Who Are We?

The Rev. Harold E. Masback III (New Canaan Congregational Church, 6 June 2004)

Skip Masback, senior pastor of The Congregational Church in New Canaan, Connecticut, is a member of the Advisory Council and the National Working Group of the Faith as a Way of Life project.

We gather this morning bracketed by our observances of Memorial Day and the 60th anniversary of D-Day. We gather to worship God as we remember with gratitude and sorrow the lives sacrificed by hundreds of thousands of men and women in the name of our nation’s highest ideals, ideals enshrined in the national hymns we sing in their honor this morning. [1] But we also gather shadowed by yesterday’s headlines that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reports that the “willful killing, torture and inhuman treatment” of prisoners by Americans is a “grave breach of international law” and may call for international war crimes tribunal review. [2] It is not a frivolous charge. The homicides, torture, extreme mental distress, and sexual assaults of men, women and children already acknowledged in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo [3] are prima facie violations of the Geneva Conventions; [4] the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; [5] the Nuremberg Principles; [6] and our own federal criminal law. [7] As Robert H. Jackson, our Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg, said at the commencement of those trials: “While this law is first applied against German aggressors, if it is to serve any useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment.” [8]

Our president has said the incidents of torture do not show “the true nature and heart of America,” [9] and we all hope and believe he is right, but the juxtaposition of events does raise the question: Who are we as a people? What is our true “nature and heart,” our national character? And is our character established by the ideals we profess or by our daily conduct in the push and pull of a dangerous world? In what we sing or in what we do?

Who are we? I used to think I knew. We were, just as we pledged, “one nation under God … with liberty and justice for all.” [10] Just as we sang, “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” [11] And our heroes “Who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life!” [12] And “Sweet land of liberty,” [13] “Land of the noble free.” [14] Just as we read our history of America patiently negotiating for peace while Japan treacherously launched preemptive war. Just as we watched movies of Nazis torturing our POW’s at Stalag 17, [15] but of South Dakota moms baking fresh pies for the German POW’s living in local camps. [16] Or Spencer Tracy, playing an American Judge in Judgment at Nuremberg, lecturing the defendants as he lectured the world: “A country is not a rock. … It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is most difficult. … Before the people of the world, let it be now noted that, here in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human life.” [17]

Who are we? We learned listening to our parents’ stories. My wife’s dad, Fred Maxted, was a Captain in Patton’s Third Army, 6th Armored Division. Fred tells of fighting to liberate Pont-A-Moussin when his rifle was clogged with mud, his command post was hit, and his general was killed. Fred gave his rifle to an orderly to clean and ran to keep up with his unit unarmed. Suddenly, he spotted a broom stick with a white flag waving from a basement window: Germans wanting to surrender. Fred waved for them to come out; but as 2, 5, 10, 20 started to emerge, all armed, he realized that the evolving dynamic was a bit awkward, so Fred backtracked to get enough help to at least appear able to guard the surrendering Germans, before arranging transfer, food and water. Wounded three times and fighting through the bitter cold and heavy losses of the Battle of the Bulge, Fred saw thousands of German prisoners. But as long as an American officer was in charge, Fred knew there wouldn’t be any “mistreatment monkey business.”

So, who are we? Are we Fred Maxted or Charles Grainer? Are we a people who stand by principles of “truth, justice and the value of one human life” even while losing hundreds of thousands of lives fighting Germany and Japan? [18] Or are we a people who believe that the 3,000 lives lost tragically on 9/11 mean the gloves and all bets are off? [19] Are we President George Herbert Walker Bush, who said, “we have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations, a new world order a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations”? [20] Or are we current White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who called the Geneva Conventions “obsolete” and “quaint”? [21]

Who are we? And does the answer lie in what we profess and sing, or does it lie in what we stand for when “standing for something is most difficult”? Today’s scripture lesson from the David and Bathsheba story points us to a God’s-eye perspective on the answer. [22]

