THE EVIL THAT IS UPON
US
WWJD about global terrorism?
With the “war on terror” AKA the “war in Iraq” I have
wrestled with the question: WWJD? Recently I had to admit
being challenged by it from a bumper sticker.
Politics aside, (because one’s fury at or approval of G.W.
Bush does not inform my thinking), it would seem that what
I’m trying to resolve is a question of religion. And yet,
neither dogma nor mysticism inform my thinking either.
Even atheists who oppose the war must admit that they are
oddly in league with those Christians who similarly insist
upon peace at any cost, that killing is wrong no matter
what the provocation, and that the enemy, whoever it is,
needs to be approached sternly but with logic and
appeasements. Atheists-for-Peace (in Iraq), if that
describes them adequately, stop short of like-minded
Christians-for-Peace, who can be relied upon to add prayer
to their solution.
I have some politically liberal friends whom I love and
respect and struggle to understand. We avoid arguing,
probably because to do so would inform neither of us but
would drive us apart, which would be stupid because neither
we nor they will affect the course of this war.
I have supported it, in general, since the USA began
cleaning up first Afghanistan and then Iraq. Yes, I trust
President G.W. Bush, a lot more than I trusted his
opponents and his predecessor. But I’m willing to ask
myself whether this is right. Am I supporting the
destruction of the world? Am I, out of ignorance, in
collusion with satan, as my Christians-for-Peace friends
might hope I come to realize? What does satan want? Does
this war serve satan, or would our avoidance of this war
serve satan better? What does Jesus want? What would Jesus
do? What is the difference between this and all other
threats?
I have sensed, since it began, that it is different. I have
accepted that, because it is different, in a way that I
could not until now describe, then our response to it has
been appropriate. Not because I was told so in a speech or
by a columnist. For me to form an opinion, I need logic and
facts. I need information and evidence. And if these don’t
point to a clear path of thinking, then I need inspiration.
I don’t subscribe to the opinions of people who demand that
I believe because they told me so or because they have the
more worthy emotions or because they are justified by their
superior intellect, connections, or purity of motive. I
don’t subscribe to an opinion because it is widely held,
supported by polls, or for the common good.
So in searching for the answer to this deepening ethical
dilemma – How can I support a war that confutes the
teaching of Jesus? – I have drawn upon the evidence that I
have been accumulating for decades: the instruction of my
own church. For inspiration, I have looked to my own faith.
For facts, I have read the Bible. And what follows is what
I see.
When Jesus came right out and said Do this and Don’t do
that, he confused his followers, including us, more than
when he taught by example and parable. I don’t struggle
with the counsel to walk another mile and turn the other
cheek. That’s illogical because it is elegant and noble and
just might do more to confound an individual enemy than
resisting. When he invited the holier-than-thou’s to cast
the first stone, he really was inviting them to compare
themselves with their intended victim.
When he asked whose picture was on the conqueror’s coin, he
was counseling a manner of pacifism that would soon permit
his followers to devote their energy to establishing his
“church” instead of wasting their energy fighting Romans.
By their faith in his illogical pronouncement, they were
able to create something that eventually would rule Rome,
not submit to it.
But the enemies everyone could identify with in that era
were, for all their power and arrogance, civil people.
Throughout history there have been many organized forces
which descended upon the innocent and conquered without
mercy, but their objective was to control and subjugate a
nation, a region, or the known world, not to annihilate,
and especially not to annihilate out of apoplectic hatred
for their chosen enemy, which in present time means,
especially, all Americans.
Attempts at conquest involve nation rising against nation,
either to settle a grievance or to satisfy a charismatic if
arrogant, self-appointed, self-worshiping ruler. Even
though Hitler and Stalin were perhaps the most sinister and
duplicitous of them all, they still made a pretense of
civility and honor. They needed to be glorified and, even
though they made mockery of it, they pretended at
diplomacy. Kim Jung-Il does the same today, and will
probably not rest until he has attempted to bring more of
the world into his fold of worshippers. Not that anyone
actually worships him, but he doesn’t know it, such is his
delusion like that of Hitler and Stalin, a few Roman
emperors, and others.
