Gee, is it because we are both from the
cloisters and not out in the real world that I agree with this lady?
REH
Published on Thursday, May
29, 2003 by the National Catholic Reporter
<http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/>
Is
there anything left that matters?
by Joan Chittister, OSB
This is what I don't understand: All of a sudden nothing seems
to matter.
First, they said they wanted Bin Laden "dead or
alive." But they didn't get him. So now they tell us that it doesn't
matter. Our mission is greater than one man.
Then they said
they wanted Saddam Hussein, "dead or alive." He's apparently alive but
we haven't got him yet, either. However, President Bush told reporters
recently, "It doesn't matter. Our mission is greater than one man."
Finally, they told us that we were invading Iraq to destroy
their weapons of mass destruction. Now they say those weapons probably
don't exist. Maybe never existed. Apparently that doesn't matter
either.
Except that it does matter.
I know we're not
supposed to say that. I know it's called "unpatriotic."
But
it's also called honesty. And dishonesty matters.
It matters
that the infrastructure of a foreign nation that couldn't defend
itself against us has been destroyed on the grounds that it was a
military threat to the world.
It matters that it was destroyed
by us under a new doctrine of "pre-emptive war" when there was
apparently nothing worth pre-empting.
It surely matters to the
families here whose sons went to war to make the world safe from
weapons of mass destruction and will never come home.
It
matters to families in the United States whose life support programs
were ended, whose medical insurance ran out, whose food stamps were
cut off, whose day care programs were eliminated so we could spend the
money on sending an army to do what did not need to be done.
It matters to the Iraqi girl whose face was burned by a lamp
that toppled over as a result of a U.S. bombing run.
It
matters to Ali, the Iraqi boy who lost his family - and both his arms
- in a U.S. air attack.
It matters to the people in Baghdad
whose water supply is now fetid, whose electricity is gone, whose
streets are unsafe, whose 158 government ministries' buildings and all
their records have been destroyed, whose cultural heritage and social
system has been looted and whose cities teem with anti-American
protests.
It matters that the people we say we "liberated" do
not feel liberated in the midst of the lawlessness, destruction and
wholesale social suffering that so-called liberation created.
It matters to the United Nations whose integrity was impugned,
whose authority was denied, whose inspection teams are even now still
being overlooked in the process of technical evaluation and
disarmament.
It matters to the reputation of the United States
in the eyes of the world, both now and for decades to come, perhaps.
And surely it matters to the integrity of this nation whether
or not its intelligence gathering agencies have any real intelligence
or not before we launch a military armada on its say-so.
And
it should matter whether or not our government is either incompetent
and didn't know what they were doing or were dishonest and refused to
say. The unspoken truth is that either as a people we were misled, or
we were lied to, about the real reason for this war. Either we made a
huge - and unforgivable - mistake, an arrogant or ignorant mistake, or
we are swaggering around the world like a blind giant, flailing in all
directions while the rest of the world watches in horror or in
ridicule.
If Bill Clinton's definition of "is" matters, surely
this matters. If a president's sex life matters, surely a president's
use of global force against some of the weakest people in the world
matters. If a president's word in a court of law about a private
indiscretion matters, surely a president's word to the community of
nations and the security of millions of people matters.
And if
not, why not? If not, surely there is something as wrong with us as
citizens, as thinkers, as Christians as there must be with some facet
of the government. If wars that the public says are wrong yesterday -
as over 70% of U.S. citizens did before the attack on Iraq - suddenly
become "right" the minute the first bombs drop, what kind of national
morality is that?
Of what are we really capable as a nation if
the considered judgment of politicians and people around the world
means nothing to us as a people?
What is the depth of the
American soul if we can allow destruction to be done in our name and
the name of "liberation" and never even demand an accounting of its
costs, both personal and public, when it is over?
We like to
take comfort in the notion that people make a distinction between our
government and ourselves. We like to say that the people of the world
love Americans, they simply mistrust our government. But excoriating a
distant and anonymous "government" for wreaking rubble on a nation in
pretense of good requires very little of either character or
intelligence.
What may count most, however, is that we may
well be the ones Proverbs warns when it reminds us: "Kings take
pleasure in honest lips; they value the one who speaks the truth." The
point is clear: If the people speak and the king doesn't listen, there
is something wrong with the king. If the king acts precipitously and
the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people.
It
may be time for us to realize that in a country that prides itself on
being democratic, we are our government. And the rest of the world is
figuring that out very quickly.
>From where I stand, that
matters.
A Benedictine Sister of Erie, Sister Joan is a
best-selling author and well- known international lecturer. She is
founder and executive director of Benetvision: A Resource and Research
Center for Contemporary Spirituality
<http://www.benetvision.org/> , and past president of the
Conference of American Benedictine Prioresses and the Leadership
Conference of Women Religious. Sister Joan has been recognized by
universities and national organizations for her work for justice,
peace and equality for women in the Church and society. She is an
active member of the International Peace Council.
