“Surge”
By the Rev. Robert Hardies
Sunday, September 16, 2007
All Souls Church, Unitarian
Washington, DC
Before I share this morning’s reading, I want to give my “I’m-about-to-give-my-sermon-about-Iraq” disclaimer, which is that you all know my position on the Iraq war and, if you don’t, you will in a couple of minutes. And I know that not everyone in the church agrees with me. And that’s okay. This church has well over 800 members and I’ve never known 800 Unitarians to agree on anything. And while I believe the moral issues of this war are clear cut, the strategic issues are far more complicated, and people of good will can differ and we can learn from one another. I’ll offer a different disclaimer, in the form of a prayer, that sometimes righteous anger can also be an instrument of love and peace.
On August 19, a unique op-ed appeared in the pages of The New York Times. It was a piece about Iraq, but it was not written by leaders of either political party, high-ranking military officials, former Secretaries of Defense or Washington pundits. Instead it’s by seven soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, stationed in Baghdad. I want to share a couple of excerpts from their piece with you as our reading this morning—you can find the full text on-line. This is a little bit longer of a reading than I’ll usually share but it’s worth it.
“Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal…To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day….
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the ''battle space'' remains the same, with changes only at the margins…
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric…
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry...
[T]he most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. ''Lucky'' Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal. In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise…
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Let me begin my sermon this morning by sharing with you the names of the soldiers who wrote that piece. As I do, you might want to reflect on the risk that each of them took in writing it. Army Specialist Buddhika Jayamaha. Sergeant Wesley D. Smith. Sergeant Jeremy Roebuck. Sergeant Edward Sandmeier. Staff Sergeant Jeremy A. Murphy. Staff Sergeant Yance T. Gray. Sergeant Omar Mora.
Editors at The New York Times gave the soldiers op-ed piece the title, “The War We Saw,” suggesting, erroneously, that their tour of duty was already over when, in fact, the soldiers aren’t scheduled to come home until November. The prematurity of that title was underscored earlier this week. Because on Monday, as General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were greeted with fanfare on Capitol Hill. On Monday, when an entire nation awaited their testimony and when Senators put on their best ties for the cameras. On Monday, on a road in the far reaches of the American empire, Staff Sergeant Yance Gray and Sergeant Omar Mora were killed when their truck crashed on a Baghdad road.
Sergeant Mora’s story stands out for me. Mora was 28 years old from Texas City, Texas, with a wife and a five-year-old daughter. Born in Ecuador, Mora’s parents brought him here when he was two. He had just received his citizenship papers and was awaiting his return from Iraq to be officially sworn in as a citizen of the United States.
In an interview, Mora’s mother, Olga Capetillo, confessed that she had been especially worried about her son in the last month. In early August, he’d watched a friend die in his arms. He’d grown increasingly despondent. When mother and son spoke on Friday for what would be the last time, Ms. Capetillo told her son, “Dios te cuidara, mi hijo, y te llevara a casa.” “God will take care of you, my son, and bring you home.”
I begin my sermon with the story of these young soldiers because as I’ve been watching events unfold on Capitol Hill this week, hoping to find glimmers of a leadership that can bring an end to this war, a leadership that makes for peace, I’ve been sadly disappointed, seeing instead only more of the same: more posturing, more spinning, more stalling. And I’ve found myself almost clinging to these young soldiers and their op-ed piece because in a small way, they demonstrate for me precisely those qualities of leadership that were missing this week, and that I believe these times call for. So this morning I want to talk about the kind of leadership that makes for peace. You know, they don’t allow ministers to declare and mount surges, but if they were to do that, then this morning I want to offer my views about exactly what kind of surge we need to bring an end to this war.
The first thing that struck me when I read the soldiers’ article was its brutal honesty. Their first-hand narrative provides a straightforward, street-level view of the daily life of soldiers and civilians in Iraq. They don’t spin or posture; they don’t offer misleading statistics. They tell us the truth as they see it and I, for one, found that remarkably refreshing this week.
Because here in Washington we have been lied to about this war from day one. Vice President Cheney—to this day—insisting Saddam Hussein had ties to 9/11. Colin Powell disgracing his and our reputation by taking to the Security Council bogus evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The administration, for four years, promising that first one benchmark and then another would be the beginning of the turnaround in Iraq. And each time Congress saying “let’s give the President time for his plan to work out.” And then the benchmark fails, we go by and the whole process starts over again. We’ve failed to make progress on so many benchmarks that Ambassador Crocker suggested the other day that when it comes to Iraq, we should think instead in terms of “mini-benchmarks.” You’ve got to pay attention to the language in this.
On Wednesday, with great fanfare, the President announced that he supports a pull-back of troops, when in reality the troops that he’s pulling back were already scheduled to rotate out of their tour of duty anyway. But that didn’t stop just about every newspaper in America from posting a big headline on Thursday morning: “President Supports Troop Pull-Back of Troops.” And then, in his speech before the nation on Thursday, the President rolled out another slogan for the war, a slogan filled with more Orwellian irony than the slogan we heard a few years ago, “Mission Accomplished.” Do you know what the new slogan is? “Return on Success.” With all due respect, Mr. President, there has been very little success, and the only returns that I’ve seen are soldiers coming home in body bags or on prosthetic limbs. Mr. President, stop lying to us! [Sustained applause] That’s what I want to hear people say: “Stop lying to us!” How come no one said that on Capitol Hill this week? I am fed up with the kind of Washington decorum that says that you can’t question someone’s integrity because it’s impolite to do so and, in the meantime, we allow killing lies to be passed off as truths. One of the things we need to bring an end to this war is a surge of honesty in Washington, D.C., [Applause] a surge of honesty!
