HE’S NOT MY COMMANDER IN CHIEF
A sermon by Rev. Robert M. Eddy
Unitarian Universalist Church
Pensacola, Florida
14 September 2003

READINGS:

".... allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion ... and you allow him to make war at pleasure. ....If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him! You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us," but he would say to you, "Be silent: I see it if you don't."

Congressman Abraham Lincoln in a letter to his law partner,
Herndon explaining why he voted in 1846 against giving
President Polk power to invade Mexico.

Now I see a little better how Nazism overcame Germany ~ It was what most Germans wanted -- or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it. I came back home a little afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, and like, under pressure of combined reality and illusions. I felt -- and feel -- that it was not German Man that I had met, but Man. He happened to be in Germany under certain conditions. He might be here, under certain conditions. He might, under certain conditions, be I."

Mayer, Milton They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45.
xxii, 346 p. 1955, 1966 The University of Chicago Press
ISBM 0-226-51192-8

Back in March, when the congress was debating whether to give the president the power he requested to go to war with Iraq without the sanction of the United Nations, a friend of mine in my home town went to see his congressman to urge him to vote no. The congressman explained why he was going to vote yes concluding with the phrase “and because he is my commander in chief.”

That’s why I chose the title you see in your program: to remind you of the very important distinction between the oath taken by every government official from the Vice President down and the additional oath sworn by the men and women in our Armed services when they enter that service.
Here’s the oath the members of our military swear or affirm:

"I,____________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God"

And this is the oath the civilians swear – or affirm.

"I, ______________________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

The men and women in our Armed services do not have a choice as to whether they will or will not obey orders from their commanders, including their commander in chief. But neither I nor the members of congress are bound by that oath. George W. Bush is my president – for the time being – George W. Bush is my president but he is not my commander in chief. As a civilian it is - not just my privilege, not just my right - it is my duty to criticize him and the policies he has put forward.

Now I can almost hear some of you saying,

"is this going to be a political sermon? I don't think that has any place in a church!"

The answer to the question is yes. The response to the opinion is what Gandhi said, I paraphrase, "Those who think religion has nothing to do with politics understand neither."
Religion is always about politics, it’s about power: who controls whom. The ancient prophets of Israel now honored by many who unquestionably support this president – the prophets who were remembered and whose writings were canonized - those prophets were the ones who condemned their governments - their kings. They “spoke truth power” and it is the responsibility of every clergyman or whatever religious denomination to do the same, to speak truth to power. If a clergy person feels his or her president is embarked on a holy crusade – as many do – it is their responsibility to support him. If they feel –as I do -he is embarked on a disastrous and immoral policy , then it is the clergy person’s responsibility to say so. I’m saying so. Our country is embarked on a disastrous and immoral policy.

So, I plead guilty of preaching a political sermon. I am not guilty of preaching a partisan sermon. Were I opposing the policies of the Bush administration because he’s a Republican and I’m a Democrat then I would be guilty of partisanship. But I also opposed this policy when it was proposed by President Clinton and later implemented when he sent troops to Mogadishu, Bosnia and Kosovo without a clear United Nations mandates. Some commentators called that policy of the Clinton administration, “Give War a Chance.” I opposed it and I have the sermons to prove it.

No, this is not a partisan diatribe. This is a reasoned, if passionate, rejection of a policy that I consider counterproductive, un-American and immoral. It is a policy the President and his advisors adopted well before September 11th, 2001. The policy is sometimes called, Pax Americana. Robert D. Kaplan defends that policy in an article in last month’s Atlantic Monthly Titled Supremacy By Stealth. The policy was attacked by Professor David C. Hendrickson in last December’s Harper’s Magazine. His article is titled, The Course of Empire. Dr. Hendrickson is professor of Political Science at Colorado College. His book, Peace Pact The Lost World of the American founding, was published by the University Press of Kansas earlier this year.

