The foundation of law and morality is mutuality. It’s embodied in the golden rule. Preemptive action in the world that does not take into consideration the rights of other nations and the cooperation of other nations is basically against that basic moral principle.

Law and morality share that idea of mutuality. I find it really ironic that India thinks that Pakistan is supporting terrorism. And I think the evidence is clear that it is. And using our policy of preemption, India should have gone to war against Pakistan a long time ago. They’ve lost just as many people to terrorists’ acts, and yet we use preemption in Iraq but we counsel the Indians to follow the moral and legal way. I find this very, very troubling and that’s why I was against when it started, against the war when it was going on, and I’m still against our presence there because I think we’ve broken international law and we’ve broken the golden rule at an international level. Sets a very bad precedent.

My feelings are kind of mixed. When you look at international law and to what philosophers and theologians have said about war, typically speaking there’s got to be some kind of imminent threat. We’ve talked about principles of self defense, we have to respond with proportionate force and when there’s a threat to your country, action has been taken, or a threat to other nations or there’s a threat to the innocent. And that’s an imminent threat and there’s no other alternative but war. A final last resort. And you’re forced that your response is proportionate. That kind of makes up the basic rules of both international law and I think what philosophers and theologians have said about a just war.

My feelings were the same in the beginning as they are today. They’re really mixed. I guess I’m still waiting. For me the jury is still out. And what I was hoping we’d see before this, is a president that would go to Congress and go though and establish these basic principles. And not just say well you know Iraq is connected to Al Qaida, Iraq is an ally, Iraq has given them resources.

You know, I really wanted the evidence, and I didn’t want possibilities. I wanted the evidence to be clear and convincing so that I could feel that there was some connection to 9/11, or there was some imminent threat — the use of force against us or other countries — and I’m still waiting for that. So to me this war could be a just one, it could be an acceptable one. But since that evidence has not been presented I don’t feel really comfortable that it’s going to be.

And I think that’s there’s an incredibly slippery slope here. It’s not just for other nations but even for us. We’re changing the rules in the middle of the game. And now we’re starting to talk about, well whenever you anticipate, or you think some country has the ability to harm others, then that justifies going in.

This idea of anticipatory self defense seems dangerous, seems dangerous on a number of levels.

I guess I think about what Jesus said, “Blessed are the peace keepers,” and I think what that really means is, you have to do everything you can to maintain peace, to pursue every available option with peace. Now, there does come a time when I think you have to engage in war but that threat has to be imminent, your response has to be proportionate, and I’m just wondering if we’ve adhered to those principles and I feel some obligation as a citizen to force our government to follow these principles.

Relationships between nations, individuals, have taken decades to build. And I can just reminisce a little on our NATO days; people don’t really understand the inner workings of NATO today. But we’d all sit around, fifteen [nations], sometimes sixteen with France, and work out common ground. And generally speaking we had a consensus and everybody would go along with the consensus and it would be funded. And the economic considerations were important. They were satisfied, but it seems like the government recently has been sort of a, kind of iconoclastic. They’ve been tossing treaties away, and tossing institutions away as they need to serve their purpose. Americans as a whole are very forgiving. They can make friends, break friends and renew friendships. A lot of these countries don’t do it. They have always had suspicions about the United States. Those suspicions have been suppressed because they looked at the overall good. And I think there are many, many countries, in fact every country outside of this country, they’re right now re-assessing their relationship with the United States, determining whether they are going to be a friend or not a friend. And these, I think, will be, if not permanent, long-term biases that the next and the next and the next administrations are going to have trouble overcoming.

Religiously, I think we have a duty to rule out evil in the world if we can, personally and as a nation.

We had a man and a regime that were not nice folks.

I think comparing that to the cold war with Russia and the USSR is two different things altogether. It's like trying to speak nicely to a rabid dog.

I think September 11th was a big wakeup call for me. It said to me, "Uh oh, we're vulnerable, right here." And I began to look at our vulnerabilities -- the oil supply, the ability to have electricity, the ability to have communications -- those things can be disrupted in a minute. And I think the administration recognized that and I think this pre-emptive strike stuff is an attempt at changing the nature of national defense. I think it's still an experiment, there could be ramifications from it that we don't see -- I think it's a reasonable experiment to be taking.

I think our form of freedom is very fragile and I think if we wait until the threat really develops itself, it may be too late.

I think the deeper religious commitment that I have is to preserve what good there is in the world and to ally myself with efforts towards what is quote “good,” as opposed to supporting or enduring the bad.

I'm sure that many of you read on the internet today -- it was kind of a sick joke -- "We know there were weapons of mass destruction because we have the receipts for them." Because we have all seen pictures of Saddam Hussein and Rumsfeld shaking hands, buddy buddy. And I wonder what has changed? I mean he was never a nice guy and we’ve been able to live with that. And I think if there were available weapons of mass destruction he would have used them.

I really haven't watched the news. I turned off the news tonight as President Bush was on the aircraft carrier, because to see the glorification of what we have done . . . I've seen pictures of the children who've been killed. In fact, I can't look at that either because there were a lot that died in the World Trade Center, but we kill 45,000 a year in our cars, in our automobiles, and I just think there are so many inconsistencies in our policies. I think Collin Powell is the bright spot in this administration. The brighter spot.

I believe that war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ. And he said, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and he told us to pray for those who persecute us. That’s where I come from.

There has to be a yardstick, and my faith is in God and scripture. It tells us that there’s a difference between personal peacemaking and turning the other cheek and so on, and a national incident. And the Bible says that the government doesn’t wield the sword for nothing, and that’s a government's main job, to protect its citizens.

We can't fight evil in the world, we can't fight the threats against us unless we are strong and sometimes we have to show the strength.

We talk about pre-emptive strikes, and I’m sure it was a pre-emptive strike because we were attacked on September 11 and there was great feelings and information and intelligence that there was a connection between Saddam and Al Quaida.

