Tag Archives: war

SUING FOR WAR

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The sight of a parliament, normally embroiled in savage personal attacks, speaking as one and showing a remarkable unity of purpose, ought to be one that should cheer our hearts and restore our faith in politicians.  Strangely it has the opposite effect. When sworn enemies suddenly become friends and join in a common cause it is often more worrying and seldom for the good. I cannot ignore the deep suspicion of this temporary marriage of convenience and I wonder who is the common foe. It reminds me of the second Psalm where the Kings of the earth gather together in their futile and laughable attempt to plot against God.  In Westminster there was the unity at the start of the first and second wars in Iraq and there was the unity over Covid. History has shown where these have led.

So I took no comfort from the concocted harmony on display in the palace of Westminster this week, when the Prime Minister gave his report on the momentous events of the past days. I didn’t feel proud to be British then. What was on open display was a commitment to support with cash and lives (boots on the ground is a nice way of talking about real people who will be wearing these boots) the continuation of a war that has been going on for three years and shows no sign of stopping. I wanted to hear from the Peace Movement from Stop the War Coalition from the Anti-Nuclear campaigners, but in Westminster there was silence. And here is one of the biggest conundrums: our money, our taxes are paying for the terrible weapons that maim and kill thousands every week on our doorstep and we seem to be ok with that. This is not theoretical. This is not about weapons of mass destruction that have killed no-one for the past 80 years, this is about weapons manufactured in our land, today, that are being sent to blow up young men and women in a land not that far away from us and our politicians seem to be all for it.

It is hard to get your head round that one.

They are united in their condemnation of the one person, the one world leader who is screaming for peace. He is desperate to bring the terrible carnage to an end. He is using the massive power and influence of his office and his own skill in making deals for that purpose and our pathetic little parliament doesn’t like it. They want this war to go on, when it as plain as day that it cannot be won, unless, of course, it finally triggers the third world war when these weapons held in their silos for 80 years will finally be unleashed.

So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And they fall to the floor
That if God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war

GATHERING STORMS

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It is hard not to be overcome by a deep sense of foreboding that crowds in and overwhelms us when we look and see and feel the movement of the tectonic plates of our world, the rise and fall of kingdoms, the nations in uproar, the growing unrest and protest, the curious alliances and the strange bedfellows. It is hard not to be overcome and gripped by fear, fear for the future for our children, our children’s children and those yet unborn. Stephen Pinker may well say that as humans we have become less violent, more reasonable more understanding, loving and caring over the centuries. Even if that is true, there is no guarantee that it will continue and the ebb and flow of history tells a different story.

When adversaries become friends and come together over an issue, as they did in the house of commons this week, it should be a cause for cheer, but it filled me with dread. This impermanent alliance has been formed for war. A war with Russia. It is not that we are in danger of slipping into this war, we are already so far in, it may impossible now to extricate ourselves from it. When so many, thousands of lives, have already been lost in the conflict, the clear commitment from the Parliament was to support the war and allow the roll call of deaths to stack up. The prospect is almost too horrific to contemplate and “sleep-walking” is an apt analogy for what we are doing.

But it is the war in the middle east that is just as frightening. Who knows where this will go, with Israel now fighting a war on two fronts with proxies of a more fearsome enemy.  Unlike Ukraine, the West seems ambivalent, supporting Israel militarily on the one hand while undermining moral on the other.  Its hard to know if a new world war will be triggered by what happens in Ukraine or here in Israel. I suspect the later.

All the while the Western Empire has hollowed out its moral foundation and what happens in the next few months will quite possibly signal the end of this project. In the United States, the “Leader of the Free World” has finally recognised his time is up and will leave, but not just yet. How a Harris presidency will respond is anyone’s guess, but peace in either conflict is unlikely.   A Trump presidency might just hold the tide for some time but boasting about what you are going to do, solving all the immigration and economic problems and bringing peace to the world is never a good thing. It doesn’t usually work out that way. There will also be very powerful people who will do everything to ensure that this does not happen. They will use very weapon at their disposal to somehow prevent Trump’s election as president for a second term. It is a well-worn conspiracy theory, of course. But these testy conspiracy theories have an uncanny habit of turning out to be true. The conspirators know how to hide and remain hidden for decades possibly centuries, but in the end all will revealed. Nothing will be hidden.

I don’t know, of course. I am just speculating. I can’t see what’s round the corner or what’s up the bend. The outworking of history always tends to surprise us. But this could be the moment, and I can can’t shake that feeling of doom. The curse of an overactive imagination has filled me with trepidation and I get no comfort from knowing that I may not see it. My overriding concern, my burden, that I find hard to shift is that we are not prepared for what is coming and, because it doesn’t touch us directly, we live in denial.

But, as always, it is only when I look again at God’s word in all its breath-taking wonder and wisdom, when I look beyond and through the cloud, I see another hand at work, an unseen hand. It’s only then that I find a hope that is real and a hope that does not disappoint.  When I read again that ancient song, Psalm 46, when I Come and See what he has done and what he is doing, when I am Still and Know that he is God, the Lord of hosts and our refuge, it is then that I find peace and direction in prayer.

The Scream 3: Going to war

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When you take your country into war you must first decide if you are likely to win it. If the odds against success are great then it’s probably wise to think again. Peace with its inevitable compromise might just be the best option. When you drag the country into a “lock-down” you should know how to come out of it. The inability of our government to know how to do that, must be one its most damning shortcomings.

Darkest Hour

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chruchillNot a film review

Darkest Hour, much like “Dunkirk” in 2017, is a refreshing film, beautiful to watch, clever and powerful. Its gift is that it does not seem to preach, but tells the story. The story in this case of the man who, disliked by almost everyone in his later years, was called upon to the lead his country in possibly its most dangerous time.

