A Conversation with Dr. Tony Campolo About the War In Iraq,
the War on Terror, and Loving Our Enemies
Dr.
Tony Campolo is known around the world for his outspoken views on
religious, cultural, social, and political matters. A sociologist by
trade, he is also a popular speaker and teacher and has been featured
on television programs like Nightline, Crossfire, Politically
Incorrect, The Charlie Rose Show, and CNN News. The author of
twenty-eight books, Dr. Campolo’s most recent titles include Adventures in Missing the Point (with Brian McLaren), Revolution and Renewal: How Churches Are Saving Our Cities, and Let Me Tell You a Story: Life Lessons From Unexpected Places and Unlikely People. Despite these lofty credentials, Dr. Campolo was kind enough to grant us an exclusive interview for this issue of Clarion.
Clarion: What is your opinion on the war in Iraq?
Tony Campolo:
There are two ways of looking at this question. There are some
Christians who are pacifists. I would fall under that category. We
build our case on the fact that historians do not argue, that for the
first three hundred years of the Christian faith, the church was
pacifist. It wasn’t until the time of Constantine that Christians
really entered into the military. Secondly, I think an honest reading
of the Sermon on the Mount and the other teachings of Jesus in the
gospels would lead one to a pacifist position. The other position that
Christians take is what is called the “just war” theory. This was
developed by St. Augustine and refined, perhaps, by Calvin.
Clarion: Do you think it is possible to have a “just war” today?
Tony Campolo:
Yes, it is possible to have a just war if you use those standards, and
most Christians would hold to a just war theory. But I’m fairly
convinced that the war in Iraq does not meet the requirements of a just
war.
I say this in part because the first characteristic of a
just war is that all possibilities of avoiding conflict have been
exhausted. In the case of Iraq, the US went to war while everyone else
was trying to negotiate. The pretext of the war was that America had
absolute proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The evidence
is quite clear now that those weapons probably did not exist. I think
that giving the UN team more time, believing the UN research team that
no weapons existed, would have been a wise course of action to take.
Another
justification of a just war is that the good that is achieved will
outdo the evil that is done. This obviously does not measure up in the
case of Iraq. You can talk about 7,000 people that Saddam Hussein
slaughtered (put to death for being political enemies). I’m sure there
were lots of other people killed. But when you talk about atrocities,
they’ve uncovered the graves of at least this many people. On the other
hand, some have estimated that more than that many Iraqis have already
been killed and wounded as a result of this war, with more Iraqi
citizens dying every day. More than a thousand US soldiers have died,
and the end of death is not in sight.
Beyond that, the goals of
establishing a democracy were ill conceived, because I’m not sure a
democracy is viable in Iraq. There are 1.5 million Christians in Iraq.
But the overwhelming majority of people in Iraq are Shi’ites. If there
is a democratically elected government in Iraq, the Shi’ites will
dominate, and we will have a Shi’ite regime. The freedom Christians
have had in Iraq to evangelize and create new churches will be severely
curtailed under a Shi’ite regime.
Clarion: Why do you think America was so eager to go to war?
Tony Campolo:
The former Secretary of the Treasury, John O’Neill, has pointed out
that from the first day of his presidency, George Bush talked about
getting rid of Saddam Hussein. [Editor’s note: O’Neill did so in the
book The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind.] I don’t judge
people’s motives, but it’s obvious from what O’Neill has said that from
the very first cabinet meeting, this is what the presidency was after.
Clarion: Why would the removal of Saddam Hussein be so important to them?
Tony Campolo:
I have some suspicions; I contend that oil had a great deal to do with
it. The things that raise these suspicion in me about our motives as a
nation is that during the first week of the war, the president
immediately gave over all rights to develop the oil industry in Iraq to
Haliburton, a company that still is financially contributing to Vice
President Dick Cheney. A further problem was that there was not
competitive bidding, which is against US law. More importantly, with
massive unemployment in Iraq, one has to ask why the Iraqis were not
given the opportunity to rebuild their oil industry. After World War
Two, the United States gave lots of money to Germany and France to
rebuild their infrastructure. We did not send Americans over to do it.
