kriz@skat.usc.edu (Dennis Kriz) (12/06/90)
In article <Dec.4.00.01.15.1990.28436@athos.rutgers.edu> kriz@skat.usc.edu (Dennis Kriz) posts: [Archbishop Roger Mahony's letter to Sec. State Baker concerning the Persian Gulf]. To which the moderator comments: >[I have mixed feelings about posting this. I'm not interested >into turning into talk.politics.mideast. However if people >have specifically Christian perspectives on the issues, this >is the right place to talk about them. --clh] Being the "instigator" here, I understand the concern. I do appreciate however, that the letter was posted anyway. There are some basic questions that we as Christians should be asking in connection to the Persian Gulf crisis ... not so much about "geopolitics", but about what kind of a society have we built, if we have to go out and *kill* for oil?? Last year I read an interview of Jon Sobrino, a Jesuit Priest from the Central American University in El Salvador. (That's the same university that the 6 Jesuit Priests/housekeeper/her daughter were killed at last year. Sobrino survived ... but only because he was at a conference in Thailand when it all happened. Interesting as all that may be, that's for "another story" however...). Anyway, one thing that struck me in the interview (by NCR -- National Catholic Reporter) were Sobrino's thoughts on what he called "the idols of death." Sabrino maintained that idols are alive and well today. No not the stone statues of ages past, but in false concepts that seduce people away from God. At first, the idol is seductive and cheap, but it progressively demands more and more to pay it homage. In the end it is satisfied with nothing less than human sacrifice paid in bodies and blood. When I read this, I immediately thought of abortion. But it is perhaps enlightening to look at the current situation in the Persian Gulf through this prism, and start asking some fundamental questions about our society and about our faith. In the last two decades, we have been preoccupied with oil. The oil shocks of the 1970s, various devastating oil spills, pollution, possibly even the green house effect, etc, etc. But never before have we been in a situation where we are (in all probability) going to go to war and start *killing* in order to get our oil. We go to church, we talk of God being the "source of our strength" And yet, our whole civilization, our way of thinking, is built on material things such as oil. This may seem silly almost ... but in all honesty, is this a form of apostacy? Is our talk of God ... high-minded bunk ... when we contemplate killing for oil or chromium or what-have-you. It is hard to imagine a world without oil, without ever larger numbers of gizmos that suck materials from somewhere ... but certainly we can all see that so long as our civilization depends "choke hold" minerals which clearly are not distributed equally across the globe ... we're going to have to inevitably KILL for them. One could write a whole treatise on the effects that rampant materialism ... peck silicone impants ... and all. But again, never before have we been asked to contemplate KILLING ... in order to preserve "this way of life" as we are (in connection with the Iraq crisis) today. dennis kriz@skat.usc.edu [There is of course also the fact that one nation has just invaded and wiped out another. Experience suggests it is unwise to ignore such actions. The extent to which the "real" motivations of those involved is simply a desire for cheap oil or is a determination not to let the prelude to WWII be replayed is to some extent a matter of speculation. My impression is that most Christians would not believe we can justify war to force a country to sell us oil. Judgements about the actual motivations of the people involved are beyond what I think I want to get into here, though they are certainly necessary in order for us to decide how we as Christians should react. --clh]
David.Anderson@cs.cmu.edu (12/12/90)
Lynn, here. At a recent interfaith meeting the Persian Gulf crisis was discussed with an eye toward coming up with an "appropriate" statement or interfaith response (essentially anti-war). The representatives from all of the denominations present said that their congregations were very much divided about this situation, so they did not feel that our particular group could really come up with a truly representative position. The rabbi present was especially concerned about the pacifist movement. He said that among the Jewish community here (Pittsburgh, 2nd only to NYC), sentiment is very strongly supportive of the administration's policy (and one should note that Pgh. is a *democratic* town by an 8:1 ratio). It wasn't just a pro-Israel thing, he insisted (and he's on the committee for Palestinian justice here, BTW), but there are simply *many* Jews who see unnerving parallels between this situation and the situation which existed in Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Jewish community is totally opposed to *any* kind of appeasement, even if it means war. I am skeptical of our "US interests" as anyone, but I would suggest that there may indeed be larger issues at stake even if some of the more obvious ones smack of hypocrisy and economic expediency. 100,000 body bags (currently in a warehouse in Saudi Arabia) is very sobering. I hope and fervently pray that war can be avoided.
cramer@uunet.uu.net (Clayton Cramer) (12/14/90)
In article <Dec.12.00.53.40.1990.1663@athos.rutgers.edu>, David.Anderson@cs.cmu.edu writes: > The rabbi present was especially concerned about the pacifist movement. > He said that among the Jewish community here (Pittsburgh, 2nd only to > NYC), sentiment is very strongly supportive of the administration's > policy (and one should note that Pgh. is a *democratic* town by an 8:1 > ratio). It wasn't just a pro-Israel thing, he insisted (and he's on the > committee for Palestinian justice here, BTW), but there are simply > *many* Jews who see unnerving parallels between this situation and the > situation which existed in Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Jewish community > is totally opposed to *any* kind of appeasement, even if it means war. The question becomes this: Does appeasement of a dangerous lunatic (or worse, a dangerous evil person) create more suffering, or less? If there were any question about whether someone represents a serious threat to others, the answer would clearly be that peace is an appropriate policy to pursue, as long as possible. But the actions taken by Saddam Hussein against domestic opponents, against Iranians, and and against Kuwaitis, definitely put him in the dangerous evil person. In 1936, German troops were sent into the Ruhr, which had been demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. I've seen a statement from a member of the German General Staff, interrogated after the war. He asserted that if the German Army had met any resistance, they would have been forced to withdraw, and in the opinion of this general, Hitler might have fallen from power. My history professor confirms that two sets of orders were given for the remilitarization of the Ruhr -- one set for withdrawal if there was resistance. If a few hundred German, French, and British troops had died in 1936, would the 40 million killed in the war have been spared? > I am skeptical of our "US interests" as anyone, but I would suggest that > there may indeed be larger issues at stake even if some of the more > obvious ones smack of hypocrisy and economic expediency. 100,000 body > bags (currently in a warehouse in Saudi Arabia) is very sobering. I hope > and fervently pray that war can be avoided. I'm afraid that our policy in the Gulf can be best described as "Wrong reasons, right results." I wish that the principal motivation was human rights, and long-range defense of our national security. Unfortunately, cheap oil is the principal motivation -- as Secretary Baker's "protecting jobs" speech makes clear. -- Clayton E. Cramer {pyramid,pixar,tekbspa}!optilink!cramer Self-defense is the most basic of human rights. Lacking the right to defend yourself today can make it very hard to exercise any other rights tomorrow. You must be kidding! No company would hold opinions like mine! [This is getting very near the borderline of becoming more appropriate for the politics groups. I'm likely not to allow responses. --clh]