In addition to being a lawyer who practices in Manhattan, I am an Elder in a Presbyterian Church on Long Island.  In late March 2007, at a meeting of the Long Island Presbytery, I was one of the "commissioners" for my  local Church to the Presbytery meeting.  At the meeting, the Peace, Justice and Hunger Workgroup offered what what was called a prayer but what considered to be a misconceived political diatribe against the Iraq War.  The Session of my local Church subsequently sent a letter to protest to the Presbtery, and I sent a separate letter expressing my own views.  It was an occasion to consider "just war" theology to which I subscribe and the pacifism which informs others in the Church.  On this Memorial Day Weekend, I think that my letter is worth reading.  On April 9, 2007, I wrote the following:

Dear Members of the Peace, Justice and Hunger Workgroup:   

    I am an Elder and a member of the Session of the Huntington Central Presbyterian Church, and I voted my full approval of the letter being sent to you from Central’s Session, under the signature of Ed Onders (the Session Clerk for Huntington Central), that objects to the “prayer” that was the product of your Workgroup and that was given at the Presbytery meeting on March 27.  At the suggestion of Ed Onders, I am writing separately because at that Presbytery meeting, I was in attendance at the March 27 Presbytery meeting as an Elder Commissioner from Huntington Central and because my older son John, a good Christian, is a First Lieutenant (with Ranger tab) in the U.S. Army honorably serving our country in harm’s way in Iraq as an infantry platoon leader.  My younger son James, also a good Christian, upon graduation from Purdue will be commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marines, having already passed officer training at Quantico.  

    In all candor, I was thoroughly alienated by what you called “A Litany For Peace, Forgiveness and Healing.”  To my reading and hearing, the ”Litany” was an expression of a certain political viewpoint -- a viewpoint that you apparently have, but that many Christians do not share and I find to be terribly mistaken.       

    It angers me that your viewpoint apparently disables you from offering a genuine prayer for the divine protection of our active troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan in harm’s way.  Such a prayer was missing from your “Litany.”   I don’t think that it should be too much to expect that at a Presbytery meeting, if a prayer is offered with respect to a war in which our military men and women are involved, that there be included a genuine prayer for the protection of active troops serving in harm’s way.  But your “Litany,” in chiding ourselves for a lack of concern for our troops not extending beyond the decals of our SUVs, was not a prayer
for protection of the troops in harm’s way. 

    As a father whose son is serving in Iraq can attest, when you pray for the troops in harm’s way, there is a bottom of the heart plea made to the Almighty that the troops carry out their missions without suffering loss of life or injury.  As an American who in fact drives a Suburban with a “Support The Troops” decal, your gratuitous swipe at the supposed lack of concern for the troops on the part of people who drive SUVs beyond a “Support the Troops” decal is ill considered -- I am not someone you can point to as not having a concern for the troops beyond the decal.  I display the “Support The Troops” decal because I believe that despite the current political situation, our troops should be supported in the good mission in which they are engaged and, as the Presbytery has already seen, I am very visible and vocal in my support.  But more than that, your gratuitous swipe at the supposed lack of concern for the troops on the part of people who drive SUVs with a “Support the Troops” decal is well beside the important point, and that point is that we should be asking for God’s protection for our military men and women.  My older son continually asks for those prayers.  He can cite numerous examples of how he and the men under his command escaped death and serious injury in situations (think IEDs and snipers) where it is not at all clear how they could have so escaped.  What kind of perversity afflicts you that you cannot offer such a prayer of protection?  Do you deny the power of such prayer?  If you do not wish to accept my account from my older son, then I recommend a book by Glenn Thomas entitled God Saw Through Them about the power of prayer in protecting a battalion of U.S. Marines serving in the Iraq War.

