you have?' It is very impressive the way that they professionally keep to the mission under intense pressure, the way that they see what needs to be done and just do it. Unfortunately, you won't read about this in the paper, not nearly on the scale that it is happening.

I saw a poll the other day. They interviewed boys in Iraq. What it the number one things that boys in Iraq want to be when they grow up? What is the number one thing? They want to be an American Soldier, not an Iraqi soldier. They want to be an American soldier and trust me, they resent being under occupation. It speaks volumes about the character of our women and men in uniform that children could say such a thing in the midst of an occupation.

Our officers, our soldiers, just make lemonade out of lemons. But that doesn't mean that we should keep giving them lemons to work with. We've watched our armed forces work out of a bad situation on so many occasions in the past few years, but I hope this doesn't relax us from our obligation to provide them with a realistic mission that can lead toward peace.

I was watching that piece of tape again. You've seen it. It is a collection of taped interviews from ‘Meet the Press' and all the other Sunday morning talk shows, from just before and just after, we invaded Iraq. The tape not only has all the people from the Administration -- Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Vice-President Cheney -- all of the people in charge of designing the Invasion and restoration – but also there were Senators and Congressmen from both parties who authorized it. They were all responding to two questions: What will it be like when we invade? And, where will we be two years after the invasion? Dozens of them appeared to be reading from the same cue card. With one voice, they said that the Iraqis will meet us with open arms, that the re-building effort will be paid for by the Iraqi people, and that we will be home in two years. A few of them adopted something of a masculine paternalistic tone that they could understand why the rest of us might be concerned about some of the issues that were raised, but, trust me, that will be resolved. You can only watch something like this with deepening humility and a certain slack-jawed amazement that so many could be so wrong.

Some years later, after reviewing hundreds of articles from left to right, from the journals of professionals in diplomacy to those reporters who have been in country most of time since the war, the overwhelming consensus is that this mission was poorly defined politically and continues to be hampered by poor political planning.

Within that Miasma, our Military personnel have done an outstanding job. Perhaps you read the series in the Atlantic Monthly that detailed some of the stability that has resulted in many of the more difficult areas because of the careful negotiations that our mid-level officer corps has been involved in over the past many months in all three of the volatile regions -- the Shiites in the South and in Sadr City in Baghdad, the Sunni triangle north of Baghdad and in Kurdistan with the minorities that live in those regions. It is very impressive to listen to their discernment, their ability to figure out who needs to be included in negotiations in order for them to be effective, and sometimes the sheer novelty that they are able to bring people to the table that have never actually sat and talked to each other, despite being enemies. Over and over, you find yourself thinking, ‘these are 28 year old kids'. Their maturity is phenomenal. Their thoroughness with detail, their attention to respect, their professionalism – all this is exemplary.

We owe it to them to develop a serious set of goals that will define a mission accomplished, so that they can come home. What we simply cannot do is let them continue to make do with diplomacy that is forced upon them because we aren't making enough serious progress on the political through the State Department. As Frank Rich reminds us in today's paper, we've now been in Iraq longer than World War 2. It is simply time to make the transition beyond the military occupation. We, who enjoy the fruits of freedom, owe this to our children who are protecting us.

As you know, this is a very serious expense and we are expending a lot of social capital. Perhaps you saw the op-ed piece this week in the Wall Street Journal that compared the economic return on various social expenditures. Not surprisingly, war is very inefficient, and a long-term drain on our collective life. This will be a very important issue for our coming elections and we simply must become informed enough to collectively develop a mature program that is realistic about what we can and cannot solve in that area, a plan that develops enough peace or détente that we can begin to exit.

Our military families are suffering too much of the burden of this effort and this, I believe is a moral issue. This week the Star Ledger had an article on the call up that we will face here in New Jersey as the largest Army Reserve action and the largest National Guard action in our history to be deployed in Iraq. These are families with mortgages, families with children, families who have already served their country admirably. They have signed up to protect our country in the advent of a national emergency, to reactivate their training, and to serve.

We have been calling them up to serve in Iraq, effectively as a back-draft because we are having trouble recruiting soldiers to serve. We are having trouble getting soldiers to serve because the mission in Iraq is politically problematic. Our military leaders were forced to turn to this method as a stop-gap measure. But at the moment, something like 1/3 of all our soldiers serving in Iraq are Army reserves or National Guard.

They will never complain because of who they are. But this is not right. It places an enormous strain on families, on marriages. As the Star-Ledger points out, it also depletes quite a large number of our state police, our firemen. These men and women provide are inordinately drawn from the pool of emergency response teams that we use day in and day out.

We are interrupting their lives, asking them to serve in a capacity that is beyond what they thought they were signing up for. Is this really what we want to ask of our children? This simply must end and soon.

Finally, we know the high costs of war. We know the toll that it takes on people that have indelible images seared upon their psyches that stay with them their entire lives. I know in the last couple years, I've finally been involved in some discussions with the generation from World War 2 as they have begun reflecting on that experience now that they are in the last chapter of life.

I was listening to a group of them describe life on the college campus right after the end of the war. Not surprisingly, it was much wilder than previously reported because there were so many young men and women working through those traumas on their own without benefit of counseling or guidance of any kind.

Unfortunately, through our on-going work with the homeless at Bridges, we see far too many of our homeless men in New York that are Vietnam Veterans. The scars from war are serious and deep. We know this now. They need to be addressed comprehensively. These are our children, why wouldn't we want to give them the tools they need to re-integrate into society. And if those tools are expensive, let's raise the money together. How can we do anything less?

Jesus teaches us to be wise as serpents, to understand the realities and vagaries of our world, but to be as innocent as doves. Jesus taught us ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.' What can we do to do some peace-making while we are in the midst of war? What can we do to develop some healing while the fighting wages on?

These are not easy questions to answer and there are certainly no quick formulas that can be directly applied. But in our government, neither can we evade them, as though we are not all responsible. In our system, we are responsible. As we pause tomorrow to remember their sacrifices, let us also pray for a serious vision of peace and commit ourselves to making it real. They are all our kids. We owe it to them. Amen.