Reining in the Red Horse: What a Believing Christian Would do About Iran

 

Introduction

 The “next big thing” in the news may well be war with Iran. Few want it, many warn against it and many more will suffer if it comes to pass. As an American who fears for his country, and who knows something about Iran, but, far more importantly, as a person who attempts to follow Christ in his life, I felt the need to write.

 The Reasons for This Book

Write the things you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this.

(Revelation 1:19)

I lived in a small Iranian town for eighteen months in the late sixties as a Peace Corps volunteer. I worked with children, shared my thoughts with Iranian colleagues, broke bread with them and learned their language. Ten years after my return to the United States, a friend of mine from Peace Corps days became one of the Americans taken hostage in Tehran. Like so many others, I followed that tense saga for 444 days and nights. More recently, I have worked closely with Iranian-Americans. I know and respect Haleh Esfandiari, an academic of dual Iranian and American citizenship who found herself imprisoned in Tehran last year on a trip to visit her aging mother, guilty of nothing except a tangential relationship to our government, which seeks regime change in Iran.

Many in America fear a country and a government they find strange, hostile and menacing, but having known the people who call Iran their home I cannot treat them like unknowable aliens or implacable adversaries. It is my Christian faith that impelled me to embrace both the suffering of the American hostages (and today the potential risk to U.S. military personnel), and the suffering of the Iranian people, who have endured oppression, war and sanctions, often at the hands of my own country.  

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, said in his Meditations on a Theme, that we may feel duty-bound, because of the regard that we have for some – such as our troops serving abroad who are in harm’s way – to feel hatred for others, who may be their antagonists. But, he says (following Solzhenitsyn) that the real battle takes place:

 …in the hearts of men, between love and hatred, light and darkness, God and him who is the murderer from the beginning. To choose the ones in order to love them, to reject the others in order to hate them, whichever side you take, only adds to the sum total of hatred and darkness…the devil finds his own profit in it; he does not mind whom you hate; once you hate, you have opened a door for him to walk through, to creep into your heart, to invade a human situation.

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 I belong to what is usually called the Eastern Orthodox tradition. We think of ourselves simply as members of the church founded by Jesus Christ, only minimally modified in doctrine and liturgical practice since the first century. There will not be much that I write here that could not as easily been written by a Baptist or a Quaker, an Evangelical Lutheran or an AME Church member. I have attempted to apply to this worldly problem what C.S. Lewis famously called “Mere Christianity.”

 I was created to be in communion with others, and so I share my thoughts and communicate my knowledge. If what I write emboldens others to think more freely, feel more deeply or act more courageously, praise God! By the same token, if my readers help me to see things more clearly, truth is also served. In the Orthodox tradition, we say “one Christian is no Christian,” for we believe strongly that it is only together that we are saved. “Being ‘knit together in love’ (Colossians 2:2), we are to suffer together and rejoice together. Bishop John D. Zizioulas is a well-respected Greek Orthodox theologian on the staff of the Commission on Faith and Order (F&O) of the World Council of Churches. In his view, “we are not essentially individuals but ‘persons’ who exist in relation to others…and who find true freedom in community.” (This is from an article about him in a British Roman Catholic publication, The Tablet).

And, as a social being, one who has worked a lifetime in the field of international development and exchange, I am in contact with a great many kinds of people, most of them not American Christians. I am also writing to them. If you, dear reader, are non-Christian American, consider what may yet be done in your name. For those of you who are both non-Americans and non-Christians — in other words, the vast majority of the world’s people – I appeal to your sense of the transcendence of morality and the sanctity of life, even though God may appear differently to each of us.

The Persian mystic poet, Mowlana Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Balkhi (1207-1273), known in the West as Rumi, told the story of Moses admonishing a simple shepherd who he thought had spoken too familiarly to the unapproachable G*d. God, in Rumi’s tale, chides Moses, saying “What really matters is to stay connected…you have come in order to connect.” Readers of Howard’s End, the wonderful novel by E.M. Forster, if they remember anything from that book written some seven hundred years after Rumi’s birth, remember two words: “Only connect.” Dr. M. Scott Peck points out, “The word religion comes from the Latin religio [one meaning of which is] ‘to connect’.” Writing is one way to make connections, to be in communion with others.

