Philosophical Perspectives on the "War on Terrorism"

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE “WAR ON TERRORISM”

VIBS Volume 188 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Peter A. Redpath Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno Gerhold K. Becker Raymond Angelo Belliotti Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum Harvey Cormier Robert A. Delfino Rem B. Edwards Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Francesc Forn i Argimon William Gay Dane R. Gordon J. Everet Green Heta Aleksandra Gylling Matti Häyry Steven V. Hicks

Richard T. Hull Michael Krausz Mark Letteri Vincent L. Luizzi Adrianne McEvoy Alan Milchman Alan Rosenberg Arleen L. F. Salles John R. Shook Eddy Souffrant Tuija Takala Anne Waters John R. Welch Thomas Woods Emil Višňovský

a volume in Philosophy of Peace POP William Gay, Editor

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE “WAR ON TERRORISM”

Edited by

Gail M. Presbey

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Cover Photo: © G. Simon Harak, S.J. Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2196-9 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Printed in the Netherlands

Philosophy of Peace (POP) William C. Gay Editor

Other Titles in POP Laurence F. Bove and Laura Duhan Kaplan, eds. From the Eye of the Storm: Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace. 1995. VIBS 29 Laura Duhan Kaplan and Laurence F. Bove, eds. Philosophical Perspectives on Power and Domination: Theories and Practices. 1997. VIBS 49 HPP (Hennie) Lötter. Injustice, Violence, and Peace: The Case of South Africa. 1997. VIBS 56 Deane Curtin and Robert Litke, eds. Institutional Violence. 1999. VIBS 88 Judith Presler and Sally J. Scholz, eds. Peacemaking: Lessons from the Past, Visions for the Future. 2000. VIBS 105 Alison Bailey and Paula J. Smithka, eds. Community, Diversity, and Difference: Implications for Peace. 2002. VIBS 127 Nancy Nyquist Potter, ed. Putting Peace into Practice: Evaluating Policy on Local and Global Levels. 2004. VIBS 164 John Kultgen and Mary Lenzi, eds. Problems for Democracy. 2006. VIBS 181 David Boersema and Katy Gray Brown, eds. Spiritual and Political Dimensions of Nonviolence and Peace. 2006. VIBS 182

Assistant Editors of POP Joseph C. Kunkel Judith Presler

This page intentionally left blank

Dedication In memory of Robin Scott Gildert A young philosopher with much promise, Active Concerned Philosophers for Peace member, And contributor to this volume, Who died while this volume was in preparation.

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS Foreword G. SIMON HARAK, S.J.

xiii

Preface GAIL M. PRESBEY

xix

Introduction GAIL M. PRESBEY

1

Part One: Terrorism Analyzed ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

The New Reign of Terror: The Politics of Defining Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism WILLIAM C. GAY Enforced Homogeneity or Mutual Difference? Luce Irigaray, the War on Terrorism, and International Peace JENNIFER L. EAGAN Responsibility and/in Crisis DIANNA TAYLOR

21

23

35

47

Part Two: Democracy as a Remedy for Terrorism

65

Jihad or the Beloved Community? Benjamin R. Barber on Terrorism and Global Democracy MAR PETER-RAOUL

67

Violence, Power, and Identity: What Are the Conditions of Terrorism? RICHARD PETERSON

91

Crisis, Terror, and Tyranny: On the Anti-Democratic Logic of Empire PETER AMATO

113

x

Contents

Part Three: The United States’ “War on Terrorism” SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

129

Bush’s National Security Strategy: A Critique of United States’ Neo-Imperialis WILLIAM C. GAY

131

Would the United States Doctrine of Preventive War Be Justified as a United Nations Doctrine? HARRY VAN DER LINDEN

141

Is the United States-led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”? GAIL M. PRESBEY

161

The Mortal God to which We Owe Our Peace and Defense D. R. KOUKAL

199

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice: Moral Dilemmas Posed by the Post-September 11th “Shootdown” Policy EDWARD J. GRIPPE Jessica Lynch: Multiple Images, Multiple Realities LAURA DUHAN KAPLAN

211

245

Part Four: Terrorism Case Studies

253

Russia, Chechnya, and the Global War against Terrorism OIDINPOSHA IMAMKHODJAEVA

255

FOURTEEN

Ethics of Terrorism and the Case of Colombia JOSEPH C. KUNKEL

FIFTEEN

Terrorism and Deterrent Violence: A Critique of Israel’s Justification of Military Violence ROB GILDERT

289

309

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

Contents

xi

The Role of Central Asia in the “War against Terrorism” OIDINPOSHA IMAMKHODJAEVA

325

Securing Human Rights through War and Peace: From Paradox to Opportunity HARRY ANASTASIOU and ROBERT GOULD

361

Part Five: The Ethics of War

373

Dilemmas of Intervention: Human Rights and Neo-Colonialism RICHARD PETERSON

375

War and Peace in Christian Tradition: Why I Am an Engaged Christian Pacifist JOHN DAVID GEIB

387

Emmanuel Levinas: From “Innocent Violences” to the Ethical “Just War” WENDY C. HAMBLET

409

About the Authors

421

Index

427

This page intentionally left blank

FOREWORD I live in New York City, but 11 September 2001 was not my first experience of terror. I had had an earlier experience of terror in a classroom of an elementary school in Iraq. I am a professor of ethics by trade, and a lover of primary resource research. I even dare sometimes to accept the challenge of my students to “practice what I preach.” All those things, and probably a few more, led me to Iraq in the late 1990s during the the time when United Nations sanctions against that country were in force. I wanted to see for myself how the sanctions were affecting the people of Iraq. I wanted to bring them medicine, which the sanctions restricted and even forbade. I wanted to bring toys to the children, and books (also forbidden, along with medical journals and all printed material) and pencils (not forbidden, but the graphite in the pencils was). That is how I found myself in an elementary school in northern Iraq. During the twelve years of sanctions, the United States flew hundreds of thousands of sorties over the “no-fly zones” in northern and southern Iraq. American jets breaking the sound barrier over the towns terrorized schoolchildren in their classrooms every day. The children would try to alert and prepare each other: “The Americans!” as they heard the planes approaching. Then one day, one of those American jets dropped a bomb in a schoolyard I later visited. “Thank Allah,” one of the English teachers told me, “The children were not playing outside.” The bomb blast had swept shattered glass and scattered debris through the classrooms, tearing and cutting into the children, severely wounding several. When we arrived, students and teachers spoke “the Americans” in a horrified whisper. Even though we were bearing gifts, we could not overcome children’s terror: “The Americans!” they began to cry. Parents came and took many of their children home. Once, a teacher let two of us into a classroom. But I remember she placed herself between us and her students, prowling back and forth with her eyes always on us, like a lioness protecting her cubs. “What kind of future are we creating,” I wondered. “What are the people in our government thinking?” The terror we were sowing in Iraq so struck me that I decided to leave my tenured university position and work full time against the sanctions. It appeared to me to be the best way to try to assure a safe future for my students. I worked with Voices in the Wilderness, which I helped found with the wonderful Kathy Kelly and others, and eventually the War Resisters League employed me as their national anti-militarism coordinator. Then after 11 September 2001, the United States began its “war on terror.” As I have watched this “war” devolve over the years, I found myself

xiv

G. SIMON HARAK, S. J.

repeating the question I began asking back in that Iraqi elementary school. “What are the people in our government thinking?” For example, by now, just about everyone knows that not one of the suicide hijackers of 11 September 2001 was an Afghan. They had not trained in Afghanistan; none had ever even been to Afghanistan. If we are to believe United States’ reports, one of the attackers came from Lebanon, one from Egypt, two from the United Arab Emirates, and fifteen from Saudi Arabia. Yet when United States’ intelligence agencies asked the Saudi government for the files on the attackers, the Saudis refused. So we bombed Afghanistan, attacking a whole country, causing as many civilian deaths as the number who died on 11 September, because we argued—without ever offering any proof—that the terror perpetrators were hiding out there. In 1998, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that the sanctions on Iraq had increased the death rate among children under the age of five by 500,000. The reader might recall the staggeringly callous evaluation of this policy by then-United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright. When Leslie Stahl of CBS spoke of preliminary reports of half a million Iraqi children dead from the sanctions and asked Albright if the benefits were worth the price, Albright responded, “It’s a difficult decision, but the price—we think the price was worth it.”1 Yet after five more years of those genocidal sanctions, people like Karl Rove and Ahmed Chalabi had convinced the United States government–and many US citizens—that the Iraqis would welcome the United States’ invaders “with open arms.” After Colin Powell had failed, in February 2003, to convince the United Nations Security Council that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or that Iraq was an imminent threat, the United States withdrew from the United Nations Security Council process and called its invasion Operation Iraqi Freedom (after changing from the original title, “Operation Iraqi Liberation” for fear that its acronym would be too revelatory2). One year after the March 2003 “shock and awe” attack of liberation, The Lancet (an independent and reformist global medicine journal) found that the invasion caused 100,000 “excess deaths”—more deaths than if there had been no invasion. Invading forces killed most of the dead, The Lancet reported, mostly by bombing. Most were women and children.3 After the invasion, the United States led an occupation whose goal, the government told us, was to “win the peace.” To accomplish that, the occupying forces disbanded the Iraqi army (thereby releasing hundreds of thousands of unemployed, desperate armed men into the streets of Iraq), seized tens of thousands of Iraqi men women and children without warrant, held them without charge and tortured them. They instituted a totally bewildering election process for a people who had had no experience with democracy in the first place, and ran an election which resulted in an illegal and partisan government led mostly by people who had been out of Iraq for years if not decades.4

Foreword

xv

They called this winning the “hearts and minds” of Iraqis, and making Iraq a “model for the Middle East.” Four years into the occupation of Iraq, The Lancet issued another report, this time with even tighter research controls, which stated that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had caused 655,000 excess deaths.5 In the meantime, coalition forces in Iraq continue to suffer about 100 attacks per day. The majority of polled Iraqis favor attacking United States troops, since they see the United States troops as provoking more violence than they are preventing. At the same time, in Afghanistan, now the world’s number one producer of heroin, the Taliban is resurgent and human rights violations are rampant.6 Has any of this stemmed terrorist attacks? In a February 2006 speech at the Naval Academy, President George W. Bush assured his listeners that “we’re winning.” But in April 2006, the National Counterterrorism Center released a report together with the annual State Department Country Reports on Terrorism, which stated, “The number of terrorist attacks worldwide increased nearly fourfold in 2005 to 11,111, with strikes in Iraq accounting for 30 percent of the total.” Then in September 2006, the media reported that a coalition of American intelligence agencies found that the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan had increased the overall threat of terrorism. 7 Those assessments do not include state-sponsored terrorism—especially not by the United States and its allies. For example, the United Nations reports that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon has left behind some one million unexploded cluster bombs, 90 percent of which were deployed during the last seventy-two hours of the attack, when a cease-fire was close to finalization.8 Such lethal litter has rendered southern Lebanon dangerous to the point of uninhabitable for years. If reports about Israeli use of Depleted Uranium (DU) are true, inhabitants of Lebanon—and eventually the entire Middle East—will be cursed with cancer and genetic deformities for untold generations.9 All the while, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people continues. Back home, the “war on terror” does not bode well for citizens of the United States either. By the time this volume is published, the number of United States’ military dead in Iraq will be well above 3,000, and the number of wounded and maimed hideously higher. The practice of illegal wiretaps has blossomed into the Pentagon’s 1500 incidents of spying on domestic groups considered a threat to United States’ security. This includes a Quaker group in Florida, the Catholic Worker in New York City, and my own organization, the War Resisters League.10 The original outrage against the torture in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places of “extraordinary rendition,” has given way to the suspension of habeas corpus, the legalization of torture, and the use of secret evidence for “alien enemy combatants”—a category dangerously underdetermined by the law.11

xvi

G. SIMON HARAK, S. J.

We can observe another economic effect exacerbated by war: the gap between rich and poor is growing in the U.S.12 New Orleans still struggles in scandalous disrepair while the American government appropriates more than $14,000 per second to the Pentagon—with extra hundreds of billions of dollars voted in emergency funds to prosecute the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Katrina itself is evidence of an alarming trend of “global scorching,” a term that increasing number of critics use. Exempt from even the flimsy United States’ laws for environmental protection, the United States’ military—at home and in its 700+ bases abroad—is one of the greatest destroyers of planetary environment. Each year, the United States’ military generates some 500,000 tons of toxic waste—more than the five leading chemical companies combined do. The fuel consumed by a Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle for one hour, for example, could run a family car for two years. With such levels of consumption and destruction, the military machine must engage in more and more “resource wars” (Michael Klare’s term) to feed its gargantuan and growing appetite. Perhaps then, the answer to our original incredulous and bemused question is, “The government people weren’t thinking at all.” Or perhaps, the answer may be that their thinking was delusional to the point of lethality. Whatever the answer, by now we should see plainly that the rage (however rationalized) that motivated the suicide bombers of 11 September 2001 cannot be countered with more, greater, and more lethal rage (whatever its noble disguise). The way to a proper response—even to the rage of terrorism—is through humble self-assessment, deep reflection, sincere truth seeking. Put simply, by thinking. Now that I am returning to academics after seven years “in the field,” I am encouraged to find a volume like this one, with so many scholars offering reflections of such quality. As global war and the war against the planet rage, to analyze coherently and plan wisely, and to reflect deeply and discuss openly the causes and effects of our actions is more important than ever. Peacemakers, too, were unprepared for the attacks of 11 September 2001, even though some critics shared ample foreboding of such “blowback” (to use a CIA term) from U.S. foreign policy. Peacemakers were unprepared for the United States government’s consummately violent response, even though they had had ample warning when the Project for the New American Century issued its recommendations for “preventive strikes” and seizure of Middle East oil. When Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney and other architects of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) moved into the Executive branch of the United States government, we had more warning. Peacemaking strategies and tactics, remnants of the Vietnam and Civil Rights eras, were, though massive and heroic, unable to prevent the initiation of our twenty-first century corporate-driven wars. Strong analysis and reflection on the nature of

