A Painful Sermon About Syria and Iraq

            This morning [here at Lawrence Park Community Church], you might expect me to say we should approach the current Syrian refugee crisis with generosity. But of course you have. I’m amazed at how much you have contributed to the United Church’s refugee relief fund this year—over 23,000 dollars last month alone. I don’t really need to dwell on that this morning.

            Or, perhaps you expect me to say that we should do all we can to treat the 25,000 refugees coming to Canada from Syria as if they were our brothers and sisters. The Bible tells us so: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt." But no, I won't dwell on that this morning, though it is true. 

            In light of our New Testament reading from Matthew, you might expect me to say we should grant safe refuge to people that show up at our doorsteps just as the Egyptians showed Mary, Joseph and Jesus. But I won’t.

            What I really want to say is something that has been bothering me for a long time, something that leaves a pit in my stomach.

            What I want to say is this. We—that is our governments in the West, usually with the support of citizens like us—have done as much as anyone else in the world over the past 100 years (and much longer) to create today’s Syrian and world-wide refugee problems.

            To say so is not really controversial if you’re an academic, a historian, a journalist, or a well-informed citizen. But saying so is also very unpleasant, so we don’t hear this too often. But the facts (minus Jewish persecution, Ottoman Empires, crusades, Napoleonic adventures and British responses)—the facts go something like this:

            During World War 1, Western governments split the Middle East into three different spheres of influence—Russian, French, and British—without regard to tribal or religious realities on the ground, laying the groundwork for the irrational borders—including no Kurdish state—that still plague us today. ISIS lists this, for example, as one of the issues it is going to fix with its murder and mayhem.

            Before World War II, the West, and especially Britain, supported the rise of the Saudi monarchy. We have supported it through thick and thin since, especially since the discovery of oil there. But, in the words of the New York Times last week, "Born in massacre and blood, [Saudi Arabia] manifests itself in a surreal relationship with women, a prohibition against non-Muslims treading on sacred territory, and ferocious religious laws." The article goes on to point out what everyone knows to be true, namely that, "Saudi Arabia has been the chief sponsor of radical Islamist ideology," and thus, "the birth-place of younger generations of jihadists." As I speak these words, Canada is sending Saudi Arabia billions in new armaments while fifty Saudi's await beheading, mostly for what we would consider minor acts of political defiance.

            In 1953, we—well at least Britain and the USA—overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran to install the Shah’s dictatorial regime, mostly because the democratic government wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. The Shah, of course, was a dictatorial and repressive disaster, and that set the stage for Khomenei’s rebellion twenty-five years later. And we all know how that turned out.

            We have supported with aid—mostly military, Egypt’s last two repressive regimes, those of Mubarak and Sissi. We in the West are largely responsible for the rule of repressive dictators like Saddam Hussein and half a dozen other dictators in countries like Morocco, Syria, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Sudan, Tunisia—all in the interest, it was argued, of peace and stability and profits for us, never mind what it meant for the citizens of those countries.

            When the world rightfully helped Israel establish a State after World War 2, we did so without regard to the Palestinians the new State displaced, creating refugee camps in neighbouring countries that have sparked generations of hopelessness, anger and extremism. There are now five million Palestinians living in camps—and if you think the people living in those camps are going to be a force for peace given their lifelong experience of poverty, hopelessness, and political oppression, you might be wrong. In the meantime, we—including Canada--have mostly winked, and winked, and winked at Israel’s subsequent harsh treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and their annexation of more and more of Palestinian territory.

            Many ISIS soldiers and commanders are former Saddam Hussein soldiers, all of them helpfully fired and left footloose and fancy free by the USA and its allies after the Iraq war. Western military action: bombing, missile strikes, drone attacks—have created scores of casualties and nearly unlimited animosity against the West. You get the picture. It’s as the prophet Hosea said of ancient Israel’s disastrous military adventures:  “you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.”

            And here is the kicker. I don’t have any idea what we can do about it. Do you? I remember, as a child, taking apart a clunky child’s watch I received as a birthday gift. I removed  the back to see how it worked. I took out a little wheel to see how it fit. A spring fell out after it. I tried to put it back in but a little cog fell out. Within minutes all the watch’s workings lay on the table, and I could not put it together again. That’s our Middle East. We’ve tinkered with it and tried to fix it, we’ve hammered away at it and picked away at it and now there is no way we can put it back together again. Humpty Dumpty has had a great fall. And all the king’s drones and all the king’s bombs and all the king’s refugee visas cannot put Humpty together again.

            This tears me apart. There is no obvious, good, expert, wise way to fix this. Repentance might be a good place to start, but most political commentators have different ideas.