Dr. Hendrickson begins his article,

“In 1798 the American statesman Alexander Hamilton accused the Directory of the new French republic of making ‘hasty and colossal strides to universal empire.” Two centuries later, the United States increasingly takes on the fearful visage that Hamilton denounced. America’s fascination with, and belief in, the utility of force, its rejection of the legitimacy of non-democratic governments, and its frantic search for absolute security are all redolent of the malady to which the French Revolution of 1789 succumbed. France’s move from republic to empire occurred in little over a decade; ours is a longer, more haphazard, and ultimately more tragic course. At no time in American history has the transmogrification from republic to empire been so stark and compelling; changes now afoot in the Bush Administration give an imperial dimension to American policy unmatched in prior experience.”

Harper’s Magazine, December 2002, p 15

Lest you think this view is limited to a professor at a liberal college I direct you to Pat Buchanan’s 1999 book, A Republic Not an Empire. Buchanan’s book was republished soon after 9/11 because he wrote in 1999,

“If we continue on this course of reflexive interventions, enemies will one day answer our power with the last weapon of the weak – terror, and eventually cataclysmic terrorism on U.S. Soil.”

Buchanan added in the preface to the post 9/11 reissue,

“If this Prodigal Nation does not cease its mindless interventions in quarrels and wars that are not America’s concern, our lot will be endless acts of terror until, one day, a weapon of mass destruction is detonated on American soil. What is it about global empire that is worth taking that risk?”

Robert D. Kaplan, in his article in last month’s Atlantic tries to answer that question. At first I thought his article was going to be a condemnation of the Administration’s policy. It is titled, Supremacy by Stealth but in fact it is a defense of that policy. He writes:

“It is a cliché these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire – different from Britain’s and Rome’s but an empire nonetheless. It is time to move beyond a statement of the obvious. Our recent effort in Iraq, with its large-scale mobilization of troops and immense concentration of risk, is not indicative of how we will want to act in the future. So how should we operate on a tactical level to manage an unruly world? What are the rules and what are the tools?”

Mr. Kaplan then proceeds to tell us we should emulate Rome and Britain – only with more efficient tools. As I read the article (it’s 17 pages long) I found myself wondering if he was putting me on. Sometimes he sounds like the novelist, Tom Clancy. Kaplan writes,

“If this era of reluctant imperium is to leave a lasting global mark, we must know what we are up to; we must have a sense that supremacy is bent toward a purpose and is not simply an end in itself. In many ways the few decades immediately ahead will be the trickiest ones that our policy makers have ever faced: they are charged with the job of running an empire that looks forward to its own obsolescence. Winston Churchill saw in the United States a worthy successor to the British Empire, one that would carry on Britain’s liberalizing mission. We cannot rest until something emerges that is just as estimable and concrete as what Churchill saw when he gazed across the Atlantic.”

I would like to remind Mr. Kaplan and those who repeat his arguments that what Mr. Churchill saw in 1945 was a United States that could then have imposed its will on the rest of the world BUT CHOSE NOT TO. That “greatest generation,” so admired today, chose instead to create an institution modeled on its own historical evolution. The United Nations organization was largely the creation of the United States. The Charter of the United Nations was an attempt to avoid a “universal empire” and to move the exhausted nations of the world toward a “parliament of man.” Kaplan dismisses that institution, as did President Bush until recently – when he is asking it to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. Kaplan’s article is, in fact, a summary of his 2002 book Warrior Politics. In that book Kaplan makes it clear that there may not be good or bad choices in foreign policy, but only choices between bad and worse scenarios. Kaplan writes,

“The more the barons of punditry demand ‘morality’ in complex situations overseas, where all the options are either bad or involve great risk, the more virtue our leaders may need in order to deceive them.”

Kaplan seems to be saying, “It’s a dirty business, but someone has to do it. IN SECRET”
Kaplan’s observation that in the “real world” the choices are not between good and bad but between terrible and horrible, is also a cliché. Such decisions have been the terrible burden that all political leaders have carried. Read Abraham Lincoln’s biography. But Kaplan sees these terrible dilemmas not as a burden but as an opportunity. He lays out ten rules, “management techniques,” for the American Empire. In the course of illustrating them he justifies nearly every undercover operation the CIA or military has ever undertaken; in fact, he revels in them. All are justified by the assertion that

“For the time being the highest morality must be preservation – and, wherever prudent, the accretion – of American power.”