As the Bible tells us over and over, David was a good man, a noble king, God’s anointed, God’s partner in covenant. [23] Today’s story makes clear that David was blessed by God, showered with divine protection and aid, blessings that gave David unrivalled wealth and power. [24] Yet, for all the stake the Bible has in the memory and reputation of one of its greatest heroes, the Bible is honest enough to recall David’s human flaws. It pays the high price of memorializing David’s flaws so as to teach four eternal lessons, lessons that go straight to our character questions of the morning. First, like all human beings, we are vulnerable to temptation. The David story establishes again the Biblical view of human nature: both blessed and flawed, subject to the temptations of a fallen world. Second, Divine and human law protect us from these temptations. In the story we see that David’s better nature would have been safeguarded by adherence to God’s commandments. Third, when great power and wealth move us to set aside confining laws, we suffer for it. God’s blessings are no warrant for lowering the guard rails that protect us. Fourth, when people of faith hear truth, they turn their lives around. David repents because Nathan confronts him with his transgression.

First, the David story establishes once again that we are, all of us, individually and collectively, both blessed with God’s love and encumbered by our human limitations. Genesis is right when it says God made us “in the image of God,” [25] but it’s also right when it says, “the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.” [26] Psalm 8 is right when it says God made us only “a little lower than God, and crowned [us] with glory and honor;” [27] but Paul is also right when he says we all “have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” [28] Neither David nor America escape the consequences of this mixed nature, particularly when stressed by the horrors of war or the temptations of sex.

Who are we? We are a nation of humans, blessed and limited like all humans. Our soldiers fight in searing heat, with little sleep, surrounded by lethal danger and an unfamiliar culture. It is inevitable that the full range of human capacities will be sorely provoked. [29]

Second, and most importantly, the better angels of our nature are best fortified against these provocations and temptations by divine law, human law, and regard for neighbor. But it is precisely these guard rails that are weakened when we achieve great power or wealth. Seduced by our own rationalizations and the sycophants around us, we begin to imagine ourselves above the constraints of God or neighbor. We mistake God’s blessings for a blank check to do as we will.

As God said to mighty Babylon through Isaiah, “You felt secure in your wickedness, you said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me.’” [30] Just so, David no longer feels constrained by God’s commandments against adultery or murder. [31]

Who are we? We are the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world, inevitably struggling with enormous temptations and rationalizations to be a law and power unto ourselves, unbound by treaty or convention. [32] It is never hard to find a lawyer ready to shade and tweak the meaning of words, particularly if the great solvent of “National Security” can be invoked. [33]

Third, notwithstanding our imaginings, God’s blessings provide no warrant simply to do as we will, and violating God’s ways and laws always brings painful consequences. David’s son by Bathsheba dies, and his dynasty is riven with conflict. [34] As evidenced by Psalm 51, David learns that divine blessing comes not because God bends his will to ours, but because we bend our will to God’s. Repenting, David pleads, “Restore me to the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.” [35]

Who are we? We are a nation blessed only as and to the extent that we seek and follow God’s will. The Battle Hymn of the Republic reminds us that God “is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat” and urges, “O be swift, my soul, to answer him; be jubilant, my feet!” My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, defers in the end to “Great God our King.” O Beautiful for Spacious Skies prays that America would “confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.” During the most desperate days of the Civil War an admirer assured Abraham Lincoln that God was on his side. Dismissing this dangerous heresy, President Lincoln replied, “It is more important that we should be on God’s side.” [36]

Finally, David repents only because he is called to account by God’s prophet Nathan, who confronts his sovereign with the limits and responsibilities of sovereignty. Nathan lances David’s presumptions and rationalizations and prompts David’s soul-searching repentance, right in the middle of the war with Ammonites. David responds simply and directly, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He returns to his path of faith and the covenant is maintained. [37]

Who are we? For all the glories and blessings of our history, we are this season a nation in need of repentance, for our nation has fallen short both of God’s laws and man’s. And it will not do to dismiss this pattern of homicide, torture and rape as the frat pranks of a few. [38] Nor will it do to merely follow the trail ascending from rank to rank, from Corporal, to Colonel, to Brigadier General, to Lieutenant General, to the Pentagon or wherever it leads, [39] for virtually all of us own our own little piece of this unfortunate business.

