Cheap Grace and the American Way of War

When American soldiers deploy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, what is

the cause for which they fight? The patriotic answer is this: they fight for

freedom. Challenge that proposition and you’ll likely pick a quarrel.

Endorse it and the conversation ends: what more is there to say?

In fact, at least two elements of that assertion merit serious further

examination. Does fighting as such actually contribute to freedom’s

preservation? And to what extent is freedom as actually exercised worth

fighting for? This evening I want to suggest that as far as the post-9/11

period is concerned, neither of those questions merits an affirmative answer.

Yet we begin our inquiry not in the present but in the past, with a young

German seeker after truth who found what he was looking for on 138th Street

in New York City.

In his 1937 book The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously

reflected on the difference between what he called “cheap grace” and “costly

grace.” The distinction between the two defined the crisis confronting

twentieth century Christianity. “Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “means

grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares.” Endowing the church

with an “inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with

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generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits,” cheap grace

served as a sort of self-replenishing debit card for the soul, allowing

everything to be had for nothing. Cheap grace, Bonhoeffer continued, “is

the grace we bestow on ourselves” unearned, allowing “forgiveness without

requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion

without confession.” Cheap grace “means the justification of sin without the

justification of the repentant sinner.”

Acquiring costly grace, in contrast, entails sustained effort. Costly grace,

wrote Bonhoeffer, citing New Testament parables, is “the treasure hidden in

the field” or “the pearl of great price” that can be gained only through

exertion and sacrifice. Rather than received passively, such grace has to be

earned.

In Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, church leaders specialized in dispensing

cheap grace. As a consequence, the German church itself became implicated

in unspeakable crimes.

Some churchmen courageously refused to conform, Bonhoeffer prominent

among them. He became part of the anti-Hitler resistance, eventually

(despite a strong inclination toward pacifism) joining the secret plot to

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assassinate Hitler. The unraveling of that plot led to Bonhoeffer’s arrest,

imprisonment, and eventual execution in April 1945.

This story of German martyrdom, inspiring in its own right, features an

important American prelude. As it turns out, Bonhoeffer himself had not

coined the phrase “cheap grace.” He had instead appropriated it. The

concept originated in Harlem, which is where Bonhoeffer himself first

encountered it.

In 1930, Bonhoeffer had travelled to New York. There he spent a year in

residence at Union Theological Seminary. Finding famous Manhattan

churches like Riverside Congregational and Broadway Presbyterian to be

liturgically insipid, Bonheoffer set out in search of worship services more to

his liking. That search led him uptown to 138th Street and the Abyssinian

Baptist Church. Among the African-Americans who worshipped there,

Bonhoeffer encountered a community of believers pursuing a vision of what

it means to live an authentically Christian life.

Abyssinian was the handiwork of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., the son of

slaves who after a misspent youth had become a dynamic preacher, critic of

racism, and promoter of social justice and Christian ecumenism.

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The “cheap grace” that the Rev. Powell denounced from his pulpit was the

tendency of white Christians to turn a blind eye to American racism while

still counting themselves faithful followers of Jesus. When Bonhoeffer

returned to Germany the following year, he carried Powell’s concept of

cheap grace with him. His critique of religion as medium for unearned self-

justification marked Bonhoeffer as a troublemaker in the eyes of the Nazi

regime and spelled his doom. Yet if acutely relevant to Germany in the

1930s, Bonhoeffer’s critique had a far wider application. Then and now it

applied to the United States.

The penchant for unearned self-forgiveness that Adam Clayton Powell

diagnosed from his pulpit eventually spread throughout the American body

politic. Since 9/11, it has reached pandemic proportions. The Powell-

Bonhoeffer formulation describes a syndrome to which Americans today

demonstrate a pronounced propensity: cheap grace deployed to excuse or

gloss over the nation’s shortcomings or misguided actions.

For Reverend Powell, cheap grace allowed white Christian America to give

itself a pass on race, a tendency that persists even today. Yet of equal or

greater moment, a predilection for cheap grace also shapes the way that the

United States approaches the world beyond its borders. Cheap grace

permeates and perverts American statecraft, upholding claims of entitlement

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and a sense of innocent victimhood when those claims meet resistance.

Expecting deference, Americans take umbrage when others refuse to accord

it. When umbrage yields to violence, American leaders cloak their actions

in the language of liberty, democracy, and humane values. Yet such

language serves chiefly to camouflage actual intent.