I think we made a terrible mistake by starting up a war with Iraq. I think that violence almost always leads to more violence. I’m not the kind of person, even though my religion tends to be very non-violent, I’d have to say that there definitely are times when you have to defend yourself and the issue, “just war” is really the heart of our conversation. I don’t feel it was just. And when Colleen was talking about the photographs of children that were under bombs in Iraq, I had to think that we were no different than those who bombed the world trade centers and I don’t feel that there was a proven connection between Al Qaida and the Iraqi government.

I would like to also stress that after 9/11 and during what has escalated along the lines of this war, there also seems to have been a move towards lack of personal freedom. Suddenly people are afraid that they will be somehow harmed, or if they stated their opinions that they’re going to have to back down, and that’s something that makes me very sad. And I’m really glad that we are here today, and that we do have different opinions and that we aren’t at each others’ throats. Because it’s tremendously important that we do and if there is something that I do want to fight for — fight for now — it is the freedom to say what we want to say in terms of this war, whether we agree with it or don’t agree with it.

I think one of the things that faith requires all of us to do is realize that whatever kingdom there is, and whatever our religious beliefs are, it is not a kingdom that only lets in Americans, it's not a kingdom that only lets in people from Saudi Arabia, it’s not a kingdom that only lets in people from Asia. I mean, it’s a kingdom where we're all brothers and sisters. And at some level we do have to sit back, I think, and just ask our government to keep in mind that there are some wars that are just, and they're probably even necessary, maybe a necessary evil. And I hark back to those principles we talked about before. They're really in line with kind of those self-defense principles, but you asked the question, 'Is there a time when war would be justified?' I actually think that when 5,000 people were killed by virtue of chemical weapons through the Iraqi regime, that the U.N. had a clear justification to go in and use force.

There probably are some situations where we can’t wait till the last minute until the nuclear bomb is ready to go off, and I think anticipatory self-defense -- if you look at some of Michael Walzer’s elements -- those things make some sense to me. But those things we’re really established in this particular situation. Maybe I’m going to learn that they are. I’m still waiting. And I’m hoping.

Since the end of the Cold War, we are the only show in town in terms of military force, a sort of superpower status.

When you’re the only show in town that way, when you’re perceived as the top dog, you’re a target for everyone as well.

There is a sense of an American empire. There is a sense that we have this position de facto, whether we wanted it or not. So it’s there and so we’re in this rather interesting position which carries with it a greater moral responsibility, but it also goes both ways -- one is that you can’t just sit around and wait for somebody else to take care of problems.

We have been at war for a long, long time and been blind to it. And I would submit that it is a religious war down to its very core. There is no doubt that the Muslim world, the Islamic world, has seen the US as a principal protector of Israel and it really wouldn’t matter what we did via Iraq, vis-a-vis Iraq, or anything else. We would still be seen as anti-Islam and anti-Arab world and that tension has played out over many, many years and so it’s not just something new on the horizon.

In this process of losing the bipolar Cold War scenario, the UN has really lost its relevance. It’s also become spineless.

I’m not happy about us going to war. I’m not even sure if it’s a just war, but I know in the scenarios our options narrow dramatically. And while we can get all teary-eyed about children being hurt or something, you know, that was happening in Iraq prior to our invasion in huge ways. It’s sort of like, you know, how many children do you want to let die there under his regime before somebody acted? It’s sort of like how many Jews do you let die in Germany before you do something about it?

We are the lone superpower in the world. That makes us even more, is more incumbent upon us to make sure that we do adhere to international law. And if the U.N. is such a weak institution, we are obligated by article 6 of the Constitution that any treaties that we sign become the supreme law of the land. The constitution is very clear. That’s why it was not just an empty gesture that some people called for the impeachment of President Bush, because the U.N. charter is part of the supreme law of the land. Our military forces took an oath on the constitution. These are very serious matters and we cannot have any moral force in the world unless we at least attempt to go by international legal standards.

I have to say that the situation in Iraq today, take our intervention out of it, ok, I’m happier about it from some sort of fundamental sense of justice and for what the potential is.

We have people who would be opposed to war and I would guess many of you would have been opposed to war no matter what. So it would’ve been one of those things where it would’ve really taken some sort of monumental thing to get you to go there. It would also be true, like that ad sponsored by the National Council of Churches, is admittedly, a confessional if you will, a liberal body. They’re not part of what would be many of the churches that are more conservative and probably more supportive of the war for right or wrong but it would represent a particular theological perspective.

In the opposition to the war, I think the peace movement would’ve had some credibility which I don’t think it had, because it never was marching in protest to the slaughter and wickedness going on elsewhere in the world at the time. I mean, how many people were protesting what the Sudanese were doing to the Christians in the south? You know, I don’t see any rallies for that. But as soon as the United States starts doing something about certain things then the peace movement gets all excited about what we’re doing. Well, that’s too late. It loses its moral credibility if it’s silent when there is wrong going on elsewhere and then only speaks when we try to do something.

Religion in the world plays the role of a curb against excessive government. Unless religion and government are combined and then it can become a very volatile and dangerous thing. In the United States, so far, we’ve managed to maintain religious freedom. So you can have comments like these on national television. It may not represent a particular religion, but represents a viewpoint and we have that as a curb against absolute power on part of the government and I think that’s a very healthy thing and I would fight to the death for that.

The thing that struck me about 9/11 and the things that have gone on since is that the terrorists use our freedoms against us. They use the ease of getting in and out of our borders, they use our propensity to educate the world, they use the free flow of money around the world using our institutions -- they rely on our freedoms to get at us. And the difficulty for me philosophically is that if that is true, the defense for it is to curb our freedoms and I don’t like that. But I think that’s the dicey era we’re in right now.

As a superpower we are called to a form of leadership. September 11th was a determining point from which we could’ve made some decisions about how to move forward. And one of the words that comes back to me over and over is integrity. How do we move forward with integrity and provide an example of that? We look to religion for that in some ways but we also look to things like objective standards for just war. What is the information that we have? I think many folks struggle with the fact that there’s limited information and there always has been and there always will be. I mean that is a standard that I think we can continue with. But the world is changing and part of me wants to hope that as it changes we move forward in a way that is a positive leadership rather than a negative one and how we do that with integrity.

