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Why I Signed Up To Go To Iraq
by Stan Dotson
February 19, 2003
I am a Christian (of the Baptist variety), and I am an American. I strive to be faithful and patriotic. Last week, my faith and my patriotism led me to send in an application to travel to Iraq, as part of a delegation of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, to join a last-ditch effort to de-rail the mad rush to war.
My decision was influenced in part by constant thoughts of my friend Jesse Jones, one of our Bonner Scholars here at Mars Hill. Jesse is also a Baptist and an American, and he is currently risking his life to fulfill his duty as a member of the United States Marine Corps deployed to Iraq. I am praying daily for Jesse, but I want to do more. I want to be willing to put my life on the line as well, for Jesse's sake, and for the sake of our country and our world.
We are living in momentous times of crisis and peril. Our nation has experienced few such moments: the threat of disintegration during the Civil War, the Nazi threat in World War II. These crises were resolved through military struggle. I am not a pacifist; I believe in the right and necessity to defend oneself and one's neighbors from violence. But I have become convinced that a preemptive war on Iraq at this point in world history is likely to bring about catastrophic consequences. Such a war will not serve to protect and defend our Constitution, our way of life. It will not provide for our common defense, as our Constitution mandates. Rather, I am convinced that a preemptive strike will make us far less secure than we are now.
Think about it-instead of disarming Saddam, we will be provoking him to unleash every weapon of mass destruction he has on the thousands of American teenagers we have sent there. Instead of containing his threat, we will be forcing his hand to launch whatever chemical and biological weapons he has on young people like Jesse Jones and the other three Mars Hill College students who have been deployed.
Further, our attack has potential consequences that reach far beyond what Saddam can do with his arsenal; it will also make us far more vulnerable here on our own soil-in New York City, in Washington, D.C., in all of our hometowns. Common sense tells us that instead of minimizing the terrorist threat, an attack on Iraq is bound to swell the ranks of Al Qeda with new recruits prepared to terrorize us at home and abroad in ways we haven't imagined.
As we approach war in Iraq, I am faced with some pretty heavy questions: If I am convinced that our President is abdicating his oath to protect and defend our way of life, if I truly believe that his actions are going to have the opposite effect and make our country and our world far less secure, how am I to respond as a patriotic American citizen? It's a question I recently heard voiced by a Marine: what happens when the Marine's oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic is fundamentally in conflict with the oath to obey the orders of the President of the United States? Is it more important to obey the order or defend the Constitution?
The Declaration of Independence gives me some pretty clear directions on how to respond as a patriotic American to the insanity of current foreign policy: our founding document tells me that governments derive their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, and whenever any administration advocates policies that becomes destructive of these Ends [of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to dissent and advocate alternate policies in such Form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety.
If I make it to Iraq, I will be saying as loudly as I can to President Bush, "I DISSENT-YOU DO NOT HAVE MY CONSENT, because your bombing campaign will be destructive of our life and liberty." I hope my willingness to go and stand in harm's way will provoke in others the same kinds of questions I am struggling with. I hope my family and friends and colleagues and students and Senators and Congressmen and soldiers and other Americans of every political stripe will wrestle with what it means to be patriotic in these times, and for all who come to the same conclusions that I have, I hope they, too, will raise their voices of dissent, saying to the President, "go to war now and risk everything we hold dear over our dead bodies!"
By joining the Christian Peacemaker Team, I am also testifying to alternative policies that seem most likely to effect our safety. I do not counsel sitting back and letting tyranny and terror go unchecked. I believe that peace, like war, is waged. It is waged through deliberate and strategic nonviolent action. A local Republican leader told me he thinks the best way to deal with Iraq is to "keep the bright lights turned on Saddam." A Marine Corps veteran suggested that we add more inspectors and keep them there indefinitely, protected by a large United Nations peacekeeping force.
Inspections can work to disarm, and given a sustained focus by the international community, the inspections process will continue to contain if not totally disarm Iraq, in spite of Saddam. For those who are impatient with containment policy after twelve years of Iraqi noncompliance, I point to our relationship with a far more powerful enemy, the Soviet Union, whose threat was effectively contained for forty-five years before their empire collapsed and their people experienced regime change. Patient containment of the Iraqi threat will buy us time to constructively engage in other transforming initiatives in the Middle East, particularly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such initiatives will enable us to target the root causes of terrorism, instead of continually responding to its symptomatic outbursts with color-coded warnings and calls for duct tape.
I have not only struggled with the question of what my response should be as a patriotic American citizen; I have wrestled with what my response should be as a person of faith, striving to follow the way of Jesus Christ. Jesse Jones and I had a pretty deep discussion about this, over pizza at a local restaurant. We debated passionately (but respectfully), and at the end of the meal he rested his case on Paul's counsel in Romans 13 that we are to submit to the governing authorities, which have been established by God and are not a terror to those who do right, but are a terror to those who do wrong. I respect Jesse's faith response, and his interpretation of scripture. I could not help but wonder, though, and continue to wonder now, how Paul reconciled these words with his own unwillingness to submit to governing authorities when they violated his conscience. The same Apostle Paul who penned Romans 13 was arrested and killed by the governing authorities, because of his refusal to submit. Other disciples suffered a similar fate for following the way of Jesus, in defiance of the established rulers.
I signed up to travel to Iraq as a witness to a Way our governing authorities are refusing to consider, a Way marked by transforming initiatives and strategic love. What would happen if we invaded Iraq with shields of faith and weapons of compassion? Right now my friend Ken Sehested and around fifty other Americans are there in Baghdad, carrying such a shield. What if instead of fifty, there were thousands-tens of thousands-hundreds of thousands of Christians following Jesus to Baghdad to pray and wield armaments of strategic love, to embrace dying children and weep with grieving mothers and speak out for human rights and stand in the way of both the U.S. bombing campaign and Saddam's campaign of tyranny? God only knows what such an action would accomplish. But that is the good news-God knows.
Finally, this situation has led me to one other question, along with the questions of what I should do as an American and as a Christian. For in addition to being a citizen and a person of faith, I am also a Dotson, a member of a family whose blood runs deep in my veins. As I contemplate my decision to sign up for a trip to Iraq, I think about some of the extraordinary decisions people in my family have made over the generations and I question what my response should be now as a member of the Dotson clan.
My great-great grandfather, who farmed in Fairview on the same land I now live on, had the courage and conviction to oppose his state government, and he walked hundreds of miles to join the Union Army and put his life on the line in the Civil War, in hopes of keeping our nation intact. Three generations later, my father had the courage and conviction to oppose his mother and forge her signature so he could join the Army as a seventeen year old and go to Italy to halt the sweep of Fascism.
Hearing these family stories all my life, I have often wondered what I would have done if I had come of age in the 1860s or the 1940s. Would I have had the courage and conviction and faith and patriotism my great-great grandfather and my father demonstrated? If I do end up going to Iraq, I hope my experience will help answer that question, and I hope that whatever I do will somehow bring honor to our family name. I also hope and pray that Jesse Jones and I will soon have occasion to go back to the pizza restaurant and continue our debate where we left off, because I know we have a lot to learn from each other.
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