    Is it that you look askance at anyone who serves in the military?  That would not be  the position taken by John Calvin, who had quite a bit to do with the establishment of the Presbyterian Church and who was one of the leading just war theologians in Christian Church history.  John Calvin wrote that “[a] Christian man” “be called to serve his prince, doth not offend God in going to the wars, but is in a holy vocation, which cannot be reproved without blaspheming of God” (Short Instructions, 78)?  Also, it may be noted that when Jesus spoke to the Roman centurion who asked for Jesus to heal the centurion’s suffering servant, Jesus did not tell the Roman centurion to go and sin no more, but rather stated how He (Jesus) had not found anyone in Israel with the great faith of the Roman centurion (Matthew 8:5-13).  An early member of the New Testament Church was the Roman centurion Cornelius, a “righteous and God-fearing man” welcomed into the Church by Peter (Acts 10:19-22).  The Old Testament contains accounts of numerous wars fought by the ancient Israelites, according to Scripture, at the direction of God.  (See, e.g., Joshua.) If you knew the American military (which I doubt), you would know how strong Christianity is among front-line troops.  A writer whose book containing (despite a dubious premise) informative detail about the American military abroad saw the influence of Christianity on front-line troops.  R. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts 220, 334, 340, 351, 360.  But what I recommend for your reading is an inspirational volume put together by Oliver North (exec. ed.), A Greater Freedom: Stories of Faith From Operation Iraqi Freedom.    
 
    It also disturbs me that in your “Litany,” you fail to recognize God’s sovereignty and you fail to call for God’s justice to prevail.  In keeping with basic Reformed doctrine, prayer in connection with war and conflict needs to include a recognition of God’s sovereignty and a call for God’s will to be done and for God’s justice to be established. I believe and I thought that Presbyterians believe in a living God acting in human history -- a truth recognized by our greatest Presidents.  George Washington, in his December 1790 address to the Hebrew congregations of Philadelphia, New York, Charleston and Richmond acknowledged that “[t]he power and goodness of the Almighty were strongly manifested in the events of our late glorious revolution” in establishing the United States of America.  Abraham Lincoln reminded us in his March 4, 1865 Second Inaugural Address that “The Almighty has His own purposes” amidst conflict and war, which Lincoln identified with respect to the American Civil War as the removal of the offense of human slavery and to punish both North and South for their responsibility for that offense.  Is it the case that don’t you pray in recognition of God’s sovereignty and for God’s justice to prevail because that would mean acknowledging that sometimes God acts in human history through war and conflict? 

    A lowly American private in World War I by the name of Walter Bromwich understood that fact when he wrote home “God is in this war, not as a spectator, but backing up everything that is good in us.”  (A Carroll (ed.), Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith In Times of War). That fact was recognized too in the prayer written by Chaplain James H. O’Neill at the request of General George Patton at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II: “Graciously harken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness or our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations.”  General Patton had Chaplain O’Neill’s whole prayer printed on wallet size cards and distributed to the soldiers of the Third Army (which included my father-in-law).  (A Axelrod, Patton 151; C. D’Este, Patton: A Genius For War 688; S. Weintraub, 11 Days In December 85-86, 108-109.)       

    There are times when it is necessary for Christians to confront and, armed with God’s power, defeat evil.  Moral conduct is not to be found in pacifist impulses leading to cowardly rationalization for inaction or self-centered reproach for having taken action.  To the contrary, as John Calvin reminds us, if we refuse to use force in a just cause, we “become guilty of the greatest impiety” (Institutes, IV.20.10).    

    It thus further disturbs me that your “Litany” laments and asks “forgiveness” that “we are so prepared for war and so unprepared for peace, so prepared to confront and unprepared to be reconcile, so prepared to shout and so unprepared to listen, so prepared to inflict injury and so unprepared to heal.”  In what universe are you operating?       
 