My Unitarian minister didn’t say anything about the war. And I was wondering why she wasn’t out on the lines with me. And she said, “I’m not going to speak for the congregation because everyone has to speak for him or herself.” I was very respectful of that position.

There's a sense of disappointment and a letdown about my adopted land and an enormous arrogance of power on the part of my country, and that is very discouraging.

I don’t understand the inconsistency -- when we launch a pre-emptive strike against Iraq and ignore the weapons of mass destruction in Korea. That bothers me, the inconsistency there.

I have never felt we had a real excuse to go in and I question Mr. Bush’s reasons for going in. He is allied with the military industrial complex through his family and through the people he has selected to advise him. And it seems as though the excuses he gave have one by one disappeared. They haven't proved to be valid. For instance, weapons of mass destruction haven't been found. And I feel like we’ve destroyed our relationship with many of our allies and those relationships were built at great trouble over many years. And I think we have lost our standing in the court of world opinion.

For me a sense of loyalty. Loyalty is one of the main qualities of my faith. And I think that as far as the decisions and actions that have been taken by our country, as far as our military is concerned, not necessarily from a political standpoint, but just from a military standpoint, my religious beliefs and conviction has forced me to stand firm with loyalty and support our country in all the actions that have taken place over the past year.

I’ve had kind of the opposite thing happen. I think the war in Iraq challenged me to ask myself where does my alliance need to be and where was it strongest. And for me, lead me to think that my citizenship in the U.S. is second to my relationship to God.

I agree with Patti in a lot of ways. It did really present a challenge. It made me rethink that commitment that you make to your country, and I have never been pro war. I think there always should be much more dialogue and more ways to settle issues in the world. It really tested my faith to say that over and over again to people that I know are just as committed on the other side.

As a Buddhist I believe in the sanctity of all life and so it was really disappointing to me that my country went in there unilateral without more effort at dialogue, so I hated to see that.

As a Christian I felt that the attack on the United States was just not an attack on the structure but it’s an attack on the values and the beliefs that we have. Although I was mad after Sept. 11, but my Christianity controlled that anger to the point that if an answer has to be given, it has to be calculated, not in the spirit of revenge but in the spirit of justice. And I believe that we prayed during the elections, we have a president that was a result of these prayers and I felt the decisions were made the most rational, patient way. Therefore I felt there was no other option except being loyal to the max to the decisions of the government.

We heard the statistics earlier where the United States has perhaps only 5% of the world’s population yet is the lone superpower, and as a Christian I see God’s hand on our nation and the responsibilities to conduct ourselves in the appropriate way. The power that we have I think needs to be brought to bear in certain ways. And where you see evil in the world I think someone has to adjust that evil. To not do that I think is probably equally as evil to not deal with it.

I see war as being one of the greatest evils in the world and that’s why to me dialogue is so important. I think that we rushed in there without the backing of the world. The world was asking us to take our time to see if this could be resolved some other way. When you talk about evil I think that war needs to be avoided as much as it possibly can be.

One of the things that my faith advocates is a search for truth. And I read an article recently in Newsweek, in which Jonathan Alter said that one of the first casualties of war is truth. And so for that reason I had a real, it was a real challenge for me to look at war and see it as a good thing knowing that truth was being sacrificed.

Before 9/11 I had the feeling that dialogue should come first and you should be able to try to reason with people but after 9/11, and I saw how many innocent people were completely annihilated just because a few felt that they didn’t believe in our principles as to how we lived, our religious beliefs and that kind of stuff. Then if we wait until the world says ok, it’s ok, let’s sit down and talk.

You know while we’re thinking of ways to try to resolve these issues they are killing us, you know continuously, they don’t care how we feel or how the world feels about us. They just feel, I have an issue with you guys and the best way to get rid of you is to completely annihilate you.

So I hate to say this, but I felt that this attack was justified. I feel that we didn’t have to wait for anyone else to tell us to go in there and do what we did. It wasn’t them who got killed, it was us. I mean the attack was on America. And if you’re an American and you have your family, you want to be able to have your children sleep safely at night.

Thank God we didn’t have a war continuously in this country. But just the fact that we see what happens in other countries, how people are living under constant threat, and I believe if you can eliminate the cancer before it spreads, then do it.

The holocaust taught me to be a realist, not an idealist. And the theme coming out of the holocaust is Never Again. I think 9/11 taught America, Never Again. And I that’s why I think going into Iraq, stopping Saddam Hussein before he and Iraq got nuclear weapons was the right thing to do.

Today in the NY Times there is an article that says that the US forces found a terrorist library in which there were detailed maps not only of Israeli cities but also of US cities, and particularly, and this strikes close to home, excruciating detailed surveillance of Salt Lake City, prior to the Olympics.

The things that the president had said about the right for all people to have this freedom throughout the world has resonated with me. I’m wondering if people who opposed the war before it was and predicted the casualties and all of the things that would happen. I wonder if they’ve moderated their views as they’ve seen how the war has indeed been conducted. And have seen what I consider actually a true evil, Saddam Hussein and the treatment of his people, and the things that have come since.

I see in those young soldiers that are over there a genuine effort to bring freedom to those people. And you know it is going to be a long slow process. People have never had democracy but we should be patient with them, we should be grateful that others are going to have this taste of freedom that we enjoy in our country.

Is God on my side? And I think the question is, “Am I on God’s side?” And that’s the question I found more difficult to answer. Because, certainly notions in my scriptural heritage of resist not evil, of turning the other cheek, of the fruit of peace being enjoyed by the peace makers, and with my own particular tradition of the idea of raising the standard of peace repeatedly, and that certainly there’s a question in my mind as to how preemption fits into that, because it almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can invariably find something to justify the war post-facto. Especially when it’s not understood in a particular context as to who in the regime or not in the regime had maps or documents. So the problem we run into it’s making those sorts of ties before you go in. And I think the case has to be made because preemption, in essence, casts aside all objective standards for waging war, including faith-based standards. So what you do is you say, “When my fear reaches a certain point, I’m justified in taking whatever action I want” and the claim is “I have to defend myself.” I would rather see objective standards put into place such as just war doctrines or faith-based doctrines that ask questions about justification before.