Speaking only for myself, I wrung my hands when I saw those Guantanamo prisoners being frog marched in sensory deprivation torture devices, [40] corralled in chain link cages under the Cuban sun. I winced when I read clever legal distinctions rolled out to wriggle out of one treaty constraint after another. I bit my lip when I read our own Secretary of Defense dismiss early complaints about our treatment of prisoners as “isolated pockets of international hyperventilation.” [41] I wrung my hands, I winced, and I bit my lip, but I did nothing. In my heart, I knew better, but maybe “desperate times call for desperate measures,” “perhaps the madness would pass,” and anyway, I was busy.

Who are we? If we are to live out the goodness we sing about, than, like David, we must have the faith, and the integrity, and the courage to repent. O Beautiful for Spacious Skies prays, “America, America, God mend thine every flaw.” [42] We must repent because it is the way of God; and we must repent because it is only by living out the highest ideals of our creed and hymn that we will prevail over those who attack us. [43] As Erasmus wrote in 1516, “We shall better overcome the Turks by the piety of our lives than by arms: the empire of Christianity will thus be defended by the same means by which it was originally established.” [44]

And if that sounds a bit too antique and pious for our modern, secular world, than consider one of President Reagan’s favorite and oft-repeated quotations: “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers — and it was not there … in her fertile fields and boundless forests — and it was not there … in her rich mines and her vast world commerce — and it was not there … in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution — and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” [45] May God bless America. Amen.

Notes

[1] Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe/William Steffe (1861); My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, Samuel Smith (1832); Once to Every Man and Nation, James Russell Lowell (1845); O Beautiful for Spacious Skies, Katharine Lee Bates (1904).

[2] Warren Hoge, “U.N. Rights Chief Says Prison Abuse May Be War Crime,” New York Times, at A6 (June 5, 2004).

[3] See, e.g., Executive Summary of Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba: “Findings and Recommendations. … I make the following specific findings of fact: … 5. That between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses of detainees were intentionally perpetrated … [including] a. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; b. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; c. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; … h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture … k. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee.” See also Christopher Cooper, “Pentagon Reviews Detainee Deaths: Cases of 33 Are Indication That Abu Ghraib Abuse Wasn’t Isolated Situation,” Wall Street Journal, A3 (May 24, 2004): “The Pentagon acknowledged that it is reviewing the deaths of 33 detainees captured in Iraq and Afghanistan, including nine homicides. Of the nine, three in Afghanistan and six in Iraq, most appear to have come as a result of beatings, according to death certificates released by the Pentagon. A senior Pentagon military official said most of the beatings appear to have been delivered during interrogations. One death, involving a senior Iraqi general, was the apparent result of strangulation, the report says …. Of the homicides, six note “blunt force injuries.” The death certificate for the former Iraqi Army Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush says he died of “asphyxia, due to smothering and chest compression.”

[4] The four Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War, dated August 12, 1949, were ratified by the United States on July 14, 1955. These are the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, 6 U.S.T. 3115 (“Geneva Convention I”); the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of the Armed Forces at Sea, 6 U.S.T. 3219 (“Geneva Convention II”); the Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 6 U.S.T. 3517 (“Geneva Convention III”); and the Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 6 U.S.T. 3317 (“Geneva Convention IV”). Geneva Convention III, Part I, Article 3 prohibits, inter alia: “(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced ….” General Convention III, Part III, Section 1, Article 17 provides: “No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.” Geneva Convention III, Part VI, Section 1, Article 127 provides: “The High Contracting Parties undertake, in time of peace as in time of war, to disseminate the text of the present Convention as widely as possible in their respective countries, and, in particular, to include the study thereof in their programmes of military and, if possible, civil instruction, so that the principles thereof may become known to all their armed forces and to the entire population.” Geneva Convention IV, Part I, Article 3 (1) prohibits: “(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court.” Geneva Convention IV, Part IV, Section 1, Article 147 provides: “Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person ….”