The United States is hardly the first great power in history to clothe less-

than-exalted purposes in high-sounding language. Hypocrisy is inherent in

the practice of statecraft. Yet to lose the ability to distinguish between

publically professed motive and actual purpose is to forfeit situational

awareness.

This describes the predicament in which the United States finds itself today.

In exercising so-called global leadership, policymakers outlining what the

United States must do routinely speak as if they have an inexhaustible

treasury upon which to draw. Those who lead or aspire to lead the nation

reject second thoughts – no apologies, no remorse – and refuse to

acknowledge limits of American resources or perspicacity. Conferring on

the nation gratuitous blessings, they insist that America is doing God’s work

without offering evidence of God’s assent or approval.

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Left unchecked, an indulgence in cheap grace induces a state akin to auto-

intoxication. To consider the potential consequences we need look no

further than the fate befalling Bonhoeffer’s Germany: During the Nazi era,

the moral compass of the German people largely ceased to function. That

Americans will in a similar manner lose their ability to distinguish between

good and evil is by no means inevitable. Yet neither should that possibility

be fully discounted. Ours after all is an age in which the United States

engages in preventive war and presidents order the extra-legal killing of U.

S. citizens.

Lending this present-day fondness for cheap grace an element of irony is the

fact that it is not endemic to the nation’s character, at least as far as war is

concerned. On the contrary: At crucial points in their history Americans

have abjured cheap grace in favor of the harder alternative. They paid; as a

consequence, the nation reaped very considerable rewards. A necessary first

step toward appreciating the corrupting and pernicious effects of cheap grace

is to recall what costly grace once wrought.

For Americans, the war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan proved an

occasion entailing the expenditure of costly grace. This was a war fought

for freedom.

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Persuading Americans that securing this freedom at home obliged them to

fight for freedom across the oceans required more than somber presidential

reflections on God’s purposes. So Roosevelt and his lieutenants shrewdly

infused democratic considerations throughout their approach to waging war

against the Axis. To a greater extent than any prior conflict, mobilization

became an indisputably communal undertaking. So too did the war’s actual

conduct.

“In a democracy,” Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson declared in

1944, “all citizens have equal rights and equal obligations.” A graduate of

Harvard Law School, Patterson was himself a combat veteran of World War

I. “When the nation is in peril,” he continued, “the obligation of saving it

should be shared by all, not foisted on a small percentage.” With regard to

obligations (if not rights), Patterson’s Axiom accurately describes the

Roosevelt administration’s approach to war. All would contribute to the

cause. All would share in whatever burdens the war effort imposed. All (or

mostly all) could expect to share in the benefits.

At least as important was this unspoken caveat: Although achieving victory

would require shared sacrifice, the president sought to limit the pain and

suffering that Americans would actually endure. The price of defeating the

Axis promised to be high. Yet Roosevelt intended wherever possible to

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offload that price onto others, while claiming for the United States the lion’s

share of any benefits. For some (but not too much) pain, enormous gain:

that describes the essence of U. S. grand strategy.

To an astonishing degree, Roosevelt and his lieutenants made good on both

elements of this formula. When it came to raising an army, therefore,

equitability became a defining precept. Rather than relying on volunteers,

the United States implemented a system of conscription. The draft took

black and white, rich and poor, the famous and the obscure, Ivy Leaguers

and high school dropouts. The sons of leading politicians like Franklin

Roosevelt served as did the sons of multimillionaires such as Joseph P.

Kennedy. Hollywood idols Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Henry Fonda, Clark

Gable, Tyrone Power, and James Stewart found themselves in uniform. So

too did baseball stars Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and Hank Greenberg,

along with boxing greats Joe Louis and Gene Tunney.

In other words, the United States waged World War II with a citizen army

that reflected the reigning precepts of American democracy (not least of all

in its adherence to Jim Crow practices). Never again after 1945 would U. S.

forces reflect such broad diversity. Never again after 1945 would they

demonstrate comparable levels of overall effectiveness.

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Service exacted sacrifice. Patterson’s Axiom applied across the board.

Among the 400,000 American lives claimed by World War II were nineteen

players from the National Football League. Glenn Miller, America’s most

popular bandleader, was killed while serving with the U. S. Army Air

Forces. Harvard contributed its share. Inscribed on one wall of the

university’s Memorial Church are the names of 453 Harvard men who died

in World War II – just 35 fewer than the total number of West Pointers lost.

The citizen-army’s strengths and its limitations as a fighting force both

reflected and affirmed the civil-military contract forged for the duration, the

essence of which was a widely-shared determination “to get the goddam

thing over and get home,” the sooner the better.