Foreword

xvii

war in our time is essential for peacemakers as well, if we ever hope to act effectively for peace. The studies in the volume will benefit warmakers and peacemakers alike. An old Muslim saying goes: However far you have gone down the wrong road, turn around and come back. All the authors in this volume, descendents of Plato and emergers from the Cave of Illusions, invite us to do just that. G. Simon Harak, S.J. NOTES 1. Madeleine Albright, interview by Leslie Stahl, 60 Minutes, CBS, 12 May 1996. 2. Jim Bunning, “Operation Iraqi Liberation,” 21 March 2003, http://bunning. senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Columns.Detail&column_id=36&Month=3&Year=2003 (accessed 8 December 2006); and Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham, “Mortality before and after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet, 364:9448 (29 October 2004), pp. 1857–1864). 3. L. Paul Bremer, “Bremer Discusses Possible Delay of Transition of Power in Iraq,” CNN Live Event/Special, 19 February 2004, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCR IPTS/0402/19/se.01.html (accessed 8 December 2006); and Michael Rubin, “Bremer’s Legacy a Recipe for Instability,” Australian Financial Review, 29 June 2004, http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/5504 (accessed 8 December 2006). 4. Phyllis Bennis, “Iraq’s Elections,” Talking Point #27, Institute for Policy Studies, 20 December 2004, http://www.ips-dc.org/comment/Bennis/tp27elections.htm (accessed 8 December 2006). 5. Roberts, et al., “Mortality before and after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.” 6. Rick Jervis, “Attacks in Iraq Jumped in 2005,” USA Today, 22 January 2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-01-22-iraq-statistics_x.htm (accessed 8 December 2006); Program on International Policy Attitudes, “Most Iraqis Want U.S. Troops Out Within a Year,” WorldPublicOpinion.org 27 September 2006, http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf (accessed 8 December 2006); Pamela Constable, “Afghan Corps Faces a Resurgent Taliban: Unit Struggles at a Time of Transition,” Washington Post, 10 June 2006, http://www.washington post.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/10/AR2006061000006.html (accessed 8 December 2006); and Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, “Country Reports on Terrorism,” http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2005/65353.htm. 7. Mark Mazzetti, “Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat,” The New York Times, 24 September 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/ world/middleeast/24terror.html?ex=1316750400&en=da252be85d1b39fa&ei=5088&p artner=rssnyt&emc=rss (accessed 8 December 2006); and BBC News, “‘Million bomblets’ in S Lebanon,” 26 September 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_ east/5382192.stm (accessed 8 December 2006).

xviii

G. SIMON HARAK, S. J.

8. “United Nations: Israel Cluster Bomb Use in Lebanon ‘Outrageous,” Reuters, 19 September 2006, http//www.ynetnews.com/articles/0%2C7340%/2CL-330 5802%2C00.html (accessed 8 December 2006); and Doug Rokke, “Depleted Uranium Situation Worsens,” The Veteran, 36:2 (Fall 2006), p. 25, http://www.vvaw.org/vet eran/article/?id=662 (accessed 8 December 2006). 9. Lisa Myers, Douglas Pasternak, Rich Gardella, and the NBC Investigative Unit, “Is the Pentagon Spying on Americans?: Secret Database Obtained by NBC News Tracks ‘Suspicious’ Domestic Groups” MSNBC, 14 December 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/ (accessed 8 December 2006). 10. Ibid. 11. Military Commissions Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-366, 120 Stat. 2600 (17 October 2006), enacting Chapter 47A of title 10 of the United States Code; and Amnesty International, “United States of America Military Commissions Act of 2006—Turning Bad Policy into Bad Law,” 29 September 2006, http://web.amnesty.org/library/ index/ENGAMR511542006 (accessed 8 December 2006). 12. “Inequality in America: The rich, the poor and the growing gap between them,” The Economist, 15 June 2006, http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory. cfm?story_id=7055911 (accessed 8 December 2006).

PREFACE To understand why we wrote this book, readers must first know about a dedicated group called Concerned Philosophers for Peace. Members of this society are philosophers by vocation. They are also citizens (primarily from the United States, but also from Canada and other countries) committed to acting as public intellectuals to support peace in our world. In other volumes of the VIBS Philosophy of Peace Series (POP), our members have discussed various wars and military maneuvers that their governments have prosecuted, evaluating those actions according to moral and logical criteria. They have heard many political speeches and have analyzed those speeches for consistency, pointing out contradictions and double standards. They have analyzed concepts used by governments to justify war, such as the “domino theory” and “collateral damage.” The “war on terrorism” (sometimes called the “global war on terror”) is another such concept. Not a “war” in the traditional sense, the concept is problematic. Can we have a war against a tactic? Would it be a military battle, a police action, or a struggle for “hearts and minds?” Questions about the identity of “the terrorists” are also unresolved. In government documents on the war on terrorism, commentators have combined different kinds of attacks into a unity as “the terrorists.” They tell us that these attacks now threaten the “American way of life” and oppose our “freedom and democracy.” How can we know when we have won such a war? Perhaps this war is unending by design. Who are our adversaries? Can we understand them with more precision? Understanding does not mean condoning terrorist actions. Through understanding, we may move toward solutions to the deeper causes of such actions. In this volume, several authors discuss how authoritarianism and indoctrination play a role in creating the violence of terrorists and the violence of counter-terror measures. They suggest that democratic participation gets to the root of problems and offers solutions that people will accept. But “democracy” has many connotations. What do we mean by democracy? What is the role of a government in relation to its people, and how should democratic governments use power? These topics enter into political and democratic theory, although different authors tie their theoretical explanations to concrete cases unfolding in our contemporary world. Along with statements about the war on terror have come new United States government documents, such as the National Security Strategy (NSS), which suggest that in the future, the United States government will be justified in acting preemptively to stop terrorist attacks before they start. The NSS talks about how new “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs) will change the tactics and the morality of war. Several of our authors search for clarity in the concept, and they find some problems with its usage. Other authors debate

xx

GAIL M. PRESBEY

whether changes in military tactics based on new technology can still be understood in the framework of long-accepted moral guidelines for the conduct of war as in the just war theory. If not, should we scrap or modify the theory, or should the current war on terror conform to the existing guidelines? The United States is not the only country engaged in fighting terrorists. One section of this volume is devoted to problems related to terrorism in other countries and regions such as Russia, Central Asia, Cyprus, Colombia, and Israel and Palestine. While the United States often plays a role in these struggles, we cannot easily reduce these diverse situations to one global problem, since context-specific aspects to these struggles exist. Our authors shed light on the historical and current details of the violent situation in the countries they examine. Each study rises above the details to explore a broader concept, such as reconciliation, punishment, Islamic identity, human rights, or nationalism. Even without prior knowledge of the countries in question, readers can gain insights about the shape of the “global war on terror” by reading the area studies articles. Many people, including philosophers, often view philosophy as being above the hubbub of the changing world. While some philosophy journals like Metaphilosophy and some philosophical societies like the North American Society for Social Philosophy have commendably devoted special issues of their publications to discussion of the war on terrorism, other philosophical journals and societies have not even mentioned the war on terrorism these past few years. This omission points to the larger questions in our field, such as the role of the philosopher in society. Lack of engagement in issues of the day such as the war on terrorism may be an abdication of our responsibility as citizens and intellectuals. While their more theoretical counterparts sometimes marginalize engaged philosophers, attitudes outside of the field of philosophy sometimes suggest that philosophers have nothing to offer. Many may consider the military experts, the terror specialists, and politicians as exclusively qualified to critique our government’s current approach. So, just what can a volume like this, written by philosophers, offer to the world suffering from its current crisis? Let me describe, as editor, what I think philosophers do best. Philosophers ask questions, especially in situations where others presume to know all that we need to know. Philosophers make observations about undetected or untheorized significant events, trends, or values. Philosophers are alert to ironies created by gaps or contradictions between what people state are their values and their actions. Philosophers care about truth when others are content with hearsay or comfortable lies. They want to know what is real instead of being satisfied with surface appearances. They want to know (and embody or live by) the ideals of justice and goodness instead of being satisfied with prevailing cultural or legal norms. They notice and point out possible long-term effects of a policy when others are only interested in the short-term effects.

Preface

xxi

Many philosophers engage in persuasive arguments in which the goal is to persuade others to care as passionately as they do about the issues they address. Philosophers are not rarified beings. These attributes are beneficial to any citizen. Engaging in philosophizing is a good model for citizenship. The philosophers in this volume are human beings interested in the crises facing our world today. They apply their thinking skills to the matter at hand, and put forward their arguments about how we should understand and solve those problems. Their articles are informative and persuasive. The opinion pieces are informed, well supported, and carefully considered. The thoughts of the philosophers contained in this volume will spur readers to think more deeply about these issues. I would like to acknowledge the help of William Gay, the Philosophy of Peace series editor, for his guidance in constructing this book and shepherding it through its various stages. Thanks also go to the members of Concerned Philosophers for Peace, who helped to make this book a reality. Special thanks goes to Larry Bove of Walsh University for organizing and hosting the 2002 conference “War and Peace in a Time of Terror and Terrorism,” which served as the first basis for collecting some articles for this volume; and David Boersema of Pacific University, who organized and hosted the 2003 conference on “Bush’s Security Strategy,” which was the source of other papers. I would like to thank Wendy C. Hamblet for editorial assistance in gathering six papers for this volume from the 2003 CPP conference, sending those articles out for blind review, and working with authors on a second draft. I would also like to thank her for working on a first draft of camera-ready formatting for over half of the manuscript. The volume benefited from the help of a whole team of readers who blind reviewed submissions for the volume, including Patricia Burdette, Duane Cady, R. Paul Churchill, Barry Gan, Ron Hirschbein, Roderick Hughes, Andrew Kelly, Glen Martin, Mar Peter-Raoul, Sally Scholz, Karsten Struhl, Barbara Wall, and Jack Weir. Thank you to our authors, who proof read their fellow authors’ chapters. Thanks also go to Olga Bukhina, Oriare Nyarwath, and Gregory Sumner for reviewing and proofreading. Thanks also go to Elizabeth D. Boepple, for many hours of careful work reviewing the manuscript, doing the indexing, and creating the camera-ready copy. She ensured compliance with VIBS guidelines, did fact checking, and made helpful comments about the clarity of passages. Finally, thanks go to Dean Charles Marske and the College of Liberal Arts and Education of University of Detroit Mercy, for a grant from the Mellon Fund for Humanistic Studies to cover the costs of manuscript preparation. Gail M. Presbey

This page intentionally left blank

INTRODUCTION Gail M. Presbey Each of the five sections of this volume centers on a theme related to the “war on terrorism,” which serves as a focus for philosophical reflection and analysis. In Part One, “Terrorism Analyzed,” our authors explore questions such as, what are the words and concepts we use to describe these times? What do we mean by “terrorism,” and “weapons of mass destruction?” Does the United States’ President’s decision to describe the war on terrorism as an “us” versus “them” and “good” versus “evil” struggle over-simplify and distort the situation? Can we speak out to clarify our ideas through dialogue, or does the government or media attempt to stifle or narrow our conversations? What kind of responsibility do we have as citizens to shape this meaning-making discussion? William C. Gay begins his article by asserting his suspicion of categorical claims. He cautions that we must carefully choose words we use in our descriptions because words help to frame the issues and shape responses. He also warns that lies and euphemisms are rampant in “official” discourse. Through the power of “re-designation,” speakers intend to make the idea of murder more palatable. With these background cautions, Gay looks at the newly popular phrase “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs). Typically, speakers intend the phrase to have a negative connotation, covering nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. But he asks what conditions we use to subsume these three things into the term. If WMDs can quickly kill many people at once, and airplanes killed thousands on 11 September, should we conclude that we should classify airplanes as WMDs? Gasoline would be the chemical. The planes would be the delivery system. After all, people or governments choose to use WMDs, not only to inflict military casualties, but also to strike terror in the population. Regarding nuclear weapons, the United States government is using a double standard; they say that the United States use of the atomic bomb during World War II was justified, but in the hands of rogue states, they believe atomic weapons are dangerous. Such thinking fits into a pattern of contrasting Americans with “villains,” in this case, insurgents or rogue states that are unpredictable and irrational. Gay holds that a fair definition of terrorism would allow that governments and insurgents could qualify as terrorists. Governments and rebels routinely call their adversaries “terrorists,” but rarely accept the label applied to themselves. He ends by suggesting that we should challenge a new “reign of terror,” in which the United States government strikes fear into the heart of its citizens and others. We

