To Retreat In War: Protesting Strategies and the Strategy of Protest in Democratic Societies

It has been all too common when discussing the current war in Iraq, as with perhaps any war, for someone critiquing the war or advocating any kind of pull-out to be personally accused of any number of things. First and foremost, it will be alleged that the critic dishonors the military service of those risking their lives and profanes the memory of those who have already made the ultimate sacrifice. I say, "Baloney!"

The theologian, novelist and essayist G.K Chesterton, addressing his own day's controversial war, wrote that, "A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it."

The much larger discussion of war and violence in general as opposed to pacifism is one which I am bracketing out here, though not because there isn’t plenty there to discuss.

My operating assumptions here are simply that, given that wars are going to continue to take place, all interested parties should care about the relative pragmatics of a given conflict and that all moral beings should care about the relative justness of how a given conflict began and how it is in fact being prosecuted. In a democracy where the government acts in the name of the people, all citizens are interested parties.

Chesterton really says it all. Unless one assumes that it is impossible for one's own country to ever take a pragmatic mis-step or make an unjust decision based on undue emphasis on self-interest, then patriotic citizens can and should critique the merits and demerits of current actions. Voicing opinion and protest if it comes to that, is an absolute civic duty.

Forget about whole wars for a moment. Let's think about this in terms of individual battles. Imagine yourself as a general in a war like the American Civil War. You're sitting astride your horse, field glasses in hand, trying to assess the status of an action through all the smoke, when your Lieutenant Colonel informs you that the most recent, now-third, wave of attack on a position has been utterly annihilated. Slaughtered to a man. It's your job to decide if it's worth sending in a fourth wave.

Now, take it for granted that you believe your side in the war is fighting for a just cause. Further, assume that you believe that attacking this particular target is mission-critical. Finally, assume also that you know each already-fallen soldier personally to be a most honorable individual who likewise believed sincerely in the cause for which you both fight. But now a junior officer is arguing it would be suicide to keep up the attack. He advises you to call a retreat immediately, re-group and live to fight another day.

Do you A.) Give the officer's opinion the appropriate weight given his relative amount of experience, weigh the pros and cons and decide? Or, B.) Would you denounce the officer as a coward and traitor to the memories of your fallen comrades-in-arms, and immediately call up the next attack? It seems to me this isn't much of a choice. You might decide it’s worth another try, but that would mean you’re doing your job just as the junior officer was doing his. Our leaders are bound to lead us, and the decisions rest with them, but in a democracy, we’re all junior officers.

It is of necessity a soldier's duty to engage in actions when he or she does not fully understand the overall strategy. Thus any sacrifice an individual soldier makes as a result of following orders is equally to be honored. (This is separate from the consideration of whether any action an individual takes as the result of orders is equally defensible, so not so fast with the Nuremberg objections.) So a soldier's sacrifice is in no way to be seen as less honorable if the battle in which they fall turns out later to be the most infamous miscalculation of commanders than it is if it were the most glorious victory effecting a critical turning point in the campaign. It seems to me the people arguing that the honor due to a soldier doing his duty is contingent upon the mission’s success are the ones dishonoring their service.

So back to the current conflict in Iraq. The most consistent criticisms of that engagement have had to do with its efficacy given that the United States sees itself as being in a wider war on terror or fundamentalist Islamic Jihadists. Since the administration that went to war in Iraq, specifically framed it in terms of a wider war, it is absolutely correct to judge it in terms of that wider context. If the war is that against 'terror', and Iraq is just a supposed battlefront, then to call for retreat is to suggest a strategic option whose merits should be duly weighed. To shout down or label cowards, those of the opinion that a tactical retreat and re-deployment is the best strategy is disingenuous at best.

While I'm on the topic, it is amazing to me how minor the difference in timetable in Iraq ended up being. Obama has been consistently pledging to have the majority of combat forces out of Iraq within 18 months of taking office, as long as facts on the ground do not significantly change. The Bush administration concluded a status of forces agreement with Iraq at the end of 2008 which basically agrees to have this same thing done by the end of 2010. So the difference between the administration which planned and carried out the campaign, and consistently argued we had to stay the course, and the new president, who of the top-tier contenders in the election had probably the most serious anti-war credentials (having opposed the invasion before it happened, when that was not a popular stand, and made that fact central to the beginning of his primary battle), who was consistently and shrilly accused of advocating a cut-and-run strategy, amounts to this: six months. Six months! Sheesh.