I was also struck in reading the article by the soldiers – I was struck by their courage. I’ve never been in the military – I’m sure some of you can fill me in – but I can only imagine the ways that these soldiers’ lives could’ve been made miserable by their commanders and colleagues for what they wrote. Clearly it takes a certain kind of courage to serve in Iraq in the first place. But the courage of which I speak I see as different from, and in addition to that courage. I’m talking about a kind of intellectual courage – having the courage of your convictions, the courage to say what you believe in spite of the consequences. That’s what I saw in these soldiers’ piece.
I must say, friends, that courage is another quality in short supply these days among our political leadership. And when it comes to war, the lack of such courage can have devastating consequences. Let’s remember a lesson from history. In the last decade new information has come to light about President Johnson’s decision-making about the Vietnam war. We now have tapes of many of his phone conversations, as well as a confessional memoir from Robert McNamara, his Secretary of Defense.
We now know, for instance, that as early as February 1965, as Johnson was ordering a bombing campaign of the North and just months before he would launch his own “surge” of about 40,000 American troops, the President made a stunning admission in a taped conversation with McNamara. He says, “Now we’re off to bombing these people. We’re over that hurdle. I don’t think anything is going to be as bad as losing this war, but I don’t see any way of winning it.”
The presidential historian, Michael Beschloss, who wrote a book on the LBJ tapes, said that when he heard Johnson’s admission it sent a physical shudder through his body. Historians had always assumed that Johnson wasn’t sure about victory, but that he had a plan and believed that we could win. But here he is telling McNamara that we can’t.
Johnson didn’t want to be the President who lost Vietnam, so instead of ending the war he didn’t think we could win, he escalated it. Now if you go down to the Mall and you follow the names on the Vietnam Wall chronologically, you’ll see the consequences of President Johnson’s failure of courage. At the time the President admitted he didn’t think we could win, only 500 U.S. soldiers had died in Vietnam. By the time we actually lost and pulled out, 58,000 soldiers had died.
If President Bush believes we can win in Iraq and has a clear strategy for that victory, then for four years he has failed to share that with the American people, or to provide to us a picture of his end game. But if, like President Johnson, President Bush feels that we can’t win and doesn’t see a clear strategy for victory, but doesn’t want to pay the political price for that admission, then we have the right to ask, “How many more lives, Mr. President, will you sacrifice for your lack of courage?”
And we also have the right to ask, “Members of Congress, how many more lives will you sacrifice for your lack of courage?” Because now we have a lame duck President who faces no more elections in his lifetime, and a Democratic congress with 60 percent of the public agreeing with them that we should end the war in Iraq, and neither can summon the political courage to end the war in Iraq. We need a surge of courage in Washington, D.C., to end this war! [Applause] Leadership for peace requires courage. It requires courage.
So honesty, courage. I would add competence to the list of leadership qualities, as everyone agrees that this war has been terribly and tragically mismanaged. And there are many others. But for me, there’s really one more surge that I believe has the power to bring an end to the war in Iraq. One more surge that can help create peace. And that’s the kind of surge that we saw yesterday here in Washington as people took to the streets to demand peace. You know, a lot of people dismiss peace activism. A lot of people have said to me, “Rob, don’t bother marching. No one listens to protestors anyway.” And I have to admit that there were times when I was tempted to believe them. I’m thinking back to the winter of 2003, in those first anti-war marches, when it seemed that every day we marched, the temperature dropped below freezing, and that the public reception was almost as frigid to our marches. There were moments when I asked myself, “Is this making any difference?”
But the movement spread—as movements do—and more and more people in more and more places marched for peace and took to the streets and wrote letters and showed up and pressured their representatives. And friends, we have watched public opinion shift about this war, and I know that activism has played an important part in that. I know that our witness for peace has made a difference. In our times of despair, let us never forget that. Let us never forget the power that we possess.
But we haven’t made all the difference yet that we need to. And so if there is one surge that we need more than any other to end the war, it is a surge of principled opposition to the war by people of faith and of conscience. We don’t need more troops on the ground in Iraq; we need more foot soldiers for peace here at home. That’s why I was so heartened yesterday to see so many war veterans, now marching in an army of peace. A surge foot soldiers for peace is what will help bring an end to the war in Iraq.
Let me just close by saying this. Every Sunday morning now for the last two years, before church starts, we have tolled our bells. We used to peal our bells, ringing them loud and clear to call people to church. For the last two years, we’ve tolled them, to remember the dead – civilian and military – in the war in Iraq. This week, as those bells toll, they will toll for, among others, Sergeant Omar Mora and Staff Sergeant Yance Gray as well as the five other soldiers and two Iraqi detainees who died with them in the truck accident this week. As we grieve their loss and the loss of so many human lives, let us also take heart in knowing that the sound of that bell reaches far and wide. Let us take heart that our prayers and our protests are being heard. And let us surge ahead holding in our full hearts both that grief and that hope. It’s the only way forward. Amen. [Applause]