REMEMBERING THE FUTURE
September 11 and War with Iraq

J. Denny Weaver

September 11, 2001, is seared in our memories. If people are asked where they were when they heard the news, virtually everyone remembers. This remembering continues. Likely few people have experienced a day since then without references to September 11, along with ever-present admonitions to remember victims and heroes of that day. One thing is clear. We should remember 9-11. But how and what we remember matters. That remembering foretells our future.

We do need to remember the victims of 9-11. But properly remembering means knowing what makes a victim. A victim is someone who does not control his or her fate. News reports listed nearly 3,000 victims on 9-11. These people were going about their business on that morning, just like all of us now reading this article. Then with no warning and beyond their power to imagine or control, planes crashed and buildings fell on them. The people in the planes and the twin towers of the Trade center were victims, and it is appropriate to remember them and their families.

But complete remembering requires seeing what produced those victims. The events of 9-11 that killed those victims are symptoms and products of a wider belief that threatens to engulf all of us. This wider belief is the assumption that violence will solve problems of injustice.

I write as a Christian pacifist—who believes that Jesus’ rejection of the sword, of violence, is a revelation of God’s reign and a call to all who would live as followers of Jesus under God’s rule. I also believe that if and when one accepts the truth of that rule, one can perceive the truth of the rejection of violence in events of the world around us. From the perspective of God’s peaceable kingdom, it is clear that we are in the grip of an ongoing cycle of violence, with each act of violence serving to justify the next round by the other side.

The perpetrators of 9-11 were convinced violence would teach "those Americans" a lesson for their many deeds and policies deemed unjust. But the American acts for which 9-11 was retaliation were already themselves acts and policies of violence in response to other violent acts. Americans, following the lead of the administration in Washington, continue to believe that an innocent nation was attacked out of jealousy on 9-11.

That claim of innocence ignores a number of items. A brief list starts with the economic violence the United States inflicts on developing nations of the world when an estimated 25-40 percent of the world’s wealth and resources are sucked into the U.S. to be consumed by four percent of the world’s population. Such economic violence takes on particular significance when one confronts the fact that the U.S. continues to give Israel nearly $6 billion yearly (with efforts in congress to increase that figure) while funds sent to Palestinians flow at the level of a comparative pittance.

This U.S.-sponsored economic violence accompanies other violence. This violence appears as the tacit approval given by the U.S. to the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, which means ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land and demolition of Palestinian houses, as well as the clear support that the U.S. has given to Israel’s destruction of towns, road closures, and curfews lasting weeks at a time imposed on the residents of the West Bank. These acts of violence the U.S. has supported were all carried out with the purpose of stopping terrorism and punishing terrorists.

The point is that in no case did any of these acts of violence by either side teach the other side a lesson; violence did not work for either side. What each act of violence did, whether small or large, direct or systemic, was to provoke more acts of violent retaliation. And it does not matter whether an observer enters the cycle at an act by a Palestinian sympathsizer or at an act of the U.S.-Israeli axis. The key point is to see that the people who perpetrate violent acts on both sides are captive to a fatal belief that more violence will end the cycle. None of this violence convinced either side to stop its violence. In fact, it simply creates more angry people who wait for another opportunity at violent revenge.

On October 7, 2001, the United States initiated a violent response to September 11. More people have now been killed in Afghanistan as a result of October 7 than were killed 9-11. Those who died in Afghanistan, such as those killed by American fighter planes at a misdiagnosed wedding reception, were also victims of this cycle of violence. U.S.-sponsored violence has not solved the problems involved or convinced the other side to stop its own violence. In Afghanistan there was a regime change, but we still hear about bombs and assassination attempts and fighting between warlords in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

And for all of the activity of this country’s "war on terrorism," people in the United States do not feel safer. In fact, our media reflect ongoing fear and the expectation of another round of retaliation. American violence has simply continued the cycle and provoked more hatred and more calls for revenge that will keep the cycle going.

We should remember the victims of 9-11. We should also remember other things. We should remember that there are more victims than those who died on 9-11. There were victims of violence before 9-11—and those victims, of whichever side, are victims of the same cycle of violence that produced 9-11. Remember the events following 9-11, the violence since October 7 that has extended the cycle of violence and increased fears of more retaliation.

Such memories show us the result of the proposed war with Iraq—a major continuation of the cycle of violence. As many historians can now locate the beginning of World War II in the humiliating Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany by the victors of World War I, even now the cycle of violence that encompasses Palestine-Israel and 9-11 and Iraq contains the seeds of more revolutions of this violent cycle in the future beyond the next proposed war with Iraq.

The cycle continues because people make decisions that advance the cycle. The cycle could stop if people made other choices. Last September for First Year Seminar, all new students at Bluffton College read Leslie Marmon Silko’s beautiful novel Ceremony. In it, the cycle of violence, which Silko called "witchery," appears graphically. And the narrative of Ceremony shows how the main character, Tayo, found the resources in Native American spirituality to escape from the cycle of violence.

If this nation does not escape from the cycle of violence, the memory of the past victims and past violent events will be our future as well. If things continue as they are going, the future is already here—and it looks like our memories of victims and of violence from 9-11 and October 7. I do not like those memories.

If we do not like those memories, we need to envision a different future. The way to that different future is to begin now to stop the cycle of violence. Contrary to popular belief, war is not inevitable. War happens because a leader makes a decision to call for it, and elsewhere other leaders and people in the street make their individual decisions to accept the call to war. But those individuals could all choose not to follow. War is not inevitable. It happens because people decide for it. If people refused to play follow the leader, war would stop.

Peace people and the peace church have a public role to play in this national choice. Our Christian witness should be that God’s reign opposes violence. Part of that witness is to pose alternatives in the political realm that reflect the truth of nonviolence as revealed in God’s reign.

Two suggestions: First, the U.S. should build houses for the 3 million or so Afghan refugees created when the Taliban, as a U.S. protégé, fought the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. (In the Afghan economy, building houses for the entire refugee population would cost only a fraction of the money already committed by Congress for the "war on terrorism")

Second, the U.S. should redirect half of the $6 billion given yearly to Israel and use the redirected money to rebuild Palestinian houses and infrastructure destroyed by recent Israeli invasions and occupation. Such actions would do much to lessen the hatred that fuels terrorist acts against the U.S., and that in turn would materially change the equation that continues the cycle of violence.

But what are the roles of peace people and the peace church when such suggestions go unheeded—as seems to be the case with the current administration in Washington? When war comes—as is appearing too likely—we still have a public role. We are still called to testify that the rule of God opposes violence. The church is still called to live as a visible, peaceful, and just manifestation of the reign of God breaking into the world. That is an important witness about the character of Christian faith, and it will belie the belief of many people in the Middle East that violence appears intrinsic to Christian faith. (If violence is not intrinsic to Christian faith, why do so many people calling themselves Christians support violence?)

The unheeded suggestions also serve an important, public role. The presence of such suggestions, which could be multiplied almost infinitely, serve to show that war is not inevitable and that war is far from the last resort, which is one of the criteria for a justifiable war.

The Christian calling of the peace church is just that—to be a peace church. And the peace church and peace people should remember 9-11 and October 7. But the real question is whether we remember 9-11 and October 7 in ways that envision a violent future or a peaceful future.

—J. Denny Weaver, Bluffton, Ohio, teaches theology and ethics at Bluffton College. Recent books include Anabaptist Theology in Face of Postmodernity (Pandora Press U.S., 2001) and The Nonviolent Atonement (Eerdmans, 2001). He is editor of the C. Henry Smith Series.