2

GAIL M. PRESBEY

must voice our criticism and discourage our government from responding to violent terror attacks with more violence. Jennifer Eagan wants us to rethink democracy in terms of its interpersonal aspects, the mutual respect involved in recognizing people in their particularity. Too often, we think of democracy in terms of individualistic strategic selfinterest. French philosopher Luce Irigaray holds the position that love, respect, and mutuality are the basis of a democracy. Eagan wants to apply Irigaray’s insights to the polarizing politics of the war on terrorism. Eagan argues that fixed categories such as “women” and “men,” while they appear to be sensitive to difference, lump all women together (and all men together), denying the differences within the group. Failure to love across differences results in oppression, exploitation, and violence. To move to the contemporary political situation, if we abstract into two groups “we citizens” and “our enemies,” we are no longer thinking of real men and women. This fundamentalist viewpoint does not listen to ambiguities. This forced homogeneity of whom we should love and hate is the opposite of the freedom of people to value different things. In contrast, George W. Bush’s National Security Strategy document asserts a narrow version of American values, focusing on free enterprise, markets, and trade. This narrow United States view focuses on securing United States interests at all costs. Since the 11 September terrorist attacks, many United States citizens have retreated and become incapable of love; instead, fear of death rules them. In contrast, for Eagan, just relationships are signs of civil maturity. This caring relationship would reduce the kind of competition that creates social ills. Dianna Taylor begins her chapter by suggesting that the tragic events of 11 September 2001 began a crisis of meaning. She asks how United States citizens were supposed to understand the nature of the attacks, and how they should responsibly shape their response. Taylor contrasts two kinds of responsibility: normative and critical. In normative responsibility, we shape our society and political institutions through our meaning making. Critical responsibility, often in tension with normative responsibility, involves the public use of reason; society’s skeptics and doubters who have a crucial role to play often voice this type. Yet times of crises strain people’s abilities to engage in critical responsibility. Anytime something terrible happens, people may find themselves striving to make sense of it. Because of the trauma or magnitude of the crises, people may disengage from meaning making. After 11 September, the United States government promoted quiescence and obedience. This emphasis on conformity was unfortunate, but understandable. In times of crisis, people’s thinking can become distorted; they come to think that the normative response is to obey authority; they depict critique as immoral. But conforming to authority can be dangerous. The United States government decided to invade Afghanistan in search of the perpetrators of 11 September; consequently, many people, especially civilians, died. As citizens of a govern-

Introduction

3

ment, we have collective responsibility for our individual actions and for actions taken by our government in our name. Taylor agrees with Hannah Arendt, who rejected the “cog” theory and the “lesser evil” arguments that people living under totalitarian rule in the mid-twentieth century used to justify their cooperation with Nazi and Stalinist regimes. Taylor warns that some governments condition their people to accept the “lesser evil” arguments to gain cooperation. President Bush tried to simplify the project of giving 11 September meaning by drawing a parallel to to the well-known attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by the Japanese in 1941. By using this narrative, Bush tells us what we are feeling and what our grief over 11 September means. He suggests that the whole country is going through an experience that begins in grief, moves on to anger, and then to a stage of swift reaction against our country’s enemies. Bush simplifies, saying to other countries and Americans, that if you are not “with us,” you are “against us.” He interprets any critical skepticism of his narrative as unpatriotic. Taylor thinks that United States citizens need to regain their sense of critical responsibility. She mentions that during the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, people finally began to hear critical voices, which she believes is an integral part of making meaning of the 11 September crisis and its aftermath. In Part Two, “Democracy as a Remedy for Terrorism,” our authors elucidate the correlation between repressive authoritarian regimes and desperate responses to repression (which sometimes includes terrorism). They suggest that democratic openness, which allows people to voice their grievances and shape their governments into more humane and helpful forms, can reduce the perceived need of some groups to revert to terrorism. They ask what kind of democracy will be helpful. Mar Peter-Raoul explores the implications of Benjamin R. Barber’s insights into the makings of terrorists in the contemporary Middle East. She begins by noting the levels of poverty and disease, which form the background for so many of Osama bin Ladin’s recruits. Jihadist rhetoric and ideology exploit the poor’s frustration with Western imperialism. Those who are impoverished and despairing are tacit terrorists. Time remains to win them over to the movement for “distributive” justice and away from “retributive” justice. A great need exists for political democracy and international economic democracy. While the military battles the terrorists, we need a “second front,” a civic movement for global liberty and equality, undermining terrorism. This would involve changing the main thrust of our capitalist world away from private good to concerns for common good. Peter-Raoul agrees with Mahmood Mamdani, that we should not equate terrorism and Islamic culture. Even so, she is concerned that the madrassa system among poor Muslims, with its narrow interpretation of the Qur’an, encourages extremism and justifies terrorism. The problem is that

4

GAIL M. PRESBEY

the poor do not have access to schools with a broad curriculum. She also notes that the United States played a role in supporting the mujahedeen fighters in the 1980s, including Osama bin Laden, which led to acts of terrorism in the 1990s and in 2001. The United States should admit that it has contributed to the problem of rising levels of violent Jihadists, and recognize its responsiblity to work for a solution to the problem, instead of dictating the steps for others to take. In contrast to madrassa education and American conformist education, Peter-Raoul wants to encourage education to forge responsible, thoughtful, critical, and competent citizens: education to foster critical compassion. She wants to see schools modeled on this pedagogy in the Middle East and Western countries. She also wants to lend her support to citizen initiatives such as Campus Compact, World Wide Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS), and Alliance for a New Humanity. She warns that without changes such as these, our society might become a “post-democracy.” Peter-Raoul argues for a religious dimension in the struggle to reduce terrorism. She wants faith traditions of the world to ground, as Martin Luther King Jr. did, socio-economic justice in theological understanding. To do so would mean that our choices are between a violent jihad on the one hand and an expansive beloved community on the other hand. Richard Peterson surveys the arguments of most critics of the war on terrorism, and finds that they hold in common two main assertions: first, that the fight against terror should take into consideration social and economic conditions, such as poverty, that lead people to engage in terrorist actions. Second, the critics argue that a violent response to terror should come second to other more helpful measures. There the consensus breaks down. Peterson rejects the first approach as behavioristic. Poverty alone cannot make someone turn to terrorism, because many poor communities do not engender terrorism as a response. He wants people to take responsibility for their agency. Peterson agrees with those who see identity formation as the key ingredient in becoming a terrorist, and he turns to recognition theory to gain insights into the psychological dynamics involved in tying identity claims to violent actions. Recognition theory explains that I only know who I am through my relation to, or contrast to, others. If people do not get sufficient recognition, they could spark conflicts. Peterson characterizes the “Islamism” of bin Ladin and his fellow travelers (not to be confused with the much broader category of the religion of Islam) as an authoritarian collective identity formation. Based on medieval texts, it is rationally unsuited for the modern world, but it still appeals to some people because it allows harmed individuals to vent indignation and selfrighteousness. Offering a decidedly unflattering portrait of the group, Peterson draws parallels between Islamists and European fascists; he holds that the only antidote for the Islamist version of fascism is democracy. Peterson’s suggestion that Islamic fascism should be replaced by democracy has also been on the Bush agenda. Katha Pollit and others have criti-

Introduction

5

cized this conceptualization of the problematic, popularized by Christopher Hitchens. For example, Pollit thinks that the term “Islamofascism” is not intended to shed light on the political problems found in Middle Eastern countries, but is instead intended to manipulate United States citizens into thinking that this new war is just like the “good war,” that is, the Second World War, when Americans fought the evil fascists. Peterson stands by the accuracy of parallels between Islamism and fascism. Distinguising himself from the Bush Administration, he stipulates that he does not necessarily promote a United States based or Western-style democracy. Western society has not lived up to its ideals. In the 1980s, the United States supported Islamist movements, an action that did not promote democracy. The United States engages in terrorist actions, and uses militant language to form United States’ identity as the opposite of its enemies, the terrorists, ironically proving that it has more in common with its adversary than it would like to admit. Peter Amato begins by acknowledging that a great tradition of civic democracy exists in the United States. Regardless, he considers the current United States foreign policy to be anti-democratic, terrorist, and tyrannical. United States’ imperialist adventures encourage terrorism “in the marginalized and immiserated enemy.” Anyone who doubts that United States foreign policy has been imperialistic can find out more about its history of terror and torture in a large, publicly available literature and recently declassified material documenting such actions. Currently, the United States is engaging in actions of rendition and torture while it attempts to redefine torture to legitimate the practices. United States’ actions have made it harder for people in other countries to have democratic power. At the same time, democracy in the United States is an unfulfilled promise. The United States government promotes a style of regime it calls democratic in which it actually fosters local elites that privatize local resources for exploitation by corporations. This is not the kind of democracy other countries need. Amato finds in Socratic philosophy a model of democracy that could provide an alternative to that which United States’ policy promotes. Realizing that most commentators do not interpret Socrates as a supporter of democracy, Amato explains that we should not take passages of the Republic at face value. After all, Socrates stipulates that censorship and propaganda would only be justified if those fashioning it were near gods – an impossible condition. We may interpret Socrates as comparing and contrasting two types of democracy. In the first, citizens reject the importance of truth and the Good. What is “good” is what is “chosen,” as in Athens, and Amato suggests the same is true of contemporary United States democracy. In both cases, the citizens pursue wealth as their highest goal. The second type of democracy aims at a dialogue through which people as a community try to discern the ideal of the Good. Theirs is a life of philosophical examination, guided by reason. Socrates implicitly advocates the second version of democracy.

6

GAIL M. PRESBEY

Amato suggests that if we were to follow the second ideal of democracy, our search for truth would lead us in a different direction from that of the Bush Administration, and even toward the impeachment of President Bush for his actions in the war on terrorism. Amato concludes that we need to imagine a United States pursuing policies based on a democratic search for the truth. Part Three focuses on the United States’ “war on terrorism”; it examines United States’ policies and speeches of the Bush Administration, describing and defending the policy. Authors describe and evaluate laws such as the United States’ Patriot Act and the National Security Strategy of the United States. They examine United States and United Nations’ actions to discern whether they fit with policy statements. They conclude that United States’ decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and its conduct during those operations, are morally problematic. In William Gay’s second chapter, he evaluates Bush’s National Security Strategy document. He notes that the document, signed on 17 September 2002, is replete with question-begging epithets and false statements. The document uses misleading language; the phrasing of the preemption policy is vague. Gay puts the document in its historical context by noting that the United States did not embrace a “no first use” nuclear policy, which in itself is a declaration of the right of preemption. To assert, as Bush does, that United States nuclear weapons are “defensive” while others are “threatening,” is a case of special pleading. Many presumed that Bush’s National Security Strategy (NSS) document was something new because he claimed it responsed to a new kind of enemy and a new kind of war—on “terrorism.” Bush wanted the idea of “immanent threat” to apply to terrorists and countries. This war on terrorism is not like wars against nations, since we cannot force stateless actors to capitulate. This means that the “war on terror” can continue indefinitely, without closure. Some also thought the document was new because it asserted that the United States did not consider itself bound by United Nations’ decisions, but the United States has voiced this go-it-alone position in the past. In addition to all the above-mentioned continuities with previous United States’ policies, even the NSS document’s assertion that the Bush Administration is ready to engage in military interventions in other countries is not completely new, since almost all United States Presidents since World War II have done so. The difference is that Bush is making a public declaration of the policy. The NSS document says that deterrence policies of the past are no longer adequate to protect the United States because “rogue states” are more willing to take risks than other counties have been. Gay sees this departure from past deterrence policy toward more aggressive intervention as troubling. He thinks that following the United Nations restrictions and upholding the practices outlined by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights would better address United States’ security needs.

