Thought-provoking article, written by a professor of philosophy at Calvin College:
http://www.thebanner.org/cpbn_special_oneyear.htm
http://www.thebanner.org/cpbn_special_oneyear.htm
quote:
The Banner / Volume 137, Number 14 / September 2002
Does Terrorism Rule out Pacifism?
by David Hoekema
The attack on the Pentagon and the destruction of the World Trade
Center in September 2001 changed the world that we live in, in
ways that are difficult to pinpoint even after a year has passed.
No longer can we think of terrorism as a distant and abstract threat,
nor can we be certain that we are safe from attack in our homes and
offices. A low-flying airplane overhead, a fellow passenger who will
not meet our eyes on a public bus, a civil-defense siren that we are
not expecting--we find ourselves anxious about trivial matters that
would formerly have escaped our notice.
Has the terrorist attack also changed our moral world? Has it
foreclosed some of the ways in which we may respond to the threat
or the actual use of violence? Some voices in the U.S. media believe
that it has: no longer, they say, is it possible to entertain the naive
illusion that violence can be effectively countered by nonviolence,
the forces of war overcome by efforts for peace. Pacifism, these
voices urge, is now plainly revealed to be impractical and idealistic.
Pacifism vs. Just War
Pacifism is one of two approaches that have historically dominated
Christian responses to violence and war. The other approach--more
widely, but not universally, held by both Protestant and Catholic
writers--sees war as sometimes justified. We call it "the just-war
tradition." Each approach seeks to balance gospel ideals with the
realities of life in a sinful world.
Jesus commands us to love our enemies and return good for evil; yet
all around us we see evidence of an ineradicable human tendency to
exploit and oppress. Love demands self-sacrifice, but justice forbids
us to sacrifice the weak and defenseless to the strong and
unscrupulous. Some argue that God calls us to participate in war
when other options fail; others believe that faithfulness to Christ
requires us to renounce warfare in any circumstance. Each
perspective has had its defenders, from the early church fathers
through the Reformers and down to the present day.
Some Christians have argued that the just-war criteria, about which I
will say more in a moment, are still too restrictive on the nation's
pursuit of its legitimate ends. War is justified when national interest
requires it, say defenders of this sort of hard-nosed realism.
Others believe that violence against the enemies of the gospel is
praiseworthy in itself, not merely a last resort to avert great injustice,
as was openly proclaimed by church leaders who led the Crusades to
drive infidels from Palestine--thereby embracing a morality of
violence uncomfortably close to that of today's self-proclaimed
religious terrorists.
But neither of those positions, defending war simply on grounds of
national interest or religious orthodoxy, can be seriously defended
by Christians today.
And neither can pacifism, say some, in the wake of Sept. 11.
Pacifism means acquiescence, they claim. To turn the other cheek is
merely to invite still more deadly violence--and hence to sacrifice
the innocent for the sake of an illusory moral purity.
No Place for Pacifism?
"When [pacifists] hold up their 'global peace and unity' signs,"
wrote Carter Loren in Capitalist magazine (Oct. 3, 2001),
"remember that their version of 'peace' means standing in a circle
singing 'Kum Ba Yah' while terrorists murder your loved ones."
Adds Thomas Donovan in the Dartmouth Review (Oct. 1, 2001),
commenting on a sparse gathering of anti-war demonstrators on a
college campus last fall: "What these few lone protestors may not
realize is that in supporting peace they are not only playing into the
hands of the terrorists, but also helping the terrorists to carry out
their crusade." To refuse to strike back by forceful military means,
insists this writer, is to "leave ourselves open to further attack."
Even if those writers seek to ridicule more than argue, what they say
needs to be taken seriously. It is not easy to see how pacifist
principles could guide an effective response to international
terrorism, and few have offered serious challenges to the claim of
the U.S. government that its war on Afghanistan was a justified
response according to just-war criteria. Let me try, all the same, to
show how a response grounded in pacifist opposition to violence
would differ from a military response, then to offer some reasons
why Christians should take such a response seriously.
Why Pacifism?
The central insight that motivates pacifism remains as important and
as timely in the 21st century as it was in the first: to fight an evil foe
using the foe's chosen weapons is already to accept defeat, and
every seeming victory one wins will be a hollow one.
The moment we undertake to fight violence with violence, we have
compromised our commitment to the gospel of peace and lowered
ourselves to the level of the adversary. This important insight can be
discerned in the writings of the early church fathers, who forbade
Christians to participate in war or judicial execution, and the
prophetic witness of the Anabaptists during the Reformation.
Leading defenders of pacifism in the modern era include Leo
Tolstoy, Martin Luther King Jr., A.J. Muste, and John Howard
Yoder. Mohandas Gandhi's concept of satyagraha, "grasping for
truth," is at the center of modern theories of nonviolent social action.
Gandhi coined this Hindi term for a concept that, he frequently
acknowledged, had been at the heart of the message of Jesus Christ:
that unswerving dedication to the truth, including readiness to die
but never to kill in order to defend it, is more powerful than any
weapon.
