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 REEDINGS . . .

 Notes on Books by Gerard Reed

 November 2003                                                         Number One Hundred Forty-three ************************************************************************

 WAR AGAINST TERRORISM  

 One of the nation’s finest and most able scholars, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Professor of Social and political Ethics at The University of Chicago, provides helpful perspectives on our nation’s role in the Middle East in Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York:  Basic Books, c. 2003).  Prodded to write after America ’s attack by Muslim terrorists, Elshtain defends President Bush’s response, especially when seen in the light of Osama bin Laden’s 1998 declaration of war against America , [entitled] “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders (p. 3).  Unlike many naive folks in the West, bin Laden declares that the current conflict is at heart a religious struggle, a rekindling of a battle that has waxed and waned since Mohammed launched his conquests in 622 A.D. 

Summing up bin Laden’s agenda a Yale historian, Donald Kagan, has written:  “he and other terrorists have made it clear that the U.S. is ‘the great Satan,’ the enemy of all they hold dear.  And what these terrorists hold dear includes the establishment of an extreme and reactionary Muslim fundamentalism in all currently Muslim lands, at least which is a considerable portion of the globe.  Such a regime would impose a totalitarian theocracy that would subjugate the mass of people, especially women. . . .  No change of American policy, no retreat from the world, no repentance for past deeds or increase of national modesty can change these things.  Only the destruction of America and its way of life will do, and Osama bin Laden makes no bones about this” (p. 85). 

As a careful philosopher, Elshtain draws important distinctions between the terrorism of bin Laden  the just war tradition that has developed in Christian theology.   Islamic Jihad bears many of the marks of terror!   There is a striking similarity between the “reign of terror” orchestrated by the Jacobins in France in the 1790s and the policies of Moslem jihadists.  Elshtain grasped this when she attended a conference in Jerusalem in 1993 and heard a distinguished scholar, Bassam Tibi, explain that:  “[The] Western distinction between just and unjust wars linked to specific grounds for war is unknown in Islam.  Any war against unbelievers, whatever its immediate ground, is morally justified.  Only in this sense can one distinguish just and unjust wars in Islamic tradition.  When Muslims wage war for the dissemination of Islam, it is a just war. . . .  When non-Muslims attack Muslims, it is an unjust war.  The usual Western interpretation of jihad as a “just war” in the Western sense is, therefore, a misreading of this Islamic concept (emphasis mine)” (p. 131). Islamic jihad is simply a religious version of might-makes-right aggression.  Wars of conquest, waged to expand and install Islam, are just wars; terror tactics, so long as they advance the cause of Islam, are defensible.  The Muslim world is ever at war with the non-Muslim world.

The just war tradition, conversely, has ever sought to distinguish between moral and immoral conduct.  Given human sinfulness, there is a need for government, whose primary responsibility is to protect people.  Thus laws, judges, police, and soldiers are necessary to maintain order and punish evil-doers.  Early Christians, especially Augustine, accepted this and provided guidelines for Christians to follow in supporting the political order.  Elshtain rightly dismisses the historical errors of those who argue that the Early Church was pacifist, indicating that the primary advocates of this position were theologians like Origin and Tertullian “who fell outside the Christian mainstream” (p. 51).  (In fact, soldiers were admired sufficiently to justify branding model Christians milites Christi, soldiers for Christ!)   “Jesus preached no doctrine of universal benevolence.  He showed anger and issued condemnations.  These dimensions of Christ’s life and words tend to be overlooked nowadays as Christian concentrate on God’s love rather than God’s justice.  That love is sometimes reduced to a diffuse benignity that is then enjoined on believers.  This kind of faith descends into sentimentalism fast” (p. 100). 

Following the admirably non-sentimental Augustine, Christian thinkers formulated the just war position, convinced that “To save the lives of others, it may be necessary to imperil and even take the lives of their tormenters” (p. 57).  Careful criteria were enumerated over the centuries and attained something of a consensus in virtually all branches of Christendom.  The late Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably the most influential American ethicist of the 20^th century, was “hardheaded [in his] insistence that Christianity is not solely a religion of love” (p. 109), showing that love and justice ever work together in solid Christian ethics.

Thus, Elshtain wonders: “is the war against terrorism just?”  After examining the evidence, she responds:  yes it is!  There are, of course, thousands of Elshtain’s colleagues in the academy and pundits in the press who say no!  They resemble, she thinks, the “humanists” portrayed in Albert Camus’s novel The Plague.  Such folks refuse to judge things in terms of black and white—all is a fuzzy mixture of gray.  There are many sides to every question and every conclusion must be tentative.  Their talk, their terms, their preferences--but not discomfiting realities--define their world.  Consequently, they “are unwilling or unable to peer into the heart of darkness.  They have banished the word evil from their vocabularies.  Therefore, it cannot really exist.  Confronted by people who mean to kill them and to destroy their society, these well-meaning persons deny the enormity of what is going on” (pp. 1-2).  So, when Ronald Reagan called the U.S.S.R. an “evil empire” a chorus of criticism was unleashed against him.  When George Bush labeled Iraq , Iran , and North Korea “an axis of evil,” the same singers united in denouncing him. 

In fact, the mark of the modern academic is negativity!   Criticizing, finding fault, disagreeing with traditional views, earns one a seat in the faculty lounge.    As one experienced professor noted, “You don’t get tenure by praising American policy” (p. 88).  In most American universities, professors retain their anti-Vietnam War stance, ever questioning the legitimacy of the military and condemning America ’s power in the world.  They seem trapped in a strange time-warp, unable to see the world apart from their youthful anger at the Vietnam engagement.  Thus you find professors alleging that America’s foreign policy is “fascist” and historian Mary Beard actually insisting that “the United States had it coming” when the terrorists attacked the nation on 9/11 (p. 93).         