In terms of conduct of the war, I think the conduct of the war has been as good as the war can be. But again, that obviates the real question which is, “Do you bully, do you push around?” and do you essentially say, “I have the football so you’re going to play by my rules,” or on the other hand do you extend the hand of fellowship, do you raise the standard of peace repeatedly? That’s where I came down. So I guess I would respond by saying I was opposed to the war before it started, I’m opposed to the war now, because I still don’t see, even post-facto a clear linkage of justification and I want to make sure in my heart that I’m on God’s side.

The old testament has a phrase: “Do not stand aside while your neighbor’s blood is being shed” and when 9/11 occurred and when Al-Qaida bombed a 1,900 year old synagogue in Tunisia blood was being shed. So my feeling was, the United States has the ability to do something the same as when the Israelis bombed the [nuclear] reactor in Iraq. That time the world condemned Israel. Now, two decades later people look back and say, “Boy am I relieved this guy didn’t get the bomb.” So history, and you are a professor of history, I think we’ll all have to wait to see how these things turn out.

I always worry about the escalation as you pointed out. That the fighting just gets bigger and better and more technical and more high-powered and whoever has the more toys is going to win. And there was absolutely no question as to who was going to win when we walked in.

I just think the reaction of the people that are exposed to all of our grandeur is going to be even more deceitful and even more terrorizing and even more scary, because they have to come up to the standards we have set for killing people. And we’re better at it than anybody. I mean we really are, we can do it better, faster, and cleaner. And I just think that that’s not what I would like to be known for.

I guess I just respond and say that the technology certainly is there and you’re right, nobody comes close to what we are able to do. I think we also have to come back to the issue of the responsible use of that. And I think that as a group of people who are here on a faith-based grouping, all of us would see war as a last choice, none of us want to see people die.

But on the other hand, I think that there is a just sense to what we’ve just gone through in the sense that there were innocents being hurt. We heard earlier, Sheila mentioned, the truth is coming out as far as women, children, men being tortured, the rapes, other things going on that most of us would find unspeakable.

Regardless of our desire to see peace, recognize that perhaps something has to be done. We would not tolerate that happening in our own house if somebody came and began to hurt one of our family members, we would probably take a stand. Our ability to do that as a nation, with the technology that we have almost makes it, to use the term, cleaner. You don’t want to use words carelessly in this particular topic, I don’t want to.

But the issue there is, if you can, through technology, minimize the collateral damage, so to speak, that you’re targeting a target that is of a strategic nature and minimize the injury, the death to others, I think that’s good, if you can use that term good. It’s a preferable way to conduct a war I think, as far as minimizing the pain to others and eradicating the evil. We heard the terms, Stop the cancer. It’s a surgical procedure perhaps where you want to remove just the bad parts and maintain intact what’s good, and it should be maintained.

I have to wonder if we didn’t have the capability that we have today, how free would we be? Would we be able to be sitting in this room today discussing those topics without having the fear of having someone monitoring what we’re saying, and if they don’t like what we say, they would do like what Sadam did, they would take you into some chamber room and just pull your fingernails out and God knows what else they would do.

I just thank God for the fact that America had the capability that we have, we are not abusing the strength that we have, but when we have to use it I think we should. It’s a deterrent. I feel grateful again that I’m sitting here this evening and I know that my wife is home safe, my grandchildren are home, they’re safe. We don’t have to worry about anybody, the Gestapo or anyone going knocking on our door or kicking our door down, dragging them out just because for whatever reason.

You know, we’ve been blessed and we don’t seem to recognize that you know we’ve never had a war in this land so we don’t really know how it feels to be under constant threat and bombardment. But you know we have to recognize one thing, if it wouldn’t have been for the fact that we are as strong as we are, we would not have the freedom we have today.

I want to just add that the war is probably the last tip of a process and the war that started against us was really the war of wills, whose will is stronger than the other. So I do not focus a lot on the structural damage to our nation or what happens to other nations during the war, as it is the ideology behind it.

So if we are attacked to the point that the principles of this country, and the values and all that we stand for, is crumbling around us little by little we would come to a point that no matter what we cannot defend ourselves, even if we have the best technology in the world. And we have to be aware of that.

The other is that the war strategy itself is being used against us, has changed from a focused war to a phantom enemy that’s all over the world. And therefore you have to come to a point that you attack when it’s controllable before you lose completely and it can’t even find out where to fight.

If I remember correctly in the 12th Chapter of Luke Jesus Christ is asked by one of two brothers to divide the goods of inheritance between them. They have a conflict as to who should get what, and he says something to the effect of “Who made me a divider of goods?”

I think that that’s a central question. Just because the power exists within the United States, I’m not sure that . . . I’m pretty sure I do not posses the wisdom necessary to decide the fate of entire nations around the world. I’m not certain that I wouldn’t end up supporting as indirectly as an American or as a country a Shah of Iran, who used the secret policy terribly with American support.

America has some great moments of history, but it also has some moments that are far less than great. And so I guess my religious problem is: who made me a divider of goods? Who appointed the United States to be the one that possesses the truth and wisdom necessary to understand and deal out the fates of people around the globe? I just don’t have confidence in that. I have more confidence in allowing people to express themselves and working long term. I suppose the scripture that comes to my mind is, to let patience have the perfect work. I think that standard of peace has to be raised and again and again and we have to watch ourselves as well as help to watch other people.

You make very good points, and very compelling points. But so does AJ. In not acting, then evil can come forward. The point that was made that we have 5% does carry with it some responsibility.

I feel in the present instance, maybe there has been mistakes in the past. I feel in the present instance that people are acting very responsibly in carrying it forward and I so I feel very comfortable in supporting what we’re doing. And had we waited, and waited and waited who knows what evil would have come in the matter of the Holocaust? We waited too long before when there was a Holocaust. So I think we share religious beliefs and it’s very interesting to hear your perspectives on it, but perhaps I’m a little more appreciative of America moving forward and doing what is doing right now.