Home signified homely satisfactions. “Your ordinary, plain, garden-variety

GI Joe,” wrote the journalist Richard Polenberg, “was fighting for the smell

of fried chicken, or a stack of Dinah Shore records on the phonograph, or the

right to throw pop bottles at the umpire at Ebbets Field.”

Such mundane aspirations did not imply a grant of authority allowing

Roosevelt to expend American lives with abandon. Indeed, to assume

otherwise would be to place his bargain with the American people at risk.

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Fortunately, circumstances did not require that Roosevelt do so. More

fortunately still, he and his advisers understood that.

The outcome of World War II turned above all on two factors: in Europe,

the durability and fighting power of the Red Army; in the Pacific, the

weakness and vulnerability of the Japanese economy. To hit the perfect

strategic sweet spot required the United States to exploit both of these

factors. This Roosevelt ably succeeded in doing. Success entailed above all

making the most of America’s comparative advantage, which lay in the

production of war-essential materiel. Whatever the category, no other

belligerent could match the U. S. in productive capacity. Moreover, since

the United States was (and is) difficult to attack and impossible to conquer,

the American “arsenal of democracy” lay beyond the effective reach of Axis

forces. Not long after Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall announced

that “We are determined before the sun sets on this terrible struggle our flag

will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one

hand and of overwhelming power on the other.” By tapping that arsenal for

all it was worth, the United States managed to do just that.

In that regard, however much Anglophiles might swoon at Winston

Churchill’s inspiring rhetoric, in the eyes of America’s senior war managers

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the Red Army mattered a great deal more than shared ideals. Soviet fighting

power represented an asset of incalculable value to the United States.

With France defeated and the British Empire short of will and wherewithal,

the president looked to the Red Army to destroy the mighty Wehrmacht.

“The whole question of whether we win or lose the war depends on the

Russians,” he told Henry Morgenthau in June 1942. That same year

Admiral Ernest King, the chief of naval operations, assured reporters in an

off-the-record briefing that “Russia will do nine-tenths of the job of

defeating Germany.”

Getting the Russians to shoulder the burden of defeating America’s most

dangerous adversary promised both to sustain support for the war effort on

the home front and to position the United States to become victory’s

principal beneficiary.

This distribution of effort – the Soviets doing most of the fighting while

drawing freely on the endless bounty of American farms and factories --

showed itself most vividly when it came to casualties. U. S. battle deaths for

the period 1941-1945 were hardly trivial. Yet compared to the losses

suffered by the other major belligerents, the United States emerged from the

war largely unscathed. Estimates of Soviet military losses, for example,

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range between 11 and 13 million. Add civilian deaths – 10 million or more

in the Soviet Union, a mere handful in the United States -- and the disparity

becomes even greater. To ascribe this disparity to the fortunes of war is to

deny Roosevelt credit that is rightly his.

The U. S. approach to waging war against the Japanese empire offered a

variation on this theme. With opportunities for outsourcing that war less

available (and less desired), the United States shouldered the principal

responsibility for defeating the Japan. Yet the Japanese were as resource

poor as the Americans were resource rich. When it came to industrial

capacity, in comparison with the American colossus Japan was a pygmy, its

economy approximately one-tenth as large. In 1941, Japan accounted for

3.5% of global manufacturing output, the United States 32.5%. As the war

progressed, this gap only widened.

“In any week of her war with Germany between June 1941 and May 1945,”

writes the historian H. P. Willmott, “the Soviet Union lost more dead than

the total American fatalities in the Pacific war,” succinctly expressing the

genius of U. S. grand strategy in World War II. Many factors account for

that disproportion, but among them were calculated choices made by FDR

and has principal advisers: give the Russians whatever they needed to kill

Germans; engage the Wehrmacht directly in large-scale ground combat only

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after it had been badly weakened; fight the Japanese on terms that played to

American advantages, expending materiel on a vast scale in order to

husband lives.

“Our standard of living in peace,” Marshall had declared in September 1939,

“is in reality the criterion of our ability to kill and destroy in war,” adding

that “present-day warfare is simply mass killing and mass destruction by

means of machines resulting from mass production.” The unspoken

corollary was this: in addition to limiting U. S. casualties, this preference

for expending machines rather than men was going to could produce positive

effects on the home front.

Even today, the numbers remain startling. Between 1939 and 1944, the

nation’s gross domestic product grew by 52% in constant dollars.