[5] The United Nations Convention Against Torture or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, G.A. Res. 39/46, 39 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 51) at 197, U.N. DOC. A/39/51 (1984) (ratified by the United States effective November 20, 1994, 18 U.S.C. Sections 2340, 2340A(a)) provides, inter alia: “Article 1: For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.” Part I, Article 2 provides: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” Part I, Article 10.1 provides: “Each State Party shall ensure that education and information regarding the prohibition against torture are fully included in the training of law enforcement personnel, civil or military, medical personnel, public officials and other persons who may be involved in the custody, interrogation or treatment of any individual subjected to any form of arrest, detention or imprisonment.”

[6] The Nuremberg Principles, August 8, 1945. Principle VI, b. War Crimes, defines “war crimes” as: “Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave-labour or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.” Principle VII provides: “Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.”

[7] War Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. 2441 (Supp. III 1997) (“WCA”). ”Sec. 2441. – War crimes, (a) Offense. – Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death. (b) Circumstances. – The circumstances referred to in subsection (a) are that the person committing such war crime or the victim of such war crime is a member of the Armed Forces of the United States or a national of the United States (as defined in section 101 of the Immigration and Nationality Act). (c) Definition. – As used in this section the term ”war crime” means any conduct – (1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party; (2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907; (3) which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party and which deals with non-international armed conflict; or (4) of a person who, in relation to an armed conflict and contrary to the provisions of the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended at Geneva on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996), when the United States is a party to such Protocol, willfully kills or causes serious injury to civilians.”

[8] Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression, Volume I, Chapter VII, Office of the United States Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1946. Opening Address for the United States, Robert Jackson, pg. 173. See also President Harry S. Truman, “Message to the Congress Transmitting First Annual Report on U.S. Participation in the United Nations” (February 5, 1947): “We cannot have lasting peace unless a genuine rule of world law is established and enforced.”

[9] “Remarks by President Bush and His Majesty King Abdullah II of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” (May 6, 2004): “I told him I was equally sorry that people who have been seeing those pictures didn’t understand the true nature and heart of America.”

[10] “I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Written by Francis Bellamy in 1892. Included in the United States Flag Code by Congress on June 22, 1942.

[11] The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe/William Steffe (1861).

[12] O Beautiful for Spacious Skies, Katharine Lee Bates (1904).

[13] My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, Samuel Smith (1832).

[14] My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, Samuel Smith (1832).

[15] Stalag 17, Paramount Pictures (1953).

[16] See, e.g., “POWs Save a Bridge” (pie baking for a POW camp in South Dakota). See also stories regarding POW camps in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Nebraska and Utah.

[17] Judgment at Nuremberg, United Artists (1961). (Spencer Tracy’s character was Judge Dan Haywood.)

[18] 292,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines were killed in battle in WWII. See Table 523 of the Statistical Abstract. The United States and its allies confronted a global attack by German armed forces that included 10,200,000 men and Japanese armed forces that included 6,050,000 men. See “Armed Forces Peak Strengths and Battle Deaths of the Axis Powers” (Table 3). German armed forces alone arrayed more than 119,000 aircraft (including 18,000 bombers) and more than 47,724 tanks against the United States and its allies. See, e.g., “World War Two Aircraft Production”; “German Armored Fighting Vehicle Production During World War II”; “German Aircraft Production During WW2.”

