Vinoth Ramachandra (formerly IFES Regional Secretary for South Asia)

Dear partners in mission:

God is once again in the news. The impending war with Iraq is of direct concern to us, not only because we care about the millions of people in Iraq, the Gulf states (including many Asian migrant workers), the US and elsewhere who will be severely affected, but because of the evangelical rhetoric that is being co-opted by the protagonists on the Western side. Newsweek last week ran a cover story on “Bush and God”, and spoke of his “deep, personal faith” as the cornerstone of his policy. Apparently the great majority of “evangelical Christians” in the US are solidly behind him. Their worldview seems to be shaped by the president’s speeches and the media tycoons. (Think of Newsweek on sale in Muslim nations around the world-what does that do to the cause of global mission?)

I cannot help feeling that Western Christian responses to 9-11 and its aftermath (the “war on terrorism”, Iraq, Guantanamo, etc) will be a benchmark to assess how effective mission conferences, “mission trips” and missiological education have been. Among those who have attended such conferences and been trained to be “global-minded” Christians in missionary training schools over the past (say) thirty years, how many have joined the protests on the streets in London, New York (and elsewhere), or have written against the war to secular newspapers/their political representatives or have spoken against it from pulpits or in classrooms? It would be worth finding out. That would be a good index of how global-minded they are; or, whether all that conventional mission training does is to reinforce the worldview of conservative, suburban Western churches.

From my visits to the US I know that there are many brethren, especially within IVCF, who deeply care about global justice and are as upset as I am. But their silence only fuels the widespread view that all evangelicals in the US are right-wing fundamentalists. It depresses us to have to answer thoughtful atheists, Buddhists, Muslims and others as to why evangelicals in the US and Britain do not openly challenge the deception, hypocrisy and double-standards that cloak US and British foreign policy. Or why they don’t challenge the way constitutional rights and the Geneva Convention have been callously ignored by the US government since Sept 11 2001? (There are many Muslim and Buddhist intellectuals around the world who have been killed or imprisoned because of their courage in confronting their national leaders). We know of non-evangelical US and British Christians who do this, but why is it that often those with whose theology we most disagree are also those with whose social practice we most agree? What has caused the split between belief and behaviour, doctrine and ethics in the evangelical world? For example, are the children of Iraq less valuable than aborted American foetuses? Or, how come weapons of mass destruction are being developed and stockpiled in the US, Britain and Israel (and even in poor nations like India and Pakistan, regularly armed and supported by the US and Britain)

without any expression of evangelical concern in the West, let alone any public agitation?

We have received a few e-mail circulars from evangelical leaders such as Leighton Ford critical of the military build-up-but these are addressed to Christians; and while we welcome them warmly, they do not go far enough in moral critique. How would the American people feel if, say, at the height of the Cold War the Russians and the Chinese so bullied or manipulated the UN Security Council to demand that Russian and Chinese spy planes be allowed to reconnoitre biological and chemical factories in the US, and that, while they did so, the US had to disarm all ballistic missiles that could reach the Asian mainland?

Jimmy Carter is the only evangelical Christian in the West whom I have read of as being openly critical of the Bush administration’s war-mongering. Little wonder that he is held in far greater regard around the world than any preacher or theologian. Do any of you know of any others?

How can this be a just war?

(A) A just war, as enunciated by Augustine and elaborated later by medieval and modern theologians, is actually a justifiable war: justifiable because it is a war of last resort. This is clearly not the case with Iraq. Not only has no shred of evidence being given to show that Iraq constitutes an immediate threat to the US and Britain, but intelligence has been distorted and countries like Turkey and those on the UN Security Council are being bribed or bullied into supporting this war. When the UN chief weapons inspector asks for more time to be given to complete his inspections, and when the head of the International Atomic Energy Authority categorically states that Iraq has no nuclear weapons, how can this be considered a just war?

(B) A justifiable war is one that uses means proportionate to the ends sought, and discriminates between civilians and enemy combatants. Consider the 1991 Gulf war and its aftermath. Operation Desert Storm has already gone down in history as the first “virtual reality war”. Journalists were fed lies by the Pentagon and passed these lies on for public consumption. They never questioned the images they were shown of “smart” bombs falling on Iraqi military targets. In fact, less than 7 per cent of the weapons used were “smart”, as the Pentagon admitted long after the war. Seventy per cent of the 88,500 bombs dropped on Iraq and Kuwait- the equivalent of seven Hiroshimas- missed their targets completely, and many fell in populated areas. The launch sites of Iraqi Scud missiles were said to have been “knocked out”. Not one was destroyed. None of this was reported at the time. Shortly before Christmas 1991, the Medical Educational trust in London published a comprehensive study of casualties. Up to a quarter of a million men, women and children were killed or died as a direct result of the American-led attack on Iraq.

Then consider the use by American and British troops of depleted uranium in its artillery shells, leaving radiation contamination across southern Iraq. The radiation could not be cleaned up (as it was in Kuwait) because the necessary equipment for this was denied the Iraqi health services under the economic embargo imposed after the war. Professor Doug Rokke, a US army physicist responsible for decontaminating Kuwait, is reported by the veteran Australian journalist John Pilger as saying, “At international symposiums, I have watched Iraqi officials approach their counterparts from the Department of Defence and the Ministry of Defence and ask, plead, for help with decontamination. The Iraqis didn’t use depleted uranium; it was not their weapon. They simply don’t know how to get rid of it from their environment. I watched them put their case, describing the deaths and the horrific deformities that are showing up, and I watched them rebuffed. It was pathetic.” [John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, Verso Press, 2002]

What we shall witness, if war begins, is a repetition, perhaps on an even more horrific scale, of these acts of terror on the part of US and Britain. To this date, I have not heard of any apologies from US or British officials for their massive complicity in arming and supporting Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s, and for the heavy loss of civilian life in Iraq caused by Operation Desert Storm and the ensuing economic sanctions. This is what makes Blair’s talk of a “moral war” so hypocritical. The US is the only nation in the world that has actually employed nuclear weapons in combat; and both the US and Britain have also deployed chemical weapons in wars of the past. We should expect of leaders professing to be Christians that they, at least, confess their nations’ crimes publicly and resolve to initiate a worldwide nuclear disarmament programme. And the Church should be leading a nation in its repentance.

(C) A justifiable war is one that has a reasonable hope of success, and will not be protracted over many years (let alone generations). I have no doubt that the Iraqi regime will be toppled relatively speedily in the event of a US-led military invasion. But who knows the consequences for the rest of West Asia and the Middle East? Indeed for the people of the US? The example of Afghanistan does not give us much confidence. Most of the protracted trouble-spots in today’s world are a legacy of British imperialism- Palestine, Iraq, Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe. Will our children and grandchildren have to live with the consequences of US imperialism?

“Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” (Js.4:17)

in our Lord,

Vinoth Ramachandra (forwarded by Rene Padilla, formerly IFES Regional Secretary for Latin America