BEYOND WAR

Earl Zimmerman

In 1969 I received a letter from our local draft board directing me to report for my physical. I was being conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War.

My most memorable experience at the army depot, where I went to get my physical, was standing in a large room full of draftees. We were stripped naked and lined up in rows. I can still see the one Amish draftee in the room who insisted on keeping his broad-brimmed straw hat on his head. An army medic was barking orders and telling us to forget about making medical excuses for not being able to serve. We were all healthy else we wouldn’t be there.

What did those of us standing in line at that army depot know or understand? Precious little! There’s such moral ambiguity in drafting or recruiting teenagers to fight our wars. They don’t have enough life experience to make wise choices. I passed my physical and was drafted; however, as a member of an historical peace church I served my time as an orderly in a mental hospital instead of the army.

Today I wonder what happened to the other young men lined up on that hot summer day. I wonder how many of us actually served in Vietnam. How many died in combat. I wonder such things when I visit the Vietnam War Memorial. Are any of those young men’s names etched into that cold grey marble? Do their parents, spouses, or children visit there to trace the outline of a loved one’s name with their finger?

Like most Americans of my generation, I hated the Vietnam War. There were relentless news-media images of fighting in a strange, far-away land—so many gruesome pictures of death and destruction. We became outraged when we began to grasp the extent to which our government lied to us about the conduct and progress of the war. Massive protests erupted on our campuses. As a consequence, I still instinctively distrust our government in such matters. No more lies, please no more lies!

It wasn’t hard to be a conscientious objector in those days. I was a hero to many of my peers. This was radically different from the social ostracism my uncles had experienced as religious conscientious objectors during World War II. My Mennonite community believed that following the way of Jesus meant loving our enemies and not participating in war. We knew such convictions lead to social ostracism but believed it was the price we paid for being faithful Christians.

My moral struggle was not about being a conscientious objector. The political rhetoric of fighting for democracy in Southeast Asia rang hollow. In my unsophisticated way of reasoning, I couldn’t understand why an American farm boy like me should fight against Vietnamese peasants in their rice paddies. To this day, I find it odd that we think we need to fight such wars far from our own shores. I have heard all the reasons, but something still does not compute. What’s really going on in our national psyche?

My dilemma, as a young man, was the growing distance between myself and the traditional Mennonite community in which I grew up. I questioned our separatist stance in relation to American society. The cost of such separation was too high even though understandable, given our history as religious dissenters. We were placing self-imposed limits on our potential for service as God’s people.

I found such questions increasingly perplexing, but I was so unsure of myself. I knew I was morally opposed to fighting in Vietnam but felt disingenuous as a religious conscientious objector. My religious beliefs were a muddle. When the draft board letter arrived in our farm mailbox, it made me get serious, and I have been doggedly pursuing such questions ever since. What an unexpected gift!

I began to read everything I could find on the question of war and peace. Mennonite scholars, like Guy Hershberger and John Howard Yoder, made a significant contribution to my moral formation. I discovered the delightful passion of peace activists like Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr. My journey took me back to school and on various church and academic assignments in Asia and North America. I became determined to make my contribution to a world without war.

Thousands of years ago the prophet Isaiah wrote, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isa. 2:4). Is Isaiah’s vision purely utopian or is it a goal worth striving for and possible to achieve? Can we imagine such a world? Do we have any idea what it might take to get there? Are we familiar with tools that can help us create such a world? Would it be possible to abolish war in the same way we abolished slavery?

The international picture is grim. Since the end of the Cold War, local cultural and religious wars have proliferated around the world. With the recent military buildup and the added costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States now has an annual military budget of $626 billion. And President Bush continues to ask for billions upon billions for the war in Iraq. Our American military budget is rapidly approaching 50 percent of total global military expenditures.

How did our republic come to have a massive institution like the Pentagon, which dwarfs the military capability of any other country and overshadows every other branch of our government? Can we even begin to comprehend how it shapes us and our world? Can we imagine how different our local communities would be if only a part of those expenditures were instead invested in things like healthcare and fighting poverty?

Surely Mennonites and other peace-oriented Christians will want to join with conscientious Americans to struggle against our preoccupation with war. That means supporting policies that emphasize comprehensive security rather than cutthroat competition among nation-states. No country can be secure unless all are secure. We should support policies that move the world community beyond war to structures of international conflict resolution. And we need to enlarge the scope of national security by recognizing that all the challenges of our world, including sustainable development, environmental protection, and civil rights, need to be addressed to create a secure world.

Why does much of the world now see our government as a bully that uses overwhelming military force to get its way? I love America and believe we can be so much more. The values of democracy and freedom, embodied in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, have set unusually high standards of governance rooted in the rights and dignity of each person. They have made a real contribution to our world (even if they are often observed in the breach).

We still have religious and cultural traditions that can help us transcend our dark side. Among them are the bonds of community and the spirit of voluntarism, which our churches nurture. At our best we genuinely care for the whole world, not just ourselves. The outpouring of contributions after the 2004 tsunami in Asia demonstrates our caring spirit. Any strategy for renewal will want to build on these spiritual capacities.

Though we think of the twentieth century as a century of war, including two world wars, there have also been significant developments in peacebuilding disciplines and practices. Among them are nonviolent strategies of social transformation pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. A whole literature is now been written on the use of strategic nonviolence. It’s a force more powerful than violence. It has been used effectively to bring down brutal regimes and thwart foreign occupations. And it does so without the debilitating destructiveness of war.

Others have pioneered in peacebuilding disciplines such as conflict transformation, trauma healing, and restorative justice. I think of them as the preventative medicine of human relationships. Conscientious objectors increasingly recognize that it’s not enough to say no to war. We need viable alternatives.

We all need to put our shoulder to the wheel to realize Isaiah’s vision of a world without war. Even the U.S. military has recently become interested in peacebuilding disciplines. Lisa Schirch, my former colleague at Eastern Mennonite University, has had the opportunity to teach such disciplines to classes at West Point. I find this both scary and hopeful. Scary because I worry about the ends they might be used for in the military, hopeful because I’m audacious enough to dream of a transformed military that’s not addicted to war.

Today I have many more tools in my peacebuilding toolbox than I did as a teenager in 1969. I have also become more grounded in my central beliefs about war and peace. War is the attempt to resolve social conflicts through organized violence. However, genuine, lasting peace with justice can only be attained through peaceful means. That’s why Jesus calls us to love their enemies and to return good for evil. In this way we become children of our God who is merciful and kind to all people.

—Earl Zimmerman is the author of Practicing the Politics of Jesus: Engaging the Significance of John Howard Yoder’s Social Ethics (Cascadia, 2007). He and his wife Ruth are the Mennonite Central Committee Regional Representatives for India, Nepal, and Afghanistan. They live in Kolkata (Calcutta), India.