    We could start with November 4, 1979, when Iranian radicals seized, in violation of international law, the American Embassy in Tehran and held hostage American Embassy personnel for the next 444 days until the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as President.  (See M. Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah.)  But let’s begin with February 26, 1993, when the World Trade Center Towers in Manhattan were bombed for the first time by radical Islamists who were followers of the blind sheik Omar Abdul Rahman and who were led by Ramzi Yousef; six people were killed and 1,042 people were injured.  On August 23, 1996, Osama bin Laden, from a cave in Afghanistan, declared jihadist war on America; the statement was entitled “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” which asserted that terrorism was “a legitimate right and a moral obligation” and that the youths carrying out jihad “love death as you love life.”  On August 7, 1998, the American Embassy in Kenya was bombed by al-Qaeda operatives, causing the deaths of 213 and injury to thousands, and the American Embassy in Tanzania was bombed by other al-Qaeda operatives, resulting in the deaths of 11 and the wounding of 85.  On October 12, 2000, the U.S. Navy ship USS Cole in a Yemen port was attacked by two al-Qaeda operatives on a suicide mission, resulting in the deaths of 17 American sailors and the wounding of 39 others.  To all of these actions, America did not do much because America was in fact unprepared for war but rather prepared for peace.  (See generally L. Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda And The Road To 9/11.)

    So finally, on  September 11, 2001, America was caught by surprise as nineteen al- Qaeda suicide jihadists hijacked four commercial airliners to fly into office and government buildings.  Two of the planes were flown into the World Trade Center Towers in Manhattan causing them to collapse, one plane was flown into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and one plane was flown into the ground in Pennsylvania as the passengers fought to take control of the plane back.  That day, often referred to now simply as 9/11, more than 3,000 people were shockingly murdered on American soil by the actions of radical Islamists.  In view of the events of that day known as 9/11 and the events of the preceding decade, I must ask: just how were we “so prepared for war and so unprepared for peace, so prepared to confront and unprepared to be reconcile, so prepared to shout and so unprepared to listen, so prepared to inflict injury and so unprepared to heal”?  

     Only after September 11 did America take military action in the name of a war on terror.  America was not gratuitously seeking war when using military force to remove the oppressive Taliban from power in Afghanistan for harboring al-Qaeda.  Nor was America gratuitously seeking war when, in coalition with other nations (most particularly Great Britain), military force was authorized by Congress and used to remove a murderous tyrant in Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq for, among other things: being in material breach of 17 United Nations arms resolutions; supporting global terrorism in allowing the operation in Iraq of terrorist training camps, paying for suicide bombers and allowing certain terrorists to operate in Iraq; having and seeking weapons of mass destruction that all believed he had (and according to Iraqi Air Force General Georges Sada did have and moved to Syria in the prolonged run up to the invasion); and using a weapon of mass destruction in nerve gas against the Kurds killing thousands.  An effective United Nations would itself have taken the action of removing Saddam from power, but a generally ineffective United Nations in this case was further corrupted and incapacitated by Saddam in the Oil-for-Food scandal.

    Do you really think that the world would be a better place if Saddam Hussein, the “Butcher of Baghdad,” were still in power?  If so, I have to ask facetiously: Do you miss the rape rooms of Saddam's sons? Or perhaps the repression and murder of the Kurds? Or the real physically mutilating torture that Saddam's government meted out to anyone suspected of being a dissident? Or the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by Saddam's government? Or is it that Saddam's dictatorial, cult of personality mode of government suits you? Perhaps it was Saddam's corruption of the United Nations in the Food-for-Oil scandal that thrilled you? Or maybe it was Saddam's payment of suicide bombers? Or perhaps Saddam's allowance of terrorist training camps in Iraq? Or was it that the terrorist thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was allowed to use Iraq as a base of operations?  If, on the other hand, you don’t think that the world would be a better place if Saddam Hussein, the “Butcher of Baghdad,” were still in power, why do you think we need to ask for “forgiveness”?  Are you open to the possibility that God wanted the oppressive hand of the “Butcher of Baghdad” removed from power?   
 
    The Iraqi War has been prolonged, and there has been violence, bloodshed and suffering.  But contrast what America has done and what the adversaries have done. 

    America with its coalition partners have removed a tyrant from power, handed sovereignty back to the Iraqi people, propelled the Iraqi people to adopt a democratic government and assisted the Iraqis in defending their young government.  It cannot be ignored that the Iraqis bravely voted three times, raising the “purple finger,” in the process of adopting a written Constitution and electing their own leadership and that the present Iraqi government is the legitimate, sovereign and lawfully constituted government of Iraq.  Nor should it be ignored that the Kurds in northern Iraq enjoy peace and that insurgent attacks elsewhere in Iraq on marketplaces, police stations and the like are both terrorist and criminal in nature and are specifically targeted to undermine the Iraqi government’s authority. 

