Mitch Lewis

It was once said that only President Nixon could go to China. Perhaps only President Obama could accept the Nobel Peace Prize by defending the just use of force.

Text of the president's speech at the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize

Among the President's remarks:

For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause. And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.

But the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions -- not just treaties and declarations -- that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another -- that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths -- that war is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task that President Kennedy called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions."

The president had more to say, of course. Read the whole speech for yourself.

One more reason for the nation to give thanks on this Thanksgiving Day, 2008: the Iraqi parliament's approval of security agreements between Iraq and the United States.

The United States and other coalition nations have been assisting the Iraqi government under United Nations mandates (and at the request of the Iraqi government) since June 2004. The United States and the United Kingdom stopped being "Occupying Powers" under international law on 28 June 2004 with the transfer of authority to the Iraqi Interim Government. See U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1546, 1637, 1723, and 1790 adopted under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

The security agreements between the United States are another significant step in the young nation's growing strength and independence. The counterinsurgency strategy and surge of forces implemented under General Petraeus are partly responsible for this step forward, but even more so are the efforts of Iraqi government, military and civilian leadership - and the Iraqi people themselves.

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On October 16, 2008 PBS will broadcast "Soldiers of Conscience," a documentary on how soldiers wrestle with the moral issues surrounding the use of lethal force. PBS follows eight soldiers in the current conflict, some of whom chose to engage the enemy and some of whom refused. In its preview for the program, PBS makes what I consider to be a very true statement: all soldiers are "soldiers of conscience."

I have not seen the program. I don't know who these soldiers are, much less what we will learn about the specifics of their moral reasoning processes. Consequently, none of the comments that follow are a reaction to the specifics of the program or to the decisions made by any particular soldier. What I want to discuss is one particular phrase in PBS' program promotion that started me thinking.

Soldiers, PBS says, are "torn between the demands of duty and the call of conscience." Based on the theme of the program, one presumes "the demand of duty" is killing and the "call of conscience" is not killing.

This way of describing the issue is problematic on two fronts. First, it presents the issue as a conflict between external demands ("duty") and an internal call (the voice of "conscience"). Doing one's duty is also a matter of conscience; the word "duty" itself implies a moral "ought." Failing to do one's duty should give one an uneasy conscience. Duty and conscience are intimately related.

More significantly, what if - when you come face-to-face with an armed sociopath rampaging through the halls of a school or an insurgent about to bomb a marketplace - what if that voice in your head telling you not to pull the trigger is not the moral voice of conscience, but simply a programmed response that emerged over the long course of human biological evolution?

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The world changed seven years ago today. When we learned that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, many of us on staff at the Chaplain School that day crowded into the Public Affairs Officer's cramped office and watched events unfold on her tiny television. As the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center, the importance of that moment was immediately clear to me. "We're at war," I said. "I just don't know who with."

As the day progressed, we watched in horror as the buildings fell in New York and the Pentagon burned in Arlington. We saw the courage of firefighters, law enforcement officers and other public safety officials displayed before our eyes. We later learned of the courage of those aboard United Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. We also learned of the selflessness of many in the Pentagon and World Trade Center who helped their brothers and sisters at great risk to their own lives. We remember today the thousands who died or were injured. We draw inspiration from their stories and pray for their survivors.

Seven years later, we are still at war. We have called it the Global War on Terror (or Terrorism) and the Long War and the persistent conflict. We struggle to find the words to understand and describe this new kind of conflict. By whatever name, it has been a long, difficult seven years. I pray today that the day of victory might come soon. What will victory look like in this new kind of conflict? It will look like peace.

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The United Methodist News Service reports that delegates to the 2008 General Conference voted Dietrich Bonhoeffer to be "the first martyr officially recognized by The United Methodist Church." I wish they hadn't.

It's not that I have anything against Bonhoeffer. I think he was one of the most significant Christians of the 20th century. Some of his writings among the most profound ever produced by the Christian church. Charles Sigman, the Arkansan pastor who authored the resolution, said, "During a time of grave darkness in Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer shined the light of Christ all the way to a hangman's noose." Indeed he did. That's not the problem.

Rather, I fear that we have just created another category of things about which to argue. The category of "officially recognized martyr" has all the earmarks of yet another political football. "I hope it will start a precedent," Sigman said. I'm afraid that it will.

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Our nation's "Thanksgiving Story" may be rooted the Pilgrims of Plymouth, but the annual holiday we observe this week finds its origins in the struggle of the Civil War.

It had been a very mixed year on the battlefield. The battle of Antietam in September 1862 had been a Union victory, but the December 1862 battle of Fredericksburg had been a complete disaster for the Union. Looking to rally the nation's lagging zeal, the president issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, transforming the Civil War from a conflict about federal power and states rights into a contest of wills over slavery. The Union began a very unpopular draft in March 1863 and suffered another terrible loss at Chancellorsville in May. In July, the Union achieved two of its greatest victories - Gettysburg and Vicksburg - but suffered another setback in September when Union forces failed at Chickamauga in northwest Georgia. Worse yet, the Army of the Potomac could not (or would not) capitalize on the victory over the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg. The outcome of the conflict was by no means a settled fact in late 1863. The cost in lives had been staggering: Antietam (2108 Union KIA), Fredericksburg (1284 Union KIA), Chancellorsville (1574 Union KIA), Gettysburg (3155 Union KIA) and Chickamauga (1657 Union KIA). If Lincoln could see into 1864 at all, he knew that things would only get worse, both for the Union and for the Confederacy which he hoped to reunite with his nation.

Despite the horrors and uncertainty of the war, Lincoln issued issued a proclamation on October 3, 1863 establishing a national Thanksgiving Day, to be observed on the last Thursday of November. Until this time, Thanksgiving had been observed only sporadically and regionally. The 1621 Pilgrim celebration was a one-time event and not the beginning of a yearly tradition. It was the president's 1863 proclamation that began an unbroken chain of presidential Thanksgiving proclamations and inaugurated the national holiday we know today. It's interesting to note that the 1863 Thanksgiving took place one week after Lincoln dedicated the resting place for thousands who died at Gettysburg.

In his 1863 proclamation, Lincoln recognizes God for his goodness and mercy, even in the midst of a terrible and costly war. Lincoln concludes:

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

Thankfulness. Penitence. Remembrance. Healing. Comfort. Restoration. Peace They all still seem like good suggestions for prayer to me.

And while Thanksgiving is a national holiday, the theme of giving thanks in hard times is not foreign to the Judeo-Christian tradition. From the first Passover Seder to the last supper of Jesus, God's people have known that faith calls us to give thanks in times of adversity as well as in times of ease. It is perhaps those in the midst of conflict and struggle who best know what it means to be thankful.

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See the full text of Lincoln's proclamation here.

See also James Robbins articles on the Thanksgiving of 1864 and the Thanksgiving of 1621.

Related:
An Ancient Act of Thanksgiving
- (Deuteronomy 26:1-11)
A Pilgrim Thanksgiving
Proclaiming a Day of National Thanksgiving
- (Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving proclamation)