Protective Force versus Punitive Force

Presented to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington

October 22, 2006

Rev. Paul Ratzlaff

In front of the Huntington Town Hall is the Veteran’s Plaza.  It is lined with large slabs of black granite, on which are names etched in gold listing those Huntingtonians who died in WWII, in the “Forgotten War” (Korea), and in Vietnam.  There is also quite a monument to the women of the various armed forces.  Then across a sidewalk, next to the building stands a white, simple four-sided post – a contrast both in color and in simplicity.  On its sides are lettered phrases: “May peace prevail on earth” and “May peace prevail in our community.”

Can there be a deeper yearning – than that all war should cease and peace prevail at all levels of society!  “…until everything was as calm and quiet as a 4 am snowdrift….”  As Lao-Tzu put it millennia ago:

If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.

As UUs we are asking ourselves via this past summer’s General Assembly to consider the following resolution, which I have had printed in the Order of Service: Should the UUA reject the use of any and all kinds of violence and war to resolve disputes between peoples and nations and adopt a principle of seeking just peace through nonviolent means?

Over the next four years, our movement hopes that we can come to a denomination-wide answer to this question.  Suggested study questions to help us think about this resolution approach peacemaking at all the interconnected levels suggested by Lao-Tzu.

“Should we adopt a specific and detailed ‘just war’ policy?”

“Should we reject violence in any form?”

“How might globally cooperative institutions such as the United Nations create and maintain effective conditions for human rights, economic justice, religious tolerance, and sustainable environmental practices?”

And more … down to the neighborhood, family and personal – “How can we promote peaceful coexistence and eliminate verbal, physical, psychological, and emotional abuse in civic, congregational, family and personal life?”

Dick Kopp, UUFH member, cares deeply about this, and invites others to join in forming a “Peacemaking Caucus” that would support our entire congregation in articulating our answers to the many issues involved in peacemaking at all levels of society.  As Dick says, “This is not about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is about the next war.”  I take Dick to mean that we will be trying to get to the deep causes of war and peace, not just the immediate instances of it.   (The immediate instance was brought home powerfully yesterday when 132 pairs of soldiers’ boots were lined up on our lawn to remind us of the men and women from NY State killed in Iraq.  A sampling of civilian shoes, of all sizes, were strewn on the ground, as well, reminding us of the Iraqi deaths.  Tears came to my eyes as I read the names and ages of Iraqi kids killed.  We need to concern ourselves both with the immediate war, and with the underlying dynamics that feed violence now and in the future!)  See Dick after the service at the table in the Social Hall if you would like to contribute to this Peacemaking Caucus.

Today I want to highlight one piece of this larger issue of peacemaking, namely, the distinction between protective force and punitive force.  I will start with an example close to home.  Your three year old is skipping down the sidewalk ahead of you.  To your alarm she moves toward the street with its typical Long Island cars doing at least 40 in a 30 mile an hour zone.

You don’t say to your three year old, “When I see you going into the traffic, I’m frightened because I need you to be safe.  Would you be willing to come back on the sidewalk?”  And then wait for the child to express her wants.  No, you grab her out of the street, put her back on the sidewalk, and hold on to her arm.

Here’s the key: do you then hit the child to punish her?  Perhaps you rationalize it as aversive conditioning.  More likely it’s simply a way for you to release the shock of fear that has washed through your body and brain, almost an instinctual hurting the child because you feel hurt.

Pulling the child out of the street is protective force.  Slapping the child is most likely punitive.

Marshall Rosenberg, who has devoted his career to teaching people how to communicate nonviolently, is my source for this distinction in using force, that is, violence.  “Protective force,” as the name implies uses force, which is a kind of violence, for the sake of protecting people from harm.  You grab the child out of the street in order to keep the child safe.

“Punitive force,” in contrast, uses force, violence, to add to the person’s suffering.  Smacking the child adds to the suffering, even if it’s under the guise of “teaching the child a lesson.”  Too often the lesson learned by the child is to fear the parent, and when she or he becomes a parent to use similar punitive force on children.

You might argue that “protective force” is not really violence, but I think it is.  From the point of the three-year-old rushing into the street her wishes to explore are being over-ridden by a larger, overwhelming power that lifts her up, or drags her back to the sidewalk.  That physical act of using strength to direct another, I maintain, is an act of violence.  But we judge it benign because it is using force to save life.

Punishment seldom works over the long run.  You hear, “I’m going to teach you a lesson” to justify treating another violently.  But what is the lesson taught?  Mostly, it’s resentment and fear.  Seldom does punishment lead the other to a considered agreement in changing his or her behavior.  More often, the child may do what you want, but, inwardly, they are cursing you – hardly a recipe for long term peace in the family.

Does this distinction hold at levels other than the family? 

At the level of neighborhoods, we need the protective force of our police.  When a batterer is threatening his spouse, we need the police to step in between them, and to contain the batterer, if necessary, by force.  On the other hand, going beyond the force needed to restrain the batterer, to wanting to hurt the batterer so that he “gets his,” that is, so that he suffers in equal measure to the suffering he has caused, is counter-productive.  I remember the Rodney King beating where force went beyond restraining King to the level of “beating,” I suspect as some kind of punishment. We need the protective force of police, but when they slip over into punitive force we are all at risk.

I believe this distinction holds at the level of nationhood as well.  Once the allies defeated Germany and Japan in WWII, they chose to rebuild those countries rather than pile on more punishment, with the result that there is now peace where there was war. 

To my way of thinking there are aggressors, who will try to use violence to get their way.  They need to be contained with protective force, which may include deadly violence.  Darfur is an area crying out for the proper use of protective force, as I see it.