Finally, I have a Christian duty to weigh in when the times are as fraught with hazard as these, if peacemaking (beloved by God) might result from my efforts. The Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadegh said, “As I have remained silent, I have sinned.” Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

For those who have firmly secular views: I make an appeal from a religious perspective; do not dismiss me. The reality of the situation today is truly dire. The joke has been told of a motorist who approaches two men in clerical collars feverishly hammering a signboard into the ground at the side of the road. On it is the message, “The end is near! Turn around before it’s too late!”

The driver yells out his window, “Leave us alone, you religious nuts!”

After the car passes out of sight around the bend, they hear a loud screech and a splash, whereupon one pastor asks the other: “Do you think just ‘Bridge Out’ would be more effective?”

The bridge may be nearly collapsed: war in Iraq has forcefully brought home to us once again the law of unintended consequences; the conflict drags on into its sixth year, and the list of Gold Star mothers grows longer. The primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Iraq told a gathering of church representatives from six continents last June:

“I come from a wounded Iraq and a severely wounded Baghdad. The situation in my country is tragic. We were promised freedom, but what we need today is freedom to have electricity, clean water, to satisfy the basic needs of life, to live without fear of being abducted…

“We Christians were in the country before Islam arrived…faith-based distinctions were never an issue: Sunni, Shia, Christian. Our relationships were very amicable. These differences only became an issue after the war started…

“However, we work to maintain bridges. We have twice visited the country’s most prominent Shia cleric…as well as the Sunni leadership. And I want to give credit where credit is due. High-ranking Muslim clerics deserve credit for their efforts in trying to prevent the present conflict from evolving into a full-blown civil war…

“I don’t see a clash of civilizations but a bungled war with tragic results for both sides… One of the tragic features of the current situation is the fact that they have stolen the nights of Baghdad from us.”

Will we be hearing another Armenian bishop in Iran saying, one day soon, “they have stolen the nights of Isfahan from us?”

Never the Twain Shall Meet?

To us in the West, Persia has for centuries been known as a place of ancient trade routes, exotic images and romantic poetry. More recently, it has been known as a place of religious and political movements that we struggle to understand. The United States and Iran have had a long and often problematic history together; the road to the present impasse has been as bumpy and curvaceous as the route an intercity bus takes from Zanjan to Sanandaj in northwestern Iran — magnificent views and pastoral scenes along the way, but the ever-present danger of a precipitous fall into a rocky abyss.

Americans have been both heroes and villains to Iranians. A first Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed during the presidency of James Buchanan and the reign of Nasser-e Din Shah, and the first U.S. legation set up in Tehran in 1883. Americans played a midwifery role in Iran’s first attempt at constitutional government, which took hold in Iran between 1906 and 1925, and other Americans were at the heart of innovations in Persian governance and development in the years that followed. Dr. Badi Badiozamani, a California-based management analyst and scholar, wrote in his book Iran and America: Rekindling a Love Lost: “Between 1830 when the first Americans set foot in Iran through 1940, hundreds of Americans had established through their good and impressive activities a vast ocean of goodwill between Iran and the United States.” This goodwill has lasted even until today among the people of Iran.

Then came the planetary tumult of the Second World War, which altered the balance of power for people in virtually every part of the globe. In one footnote to that cataclysm, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran. Iran appealed to the United States, saying (in a letter to FDR), “on the basis of the declarations which Your Excellency has made several times regarding the necessity of defending principles of international justice and the right of peoples to liberty. I beg Your Excellency to take efficacious and urgent humanitarian steps to put an end to these acts of aggression. This incident brings into war a neutral and pacific country…” His appeal fell on deaf ears; in fact the United States joined the effort. Later, a conference between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin held in Tehran late in 1943 strengthened their cooperation in the war.

