Guest Blogger Arden C. Hander : The Peaceable Kingdom, American Style

The film begins with Eisenhower’s speech and the now famous words, then quickly travels from person to person and place to place to backlight the new phrase’s significance. Two stealth bomber pilots appear almost nonchalant & air-headed about dropping the first “smart bombs” on Baghdad. Bill Kristol of the ultraconservative Weekly Standard admits to talking about “preemption” within the Project for a New American Century group. So also Richard Perle, whose several interspersed comments representing the ‘right’ are self-righteous & pompous, sure that the Iraq war was the right way to go in this “New World” of the 21st Century.

John Eisenhower has an equal number of appearances with comments to offset Perle, not just a son’s support of his father but his own misgivings about Bushian foreign policy as well. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked the Iraq Desk at the Pentagon before she retired an almost broken person, questions the flawed intelligence that toppled Saddam Hussein. Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York City cop who lost a son in the World Trade Center attacks, struggles on camera throughout in cameo contexts and is offset & juxtaposed by an unlikely high school graduate William Solomon who joins the Army because he cannot survive alone after the death of his mother. All have personal reasons for their plight and are therefore motivated differently in their “fight.” Each vignette both speaks for itself and is connected to an evolving meaning; yet, one does not feel manipulated at all.

Since the film was made, how Washington works has gotten much airtime. The military-industrial complex has been implicated in most of the “K Street” lobbying disclosures to the chagrin of Congress and Pentagon planners alike. “Duke” Cunningham has not only been prosecuted for accepting defense contractor bribes in the millions but has just been sentenced to eight years in prison for his illegalities. Tom DeLay has had to step down from his leadership post in the House while his Court date for his influence peddling looms. Disclosures in the “lobbying” crisis have touched many if not most elected officials, and this has challenged citizen apathy as nothing in too long a time has. But how long will it last or last at all is the question most often heard too since the American voter historically has a very short memory. To things like these that have happened since the film was made, the Producer’s choice of a George Santayana quote on which to end this documentary is pointed: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That’s also the challenge of his throwing the gauntlet down this way! The “perils of empire” have come forth in the quest of an imperial presidency not seen since the days of Nixon, and it is not hard to imagine where hate has been fostered in the world with unilateral and misguided actions which reflect back on us. But what will we do about it? Will we remember at all? Will Ike’s tepid warning against militarism endure?

Christianity’s role in war & violence preceded even the early 4th Century with the conversion of Constantine, but from that point for sure the sword and the Cross were too closely identified, even made interchangeable. F.C. Grant’s great book, The Sword and The Cross, still stands to delineate that difficulty. Religious involvement in the Crusades and the Inquisition was not even the right thing for the wrong reason, just wrong-headed, but one would never think that God wasn’t on our side from the electronic church who cannot know that Islam is the third member of the triad that is the Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s likely that most Muslims are too sectarian to know it either. “Blessed be the peacemakers” is a hard saying in our country where ‘peacemaker’ was the western Sheriff with his weapon drawn but also the Colt 45 of the gunslinger or cowpoke who had shot or murdered a victim. Now, before our military is deployed to shoot in Iraq or elsewhere, shots echo in our own streets and alleys, our home kitchens and workplaces, to the count of more than 300,000 casualties annually. How can we lay claim to being a ‘Peaceable Kingdom’? And there’s a passive violence too in how our national & state budgets do not seek to include the lowliest or poor or an unacknowledged underclass or countless others. This may be the “Arms of Krupp,” American style.

I grew up with a certain nonconformity as begats the Protestant Tradition, but my first public act of civil disobedience was on May 25, 1956 when perhaps a dozen of my fellow graduates refused to stand for the graduation speaker, The President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was certainly a World War II hero, not even close to evil as is easily posited against several of his followers in that office but just weak & ineffective, a kind of respite which people may have needed after “The Big One.” His speech was a formative one for him, entitled “The Baylor Proposal for Education.” It was my first degree of several to follow, and I was only the second member of my family line at that time to graduate from college and twenty years old. Security like is commonplace today was just not needed. My first presidential ballot would go to Adlai Stevenson, proudly, in a few months even if Ike would win a second term for another four years. I could not say “I like Ike” as the buttons suggested. By 1960 I would be at the beginning of civil rights demonstrations and thousands of hours invested, as would continue throughout the years in many matters of social justice involvement.

Since World War II left a dominating influence on me, I did a seven week pilgrimage to Normandy in July-August 1992 in which I visited most every church, cemetery, museum or marker that had to do with the War. The way the French were devastated, and twice – first in WWI and then in WWII – was dramatic and life-altering. The Summer of 1995 I added more of the same from Paris to Alsace. I saw more momentos to Churchill than Eisenhower, but since Ike’s last speech of his Presidency, I had looked at him more passively, even appreciatively.

The landscape that Hicks chose on which to place his juxtaposed animals in the panoramic version of “The Peaceable Kingdom” is the Delaware Water Gap, saved by citizen action from becoming the site for a one hundred mile lake & recreation area in the early 1970s when three states also objected. It can be hiked and is still in its original state, and I think it’s worth a pilgrimage of sorts to walk among the rocks and feel why & how Hicks chose to place his animals in the painting. It’s a bit odd that “peace-making” in our national military sense is now called ‘nation-building’ and is being tried in Iraq even if George W. dismissed it with scorn in the first Presidential Debate. Peace-making and peace-keeping is surely a more honorable way to occupy a country, if at all, than smart bombs that miss their mark badly and maim innocent civilians. A Pax Americana notion has been rejected dramatically and not just in Iraq.

In just a few weeks it’ll be the 50th anniversary of my college graduation, but now I will remember what Eisenhower was and try to forget what he wasn’t. His clarion call to the danger before us in the now even more dangerous Military-Industrial Complex was nothing less than prophetic. At long last and not grudgingly, I’m going to say, “I like Ike!” and maybe even like doing so.

WHY WE FIGHT may just be the most important cinematic achievement of the year, and I hope that its success, no matter the obstacles before it, will be around for next year’s Academy Awards for Best Documentary. That aside, its instructional and educational value for schools and churches can be immense, as we answer the call to be Peacemakers. Surely there is no higher calling.

About the Guest Blogger:

Arden C. Hander is a retired professor who spent 40 years in higher education and simultaneously serving United Church of Christ churches in extended Interim and Supply service. He has a long involvement in Civil Rights and Social Justice issues, to which he remains committed. He holds degrees from Baylor University, Southeastern (Wake Forest) and McGill University (Montreal) and also studied extensively at Temple University. He lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and dog, where he continues to be an avid reader, BBC watcher and traveler.