Something of the same marks mainline churches.  In a chapter entitled “the pulpit responds to terror,” Elshtain demonstrates the degree to which American clergy share the leftism of the academy, for “a position best described as ‘pseudo’ or ‘crypto’ pacifism now dominates, certainly from our mainline pulpits”(p. 112).  Such preachers state the 9/11 devastation was less a murderous attack upon innocent people than a “wake-up call” for us Americans who need to examine ourselves and change our ways, to eliminate the “root causes” of terrorist anger.  A prominent evangelical, Tony Campolo (never one to allow historical ignorance to temper his rhetoric), as well as former President Bill Clinton, harked back to the Crusades, suggesting that Muslim terrorists were simply avenging the evils their ancestors suffered at the hands of Christian Crusaders.  Campolo and Clinton, of course, seemed often mute when confronted with the far greater numbers of Christians who have been slaughtered and enslaved as a result of Islamic Jihad!            Significantly, Albert Camus, in a 1948 statement, insisted that the “Christian has many obligations, and that the world today needs Christians who remain Christians.”  Camus professed that he did not share the Christian hope.  But he did share “the same revulsion from evil” (p. 123).  Elshtain clearly prefers the atheist Camus to the sentimental Christians, arguing that when confronting Terrorisism we must have the courage to both denounce and actively oppose it.   

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Immediately following September 11, 2001 , one of the nation’s premier military historians, Victor Davis Hanson, wrote a series of articles that provided Americans historical and analytical insights with which to put things in perspective.  Those essays have been collected and published as An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 And the War on Terrorism ( New York : Anchor Books, c. 2002).   “At the very outset,” he says, “I was convinced that September 11 was a landmark event in American history, if not the most calamitous day in our nation’s 225 years” (p. xiii).  In response, “we must be retold that we war to remember the dead, to save the innocent, and to end the violence” (p. 12). 

We must understand the Muslim threat, which Hanson thinks is primarily a reaction against the West’s economic and military success in the Middle East .  Islamists hate Israel primarily because “Israelis have defeated Muslims on the battlefield repeatedly, decisively, at will, and without modesty” (p. 195).  Even more, the very existence of Israel illustrates “that it is a nation’s culture--not its geography or size or magnitude of its oil reserves--that determines its wealth or freedom” (p. 195).  Similarly, the United States , both as Israel ’s ally and as the world’s foremost example of a successful modern society, incurs Muslim wrath.  “The Taliban, the mullahs of Iran , and other assorted fundamentalists despise the United States for its culture and envy it for its power” (p. 15).  We should have heeded early alarms, such as the PBS documentary, American Jihad, and intelligence reports that showed the rapid growth of terrorists rather openly operating in the United States during the 1990s.  Taking advantage of the freedoms--and frequently generosity--of their host country, they malignantly awaited opportunities to destroy her. 

Importantly, Hanson says, weakness--even the voluntary weakness of pacifism--never copes with the systemic hatred that fuels radical Muslims.  Long ago the Greeks decided that war, though often horrendous, was at times necessary to destroy evil powers and preserve civilization.  Today, if we understand the world, we must understand what we really are fighting for—“preserving Western civilization and its uniquely tolerant and human traditions of freedom, consensual government, disinterested inquiry, and religious and political tolerance” (p. 73).  Only military power can do this.  “It is an iron law of war that overwhelming military superiority, coupled with promises to the defeated of resurrection, defeats terrorists--in the past, now, always--whether they be zealots, dervishes, or Ghost dancers” (p. 155). 

But he wonders if we have the will to empower the military to do the same today.   Americans responded to Pearl Harbor , in 1941, with an anger and resolve that enabled them to support military action, despite horrendous battles, such as that at Okinawa , where kamikaze attacks destroyed 34 American ships and 12,000 servicemen died.  Folks at home wept, but they never marched in the streets demanding an end to the war.  Following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington , however, many Americans seemed more fearful of offending Muslims’ feelings than responding with strength to their assault.

As was evident in Vietnam , “One of the first casualties of war is language” (p. 75).  This is often true of those who wage it, but it also distinguishes many of those how oppose it.  Hanson pointedly condemns those American university professors who posture and pontificate while undercutting their nation’s morale.  Having taught at Fresno State University for two decades, he anticipated that his colleagues would protest any military response to terrorism, such as the attack upon Afghanistan .  The ordinary working class people he knows (in addition to teaching Hanson farms his family farm) supported President Bush’s response.  But “nearly all of the opposition to our conduct in this war was expressed by professors and those in law, the media, government, and entertainment, who as a general rule lead lives rather different from those of most Americans” (p. xvii).  This elite tenth of the population, dominating “the media, the university, politics, foundations, churches, and the arts--is adamantly and vocally at odds with most Americans” (p. 92).  Anti-war protesters, marching in the streets and urged on by folks in classrooms and churches imagine “peace” comes through appeasement.  The courage of Churchill, the toughness of an earlier America , seems absent in too many sectors. 

Though some anti-war rhetoric appeals to an authentic Christian conscience, Hanson argues that it is secular, humanistic pacifists, including the “deviant offspring of the Enlightenment--Marxists and Freudians--[that] gave birth to even more pernicious social sciences that sought to ‘prove’ to us that war was always evil and therefore--with help from Ph.D.s--surely preventable” (p. 66).  Consequently:  “Pacifists shamed us into thinking that all wars were bad, relativism convinced us that we are no different from our enemies, conflict resolution and peace studies hectored us that there was no such thing as a moral armed struggle of good against evil” (p. 98), and the nation’s elite chattered about a principled policy of appeasement.