A U.S. War Department publicaion of the time notes, “Because of its prime strategic value, Iran is the only country in the world where three of the United Nations – Great Britain, Russia and the United States – are operating in daily touch with each other.” As time wore on, the interests of those foreign powers diverged, as they inevitably had to, and in 1943 the secretary of state advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “From a more directly selfish point of view, it is to our interest that no great power be established on the Persian Gulf opposite the important American petroleum development in Saudi Arabia” – unless of course, it would be the United States. Thus began a long tug-of-war over Middle Eastern “black gold,” including that of Iran. (Interestingly, Colonel Norman H. Schwartzkopf, father of the officer who commanded U.S. forces in Desert Storm, actually served as the commander of the national police of Iran in 1945.) 

George V. Allen, who assumed the post of U.S. Ambassador to Tehran in 1946 wrote back to the Department of State, ten thousand kilometers distant: “The best way for Iran to become a decent democracy, it seems to me, is to work at it, through trial and error. I am not convinced by the genuinely held view of many people that democracy should be handed down gradually from above.” But, as Dr. Badiozamani observes: “Unfortunately, neither Allen nor his successors followed this advice. Time and again when the shah took a critical step toward autocratic rule, they either applauded and justified his action or maintained an approving silence, explaining their behavior as ‘non-interference.

In 1953 came the event that more than any other colors Iranian perceptions of the government of the United States and its intentions toward Iran. When the elected leader of Iran, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, rejected the exploitative arrangements that governed Iran’s supplying of oil to the West and nationalized its oil resources (“By 1950, the AIOC’s annual profits from Iranian oil amounted to 200 million pounds while Iran’s share of the revenues was a mere 16 million.” according to Ray Takeyh). He was overthrown in a coup orchestrated in part by the American CIA. The coup (finally acknowledged publicly by the Government of the United States decades later) has been called, by Lee Smith, a journalist associated with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, “Probably the most egregiously sinister policy the United States pursued in the Middle East.” The monarchy was reestablished, and would endure, with its secret police aided by intelligence from the U.S. and Israel’s Mossad, until what has become known as the “Islamic Revolution” in 1979. (It would more properly be called the “anti-Shah” or “independence” revolution; it would be several years before it was clear that a theologically-oriented government was going to take control in Iran.) Never again would American motives be taken at face value by Iranians. 

Those over fifty will recall that the United States had a preoccupation in those days with the closeness of each foreign country and faction to the communist empire. The revolution in Iran, though, was not a socialist revolution. Oil was nationalized, but private rights to own land, accumulate wealth, operate businesses and bequeath inheritances were, and still are, protected by law and enforced by the government. It was a “social” revolution, in that the constitution states that the government is required to provide every citizen with access to education, social security for retirement, unemployment, old age, disability, accidents, health and medical treatment, out of public revenue — provisions that are now either already a part of American public policy or are under active consideration by leaders here.

Former State Department official, academic and author Francis Fukuyama observed in a February Wall Street Journal piece: “What is it that leaders like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez have in common that vastly increases their local appeal? A foreign policy built around anti-Americanism is, of course, a core component. But what has allowed them to win elections and build support in their societies is less their foreign-policy stances than their ability to promise, and to a certain extent deliver on, social policy–things like education, health and other social services, particularly for the poor….”  

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American antagonism toward Iran stems largely from the taking of hostages in Tehran in the early days of the Islamic Revolution. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were broken off, and the ABC News program, Nightline, was created to satisfy the need for news generated by the crisis. America became the “Great Satan,” and Iran was viewed first with shock and bewilderment, and later with fear and hate by many Americans. Although he is no supporter of the Islamic Republic, author Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down, Guests of the Ayatollah), in the latter book, captured the wider significance of those events:

“Iran’s revolution wasn’t just a localized power struggle; it had tapped a subterranean ocean of Islamist outrage. For half a century the tradition-bound peoples of the Middle and Near East, owning most of the world’s oil resources, had been regarded as little more than valuable pawns in a worldwide competition between capitalist democracy and communist dictatorship. In the Arab states, the United States had thrown its weight behind conservative Sunni regimes, and in Iran behind Pahlavi, who stood as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism in the region. “

What Bowden fails to credit sufficiently (the great bulk of his research for Ayatollah was done using U.S. and other western sources) is the frustration and anger of ordinary, non-”Islamist” Iranians centered on the sometimes quite brutal reign of the Shah. Their own loved ones were targeted by secret police and rotted in the Shah’s prisons, broken by his torturers. When the people took to the streets, it was not just political, or even religious, it was also quite personal. The United States came to stand, therefore, for dictatorial rule over Iranians’ daily lives, and for economic exploitation and ill-considered modernization.