    Radical Islamists, both Sunni and Shiite, do not want democratic government and society to take root in Iraq, and they have caused much bloodshed, death and injury in their efforts to undermine the elected Iraqi government.  Al-Qaeda’s No. 1 Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri have declared that Iraq is the major front or “greatest battle” in what they describe as the “Third World War” between Islam (actually their radical Islamism) and the West.  Al-Qaeda, in opposition to the Iraq government and in league with other Sunni extremists (e.g., the post-Zarqawi Islamic State of Iraq), has led the insurgency in areas such as Anbar province, has engaged in bombings killing innocent Iraqis and has actively sought, with some success, to incite sectarian violence in Iraq between Sunni Baathists unreconciled to the loss of power in post-Saddam Iraq and Shiites who had been repressed by Saddam.  The radical Shiites in Iran have similarly been channeling resources to fueling sectarian violence and providing material assistance in the form of a massive supply of IEDs, EFPs and other weaponry not only to radical Shiite militias but also Sunni insurgents.  Radical Shiites in Iraq such as renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have militias that engage in sectarian violence, either oppose or seek to compromise the Iraqi government and at times work with their Iranian radical allies to attack American troops.  Do you think for one moment that if we withdrew from Iraq now, that country would be better off?  That is not the judgment of New York Times Baghdad bureau chief John Burns, who has stated that such withdrawal could result in "levels of suffering and of casualties amongst Iraqis that potentially could dwarf the ones we've seen to this point."

    The fact is that we are the good guys in Iraq.  Our military has been supporting the lawfully constituted Iraqi government, seeking to establish security for the Iraqi people from radical Islamist insurgent violence and mayhem and training the Iraqi army and police to take the responsibility for that security.  Our military with civilian contractors have been rebuilding the country that had been driven into the ground economically by Saddam’s misrule and exploitation.  Young Iraqis are drawn to our soldiers and Marines; my wife and I send candy to the our son so that my son and the guys under his command can hand it out to the kids.  Pictures of American soldiers and Marines carrying in their arms Iraqi kids do tell a truth about the conflict.  I sometimes use an example from my older son’s division to contrast the Americans and the radical Islamists.  My older son’s division has, among other things, built schools for the Iraqis and distributed medical supplies to local hospitals and clinics; in contrast, the girls’ school that was next to my older son’s base was blown up by a suicide bomber with much loss of life because the radical Islamists do not want girls educated.  Again, I ask: why do you think it is we who need to be asking for “forgiveness”?

    By asking for forgiveness in the manner the “Litany” does and stating that we are “so prepared for war and so unprepared for peace” and “so prepared to inflict injury and so unprepared to heal,” the “Litany” implicitly blames America for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars while not making the slightest acknowledgment of the evil that America has been facing in the actions of the radical Islamists.  That gives a very bad context to what followed in the “Litany”:  the reading of the names of those Long Islanders who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    By way of contrast, Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” delivered at the site of the Gettysburg battlefield, refers to how “[t]he brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract” and to how the world “can never forget what they did here.”  Lincoln then used the occasion to state the purpose for which the sacrifice was made: “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”  

    The remembrance of war dead unavoidably raises the question of the cause for which they were sacrificed.  The “Litany” here, however, in asking for forgiveness and stating that we are “so prepared for war and so unprepared for peace” and “so prepared to inflict injury and so unprepared to heal,” states no such cause.  In the context that the “Litany” gives, the reading of the fallen comes across as that the loss of lives was in vain.  That message does not truly honor those in the military who have given their last full measure of devotion to the nation. 
          