You will recognize that as a paraphrase of the philosophy of Machiavelli and his followers. The only difference between Kaplan’s assertion and that of the practitioners of “realpolitic” throughout history is the name of the nation. “For the time being the highest morality must be preservation – and, wherever prudent, the accretion of” - Florentine, English, German, Japanese, Russian, Iraqi, North Korean – American power. All their leaders came to that same conclusion and were corrupted by it!

Lest you think I have taken Kaplan out of context let me read the whole paragraph:
“ A world managed by the Chinese, by a Franco-German-dominated European Union aligned with Russia, or by the United Nations - (an organization that worships peace and consensus, and will therefore sacrifice any principle for their sakes)- would be infinitely worse than the world we have now. And so for the time being the highest morality must be the preservation – and wherever prudent, the accretion – of American power.”

It’s interesting that what Kaplan condemns the United Nations for doing– sacrificing any principle – is what he is recommending as the foundation of American Policy. And While condemning the United Nations for “sacrificing principle for peace and consensus” he recommends that the United States sacrifice principles to insure American Hegemony.
Earlier, I quoted Milton Mayer’s conclusion to his book “They Thought They Were Free.” He might also have titled his book. They Thought They Were Virtuous.” As with the Germans, so with us?

The argument that the highest morality is the preservation of the State is the waterfall over which we must never allow our beloved country to drift or even approach. This nation, to quote Abraham Lincoln was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Now we are engaged in a great debate, or should be - whether that idea - that all persons have equal rights - can be promoted without abandoning the very principles that gave it birth. I believe the proposition that all men – and women – are created equal. I also believe that “government of the people, by the people and for the people” can never be achieved by imperialism – no matter how beneficent its intent – and certainly not by Machiavelianism – the doctrine that the end justifies the means. It is only by following the example of the founders of this republic – only by promoting international cooperation and by respecting human rights – that we justify our existence.

The United Nations is today what the United States was under the Articles of Confederation, a loose “Peace Pact” of sovereign states. Our forefathers understood there was no security in that arrangements so created the present Constitution of the United States, severely limiting the sovereignty of the participating states. The United Nations must also evolve and it is the United States that must forgo the temptation to Universal Empire and “grow” an always-improving United Nations into what its founders envisioned. We must not be the suicide bombers that destroy it. It is the “last best hope of mankind.”

What have we learned from 9/11/91? Too little. We should have learned that whenever men or women or children are willing to sacrifice their own lives to kill some of us the world cannot be safe. It is possible to foil bombers like Timothy McVeigh who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City or the Terrorists who put bombs on the airplane that blew up over Lockabee Scotland. We can, in the long run, remove the risk of suicide bombers whether in Israel of America, only by dealing with that which motivates their hatred. Martyrdom is fueled by a sense of injustice. “The last weapon of the weak.” It is only by empowering “the wretched masses yearning to breathe free” that we can ensure the safety of our grandchildren.

We should have learned from 9/11 the difference between policing and warring. Our reflex was to kill those who had killed those we loved. But that cycle is as unending in international affairs as it is in an Appalachian valley or Iraqi village. War is not the answer! WE should have learned that but we didn’t.

We should have learned from 9/11 that “the ends never justify the means.” Bad means corrupt good ends.

And finally we should have learned from 9/11 that this is one gloriously green planet and we can’t fence off or wall off the richest parts and say, “This is Ours: you others stay out.” We need those others. We are becoming ever more dependent on the rest of the world. Americans cannot forever - not even much longer – live in a gated community with professional warriors guarding the ramparts. Rome tried that. England tried that. If we want security, we must promote justice.

And that my friends, is the lesson for the day – in Pensacola or in Iraq. If we want security, we must promote justice.

END

The Essay The Course of Empire by Professor David C. Hendrickson can be
Found in the December, 2002 issue of Harper’s Magazine
The Article Supremacy By Stealth by Robert D. Kaplan can be found in the
July/August 2003 Issue of The Atlantic Magazine.
The updated, paperback edition of Patrick J. Buchanan’s A Republic Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny.” Is published by Regency Publishing, Washington, D.C.
They Thought They were Free by Milton Mayers is out of print but
extensive quotes and reviews are available on line.