Since that time, we have not found ourselves at so grave a juncture as we are today. A National Security Document of March 16, 2006 asserted as fact Iran’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. I am afraid it is “déjà vu all over again” and the abyss of war beckons:

 In early 2003, even as U.S. forces were on the brink of war with Iraq, the army had already begun conducting an analysis for a full-scale war with Iran. The analysis, called TIRANNT, for “theater Iran near term,” was coupled with a mock scenario for a Marine Corps invasion and a simulation of the Iranian missile force. U.S. and British planners conducted a Caspian Sea war game around the same time. And Bush directed the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up a global strike war plan for an attack against Iranian weapons of mass destruction…[and] a major combat operation, from mobilization and deployment of forces through postwar stability operations after regime change. (from an article by William Arkin, Washington Post, April 16, 2006)

According to Michael Chossudovsky, writing for Global Research in February based on U.S. Northern Command war-game scenarios already developed as early as August 2006, military planners foresaw that such as crisis might lead to launches of ICBMs by North Korea and a “limited strategic attack” by the Russian Federation (by which time, presumably, Iran would be the least of our worries). World war may be difficult for most of us to imagine, but it is always an item on someone’s to-do list.

The U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf today is hard to visualize for the non-military reader; it may help to know that just nine of the ships deployed carry some 17,000 U.S. personnel, according to a Reuters report. This is in addition to around 20,000 U.S personnel already stationed at sea in the Persian Gulf and neighboring waters. In May, they were joined by the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard and its own strike group, which includes landing ships carrying members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, according to the Associated Press. Carrier Air Wing 11, embarked in the Nimitz, had four squadrons of F/A-18 aircraft instead of the three squadrons that are normally deployed with a carrier.

Sara Flounders, an American peace activist, said, “The aim is to destroy not just military targets but also airports, rail lines, highways, bridges, ports, communication centers, power grids, industrial centers, hospitals and public buildings.” It is because so many military elements of the U.S. and its allies are daily operating in the waters that form the Western border of Iran and other nearby areas that “trip-wire” incidents are increasingly likely to occur. Barbara Surk, an Associated Press writer, has written that “U.S. warships have frequently collided with merchant ships in the busy shipping lanes of the [Persian] Gulf.” If this sort of accident happened at the wrong moment, it could provide a convenient rationale for massive activity.

The precise number of targets varies, according to analysts, from a handful to as many as 10,000. An analysis done in February 2006 by the UK-based Oxford Research Group (whose prognoses of events in Iraq, beginning in 2002, have been remarkably prescient) described the likely scenario in this way: “An air attack would involve the systematic destruction of research, development, support, and training centres for nuclear and missile programmes and the killing of as many technically competent people as possible. A U.S. attack, which would be larger than anything Israel could mount, would also involve comprehensive destruction of Iranian air defence capabilities and attacks designed to pre-empt Iranian retaliation. This would require destruction of Revolutionary Guard facilities close to Iraq and of regular or irregular naval forces that could disrupt Gulf oil transit routes…” The likely targets in Iran identified by the Oxford scholars include: a nuclear reactors in Bushehr, and in the capital, Tehran; the Nuclear Technology Center in Esfahan, an enrichment plant outside Natanz; university laboratories and technology centers; radar facilities and command-and-control centers. To these would be added Western Command air bases at Tehran, Tabriz, Hamadan, Dezful, Umidiyeh, Shiraz and Esfahan; Southern Command air bases at Bushehr, Bandar Abbas, and Chah Bahar; R&D facilities for medium-range ballistic missile programs; coastal anti-ship batteries, naval bases and warships; and Iranian army bases in areas near the Iraqi border.