    The context in the “Litany” that cheapens the reading of the fallen also calls into question just what kind of prayer is being made in the “Litany” for the wounded troops returning home.  The “Litany” asks that the Lord sustain the wounded “after the parades are over, the honors [are] given, and the medals have lost their luster, and they [the wounded] are forgotten.”  It is very right and good to ask that the Lord sustain the wounded, but the “Litany” couples that request with what effectively belittles the cause in which they were engaged.  Parades, honors and medals give proper recognition to the good and valuable service rendered, and the wounded are not forgotten unless, as was the case was with Vietnam, there is a desire to put away thought about their sacrifice.  Just as we should pray for the divine protection of active troops in harm’s way without gratuitous reference to decals on SUVs, we should pray for divine healing of the wounded without gratuitous reference to “after the parades are over, the honors [are] given, and the medals have lost their luster, and they [the wounded] are forgotten.”
     
    Finally, while it is very right and good to pray for the Iraqi and Afghanistan people and that they may enjoy peace, do you consider what is the good that we can wish for the Iraqi and Afghanistan people and how peace may come for them?  If you think that it comes by way of the success of the American-led NATO mission in Afghanistan and the success of the American-led coalition mission in which my older son is engaged and now capably commanded by General David Petraeus in Iraq, I would agree.  But the “Litany” does not give me that sense.  I hate to think, but it is possible, that like a number of secular leftists, you believe that American withdrawal is the answer and that you are living some kind of glorious repetition of an opposition to the Vietnam War.  If so, how do you handle the parts that the elected South Vietnamese government fell in 1975 because of a massive invasion from North Vietnam after congressional Democrats cut off any funding to the elected South Vietnamese government and that after America left Southeast Asia, all of Vietnam was subject to a rigid Stalinist-type totalitarian dictatorship, Cambodia was under the control of a genocidal radical communist regime, thousands of Vietnamese sought to escape tyranny by taking to the seas in open boats (the “boat people”) and literally millions of those who could not escape died in Cambodia and Vietnam?   Most all secular leftists simply turned their back; but was that the appropriate Christian response?  If we withdraw from Iraq precipitously and as indicated above there is massive bloodshed and death as radical Islamists set off bombs and wield the beheading sword, will you simply turn your back?  And don’t you think that radical Islamists will be emboldened to attack us again on American soil?             
    I am very conscious of the sacrifices that our men and women in military service in harm’s way make.  There is every reason to give them the highest respect: America’s effort to free the Afghani and Iraqi people from oppression and to give them the opportunity to elect democratically their leaders has been noble and just; there is nothing “Christian” about failing to confront what is deeply evil in the actions of the radical Islamists; the casualties suffered by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq should not be allowed to be and should not be seen as in vain; to invoke Lincoln again, America as the last best hope of Earth.  May America, under God, be blessed by God.
       
                                In His service,


                                Philip A. Byler, Esq.
   

I had opened this blog some time ago, but never posted because I am a busy lawyer in private practice in Manhattan.  Some people who have posted comments under articles published by townhall.com expressed regrets that I had not taken advantage of my blog, and I decided that I would start this Memorial Day weekend with what I believe is a good subject for Memorial Day.  I have started reading Michael Yon's excellent Moment of Truth in Iraq, and it occurred to me that I should publish my lengthy e-mail exchange in 2007 with my congressman, Steven Israel (D-NY), concerning the Iraq War.  Congressman Israel is a liberal Democrat who is a political ally of New York Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.  I am a moderately conservative Republican who strongly supports John McCain, admires Teddy Roosevelt (whose beloved Sagamore Hill is not far from where I live) and greatly appreciates the speeches of Ronald Reagan and the writings of such people as Victor Davis Hanson, Oliver North and John McCain.  While my blog won't always read like Winston Churchill's World War II history in reproducing documents verbatim, I think you will find the Congressman Israel-Phil Byler exchange is worthwhile reading.   

At the time of my exchange with Congressman Israel, my personal interest was that my older son John (Purdue '05) was a U.S. Army First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army (with Ranger tab and paratroop wings) who was then serving as an infantry platoon leader in Iraq and that my younger son James would be commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marines upon graduation from Purdue and would at some point be expected to be serving in harm's way like his older brother.  I still have my interest because my older son John completed his 15 month tour of duty in Iraq earning a Bronze Star and and Army Commendation "V" Medal for Valor for actions under fire, my younger son was commissioned a U. S. Marines Second Lieutenant upon graduation this May from Purdue and they both can be expected to be serving in harm's way in the future for our country.