However, using that protective force, we should not slip over the line into punitive force.  I fear, for example, that the present war on terror has been conducted in a way that we have gone beyond containment to punitive force.  Sweeping up batches of men on the suspicion of terror, and then denying them access to legal representation and fair trials, strikes me as punitive.  And I fear that we see the result – even more hatred against the United States, and more terrorist dreams of punishing our country in return.

Of course the challenge is to know when punitive force slips over that line into punitive force.  I can imagine the defenders of pre-emptive war arguing that their choice to move to violence was protective.  “We had to get them first, because they knew they were out to get us.  In fact, by attacking them first, we lessened the long term suffering that would have happened had we waited.  Would we not have saved many lives by pre-emptively attacking Hitler long before he went on the offensive?”

I hope that over the next months and years, with the encouragement of the Peacemaking Caucus we can consider these issues, and develop a shared position that will guide our advocacy in the future.

One indicator that the will to punish dominates is this: do we find pleasure in the suffering of the other?  When we use protective force, we do so reluctantly, because we know that we are hurting another, even though it is to protect them and others.  But we find satisfaction when we use punitive force because we want to cause the other to hurt.  We’ve so estranged ourselves from the other that the other becomes less than ourselves.  Since they are not within our family, we can treat them in whatever way pleases us.

In other words, where is our heart when we use force against another?  Does our heart contain the other, or cast the other out?

We were given an awesome example of peacemaking between neighbors earlier this month.  Did you see how the Amish community treated the family of the man who had killed 5 and wounded 5 of their girls at school?  Listen to this account from USA Today, the seventh of October:

Dozens of Amish neighbors came out Saturday to mourn the quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage.

Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, was buried in his wife's family plot behind a small Methodist church, a few miles from the one-room schoolhouse he stormed Monday.

His wife, Marie, and their three small children looked on as Roberts was buried beside the pink, heart-shaped grave of the infant daughter whose death nine years ago apparently haunted him, said Bruce Porter, a fire department chaplain from Colorado who attended the service.

About half of perhaps 75 mourners on hand were Amish.

"It's the love, the forgiveness, the heartfelt forgiveness they have toward the family. I broke down and cried seeing it displayed," said Porter, who had come to Pennsylvania to offer what help he could. He said Marie Roberts was also touched.

"She was absolutely deeply moved, by just the love shown," Porter said.

Roberts stormed the West Nickel Mines Amish School on Monday, releasing the 15 boys and four adults before tying up and shooting the 10 girls. Roberts, who had come armed with a shotgun, a handgun and a stun gun, then killed himself.

Roberts' suicide notes and last calls with his wife reveal a man tormented by memories — as yet unsubstantiated — of molesting two young relatives 20 years ago. He said he was also angry at God for the Nov. 14, 1997, death of the couple's first child, a girl named Elise Victoria who lived for just 20 minutes.

 Even in its profound grief, the Amish neighbors went to the funeral of the man who had terrorized and shot their daughters.  Amazing!  Can you imagine it?  Someone takes the life of a child most precious to you.  But instead of fueling your anger with curses and threats “There is no degree of torture that maniac shouldn’t suffer…” – instead you extend your heart to the killer’s wife and children in sympathy for the pain they must be suffering.

What a splendid example of peacemaking!

You don’t act on that very human first response when hurt – “We’ll bomb them back to the stone ages!”  Craving the satisfaction of seeing your enemy suffer is so human – and such a dead end.  Mahatma Gandhi quipped, “An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind.”   Instead of the instinctive reaction, you extend your heart to the ones who have caused you such incredible pain.  You take in their pain as you keep them as part of your community. 

How do we live this?  How do we live with without striking back?  Without being crazed for revenge?  How do we live without being punitive?

I offer four steps:

First, remove yourself from danger.  Stop the damage.  Use protective force, or call 911 to protect yourself from further harm.

Second, having removed yourself from danger, be aware of the anger and hurt you are feeling.  Don’t try to skip this step.  Don’t tell yourself, “I shouldn’t be feeling angry and hurt.”  Don’t minimize it – “It was really nothing” – especially if it wasn’t.  Be mindful of the rage-full fantasies that may parade through your mind.  Hopefully you have a good friend who can listen while you get in touch with how inflamed you are.  But don’t keep adding fuel to the fire.

Third, consider the damage and allow yourself to grieve the loss.  This is a critical shift!  Instead of focusing on the other you focus on yourself.  Instead of thinking of all the ways you can cause the other person to suffer, you begin to mourn your own losses.  You grieve fully the pain of the loss you have suffered.

Finally, as you heal from the loss you have suffered, you will be open to re-connecting with the humanness of the one who hurt you.  You will, in compassion rather than revenge, seek to understand what happened from the other’s point of view.  Then you will know what needs to be done – whether it’s containing the other using protective force, or reconciling with forgiveness in order to restore community.

I don’t know that the Amish families and community went through these steps.  It may be that they shortcut the anger, the mourning, and simply went to the neighbor’s funeral because that is what Jesus taught.  But the news report points out that they went with love and not with hatred.

I do trust that acknowledging our hurt and anger, and then mourning our loss will lead to the possibility of a restored humanness. 

That’s what peacemaking is about, ultimately.  It’s not about keeping harmony where there’s already harmony.  That’s easy.  Peacemaking takes the most divided, estranged and hateful feelings and finds a way to restore relationship.  It takes fabric that is ripped apart, and reweaves it into wholeness.

As the Buddha observed simply: Never does hatred cease by hating in return; only through love can hatred come to an end.  Victory breeds hatred; the conquered dwell in sorrow and resentment.  They who give up all thought of victory or defeat, may be calm and live happily at peace.  Let us overcome violence by gentleness.

May it be so.