Living Wittily

Peace Envoys or Peace-Makers?

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Image545113x_2  I confess to being puzzled, perplexed, bemused, bewildered as to how I should feel that Britain’s outgoing Prime Minister should be appointed (by whom? by the US???) to be a peace envoy in the Middle East. How does someone who has never fully explained a decision to go to war, has never expressed regret or conceded error of judgement in such a decision, has no unquestioned legal authority for such a catastrophic act of international fight-picking, did so under the influence of / in response to / in collaboration with, the American President and Administration, who now appoint him as a peace envoy – how does that work?????

What about goodwill, integrity, honesty, humility, understanding of the OTHER, as characteristics of the envoy? And shouldn’t those to whom such a person is sent, have some evidence that such an envoy is not coming to serve their own, or their own side’s interests? How do they trust, even talk to, a person who has shown no public independence of thought from the US view on Iraq, the Israeli hammering of the Lebanese and has done little more than speak shoulder shrugging platitudes about the Palestinian question? And who comes as a US messenger?

Sw70031 I am committed to peace – I’m prepared to support every initiative that might bring peace about, that offers an alternative to war. I will pray for all patient peace-makers, all persuasive peace-seekers, all political peace-envoys, all persistent peace-prayers. I believe that words and human relationships are always preferable to shock and awe – but I just wonder what the peoples of the Middle East make of a man who as Prime Minister declared war on the flimsiest of evidence, and has never conceded such, as the West’s best hope for ending the horrors of Iraq, Israel and Palestine? Sometimes the hardest part of following Jesus today, is knowing what to pray for in a world already scarily complex, made more ethically and politically complicated by dualities of language, action and motive. I genuinely don’t understand what is going on here.

The Lord’s Prayer helps though…..your Kingdom, come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven….and that means Iraq and all its people. 

Christ have mercy

Lord have mercy

Christ have mercy, Amen

Comments

4 responses to “Peace Envoys or Peace-Makers?”

  1. Eric Stoddart avatar
    Eric Stoddart

    War and peace are subsidary industries; complex economic and political systems interlinked at local, national and transnational levels. The list of participants is extensive including, for example, the US government, multinational oil and construction congolmerates, mercenaries/commerical security companies, the EU, UK, Russia and any number of other governments, the UN, etc. Grass-roots peace movements have their part to play but they’re not ones who hold the power (i.e. the finances) to wage war and peace. As much as I think that grass-roots peace movements merit support the unpalatable reality is that war/peace is negotiated in the maelstorm of competing and supporting relationships between states and multinational business – perhaps with a bit of gangsterism in the mix too. A ‘peace envoy’ who is not accepted by a strategic combination of these interests is a non-starter. Tony Blair, if he gets confirmed in the post, is part of this system. In this sense his appointment is no surprise. At the same time, his membership of the ‘war/peace club’ could be used to de-escalate conflict and reduce violence. Time will tell to what extent this happens, even if at all. Blair knows whom he is dealing with (his bosses and as well as the other protagonists). War/peace is a dirty commercial enterprise and (not but) I wish Tony Blair well in this opportunity to do good. That doesn’t mean I endorse all his decisions in the past, merely that I acknowledge the multi-layered web of interests within which he’s been serving as British PM.

    Reply
  2. Eric Stoddart avatar
    Eric Stoddart

    War and peace are subsidary industries; complex economic and political systems interlinked at local, national and transnational levels. The list of participants is extensive including, for example, the US government, multinational oil and construction congolmerates, mercenaries/commerical security companies, the EU, UK, Russia and any number of other governments, the UN, etc. Grass-roots peace movements have their part to play but they’re not ones who hold the power (i.e. the finances) to wage war and peace. As much as I think that grass-roots peace movements merit support the unpalatable reality is that war/peace is negotiated in the maelstorm of competing and supporting relationships between states and multinational business – perhaps with a bit of gangsterism in the mix too. A ‘peace envoy’ who is not accepted by a strategic combination of these interests is a non-starter. Tony Blair, if he gets confirmed in the post, is part of this system. In this sense his appointment is no surprise. At the same time, his membership of the ‘war/peace club’ could be used to de-escalate conflict and reduce violence. Time will tell to what extent this happens, even if at all. Blair knows whom he is dealing with (his bosses and as well as the other protagonists). War/peace is a dirty commercial enterprise and (not but) I wish Tony Blair well in this opportunity to do good. That doesn’t mean I endorse all his decisions in the past, merely that I acknowledge the multi-layered web of interests within which he’s been serving as British PM.