The study went on to note that an element of surprise would be considered critical; this means that “there will be no opportunity for people to move away from likely target areas as was possible in the days and weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq…One key response from Iran would be a determination to reconstruct a nuclear programme and develop it rapidly into a nuclear weapons capability, with this accompanied by withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This would require further attacks. A military operation against Iran would not, therefore, be a short-term matter but would set in motion a complex and long-lasting confrontation.”

Militarily, as we have heard repeatedly, everything is “on the table”, including first-use of nuclear weapons for the first time since Nagasaki. The biblical phrase “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6) describes our time to a T. A new president may take a new look at the situation, but a radically new way of thinking about Iran is called for, if we are to avert disaster long-range. When we approach the future with trepidation, we should think not only of the events foretold in Luke 21: “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,” but also remember the rest of what Jesus prophesied will happen: “it shall turn to you for a testimony…You shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinfolks, and friends…and you shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake.” This is not a prophecy about our having to meet an assault by foreign forces; it envisions a Christian having to take very unpopular positions, but standing firm nonetheless. But we are assured, “there shall not be a hair of your head perish…In your patience possess your souls.” Though peacemaking is not for the faint of heart, we have good reason to hope for ultimate success. 

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Why should it have been so utterly impossible, during the almost thirty years of the Islamic Republic’s existence, for our two governments to have found a way to communicate? Neither country is the same as it was when the Islamic Revolution took place, yet leaders of both nations act as though frozen in that time and those circumstances. Sandra Mackey, in her 1998 book The Iranians, said: “Current American policy on Iran began in that calamitous year of 1979 when the fall of Muhammed Reza Shah left the United States stunned and adrift in the crucial Persian Gulf. When disciples of Ayatollah Khomeini captured the American Embassy, anger took over from confusion. And anger and confusion have led four administrations to flounder in what is in essence a rudderless boat carrying the vital interests of the United States.” As Ray Takeyh wrote (in his Hidden Iran, NY, Henry Holt, 2006):

“getting Iran wrong is the single thread that has linked American administrations of all political persuasion.” 

However, current U.S. foreign policy presents, as former-president Carter has said, “a radical departure from all previous administration policies” in its aggressive unilateralism and its embrace of preemptive or preventive action, considered by many to be in contravention of international law (or even punishable as a war crime, if such a prosecution could ever take place). Otto von Bismarck, unifier of Germany and no shrinking violet, likened preventive war to “committing suicide because you’re afraid of dying.” Though a majority of Americans consistently favor limiting attacks by states to self-defense, nowhere has Bismarck’s warning been more applicable — or more studiously ignored — than in the administration’s approach to Iraq and Iran.

The two countries are hardly two peas in a pod. Scott Ritter, former IAEA arms inspector, spent time in Iran in 2006 (researching his book called Target Iran). He wrote in The Nation: “I recently returned from a trip to Iran, where over the course of a week…I had my eyes opened…Iran is nothing like Iraq. I spent more than seven years in Iraq and know firsthand what a totalitarian dictatorship looks and acts like. Iran is not such as nation…[it is] a vibrant society that operates free of an oppressive security apparatus such as the one that dominated Iraqi life in the time of Saddam Hussein….Iran has functioning domestic security apparatus, but it most definitely is not an all-seeing, all-controlling police state, any more than the United States is in the post 9/11 era…” 

I quoted the Sufi poet Rumi previously. American poet Coleman Barks numbers among the many thousands who have admired Rumi through the centuries (I met Barks last year in the central square in Esfahan, where he had gone to take part in a literary gathering.) In his recently-published volume A Year with Rumi, Barks described Rumi’s work, now surprisingly popular in the United States, in this way: “[T]he meditative silence and no-mind of Zen, the open heart and compassion of Jesus, the stern discipline of Muhammad, the convivial humor of Taoists, the crazy wisdom and bright intelligence of the Jewish Hasidic masters. Rumi is a planetary poet, loved the world over for the grandeur of his surrender and for the freedom and grace of his poetry.” In the current impasse our diplomats would do well to ponder Rumi’s words: “Do not look at my outward shape/ But take what is in my hand.” The signals coming from Iran over the past few years have shown both assertiveness and flexibility, both stubbornness and hints – sometimes broad hints – of possible compromise. But can we get past the one, in order to build on the other? 

