Members of the College Community React to War Part II

Author: [no author name found]

Laurie Jordan, College Chaplain

Many of us on this campus have strongly held, long-settled, and widely differing opinions about the necessity and wisdom of this current war. My hope is that each of us, in spite of our differences, will aspire to be thoughtful, articulate, caring and willing to listen to the ideas, beliefs, and anxieties of others. The outbreak of war brings with it heightened fears and feelings of helplessness. For people of faith, it is time to pray for leaders of nations, for people in uniform, for all who suffer from the violence and destruction that comes in the wake of war. Whatever our beliefs about the wisdom of entering into this war, people of faith can unite in prayer for a just and swift resolution to it. I have arranged for Mead Chapel to be available for quiet meditation and prayer from 11:30 to 1:30 Monday through Friday. Finally, it is my great hope that out of the ashes of this current international crisis will rise the call for greater investment in peace studies and research in liberal arts colleges like Middlebury.


Peter J. Napolitano, Director of Dining Services

I detest the thought of war and the loss of human life. The destruction, the hatred, and the distrust that boil up inside the human race have yielded many horrific events throughout our history. A numbing of the human spirit grows in us as families are ripped apart and people suffer. In the words of Charles Kettering, "My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life here." My concern, too, is indeed for the future, as all human beings have a duty and an obligation to protect our world for future generations.
Having said that, I fully support our troops on the front line. My nephew, CPL Anthony J. Ceccacci, United States Marines, is in Kuwait on the Iraqi border. He and his fellow troops have sworn to protect our freedoms, and it is incumbent on all Americans to stand behind them. Our leaders may not make the best decisions, but they are our elected officers, and for that they deserve our support.
Peaceful demonstrations, opinion letters in our papers, and most importantly, election poles are all part of the process we must use to effect change. These are stressful times, and our situation demands clear thinking and careful consideration of all outcomes.


Rabbi Ira Schiffer, Associate Chaplain

A friend recently described the pastoral role of clergy. "What pastors do best," he said, "is put a human face on abstract issues." "Pastors," he continued, "care for people before policies." When I speak with students, faculty and staff about our fears and concerns surrounding the war in Iraq, I do so as a pastor.
I like to think that Middlebury College is a community of inquiry and analysis, not one of posturing and polemics. How we speak with each other matters. When I hear people dismiss groups or individuals on the other side of an issue as "thugs" or "idiots," we are not modeling the highest values we claim for ourselves.
What is at stake is our integrity as a caring, intellectual community during an historic time of turmoil. We need to consider the person with whom we speak as having precedence over the position for which we argue. To do this, we must carefully choose our words of dissent or support.
To again quote my friend, "Regardless of our own political persuasions, we can pray for the safety of those who serve; we can pray for the minimizing of innocent suffering and loss of life; we can affirm a hope for a speedy conclusion of hostilities; and we can give voice to the hope that out of the tragedy of war might arise new conditions that might lead more firmly towards democracy and peace in the world."


David Macey, Director of Off-Campus Study and Professor of History and C.V. Starr Professor of Russian Studies

The logic that brought us to this point, [three] weeks into an invasion of Iraq, is astounding. As a historian, one is trained to ask of any historical event: "Why now?" Yet we still do not have an acceptable explanation. No proof supported the administration's arguments, while whatever information our intelligence agencies transferred to the arms inspectors did not enable them to turn up a single piece of supporting evidence for the existence of WMDs. Meanwhile, the administration has flouted every international convention, having previously assured that the U.S. would be exempt from the newly organized Global War Crimes Tribunal, by launching an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation - an act that for all the implied references to the "lessons of Munich" is, in fact, more reminiscent of Hitler's attack on Czechoslovakia or Poland than Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.
Meanwhile, "Little Bush," as Saddam Hussein has called our minority President (though, one assumes, less for his election by hanging chads than for being George Junior), adopts a series of arguments to support his position that amount to nothing more than a version of Lenin's and Stalin's "Kto kogo" - if you aren't with us you're against us! Such absolutistic thinking is an insult to a world that has just left the bloodiest century in human history. So is the total lack of respect for the cultural values of others - and I refer here not only to the Islamic world but also to our long-term allies such as France and Germany among many others. Peaceful co-existence among nations and tolerance for the ways others chose to live and think about their lives are absolute necessities of world affairs, even when based on military strength.
Who does our administration think they are? Those who are convinced that they alone possess the truth are not democrats, as anyone has ever understood that word. And, now, as Bush Junior seeks to reverse the "errors" of Bush Senior and exact revenge for an apocryphal assassination attempt on his dad, while following a fundamentalist-inspired plan for the democratization of the entire Arab/Moslem world, we have one fundamentalist regime facing off against another. But there is also a fundamental miscalculation that our fundamentalists have made: no matter how repressive a regime may be, when attacked by a crusader for its own version of truth, the victim country's population is much more likely to rally behind its own leadership, because they are theirs, in defense of the common homeland than to dance in the streets in appreciation of their "liberators."
Without implying the least bit of support for our or the Iraqi administrations, I had hoped for a quick victory for the sake of all involved. But it was not to be. Where it will end, no one can predict, though every day that it continues, the potentially negative consequences increase geometrically. If we are lucky, however, this war will at least result in a "regime change" at home.