The scripture says too much is given, too much is required, and I think to echo what Dan said earlier, we are escaping a sense of reality. The world that we live in, everyone knows is not perfect, and from far back as we can remember, even in the Old Testament, there has been wars and there has been bloodshed. Some of my first times reading the Old Testament kind of just blew me out of the water, like wow, what is going on here. But that’s the world that we live in unfortunately and is due to circumstances that took place. As you go into theology you understand that.

And so to this date, we’re in a situation where we have a responsibility – approach one- we have to be the police of the world. That’s just the reality of the world that we live in. Now automatically, I think we kind of spill over into the second option, as far as when you police you automatically draw into the influence of whatever it is your political stance is, which for us is democracy, and that kind of sheds it in a negative light.

As a young African American man in this society, it hasn’t been always peaches and cream living in Southern California. I was part of history with the Los Angeles riots. But that doesn’t at all for one minute make me escape the fact that I still love this country. My father was a Vietnam vet, in the service for 20 years. And if they would call on my right now, I would go. I don’t have time to debate whether what I feel is wrong or is right. I have my opinion and I can stick with that as with everyone, but at some point I have to say, The machine is moving forward and I’ve got to jump on board. And that’s the reality of the world that we live in, we haven’t made to heaven yet. When we get to heaven it will be that way.

Somebody raised the issue of who should be the divider of goods. First of all I think the strong have an obligation to protect the weak.

Second thing is if you look at Numbers, Moses is in the wilderness with 12 tribes. He’s got 12 tribes but he doesn’t have a nation. He’s got large tribes and he’s got small tribes. If you go to Numbers you’ll find the actual number size of tribes. The first thing he does when he sets up the camp in the desert, is he puts the largest tribes furthest away from each other so that they can gang up on the smaller tribes, and so he creates buffer states in between the large tribes with two small tribes in between two large ones. And so he divides the goods and he keeps the strong from ganging up on the weak. And the metaphor for balance of power is right there. And the United States is still working with that paradigm today. It’s a strong nation protecting the weak.

I think that President Bush is sincere, he has a good deal of integrity. But in all seriousness I would say I wish to God we had a Moses.

Aside from that, one of the dangers I see, and what we might refer to as the perception of other nations, is if this is not a war on Islam but it’s a genuine war on terrorism, then we have to look if you will back at history. Over the past two decades the country with most terrorists acts in it is Colombia. By far. It has far in excess of any other country. Three times more than India, which was second in 1999.

And so if it’s a war against terrorism, then we have to take into account the Basque separatists, and the Shinning Path in Japan, and the IRA, and the drug lords in Colombia.

If we have the morality, all of us in the United States, and I think the United States is a great country, I’m not trying to talk down the United States, but if we had the morality, we’d stop using street drugs. That’s the war on terrorism, because that’s where the terrorism starts in Colombia.

In other words, there’s a lot of things we can do to help, that resides within the purview of faith, and in the purview of morality and the purview of religion, which teaches us to live good, clean, honest lives. And I think that if we focus on that there’s a lot of good that can be done in the war on terrorism, short of combat and troops.

I would comment too and say that first of all we have had a war on drug-related terrorism when we went to Panama and removed Noriega from his position. It hasn’t turned out probably as well as we’d like to as far as a democracy there but that was what that effort was about.

I come back to the whole issue that as a Christian it is a difficult issue to undertake war. I believe our president earnestly sought the guidance of God in his decisions. I know many of us pray for him; probably continue to pray for him on a daily basis, for him and his family, for wisdom for him and his advisers.

There reaches a point, and this is stepping back, stepping away from the faith-based perspective, just for a moment. As a nation, we have interests and our president, whether he’s a Christian, and I believe President Bush is a Christian, I believe that. Whether the President at the time is a Christian or not his foremost responsibility is the defense of the nation, national security.

And so you’re almost forced into an issue of picking and choosing where you’re going to get involved internationally, because how does this impact, how does this impact us as a nation, how does this impact our allies? And now come back into Iraq, and while we as a nation are not dependent upon Middle East oil, our primary oil comes from Venezuela, our imported oil, our allies depend heavily upon Middle Eastern oil. And it gets back to a sense of loyalty, and we talked about that earlier. You spoke very well about that, I appreciated what you said. There’s loyalty among nations as well, and the alliances and coalitions we’ve formed.

So I think that this war was first of all not a unilateral effort. We had the consensus of a number of nations that said, Let’s go do this, we think it is the right thing to do. The United Nations initially said yes, go do it, then it seemed they got some cold feet about it eventually, but nevertheless, it wasn’t simply President Bush saying, Let’s go to war.

It comes back again to dealing with evil when you are able to deal with it. This is my own personal sense. Involved in ministry in different ways, but also working in the secular environment. I’ve had number of people ask me, How do you feel about this? And this is prior to the war starting. And there was a time, some of us have mentioned and talked about how we’ve had to deal with this self-reflection, How do I feel about this? Is this right? Is this something God could condone?

In my own mind, and I said this several times, but I came back and I said: this is an evil person, is an evil environment, is an evil government. Bad things are happening to good people, somebody has to do something. And we find ourselves in that rather unique position, as the lone superpower. I think that’s the hand of God. That’s my sense. I think it is the hand of God on our nation called to do the right thing.

We refer to Jesus in scripture as the Prince of Peace. I was reading the other day in Revelation where the Prince of Peace in the interest of righteousness and truth prepares to go to war against evil. And there’s a difficulty there, because you can place yourself in those shoes. That’s not what I’m saying. But there’s a time somebody has to do something. I think we did the right thing as a nation. I think we did the right thing as a nation that claims to be a Christian nation.

