Thursday, December 04, 2003
A response to Fr. Patrick from Dn. George (Mailed 11/28/03)
Dear Fr. Patrick:
Thank you for the (Nov., 2003 Touchstone)article on our church’s division over the 2nd Iraqi War. I appreciate your overview of the church’s history of coping with war. But I’ve got some issues.
On the first page you said you wouldn’t be arguing the merits of the war, one way or the other. The content and tone of the article did not live up to your disclaimers. On page 25 you forcefully/ably argue the selfless, decent, practical use of American force against Iraq, then you contend that the accuracy, the truth, of this analysis is “irrelevant here.” Come on Fr. Patrick. You made the point; you defended our attack. We had to attack Iraq to keep the oil flowing to the Third World subsistence farmers’ irrigation pumps. Armed with the threat of the worldwide starvation and hypothermia deaths you predict, the USA would have license to invade any nation—and, of course, distribute its resources to the most needy. I haven’t read or heard anything that self-serving from the Bush administration or its neo-con imperialist cheerleaders. You should get and Extreme Advocacy Award from the Heritage Foundation.
The utopian Orthodox peaceniks come off poorly next to their practical, decent, pro-war brothers, who have done the fighting for these slacker pansies over the centuries. You got in a well-deserved jab against the Orthodox Peace Fellowship’s use of the word “murder” to describe our war. And in the other corner we have Frank Schaeffer, who gets your sympathy, and deserves the readers’. You exaggerate the position of Orthodox opponents of the war to pacifism and beat up this straw man. You contend that Orthodox opposition to the war is the result of historical hangovers (Islam and the Crusades)—presumably, there’s no contemporary reason for someone not so haunted to oppose our latest pretext war of aggression. You leave out the more realistic arguments against the war; Met. PHILIP, for example on 10/09/02 cogently compared Iraq’s violations of UN resolutions to Israel’s.
Fr. Patrick, some of us do not see the gift of “very limited peace, and international stability” from American foreign policy that you mention in your last paragraph. We see our nation’s support of tyranny—from the Shah to Pinochet to Mobuto, from occupied Palestine to East Timor to Guatemala.
The division of the Orthodox Church on the 2nd Iraqi War isn’t an affliction. When the war started, another convert priest reminded us that there is no political standard for membership in the Orthodox Church. Our membership in Christ’s Body transcends all this. I must love the Zionists in our church; the Republicans must love me. And we do, with our eyes open! I’ve prayed for the safe return of Cpl. John Schaeffer, and for victory. I will not be attending his victory parade. I will continue to protest the war—and American belligerence against Syria, where my (and your) Church is headquartered.
Sincerely,
Dn.George (Charlie) Lehman
Dear Fr. Patrick:
Thank you for the (Nov., 2003 Touchstone)article on our church’s division over the 2nd Iraqi War. I appreciate your overview of the church’s history of coping with war. But I’ve got some issues.
On the first page you said you wouldn’t be arguing the merits of the war, one way or the other. The content and tone of the article did not live up to your disclaimers. On page 25 you forcefully/ably argue the selfless, decent, practical use of American force against Iraq, then you contend that the accuracy, the truth, of this analysis is “irrelevant here.” Come on Fr. Patrick. You made the point; you defended our attack. We had to attack Iraq to keep the oil flowing to the Third World subsistence farmers’ irrigation pumps. Armed with the threat of the worldwide starvation and hypothermia deaths you predict, the USA would have license to invade any nation—and, of course, distribute its resources to the most needy. I haven’t read or heard anything that self-serving from the Bush administration or its neo-con imperialist cheerleaders. You should get and Extreme Advocacy Award from the Heritage Foundation.
The utopian Orthodox peaceniks come off poorly next to their practical, decent, pro-war brothers, who have done the fighting for these slacker pansies over the centuries. You got in a well-deserved jab against the Orthodox Peace Fellowship’s use of the word “murder” to describe our war. And in the other corner we have Frank Schaeffer, who gets your sympathy, and deserves the readers’. You exaggerate the position of Orthodox opponents of the war to pacifism and beat up this straw man. You contend that Orthodox opposition to the war is the result of historical hangovers (Islam and the Crusades)—presumably, there’s no contemporary reason for someone not so haunted to oppose our latest pretext war of aggression. You leave out the more realistic arguments against the war; Met. PHILIP, for example on 10/09/02 cogently compared Iraq’s violations of UN resolutions to Israel’s.
Fr. Patrick, some of us do not see the gift of “very limited peace, and international stability” from American foreign policy that you mention in your last paragraph. We see our nation’s support of tyranny—from the Shah to Pinochet to Mobuto, from occupied Palestine to East Timor to Guatemala.
The division of the Orthodox Church on the 2nd Iraqi War isn’t an affliction. When the war started, another convert priest reminded us that there is no political standard for membership in the Orthodox Church. Our membership in Christ’s Body transcends all this. I must love the Zionists in our church; the Republicans must love me. And we do, with our eyes open! I’ve prayed for the safe return of Cpl. John Schaeffer, and for victory. I will not be attending his victory parade. I will continue to protest the war—and American belligerence against Syria, where my (and your) Church is headquartered.
Sincerely,
Dn.George (Charlie) Lehman
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