Canon Paul Oestreicher speaks in Wellington

'Whose war is it anyway?' A rare opportunity to hear Paul Oestreicher - Canon Emeritus and Director of the Centre for International Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral (retired); founding Chair of Amnesty International; Vice President, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; and a lifetime worker for peace and social justice - speaking about the new war on the people of Iraq.

Friday, 28 March from 6pm to 7-30pm at St Andrews on the Terrace, 30 The Terrace.

Organised by Peace Movement Aotearoa, in conjunction with St Andrews on the Terrace, for more information contact Peace Movement Aotearoa tel (04) 382 8129 or email.

Paul Oestreicher's latest article, published in the Guardian: 'Not in a soldier's name'

He wasn't a pacifist. He'd done his military training. Franz Jägerstätter was a devout Catholic, a peasant farmer with a wife and children. He knew the difference between a just and an unjust war. When Hitler attacked Russia, he said: "This is aggression. I will not serve." Not even his patriotic bishop could change his mind. He knew the cost: imprisonment and execution.

Today, as his widow celebrates her 90th birthday, that bishop's successor is asking the Pope to beatify him. Had Hitler won, he would still be dammed as a traitor. The church, as religious institutions tend to do, bends with the prevailing wind.

At Nuremberg, Hitler's foreign minister Ribbentrop was executed for waging an aggressive war, but so too were his top generals, Keitel and Jodl. The fuhrer's orders were not accepted as a valid defence. They had beheaded the conscientious objectors; the leaders were hanged. Who were the true patriots?

Today in Israel, some children of Holocaust survivors, though only too willing to defend their country, refuse to be part of a brutalised occupation force. As many as a thousand reservists are refuseniks, with as little support from the rabbinate as Jägerstätter had from his bishop. Reviled by many, they are surely the true patriots and heirs of the uncomfortable prophets of Israel.

The same dilemma now faces the men and women of the US and British armed forces. "Theirs not to question why, theirs but to do and die," will no longer wash. Many of them are Christians. The issue is both legal and moral. Christian leaders in the US and in Britain - and worldwide, across all denominational divisions - oppose this war; so do eminent military men. Desmond Tutu stands alongside Jimmy Carter. They say no. There is something like a global consensus that a preemptive war, with no UN backing, is unwise, immoral and illegal.

Interviewed by television crews in the desert, the officers and men on the frontiers of Iraq put a brave face on it all. "We're here to do a job." But killing, and being killed, isn't just a job. At least, some of them know it. Once in the service, it is very, very hard to quit. Comradeship is no mean virtue.

But in the US, it has become an issue. The Quakers, in North Carolina, have established a hotline to counsel disturbed members of the armed services. It is much in demand. Many Americans are devout Christians. Do they listen to church leaders, or do they follow their fundamentalist president, who still believes in crusades? It is tragic and ironic that Christian fundamentalism plays unwittingly into the hands of the Islamic fundamentalism it purports to despise.

The New York-based, veterans' association, Citizen Soldier, estimates that, of the 1.4m service men and women, around 1,000 each year seek to leave the forces on grounds of conscience. As many as 20,000 have sought advice during the past year. The memory of Vietnam still weighs heavily. We, in contrast, have forgotten Suez. Our cause cannot simply be presumed to be just.

Most military chaplains are understandably reluctant to wrestle with this problem. They are both pastors and serving officers, and hardly trained to be prophets. Soldiers are trained to obey. Yet even military law makes it illegal to obey an illegal order. And even a legal order may conflict with an informed Christian conscience.

The issues raised are of great moral complexity at one level; at another, they are simple. To win this war may prove relatively easy; to win the peace will not. The winners will appear only before the court of world opinion; the losers alone will stand trial. But all will be the losers if war is once again held to be the legitimate pursuit of political ends by other means.

A few, whose names we may never know, will have refused to fight. At a level that embraces and transcends politics, we may all be in their debt.

Canon Dr Paul Oestreicher, 22 March 2003.
Published in the Guardian

On the Israeli armed forces occupation of Palestine: "My commitment to human rights has much to do with the fact that my Jewish grandmother took her life rather than face Auschwitz. That is reason enough to express my solidarity with the brave, marginalised minority of Israeli patriots who regard what their nation is doing in Palestine as criminally shameful. To remain silent in the face of Israel's occupation is to be complicit with torture and state-sponsored murder. The prophets of ancient Israel did not hesitate to condemn the sins of their nation. Nor should the friends of Israel today. That is the opposite of anti-semitism." Mid East role for Europe, Letter published in the Guardian, 20 April 2002.

On the war aginst the people of Afghanistan: "Canon Paul Oestreicher of Coventry Cathedral, led a series of speakers. "We are the patriots. We must now build real peace and can only do that by creating a just economic system. A world where rich gets richer and poor get poorer is a recruiting ground for terrorism." " see Another coalition stands up to be counted, John Vidal, 19 November 2001.

On the NATO bombing of Former Yugoslavia: Will Nato lose the peace?, 4 June 1999 and Military victory is not always moral, 30 June 1999.