THE MORAL FOG OF WAR FEBRUARY 2, 2012 AT REDEEMER Some of you here tonight I know; many I don’t. In either case, I know I am among friends. So I dare to share with you some things which may make you uncomfortable and me vulnerable. Many of you share with me the deep confidence that the Lord’s goodness and mercy accompany us all the days of our lives whether we luxuriate in green pastures beside still waters or tremble through valleys with more than just shadows of death. We rejoice in God’s goodness and mercy at the same time as we face evil candidly. The Moral Fog of War. That title plays on the name of a documentary about Robert Strange McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defence for about 7 years immediately before my time in the U.S. Army. Fog. We don’t like it. give us clarity. Tell us what and who are right. What and who are wrong. That simplicity will elude us tonight, beginning with this story. During my first week in Viet Nam, we had a training class on rules of engagement. These rules review the Geneva Conventions and tell you when, where and how you may engage—fight against- the enemy. You fight soldiers; don’t harm women, children, civilians and friendly people. Sounds like simple common sense. We all knew that from previous training. This was review. The class was taught by an experienced sergeant who did the proper and correct job expected of him. Then, time for questions. Up stands a boy who looks hardly old enough to have finished high school. His question indicates he is a little older. He was in Viet Nam before, he says, serving on a LRRP team. Now L-R-R-P, lurp, is the acronym for long range reconnaissance patrol. That’s a few tough, highly trained guys sent into enemy territory, lightly armed, sometimes for days, to get information about the enemy—to spy. Being lightly armed, they can’t afford to be discovered. In enemy territory that means likely death. So, in a baffled, naive, almost hurt boyish voice, he asks his question: “Do you really mean that now if we are discovered in the jungle by a woman and a couple of kids, we can’t kill them anymore?” Now that is not just an interesting story. The meanings and implications of it just don’t quit. You could start by asking how you would feel if the woman and children killed were your mother and sisters. Or, if they were not killed, how would you feel if, as a result, one of the dead LRRP members was your brother, father or son. And on a bigger than personal level, we were told that we were in Viet Nam to “win the hearts and minds of the people.” That’s what counter-insurgency is mainly about. As an aside, think about what a spiritually evangelistic concept that is: “winning hearts and minds.” Anyway, if you were in the community of the dead mother and children, would their deaths, just because they were innocently at the wrong place at the wrong time, win your heart and mind? But the story doesn’t end there. The instructor has to answer the question. He is a very experienced, well-trained soldier. Does the question shock him? No. Apparently he has heard variations of it frequently. Perhaps he has lived it. He’s ready for it. As robotically as he would swing his rifle toward enemy fire, he presses the rewind button and repeats what he has mouthed before, and what the questioner has heard repeatedly before: “The rules say,...” He didn’t even have to wink or continue with ...”but...” The answer was clear and it wasn’t in the words. Nobody could say that he didn’t teach the rules. And everybody knew he didn’t. But that still isn’t the end of the story. There were about 50 people there. The instructor was there. I was there. Every one of us knew the rules. By the rules it looked like this boy was a real live war criminal. Every one of us should have reported that. Was I, were we all, complicit in the cover up of a possible war crime? How could this happen? Is this simply a conspiracy of lawlessness? And this is not just a rare incident. You have all read in the news many variants of this story from My Lai in Viet Nam to Abu Ghraib and Haditha in Iraq and Canadian Captain Robert Semrau. How can these things happen? Let’s start by asking, “What is war anyway?” The invitation to speak on this prodded me to think about that in ways I haven’t in the first 40 years since my war experience. To get the issues before us, I will say some of this with brutal starkness, simplification and hyperbole. We can discuss nuance later. First, the standard definition of war. Something like this: It is an instrument of statecraft. In just war theory, that distinguishes it from private violence, even private violence on a large scale like that of drug cartels or terrorist organizations. That line gets fuzzy in cases like insurrection terrorism and civil war, but the pure idea is that war is between states, not between individuals or non-governmental groups. It is also subject to rules of warfare like Geneva Conventions and just war theory. Now isn’t that a charmingly comforting sterile definition of war? Fervently desired, but fanciful? You could be forgiven for likening it to professional sports. Yes, there is a bit of physical contact between players, but there are nice rules limiting that contact. Players wear impressive uniforms to distinguish the teams and to distinguish players from spectators. Certainly no spectators would ever be involved or hurt. And there are referees, governing bodies and appeals boards to deal with violators both in the stands and on the nice level playing field.