[19] A total of 3,030 people lost their lives as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon and the crash of United Airlines flight 93 on September 11, 2001. CNN and Reuters. Al Qaeda force numbers are necessarily difficult to estimate, but they may include less than 300 formal members and no more than “several thousand” affiliated fighters. See, e.g., Peter Bergen, “The Dense Web of Al Qaeda,” Washington Post, December 25, 2003: “Most non-specialists are surprised to learn that al Qaeda has only 200 to 300 members. These are men who have sworn bayat, an oath of allegiance to serve their emir, or leader, bin Laden, even unto death. (It is al Qaeda, the organization, that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.) The second concentric ring spreading out beyond the inner core of al Qaeda consists of perhaps several thousand ‘holy warriors’ trained in the group’s Afghan camps in the terrorist black arts of bomb making and assassination …. Some attacks will continue to be planned by the terrorist organization itself, others will be carried out by affiliate groups acting in the name of al Qaeda and additional operations will be executed by local jihadists who have little or no direct connection to al Qaeda. The last is perhaps the most worrisome development, because it suggests that al Qaeda has successfully turned itself from an organization into a mass movement — one that has been energized by the war in Iraq.”

[20] President George H. W. Bush, “Address to the Nation Announcing Allied Military Action in the Persian Gulf” (January 16, 1991): “This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order — a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful — and we will be — we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.’s founders.”

[21] Alberto Gonzales, “Memorandum to the President,” quoted in Newsweek (May 16, 2004): “In my judgment, this new paradigm [of war] renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

[22] 2 Samuel 11:1–12:15: 1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. 2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. 3 David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. 5 The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.” 6 So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. 10 When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” 11 Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.” 12 Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, 13 David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house. 14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.” 16 As Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant warriors. 17 The men of the city came out and fought with Joab; and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite was killed as well. 18 Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting; 19 and he instructed the messenger, “When you have finished telling the king all the news about the fighting, 20 then, if the king’s anger rises, and if he says to you, ‘Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? 21 Who killed Abimelech son of Jerubbaal? Did not a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead too.’ ” 22 So the messenger went, and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. 23 The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us, and came out against us in the field; but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. 24 Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall; some of the king’s servants are dead; and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.” 25 David said to the messenger, “Thus you shall say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another; press your attack on the city, and overthrow it.’ And encourage him.” 26 When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. 27 When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. 1 But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had very many flocks and herds; 3 but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. 4 Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.” 5 Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; 6 he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” 7 Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; 8 I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. 9 Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. 11 Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. 12 For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.” 13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan said to David, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die.” 15 Then Nathan went to his house.

[23] 2 Samuel 7:8–13: 8 Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; 9 and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11 from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. 12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

[24] 2 Samuel 12:7–8: 7 Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; 8 I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more.”

[25] Genesis 1:27: So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.

[26] Genesis 8:21: And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.”

[27] Psalm 8:5: Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.

[28] Romans 3:23: since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

[29] See John Schwartz, “Fine Line Between ‘Normal’ and ‘Monster’ ’71 Simulation Turned College Students into Guards, Prisoners for Two Weeks,” New York Times, May 6, 2004: “In 1971 researchers at Stanford University created a simulated prison in the basement of the campus psychology building. They randomly assigned 24 students to be either prison guards or prisoners for two weeks. Within days the ‘guards’ had become swaggering and sadistic, to the point of placing bags over the prisoners’ heads, forcing them to strip naked and encouraging them to perform sexual acts …. Professor Zimbardo, who supervised the experiment, said he was not surprised by the prison abuse in Iraq: ‘It’s not that we put bad apples in good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything it touches.’ Craig W. Haney, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was one of the lead researchers in the Stanford experiment, says prison abuses can be prevented by regular training and discipline, along with outside monitoring.”

