Peacemaking (Rant 104)

A Ministry for Peace. A jolly good idea, is it not? Now being put forward by a British MP. Hard to imagine anyone, either individual or nation, who’d oppose it. To paraphrase England’s greatest living playwright, Harold Pinter: I have never heard of a peace-hating people.



Er…Fr Frank, sorry to contradict, but it would appear you have not read Tacitus’ Germania. That worthy Roman historian records how naturally warlike the German tribes were. Peace they just abhorred. So, there!



Tacitus was right – as far as the ancient Germans are concerned. You know, the old imperialist actually admired the Krauts. (Felix, Fidelius, Achim, Alex I & II, this isn’t personal!) His Germania was meant as a reproach to his own race – he set up Germans as role-models, as it were. Not that the Romans were quite like Quakers. ‘We have made a desert and then we called it peace’, he averred, describing the savage Roman ‘pacification’ of Britain. But present-day Germans are a far-cry from the ancient Teutons, as the Yanks – themselves originally a Germanic lot – realised when seeking to enlist them over Iraq. The fierce race of Arminius, Frederick the Great and the Man with the Moustache is now a bunch of snivelling, cry-baby pacifists. Old Tacitus would be dismayed.



Forcefully put. But do you approve of this new Ministry for Peace?



I don’t know. A ministry intended to promote peace “ in homes, schools, streets, communities, organisations and internationally’ seems as bright an idea as sliced bread. How would it do that, though? Through ‘peace officers’? In homes, streets, schools etcetera? Call me carping – I can’t get out of my mind the image of Saudi Arabia’s snooping ‘religious police’. A Peace Police sounds almost as ghastly. Right out of Orwell’s bleak 1984, if you ask me…



Rather sneery, Fr Frank. We’d expect a priest to back peace initiatives, of whatever kind.



If you pardon me, I am gonna be even sneerier. A Ministry for War. Yes – you heard me. That’s what the Ministry of Defence used to be called, right up to WWII. An honest, right-on-the-chin description. It is now time to revert to it. The Ministry for War – let’s name it that. Haven’t two distant foreign countries being invaded by US/UK armies in the last two years? Aren’t further threats now being aimed at other sovereign states? Spokesmen for the New World Order blare it out loud. Mars, not Christ, is the god they worship. Even self-defence is now old-fashioned. Aggressive war is OK – no, more than that. Exalted, sanctified, hallowed in order to impose shining, ‘white’ Western values on recalcitrant dark or brown-skinned peoples. Looks as if the Man with the Moustache is having a posthumous come-back after all.



What a twist! The dreadful Fuhrer was not out to spread justice and democracy, was he?



No - although the Nazi Party’s full name was ‘National-Socialist’. But you’ll learn from ‘Hitler’s Table-Talks’, taken down by Martin Bormann, how he too, world conquest accomplished, looked forward to a pleasant peace. ‘I yearn to retire and take up painting again’, the Fuhrer wistfully sighed. Like today’s liberal-democratic war-mongers, Hitler was teleological about war – he saw it as a means to an end. ‘War for its own sake would be stupid’, taught Thomas Aquinas. Everybody, democrat or dictator, sees that. But they have this in common: wanting to maim and kill foreigners for their ever so superior values’ sake.



Hmm…what exactly are you leading up to, Fr Frank? Glorifying war?



Don’t be silly. My name is neither Maggie nor Tony. I can’t even stand war on TV. The endless showing of war movies, programs and documentaries sickens me. That stuff is as morally vile as hard porn. How a civilised people like the Brits keep revelling in that is beyond me. I fear the glorifying is done rather by those who drag us into needless military adventures.



Surely you must agree war is sometimes necessary. The Just War doctrine and all that. And didn’t a wise man say ‘if you wish for peace, prepare for war’?



A Roman slogan. It figures. Their history is one of perennial fighting. How else you can build a worldwide empire? At least they were upfront about it. Cant of human rights and democracy they didn’t care for. As for the Just War concept… well, it is really beginning to bug me. Not because I disagree with the principles underlying it – I don’t. Trouble is, this hoary piece of ethical machinery is wheeled out every time a bloody war is in the offing, to buttress wholly opposite views. Has it ever helped to prevent or stop even the most piffling skirmish? Like a tussle between frogs and mice? I bet it hasn’t. Instead, spurious justifications for fighting – it has provided aplenty. It says a lot, doesn’t it?



Obviously in a nihilistic mood today, Fr Frank. But Christ said ‘Blessed be the peacemakers’. Are we not to try and be makers of peace then?



Nihilism? More like the creed of those who advocate acts of international lawlessness, like raining death and destruction on another country. And, in so doing, they are also guilty of encouraging lawlessness at home. John Sentamu, the Bishop of Birmingham, had a point when he compared the invasion of Iraq to breaking and entering – plus murder, of course. But peacemakers we Christians have got to be. From the martyr to the faith-based diplomat (the latter being methods advocated by my friend Douglas Johnston in a fine book he has just edited, Trumping Realpolitik), from anti-war campaigners to brave idealists like another friend of mine, young Justin Alexander, currently working for Jubilee charity in Iraq, from indomitable Pope John Paul II to Rowan Williams, many, many Christians do their best.



The question is: will that best be enough? Is something more required? Something radical. Dramatic. Apocalyptically so. Is it?



I don’t know.



Perhaps…