There is every indication that the Iraqis could rebuild their oil
industry, seeing as they built it in the first place and rebuilt it
after the first Gulf War. Bechtel, a major contributor to the Bush
election campaign, was given contracts to rebuild the infrastructure of
Iraq. There is suspicion that these contracts were politically
motivated. The Bible says to avoid the appearance of evil. I have to
tell you, this is not avoiding the appearance of evil.
When all is said and done, as one of my students who visited Iraq
recently has said, ‘Saddam Hussein is a horrendous tyrant. But if a man
is brutalizing his family, you don’t burn down his house with his
family inside to get rid of him.'
Clarion:
So you’re saying it would have been better if the US simply got rid of
Hussein instead of declaring war on the entire country of Iraq?
Tony Campolo:
When faced with a similar situation in Yugoslavia, the US was able to
secure a verdict from the UN and the world court that this
man—Milosovich—should be indicted for war crimes. That created the
condition of going in and taking him alone. That course of action was
rejected by the US.
You’ve got all these arguments: weapons of
mass destruction, the removal of Saddam Hussein, going over there to
create a democracy. When you begin to raise all of these questions, you
find one big question behind them all: Should the US be moving into all
nations where there is tyranny? Should we be going into Burma, for
instance? Does the US have that responsibility? Take Red China as a
case in point. Should we go in there? Or should we just invade smaller
countries? And if we do, can we still call ourselves idealists?
Clarion: So you’re saying Saddam Hussein had the bad luck of sitting on one of the world’s largest oil reserves?
Tony Campolo: Yes, I am. But that’s merely speculation.
Another
tenet: The US is under condemnation by the UN for using cluster bombs.
And my students who were in Iraq saw the effects of these in the
hospitals. How can you drop a cluster bomb in a populated community and
call yourself a just nation?
What we are facing right now—and this does not make the US press or
even the Canadian press—is that there have already been twenty-two
suicides among troops in Iraq and three hundred attempted suicides.
This rate far exceeds the suicide rate in Vietnam. The Navy has a
psychiatric team that is expecting almost twenty percent of the US
soldiers who go to Iraq will have psychiatric problems upon returning
home. They contend that this is largely due to the fact that they
expected to be received as liberators but instead find themselves being
received as occupiers in a hostile nation.
We should note that in between the first and second Iraq wars, there
was an embargo that really caused great suffering to the Iraqi people.
It is estimated by the UN that half a million children died as a result
of that embargo. You have to be extremely naïve to think that when you
kill half a million children in a nation of seventeen million your
soldiers will be welcomed as heroes when they march into town.
I feel the American people have been deceived and are still being
deceived. I think everything about that war has the mark of a
propaganda machine, such as the ‘rescuing’ of a young woman (Jessica
Lynch) in a hospital that was shown to be a complete farce. She says it
didn’t happen that way. ‘I was a coward,’ she says. ‘I was crying, I
didn’t shoot my gun at anyone. I was in an accident due to my own
stupidity. To call me a hero because of that is ludicrous.’ I fear for
a nation that does not tell the truth to its people, because democracy
in the United States depends on the truth.
Clarion:
I often struggle with this, not knowing what to think about situations
like America’s involvement in Iraq, because I don’t believe I have
reliable information.
Tony Campolo: During times of war,
you certainly don’t have to tell everyone everything, but to
deliberately make up lies, that’s unnecessary. Let me say beyond this
that I basically believe that George Bush is a good man, a Christian
man trying to do the right thing. I can’t say as much for the forces
behind the throne, who I believe are calling most of the shots.
Clarion: Who might these forces be? The Saudis? Big Oil?
Tony Campolo:
I don’t know about the Saudis. In fact, one of the reasons we went to
war was because of the Saudis. The Saudi government is increasingly
unstable and unreliable. If any government has ties with Al Qaeda, it’s
them. You have to remember that Bush has promoted this war because of
9/11, but there weren’t any Iraqis on the planes. There were Saudis and
Egyptians. Secret documents found with Saddam Hussein said he had no
connections with Al Qaeda and instructed his followers not to have
anything to do with the organization. On the other hand, there are
members of the Saudi royal family suspected of having helped fund Al
Qaeda. The Saudi government is in a very precarious position. If it
were to fall into unfriendly hands, the US economy would be doomed.