[30] Isaiah 47:10–11; see also Ezekiel 28:1–6: 1 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 Mortal, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord God: Because your heart is proud and you have said, ‘I am a god; I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,’ yet you are but a mortal, and no god, though you compare your mind with the mind of a god. 3 You are indeed wiser than Daniel; no secret is hidden from you; 4 by your wisdom and your understanding you have amassed wealth for yourself, and have gathered gold and silver into your treasuries. 5 By your great wisdom in trade you have increased your wealth, and your heart has become proud in your wealth. 6 Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you compare your mind with the mind of a god, therefore, I will bring strangers against you, the most terrible of the nations; they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendor.

[31] See Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941), I, 16: “[Man’s] essence is free-self-determination. His sin is the wrong use of his freedom and its consequent destruction …. Man is an animal but he is not self-sufficing. The law of his nature is love, a harmonious relation of life to life in obedience to the divine center and source of his life. This law is violated when man seeks to make himself the center and source of his own life. His sin is therefore spiritual and not carnal, though the infection of rebellion spreads from the spirit to the body and disturbs its harmonies also. Man, in other words, is a sinner not because he is betrayed by his very ability to survey the whole to imagine himself whole …. Human self-consciousness is a high tower looking upon a large and inclusive world. It vainly imagines that it is the large world which it beholds and not a narrow tower insecurely erected amidst the shifting sands of the world”; Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (1952, Scribners reprint 1985), Chapter 7, “The American Future,” Part V: “The American situation is such a vivid symbol of the spiritual perplexities of modern man, because the degree of American power tends to generate illusions to which a technocratic culture is already too prone. This technocratic approach to problems of history, which erroneously equates the mastery of nature with the mastery of historical destiny, in turn accentuates a very old failing in human nature: the inclination of the wise, or the powerful, or the virtuous, to obscure and deny the human imitations in all human achievements …. Since the lives and interests of other men and communities always impinge upon our own, a preoccupation with our own interests must lead to an illegitimate indifference toward the interests of others, even when modesty prompts the preoccupation. The cure for a pretentious idealism, which claims to know more about the future and about other men than is given mortal man to know, is not egotism. It is a concern for both the self and the other in which the self, whether individual or collective, preserves a ‘decent respect for the opinions of mankind,’ derived from a modest awareness of the limits of its own knowledge and power.”

[32] But God warns through Jeremiah, “Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:22–26).

[33] See, e.g., Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, “Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn’t Bind Bush,” New York Times, June 8, 2004, A1: “A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting anti torture or by any federal anti-torture law because: … ‘In order to respect the president’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign [the prohibitions against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority.’ Similarly, an interrogator would not be liable if he ‘has a good faith belief his actions will not result in prolonged mental harm, [because] he lacks the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute torture.’ Even intentional torture may not be illegal if the interrogator ‘believed at the moment that his act is necessary and designed to avoid greater harm.’”

[34] 2 Samuel 12:15–19: 15 The Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became very ill. 16 David therefore pleaded with God for the child; David fasted, and went in and lay all night on the ground. 17 The elders of his house stood beside him, urging him to rise from the ground; but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. 18 On the seventh day the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead; for they said, “While the child was still alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us; how then can we tell him the child is dead? He may do himself some harm.” 19 But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, he perceived that the child was dead; and David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?” They said, “He is dead.”

[35] Psalm 51:12.

[36] Abraham Lincoln, reply to a deputation of Southerners during the Civil War.

[37] 2 Samuel 12:13: David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan said to David, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.”

[38] But see Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show (May 4, 2004): “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of a need to blow some steam off?”