    Reply
  3. jim gordon avatar
    jim gordon

    Thanks Eric – what you say is both persuasive and worrying – you confirm my sense that this whole scenario is, as you say,a multi-layered web of interests. But where in those layers are the interests of justice, humanitarian consideration of the OTHER as a key principle in any democracy, and indeed the recognition that peace, while it may have industrial and economic dividends, is nevertheless preferable to the sheer hell unleashed by ‘the powers’ you so fully describe. I looked for images of those wonderfully expensive smart bombs unleashed without much regard for the inevitable collateral damage – and simply could not bear to look at the images depicting the impact of such weaponry on human bodies; and since I had no intention of causing either shock or awe to those who visit here, I didn’t use them.
    But those we put in positions of power have responsibilities to ensure that such explosive force is never used except when all other options are expended, and even then, with no high ground claiming rhetoric about WMD,liberation and democracy. Now and again leadership is to refuse to do what all the other leaders, political, economic, defence etc, say MUST be done. I agree Eric, that Tony Blair might now be listened to – the issue is by whom, and to what end, in whose name, by whose authority and to serve whose interests. I doubt if it will be the Palestinians, Iraqi people and the many victims of this, what do they call it…. liberation. And I suppose I have to choose between prohetic protest knowing we live in a world where ‘the powers’ are dangerously intermixed and operate in a different moral universe, or simply accept the realities of brute force uncoupled from awareness of human costs. But I cannot as a Christian accept ‘the reality’ of ‘multi layered interests’ calling the shots, firing the shots and to Hell with the consequences. I know you aren’t arguing for that. But what then is a Christian responsible response? Christus Victor has, in my worldview, ontological reality, not as the imposition of an alternative power system, but as a direct challenge to ‘the maelstorm of competing and supporting relationships between states and multinational business – perhaps with a bit of gangsterism’. The challenge to such bleak politics has to be articulated as part of Christian witness to another Reality. At least, so it seems to me. But I go on being perplexed, praying, and yes, trying to work out a theology of hope.

    Reply
  4. jim gordon avatar
    jim gordon

    Thanks Eric – what you say is both persuasive and worrying – you confirm my sense that this whole scenario is, as you say,a multi-layered web of interests. But where in those layers are the interests of justice, humanitarian consideration of the OTHER as a key principle in any democracy, and indeed the recognition that peace, while it may have industrial and economic dividends, is nevertheless preferable to the sheer hell unleashed by ‘the powers’ you so fully describe. I looked for images of those wonderfully expensive smart bombs unleashed without much regard for the inevitable collateral damage – and simply could not bear to look at the images depicting the impact of such weaponry on human bodies; and since I had no intention of causing either shock or awe to those who visit here, I didn’t use them.
    But those we put in positions of power have responsibilities to ensure that such explosive force is never used except when all other options are expended, and even then, with no high ground claiming rhetoric about WMD,liberation and democracy. Now and again leadership is to refuse to do what all the other leaders, political, economic, defence etc, say MUST be done. I agree Eric, that Tony Blair might now be listened to – the issue is by whom, and to what end, in whose name, by whose authority and to serve whose interests. I doubt if it will be the Palestinians, Iraqi people and the many victims of this, what do they call it…. liberation. And I suppose I have to choose between prohetic protest knowing we live in a world where ‘the powers’ are dangerously intermixed and operate in a different moral universe, or simply accept the realities of brute force uncoupled from awareness of human costs. But I cannot as a Christian accept ‘the reality’ of ‘multi layered interests’ calling the shots, firing the shots and to Hell with the consequences. I know you aren’t arguing for that. But what then is a Christian responsible response? Christus Victor has, in my worldview, ontological reality, not as the imposition of an alternative power system, but as a direct challenge to ‘the maelstorm of competing and supporting relationships between states and multinational business – perhaps with a bit of gangsterism’. The challenge to such bleak politics has to be articulated as part of Christian witness to another Reality. At least, so it seems to me. But I go on being perplexed, praying, and yes, trying to work out a theology of hope.

    Reply

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