Manufacturing output trebled. Despite rationing, consumer spending

actually increased during the war.

More remarkable still is this: the benefits of this suddenly restored

prosperity were broadly distributed. To be sure, the rich became richer. Yet

the non-rich also benefited and disproportionately so. Families in the lowest

quintile saw their incomes grow by 111.5% and in the second lowest quintile

by 116%. Between 1939 and 1944, the share of wealth held by the richest

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5% of Americans actually fell, from 23.7% to 16.8%. The war that had

exhausted other belligerents and left untold millions in want around the

world found Americans becoming not only wealthier but also more equal.

Notably, all of this happened despite (or because of) increased taxes.

Americans paid more and more Americans paid. In 1940, approximately 7%

of Americans paid federal income taxes; by 1944, that figure had

mushroomed to 64%. No one proposed that wartime might offer a suitable

occasion for cutting taxes.

None of this is to imply that World War II was a “good war,” either on the

fighting fronts or at home. Yet if not good, Roosevelt’s war was surely

successful. If the essential objective of statecraft is to increase relative

power, thereby enhancing a nation-state’s ability to provide for the well-

being of its citizens, then U. S. policy during World War II qualifies as

nothing less than brilliant. Through cunning, and foresight, Roosevelt and

his lieutenants secured for the United States a position of global

preeminence while simultaneously insulating the American people from the

worst consequences of the worst war in history. For the United States,

World War II did not deliver something for nothing. But it did produce

abundant rewards for much less than might have been expected.

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Furthermore, this collaboration forged between government and governed

yielded more than victory abroad. At home, it dramatically enhanced the

standing of the former while reinvigorating the latter. The Great Depression

had undermined the legitimacy of the American political system, prompting

doubts about the viability of democratic capitalism. World War II restored

that lost legitimacy with interest. As a people, Americans emerged from the

war reassured that prosperity was indeed their birthright and eager to cash in

on all that the nation’s arrival at the pinnacle of power promised. This is

what costly grace had purchased.

Victory in 1945 propelled the nation to dizzying heights of power and

prosperity. Yet Americans interpreted these as mere outward signs of

something much more fundamental. In the victors’ estimation, the war that

destroyed the Axis had rendered a verdict of transcendent significance. The

future belonged to Freedom. By extension, the future belonged to the nation

and people most clearly expressing Freedom’s intentions.

Here were the twin springs that for decades filled a reservoir of American

confidence and self-regard. Roosevelt’s successors drew on these war-fed

reserves to justify a dizzying array of adventures and misadventures. From

victory, in other words, came the sense of self-assurance, prerogative, and

obligation that sustained America’s hold on the summit of global power.

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After September 2001, when George W. Bush inaugurated the Global War

on Terror, he saw another such victory ahead, one that he expected to

refurbish and restore the nation’s sense of purpose. “This time of adversity,”

the president declared in his 2002 State of the Union Address, “offers a

unique moment of opportunity, a moment we must seize to change our

culture.” “For too long,” the president continued, “our culture has said, ‘If it

feels good, do it.’”

Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: “Let's roll.”

In the sacrifice of soldiers, the fierce brotherhood of firefighters, and

the bravery and generosity of ordinary citizens, we have glimpsed

what a new culture of responsibility could look like … a Nation that

serves goals larger than self.

No such transformation of American culture ensued. Indeed, the way

President Bush chose to wage his war all but ensured a contrary result. In

stark contrast World War II, the war on terror depleted the nation’s

remaining stores of moral capital, leaving in its wake cynicism and malaise.

It impelled the country on a downward rather than upward trajectory.

Embarking upon what he himself unfailingly described as an enterprise of

vast historic significance, Bush wasted no time in excluding the American

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people from any involvement in the events that ensued. Choosing war, he

governed as if there were no war.

“We have suffered great loss,” the president acknowledged in a nationally

televised address shortly after 9/11.

And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our

moment. …. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by

our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail.

But who exactly was this we? To whom was the president referring in his

repeated and fervent use of the first person plural?

What soon became apparent was that Bush’s understanding of the term

differed substantially from Lincoln’s “we here highly resolve” at

Gettysburg. It differed more drastically still from FDR’s we after Pearl

Harbor: “We are now in this war. We are all in it -- all the way.”

Bush’s we turned out to be a mere rhetorical device. Minimizing collective

inconvenience rather than requiring collective commitment became the

distinctive signature of his approach to war management.