I think prior to the war the National Council of Churches and the International Council of Churches proposed a six-point plan that the U.N. Security Council was looking at, and looking at real favorably. And it was not a roll-over-give-them-your-belly thing; it was a plan to move more slowly. And I know that President Bush is perceived and says he’s a man of prayer. But it was puzzling to me that the Church leaders asked to meet with him for a time of discernment and prayer and take just a bit of time there to explore that. And it seems that the momentum carried on passed that, and he wouldn’t meet with them.

We look at clergymen and we have to remember they’re human beings and they interpret the Bible in the way they think is right. But I feel that I went to school, I can read and I can make up my own mind when I read the Bible about certain passages. Take for instance when Jesus was in the town square, where the money changes, when he kicked them out of the plaza, whatever it is, because they weren’t, what were they? They were corrupted right? They were corrupt.

I feel, whether Bush acted too quickly or not, the fact is, we have a bunch of corrupt people in Iraq. They were killing people. Sadam was paying people to go out and blow up people in Israel, you know. They were paying them $30,000, whatever it is, per family. If your son would go out and blow himself up and kill some people in Israel, hey I’ll give you $30,000. A lot of clergymen would say, Well, we have to talk, we have to pray about it. Well, we are praying about it, we are still having people being killed by those terrorists.

You know there has to be some kind of leverage there, somebody has to do something. I mean God is not going to come down and say, you, you, and you, out! No, he’s not going to do that. No, God is not going to that. He’s not going to come down and do it himself. So I’m hoping that someway, someone would be touching, you know, I have . . . I cannot tolerate this anymore. We have to do something about it.

You can call me names, you can call Bush names, but the fact is tonight we’re safe. We don’t have to worry about Saddam taking his weapons of mass destruction, giving them out to the terrorists, and then they coming in on the planes, or they coming in on the subways, or wherever else, blowing us up.

I am happy to say this, that I am happy tonight that I am sitting here. We can discuss this intelligently; we don’t have to worry about being blown up.

When 9/11 came we were all fat and happy just relaxing. What happened? Almost 5,000 got killed and then we started panicking. And we reacted in a panic mode. That’s not the time to react. When you’re in panic mode you can’t really react, you know. You have to be able to analyze the information in front of you. Where are the threats are coming from?

So I’m saying you know, we know that a lot of the preachers and the clergymen you know, they want to follow the scriptures and they want to read the scriptures which is fine and I respect them. I believe I am a Christian, I believe in reading the Bible, I believe in all that good stuff, yet people are still getting killed while we read the Bible, while we’re talking about it. I think Bush did the right thing.

We’re sitting here safe tonight, but there are human beings that are still being killed in Iraq. When they blew the ammunition dump in Iraq, they showed the people around from the neighborhood who had family killed because of that. And one young man’s face sticks in my mind, the anger, the hatred on his face. We’re not always going to be safe from those people.

We go over there and kill people. It starts that cycle of hatred and revenge and violence. So I don’t believe that war is the way to make ourselves safe. We need to go over and educate people, we need to help people, we need to show them that we do have the right way of life. And that means to let people have a voice, and it’s not about killing.

It’s not about killing and it’s not about war. But again, getting back to the way life is, repeating what has just been said. We’re sitting here and none of us know what it is like to have soldiers marching down the street from another country on your block. The closest I can even come to imagining is the National Guard during the L.A. riots.

Even though we’re in a situation, our country is in a situation where you know the country is split on whether it is right or whether it is wrong. I think there is a sense of obligation. David, King David in the Old Testament, had an army. Solomon had an army. Israel, for the most part has always had an army. And that army, the responsibility of that army is to protect and to serve the people. And because, if that army was not there, 9/11 would occur on a regular basis.

So sometimes, the scriptures say turn the other cheek. I’m a clergyman and I preach from the pulpit that you turn the other cheek. But you only got two cheeks and you can’t keep turning or you won’t be able to eat dinner. And so at some point you have to defend yourself. And it’s not even about yourself. Because I don’t think it is about Bush, because I don’t think Bush is worried about his family in particular. It is the people of the country.

If a strongman comes to my house, I’m going to try my best to discourage that strongman from entering into my house and doing something negative to my family. But if that strongman steps across the threshold, then we have an issue. I’m going to rise up like David’s army did in the scriptures, even though I’m a preacher. And I just think that’s the reality of life.

Several people have alluded to the scriptures and to what God has done, and I just think that we just really have underestimated the power of God in this whole thing. I mean we keep saying we have to do this, we have to do this. Well, why don’t we let God do some things?

Man has tried and tried and we have not evolved very far from Samson and his armies and everybody else’s. And I think if we give something else a chance—it is like that song, Give Peace a Chance—and give God a chance in our lives and in our communities and really live out what we keep saying we are, then we might not have so many chances to throw our weight around and show how powerful we are.

You showed us a clip of American religious leaders on American television. I wonder what is being shown on television in Saudi Arabia and in Syria. Our religious leaders say that we should engage in prayer so we won’t enrage people who might be oppressed by us. These people already want to kill us. Whatever we do around here in terms of prayer isn’t going to change that.

Let me give you an example, in terms of how that’s worked. And I use a television series as a metaphor. In Star Trek we had three classes of enemies: we had Klingons, Romulans and the Borg. Now the Klingons were the Russians, they basically were the metaphor for the cold war. Now we solved that all right. The cold war is over, the Klingons are our friends, you got a Klingon on the deck of the Star Trek Enterprise now. The Romulans are the Chinese, but when the Chinese had SARS who did they call? They called the U.S. Center for Disease Control. But the one group that Captain Picard hasn’t been able to deal with very effectively is the Borg. They’re implacable, they want to do just one thing: assimilate or die.

30:13 And radical, fundamental Islamic groups who are funded with state-sponsored terrorism have just one goal in mind, they want us to die. And all the prayer in the world isn’t going to stop that. We need something else.

I’m not a real deep thinker, but I do believe a lot of things that have been said tonight. I agree that I’m against the war, number one. I believe that we need some justification. I agree with a lot of things that David has said, with what a lot of people have said. I do believe that we do have to look back in history. And what have we learned from history and the war issue in history. The only thing I have seen, that I‘ve been involved with, a father who was in the Second World War, a husband who was in Vietnam. I’ve lived that side of the war issue. And the only thing that I’ve seen come from it is hate.