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Not Whether but Which: Authority Part III

Any debate on religious authority usually takes the form of those in favor of authority versus those against it. Thus conservatives will argue for obedience to authority (Catholics stressing hierarchy, Protestants the scriptures) while liberals or progressives argue against it. But it's never really a question of whether or not one obeys an authority, but rather which authority one respects. [1] The mistake then is made by both sides in this debate. Indeed, the mistake is to have the debate at all.

Authority in and of itself is not inherently bad, nor is it inherently good. Authority is good when it is properly oriented toward good ends. Thus the progressive side of the debate, couching its argument in terms of liberation and freedom, is to my way of thinking, just substituting the tyranny of the self for obedience to an external authority. (I think the way to view this is in how celebrities clearly seem to be enslaved to the image of themselves that they propagate in the culture - genuine celebrities being just an extreme version of the average self-centered American ego.)

The conservatives do the disservice of granting the terms of the debate instead of pointing out that there is no rejecting of authority but only a switching of allegiances. Conservatives thereby come across as being against freedom instead of more fruitfully stressing the classic distinction between freedom-from (negatively defined) and freedom-for (positively defined).

If what I've said so far seems to be taking the 'side of authority', reneging on my claim that the debate over authority is a false one, it is only because in our time and place, 21st century America, we exist at an apogee of individualism (blogs themselves being an interesting manifestation of ego-extension) and so we really are in no danger of accidentally becoming overly submissive to authority. (At least as a culture. It should be noted that some individuals, because of personal psychological makeup, can be more prone than others to the abuse of authority.)

So while on the one hand the extreme individualism of our society makes anti-authority tendencies stronger and thus more in need of counter argument, on the other hand I do think it is the case that recognizing no authority other than one's own self, what I've called the tyranny of the self, is the more pernicious of the traps to fall into. There are two basic reasons for this.

One is that, because one whose only master is oneself imagines that they are without a master, they mask from themselves the nature of their enslavement and are in far greater danger of never achieving true liberation.

And two, while one who seeks to submit to some kind of external authority will always have their inherent selfishness and pride to call into question abuses of authority, submission to the self is self-reinforcing, a kind of feedback loop that has nothing outside itself to break the vicious cycle of pure self-servitude. We need something other than ourselves to call us out of ourselves.

It goes without saying that authority can be easily abused, though it is important to keep in mind the afore-posted distinction between authority and power. We might say that the mistake those in authority make is to rely on the exercise of power while the anti-authority mistake is to throw out the need for authority because of the misuse of power.

There is a sense in which the complete jettisoning of authority in our culture because of abuses has the positive outcome of opening space for submission to the Church to be truly free. Finally, nothing I've said so far assumes a conclusion to the necessary discussion on what form Christian authority should take in terms of ecclesiology or family life, etc. However authority is manifested in the Church it is always through mutual submission and whoever is in a position of authority need always lead in terms of service above all.

Another picture to reflect the distinction between the question of which authority versus the false debate for and against authority is in Jesus' claim that his yolk is easy and his burden light. The first thing to note is that there is no question in this statement (let alone the rest of the New Testament) as to whether or not becoming a Christian involves submitting oneself to Christ. The Christian is nothing if not a follower in the way of one who has gone before.

The other thing I've often wondered about this statement of Jesus' is what burdens and what yolks are being held up for comparison. I think a common tendency would be to assume the heavier burden alluded to is the Law of Judaism, especially of those legalistic Pharisees. There may be something to this, but while I have no exegetical basis for it, I think it is more useful (again, in our context) to see the heavier burden, the harsher yolk as that of subservience to ourselves.

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1. This writing is a riff along generally Hauerwasian lines. It isn't based on any work in particular but after writing it, I realize that the basic idea isn't any new insight of mine. In addition to various Hauerwas essays, it is probably most indebted to Jamie Smith's reading of postmodern thinkers such as Foucault. (See especially his chapter on Foucault in Who's Afraid of Postmodernism.) The usual caveat applies: the above authors get credit for any useful insights and I get credit for any mistakes, oversimplifications etc. etc.

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