Four Revealing Questions
What would a pacifist response to terrorism amount to, and how
would it differ from one grounded in just-war standards? How might
we respond to terrorism if our highest goal were not to vanquish the
foe but to restore peace, not just to win a conflict but to do so in a
way that spares the innocent and plants the seeds of lasting peace?
Let me try to answer those questions by discussing four more
focused ones:
1. Are there areas in which pacifism and just-war teaching agree?
Yes, there are--and they are far more extensive and more numerous
than the areas in which the two approaches offer different answers.
For example, pacifists and just-war defenders agree that military
force may never be used simply to defend national honor or to
advance essential economic interests. Those goals may be pursued in
many ways, including diplomacy, negotiation, and the carrot and
stick of international trade policy. But they do not warrant the use of
deadly force.
Both perspectives also agree that neither a government nor its
citizens should accept injustice passively. Rather, we should work
actively to correct it. This is an area in which pacifism is often
misconstrued, as if it condoned inaction in the face of evil. The
difference between the two approaches is not over whether to act but
over how we should act--by waging war or by means that stop short
of deadly military force.
2. Where do the two approaches disagree?
They part company above all over the issue of whether the morally
legitimate means of righting grave injustice include the use of
military force and the waging of war. The just-war defender replies,
Yes, military force is sometimes justified, subject to a lengthy list of
conditions. Those conditions fall under the two broad headings of
"just cause" and "just conduct."
First there must be just cause for war: a grave injustice that has
resisted every peaceful means of correction, such as defense of
national territory against an invader or rescue of a defenseless
minority from unrelenting oppression. Without such a cause as the
basis for a formal declaration of war and an announcement of its
objectives, no war is just.
But even a war that is just in its cause and properly declared must
also be pursued by moral means. The level of force used may never
exceed the minimum needed to correct the injustice, innocents must
never be the subject of direct attack, and the military conflict must
be terminated the moment a satisfactory negotiated settlement
becomes possible. When all of these conditions are met, defenders
of just-war assert, war is morally permissible. Governments may
declare war, and citizens, including Christians, may participate in
military action with a clear conscience.
To all of that the pacifist answers with a resounding no. War by its
very nature leads to excess and wanton destruction, and it is simply
not a suitable means to the end of restoring justice. Nations should
never go to war, and Christians should not to lend their assistance
when they do, regardless of how noble the stated purpose. Rather,
Christians ought to work with their governments to find practical
and effective but nonviolent means of combating injustice and
oppression.
Some pacifists exclude all use of violence even in domestic
contexts, such as law enforcement. Others believe that violence and
its threat are legitimate in law enforcement, since armed police
officers are likely to diminish rather than increase the level of
violence in society.
But war, pacifists insist, is fundamentally different from law
enforcement: by its very nature war foments hatred, hardens hearts,
and causes widespread and needless suffering. Violence may be
necessary in some contexts, insist many pacifists, but waging war is
not one of them. Opposition to warfare is the defining characteristic
of pacifism, and it is here that pacifists part company with advocates
of just war.
So far our discussion has been highly theoretical. It is time to be
concrete and to take into account the terrible events of last
September. Is it even possible to respond to such events without
resorting to war?
3. What nonmilitary response to the terrorist attacks would have
been morally justified?
It would have been highly appropriate, and entirely justified, for the
United States to respond to the attacks on the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center by treating them as what they really were:
massively destructive criminal acts.
The attacks were crimes, not acts of war. No foreign power sought
to achieve any objective by means of the attacks, and no government
has accepted responsibility for them.
War is by its nature an interaction between nations or, in civil
conflicts, between factions within a nation. In war we can identify
the combatants and their objectives; we can assess each side's
successes and failures as a war progresses.
Last September's attacks, by contrast, were carefully coordinated
joint actions of 19 individuals trained in a secret international
network that--according to the information that has been released to
the public--is directed by extremist political and religious factions in
the Middle East. Clearly others guided these actions, apparently with
no higher purpose than to wreak destruction and sow fear. These
were not military actions in any sense; they were acts of suicide and
mass murder.
Punishment of any serious crime calls for rigorous investigation,
impartial adjudication, and firmness in imposing penalties
proportionate to the offense. Punishment of international crime is
best pursued in an established international venue such as the World
Court of Justice. The first, and the principal, response to the criminal
acts of last September should have been a demand that officers of
that court, or a similar international body, seek to locate and
apprehend all those who directed and assisted the attacks and bring
them swiftly to trial, calling on the United States and on other
nations for help as needed.
It is true that investigation is a slow and painstaking process, and
there can be no assurance that all of the guilty will be caught and
punished. Hence other measures are also appropriate in response to
such heinous criminal acts.
Enhanced security, covert intelligence gathering, and international
pressure on those who harbor the guilty were all appropriate
measures in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Together with judicial
proceedings such measures diminish the likelihood of additional
attacks.
One response that is not appropriate to a crime, however, is warfare.