[39] Corporal Charles Grainer, in charge of Wing 1A at Abu Ghraib; Brigadier General Janice Karpinsky, head of the 800th Military Police Brigade, responsible for prisons in Iraq; Colonel Thomas M. Pappas, Commander of the 205th MI Brigade and the Commander of FOB Abu Ghraib; Lieutenant General Richaro Sanchez, commander of Joint Task Force 7. See Jonathan D. Tepperman, “An American in The Hague,” New York Times (June 10, 2004), A27 (Mr. Tepperman is senior editor at Foreign Affairs magazine): “Under the doctrine of command responsibility, officials can be held accountable for war crimes committed by their subordinates even if they did not order them — so long as they had control over the perpetrators, had reason to know about the crimes and did not stop them or punish the criminals. This doctrine is the product of an American initiative [at Nuremberg] …. Moreover, the abuses seem to have been more than isolated actions. Instead, they now appear to be part of an explicit policy of coercive interrogations conducted around the globe and supported by Justice Department and White House lawyers, who argued in 2002 and 2003 that the Geneva Conventions and other domestic and international bans on torture did not apply in these cases.”

[40] See Mark Bowden, “The Dark Art of Interrogation,” The Atlantic, 8–9: “A 1963 CIA manual on interrogation called the Kubark Manual cites a 1954 study of sensory deprivation suffering at the National Institute of Mental Health: The sensory deprivation subjects both passed quickly from normally directed thinking through a tension resulting from unsatisfied hunger for sensory stimuli and concentration upon the few available sensations to provide reveries and fantasies and eventually to visual imagery somewhat resembling hallucinations. John Marks reported in his book that in a similar experiment a volunteer kicked his way out of sensory-deprivation box after an hour of tearful pleas for release had been ignored. The summary of another experiment concluded, ‘The results confirmed earlier findings. 1) The deprivation of sensory stimuli induces stress; 2) the stress becomes unbearable for most subjects; 3) the subject has a growing need for physical and social stimuli; and 4) some subjects progressively lose touch with reality, focus inwardly, and produce delusions, hallucinations, and other pathological effects.’”

[41] “High Taliban Official in U.S. Custody,” USA Today (February 9, 2002): “Rumsfeld complained of ‘isolated pockets of international hyperventilation … ’ Secretary Rumsfeld referred to critics who reacted strongly to an official Defense Department photograph of newly arrived prisoners kneeling on the ground and wearing earmuffs and blacked-out goggles …. ‘The newspaper headlines that yelled, “Torture! What’s next? Electrodes?” and all of this rubbish (were) so inexcusable that it does make one wonder why we put out any photographs, if that’s the way they’re going to be treated, so irresponsibly,’ he said.” “We do not treat detainees in any other manner than a manner that is humane” (Pentagon Press Briefing, February 8, 2002).

[42] O Beautiful for Spacious Skies, Katherine Lee Bates (1893): “O beautiful for pilgrim feet, / Whose stern, impassioned stress / A thoroughfare for freedom beat / Across the wilderness! / America! America! / God mend thine every flaw, / Confirm thy soul in self-control, / Thy liberty in law!”

[43] See Donald P. Gregg, “Fight Fire with Compassion,” New York Times (June 10, 2004), A27 (Ambassador Gregg was national security adviser to George H. W. Bush from 1982 to 1988 and ambassador to Korea from 1989 to 1993; he worked for the C.I.A for 30 years and lectures active C.I.A. officers annually): “Recent reports indicate that Bush administration lawyers, in their struggles to deal with terrorism, wrote memos in 2003 pushing aside longstanding prohibitions on the use of torture by Americans. These memos cleared the way for the horrors that have been revealed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo and make a mockery of administration assertions that a few misguided enlisted personnel perpetrated the vile abuse of prisoners. I can think of nothing that can more devastatingly undercut America’s standing in the world or, more important, our view of ourselves, than these decisions. Sanctioned abuse is deeply corrosive — just ask the French, who are still seeking to eradicate the stain on their honor that resulted from the deliberate use of torture in Algeria …. As Alistaire Horne put it in ‘A Savage War of Peace,’ use of torture may have won the battle of Algiers for the French, but it cost them Algeria.”

