Can there ever be a just war?

Over recent years large crowds of people have gathered along the streets of Royal Wooton Basssett to pay their respects to fallen service women and men as the cortèges have passed by en route from RAF Lyneham to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. However, recently these repatriation flights have been diverted from RAF Lyneham to RAF Brize Norton.

 This has been a deliberate policy of the British Government, partly to reduce the level of public awareness of the number of young women and men killed in the pointless Afghan War. Even the back gate of the airbase is used and the coffins are driven along small country roads so those who wish to pay their respects cannot do so in the way that were able to do in Royal Wootton Bassett. Following public pressure there has been some official relenting in that a small area en route has been set-aside for people to gather to welcome home the fallen.

 Andrew Robathan, Minister for Defence Personnel, Welfare and Veterans said in June that the Government had deliberately decided to do this "to avoid public scenes of emotion." Is this yet another example of the Government's manipulation of the public by its propaganda machine?

 And yet the Government continues, rightly, to support and to encourage people to become more involved in the most important annual public event in Britain, the Remembrance Weekend whose custodian is the Royal British Legion. Its annual Poppy Appeal has been more successful this year than ever before. The expectation is that today's Remembrance services up and down the country will be better attended than ever before.

 It seems to me that this Government decision is part of a process that is reasoned like this: "It is OK for people to remember the past but let's not have them focus too much on the present day arrival of coffins and the countless number of young women and men returning home having suffered grievous loss of limbs or mental faculty. To be too aware may turn the people even more against the War in Afghanistan."

 While reflecting on this sermon my thoughts went back again to my father who died 22 years ago. In the years before he died I asked him many times to write down his memories but he always refused. Memories were too difficult for him to share.

 All I ever found out from him of his war years was that he had been a young steward on the MV Royal Sovereign at the beginning of the Second World War. He mentioned only that his ship went continuously back and forth from Margate to Dunkirk for seven days and nights of the evacuation, and that the Royal Sovereign was the last ship to leave Dunkirk even while other ships were being scuttled to block the entrance to the port. He spent the rest of the War in the Royal Military Police, part of that time on a tour of duty at Bletchley Park where the code breakers worked, and then at a large house somewhere in the Tewin area of Hertfordshire. Finally he was in the push through Italy. That's all I know of my father's war years. He could not face the ghosts within his memories. 

 And my father was not unlike many of the veterans standing 'on duty' today. Talking with many veterans in my role as Padre to a local branch of the Royal British Legion I am all too aware that many are able to reflect upon the comradeship and amusing times that they had with one another. But when it comes to remembering the pain of loss of friends and colleagues, and of the face to face combat and actions in which they were involved, the memories are too painful to put into words. Many cannot share these experiences with anybody who was not with them in the midst of the brutality and inhumanity of war.

  Also like many in his generation, my father had been brought up within the local church but his war experiences, especially the Dunkirk evacuation, killed God for him. One of the great sadnesses for me is that down the centuries friend and foe alike have all claimed to have God on their side in times of war. But the God I know and experience is on no one's side. Instead, if this God is able to weep, then God has cried a million tears whenever mothers and fathers have received the news that their daughter or son has been killed in action.

 If God is capable of tears then the tears of the God I know and experience has cried a million tears along side the widows and the orphans. The tears of God continue to flow when young women and young men are scarred psychologically for life by the experiences and brutalities of war. The tears of God still flow whenever another young woman or young man is disabled through roadside bomb or sniper's bullet.

 It is right and proper that the Christian Church not only remembers the military and civilian victims of war, but we also need to be challenging Governments around the world in their use of the propaganda machines that manipulate individuals to identify and to demonise, and then to make possible military attacks upon other sovereign nations. But how do we square our 'what would Jesus do' teaching and our lifestyle in the light of the peaceful passive resistance that, from my study of Mark's Gospel, I understand to have been the way of Jesus? How do we view our armed forces that are trained and equipped to mutilate and to kill in your name and in mine? How do we come to terms with the teaching of Jesus concerning our attitudes towards friend, neighbour and enemy?

 "But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, [Matthew 5:39-44]

 Or again, how do we face up to the teaching contained within the Beatitudes?

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. [Matthew 5:3-12]

 Winston Churchill was right, "It is better to jaw jaw than to war war." But what happens when the time for talking is exhausted? Many Christians speak of a just war in which the only option left when peaceful dialogue fails is to take up arms. That is how both Kaiser Wilhelm in the First World War [remember, the war to end all wars!] and Nazism in the Second World War were defeated. That's how Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and other despots in the Arab world have been deposed and how many military strategists still think that the Taliban can be defeated in the near future.

 In the last 30 years we have witnessed genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity on a wide scale - by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; by the Bosnian Serb forces of Radovan Karadzic against the Muslims of Eastern Bosnia; by the majority Hutus against the minority Tutsis in Rwanda. Genocide continues today in the Horn of Africa, and on September 15, 2009, the 574 page Goldstone Report was released. It concluded that war crimes and crimes against humanity were perpetrated on both sides of the Israeli-Hamas conflict at the turn of this year.

 Many Christians argue that violence is not God's Way but when faced with genocide and other major injustices, which is better - to go to war to defeat the tyrants or to step back and watch the slaughter continue? The answer can only be an individual decision and no one takes lightly either a pacifist or a just war stand.

  Whatever decision that individuals arrive at, on this Remembrance Sunday we all continue to be saddened by the immense loss of life in war, both military and civilian, especially the lives of young women and young men who had so much to live for. We long for the time when every war will be the last. And we again hope beyond hope that one day the world will realise that war simply creates victims and destruction, and that victory by one side often plants the seeds of a future conflict. But sadly, one lesson of history is that we never learn the lesson of history.

 For those of us who have never had to face the inhumanity of war - we can only guess what happened in the wars and conflicts of the last century. We can get some idea from the television screens of the war that sadly continues today in Afghanistan  - but we can never know what it was and what it is like. However, we acknowledge the cost to individuals and we honour all who served. And together, veterans and non-veterans, we especially remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. We honour them best by committing ourselves afresh to the daily struggle for the sake of truth, justice and peace for all people. Let us not only remember and be grateful, but may we, the living, be worthy of our dead.