Bush wanted members of the public to carry on as before: After all, to

suspend the pursuit of individual happiness (defined in practice as frantic

consumption) was to hand the terrorists a victory. So within three weeks of

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the 9/11 attacks, the president was urging his fellow citizens to “Fly and

enjoy America's great destination spots.” To facilitate such excursions, the

president persuaded Congress to enact further tax cuts.

Here was cheap grace tied up with a patriotic bow and handed down from on

high. To purchase support for (or acquiescence in) the nation’s mission of

advancing the cause of human freedom, the administration, with

Congressional approval, distributed bonuses.

Americans had little difficulty deciphering the president’s cues. In short

order, the we called upon to advance the cause of human freedom took a

backseat to the we preferring to enjoy life. Thus encouraged, Americans

disengaged from the war, leaving to others the task of waging it.

Within a matter of months, Americans had settled on three first person plural

axioms to describe the parameters of their wartime role.

First, we will not change.

Second, we will not pay.

Third, we will not bleed.

According to the first axiom, Americans refused to permit war to exact

demands.

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According to the second axiom, Americans rejected any responsibility to

cover the financial costs entailed by war’s conduct.

According to the third axiom, actual participation in war became entirely a

matter of personal choice. War imposed no collective civic duty, other than

to signal appreciation for those choosing to serve -- easily achieved without

violating principles one and two.

As long as it agreed to abide by these proscriptions, Washington could pretty

much make war wherever it wanted – more or less assured of at least tepid

popular acquiescence: This defines the chief accomplishment of the George

W. Bush administration after 9/11.

The bottom line is this: Invited to indulge in cheap grace, Americans

willingly complied. Virtually from the outset, George W. Bush’s Global

War on Terrorism was never really America’s war in the sense that FDR’s

war had been. It was – and at least in some quarters was intended to be --

Washington’s war.

So despite the lofty Freedom Agenda described by Bush, the conflict almost

immediately became and thereafter remained a third-person plural

enterprise: they fought while we watched, uninvolved and seemingly

unaffected. The fighting they were American soldiers, members of an

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institution that by beginning of the twenty-first century existed at

considerable remove from the rest of society. With something approaching

unanimity, ordinary citizens professed fervent admiration for the nation’s

“warriors.” Yet admiration did not imply mutual understanding, much less

intimacy. The actually existing relationship between soldiers and society

tended to be long on symbolism and short on substance.

So when it came to fighting and dying we not only got a free pass – we could

feel good about it. Courtesy of the Bush administration tax policies,

moreover, that free pass extended to defraying the war’s financial costs: The

obligation to pay for the Global War on Terror fell on a second they – future

generations of tax payers, oblivious to the fate awaiting them.

George W. Bush had inherited from his predecessor a balanced federal

budget. After 9/11, increased military outlays combined with tax cuts drove

the budget into the red. There it stayed. For fiscal year 2009, the year Bush

left office, the federal deficit reached a staggering $1.4 trillion. Over the

two terms of his presidency the total size of the national debt had more than

doubled, ballooning from $3.3 trillion to $7.5 trillion. Trillion dollar annual

shortfalls became routine.

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Outsourcing war’s conduct to a small warrior class – less than one percent of

the total population -- evoked occasional twinges of discomfort: Could such

an approach to warfighting comport with authentic democratic principles?

Obliging generations unborn to foot the bill for wars in which they had no

voice elicited similar expressions of concern: Were such arrangements

consistent with the basic requirements of fairness? Such qualms of

conscience did not produce action, however. No longer seeing war as an

enterprise requiring collective effort on a national scale, adamant in their

refusal to curb their penchant for consumption, Americans swallowed hard,

averted their gaze from the consequences of actions undertaken in their

name, and carried on as if there were no war.

This post-9/11 approach to conducting war – the country more or less

AWOL while the state does as it pleases -- raises troubling moral and ethical

concerns. Yet in any evaluation of the Global War on Terrorism, the

overriding question is necessarily this one: Has a decade and more of armed

conflict enhanced the well-being of the American people? Is war making

the United States more powerful and more prosperous?

If the answer to these questions is affirmative, then moral and ethical

misgivings might figure as matters of academic debate, but won’t really

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matter. Yet evidence supporting an affirmative answer is difficult to locate.

Indeed, such evidence does not exist. Consider the economy.

In American political discourse crisis ranks alongside historic at the very top

of the list of overused terms. Yet the Great Recession that began in 2007 –

coinciding with the “surge” that was ostensibly salvaging the Iraq War --

was the real deal: a crisis of historic proportions.