Introduction

7

Harry van der Linden raises the question of whether the Bush doctrine of “preemptive” war, as implemented in the war against Iraq, would be justified as a United Nations doctrine. Would the Bush doctrine be morally acceptable once the authority to make the decision to resort to “preemptive” force (or more accurately, preventive force) is placed in the hands of the United Nations Security Council? Kofi Annan raised the issue on the same day that President Bush defended his unilateral preventive war against Iraq in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Annan, speaking after Bush, reiterated his opposition to Bush’s notion that individual states may act preventively to meet the threat posed by the spread of WMD among rogue states and terrorists. Entertaining the possibility that the Security Council may rightfully authorize preventive force to meet this type of threat, Annan said that he would create a high-level panel with the charge (among other tasks) to examine whether the United Nations should adopt a collective preventive war doctrine. Van der Linden first examines the Bush doctrine of “preemptive” war. In the National Security Strategy (NSS), Bush argued that war has changed from the way we traditionally conceive of it. Our new enemies are rogue states and terrorists who seek death as their goal. In conventional wars of the past, we could detect imminent threats, but with new weapons, this no longer is the case. Accordingly, he argued that the rules of war had to change to meet the new exigencies. He claimed that unilateral anticipatory action, even in the face of uncertainty, is justified. We must destroy the enemy’s WMD before they have a chance to deploy them. Bush has obscured a distinction between preemptive and preventive war. Van der Linden observes that, technically, “preemptive” refers to a “quick draw” situation, in which the enemy has already begun to deploy weapons, but a state thwarts the effort before it reaches fruition. We would be more accurate to call what Bush was describing “preventive war,” which entails attacking enemies before they have declared or exhibited hostilities. Such preventive war is never justified, van der Linden argues, because we can never be sure that war is inevitable, until it has begun. Van der Linden is concerned that in the case of unilateral action, a country could have a distorted picture of another country’s intentions. Another danger of unilateral preventive war is that it may be a pretext for a war of aggression, aimed, for example, at guaranteeing access to crucial resources. He grants that these dangers of preventive war will be less likely to materialize in the case that the authority to declare preventive war is limited to the Security Council because the Council can provide a greater degree of objectivity than any one country, despite the Council not being perfectly impartial. Van der Linden argues that we must reject a United Nations preventive war doctrine, insisting that better ways exist to discourage possession of WMD than engaging in war. The countries that already possess nuclear

8

GAIL M. PRESBEY

weapons must gradually abolish them. Countries in the North should stop propping up dictators in the South and use economic incentives to discourage WMD possession. He questions the need for a preventive war doctrine by arguing that the NSS document overstates the interests of terrorist groups in getting WMD. He says only one known terrorist group has created and used WMD: the use of chemical weapons by a Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo. Even this deadly attack had low casualties. The group could have inflicted more casualties with conventional weapons. Obtaining delivery systems for WMD is also quite difficult for terrorists. The Bush Administration and the media popularized the term WMD in the months before the Iraq war, but they did not use it in a fair way. What keeps us from characterizing the United States’ depleted uranium weapons as WMD? We do not term economic sanctions as WMD, although they kill indiscriminately. People resort to terrorism in cases of asymmetrical conflict. United States hegemony plus its previous use of WMD and terrorist methods encourages terrorism. To stop WMD proliferation, we need to stop United States military buildup, since other countries strive to possess WMD to stop United States hegemony. In a postscript, van der Linden examines “A More Seucre World,” the report of the high-level panel created by Annan. He argues that the report, issued in December 2004, offers valuable non-military recommendations for stopping the spread of WMD, but wrongly advises that the United Nations adopts a collective preventive war doctrine. Gail M. Presbey reviews many Bush and Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney speeches and finds that they have conflated and confused many diverse actors into a single category in their descriptions of the United States war on terrorism. For example, a whole range of fighters in Iraq and elsewhere are lumped into a single overaching category of being “terrorists.” Bush and Cheney’s speeches have been misleading in suggesting that there were connections between Iraq and the 11 September 2001 attacks. Intelligence services, prodded by the Bush Administration to follow a train of assumptions, led the American people to erroneous conclusions about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Bush and Cheney also presume the United States has the power to install democracies in other countries if it so desires. They have been giving inaccurate estimations of the situation on the ground in Iraq. A recent bill passed by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, claiming that the United States will “prevail” in the war on terrorism repeats the rhetoric of the Bush Administration. In contrast to such speeches, we need to understand the insurgency in Iraq. Many of the insurgents are Sunnis and Shiites fighting each other for dominance. Thomas E. Ricks and others suggest that the United States made the insurgency worse by appearing to side with Shiites against Sunnis instead of taking a more neutral and conciliatory role. Harsh treatment of prisoners

Introduction

9

exacerbated the situation, and made insurgents more determined to fight United States occupation of their country. Iraqi leaders and leaders of Iraqi insurgent groups have been asking for a timetable for United States withdrawal of troops, but Bush has been suggesting that such a timetable would amount to leaving before the job is done. In the meantime, the fighting continues unabated. The current policy is not succeeding in reducing terror and death in the area. Presbey’s chapter charges that some of the United States tactics are terroristic, especially torture and harsh treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and holding prisoners without charges or proper trials. The chapter defines terms such as terrorism (centering on the targeting of innocent civilians or their infrastructure to instill fear in the government or civilian population so as to force a political change), insurgents and guerrillas (fighters out of uniform, not necessarily “terrorists,”). She then covers the debate over who should be called a “terrorist” or “insurgent.” States and insurgents can engage in terrorism. In addition, some counter-terror measures are terroristic, while other counter-terror methods are more benign. Presbey suggests that using terror to fight terror is self-defeating and morally inconsistent. We need a more humane and smart approach to the complex problems of the Iraqi insurgency, and more diplomacy and cultural sensitivity. Threatening parties with violence will not go far in solving delicate and deep-seated problems of the region. D. R. Koukal argues that the United States has taken on the role of the “Leviathan,” drawing on Thomas Hobbes, “the mortal god to which the world owes it peace and defense,” master of all and subject to none. He uses the term “Leviathanism” to refer to a paranoid style of geopolitics, which dominates weaker nations and acts unilaterally with a claim to its own superiority. Ironically, Koukal notes, the United States is not even an effective and prudent Leviathan. He grants the truth of Hobbes’ claims that all of us want happiness, which is why we contract with others to maintain peace and preservation even if it means handing over our rights to a common power that is nothing more than a thug. The sovereign is the sole judge of what disturbs the peace, and the sovereign can wage war in pursuit of the good (which departs from just war theory). Ironically, Koukal notes, the United States is not even an effective and prudent Leviathan, because it exercises “bad prerogative.” It is not effectively exercising its might in a way that would result in protected subjects. The United States in Hobbesean fashion has decided to take a leading role in protecting the world from the terrorist threat, in effect telling other countries in what their good consists, but in so doing trampling on the sovereignty of other countries and trampling on the human rights of its own citizens through the United States’ Patriot Act. If those in other countries complain that they did not contract with the United States to fight the global war on terror on their behalf, a

10

GAIL M. PRESBEY

Hobbesian can retort that contracts can be authored by consent or force, and that even contracts extorted by fear are still valid. The Hobbesian approach opposes the Lockean approach of the United States Founding Fathers and the United Nations. For John Locke, human beings possess inalienable rights, and governments must follow a rule of law, not a rule of force. Operation Iraqi Freedom used Hobbesian means (including state terror) for ostensibly Lockean ends (of Iraqi self-rule). Also, the United States’ disregard of United Nations’ guidelines and much of world opinion (demonstrated by large anti-Iraq invasion protests around the world) when it decided to invade Iraq without United Nations Security Council approval shows a move away from Lockean to Hobbesean foreign policy. The think tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC), so influential with the Bush Administration, also advocates a Hobbesean foreign policy. Since then, intelligence sources have shown that the rationale for the invasion was unsound. A policy pursued along Hobbesean lines will not be able to win against an opponent like Osama bin Laden and his followers because, as the attacks on 11 September and other suicide bomber missions demonstrated, they do not follow the Hobbesean rule of being willing to submit to a world sovereign to save their lives. Koukal speculates that bin Laden counted on the United States government responding in a Hobbesian fashion to his provocation. Since United States’ invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, these areas have been more troubled than ever before and because of resentment toward United States forces’ actions, the number of enemies of the United States rises daily. Hobbes gave his sovereign much liberty in ruling powers because he counted on the natural prudence of a leader to make wise decisions about when force was necessary. The Bush Administration has not exhibited this prudence. Bush has abandoned the best of our enlightenment tradition in politics, and by doing so, he is bringing on the terror that he says he is eliminating. In Edward J. Grippe’s chapter, he scrutinizes the recent United States “Shootdown Policy,” which declares that United States Forces can shoot down a commercial airliner if they have reason to believe that terrorists have taken over the plane. The moral problem that arises is that the policy would involve United States forces in killing innocent people (including American citizens who they are duty-bound to protect) according to a utilitiarian calculation. If each American life has worth, according to President Bush, then why would he advocate such a policy? While Grippe admits that in some circumstances the ratio of lives lost, if the hijacked plane were to hit a highly sensitive target, would be high compared to the lives lost on the plane if it were shot down (for example, if the plane were heading toward a nuclear power plant), that would not be true of all cases. For example, the ratio involved in the plane that hit the Pentagon was 1:2. What about the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who voluntarily risked their lives trying to stop their hijackers from hitting a sensitive target? If the Shootdown Policy had

Introduction

11

been in effect, they would not have had a chance to succeed or exhibit their heroism. Grippe draws upon the analyses of Samuel Scheffler and Bernard Williams to analyze the Shootdown policy. He argues that an exact parallel exists between Williams’ famous “Jim” case (in which Jim refuses to kill an innocent person to prevent Pedro from killing more innocent persons), and the situation of a United States’ fighter pilot told to shoot down a plane with terrorists and innocent passengers on board to stop the terrorists from killing others. He concludes his discussion of the pros and cons of Sheffler’s view (in which Scheffler appeals to the idea of negative responsibility to bolster consequentialism’s weaknesses) by arguing that the shootdown policy is not morally justified. He draws an analogy: when criminals use hostages as human shields, should law enforcement shoot and kill the human shield in order to also kill the hostagetaker? Our reluctance to kill the human shield is the main way in which we are different from al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group that does not want to make distinctions between the innocent and non-innocent. Grippe appeals to the principle of nonmaleficence to buttress his view. In crises, he notes, the desire to be beneficent (to promote the most good and least harm for humankind) and the desire to not harm the innocent sometimes clash. For example, a “sincere agent” who is an aerial bomber for an army may want to blow up the munitions plant to end the war and help others, though he or she knows innocents will die. How can we resolve this dilemma? The answer lies in the way we order the two moral desires. Grippe argues that the desire to not harm the innocent should come first, because that goal is in harmony with what Charles Taylor calls the trans-cultural sentiment of human importance. Commitment to protect the innocent is also the only thing that distinguishes the sincere agent from the terrorist, since the terrorist presumes he or she is following the principle of beneficence. Grippe calls the commitment to protect the innocent the “bedrock ethical maxim for all sincere agents.” He argues that if, according to Bush, violence directed at innocent Americans is terrorism, then the shootdown policy is wrong. The United States government, in its zeal to protect the lives of Americans, is breaking moral rules and harming non-consenting innocents, not only in this shootdown policy but also in its abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. While people can choose to risk their lives for their country, for example in voluntary military service, to non-consensually jeopardize the lives of innocent people is not right. In conclusion, Grippe condemns the shootdown policy because its consequentialist base is not a good moral guideline. Laura Duhan Kaplan’s paper focuses on Jessica Lynch, a private who was missing in Iraq for many days before she was “rescued,” and the media coverage of Lynch’s disappearance and rescue. Why was the Lynch story, of all the United States military wounded, abducted, or killed in Iraq, of such interest to so many people? First, Lynch fit the usual profile of a blonde

12

GAIL M. PRESBEY

“Miss Congeniality,” while simultaneously defying such a role by joining the army and fighting in Iraq. The ambiguity of her position continued when she was “rescued” by her fellow soldiers while she was rendered passive due to her wounds. Men could feel good about using their power to rescue her. Kaplan asks why the media did not evince similar concern for other wounded female troops. Apparently, racial stereotypes played a role in the media’s focus on Lynch. Lynch herself felt bad about the racist aspect of the attention bestowed on her, and she made a point of drawing attention to the sacrifices made by women of color in the armed forces. Lynch played an active role in ensuring that the media did not use her image to reinforce racism. Despite the attempt to use her image to sell the war on Iraq to the American people, Lynch’s biographer Rick Bragg remains highly critical of the war. Iraqi doctors worked hard to restore Lynch to health; their actions defy the idea of her Iraqi captors as “bad,” further problematizing a simplistic good guys/bad guys picture of the United States role in Iraq. In Part Four, “Terrorism Case Studies,” our authors look at political violence in areas around the world including Colombia, Israel and Palestine, Russia and Chechnya, Central Asia, and the island of Cyprus. While these conflicts are outside the borders of the United States, the United States military plays a role in many of them, through the presence of its bases or through providing weapons and funds needed to fight these battles. Political violence had been ongoing in many of these countries long before President Bush ever declared a war on terrorism. Yet he has now recast much of the understanding of those violences as part of the global war on terror. The idea of a war against terrorism is problematic because it claims to be a war against a method of warfare. Conceptualized in this way, sorting out which of the many ongoing struggles in the world constitute the nebulous war on terrorism becomes difficult. How can we understand these conflict situations for what they are, instead of superimposing a pattern or understanding that may not be appropriate? Further, how can we resolve deeply entrenched conflicts? Oidinposha Imamkhodjaeva discusses the problems of Russia and Chechnya in the context of philosophers Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and recent commentators, Francis Fukayama and Samuel Huntington. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, people hoped that the new countries would be democratic and capitalist. Instead, civil wars and terrorism have plagued the region. While Huntington has asserted that religion is the factor that mobilizes people, others say that economic and political factors are key. According to Karl Marx and Vladimir I. Lenin, nationalism was useful in rapidly implementing capitalism. Still, nationalism and religion were both ideologies that should eventually evaporate. Joseph Stalin said nationalism depends on a national culture, language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup. Stalin advocated Soviet national culture to replace the earlier Russian identity and more local ethnic identities.