Recent indications are that we cannot. Though little has fundamentally changed between our two countries since the 80’s, the drums of war beat ’round about us ever louder. Suddenly, we hear more and more about women’s dress codes, human rights and the threat posed by Shi’ite Islam. Yet these concerns are often based on fairly skimpy substantive knowledge. Not only is our hard intelligence on military, political and technical matters sorely lacking, but direct familiarity with contemporary Iranian culture and politics is nearly non-existent. A February 2007 report by Network 2020 contained this astounding information: “In the context of tensions between the U.S. and Iran, American Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns told us that the U.S. and Iran maintain only limited back-channel contacts. Burns reported that he himself has never been in a room with an Iranian official and that the State Department does not have a cadre of Farsi speakers. ‘There is no one in my generation who’s ever served in Iran,’ he said. ‘There’s no one in my generation who has ever worked with the Iranians in any way, shape or form…’ ” More recently (in a June 8 roundtable with the Wall Street Journal editorial board), Condoleeza Rice “confessed that she couldn’t figure Iran out,” according to a Washington Post account of the meeting. “I think it’s a very opaque place,” Rice said, “and it’s a political system I don’t understand very well.” Rice, remember, was speaking as the Secretary of State, our most senior foreign policy official. 

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I was flying from JFK to Tehran’s Mehrabad International last May, part of a peace delegation of twenty-two ordinary, but also in many ways quite extraordinary, Americans from all parts of our country. On the plane, taking off from Charles de Gaulle airport for the last leg of our journey, I spoke with a young Iranian man on his way home to Iran. He had visited a cemetery in Paris where several noted Iranian writers are interred, including one we both admired, novelist Sadegh Hedayat. I recalled the opening line of Hedayat’s dark novel Blind Owl: “In life there are sores that tear and eat at the soul, like cancer.” We agreed that the will to make war is one of these sores. Balancing the voices of bellicosity, there must be voices of humanity. Our delegation last May included a retired banker, a child psychiatrist, veterans of the Vietnam War and members of the clergy. They did not go in order to advocate, but simply to have an honest encounter with fellow human beings. A young anthropologist in the group said:

How might we as Americans overcome our historic amnesia that contributes to so much violence, even as we espouse “peace” and “freedom” for all? We come as delegates for peace, yet what more important thing can we do towards this end but to listen, pay attention, and learn from these people? If all I have done as a result of this trip is begun to dispel the myths that circulate about Iranians, then I have done a lot. And if I can hold up a mirror, then I have done even more. Violence begins in the smallest of spaces. Peace then, must as well.

 Instead, there has been a disturbing sea-change within America in what we seem to find acceptable. On March 21, 2006, a website called Tradesports was launched that recalls 1984 or Mad Max. Tradesports accepts wagers on, among other things, death and destruction, using odds developed by professional security groups. For example, bets could be placed on whether a joint US/Israel attack would kill Iranians before June 30^th of that year. I, for one, am happy that those betting on that prospect lost their money. What we like to call “Western Civilization” now includes wagering on how much time an innocent child has left before her life is extinguished!, for surely such “collateral damage” would be a part of any attack. This smacks more of the Roman legions casting lots for Jesus’ clothing, than it does of the early Christians living their new faith. Imagine if, instead of mentioning cities in Iran, the betting focused on casualties in St. Louis, Columbine or Virginia Tech. 

Later that year, conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly expressed an on-air opinion that Iran should be bombed into non-existence. No reaction came from the White House or the State Department. Don Imus made a similarly callous remark to his millions of viewers. Talking about the crash of an Iranian Airliner in the United Arab Emirates, Imus remarked, “When I hear stories like that, I think: who cares?” In fact, only the Iranian-American community and a few others seemed to care or to mind. 