And I think as a human being, we have to look at the world differently than, I’m going to go over and annihilate whatever the problem is. I doubt that we do that when we have a war. I doubt very seriously. I believe that we create dividing lines, we create hatred for other races, for other people in the world when we go in and act as the bully. And I believe very strongly that war is not the way to go, that dialogue is the way to go.

And if we want peace in the world, we can’t talk out of this side of our mouth and say we want peace, but we are going to kill hundreds of people to do it. I just feel very strongly and I get very emotional about that issue, because, as Neldon said, when you’re watching the movies, the video clips, the result of what has been done, by anyone, us, anyone, you see the agony in human beings. And the agony and human beings is the issue.

I don’t think this is a just war. And I’m appalled that we have had a pre-emptive strike. On the other hand, if we look at Saddam Hussein he is truly one of the worst monsters the world has produced.

Despite our best efforts, and I think they have been excellent, there have been thousands of civilians that have died—more civilians than soldiers.

The issue has never been the troops that we sent over there. For me, I have always believed that they should be supported.

But where can we be? On the one hand this is a terrible man and a vicious oppression, and on the other hand we have entered into an entirely new kind of approach to foreign relations in the use of war.

I was very young in WW 2 and I remember the stories of what was happening to the Jews in Germany coming out, being made known to us and people said, “Oh it just can’t be that bad . . .”

People that age believe that we should never allow that to happen again, believe we should never allow that to happen again.

If we truly have learned anything from WW 2 . . . I think it’s mandatory that we have to move to stop that when we see it.

If we truly believe “never again,” it demands that we do something to attempt to stop it.

Why don’t we stop all evil in the entire world? And I think that’s a place where we’ve got some significant capability in American but we don’t have unlimited forces. And I think we have to really understand that the military is an instrument of national policy. And it can only be used really when there is some national interest. Now, stability of the world is in our national interest, but only when it really impacts us. And that’s a hard thing for us to face, that we can’t right every wrong in the world, regardless of how heinous that is.

During the war for independence, we wished we had allies that would have come and liberated us from the British but we had to fight our own fight.

We are the only superpower, we must make sure that we should be fair and we should stand up for all weak. My religion, Islam, teaches that if I have power I should stand up and stop evil, even if I have to do it with my own hand.

On the other hand, as much as I appreciate Iraqis being liberated, there are other places in the world where butchery goes on. In Africa, and I know hundreds of thousands of people died, Hutus and Tutsis in massacre and we just stood silently by and we didn’t do anything. I think it’s a moral obligation on us if we remember our own history that we should stand up and protect all the weak.

Is military force really the solution to the answers wherever oppression is taking place? Has it worked in Israel? Has it worked in Iraq? Has it worked in any of the places where you get a long-going conflict where it can only be suppressed by force? I don’t believe that any of our efforts, not diplomatic, not cultural exchange, not humanitarian . . .

Nowhere in our policy have we done enough that at the same time the military force is being employed that we’re also taking care of other factors. And I believe in most cases it’s wrong and I believe that the new era in the United States where we’re taking pre-emptive force it’s just wide open for abuse and for really terrible things to happen to us and the whole world.

Now we have even more damage in the world that we have to somehow attempt to try and correct. And it’s damage that we created. Maybe we made things better in the long run, but for right now, there were a lot of holes in this world to be filled before and now we have even larger work ahead of us.

This has just totally consumed me. I think it’s because I have this notion that America is a Christian nation, that America is Christian and this idea that a Christian nation would find some excuse, any excuse, to commit murder and destruction in the name of Christ. It’s just . . . I just I cannot explain. I wish I could say how much that has impacted me.

My understanding of what Christ wanted is “Love God with all your heart” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That means that when there is evil in the world, and there are bad, bad people doing horrible things, it doesn’t mean that we walk away from it or we don’t deal with it, but we deal with it in the way Christ would deal with it. And what did Christ teach us? Did Christ come to earth and say, “If you are the most powerful and if you are the strongest then you win? So get out there and get those arms and go and smash?” Or did Christ say, “That’s not what it’s about. Turn the other cheek. If your enemy is hungry feed him; if he wants your cloak, give him your cloak”? Over and over again, Christ says, 4000 years of violence to suppress violence does not work.

Christ came 2000 years ago and this America, the Christian nation, the Christian nation is doing this. We can’t come up with anything better? I mean, look at Gandhi, look at MLK, look at what happened in South Africa. It is possible to live and love. It is possible. It is possible to change the world. But we, I am just so disappointed in America that we can’t think smarter than we have done.

What are we saying to the Muslims and everybody else in the world about what it means to be a Christian?

The sports ethic in this country I suspect has leaked into the rest of our lives where we have to be number one, we have to come out on top, we have to declare ourselves winners. And unfortunately I think that presents not only the wrong attitude towards the rest of the world but leads us into dangerous territory in many parts of life.

My faith . . . says that all people are worth compassion. All people should be loved. That there is no number one and number two. There is no winner and there is no loser if you’re approaching life with compassion and with putting humanity first.

This war, like its predecessor incidentally with the other Bush in office, angered me, outraged me and caused me to fulminate to the point where I think I’ve had to monitor my blood rate and my pulse rate. I have done different things this time, though. I took part in the first peace march that I’ve ever done. . . Despite that I think it’s irrelevant, half the time. I wrote to every single one of my congressman and wrote the White House and got the typical form letters back.

I think a big part of our problem is that we inculcate in ourselves and in our children this whole idea of win--“win, win, win”-- and I don’t object to it on the sports field but when it spills out into the rest of our approach then we can’t sit back in humility and say well yes we have all this power but there’s other ways to show it than to say that we’re all powerful and dominate others.

We always I think start with the right intentions but somewhere-- I’ve seen in the past so many conflicts I’ve been here long enough-- we always tend to bungle up.

