Today people look back at the "First Gulf War" as "the good war." Today's unpopular war in Iraq, however, has its basis in the public relations spin in the early 90's invasion of Iraq. Hauerwas writes "hoping to convince the many Christians who supported the Gulf War that on Christian grounds such support was a mistake. The so-called just war theory, rather than helping Christians discern where their loyalties should be, in fact made it more difficult for Christians to distinguish their story from the story of the United States of America. As a result, appeals to that theory led to an uncritical legitimation of the Gulf War by most American Christians. This outcome should not be surprising since most Christians in America continue to believe that this is a 'Christian nation' (p. 137). The fact that Christians embraced the first Gulf War through "just war theory" made it easier for them to embrace the unprovoked invasion of Iraq in 2003 via the same theory. Given information, available then but widely available now, such thinking either stretches such just war thinking to incoherence or shows that just war thinking never could, especially in the modern era, do the work that it is supposed to do.

Hauerwas contends that "the Gulf War was conceived and fought by . . . political realists who found it useful to justify it on grounds of just war. No doubt, s ome have cynically gone about this project, but I suspect that many realists who have justified the war on those grounds genuinely believe that the war was conceived and fought as a just war. But from a realist perspective what must be acknowledged is that those with the biggest armies and the best technology can call any war just, if they so choose, when or if they have won it" (p. 140). If so, the difference between the current Iraqi war and the "First Gulf War" is that it has not been won after it was declared over. Of course, in a historical perspective one sees that the current conflict continues the early '90s conflict. The realist position was never very "realistic."

Hauerwas describes the rationale for the Gulf War: "The war in the Gulf was prosecuted by a military shaped by realistic presuppositions, justified by the crusade rhetoric of the cold war, and determined not to repeat Vietnam. Americans were able to fight the war in the Gulf as an allegedly just war, not because America is a nation whose foreign and military policies are formed by just war doctrine, but because America is a nation whose military had been shaped by realists to serve the crusade against communism. American Christians, undisciplined as they are by any serious reflection on the morality of war, enthusiasticaly backed this war as simply a providential instance of good versus evil" (p. 144). This rhetoric was continued by the second Bush administration -- thus showing more continuity between the Bush I and Bush II than recognized. Yet the more ambitious political ends of the invasion showed the ideological nature of the rationales when the occupational strategies turned Iraq more into a Vietnam-like popular insurgency rather than a crusade-like "War on Terror."

War within the context of democracies depend upon the ability of the war-makers to control the media to provide always available justification for war -- regular disinformation (it is remarkable how the New York Times editorial page has followed public opinion in their assessment of the war). This again goes back to the first Gulf War, but likewise, has proven the Achilles heal in the Bush preemptive war policy: "Through the methods by which the administration and military controlled descriptions of the war, Americans belieed that they had prosecuted a war in which 'no one got killed.' That fact that there were thousands of Iraqi casualties is not thought to be morally relevant. As a rult, the Iraqi war has put realist and just warrior alike in the difficult position of having to meet the unreal expectations of the public in the future. Now realist and just warrior must justify future wars to the American people who believe in the technological fantasy of a war in which no one gets killed -- when 'no one' mans any U.S. soldiers. As a result of this spin control that has fired the crusade mentality, the fundamental question for advocates of just war theory or realism is how democracies are to develop virtues in their citizens to fight wars with limited purposes, not crusades" (pp. 146-47).

This has been the fall out in Iraq. "Some one" (i.e. American soldiers) are getting killed, dying in horrible and barbaric ways. War without death (of "real people, i.e., Americans) is the fantasy into which Americans bought -- and still do. The denial of Lancelot's study of the total Iraqi death toll (confirmed in its methodology by the British government among others) within American discourse shows that Hauerwas was correct: if it's not a Crusade, Americans don't really want war. It's not that they are opposed to war, but the US as God's elect nation should only fight crusades. This is why there is no real "peace movement" in the US -- the ideology of the nation-state as the focus of moral allegiance cannot stand a peace movement for no one is willing to suffer the consequences of not going to war.

Thus Hauerwas wants, in this essay, to recognize the concrete socio-historical position of those who argue for "just war", rather than seeing just war as an abstract, moral landry list of what it takes to go to war. Hauerwas argues "To understand the Gulf War, it is crucial to understand the interrelation of moral and political imperialism excemplified by American justification of the war. Imperialism derives from the hegemonic power of an empire that presumes, exactly because it is an empire, that anyone, anywhere if given the opportunity would want to be part of the empire. A false universalism is created that necessarily blinds the imperialists, since they believe that they represent the nonbiased view of humanity" (p. 150). What deeper confirmation do Hauerwas' insight than the belief, espoused by many neo-conservatives that the Iraqis "will welcome us as liberators"?

Finally, Hauerwas concludes the essay, "Surely the saddest aspect of the war for Christians should have been its celebration as a victory and of those who fought it as heroes. No doubt many fought bravely and even heroically, but the orgy of crusading patriotism that this war unleashed surely should have been resisted by Christians. The flags and yellow ribbons on churches are testimony to how little Christians in America realize that our loyalty to God is incompatible with those who would war in the name of an abstract justice. Christians should have recognized that such 'justice' is but another form of idolatry to just the degree it asked us to kill. I pray that God will judge us accordingly" (p. 152).

Perhaps God has judged us accordingly. The celebration of the Gulf War in the churches lowered the ability of the churches to resist an unprovoked war called on at the very least ambiguous data, the result of an elective policy rather than a military contingency. The United States is paying; the conservative evangelical church is paying for its mindless idolatrous loyalty. There is a sense of secularism that is spreading and a justification for a theological liberalism (itself at the forefront of justifying the first Gulf War and the invasion of Afghanistan), it seems to me at large in our culture. But I wonder if congregations have gotten it -- I wonder what was celebrated in congregations throughout the United States -- Pentecost or Memorial Day? I'm deeply suspicious that I know the answer.

I am not a pacificist; I am a Christian. Hauerwas reminds us over and over again that "Christians do not become Christians and then decide to be nonviolent. Rather, nonviolence is simply one of the essential practices that is intrinsic to the story of beinga a Christian. 'Being a Christian' is to be incorporated into a community constituted bythe stories of God, which, as a consequence, necessarily puts one in tension with the world that does not share those stories" (p. 137). I think that the problem with war is that it offends "the God revealed in Christ," not that war is "irrational given the progression of the human race" (p. 141). I pray that this day after Pentecost Sunday, we might remember this offense to God, maybe even make a memorial day of it.