That’s where the oil theory comes in. The US economy is almost totally
dependent on Saudi oil right now. Thus, seizing Iraq’s oil fields is a
form of insurance. There is every indication that there will be a
radical Muslim takeover of the Saudi royal family, in which case the US
would really be left out in the cold. So there are my speculations.
The ultimate question is, did we do what Jesus would do? And I think
that question is one that people have to answer for themselves. I don’t
think we did, but others will think otherwise. I have to say that my
heart goes out to these soldiers over there who live in constant fear,
many of whom have given their lives in a cause that is becoming
increasingly ambiguous.
Clarion: What do you think of the ‘war on terror’? Can it be won?
Tony Campolo: That’s a good question. It can be won, but you
can’t win the war on terror by killing terrorists just as you can’t win
the war against malaria by killing mosquitoes. You get rid of malaria
by getting rid of swamps that breed mosquitoes. In the same way, you
get rid of terrorism by removing the conditions that breed terrorists.
You have an educated elite emerging in the Arab world that is angry
over the humiliation of their people at the hands of the West. They
find themselves powerless and pushed around. Tony Blair, on one
occasion, said all the problems in the world right now can be traced
back to Palestine and Israel, and I think he may be right. The United
States provides one-third of all its foreign aid in any given year to
Israel, most of which is used to build up a gigantic military. Thus,
Israel is in a position to do what it wills in the Middle East. The
inability to stand up to Israel, backed by the US, where the
Palestinians are left with no negotiating power whatsoever, leaves them
in a state of hopelessness. That’s what creates a suicide bomber,
someone who sees there are no other alternatives. The suicide bombers
have as much in their statements before going to death.
Clarion: So the situation in Israel, this is one of the conditions that breeds terrorist attacks against the US?
Tony Campolo:
That’s one of them, but it’s the overall sense of being inundated by
western commercial, political, and industrial interests. The Arabs see
Israel as a surrogate nation used by the US to maintain its power in
the Middle East. You have to grasp the fact that we overthrew the
democratically elected government in Iran to make way for the Shah. We
have been the primary buttress for the ruling family in Saudi Arabia,
which is despised by much of the Arab world. Along with the English, we
are responsible for creating the State of Israel. It is the western
nations that actually created the national boundaries of all the
nations that exist in the Middle East. It’s the West who created all of
these nations after World War One when the Ottoman Empire fell and
England divided up the territory.
I don’t want to get much more into the Middle East situation except to
say the following: The Jews have suffered enough. They are the victims
of anti-Semitism in every western nation. They justifiably believe they
can have no freedom or dignity unless they can have a land of their own
in which they are the rulers, and I agree.
Clarion: But what about the Palestinians, can’t they make the same claim?
Tony Campolo:
The Jews should have a secure land with secure borders. They shouldn’t
have to worry that their children will be killed on the way to school
due to terrorists. Whatever may have been the justification for
creating the state of Israel in 1948—and that can be debated—the
Palestinians are asking what right a group of people in New York had to
create a new nation in which the Palestinians became second-class
citizens. But whatever the reasons, I would have to say that the nation
exists now, and I violently oppose that kind of thinking among the
Arabs, that the solution to the problem is to drive the Jews into the
sea. We must stand behind the people of Israel and defend their right
to exist as a nation.
Clarion: And the Palestinians?
Tony Campolo:
Having said that, if we believe the Jews are entitled to a land of own,
should not the Arab people who lived in the Holy Land have a land of
their own, too? This was the original intention of the UN when the
State of Israel was created, an intention that I think the Palestinians
foolishly rejected. It has been said of Yasser Arafat that ‘he has
never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.’ There have been
many opportunities for a separate Palestinian state to exist in ways
the State of Israel would have supported. Most of those proposals were
rejected by the Palestinians. Things have changed now. The Palestinians
are willing to accept the State of Israel, but they want a negotiated
settlement. However, the Israeli government is imposing a settlement by
building a wall along what they want to be the border. Leading
ideologists in the American Jewish community, people like Thomas
Freedman, would say the survival of Israel—in the long run—depends on
the nation making friends with Arabs. The United States could be there
for Israel for 50 years at the most.
Clarion: What do you mean?