[44] Desiderius Erasmus. See also Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (1952, Scribners reprint 1985), Chapter 7, Parts 4–5; Chapter 8, Part 3:

The fact that the European nations, more accustomed to the tragic vicissitudes of history, still have a measure of misgiving about our leadership in the world community is due to their fear that our “technocratic” tendency to equate the mastery of nature with the mastery of history could tempt us to lose patience with the tortuous course of history. We might be driven to hysteria by its inevitable frustrations. We might be tempted to bring the whole of modern history to a tragic conclusion by one final and mighty effort to overcome its frustrations. The political term for such an effort is “preventive war.” It is not an immediate temptation; but it could become so in the next decade or two.

A democracy can not of course, engage in an explicit preventive war. But military leadership can heighten crises to the point where war becomes unavoidable.

The power of such a temptation to a nation, long accustomed to expanding possibilities and only recently subjected to frustration, is enhanced by the spiritual aberrations which arise in a situation of intense enmity. The certainty of the foe’s continued intransigence seems to be the only fixed fact in an uncertain future. Nations find it even more difficult than individuals to preserve sanity when confronted with a resolute and unscrupulous foe. Hatred disturbs all residual serenity of spirit and vindictiveness muddles every pool of sanity. In the present situation even the sanest of our statesmen have found it convenient to conform their policies to the public temper of fear and hatred which the most vulgar of our politicians have generated or exploited. Our foreign policy is thus threatened with a kind of apoplectic rigidity and inflexibility. Constant proof is required that the foe is hated with sufficient vigor. Unfortunately the only persuasive proof seems to be the disavowal of precisely those discriminate judgments which are so necessary for an effective conflict with the evil, which we are supposed to abhor. There is no simple triumph over this spirit of fear and hatred. It is certainly an achievement beyond the resources of a simple idealism. For naive idealists are always so preoccupied with their own virtues that they have no residual awareness of the common characteristics in all human foibles and frailties and could not bear to be reminded that there is a hidden kinship between the vices of even the most vicious and the virtues of even the most upright.

The American situation is such a vivid symbol of the spiritual perplexities of modern man, because the degree of American power tends to generate illusions to which a technocratic culture is already too prone. This technocratic approach to problems of history, which erroneously equates the mastery of nature with the mastery of historical destiny, in turn accentuates a very old failing in human nature: the inclination of the wise, or the powerful, or the virtuous, to obscure and deny the human limitations in all human achievements and pretensions ….

We do, to be sure, face a problem which Lincoln did not face. We cannot say, “Both sides read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” We are dealing with a conflict between contending forces which have no common presuppositions. But even in this situation it is very dangerous to define the struggle as one between a God-fearing and a godless civilization. The communists are dangerous not because they are godless but because they have a god (the historical dialectic) who, or which, sanctifies their aspiration and their power as identical with the ultimate purposes of life. We on the other, as all “God-fearing” men of all ages, are never safe against the temptation of claiming God too simply as the sanctifier of whatever we most fervently desire. Even the most “Christian” civilization and even the most pious church must be reminded that the true God can be known only where there is some awareness of a contradiction between divine and human purposes, even on the highest level of human aspirations.

There is, in short, even in a conflict with a foe with whom we have little in common the possibility and necessity of living in a dimension of meaning in which the urgencies of the struggle are subordinate to a sense of awe before the vastness of the historical drama in which we are jointly involved; to a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom and power available to us for the resolution of its perplexities; to a sense of contrition about the common human frailties and foibles which lie at the foundation of both the enemy’s demonry and our vanities; and to a sense of gratitude for the divine mercies which are promised to those who humble themselves

Strangely enough, none of the insights derived from this faith are finally contradictory to our purpose and duty of preserving our civilization. They are, in fact, prerequisites for saving it. For if we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.

[45] Attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his final campaign address in Boston, Massachusetts, November 3, 1952. See also www.tocqueville.org’s citation of The Weekly Standard, November 13, 1995, where it cites Ronald Reagan as using the quotation, inter alia, in speeches in 1982 and 1984 and Bill Clinton using the quotation in a speech in 1994.