At this time millions of people throughout the world are praying fervently for peace, and particularly that there may not be war with Iraq. But what is it, exactly, that drives our prayers? To hear some of us talk, you would think that peace was an absolute priority, something that was to be sought and held on to at any price. But is peace at any price something that Christians should desire or pray for? My anxiety is that it is chiefly the comfortable, the wealthy and powerful who desire peace at any price, because they can afford the luxury of it. For those who are the victims of this world and its systems of economic power, it is justice and liberty that are more important than the absence of war, and sometimes these are things that they are prepared to fight for.
Although war is an absolute evil, I can think of situations in which it may be less of an evil than peace at any price, and indeed the only possible choice for those who have to face it. When Britain stood alone in 1940, was such a time. In The Lord of the Rings (and who can estimate the power of fantasy to shape our attitudes to world events?) little Rohan standing against the might of the evil Saruman and his hordes, is another example. And can it be that the people of Iraq feel something like the people of Rohan? They too are faced by overwhelming enemies, whose numbers and might and weaponry far surpass theirs, and whose leaders will not suffer them to sue for peace. What can they do, but stand by their defences and await the onslaught, nerved only by courage and the desire that the homeland they love may be free from foreign destruction, and a desperate grim hope?
Or perhaps war may be preferable to peace at any price, if we are called on to defend the helpless against aggression. That was the argument for war with Hitler's Germany when he invaded Poland, as it was for the Falklands War and the Gulf War. It is one of the reasons for the development over the centuries of a doctrine of the 'Just War' that Christians might be allowed to wage. The fact that this is a noble aim should not be (entirely) eclipsed by the apparent selectiveness of whom we choose as suitable helpless victims to defend. The Palestinians who suffer daily at the hands of the Israeli army may well feel cynical about Western claims that the 'Just War' doctrine may be invoked to police the world and defend the poor against aggressors.
But can we really say that this is the situation with regard to Iraq? That an attack by the Western allies would really be resistance to an evil aggressor, and for the defence of the helpless? In the light of the failure of UN weapons inspectors to discover Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - the absence of which evidence, strangely, is taken to prove that they must exist - and of the fact that Iraq has not currently attacked any of its neighbours, surely we must answer No. Saddam Hussein may be a monstrous tyrant along the lines of King Herod, but so are Robert Mugabe, the military governors of Burma, and many other leaders of recent times. Why pick on Iraq, and not the rest, when the people of the country, who will suffer most in the event of war, having already suffered so much through Western economic sanctions?
The need to bolster the power and popularity of an American president with a highly questionnable mandate to govern, and to safeguard cheap supplies of oil for American car drivers, are not adequate reasons to justify an attack on Iraq. If Saddam was to be removed from power, the proper time to have done it would have been at the end of the Gulf War; but the West stayed its hand because they did not want the vacuum of power that would follow. Once again, so much of our policy smells of hypocrisy. And it leaves us to face the grim and painful question: if we attack Iraq at this time, is it not we who will be the aggressors? Quite apart from the danger of igniting the whole Middle East in even worse conflict, and stirring up hatred and maybe war between worldwide Islam and the secular West, this should be enough to drag us back from the brink.
We do indeed need to pray for peace, and work for peace, and demand that our Government do not go to war; not because we are seeking peace at any price, but because we in the West first stand for justice for all people - especially the poor and oppressed - and for freedom for all to live 'quiet and godly' lives as God desires, safe from the threat of invasion by militaristic foreign powers.
Published in the Marston Times, February 2003