Many Americans saw the video of Sen. John McCain, a man who was seeking the nation’s highest office, flippantly answering a reporter’s question on policy toward Iran by chanting “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ song, Barbara Ann. While many later decried this behavior, many in his audience cheered. Indeed, they may be the market for one internet merchandiser who is selling T-shirts, sweat-suits and thong underwear with a map of Iran emblazoned with the words “NUKE ‘EM!!” Treated as “a bad joke” by the McCain camp, this “mistake” was compounded by the March 2008 interviews in which McCain wrongly linked al Qaeda in Iraq with Iranian training support. (On one occasion, he was corrected by his traveling companion, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, himself a supporter of the U.S. presence in Iraq; on others, reporters had to challenge his “misstatements.”)

What is happening here? Isn’t it the process that Chris Hedges warned about in his book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning: the need to demonize the enemy before the launching of an attack can become psychologically supportable? It was done with “the Japs”, “the Huns”, “the gooks” and “the towel heads” and “sand niggers;” now it is the “Axis of Evil.” In this process, the other is made to become a creature unworthy of our compassion. (Also see anthropologist William O. Beeman’s book, The Great Satan vs. the Mad Mullahs: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.)

While we are busy tarring the Islamic Republic with the brush of deviousness and malevolence, the United States – and therefore American Christianity – has reached an all-time nadir in terms of how we are regarded outside our borders and among those in other faith communities. We should be known, per the scriptural standard, according to how we “love one another” (John 13:34-35). It seems that this is being rapidly supplanted by our reputation as people who hate all those who are not like us. In poll after poll, fewer and fewer people around the world look up to us as a country with something of value to teach the rest of the world. A Pew Center poll, done in April/May 2006 showed that people in six Muslim countries, all “friendly” to our country — Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey — perceive Westerners (Americans and Europeans) as “selfish, arrogant, immoral and greedy.”

In the early years of our republic, Jefferson said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” I cannot improve on those words of my most distinguished fellow alumnus of the College of William and Mary, but merely add my own quaking to what he felt then. And yet, I also remember that another forefather, St. Isaac the Syrian, counseled, “Never say that God is just. If He were just, you would be in hell. Rely only on His injustice which is mercy, love and forgiveness.” For “with God all things are possible.”

 

The Preeminence of Faith

 

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

(Galatians 2:20)

 

For Christians, the singular criterion for evaluating any action is this: does it conform to the example of Jesus Christ? We are to refrain from focusing on the “speck” in the eye of the other, in this case the Iranians, without first remembering to take the “plank” out of our own (American) eyes. (Matthew 7:3-4) Better to err in the direction of forbearance, than to tilt toward smug and superior chauvinism. 

Some will fear that such a path entails a risk that the adversary might take advantage. But can’t that be said about any conflictual situation? When, exactly, would it be prudent to “turn the other cheek?” The law of love represents a higher calling than prudence or even self-preservation. Jesus’ approach was truly radical:

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also…You have heard, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you… (Matthew 5:38:44) 

Monk/author Thomas Merton, in an essay “St. Maximus the Confessor on Non-Violence,” (The Catholic Worker, September 1965, later included in Passion for Peace: The Social Essays of Thomas Merton, edited by William Shannon, (New York: Crossroad, 1995):

“The love of enemies is not simply a pious luxury, something that [the Christian] can indulge in if he wants to feel himself exceptionally virtuous. It is of the very essence of the Christian life, a proof of one’s Christian faith, a sign that one is a follower and an obedient disciple of Christ…. [A] superficial…Christianity…denies Christ by refusing to obey His commandment to love.”

