I would like to respond to Fr. Patrick Reardon's article, "Not So Quiet on the Eastern Front" in the November 2003 issue of Touchstone magazine.

Let us put aside the pretense that Fr. Patrick was not advocating a particular point of view, but merely trying to illuminate the sources and nature of the divisions within the Orthodox Church regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His clear aim was to discredit the anti-war view, and I think that he goes a bit too far in attacking the motives and reasoning of the anti-war party.

I, too, have been troubled by the anti-American tinge of some statements by church officials, particularly the statement by the Patriarch of Antioch regarding the September 11 terrorist attack, in which His Beatitude gave the impression of nominalizing the suffering of the victims while shifting responsibility for their deaths to �certain nations.� However foolish and unjust American policy with regard to the Middle East has sometimes been, the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was the wrong time to rub our noses in it.

On the other hand, I cannot find fault with the Orthodox Peace Fellowship�s pre-war plea to avoid war. Leaving aside any further semantic hair-splitting about who did or did not call whom a murderer, the letter clearly was intended to condemn a policy, not those who, once the decision was made, were obligated to carry it out. If the time to speak out is not before our government embarks on a potentially disasterous course of action, when is?

I understand Frank Schaeffer�s desire to take comfort in the heroic myths with which every nation in every age has adorned its men in uniform. As the son of a U.S. Army World War II veteran, I share that desire, more so since I earn my living by developing technology for the U.S. government. But as each day casts further doubt on the wisdom and honesty of the Bush administration in embarking on this neoimperial crusade, the unchallenged assumption of American rightness becomes increasingly untenable. Offended as Mr. Schaeffer is that the Church presumes to speak out against the war on his behalf, many of us are more offended that our government presumes to send our young men and women across the globe to die and kill unnecessarily on our behalf.

Yes, let us remember that our brave men and women are not only dying in Iraq, they are killing as well, and if this is truly a war of liberation, not conquest, not all of the dead can be counted as �the enemy.� At last estimate, 3,000-4,000 unarmed Iraqis have perished in the conflict, most of them under American bombs, missiles and bullets. With the American muslim community intimidated into silence, who will speak up for the dead, the maimed, the widowed and orphaned, if not the Orthodox Church?

But of course, there is a world of difference between intentional targeting of civilians and inadvertant civilian casualities. However, it might serve us well to ask whether the actions of our military commanders and their civilian superiors have not at times constituted depraved indifference to human life. In the waning days of �major combat operations� in Iraq, a U.S. plane intentionally bombed a building in a residential Baghdad neighborhood based on the rumor that Saddam Hussein would be there. He was not, nor were any other government or military personnel found among the mangled, dismembered and decapitated bodies � women and children included � that were pulled from the rubble. The officer who flew the plane was quoted at the time as saying that he was �never prouder� to be part of the U.S. Air Force.

If turning a blind eye to this kind of callousness is the price that the Orthodox Church must pay in order to be accepted into the mainstream of American society, then I hope that I will be excused for thinking that price too dear. One of the impudent priests who had the temerity to sign the OPF statement has often told me that the Orthodox Church in this country has two choices : to transform American culture, or be transformed by it. If we adopt the �praise the Lord and pass the ammunition� jingoism of many of our Protestant counterparts, we will be choosing the latter path.