August 11, 2006

Deacon draws on experience, moral questions for book on war

Theresa Laurence, Tennessee Register

John Krenson has long struggled to reconcile two of his major life callings-as a permanent deacon and a National Guard soldier. He has grappled with whether the war on terror is a just war and whether the U.S. military can make a positive difference in the world.

After serving as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan for nine months, and being “eye to eye with the terrorists and the people we were there to protect, I have resolved these questions in my mind and heart,” he said. “I feel that this war is a just war.”

Krenson, a deacon at Cathedral of the Incarnation, has recently published a book titled “Crossfire: A time for peace, war and love,” that chronicles the church’s position on war, the actions being taken by the U.S. military in the Middle East, and anecdotes from the front lines.

This slim volume, meant to be read in one or two sittings, is a very personal narrative and one he hopes “will contribute to the debate” on the war. The book grew out of Krenson’s journals written while he was posted in Kabul, Afghanistan, as “a way to process things,” he said.

“There are not a lot of soldiers looking through the same theological lens that I am,” said Krenson. “I know that people will disagree with it and some will have great difficulty with it.” But he’s ready to defend his position, which is succinctly summed up in his book.

Krenson, a staunch supporter of U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, says “there should be a struggle and a tension about going to war,” and the Catholic Church should weigh in on it. However, he disagrees with some of the church’s recent statements on the war.

Halfway through his tour of duty in Afghanistan, Krenson read Pope John Paul II’s World Day of Peace message, which warned that the U.S. was falling into a culture of revenge in order to respond to terrorism.

“What I was reading didn’t seem to jibe with my experience,” he said. “My experience was telling me that ours is a culture of hope, freedom, tolerance, respect and security. We do not seek to occupy; we seek to rid the world of tyranny,” he writes.

To affirm his own thoughts on war, Krenson dug into scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the writings on St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. In the book, Krenson details the criteria for a war to be considered “just,” and finds that it is.

The catechism’s teaching that peace “is not merely the absence of war” but rather the “tranquility of order,” spoke to Krenson loud and clear. Rattling off the mass murders, torturous behavior and human rights abuses committed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, there is little argument that the citizens of these countries lived in peace before the U.S. military took action there. 

Krenson says great strides are being made toward establishing democracy in the Middle East and gives the free elections in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the region as examples of hope. In the book, he recounts visiting an orphanage and speaking to the children there about what they wanted to do when they grew up. To the young girl who said, “I will be president of Afghanistan,” Krenson and his fellow soldiers, “laughed, not at her, but with her. We knew that, less than three years earlier, she would never have been able to dream that dream.”

Krenson is well aware that his account of progress in Iraq and Afghanistan sounds contradictory to reports most often delivered through major media outlets. A self-described “news junkie,” Krenson is a supporter of the free press, but wishes he would see more positive stories about the rebuilding that is happening even as the war is being fought.

“We have accomplished far more in the first five years of this active war than we did during the first five years of occupation in World War II-after the six years of intense combat,” he writes.

Even considering the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, “it’s almost miraculous when you look at it through the lens of history,” to have so few causalities after years of fighting, he said.

Furthermore, he writes, “our soldiers and our allies fight and die for a just cause, a cause that provides hope, a peace not known before in many parts of the world, a peace that is becoming known today.”

A business consultant, husband and father of two adopted children from Russia, Krenson also speaks locally and on college campuses throughout the country in association with the conservative Young America’s Foundation.

Krenson’s book will most likely be embraced by conservatives like himself who strongly support the War on Terror, but “Crossfire” gives all Catholics and all citizens some food for thought.