Tony
Campolo: The United States isn’t always going to be the powerful nation
it is today. Nations rise and nations fall. You can put it off to one
hundred years if you want. But the US economy is facing a national debt
of over seven trillion dollars! We simply cannot support what is going
on in the Middle East right now. Military spending is exhausting us. We
can’t always be there. Even if the US is behind Israel, consider the
fact that there are Arab peoples living within Israel who are
multiplying at a rate that is much greater than the rate at which the
Israelis are multiplying. Demographically, twenty-five years from now,
there will be more Arabs in Israel than Jews. Either Israel has to deny
these people the right to vote or they will be taken over by an Arab
majority. In fact, the most extreme Arabs right now do not want a
settlement. They’re the ones doing the bombing. No one is asking why
they’re so willing to wait. But Arabs have a great capacity to wait. As
I said, it’s only a matter of time before the number of Arabs exceeds
the number of Jews in Israel. Incidentally, this is exactly what
happened after the Crusades, as Friedman points out. After the First
Crusade, the Christians took back the Holy Land, but over time, the
Arab population grew, so that the Christians had to retreat. If there’s
anything the Arabs remember, it’s the Crusades. They learned why they
lost the Holy Land, and they learned how they got it back. And history
will repeat itself. That’s why these extremists torpedo every plan that
comes along that proposes two states. They want a one-state solution.
”Let Israel own all the land, and let us outbreed them,” they say. This
is obviously what has happened in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank over
the last twenty-five years. The refugees that were once a smaller
number now have grown into the millions. And the children that are
raised in these places are taught to hate Jews. It is a fact that the
schools teach hatred and a twisted view of history that makes the Jews
and the Americans the incarnation of Satan. What are the consequences
of that? Millions and millions of children growing up with that kind of
thinking within the nation of Israel. The time has come for spiritual
leaders who are moderates, in the Jewish community, the Muslim
community, and the Christian community—please remember fifteen percent
of all Palestinians are Christians—to come together and find some
common ground between the Torah, the New Testament, and the Koran that
will mean peace.
Clarion: Seeing as our magazine is a ‘journal of spirituality
and justice,’ I’d like to ask you to define justice. For example, what
does justice look like in the case of someone like Saddam Hussein? And
how are we to balance loving our enemies with holding them accountable
for their actions?
Tony Campolo: I’ll put it this way: What if the United States
obeyed the teachings of the Apostle Paul in Romans 12: to love your
enemies, do good to those who hurt you, overcome evil with good, feed
your enemy if he is hungry, for in so doing you will heap coals of fire
on his head? Paul suggests that the way to get rid of an enemy is to do
the good that Jesus would do. I contend that if, over the last ten
years, instead of an embargo we had fed the people of Iraq, we provided
them with they medicine they needed to prevent their children from
dying, and helped them economically so they were economically allied
with us, I think that such loving commitment would have done more to
bring down Saddam Hussein than the embargo. If we had done the good
that God requires of us, then we would have overcome evil with good.
The question that the church has to answer is, ‘Do we really believe
the Apostle Paul? Do we really believe that evil can be overcome with
good? Do we really believe that doing such good will ultimately destroy
our enemy by heaping coals of fire on his head?’ I believe in the
Bible, and I am willing to tell those who are in places of leadership
what the Bible requires of them, whether they listen or not. In my
case, I let it be known what the Bible teaches to President Clinton. I
did not have the same opportunity with President Bush. I hope there are
others who at least speak the Scriptures to him on this matter.
Kevin spoke to Dr. Campolo in Kona, Hawaii on January 29, 2004.
Kevin Miller is a freelance author, editor, and educator from
Abbotsford, BC. To learn more about Kevin and his work, please visit
www.kevinwrites.com.
Dr. Tony Campolo is professor emeritus of Sociology at Eastern
University in St. Davids, Penn. Founder of the Evangelical Association
for the Promotion of Education (EAPE), Dr. Campolo has provided the
leadership to create, nurture and support programs for “at-risk”
children in cities across the United States and Canada and has helped
establish schools and universities in several developing countries. He
is a graduate of Eastern University and earned a Ph.D. from Temple
University. He is also an ordained minister in the American Baptist
denomination. Dr. Campolo is married to Peggy (Davidson) Campolo. They
have two children and four grandchildren. For more information on Dr.
Campolo, please visit www.tonycampolo.org.
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