Islam suffers from the same sort of self-destructive forces
in the person of its ruling do-no-wrong clerics. But Islam
is not a country or an ethnic group. Nor is it a unified
religious body such as the Roman Catholic Church. Islam is
a body of ideas, some of them religious, some even grounded
in faith (as opposed to religion or dogma), but not the
property of any orderly clerical hierarchy. The high
priests of Islam don’t even appear to be interested in
finding their own common ground or representing their
teaching to the world. (Something like that could also be
said about the intolerant, hate-motivated splinter groups
of so-called Christians, up to a point.)
The high priests of Islam’s most self-destructive splinter
groups aren’t interested in civility amongst themselves or
representing their teaching to the world because it is not
their objective to win converts. They are preaching hatred
for anything and anyone who is not themselves. They don’t
want slaves. There is no place in their world for converted
followers or repentant non-Muslims. It is ironic that they
now have a few tools that they did not have a century or
even a quarter century ago, and all are the products of
civilized societies: Broadcast media to spread their
message, money from oil or plunder (whatever the difference
might be), the armaments that their money can buy, and most
diabolical of all, the open borders that free societies
have permitted in the name of humanity. Ironically, too,
they have the complicity of a fawning American
communications media, motivated not by love for radical
Islam but by hatred for a common enemy, George Bush.
It is with the tools made possible by our prosperity and
generosity that we are being attacked. This time in
history, though, the enemy is anywhere and everywhere.
There is no leader who, by our taking him out, leaves the
movement stalled or stopped. Since it is not a nationalist
movement, there is no single country to overpower to stall
or stop the movement.
And since the movement is not interested in our
subservience, our gold, our conversion, or our appeasement,
there may be no stopping it. It was easier to wipe out
smallpox than it will be to put down radical militant
Islam.
Regardless which way we react, with guns or with olive
branches, we face one choice and that is to wait it out.
Turning the other cheek will have no influence on their
loathing for all things American or Jewish or Christian. So
what do we do while their fury runs its course?
Options:
...Duck every time there is a bombing in a civilized part
of the world such as Spain or Indonesia or England or the
USA, then carry on as if it was another hurricane that
can’t be prevented or diverted.
...Send money and suicidal volunteers to the mountains of
the Middle East to set up schools for teaching the
peaceable tenets of Islam, and hope to have more influence
than the radical militants.
...Appeal to the good will and spirit of cooperation of
desperately poor and uncooperative nations such as Russia
and China and ask them to intervene to persuade the radical
militant rabble-rousers to look more kindly on the USA, so
we can resume exporting Barbi dolls and Coca-Cola to the
Middle East.
No, these aren’t options, and I won’t go on.
War is a great waste of resources and lives, but Jesus did
not suggest how to deal with this enemy. Rather, I’m
somewhat persuaded that he warned of this enemy and this
time. I am not a student of Revelation, nor do I want to
be. It accomplishes nothing if I spend the next ten years
of my life becoming yet another expert on the end times.
But I could be persuaded that we are there or nearly so.
I’ve tried to discover the rational, productive, and
inspired response to the attacks on the free world by this
newly-empowered force which, as I admit, we have helped to
create. If a military response is appropriate, then it must
be everything we can do or nothing at all. Anything in
between will be like Vietnam. And damn the United Nations;
half the nations involved are state sponsors of terrorism,
so it’s no wonder the UN isn’t united on this problem.
If the response is heightened security, then let it rise to
a level that will truly thwart homeland terrorism. Anything
less will be a waste of resources and an acceptance of
random attacks. No security at all is, to me, not an
option, especially when the earliest victims of a casual
attitude will be slaughtered or poisoned innocents,
including more children, and letting our lives ever more be
controlled by the fear of another attack now and then. I
may be uncomfortable in the summertime wearing long clothes
against the insects, but if I want to reduce the bites and
stings I live with the extra heat.
Whether we submit to the attacks of those who hate us and
regard it as a fact of life in the modern world, or respond
with decisive force and intrusive scrutiny, as we have
begun to do, I am persuaded that we are in it for a very
long, long time. Those whose anger at the USA is so
profound that they will commit suicide in order to express
it do not represent a passing fad. They represent a
still-growing movement. Ignore them and they won’t go away.
They will not be satisfied until they have annihilated us.