Introduction

13

Russians had settled all over the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union disassembled, Russians found that they were foreign nationals within the new countries. Xenophobia emerged against foreigners. The problems of national identity multiplied, as the different ethnic groups in the new countries like Georgia asked for quasi-independence in their territories. Some ethnic groups such as the Chechens did not gain independence, despite their ethnic nationalism, because of their geographic location. Later, in 1994, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin feared that allowing Chechnya to secede would become a precedent for other ethnic groups, so he believed that thwarting their aspirations was wise. Russia undertook a full-scale invasion, in which 10,000 Russians and 15,000 Chechens were killed. Imamkhodjaeva surveys history to demonstrate that the Chechens have been punished for their attempts to assert their independence for many years. In 1944, the Soviet Union deported 500,000 Chechens to Central Asia as a punishment for their rebellion. In the mid 1950s, many began their return to Chechnya, but the area was impoverished and unemployment was high. A long sequence of historical grievances led them to ask for separation. After the Russian invasion of Chechnya, Chechens turned to hostage-taking, hijacking buses and airplanes, and other terrorist tactics. The most famous recent case was the taking of 750 hostages in the Moscow Theater. These tactics have not won any sympathy for the Chechens from the Russian people. “Islamophobia” also shapes public opinion and police engage in racial profiling against those with olive skin and dark, curly hair. In 2004, Russia persuaded the United States to add Chechens on the list of terrorists, but Imamkhodjaeva thinks this categorization is inaccurate; she believes that we are wrong to consider Chechens as international terrorists. Instead, she views them as separatists fighting for a nationalist cause. The issue of integrity of nations contrasted with separatism continues to be debated. Imamkhodjaeva concludes by suggesting that countries must work out a way to articulate national identity while sharing political structures and economies. In the case of Chechnya, if violence can subside, Russia can begin to give Chechnya the authority it needs for its identity, while continuing to help the region economically. Such an approach would be a helpful alternative to the United States’ and earlier Soviet Union approaches of empire and globalization. Joseph Kunkel notes that since 11 September 2001, the United States government has labeled a wide range of rulers and countries as “terrorists.” He demonstrates that this labeling is inconsistent because not all harmful actions that target innocents done by individuals or countries friendly to the United States are called terrorists. This reduces the definition of terrorism to “armed actions by enemy forces.” A better definition would be that terrorism involves calculated violence against the innocent. Accordingly, military forces sometimes engage in terrorism. Kunkel notes that according to

14

GAIL M. PRESBEY

Hobbes’ philosophy, human beings in a state of nature are involved in a war of all against all, and so may resort to terror to save themselves. But under a social contract, individuals give up terroristic ways. The United States prefers that rights, treaties, or law of the seas not bind it, so that it can use its military might in Hobbesean fashion. Kunkel offers two criticisms of Hobbes. First, he holds that human beings are not naturally aggressive. Second, standards of right and wrong exist independent of contracts and laws. So, even without a contract, we still need a moral standard that would forbid practices of terrorism. Kunkel surveys both deontological and consequential arguments surrounding war and its limits. Deontologists, he notes, make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and argue that to target the non-combatants is wrong. But some ethicists absolve themselves from moral responsibility for killing noncombatants by using the “principle of double effect.” They argue that they do not intend most of the deaths that result from their actions. Kunkel asserts that in the case of massacres or terrorism, the killings of the innocent are not accidental. According to consequentialism, no need to single out noncombatants for special protection exists. Kunkel says that according to consequentialism, a war against Iraq would have been justified if Iraq was about to use weapons of mass destruction to harm thousands of people. That was not so. The same kind of consequentialist thinking could justify terrorist activity, if it is the only way for an oppressed people to forestall their total defeat and annihilation, such as in the case of the Palestinians. With that moral discussion as a background, Kunkel then delves into the case of Colombia. The United States calls all three leftist insurgent groups there “terrorists.” Kunkel thinks that the military are also terrorists, and so United States aid for them in the fight against the “terrorists” constitutes a case of aiding terrorism. In the past, when some leftists laid down their arms, the paramilitary killed them, and so other rebels are reluctant to do the same. Deaths caused by the paramilitary have grown over the years, yet in 2003, the President of Colombia pardoned them of their crimes. Kunkel thinks that a Hobbesean model of power politics, not ethical considerations, underlies the United States role in Colombia. Kunkel suggests that the United States’ claim to be engaged in a “war on drugs” is just a cover for an anti-terror counter-insurgency operation. The high priority United States troops have given to protecting Colombia’s oil pipeline is a sign of United States self-interest. Practices of fumigating coca crops do little to stop the drug trade and hurt farmers while leaving Colombian and United States mafia, who profit from the business, untouched. He doubts that the paramilitary terrorizing of Colombian people is “good for business.” He finds a hopeful model for peace in the Mennonite community that risks their lives, helping to “reinsert” ex-guerrillas into the community. Kunkel sees the poverty and exploitation of resources by multinational corporations as a key cause of the continued fighting. Solutions to Colombia’s

Introduction

15

problems would entail encouraging alternative crops, and training an effective police force that could stop the high homicide levels. For the United States to take seriously its stated commitment to reducing terror in Colombia, it should address these root issues. Rob Gildert analyzes the entrenched fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli Defense Forces practice a “deterrence” policy, in which they expel family members of Palestinian militants and demolish their houses. They argue that undercutting the family approval for militancy will lessen Palestinians’ desire to become militants. Critics of this Israeli policy call this collective punishment and believe that to punish family members when they have done nothing wrong is unfair. Conversely, Israeli forces say that this procedure will deter future militants. The Israeli courts have ruled that the government can deport people for security concerns, but not as deterrents to future militancy. In the context of this debate, Gildert surveys the moral arguments for deterrent punishment, and weighs the supposed effectiveness of the deterrent policies. Gildert notes that North American research has shown that harsh punishments are not effective deterrents against criminal activity. Instead, addressing the needs of individuals at risk of violent behavior is a more effective deterrent to future violence. He notes that many, who turn to violence, do so because they come from communities suffering from economic and social oppression. Reducing violence calls for addressing this social context and rectifying its problems. Deontological moral approaches, following Kant, would argue that punishing the offending person, as a means to an end of deterrence, is immoral because it does not respect the individual. A utilitarian approach does not justify harsh deterrence policies either, since studies show that punishments increase incidences of offending, leading to a net disutility. Moralist Daniel Farrell argues that the state has a right to threaten those who would attack people. If people must suffer, it must be the perpetrators, not the victims. Gildert counters that increasing the suffering of the perpetrators will lead to future violence against, not safety of, citizens. Applying these insights to Israel, he suggests that if Israelis are trying to secure peace, violent measures against the Palestinians will not help. Threats of death do not deter suicide bombers, which is why Israeli policy focuses on terrorists’ family members. But the source of suicide bombers is the poverty and social ostracism of their communities, which drives them to such drastic actions. Demolishing houses increases the poverty of the community, and so is counterproductive in reducing the number of future suicide bombers. Next, Imamkhodjaeva discusses the current situation in the Central Asian republics. She argues that the cause of the current Islamic revival in Central Asia is the Soviets’ previous discouraging of religions, including Islam. The current rulers are secular and in tension with their people. Central Asian rulers have also repressed the democratic movements in their countries—a tactic that only increases the frustration of the people and makes ter-

16

GAIL M. PRESBEY

rorism more likely. She argues that devout Muslims should be allowed religious expression because most are not terrorists. The Uzbeks mostly practice Sufi Islam and are not “Islamists.” Most movements prefer nonviolence but believe that they must retain the option of armed struggle against repressive governments. This does not make them terrorists. Meanwhile, governments have used state terrorism to subjugate their people. Imamkhodjaeva reviews the background of Sunni and Shiite Islam. She notes that Samuel Huntington’s famous claims of a clash between the “West” and Islam ignore the longstanding Soviet/Russian-Islam tension. Edward Said’s book, Orientalism, offers a description of how Europeans created the Orient-as-other, but Said does not discuss the Soviet attitude toward Central Asia. The Russian Revolution started a social experiment that promoted the social good, but the government took over everything, reducing religion to irrational mysticism. The Soviet Union gave lip service to the flowering of autonomous minorities, but it wanted them to all merge into one culture of socialism. Soviets studied in Central Asia and rewrote their philosophical history from a Marxist-Leninist viewpoint, for example considering philosopher Ibn Sina a great materialist. Turkestan was the first to rise up against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but its Basmachi rebellion was defeated. Some people migrated to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. In the 1930s, the Soviets engaged in a harsh campaign against the religious class and general followers of Islam. Central Asian countries gained independence and then joined the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a group of former Soviet republics, in 1991. Since gaining independence, they have been plagued with problems including extremely high unemployment, high inflation, and poverty. The RussiaChechnya conflict has also affected them. Radical Islam flourishes in some countries, not because people are devout Muslims, but because of their dire conditions coupled with authoritarian secular rule. Since 11 September 2001, the United States has been using air bases in Uzbekistan. Russia and China have had mixed reactions to the growing influence of the United States in the region. There have been suicide bombings in Uzbekistan, but Imamkhodjaeva says that these are homegrown movements protesting Islam Karimov’s rule, not members of al-Qaeda. In May of 2003, Uzbekistan armed forces fired on crowds, and many fled the country. She argues that current Central Asian rulers are in the position of the former Shah of Iran. People who want change will struggle, and their struggle will be in many forms. We should understand people’s struggles in the long context of struggles for self-rule and justice, and not misunderstand them as “terrorist” movements. If rulers allowed freedom of speech in their countries, people would prefer nonviolent protest. Harry Anastasiou and Robert Gould look for solutions to ethnic strife exacerbated by nationalism. They explain that under the influence of nationalism, human rights advocacy, a field we usually consider helpful and neces-

Introduction

17

sary can make conflict and fighting more entrenched. In nationalist conflict, each side cites violations of human rights resulting from the violence, while claiming that the need for the restoration of human rights legitimizes the use of violence. The integration of even justified grievances into nationalism’s adversarial perspective perpetuates the violations. They hold that grief and suffering is only shared intra-communally, not inter-communally. As violence is a profound form of inter-group alienation, the plight of the enemy rarely comes into view, while the only feelings that prevail are anger, rage, and retaliation, which nationalism usurps in sustaining its adversarial mindset. Under these conditions, the pursuit of human rights leads to violence, not peace. Examples include the divide between Israelis and Palestinians. The bulk of the paper is devoted to the divide between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The challenge to make headway in reconciling the belligerent nationalist groups is to dissociate the pain and suffering from the adversarial, nationalist framework in which it becomes embedded. A long path starting from initial, mutual acknowledgement of injury to eventual empathy and compassion for all sufferers is indispensable for addressing human rights issues in a nonadversarial mode and for envisioning a new, peace-seeking, socio-political reality. The authors cite examples of those facilitating this new, common narrative. Such work has the potential of bringing together the rival groups in a more constructive way than the divisive, “human rights” assertions of competing nationalisms, which concentrates instead on the rights of one side over the other. Part Five “The Ethics of War,” asks reflective questions about violence and human nature, and whether humas can decide to forego violence and war. The section covers issues of religion’s admonitions regarding violence and the tricky issues of when intervention in another country’s business is morally right or justified. The section ends with reflections on the human desire for vengeance. We naturally want to subdue adversaries, but is giving vent to such desires the best goal possible? In his chapter on intervention, Richard Peterson charges that since the Cold War, the United States has been involved in wars of intervention, supposedly for humanitarian reasons in defense of human rights. Peterson characterizes these wars as neo-colonial, since they imposed conditions of dependency on the countries supposedly helped by the intervention. Since the time of John Stuart Mill, people have advanced two rationales in defense of colonialism: the first being for the sake of the rewards of empire (as is apparently the case in the current Iraq example), and the second for the sake of the dominated, who need colonial tutelage. While Peterson is skeptical about many governments’ claims to be engaged in the second rationale when they are actually engaged in the first, he agrees that such a thing as “colonial tutelage” can exist. He likes the word tutelage because it admits a power differential is at work. Much of the tutelage going on in today’s cases of intervention is that of leading other countries into the capitalist world order, a practice of

