"The True Cost of War: A Moral Balance Sheet "

READING 1

An open letter to Members of the United States Congress, from the Reverend William G. Sinkford, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association

March 9, 2007

To Members of the United States Congress:

The United States has spent at least $400 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The astronomical cost of these operations is exceeded only by the staggering human toll, and both counts are far beyond what any of us could have imagined when we invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003. Now, four years later, the administration is asking you to approve $100 billion to prolong this disastrous conflict and to return exhausted soldiers to a dangerous and embittered land.

While this money would allow our nation to send more brave citizens into harm's way, it would do little to guarantee that they will be fully trained and equipped, or that our wounded veterans will receive adequate medical treatment once they return home. And the increased funding does nothing to ensure a speedy end to the carnage in Iraq. We have already failed our troops in so many tragic ways. The best way to support them now is to bring them home and to ensure that they and their families are given all of the respect, compensation, and care they deserve.

Rather than a surge of troops, we American taxpayers deserve a surge of truth.

Because citizens of all faiths and political persuasions are being asked to pay to prolong the violence, it is our moral obligation to reckon the true cost of the war before we agree to continue it. To give a true reckoning, we must honestly confront what we have done in Iraq, and we also must acknowledge the many vital needs we have left unfunded because we chose to put our money toward war.

Until we can adequately prepare and protect our troops, until we can provide them with premium medical services when they return home, and until we can guarantee a speedy and just end to the Iraq conflict, I urge you not to spend another American dollar on this war. I hope you will take a moment to review the enclosed balance sheet. These concerns are neither Republican nor Democratic. They transcend partisan differences. They are moral concerns that affect all of us.

Sincerely,

Rev. William G. Sinkford

 

READING 2

One Day in Iraq

To date, more than 3,100 American military members have been killed in Iraq, and another 400 have been killed in Afghanistan. On average, another college-aged soldier (between the ages of 18 and 22) is killed every day.

The money the US spends on average in just one day in Iraq, $259 million, could have provided 22,615 college-aged students with a full year's tuition or enrolled 35,500 three- and four-year-olds a full year in Head Start pre-school programs.

One Week in Iraq

The toll of the war on Iraqi civilians has been devastating. Estimates of the number of Iraqi dead range up to half a million.

As many as 3.8 million Iraqis have already fled their homes, and an additional 10,500 civilians become refugees on average every week.

The money spent in one week in Iraq could have provided three meals a day for nearly an entire year for 6 million children, the same number that dies from hunger and malnutrition every year.

One Month in Iraq

In addition to the tens of thousands of injuries American service members have sustained in fighting in Iraq, more than 500 have undergone "major amputations" - the loss of arms or legs. In the four years of fighting in Iraq, that totals ten servicemen and women losing a limb every month (or one every three days).

For less than the amount spent in one month in Iraq, New Orleans' neighborhoods could be completely rebuilt and improved to meet standards that would better protect them against another hurricane.

One Year in Iraq

More than 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in Iraq in 2006 alone. That is equivalent to 93 civilians killed every day.

The money spent in Iraq in one year could have paid the health insurance premiums for half of all uninsured Americans, including all uninsured American children.

Four years in Iraq

More than 3,100 American service members have been killed since the invasion, and more than 23,500 soldiers have been wounded. As many as 300,000 veterans have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, two-thirds of whom are not being treated.

What could we have purchased with $400 billion, had our national priorities matched our moral potential?

We could have funded full American compliance in the Kyoto Protocol, which is estimated to cost $75 billion less than what we've already spent in Iraq.

We could have purchased life-giving treatment, including costly antiretroviral drugs, for every person in the world infected with HIV/AIDS. For almost six full years.

The Years Ahead

Even if it ends tomorrow, we will be paying for this war for decades to come. When we factor in the future costs of veterans' medical care, disability payments, and the price of rebuilding our depleted military, the total cost could exceed $1.2 trillion.

Imagine what our world might look like in a few years if we had focused those resources on making the world healthier, wealthier, better educated, and safer.

As Americans, it is our duty to hold ourselves and our government accountable for any decision to spend American lives and money on a futile war. These are moral choices, and they have moral consequences.

Copyright Unitarian Universalist Association, 2007. References and source material are available upon request. This document maybe be reproduced in its entirety and freely distributed. When material is excerpted we ask only that it be attributed to the UUA.

 

SERMON

We calculate the cost of war in many ways. We already know the toll on life and the environment, the suffering and sacrifice, that always come with war. There is also a moral cost. As William Sinkford, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, wrote in his open letter to Congress, money that we could have spent on everything from Head Start at home to food for children in Iraq, from rebuilding New Orleans to lifesaving treatment for HIV/AIDS; we spent instead on a "futile war."[i] We are paying with lives and paying with moral consequences - missed opportunities to give instead of take away, to heal instead of kill. We have yet to know the full extent of those consequences. But they are likely to haunt us for decades to come. We are haunted now. The true cost of war is a burden we all carry, not only as taxpayers, but as a people whose conscience is heavy with the truth.

Friends, this is a grim subject. I nearly chose not to address it this year, on the fourth anniversary of the war, because I did not want to confront the shame and the helplessness I have felt as an American citizen. But as the anniversary drew close, I realized I had no choice but to speak. My own feelings are inconsequential compared to the suffering of a soldier who has returned from battle permanently disabled and disillusioned. But I am, as we all are, part of a society that allowed this war to happen - to steamroll forward, almost inevitably, out of fear, false information, and even worse - out of a cynical and opportunistic calculation that few of us could understand, let alone support. The anger and outrage smolder, while every day, more people die.

