Writings from Rabbi Glickman

“Rabbi, I was wondering how our Temple is going to respond to the situation in Iraq.”

It was Janice on the phone – an articulate, soft-spoken, psychologist in her late-50’s. As usual, she spoke slowly and quietly, but today there was also a note of frantic tension in her voice, and it surprised me.

As we spoke about Iraq, I shared some of my own struggles over the issue – that I find many of the recent arguments of both dove and hawk to be quite compelling; that Judaism requires war when a nation’s existence is at stake, but that I wasn’t sure whether that was the case in this particular situation; that, for once, on this issue, I really didn’t have a strong opinion.

“Of course, Saddam is a tyrant,” Janice responded. “But c’mon! We all know what’s going on here – the President is just co-opting us into his personal ‘Oust Saddam’ campaign. What a great way he’s found to gain political clout, turn around the economy, and do a big favor for his Texas oil buddies along the way.” Janice was speaking as politely as always, but now I think I could also hear her teeth begin to gnash. We agreed to speak again a few days later.

As I hung up the telephone, I came to two conflicting realizations about our conversation. First, Janice and I were miles apart on the attack-Iraq issue. I was still undecided; she was vehemently opposed.

Second, however, was that, with regard to the individual aspects of the issue, Janice and I agreed on almost everything. We agreed, for example, that the world would be better without Saddam in power; that our nation does have the right to defend itself against foreign aggressors; that, whatever the President’s response regarding Iraq, he mustn’t have us go it alone. Our disagreements, it seemed, were primarily differences in tone, not content.

I wondered what was going on here. How could Janice and I have agreed on so much, and yet also disagreed so fervently, on the possibility of war with Iraq? When it comes right down to it, what was it that really separated us?

What most separated us, I soon realized, was a single historic event – the Vietnam War. Unlike those in my generation, Janice and her contemporaries were young adults during that painful time. They were the ones who got drafted, they were the ones who protested, and more than 58,000 of them were the ones who died.

And they remember it all too well. Many recall their feelings of powerlessness as they saw a war unfold that they couldn’t understand, let alone justify. Others remember the hope with which their young voices boldly demanded that America give peace a chance. I guessed that, to Janice and her contemporaries, the specter of war in Iraq conjured up images of weekly casualty counts, of presidential power run amok, of naked children fleeing burning villages. To them, “war” is not surgical, precise, and quick – it’s long, drawn out, and bloody.

But I’m not quite 40; I was a little kid during the Vietnam War. When I reached the age of protest, it was Ayatollah Khomeini and the Sandanista Rebels who dominated the front pages of the papers, not Ho Chi Minh and the Khmer Rouge. Unlike Janice’s friends, I never had to decide whether to burn my draft card; my friends and I never chanted antiwar protests; nobody in my high school graduation class was ever killed fighting over a country we’d hardly heard of. Most of what I know about the Vietnam War I’ve learned from dusty old Time-Life books and the History Channel. The war I remember best is the first Gulf War – a war that seems so nice and quick and easy compared to Vietnam.

An ancient Jewish adage teaches, “Who is truly wise? The one who learns from all people.” Janice and I both need to remember this now more than ever. Our respective generations have so much to learn from one another. Janice’s memories should remind me of the great dangers a nation faces when fighting a war its citizens don’t support. They should remind me that, smart bombs and computerized fighter jets notwithstanding, war is not always neat, clean and easy. Someday soon, our nation may once again find itself fighting a war that sends our soldiers home in body bags and seems to last forever.

At the same time, my post-Vietnam generation has some important lessons to teach, too. I hope we can show Janice’s contemporaries that, regardless of whether America over-demonized the Soviet bloc, there are still tyrants aplenty – and these days, they may have bigger bombs, better methods, and may thus be a greater threat. I hope we can remind them that the protests of the ‘60s sometimes obscured the fact that the United States truly is a great nation – one that we should defend. Janice’s generation asked, “Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?” I hope that my generation can teach the answer we have learned – “Because sometimes we have no choice.”

So what are we at Temple going to do about the situation in Iraq? We’re going to sit down and struggle with it. We’ll share our different perspectives, we’ll learn from our past and from one another, and in this context of ongoing and respectful study and struggle, we will then respond in the best and most sacred ways we possibly can.

These days, we dare not do anything less.

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