Police are authorized to use force to uphold the law, and the
international equivalent of police action should be no less firm or
effective. But we do not permit police officers to level an entire
neighborhood because thieves live there. A war that is undertaken in
place of punishment for a heinous crime is no less objectionable.
Imagine how we would respond to a politician who proposed to
counter a crime wave by hiring twice as many police officers and
encouraging them to shoot more freely--while taking funding away
from education and community health programs in order to pay their
salaries. The United States' response to the terrorist violence
sometimes seems uncomfortably similar to this, as the president and
Congress enact enormous increases in military budgets with scarcely
any debate, yet cut back on already small allocations for
humanitarian aid.
To be sure, terrorist violence can never be justified on the basis of
political grievances or economic hardship. Yet we have seen over
and over again that poverty and neglect are fertile breeding grounds
for resentment and anger. A nonmilitary response to terrorist
violence that combined enforcement and prevention measures with
generous and evenhanded humanitarian aid would address the root
causes of terrorism in ways that military action cannot.
By now you may have anticipated my final question:
4. Could a nonmilitary response to terrorist violence have been
effective in addressing its causes and preventing its recurrence?
The question is difficult to answer, and judgments will differ. But it
is hard to see any basis on which to say that a coordinated
international effort to punish the guilty and prevent further attacks
must have been less effective than the war that the United States
initiated, with the aid of its allies, against the government of
Afghanistan. Nor did that war meet the standards of the just-war
tradition, notwithstanding efforts to minimize the killing of the
innocent. It was not declared by the U.S. government, nor was it
directed at an enemy who had threatened violence against our
nation. It was not a last resort after other means such as international
police and court actions had failed, nor were the means employed
well suited to the war's ends.
Indeed, it is difficult to discern whether the United States has
actually achieved any of its major objectives in the Afghan war. An
extreme Islamist faction has been removed from power, but the root
causes of its ascendancy--the economic and social dislocation
caused by the protracted and disastrous Soviet war--have not been
addressed. Power has reverted to tribal warlords in Afghan cities, to
brigands in the countryside. Taliban forces are in hiding or in exile,
but the masterminds of recent terrorist attacks remain at large.
When the New York Times assessed the overall effects of the
Afghan war six months after the bombing began, it was able to
document just two: Islamist terrorist groups have moved their
operations from Afghanistan to neighboring countries, and popular
perceptions that the United States is the enemy of Islam have been
inflamed. If this is success, it is hard to imagine what failure would
look like.
Could an effort at international law enforcement have been more
successful? Not in every way that we might wish. It is uncertain
whether top Al Qaeda leaders could have been apprehended, and the
processes of gathering evidence and conducting a trial would
probably drag on for years. The Taliban might remain in power, and
Al Qaeda cells might remain entrenched in the Afghan mountains.
But there would be successes to count up against those failures. An
already war-torn land would have been spared a massive bombing
campaign. Employment of the mechanisms of international law
enforcement would have enhanced American moral standing and
increased the level of cooperation from other nations in the region.
There could be no assurance that we would prevent future terrorist
attacks, but we would have strengthened the networks of mutual
responsibility that help eliminate the conditions under which
terrorism thrives.
What, after all, do success and failure mean in this context? By what
standard, in other words, ought we to assess our actions? It is to this
question that pacifists continually redirect our attention. If the only
standard we apply is success in meeting military and political
objectives, they insist, we have abdicated our moral responsibility.
What matters is not merely what results we attain but how we attain
them--whether by treating others as objects we may destroy at will
or as subjects whose dignity and value we cherish. To follow the
way of force and violence is to embrace power as our god. To
choose instead to seek justice by nonviolence is to bear witness to a
higher way.
Concluding thoughts
It does not follow that every resort to violence must be condemned.
It does not even follow from pacifist principles that a war such as
the one that the United States initiated in Afghanistan should be
condemned. Even Gandhi, after all, insisted that it is better to
employ violence to combat injustice than to stand by and tolerate it.
And yet, he added, if we have sufficient wisdom and spiritual
strength, there is always a still better way, a way of nonviolence and
reconciliation, a path that is not only more moral but also more
effective in the long run.
In the face of wanton violence, whether in war or in unprovoked acts
of terrorism, it is difficult to know how Christians should respond.
The moral tradition that condones war as a remedy for grave
injustice deserves our respect: it is deeply rooted in the Christian
tradition, and when applied conscientiously it serves to restrain and
limit the tendency of individuals and nations to prey on each other.
But the prophetic voice of the pacifist tradition deserves our
attention as well. If we are truly followers of the Prince of Peace, the
pacifist urges, we must find a way to escape the cycle of violence
that begets violence.
Even in the most extreme circumstances confronted by an
unprovoked attack on thousands of innocent men and women--our
goals should be just punishment for those responsible and healing
for the torn fabric of global society. Aircraft carriers and cruise
missiles can never take the place of our own unswerving
commitment to justice and to the well-being of every person who
bears God's image.