18

GAIL M. PRESBEY

ambivalent value. Peterson suggests economic plans should be subject to ethical norms. He also suggests that a key aspect of any tutelage should involve sharing the structures and practices of democracy, and reciprocity between both countries, instead of dependency and exploitation. Is intervention for ethical reasons a practical possibility in our world, or is it an impossible ideal? Peterson admits that the cases of truly altruistic interventions motivated solely by concern for human rights will be rare. He also advocates a new conception of human rights that sees them not as timeless universals that express minimum standards of moral and legal behavior, but as the fruit of a consensus among nations, at a particular time, that speak to the protections individuals and groups should enjoy. In the next chapter, John David Geib explains that he is an engaged Christian pacifist. Surveying the variety of Christian ethical positions regarding war, he notes we can identify three positions. The first, drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, asserts that a Christian should not participate in war. The second, following the Just War Theory, advocates participation in some wars under particular circumstances. The third position advocates participation in war as part of a religious crusade in which individuals destroy God’s enemies. Geib explains that he espouses his position in a context of humility, since none of us human beings can know God’s will with certainty. Geib also does not want to deny that the transcendent God can bring something good out of a terrible thing like human-made wars. Geib points to human sinfulness, derived from our finitude, as a key factor in why human beings cannot fight just wars. He also notes that people often conflate Christ’s purpose for the Church and the concerns of their civil nations. He is skeptical of religious motivations for war fighting and concludes by contending with those who argue that the Older Testament justifies war. He prefers to follow the Newer Testament injunctions, pointing to the early Christian Church’s stance on non-participation in war, and suggests that they were closest to the Gospel as preached by Jesus Christ. Geib’s analysis is especially interesting to us, for in our current times, Christianity and some other religions use their faith to exhort their fellow citizens to arms. Wendy C. Hamblet’s contribution explores Emmanuel Levinas’ concept of “innocent” violences. According to Levinas, our globe has finite resources, and each of us exists by consuming these resources. Our existence is inherently violent and even murderous, since we exist in the place of some other being. Yet in the midst of our enjoyment, our egoism makes us blind to our violence. This feeling of innocence during our enjoyment is due to a lack of feelings of guilt or responsibility. Our natural self-interest can lead, in the extreme, to war. The heroes in war, starting with the ancient Greeks, are those whom we admire despite their violent behavior because we judge that their intentions are good. This subjective intention is the source of their innocence;

Introduction

19

but the restrictive egoism, which does not listen to the “other,” helps to construct this innocence. Although stories like the Iliad appear to laud the heroes, they also show the shortcomings of the heroes approach. At some point, each hero has an opportunity to show mercy to someone who pleads for life, and in each case, the hero ignores the plea to refrain from killing the opponent. Accordingly, Hamblet charges that violence, not the hero, is the real victor of the war. Hero stories show that victory in battle is short lived and that the victories are later undone when the other side seeks vengeance. Levinas experienced the same story pattern first hand through the war adventures of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi army, which he thought merely repeated the narratives of early Greek days. While Levinas says that to be such an egoist is only natural, he asserts that we can also rise above this natural state, which we share with the animals, to become “thinking” beings. We cannot wholly transcend violence and egoism, but thinking, disquietude, and awareness set the stage for the possibility of the good. Some commentators insist that Levinas says human beings cannot willfully pursue goodness. But Hamblet points out that to say ethically significant existence can fall upon the subject contrary to their will is consistent with Levinas’ position. A subject can cultivate receptivity to goodness by thinking of others’ freedom, not only theirs. Insofar as someone resists mere life and aims for human life, they can escape from egoism and forego the desire to crush their victim. Hamblet ties these themes to the current war on terror. While Americans rightly felt hurt by the 11 September 2001attacks, the lust for vengeance has resulted in more lives being lost in Afghanistan and Iraq than were originally lost in the attacks in the United States. Those of us in the United States are in the position of the Greek warrior holding a sword over his cringing victim. The challenge is, can we see past our rage? We should not demonize our enemies to justify destroying them. Instead, we should humbly recognize the violence in all of us, and become aware of our guilt and complicity.

This page intentionally left blank

Part One TERRORISM ANALYZED

This page intentionally left blank

One THE NEW REIGN OF TERROR: THE POLITICS OF DEFINING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION AND TERRORISM William C. Gay “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” So begins Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. While he was writing about London and Paris during the turbulent times associated with the rise of the British Industrial Revolution and the French Political Revolution, these lines express the current sentiments of many Americans. Before 11 September 2001, many people thought we were living in the best of times. Baby boomers were relishing in the prospects that through inheritance they would be the beneficiaries of the greatest transfer of wealth in United States history. After 11 September, even more citizens were psychologically shattered when they realized that the terrorist strikes showed that the United States, the most powerful nation on Earth, is still quite vulnerable. I do not share the sentiment that we are living in the best of times and the worst of times, even though, along with many others, I recognize that the Industrial Age has been one of both mass production and mass destruction. I find it hard to consider these the best of times when many corporate executives are receiving hundreds of times more compensation than their hard working employees and when a new xenophobia has swept the land that makes us suspicious about receiving new immigrants. I think times would be better, if not the best, when universal health care and genuine welfare for the poor and unemployed are available and when we welcome immigrants and celebrate the value of diversity. I also think times were worse, though not the worst possible, when tens of thousands of innocent civilians died from the dropping of a single atomic bomb on Hiroshima and on Nagasaki, Japan, and when famine and disease have devastated entire societies. As a philosopher, I am professionally inclined to be suspicious of categorical claims. While I do not think these are the best or worst of times, I think these times are ones in which precision in how we describe our global situation are especially crucial. I fear that government is exercising too much control over the terminology used to describe our situation, often resorting to vitriolic rhetoric, and I fear that the media are adopting this terminology too uncritically, generally handling governmental rhetoric with kid gloves. In what follows, I will offer some critical reflections on the use of the terms

24

WILLIAM C. GAY

“weapons of mass destruction” and about “terrorism” that illustrate problems in what I elsewhere term “the language of war” and undermine giving voice to alternative conceptions associated with “the language of peace.”1 Albert Einstein, whose scientific work contributed to the development of nuclear weapons and whose subsequent humanitarian efforts called for the elimination of these weapons, is often remembered for his statement, “Everything has changed save our way of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Is the twenty-first century more likely to move toward an unprecedented escalation in violence, terrorism, and war, or toward an equally unprecedented renunciation of violence, terrorism, and war? In my view, a continuation of the patterns of twentieth-century conflict is not likely to be characteristic of the twenty-first century. The different types of weapons of mass destruction developed over the last sixty years and the types of terrorism and war emerging at the beginning of the twenty-first century do suggest how dramatically our capability to inflict violence has changed. How we think about and respond to these developments will have a lot to do with whether we will drift to further unparalleled catastrophes or whether we can steer away from such horrors. The language we use to frame these issues will fundamentally influence how we think about them. Those who control the language, the terminology and the definitions on these issues, will largely control the politics of how we respond. Beyond its extensive use of euphemism and even outright lies, official discourse imposes itself as legitimate and, thereby, co-opts efforts by critics of war.2 At a basic level, to mark the institutional character of military behavior, most societies use distinctive words to designate the violent acts of warriors and soldiers. The act we designate as “murder” when performed by an individual, we may re-designate as “justified use of force” when carried out by law enforcement or military personnel. This power of re-designation, which allows for legitimation or condemnation of different actions, manifests how political uses of language precede and support the pursuit of war. For example, throughout the Cold War, many Americans regarded their government as the “champion of freedom” and the Soviet government as “an evil empire.” Since perception and behavior are so closely connected with the way language shapes consciousness, the “right of bestowing names,” as Friedrich Wilhlem Nietzsche saw, is a fundamental expression of political power.3 In the twentieth century, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu elaborated theoretically and empirically on the extent of the symbolic power that language can provide.4 Leading scholars who have analyzed in detail discourse about war, such as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Haig Bosmajian, contend that language is corrupted in ways that make the cruelty, inhumanity, and horror of war seem justifiable.5 Language becomes a tool employed by political and military officials to make people accept what ordinarily they would repudiate if the true character were known.

The New Reign of Terror

25

1. Defining Weapons of Mass Destruction What is meant by “weapons of mass destruction”? They are defined in more than one way, and sometimes one and the same person or agency does so to deceive or confuse those with whom they are communicating. This prospect can be illustrated using the attacks of 11 September 2001. First, weapons of mass destruction need to be defined. Typically, weapons of mass destruction refer to nuclear, chemical, and biological means for killing large numbers of people.6 This definition correlates with developments in the history of warfare. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons have all been used in war. Nuclear weapons were used at the close of World War II. Chemical weapons were used in World War I. Biological weapons have been in use in warfare for over two millennia. Several significant treaties have also been ratified that ban the use or even the production and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations and many countries, for example, have called for bans against such weapons, even terming them genocidal; some philosophers have made similar judgments as well.7 Second, the target of weapons of mass destruction needs to be specified. Generally, civilians or noncombatants are the targets of weapons of mass destruction. The possibility remains that, instead of targeting civilians, weapons of mass destruction can have military or political targets. For example, the United States Pentagon would qualify as a military target, while the United States White House would qualify as a political target. Regardless, one intention of those who use such weapons typically is to strike terror into the population, even if they also wish to inflict death and destruction on military or political targets. As one proceeds, clarity in discussions about weapons of mass destruction continues to be elusive. In many discussions, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons are no longer considered the only possible weapons of mass destruction. At one extreme, you will discover that in some police jurisdictions weapons of mass destruction are defined legally as ones that potentially can kill two or more people. At the other extreme, a single weapon of mass destruction can be conceived that would kill all life on the planet. Fortunately, such “doomsday” weapons so far remain in the realm of science fiction. Between these extremes, social and political scientists generally use a much higher actual or potential death toll in their definitions than two people and much less than all persons. Often, a figure of 1,000 or more deaths is used. In this case, a weapon of mass destruction would be a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon that has killed or could kill a thousand or more people. When nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons are used, they sometimes only kill a few persons or even no one. Regardless, for people to use them, with whatever level of destruction that ensues, a means must be available to deliver them to their targets.

26

WILLIAM C. GAY

Having made these observations, I now return to the use of commercial aircraft on 11 September 2001 to attack the New York City World Trade Center. These attacks illustrate the difficulty of anticipating all the means that people can employ to strike terror or to function as weapons of mass destruction. While the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took over 3,000 lives, some analysts deny that commercial aircraft, even when used as weapons to kill thousands, are technically weapons of mass destruction. On the contrary, I contend that these attacks underscore the variety of delivery systems possible. The commercial aircraft involved in these attacks carried large quantities of fuel, and gasoline is a chemical. I conclude that the attack on the World Trade Center represents a use of a weapon of mass destruction that meets the criteria of having a nuclear, chemical, or biological composition, a civilian target, and a death tool in excess of one thousand people. Perhaps the most usual aspect of this instance of the use of a weapon of mass destruction is that the chemical agent and the delivery system were hijacked. Government officials accuse terrorist groups of developing and even using weapons of mass destruction, and some regard the attacks of 11 September as ones involving such weapons. In this context, what may need examination is not so much what is said as what is not said. I am not merely referring to the unwillingness of government officials to consider that the attacks on Afghanistan since 7 October 2001 could be regarded as the pursuit of revenge.8 I am referring to the unwillingness to consider past, current, and future United States military action in relation to the same definition of what constitutes a weapon of mass destruction. Fundamentally, weapons of mass destruction are instruments of terror. As moral philosophers have noted (Robert Holmes, in particular), subnational groups and governments can resort to the use of weapons of terror. Wars generally kill far more people than do what are generally termed terrorist attacks. Principles of just war forbid the intentional killing of noncombatants. Especially since the obliteration bombing (strategic bombing) in Europe and against Japan at the close of World War II, cities and their civilian populations have become targets. So, one of the more important ethical lessons about weapons of mass destruction is that they can be (and have been) used by individuals and by governments. In this regard, the difference is not so much one of kind as of degree. The end is the same in the terrorist acts of individuals and governments; the goal is to cause fear among civilians by doing violence to them or threatening them with violence. Given the range of linguistic use, the term “weapons of mass destruction” needs some special philosophical analysis. When we refer to weapons of mass destruction, we are drawing on a condemnatory connotation. We need to highlight the prospect for, and reality of, special pleading in using this term. For example, the United States presented its use of nuclear weapons in World War II as a means to end the war and save lives, yet the United States

