To the Editor:
“You must live your values,” General David Petraeus admonished the full house at the Student Life Center on Monday evening. “If you don’t live your values," he said, "you’re going to pay for it in the long run.”
These are good words that beg hard questions: What values is the United States living in its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? What values are our soldiers living as they fight, kill and die in lands far from home? What values is Congress living as it commits nearly 57 percent of our federal budget to military spending (and four percent on education)? What values is the leadership of the U.S. military living as it continues to view the death of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan simply as collateral damage, not even worthy of keeping count?
From the vantage point of this student, the values that the United States is living in its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are arrogance, hypocrisy and fear. The U.S. entered Iraq under false pretense (remember those weapons of mass destruction) and in violation of international law. The U.S.’s long history in Afghanistan is one of convenient alliances made without concern for the freedom of the Afghan people or their capacity for self-governance. Both wars have seen uninhibited profiteering by U.S. based and multi-national corporations as well as the employment of mercenary armies such as Xe. Clothed in language of freedom and democracy Petraeus, and the military he represents, have executed a policy based on fear, misrepresentation and an uncritical posture of U.S. dominance on the world stage.
My concerns about the living out of these values are deeply personal. My younger brother Jesse is currently deployed in the Maysan province of Iraq at Forward Operating Base Hunter. He doesn’t love killing or violence. He believes that he is simply doing his duty. However, I am concerned for Jesse, concerned about the values that he is living during his deployment, concerned about which of those values he will carry home with him. Will he, like so many of his peers, come home with the lingering effects of physical or mental wounds such as post-traumatic stress disorder? Even if he is not visibly changed, how will his life and values be deformed by the national sin in which he participates?
For Jesse’s sake, and for the sake of those across the globe impacted by the reach of U.S. imperialism, I must echo Dr. Martin Luther King’s call for a revolution of values. In his speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” King said, “A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.”
The reality is that the United States is paying for its failure to live such ecumenical values from the time King’s uttered his prophetic words in 1967 until today. Petraeus helpfully, though inadvertently, reminds us of this harsh reality.
End the wars! Bring our troops home! Let us learn to live the values of peace.
Kyle Lambelet
Masters of Theological Studies Candidate
Vanderbilt Divinity School