I still do not know what the national interest is. It’s always nice to be on the winning side. I started with doubts, as we started winning there, it kind of felt good. And now I’m wondering at the conclusion. It was interesting in the Wall Street Journal General Motors took a full-page ad as we were winning. You know what the ad was about—buy Humvees, buy Hummers. So are we winning the war so we can have more gasoline?

If we are number one, we have to act like number one, even at the point that we may become bankrupt.

The number one position at least scripturally says that the king may become bankrupt. But we have to have that conviction.

First we have to know what’s right. I don’t think anyone knows what is right.

I saw after September 11, for about four days, everything was fine, there were no parties; people were coming to churches, and mosques and temples. And probably the next week it was “kill, kill, kill.” BSU stadium was full; the beer was flowing. It was normal.

Charity begins at home. We’ll keep on fighting these wars until we basically change our own selves . . .

What Christ says, what Gandhi said, they all talk about not world domination. First look at your own self. How many of us have changed our lives since September 11? Except worry that “Oh, you know take your shoes off at the airport.” It requires something more than that. How many of us have sat down and read geography books, history books, appreciated other cultures? Nothing of that sort. We want our Hummers. We went from cars to SUVs, now Hummers. It is amazing. I mean 200 people died from this country, thousands from there, so we can get oil for Hummers. And that’s not what makes a big nation.

There isn’t a war to end all wars. The way to peace is not through war. The Dalai Lama said recently that war is obsolete. You may want it in your head but your heart doesn’t want it and you’re split in two if you go for war.

The national interest in this past year has been much too narrowly defined.

Winning for us means the other guy loses. And I think that is a big problem. Why does the other person have to lose? The sports metaphor, football. We know that we’ve won when they’ve lost. What about everybody staying alive? Everybody’s kids living?

I think the idea of finding a just peace rather than a just war . . . we have a department of the military. I think we’ll never make it where we’re going until we have a department of peace.

I’m thinking of Israel and Egypt. That looked at one point like it was going to be a standoff and we all know that it wasn’t.

By demilitarizing something rather than going in and crashing heads they were able to find a solution where the Egyptians were able to own the Sinai; the Israelis were able to defuse their fear of what was in the Sinai; and they didn’t go to war.

We are the country that has the most foreign students come to our schools of higher learning. I think it’s appalling that with all this brain-power we’re using fire power to solve the problems of the world.

Muslims who are living outside the US, we need to see from their angle, and the rest of the world, how they look at the US at this time.

British in India, they started occupying India by saying “We’re just here as traders and we will just leave,” and soon they were all over the place. Living here in the US, we know our country is not going to do that. But that’s us. It’s just like family. We know our family, but it’s the outside world that does not know the family.

I go to church more than one day a week and I do not think this is a just war. And I think there are other ways to do what needed to be done.

And I really think that you’re talking about a minority number of Christians, very vocal ones, and the ones that put the present regime in power. I think that people, Christians like myself have been very quiet, too quiet. That’s my problem—that I’ve been too quiet.

War is hell. Nobody in their right mind wants war. It’s a horrible thing to happen. It’s a horrible thing to be involved with. It’s a horrible thing to be looking at a gun that’s pointed at you and you have to make a decision. But sometimes those decisions have to be made. I look at the war in Iraq and I’m appalled at the peace marchers. Why am I appalled? Because I think we had a good possibility of removing Saddam Hussein from power without firing a shot. But France would not allow us to do it. And then we got all kinds of disruptions within our own country. Now the lady here said that we are a Christian nation. But I would debate that. We are more Christian now than before 9/11, but when I see what comes out of Hollywood . . .

God is behind all of this. Whether we want to accept the idea or not. You know, people talk about the Bible. They say, well I don’t believe the Bible. OK, don’t believe the Bible. But believe in the man who the Bible was about who changed the world forever. And that world is changed. Did everything go right for him? So it’s not all going to go perfect.

I’d love to see the draft back. What has happened to our young people since the draft went away? What has happened to our schools? We kicked out prayer in the school. We kicked out the Ten Commandments. We wonder why our morals went to pot. And that’s what’s driving our nation.

This is not a Christian nation. We’re made up of lots of faiths. And so we didn’t attack the Muslims. We attacked Iraq and Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard.

I heard several people talk about peace as a method of attaining righteousness or whatever. No, I think peace is an end. Peace is not a method. If Gandhi or Mandela or the Dalai Lama had tried their techniques in Iraq or in the Soviet Union and tried to use peace as a method, they’d be dead.

Knowing that my brother is over there until at least this August. There’s something to be said that my brother is not a warmonger. But he thought the GI bill was his way to an education. He’s a much better accountant than he is a shooter.

I feel as an American, as a Christian, the only thing I have to do is give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but past that, everything else goes to the Lord. And that means banding together and doing everything I can towards peace. And that means if there is a walkout on campus, I’m walking out.

I say that we have to become more vocal.

I’m trying to make a movement that says there is a large group of Christians that are willing to be loud, that are willing to say hey, there are many things that we can do other than this war. Let’s get my brother back to accounting and less on the shooting.

As being a Muslim American, I do realize that we are guests. We have been invited in and we have to learn to live with the family.

What is more important is what happens now in Iraq, after the war is over. Franklin Graham is going into Iraq with a bunch of Bibles and hand them with gifts from the real Christian people.

What is going happen now is going to be the test of our intentions. If we continue . . . our actions actually have to speak louder than our words. If we are there and do what our leaders have said they will do-—hand the power back to the democratically elected government of Iraqis, ruled and governed by Iraqis. We can oversee it and leave. Let the people have their resources. Let them figure out their differences and let them choose their own leaders. Then we won, folks. We did what we promised that we will. Now, once we are there and we start looking around and saying, “Now we have been here, now we have to expand,” we will be doubted, all over. Our intentions will be doubted. And as Americans we will look bad, because it is our government that we have elected and voted, and that these people have told us a tall tale. And that the end result is what they wanted, not we wanted. And we all lose.

We just don’t want other people’s land. I’m convinced of that.