The New Reign of Terror

27

condemns as weapons of mass destruction ones with far less destructive capability when they are being developed by “rogue” states or terrorist groups that are perceived as a military threat. Perhaps, the time has come for us to realize that we should condemn most violence, terrorism, and war, regardless of whether we term their instruments as weapons of mass destruction. 2. Defining Terrorism Assessment of terrorism presents even greater difficulties than those connected with the assessment of weapons of mass destruction. Not surprisingly, commentators have written more on terrorism during the last year than they wrote over several previous decades. This general tendency repeats within philosophy as well. Between 1940 and 2001, Philosophers Index cites about 140 references on terrorism and terrorists. Since 11 September 2001, dozens of references have been indexed.9 I want to provide just a little conceptual and historical clarity in defining terrorism, using primarily pre-11 September 2001 sources since they do not include the emotional and political dimensions of so many post-11 September 2001 treatments. “Terror” is a broader term than terrorism. Terrorism is designed to influence political behavior by the using or threatening violence. In this regard, David E. Johnson defines terrorism as “The strategy of employing violence or the threat of violence to escalate people’s fears to achieve or keep political power.” He continues, “Ordinarily, terrorist acts are thought to be different from military operations, but that distinction is not always clear”; both “treat victims as a means.”10 Robert Holmes echoes this point when he observes, “governments or armies can terrorize as well: ‘What makes a terrorist a terrorist is the means . . . not the ends.’”11 In this regard, even when people think about terrorism, they generally fail to recognize that it has these two major forms, which can be parsed in several ways. “Enforcement terror” is a reign of terror committed by an incumbent power (for example, the balance of terror during the Cold War), while “agitational terror” is a siege of terror committed by an insurgent power (for example, purportedly al-Qaeda relative to the attacks of 11 September). Most citizens and political analysts focus on insurgent over incumbent terrorism. In part, institutionalized forms have less news value and are more dangerous and difficult to report. States seem more predictable and rational, while members of insurgent groups appear to be more irrational and to act in a more random manner. All this fits nicely with a villain view of evil. Most Americans now support increased surveillance of individuals already in, or trying to enter, the United States who are Arab or Muslim. The media aided government in fostering this reaction by quickly simplifying the attacks into an individual villain—Osama bin Laden. The United States, which used to charge the Soviets

28

WILLIAM C. GAY

with the cult of personality, has long tended to have a villain of the decade. Previous villains include Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Moammar al-Qaddafi, Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini, and Saddam Hussein. After 11 September 2001, Osama bin Laden became the embodiment of evil and THE threat to the United States, until we could not catch him. Then, as the United States war on terrorism continued, Hussein recaptured top billing as the World Enemy Number 1 of freedom-loving Americans. Forget that evil is far too extensive to be personified in one person. Forget that discourse about “good vs. evil” is more characteristic of Manichaeanism than the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions. The fallaciousness of the popular response should be obvious to anyone who has studied critical thinking. Stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims as terrorists is an unfortunate, but far too common, “hasty generalization.” Worse still is the willingness to subject such individuals to a type of “ethnic profiling” that makes “racial profiling,” by comparison, almost appear less unacceptable.12 To those too quick to point a finger of blame, Holmes observes: Terrorism is misleadingly represented as a struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Any people desperate enough are capable of engaging in it. Any government unscrupulous enough, [is] capable of using it.13 In his survey of the scholarly literature, David C. Rapoport notes that over 100 definitions of terrorism can be found in the scholarly literature, and he connects its first use with the French Revolution.14 He states: Terrorism was seen as an indispensable tool to establish a democratic order, and the term “terrorism” initially referred to government acts. Thus, the Oxford English Dictionary says the term originated in 1795, meaning either “government by intimidation” or “a (government) policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted.15 While Maximilien Robespierre had little or nothing to do with the organization of the original Reign of Terror, he was responsible for enlarging its scope. During its last six weeks, 1,284 persons were beheaded; then, on 28 July 1794 so were Robespierre and twenty-one of his lieutenants. During the Reign of Terror, which lasted from September 1793–July 1794, 20,000 people were executed. I will contrast this Reign of Terror with the one we are entering, and I am not so much referring to the acts of terrorism of 11 September as I am the United States war on terrorism that followed. The number of persons who died during the initial Reign of Terror is far fewer than the number who die in most civil and international wars.

The New Reign of Terror

29

The United States Civil War claimed hundreds of thousands, and Napoleon, who ended the French Revolution, was responsible for more than twenty times the number of deaths as the Committee of Public Safety. In Origin of Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had already addressed the way such events perverted language while taking human lives: The most decent people learned to consider it one of their duties to kill their fellow men. Men were seen massacring one another by the thousands without knowing why. More murders were committed in a single day of combat and more horrors in the capture of a single city than were committed in the state of nature during entire centuries over the entire face of the Earth.16 Holmes observes, “Once one accepts the premise that violence is a permissible means by which to pursue ends . . . one only needs to accustom people to overcome their natural revulsion to killing.”17 In the two hundred and fifty years following Rousseau’s remarks, governments have not changed much in relation to the practice of large-scale slaughter. What has changed is that the weaker now mimic the strong, though on a smaller scale. Rapaport observes, “Rebels characterized every government that oppressed them as terrorist no matter what tactics it employed; governments returned the compliment, deeming every rebel who used violence a terrorist.” The media, Rapoport noted, corrupted or confused language even further, deliberately refusing to use terms consistently, apparently to avoid being seen as blatantly partisan.18 Since 11 September 2001, the United States media has adopted a new pro-government linguistic partisanship. With both government and media largely using the same terminology and definitions, the politics of how we will respond to terrorism is firmly under the control of the establishment. Putting the emerging war on terrorism into perspective, we need to remind ourselves that, from the obliteration bombing in Europe during World War II through the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, governments have used terror and in the process have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. So, quantitatively, if citizens of the world reflect on the most ominous sources of threat, governments should top their list. Still, none of these facts justify the acts of violence perpetrated on 11 September 2001, but neither do they justify the United States invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. In examining the issues, we must hold fast to our moral perspective. Whether we are referring to the conventional and atomic bombings that concluded World War II, the terrorists attacks of 11 September, or the United States response to these attacks, we have what Holmes terms, “acts of terrorism, employing massive, indiscriminate violence against mostly innocent persons.”19 If a rose is a rose, a terrorist act is a terrorist act. Concerning the morality of terrorism, Holmes contends that terrorism is not less moral than war:

30

WILLIAM C. GAY The killing of children does not become less reprehensible because done from a plane, by soldiers trained in warfare and acting under orders from a duly elected leader than when done clandestinely by men acting on their own or in concert with a few conspirators.20

I would add, from a moral perspective, differences in degree are also significant. 3. Overcoming the New Reign of Terror Some treaties and agreements exist that aim to prevent the production, stocking piling, deployment, and use of weapons of mass destruction. While supposedly aiming for the elimination of such weapons, government agencies sometimes also set up procedures designed to thwart attacks, which use weapons of mass destruction. One of the tasks of the new Office of Homeland Security, created in the United States following the attacks of 11 September 2001, is to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, including ones that might employ weapons of mass destruction. Whether such efforts can be effective or whether they will be merely quixotic remains to be seen. All attempts to protect populations from existing weapons of mass destruction face formidable challenges. Once delivered to their targets, little help is possible for the immediate victims. Admittedly, some measures are possible for populations significantly downwind from nuclear fallout or airborne chemical and biological agents. The best prospect for protection involves the eradication of such weapons. Since human beings know how to produce these weapons, eliminating them does not prevent their reintroduction. What Jonathan Schell noted about nuclear weapons is also true for chemical and biological weapons—for all weapons. The materials needed for their production and delivery remain, and the knowledge of how to produce them. Philosophers have gone one step further in their assessments. The obstacles are more than physical and epistemological; they are also moral. For this reason, some of the most important work in preventing catastrophic use of weapons of mass destruction may not be what is being done by scientists and politicians but what can be done by moralists. The United States’ response to the 11 September attacks has continued to rely on the strategy of using more traditional military hardware against an enemy. This strategy ignores that this “enemy” is not a state, a government, or even an army and that this “enemy” lacks both a centralized territory and a single hierarchy of command. Matthew Cannon notes: Terrorism, like environmental problems, does not stop at the borders of a nation-state, but instead depends on a network that crosses borders and defies national jurisdictions. Responding to terrorism requires an international effort.21

The New Reign of Terror

31

An international effort is needed because: Terrorism is transnational and feeds off the inability of sovereign nationstates to monitor their cross-border networks. The nation-state is a blunt tool, poorly equipped to respond to a long-term war against terrorism;22 For this reason, Cannon concludes, Instead of continually fighting the symptoms of terror, the process of building relationships that cross borders and communities is essential to addressing misconceptions that feed terror.23 Philosophers and others have recognized that if we are to avoid devastating wars, especially ones involving weapons of mass destruction, we must first change our attitudes toward one another, especially toward what we regard as alien cultures. We can come to regard diversity in the expression of cultural and religious traditions and economic and political systems, along with the diversity of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation, as making up the harmonies and melodies that together create the song of humanity. In this regard, Holmes suggests we “try to understand terrorists,” observing, “they are not subhuman monsters, to be fought with blood and iron and all the righteous fury that civilized people can muster”; instead, “the imperative is to find nonviolent ways of dealing with the problems of injustice, poverty, and oppression that are typically at the root of their actions.” 24 He continues: We do know that resort to war and violence for all of recorded history has not worked. It has not brought either peace or justice to the world. Nonviolence worked in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi, in the U[nited] S[tates] with [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] and in Scandinavia against the Nazis during World War II. No one can foresee what the results might be if a country like the U.S. were to spend $300 billion a year in research on techniques of nonviolent resistance and on training people in their use.25 I wish to end with a few questions, observations, and suggestions. First, here are my questions. Will terrorism be eradicated during the twenty-first century? Will the war against terrorism spawn a new and larger generation of terrorists who continue to find dramatic ways to show the vulnerability of the United States and its allies? What measures will be taken in the effort to fight terrorism? What impact will these measures have on innocent citizens abroad and on civil liberties at home? What will be the future of war? Will the war against terrorism end any pretense of trying to abide by principles of just war? Will the United States go so far as to carry out first-strike nuclear at-

32

WILLIAM C. GAY

tacks against nations or subnational groups that do not yet even possess, let alone that have not yet used, weapons of mass destruction? Here are my observations. While we do not know the answers to the questions I have raised, we do know some of the lessons of 11 September 2001 and its aftermath. On the one hand, while we can inflict great harm, we cannot prevent harm—even great harm—from being inflicted on us. On the other hand, a war against terrorism may continue a cycle of escalating violence and terror against others and ourselves. Finally, here are a few suggestions. Despite our lack of answers, let us break the silence and continue to fight injustice. Let us not initiate violence or resort to violence to fight violence. Let us not remain silent when government and media suggest all Americans speak in a single voice. Let us not leave unchallenged a new Reign of Terror in which our government, while mouthing concerns for democratic values and global justice, threatens the initial use of nuclear weapons in our version of holy war.

NOTES 1. William C. Gay, “The Language of War and Peace,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, vol. 2, ed. Lester Kurtz (San Diego: Academic Press, 1999), pp. 303–312. 2. Ibid. 3. Frederich Nietzsche, The Geneology of Morals; and The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Francis Golffing (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956). 4. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991). 5. Aldous Huxley, “Words and Behaviour,” The Olive Tree (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937), pp. 84–103; George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, In Front of Your Nose: 1945–1950, vol. 4, eds. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), pp. 127–140; and Haig A. Bosmajian, The Language of Oppression (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1974). 6. William C. Gay, “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Global Studies Encyclopedia, eds. Ivan I. Mazour, Alexander Nikolaevich Chumakov, and William C. Gay, (Moscow: Raduga, 2003), pp. 533—538. 7. William C. Gay and Ronald E. Santoni, “Philosophy and Genocide.” Encyclopedia of Genocide, ed. Israel W. Charny. (Oxford, UK: ABC-CLIO Publishers, 2000), pp. 459–460. 8. Cf. Joseph C. Kunkel, “Differing with Bush on Afghanistan,” Concerned Philosophers for Peace Newsletter, 21:1–2 (2001), pp. 4–6. 9. Philosophers Index, http://www.philinfo.org/ (accessed 27 May 2006).

The New Reign of Terror

33

10. David E. Johnson, “Terrorism,” An Encyclopedia of War and Ethics, ed. Donald A. Wells (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishers, 1996), pp. 454 and 455 respectively. 11. Robert Holmes, “Terrorism and Violence: A Moral Perspective,” Issues in War and Peace: Philosophical Inquiries, eds. Joseph C. Kunkel and Kenneth H. Klein (Wolfeboro, N.H.: Longwood Academic, 1989), p. 116. 12. William C. Gay, “Xenophobia and Revenge: Morally Pretentious Backlashes to September 11th,” Concerned Philosophers For Peace Newsletter, 21:1–2 (2001), pp. 2–4. 13. Holmes, “Terrorism and Violence,” p. 118. 14. David C. Rapoport, “Terrorism,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, vol. 3, ed. Lester Kurtz (San Diego: Academic Press, 1999), p. 498. 15. Ibid., p. 499. 16. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Origin of Inequality,Classics of Moral and Political Theory, ed. Michael L. Morgan, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1996), p. 882. 17. Holmes, “Terrorism and Violence,” p. 121. 18. Rapoport, “Terrorism,” pp. 499–500. 19. Holmes, “Terrorism and Violence,” p. 117. 20. Ibid., p. 118. 21. Matthew Cannon, “Terrorism, Prevention of,” Global Studies Encyclopedia, pp. 503–507, quote from p. 503. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Holmes, “Terrorism and Violence,” p. 124. 25. Ibid., pp. 125–126.