As the ongoing Global War on Terrorism approached the ten-year mark, the

U. S. economy had shed a total of 7.9 million jobs in just three years. For

only the second time since World War II, the official unemployment rate

topped 10%. The retreat from that peak came at an achingly slow pace. By

some estimates, actual unemployment – including those who had simply

given up looking for work – was double the official figure. Accentuating the

pain was the duration of joblessness: Those laid off during the Great

Recession stayed out of work substantially longer than had been the case for

the unemployed during previous postwar economic downturns.

As an immediate consequence, millions of Americans lost their homes.

Countless more were thrown into poverty, the number of those officially

classified as poor reaching the highest level since the Census Bureau had

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begun tracking such data. Inequality reached gaping proportions with one

percent of the population having amassed a full 40% of the nation’s wealth.

Only time will tell whether Americans are able to shake their apathy and

reverse the indicators pointing to national decline. Rather than attempting a

definitive judgment, the aim here is to posit an additional line of inquiry,

suggesting a direct link between the problems besetting the American way of

life and the shortcomings evident in the contemporary American way of war.

Put simply, to a considerable extent, the latter have begotten the former. Or

to put it another way, cheap grace turns out to be not really all that cheap; it

ends up exacting costs of its own.

The crux of the problem lies in those two symmetrical one-percents, the one

whose members get sent to fight seemingly endless wars and the other

whose members demonstrate such a knack for enriching themselves.

Needless to say the two one-percents neither intersect nor overlap. They

exist worlds apart from one another. Few of the very rich send their sons or

daughters to fight. Few of those leaving the military’s ranks find their way

into the ranks of the plutocracy.

Yet a people who permit war to be waged in their name while offloading

onto a tiny minority responsibility for war’s actual conduct have no cause to

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complain about an equally small minority milking the system for all it’s

worth.

Crudely put, if the one-percent who are very rich are engaged in ruthlessly

exploiting the 99% who are not rich, their actions are analogous to that of

American society as a whole in its treatment of soldiers: The 99% who do

not serve in uniform just as ruthlessly exploit the one-percent who do. To

excuse or justify their unconscionable conduct, the very rich engage in acts

of philanthropy. With a similar aim of excusing or justifying their equally

unconscionable conduct, the not-so-rich proclaim their undying support for

the troops. Both of these are exercises in dispensing cheap grace.

As the bumper sticker rightly proclaims, freedom isn’t free. Conditioned to

believe that the exercise of global leadership is essential to preserving their

freedom, conditioned further to believe that leadership expresses itself in the

wielding of military might, Americans have begun to discover that trusting

in the present-day American way of war to preserve the present-day

American way of life entails exorbitant and unexpected costs. Among the

most obvious are high unemployment, gaping inequality, massive federal

deficits, and soaring national debt, not to mention the countless billions

squandered by U. S. forces seeking to extricate themselves from wars they

have proven unable to win.

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Yet as painful as they are, these costs symbolize something far more

disturbing. As a remedy to all the ailments afflicting the American body

politic, war – at least war as Americans have chosen to wage it – turns out to

be a fundamentally inappropriate prescription. Rather than restoring the

patient to health, war as currently practiced pursuant to freedom as

currently defined constitutes a form of prolonged ritual suicide. Rather than

building muscle, it corrupts and putrefies. Rather than purging, it poisons.

Returning home from New York in the 1930s, Bonheoffer mourned “the

millions of spiritual corpses” who filled German churches while allowing

others to pervert German culture and politics. So too in the America of our

own day: Spiritual corpses abound.

The choice Americans seemingly face today ends up being as

straightforward as it is stark. If, on the one hand, they believe war essential

to preserving their freedom, then it’s incumbent upon them to prosecute war

with the same seriousness that their forebears demonstrated in the 1940s.

Washington’s war would then truly become America’s war with all that

implies in terms of commitment and priorities. Should, on the other hand,

Americans decide that freedom as presently defined is not worth the

sacrifices entailed by real war, then it becomes incumbent upon them to

revise their understanding of freedom, settling for something less. Either

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choice – real war or a more constrained conception of freedom – would

entail the expenditure of costly grace.

Yet the dilemma as just described may in fact be more theoretical than real.

Having forfeited any responsibility for war’s design and conduct, the

American people may find that Washington considers that grant of authority

irrevocable. Put simply, the state now owns war, with the country consigned

to observer status. The American future may be one in which real if futile

sacrifices exacted of the few who fight serve chiefly to facilitate

metaphorical death for the rest who do not.

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