What does Jesus want me to do? Well, there is frankly
little that I can do, personally. I wish there were
effective channels for me to do something beyond the
borders of my own country, but at least I can look after
those in need in my own country. I can and do vote. But I
vote with different things in mind than a single issue that
has most affected my “consciousness.” I vote based on my
understanding of government and how I believe candidates
will uphold the Constitution, not based on contrived issues
such as abortion-as-birth-control or campaign finance
"reform" or fake immigration reform. Candidates dangle
their positions on issues before us to attract our votes
when they know full well they have little chance of
delivering on their promises. We are fools to let their
stands on issues influence us. It's their position
on government that matters to me – the less of it
the better.
If I have the opportunity to come face to face with an
open-minded Muslim who has yet to form an opinion of
Americans, I hope I as an individual will have contributed
to a favorable impression. But what are the chances that
such an opportunity will fall to me?
America has been attacked by these indistinct forces
somewhat due to our own indifference toward the nations
that they come from, but moreso due to their envy, the
misinformation fed to them by their own leaders, and the
machinations of their own minds, steeped in ignorance of
us. When mosquitoes swarm, I swat. I don’t kill or chase
them all away, but fewer get to poke me. I don't try to
talk them out of it. They want my blood. I am definitely
less efficient in whatever I’m doing if I’m flailing at
them, but the alternative – simply letting them all stick
me – is unthinkable. Let that be an analogy.
I wish I could regard the “enemy combatants” as redeemable
individual humans. They won’t let me. Jesus submitted to
his crucifixion without flailing or fighting back or
calling upon his followers to attack his captors and free
him. But I argue that he knew that his individual death, so
inscrutably accepted by him, would affect the entire world.
Perhaps we humans have reached the limit of our ability to
civilize ourselves, the limit of our ability to cooperate
to any greater extent. Perhaps this is as good as it gets.
Four fifths of the world still lives in conditions no
better than a thousand years ago. It’s America’s delusion
that there is a bright future ahead for humanity. We tried
to show the world that it can be done: Individuals can have
liberty and self-determination, and left to chose to be
selfish or charitable, people will mostly chose to give to
those in need. Supply will meet demand when markets are
left to take care of distribution and cost. People freed
from tyranny will invent and invest. Information will flow.
Well, we have demonstrated all of that. But the rest of the
world only stares at us in wonder, then envy, then hatred.
They don’t perceive that they, too, can chose what we have.
They see, instead, that they cannot, and they would deny us
the same. When they can lash out at us in the name of God,
they are justified.
A long war has only just begun. It may cost the USA all
that we have left in lives and resources, not to mention
money and the destruction that will be wrought wherever we
meet the battle. But I can see no alternative. Not to
engage them is to invite an equal waste of lives and
resources and destruction in a place of their choosing, not
ours. It matters not to them who dies, as long as the
maximum number of Americans (or Brits or Spaniards, etc.)
are destroyed. In a war, however peculiarly it is fought,
the individual foot soldiers of the enemy cannot be
indicted and “brought to justice.” In a war, they get
picked off before they pick you off. They disguise
themselves as or hide behind “civilians” and so the
innocent in their own countries are victims. So are the
innocent in this country.
I find no clear answers in the Bible. I find no evidence
that Jesus dealt with or told anyone else how to deal with
humans who turn themselves into mosquitoes or vipers or
whatever non-human analogy best describes the plague that
is upon us. I am not persuaded that the enemy we now face
is even fully human except in DNA. I do not purport to be
an expert on evil, so I will refrain from declaring those
who would destroy me as evil, in the sense that would make
them literally agents of satan. They are evil in the sense
that they are fiercely dedicated to opposing the will of
God, inasmuch as we, as a society, have constructed our
world on the premise that God is love and that the two
great commandments should guide our thoughts and our
actions.
I will carry on with my life as best I can. I will think
globally and act locally. In thinking globally, I will not
regard the hate-motivated,
random-destruction-of-anything-that-can-be-a-target as an
acceptable norm, therefore I will not oppose reasonable
efforts to stop it. Locally, I will act as I have been
inspired to do by my God.
What God has in mind to resolve this conflict and repair
this mess I don’t presume to discern, and I will be
skeptical of anyone who confidently tells me he has
discerned God’s mind on this. I think we will be shown, in
the fullness of time.
11 July 2005
©David A. Woodbury
