Giving war a chance

Local soldiers returning from Iraq say war is justified

“Jesus didn’t call us to war,” peace activist Cliff Kindy said as he stood in the middle of “Camp Casey,” a collection of tents on a parking lot at 1521 E. Pontiac St. “We want to engage in a dialogue about how the war has affected our community. The tools of non-violence can be effective (at ending the war and stopping terrorism).”

As he spoke, two members of a badly bloodied Marine Reserve battalion were returning safely to northeast Indiana after seven months in Iraq. Both of them are husbands and fathers, and one is a Christian pastor. But even though they are now home – Kindy’s prayer for all American military personnel in Iraq – they take a decidedly different view.

“(Kindy’s) entitled to his opinion,” Cpl. Chris Langford said shortly after arriving in New Haven Friday afternoon. “But we’re fighting so people in Iraq get the chance to have that opinion, too.”

More than 80 years after the end of World War I, “the war to end all wars,” Americans still debate the philosophical paradox posed by Kindy and Langford: Can war – with all its sorrow, destruction and death – ever be a good and even noble thing?

With 48 members of the Cleveland-based 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment killed and at least another 150 wounded, Langford and Chaplain Lt. Eric Malmstrom of Fort Wayne are intimately familiar with the horrors of war. But even after what they saw during the past seven months – or perhaps because of it – they remain convinced the war in Iraq is justified.

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