At War --
Commentary
How America lost Europe’s good will
By JOAN CHITTISTER
I’ve been in Europe while debate about war in Iraq has raged
on. I feel like I got here in time to see the end of a movie that I’d
started to watch years ago. The first scene happened in Holland; the last scene
happened a few days ago in Ireland.
In two conversations with young people 20 years apart, I got a
glimpse of what the United States is facing now and in the immediate future.
Few people wanted to believe the story when I told it the first time. I am not
sure it will be understood now. But I think it’s crucial to try.
At the time of the first conversation, in 1980, the U.S.
government had begun to wire Sicily and the outskirts of London with Cruise
missiles, the first attempt in the West at erecting a “nuclear
shield.” The design then had nothing to do with putting nuclear warheads
into orbit to shoot incoming missiles out of the sky. This shield depended
instead on putting first response warheads on European soil.
Politicians claimed that the United States would be providing
missiles to defend Europe from Soviet incursion. But the transparency of the
argument was not lost on the peace movement in England or Italy. If the United
States installed nuclear weapons in Europe, they argued, the first nuclear war
would be fought in European cities. Not in the neighborhoods of New York or
Washington, where, as far as they were concerned, it belonged if it was a
U.S.-Soviet war.
Resistance was intense. Young protesters held sit-down strikes in
Trafalgar Square and organized demonstrations everywhere. I myself had gone on
a personal peace mission to churches from Sicily to England in an attempt to
elicit religious opposition to the plan. But Europe was, in large part,
passive. Given the fact that Europe had suffered massive destruction at the
hands of Nazi Germany, I found myself dumbstruck by the docility I encountered
in the face of possible nuclear annihilation.
Priests answered my concerns with bloodless talk about just war
theories, as if nuclear holocaust had anything to do with justice.
Politicians talked to me about “readiness” as an
antidote to war but failed to consider the fact that fear is just as often a
cause of violence as powerlessness is.
Average citizens shrugged off the arguments completely.
When I got to Holland I finally began to understand the situation.
We were in one of those small brick cottages that are so common in
the Lowlands. Eight of us crowded into a tiny living room, sitting on small
wooden chairs and thin couches for hot tea and cheese. The old people in the
family loved America. “Whatever America wants, we will do,” the
father said in answer to whether he was concerned at the thought of becoming a
nuclear target now. He got up and went to the window and pulled back the lace
curtains. “I stood at this window when the American Army marched down this
street and liberated this village,” he said. “As long as I live I
will remember that America freed us from our enemy.”
But his youngest son, a youth of about 19, fairly jumped to his
feet. “Poppa,” he said, “you don’t understand. America is
the enemy now. They are not our liberators. They are out to make us the target
so that they are never touched.”
“Enough!” the father said.
I sat in the room and calculated. In 20 years, the older
man’s generation would be out of power and the young man’s generation
would be taking over. Then, I knew, the United States would no longer be at the
disposal of Europe.
I found out yesterday that the dates were pretty accurate.
The young Irish medical student who stopped to talk has worked her
way around the world carrying a backpack. But she describes her journey as
allowing her to see “American foreign policy firsthand.” She’s a
polite young woman, careful not to insult me but just as careful to make her
point. “I was in New York on 9/11,” she said. “It was terrible.
But more terrible was the fact that good, kind, generous Americans don’t
understand it. I couldn’t believe how little they know about what they
do.”
And then she said, “I was astounded. They kept saying that
after 9/11 the world changed. Well, they are dead wrong. The world didn’t
change at all. The only thing that changed is that finally violence happened
there. Their violence has been happening everywhere. Now the effects of their
foreign policies are happening there, too.”
Maybe she’s wrong. Maybe she’s confused. But one thing
is sure: She is the next generation of Europeans who doubt U.S. good will, who
mistrust U.S. policies, who resist U.S. intrusion in European politics and
whose newspapers -- now under the control of those the same age as would be the
boy I talked with in Holland years ago -- are calling George Bush “a
greater threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein.”
Clearly, the “war” we are fighting is not the war we
must win. We must win the hearts of this generation of Europeans. And we are
not going to win it by making “preemptive war” on anybody.
Sr. Joan Chittister, a frequent contributor to NCR, is a
member of the Erie, Pa., Benedictines.
National Catholic Reporter, March 28,
2003
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