I grew up with Churchill. As a child in the 50’s the war years were recent memories for my parents and my mother could spend hours recounting personal stories of the Clydebank blitz. She would describe what it was like to be in a country at war, always had her take on the politics of it and never far away was the admiration for the man. Even my father who found the cigar smoking, heavy drinking, and load mouthed aristocratic antics quite distasteful held a grudging recognition that Churchill was somehow the man for the time and without him the world may well have descended into the “ the abyss of a new dark age” he ominously described in his speech to the House of Commons in June 1940. These words were pregnant with foreboding and with a chill I could feel even as a youngster. So I was imbued with the simple narrative of these times: from its beginnings in Poland to its ending in the South Asian sea, from Chamberlain to Macarthur, from the Bren gun to the atomic bomb and somehow, while terrible things, some of indescribable horror, were done in the course of it all, the cause was just and the end was for the good.

That narrative has taken a severe battering over the years and, while I know that we must always revise orthodox interpretations of history and challenge any complacency over the horrors of war, I cannot help but feel that we can revise it out of its significance and its relevance in understanding where we are today. It is so easy for those of us who have never known anything but peace and who have enjoyed unprecedented levels of freedom and comfort to pontificate and judge the actions of those who lived in a quite different time. We need to have the imagination to think our way into what it was like for them and the film does that brilliantly

The darkest hour, it seems, was the time when a terrible decision had to be made and the nightmare of being the one on whom that decision lay most heavily. What the film seemed to suggest was that Churchill was tortured by the decision and seemed to carry the burden alone. In 1940 the war could have ended with a peace treaty. The route to such a treaty was in place and the negotiations almost begun. Instead the conflict escalated to include the whole world, involving millions of deaths and the most diabolical destruction. The dilemma is a recurring one and strangely one that is hard to debate in the face of polarised views on defence, the protection of interests, defending the oppressed, militarism and pacifism.

The Darkest Hour, to its credit, opens up that vexed question. It doesn’t answer it. It just leaves it there.

Of course it is only a film not a documentary or a detailed historical account. It is a drama. The underground scene, for example, is a very fanciful one but it serves to illustrate how Churchill seemed to connect directly with the people over the normal political channels. The intriguing thing is that the connection was not made by any attempt to be ordinary or be like the “common people”. From his pedigree and privileged background, he couldn’t have been more different. Yet he somehow sensed what the people needed to hear so that resolve could be galvanised and victory achieved

Whatever we think of the man, and in there is no love lost for him in my own city of Dundee, he had that special quality of true leadership, not to shirk from making a fearful decision and to carry the people with him.

I loved the film.

Crawford Mackenzie

Unclear Nuclear

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nuclear

I have never been on an anti-nuclear march. I have never been on a protest march of any kind, for that matter, and expect I never will. Not that the issues don’t concern me. They do. But I have never felt, for me, joining a protest march or sit-in, was either a relevant or effective way of making a point and of influencing opinions and decisions. The issue of Nuclear Weapons, a big thing in many people’s mind with the possibility of an independent Scotland, presents a particularly vexing dilemma

You don’t need to have much imagination to grasp the unspeakable horror that would be unleashed in the event of a nuclear conflict. I have read the books and watched films. One of my closest friends comes from Nagasaki. I have a very vivid imagination and these images and records have been indelibly printed in my mind so that they won’t go away.  Because of the scale, the might, the inevitable indiscriminate nature of the beast, no cause could ever be important enough to justify their use. And if you have no intention of using them how can you ever justify having them?  That the other side have similar weapons is, for me, no argument either. I would accept facing a major nuclear assault on my own nation, my own people, my own family, with all the horror that that would entail and still refuse to respond in kind. But then, nothing is ever that simple. Or is it?

When you look at the issue dispassionately, (if you can) a curios but relevant fact comes into play. While millions of people (2-3 million) have been killed in wars since 1945 with bombs, missiles, rockets, shells, kalashnikovs and machetes not one single person has died as a result of a nuclear weapon being used in anger. This is an astonishing statistic and despite current East/West jumpiness and the possibility of a terrorist group laying hands on the goods there is nothing to suggest that these weapons are ever likely to be used. Many would even suggest that the presence of these weapons has, in fact, kept us from all-out war over this period.  If that is so, and it is a big if, then the argument shifts from morality to money. Maintaining a nuclear arsenal, or being covered by a nuclear umbrella, when there is never the intention of using either, does seem quite insane.  It can only be regarded as a foolish and obscene waste of money, time and expertise, resources that would much better be employed in more worthy causes.

But to the dismay, no doubt, of many of my friends and family, I am still not convinced that the campaign for nuclear disarmament is a necessary element in the pursuit of world peace. At the end of the day, a nuclear missile is an inanimate object and of itself has no moral character. It is certainly a weapon and the vilest kind. (Although I expect evil minds can and will produce even worse). The person behind the weapon is, on the other hand, a moral being, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. In a way it doesn’t matter if they are pushing a button, or firing a shell, dropping a bomb or wielding a machete, the end result is the same. The difference is only in method and scale.

So the campaign that I want to be involved and committed to is for the changing of hearts and the resistance of evil. This is essentially a work of God and of His Holy Spirit but I believe that Jesus has called his followers to be part of and instruments of, that work. This, for me, is the most relevant and most effective way of engaging in this struggle.  The struggle: the campaign, the fight and the battle, which is not against people, or governments, or political parties or societies, or nations, but against the spiritual powers of darkness.

Crawford Mackenzie