The Book of Proverbs (6: 17-19) provides a list of seven things that God hates: 

• A proud look

• A lying tongue

• Hands that shed innocent blood

• A heart that devises evil thoughts

• Feet that are hastening to do evil

• A false witness who speaks lies

• One who sows discord among brethren

 We must not delude ourselves that these apply only to our adversaries. Surely “a proud look” is the sin that detractors around the world are most likely to lay at our door, with some considerable justification. Much “innocent blood” has been shed by our forces and their surrogates, as noble and well-meaning as their efforts might have been. The run-up to the Iraq war included well-known instances of “false witness,” if not “a lying tongue.” We are as responsible as any country for “sowing discord” between Sunni and Shi’a, between Kurdish and Persian, and between Iranians and Afghanis, if one looks back over the history of the past several decades with an open eye and an honest mind. It was, after all, the United States (under the Reagan administration) that organized, armed and trained radical Islamists in Afghanistan — the group that was the forerunner to the Taliban, and progenitor of Al Qaeda. “Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind.” 

Others’ Insights versus My Own

 ”I am debtor for I have sat in the shade of trees I did not plant, eaten at tables I did not prepare, drunk from wells I did not dig, traveled on roads I did not grade, been sheltered under roofs I did not raise, and been warmed by fires I did not build.” (Thesis 56, Martin Luther, 1571)

“A fool’s voice is known by a multitude of words.”

(Ecclesiastes 5:3)

 

I take responsibility for what is printed here, but I do not claim to have invented any of the ideas out of whole cloth. I quote freely and often from those who know better than I or those have expressed more effectively than I a thought we share. I have tried to be accurate and clear in my attributions. If I have misquoted or misinterpreted the original author’s intent, I regret any such errors.

 I am aware that my liberal use of scriptural quotations involves a potential for blasphemy. In what some call “proof-texting,” one can easily cherry-pick phrases or verses to suit almost any agenda one might have. In her remarkable book, The Hawk and the Dove, Penelope Wilcock has a wise mother warn her daughter: “A funny thing happens with the Bible, Melissa. It acts a bit like a mirror. People who come to it resentful and critical find it full of curses and condemnation. People who come to it gentle and humble find it full of love and mercy…If you try to use the Bible like a fortune-telling game, it just bounces your own ideas back at you.” All that I can say, to protect the reader from being misled, is that all such quotes (as well as those from poets or pundits) should be taken with the proverbial grain (or more) of salt. In the end, caveat lector — let the reader beware.

All New Testament quotations are from the Orthodox Study Bible, while Old Testament citations are from the Septuagint (Sir Lancelot C.L. Brenton, Hendrickson Publishers; originally published by Samuel Bagster & Sons, Ltd., London, 1851), except where quoted by another author. Koranic references are from a translation by J.M. Rodwell. Please note that I have used “Shi’ite” to indicate the principal Muslim minority (also known as Shiite, Shi’e, Shi’i or Shi’ah). Note also that there are a number of organization names appearing within the text that I have placed in bold print; my intent is to call attention to groups that readers might consider contacting, to discover their own possible roles in improving the prospects for a sustainable peace. 

All dates pertain to the year 2007, unless otherwise indicated in the text.

An Apology 

On the facade of Union Station, a venerable landmark in our Nation’s Capital – inscribed high enough above eye-level that most travelers miss them – are some words that I have always liked: “Let all the ends thou aimst at be thy country’s, thy God’s and Truth. Be noble and the nobleness that lies in other men – sleeping, but never dead – will rise in majesty to meet thine own.” Inevitably, in making assessments about the comparative correctness of different courses of action, we betray an all-too-human tendency to judge in a moral sense. Lest we get “too big for our britches,” however, Jesus warns us, in the parables of the Publican and the Pharisee, The Adulterous Woman, The Prodigal Son, and others, against judging others. In writing this book, I have done my level best not to attack anyone personally or to exhibit an un-Christian self-righteousness. But I have almost certainly failed to pull this off completely, and so I say mea culpa in advance. Of those whom I may offend, I beg forgiveness.

 

Acknowledgments

 Those to whom I am especially indebted include my teacher, philosopher Dr. Jon Lachs, who introduced me to the “geography of concepts;” friend and mentor Jim Forest, long-time Secretary of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, who models a life well-balanced between contemplation and worldly action — and the formation of connections between the two; and to Jesus Christ, for His boundless love.