            Shall we keep on with the bombs and Special Forces on the ground? Or do we dare leave the spoils to ISIS? Stop meddling and let the Middle East find its own equilibrium without our forcing an answer on them they don’t want? Maybe training Kurdish militias help? Economic aid? Sanctions? A warm welcome for all the displaced among all the countries that have contributed to this mess?

            I don’t know. We do not know. There are no obvious answers. But this morning I will not be like the prophets Amos railed against, the prophets who said, “Peace, peace!” when there was no peace and no justice in all the land of Israel or Iraq or Syria or Libya or Sudan or Palestine or Lebanon or Yemen or wherever. I will not use our doing the right thing when it comes to refugees, here in Canada, as an excuse to ignore our complicity in creating this wave of refugees; I will not use my habit of wrapping up a sermon nice and neat and happy as an excuse for ignoring the fact that none of us has an inkling about what to do.

            What I can say is this. Once upon a time, as the story goes, a little baby fled to Egypt, and later back in Palestine grew up to be a prince of peace. It wasn’t easy. It eventually cost him his life. And now, no matter where everyone else in the world is headed off to, we, here, have decided to follow him. And the hard truth is that when it comes to the Middle East, peace in our time might cost us almost as much as it cost Jesus in his.

            Even though, for now, we don’t know what to do.

On the Eve of the Our Reprisal Against Syria

            I am wondering about this international rush to punish Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons. I don’t like it. I fear that it is hypocritical and self-serving.

            But first a caveat. I am sure—as sure as a twenty-first century guy who didn’t live through the gas attacks on the front lines of some WWI battlefield like Ypres—I am sure that the use of chemical weapons is a terrible evil. No one in his or her right mind would condone such use.

            Why? It is a potentially painful way to die—perhaps like bleeding to death from shrapnel. It is a weapon that can be used as easily against civilians as against soldiers—like nuclear weapons or landmines. Chemical weapons are also a sort of mirror on human depravity. The suffering that followed their use in WWI has sunk so deep in (most) nation’s psyches that it is a place we just can’t go back to. But mostly, chemical warfare is thought of as especially evil because it is a weapon of mass destruction. Their use cannot be easily restricted to a front line or military installation. Noncombatants suffer.

            And that is just how it is with war, especially modern war. The truth is, whereas several hundred civilians died in the chemical weapons attack earlier this month, a hundred thousand have already died in the larger Syrian civil war. By bullets. Missiles. IEDs. Infection and disease. Bombs. And beyond Syria the toll rises into the millions. Why don’t we pull together an international treaty to outlaw bullets? Nuclear weapons? What is it about chemical weapons that move us more than these other, arguable far more effective and destructive weapons?

           

            I listened carefully to what John Kerry and Prime Minister David Cameron had to say, and while they were obviously outraged at the use of the chemical weapons, neither explained why this form of warfare was particularly immoral compared to the larger war or nuclear weapons or land mines  It was almost as if their outrage made a more nuanced explanation of the moral issues unnecessary. “Can’t you see how mad I am. Of course the use of such weapons is evil beyond imagining!” They reminded me of the preacher who put in his notes "weak point; pound pulpit." This has happened before. Who can forget Colin Powell’s raising the spectre of chemical weapons before the start of the Iraq war?

            I also believe our outrage at Syria’s use of chemical weapons is a rallying cry for the West right now because our cultural narcissism needs something to be outraged at to justify itself. We need to assuage a vague but collective sense of guilt we have that is occasioned by our pervasive lack of gravitas when it comes to almost everything we do or do not do, from popular entertainments to climate change.

            Of course, cultural narcissism is only a partial explanation for the outrage. For others, this moral outrage is a cover for our own reliance on even more deadly weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear weapons. This moral outrage justifies our reliance on the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us against. This moral outrage at Syria justifies our sales of arms to just about every nation that wants them. This moral outrage gives civil Christians the opportunity to act like peacemakers when generally they love nothing better than having their country build more chariots and rely on more horses. This moral outrage is a deep magic that excuses our boredom with news from Egypt and Syria and the Congo and so on. I mean, did you see Miley’s performance at the VMA? Now that was shocking!

            I do not pretend to know what the answer is in Syria or Egypt or anywhere else in the world. But that does not mean just a violent response is the best one. It reeks of international “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This approach has not made Middle East more prosperous or democratic or friendly to the West over the past fifty years or so. Remember how years before 9/11 Clinton was lobbing cruise missiles at Afghanistan’s terrorist training camps? Why should another round fired at Damascus help bring peace and prosperity or amity there? Why shouldn't it spark a wider war? Did shock and awe solve Iraq’s problems? Not knowing the right answer to Syria’s convulsions doesn’t mean we should fall back on solutions that have not worked before.

            So tonight I am sad. I’m tied up in knots, actually. Partly it is the swelling moral outrage that demands military action, now! And partly, it is the lack of similar outrage over the first 100,000 to die there.