William Sinkford wrote, "We must honestly confront what we have done in Iraq, and we also must acknowledge the many vital needs we have left unfunded because we chose to put our money toward war." Reading the "moral balance sheet" will break your heart. Funds that could have fulfilled our American dream: for education and health care, humanitarian relief at home and abroad, have sent instead American citizens into a dangerous and volatile foreign adventure without a reason or a plan.

When they came back - if they came back, there wasn't much waiting for them. A hero's welcome, we can hope, from loving family and friends. But how about health care for their broken bodies and spirits? Will they be the next generation of veterans, used up and discarded, homeless, camping out on the beach? "Even if it ends tomorrow," William Sinkford wrote, "we will be paying for this war for decades to come."

This sad situation is difficult to address, let alone look at for very long. If you came to church today expecting a different message, I can only say that I wish I had a different message to offer. But when I read William Sinkford's moral balance sheet and thought about the cost, I also thought about us - and how we are caught, in a pervasive moral compromise that keeps us from changing course.

Some of you marched yesterday. Some of you will send a post card to Henry Waxman. I hope that all of us can face the pain of responsibility - not because we voted one way or another, or did or did not trust our leaders - but because we have a responsibility as people capable of making moral choices, and we know that this choice is wrong. Just take a look at the moral balance sheet.

In the story we heard earlier, Asoka trained to be a fierce warrior, prepared to fight his kingdom's enemies at any time.[ii] This is how to become a great king, he learned, and when the time came he led his army into battle against their enemies, the Kalingas. Asoka's army was victorious and he took pride in the number of captives they took.

His heart changed when he met a beggar, who happened to come into the palace garden.The beggar was a follower of Buddha, and talked to Asoka about the futility of war and killing. "The things that last, O King," the beggar told him, "are gained through gentleness and kindness. You can never really conquer people by fighting them. If you are cruel to others, they in turn will be cruel to you. And you will always live in fear of what harm they will do you. On the other hand, if you feel generous and kind toward others, kind feelings will slowly grow in them also. They will become your friends. You will have no one to be afraid of."

The beggar showed the King a moral balance sheet. It changed his mind forever. He apologized to the people he had conquered. He renounced war. And he carved his wisdom on a stone pillar for all to see: "The only true conquest is that which is brought about by kindness. . . . Let this Law of Life be remembered as long as there is a sun and moon in the sky."

People will wage war, it seems, without thinking of its costs. They do it because it's the only way they know - as it was with King Asoka, trained all his life for battle. War is a way of life. Only an intervention - such as a change of the King's heart - can put a stop to it. The beggar had probably studied for years for just such an opportunity.

The playwright Bertolt Brecht survived the Nazi occupation of Europe. He fled Germany to live in Sweden, where he wrote the anti-war drama "Mother Courage." In it he conveys - with bitter sarcasm - the resignation with which people accept war, and the moral inertia it engenders.

Brecht wrote, "Well, there've always been people going around saying someday the war will end. I say, you can't be sure the war will ever end. Of course it may have to pause occasionally - for breath, as it were - it can even meet with an accident - nothing on this earth is perfect - a war of which we could say it left nothing to be desired will probably never exist. A war can come to a sudden halt - from unforeseen causes - you can't think of everything - a little oversight, and the war's in the hole, and someone's got to pull it out again! The someone is the Emperor or the King or the Pope. They're such friends in need, the war has really nothing to worry about, it can look forward to a prosperous future.

"[iii] War is a living thing, a creation of humanity. It has clever ways of justifying itself. With powerful allies such as Emperors, Kings, and Popes, it can easily find reasons never to end.

We're up against such a creation right now. We want the war to end - but we keep hearing that to do so would leave even more lives in jeopardy, make a bad situation even worse. In this perverse way, war becomes the moral option, self-perpetuating, resistant to protest. We become confused, tired, and resigned. Another true cost of war is a loss of confidence in ourselves and in our ability to make a difference. It's another deficit on the moral balance sheet.

It may well be the case that there are tragic consequences to everything we do now. Every choice - from removing troops immediately to occupying Iraq indefinitely - now emanate from the great wrong choice we made earlier. But moral indecision and passivity are even worse. A "speedy and just end" to this war is the only moral option we have.

Yes, it is frightening to imagine what will happen next. But what is happening now is even more frightening and what is worse, we are letting it happen; because we can't see any alternative, war, with a life of its own, finds a way to keep on going. It's got to stop. If we shrug off the responsibility, we will live forever with the consequences. What hangs in the balance affects everyone, American and Iraqi, Republicans and Democrats, you and me.

The moral balance sheet shows us the true cost of war. When we see it for what it is, we know we can act, and like the King who changed his mind, we too can choose life over death. If we choose life, then peace will follow. Tell everyone you know.

[i] For full text of William G. Sinkford?s "open letter" and the "True Cost of War: A Moral Balance Sheet," go to www.uua.org/news/2007/070309_iraq.html.

[ii] Sophia Lyon Fahs, "From Long Ago and Many Lands" (Boston: Skinner House, 1995).

[iii] Bertolt Brecht, "Mother Courage," trans. Eric Bentley (London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1962).