This page intentionally left blank

Two ENFORCED HOMOGENEITY OR MUTUAL DIFFERENCE? LUCE IRIGARAY, THE WAR ON TERRORISM, AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE Jennifer L. Eagan Rethinking democracy is useful in the face of political violence and for securing international peace. In this paper, I will contrast Luce Irigaray’s interpersonal approach to the basis of democracy with a traditional individualistic approach. In her later work, Irigaray discusses values such as respect, mutuality, and love as central to the basis of democracy. In I Love to You and the lectures included in Democracy Begins between Two, she suggests we adopt a new basis for thinking about democracy, approaching the concept from interpersonal instead of individual dynamics.1 From this shift in focus, we can come to value a genuine mutuality that recognizes the particularity and differences among persons, instead of a strategic self-interest being the motivation for being a part of and sustaining a democracy and securing international peace. The basis of interpersonal relationships, mutual respect between two, is identical to—not merely an analogy or a microcosmic picture of—the basis for democracy and mutuality. I will also reflect on how the notion of reciprocity has influenced my thoughts about the events of 11 September 2001. Last, I will explore the failure of the George W. Bush foreign policy doctrine from the perspective of Irigaray’s later work. The events of 11 September and the ensuing war on terrorism, especially the United States’ military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, form the backdrop for my discussion. I consider how these events inspire us to rethink democracy, perhaps in a new way. Western political philosophy has been primarily concerned with how civil societies form. Philosophers from Thomas Hobbes to John Rawls have shed light on those beginnings from different perspectives. Most accounts of a civil society developing into a democracy have as their central character an individual who makes an individual choice to become a member of the society, a democratic citizen. As Rawls and others rightly point out, this notion that we join a society does not reflect the reality of how we come into the world. This reality puts into question the basis of democracy itself.

36

JENNIFER L. EAGAN 1. Love, Interpersonal Relationships, and Sexual Difference

Irigaray’s later work expands her feminist theory to the problem to all political relationships, especially the relationships between democratic citizens. Her feminism is a philosophy that illuminates how to think about difference so that we do not reduce its categories to sameness. She shows us that in the Western philosophical tradition, we are often blind to difference, mostly with regard to sexual difference, but to other differences as well. For example, she would claim that we tend to reduce all women and men to homogeneous and fixed categories, placing every individual into one of the categories, “woman,” or “man.” Though this categorization appears to admit that women and men are different, within their respective groups, all individuals are homogenized. Irigaray shares the feminist assumption that a masculine norm has been the standard for all human beings in patriarchal Western culture. Women, if they are socially or politically visible at all, must become like men to be recognized as political beings. Where women appear as intelligible on the social-political landscape, they are characterized as man-like. Difference disappears altogether. For example, many argue that the United States does not need to revise its Constitution to include an Equal Rights Amendment that specifies that women are claimants to the rights listed in that document because they are already, though not always historically, included in the terms “man” and “citizen.” The fixed categories in which Western thinking places human beings preclude the possibility of mutual and equal relationships between nuanced and different entities because some entities have not yet come into being. Mutuality and equality are ideals in civic relationships and relationships between the sexes. Misperceived differences between citizens can also preclude constructive differences. Many theorists debate over what Irigaray understands sexual difference to mean. They wonder whether her assertion of sexual difference indicates a kind of essentialism. Her later work asserts a utopian political perspective; she asserts that sexual difference is about imagining new identities and relationships. According to Penelope Deutscher: [s]exual difference in this sense is not an ideal for monolithic, radically distinct, sexual identities occupied by men and women. It is an ideal for a culture in which sexed subjects would be primarily oriented toward the other, as opposed to drawing on the other only to provide succor for their own identity.2 Irigaray would argue that women do not yet know what they are or what they can be, since they cannot think of themselves outside of patriarchal

Enforced Homogeneity or Mutual Difference?

37

structures, which either erase them by claiming sameness or devalue and other them by claiming their second-class difference. This process of becoming a woman relates to the project of rethinking all concepts, including democracy. Margaret Whitford observes: [I]n order to become a woman, it seems, it is first necessary to rethink all the categories which structure our thought and experience. It is not just a question of inventing some new terms, but of a total symbolic redistribution.3 Though this appears to be a monumental task, Irigaray gives us some hope that we can achieve the symbolic redistribution by establishing mutual relationships by recognizing genuine and nuanced differences between entities. This process is necessarily imperfect because we must attempt such relationships from an initial position of inequality and such relationships require equality as a starting point. We hope to achieve a genuine mutuality that recognizes that the other is irreducible to me and to my perspective. I am not him/her, and he/she is not me. I cannot lay any claim to understanding the position or perspective of this other, yet I can respect that he/she is different. Irigaray advocates reconceiving our semantics surrounding this expression of love: I love to you means I maintain a relation of indirection to you. I do not subjugate or consume you. I respect you (as irreducible) . . . I speak to you, not just about something; rather I speak to you. I tell you, not so much this or that, but rather I tell to you. The “to” is the guarantor of indirection. The “to” prevents the relation of transitivity, bereft of the other’s irreducibility and potential reciprocity. . . . The “to” is the sign of non-immediacy, of mediation between us.4 For Irigaray, love requires seeing and respecting difference. She claims that this is not yet happening due to unequal relationships. She encourages us to begin our investigation of love with the unequal, yet entrenched, relationship between men and women, as it has existed historically. She writes: [Karl] Marx defined the origin of man’s exploitation of man as man’s exploitation of women and asserted that the most basic human exploitation lies in the division of labor between man and woman. Why didn’t he devote his life to solving this problem of exploitation? 5 Irigaray suspects that Marx did not explore the problem of exploitation based on sex because he did not want to deal with the sticky, intimate nature of love, or lack thereof, in interpersonal relationships. Love is the fundamental problem of sexual difference. When we have disentangled this problem

38

JENNIFER L. EAGAN

of love, we will have some insight into exploitation, oppression, and violent conflict. This failure to love across differences is why she says that men and women do not now know love or think of it in the same terms. In heterosexual relationships, men see love as anonymous sexual intimacy with a woman who is interchangeable with any other woman, while women love the universal category of men that a particular man stands for. Though Irigaray explicitly critiques the relationship between women and men, sexual difference is not strictly a problem of or for heterosexuality. People of all sexualities are subjected to homogeneous and fixed identities of different kinds, the structure of what it means to be sexed in Western culture is powerful such that all form or lose their identities in it. According to Elizabeth Grosz: If Irigaray’s recent texts advocate the creative, mysterious interchange between woman and man, this does not imply that her work is irrelevant to gay and lesbian politics. These texts problematize our culture’s understanding of both homosexuality and heterosexuality in their present forms.6 2. The Social Contract and Mutuality Irigaray branches out from her work on feminism to offer an alternative version of the basis for democracy primarily based on interpersonal love relationships. She makes an analogy between the relationship of men to women and the relationship of citizen-to-citizen. In both cases, the ideal is a mutual respect for difference without a demand for sameness. If we take love relationships as the model for democracy, we would deemphasize the focus on the two individuals or a group of individuals entering into a contract to get what they can for themselves from the relationship. She writes, “[t]he foundations of democracy have to be renewed as being-two, on the basis of a just relationship between two beings.”7 With a traditional social contract, civil justice can only exist after the establishment of the contract. In Irigaray’s view, the preexistence of justice within an interpersonal relationship is a precondition for a social contract. But she believes that the model of a contract establishes democracy as agonistic, so she abandons contract language altogether. Similarly, I argue that intimate interpersonal relationships do not work well if each party is wondering what goods they can secure for themselves individually, as in traditional social contract theory. This sort of gaming or strategizing is not what we would generally want in a love relationship; we would say that this sort of manipulative self-interest would undermine the basis of what we would call love. Instead, I agree with Irigaray when she advocates that democracy emanate from mutual respect and reciprocity among individuals. The central feature of democracy in her sense is not institutional, structural, or procedural, but fundamentally interpersonal. Each citizen would

Enforced Homogeneity or Mutual Difference?

39

retain personal autonomy by virtue of this fundamental respect, but the basis of democracy would be interpersonal, not individualistic, not owned or claimed by either party. The ability of people to take on this perspective and create that inbetween space that constitutes a just relationship is what Irigaray calls “civil maturity.” For civil maturity to be possible, the relative absence of relations of oppression, domination, and especially a paternalism that denies the autonomy and responsibility of individuals is required. She sustains the paradox that the preconditions for relationships among citizens are identical to the conditions that should be the result of the relationship. The preconditions and outcome co-found each other. Irigaray urges that for a true democracy based on civil maturity to form, all citizens in a society must emerge from the infantilized and oppressed states that were generated in what passed for civil society before. To accomplish this goal, citizens must become responsible, recognize others as such, and not reenact old modes of dependence. Irigaray’s movements within this paradox of civil maturity are intriguingly Rousseauian and existentialist. What she calls the state of nature is analogous to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s discussion of corruption that civil society breeds. Like Rousseau, she holds that no original nature to be corrupted exists; corruption results only from a subsumption of freedom under domination.8 To counteract this tendency toward domination, we must assert the rights of individuals to insure their respect. Within this context, rights are an act of placing trust in a genuine other, much as in an interpersonal relationship: Paying attention in this manner to the rights of the individual seems to me also a way of entrusting each man and woman with personal responsibility, and with a means of resistance in the face of danger of a fascist sort. . . . This [recognizing difference within reciprocity] is not easy perhaps, but nor is domination or conflict. . . . Reciprocity refuses this game between two, who remain poles of a unique subject. Reciprocity obliges each woman and each man to remain within the self and to respect that s/he is irreducible, as is the other. This provides another way of emerging from childhood and dependence.9 This emergence is akin to accounts of the true becoming of an existential self, with an identity and life project uniquely ours. Irigaray appears to acknowledge her inheritance of an existentialist tradition. She describes becoming a citizen as parallel to becoming a genuine self. Ideally, we come to define ourselves as individuals not defined by others, but acknowledging that we always exist in relation to others. She argues for a model of citizenship universalizable as an ideal to which all citizens should to aspire, but one that does not insist on homogenization. This is a difficult position to envision, but

40

JENNIFER L. EAGAN

citizenship is not a given state of being, but a chosen activity, a decision about how to live in relationship to others. With Irigaray, I believe that her model for the basis of democracy can ease the problems of sexist oppression, racism, and environmental destruction within a democratic society. First, we can look to interpersonal relationships as an ideal model of all relationships. Then, we can aspire to this ideal in cultivating relationships between citizens. If the relationships between citizens have love as the basis, then we can diminish the competition between citizens that fuels social ills. These ills, critical institutional and societal problems, begin at a simple interpersonal level. Can approaching democracy from an interpersonal perspective help us to bridge the gaps among people who are not fellow citizens in the same way, to resolve international conflicts without war? Yes, democracy is the best way to foster these values on an international, global level. If the love between civil equals takes the same character of “I love to you,” then “[t]he ‘to’ is also a barrier against alienating the other’s freedom in my subjectivity, my world, my language.”10 If I love others in a political sense, I do not demand their sameness to me or their agreement with me. 3. Terrorism and Enforced Homogeneity I am worried about what terrorism does to each of us as individuals and how it affects our everyday thinking, action, and interpersonal relationships that form the basis of, if we follow Irigaray, democracy. Reuters and other news agencies did not designate the 11 September attacks as “terrorism” because they recognized it as a value-laden term. Instead, they used the term “terror attacks,” which speaks more to the existential dimension of lived experience that I will address. Regardless whether these attacks constituted terrorism, they were terrifying. Richard Kearney, reading Hannah Arendt and Immanuel Kant, notes that the sublimity of terror does what Irigaray warns against: If “beauty is the symbol of morality” (Kant), the sublime is its opposite. For if the category of beauty induces democratic sentiments of universality and “sensus communis”—allied to the “enlarged thinking” which comes from our capacity to imagine what it is like to be others or to engage in concrete moral action–the sublime draws us away from such democratic impulses into an unworldly inwardness.11 Though we had been urged by President Bush and others to “go about our business,” with the emphasis on business, I worry that we turned away from each other as citizens and retreated into a traditional domestic and internal personal sphere. Understandably, any threat of death might cause this sort of retreat. Since terrorist acts can instill the fear that more terrorism could be

Enforced Homogeneity or Mutual Difference?

41

imminent, such acts urge individuals toward this sort of retreat, rendering a return to normalcy quite difficult. Bat-Ami Bar On agrees, saying that terrorism is deliberately cruel, severing our relationships to one another as individuals. Striking at the heart of the mutuality necessary for interpersonal relationships, terrorism can create people incapable of love. Living in the face of such cruel danger entails the risk that we will let the fear of death dictate our actions instead of seeing such events as calls to responsibility for others and ourselves. We run the risk of becoming subhuman devils, clawing away at civil liberties in the name of security and seeking advantage over newly defined and defeated others. Being a citizen requires taking responsibility for our place in the world, not subjecting ourselves to an untrue cultural representation of difference, that we are all alike and have nothing in common with our enemies. This view of citizenship being about sameness serves to dehumanize us, and our alleged enemies. Real men and women are “not individuals in the abstract, impersonal, quite like robots or strange beings beyond the reach of death.”14 Salman Rushdie’s character Saladin Chamcha in The Satanic Verses, symbolizes the sort of devil I fear we could become if we succumb to terrorism: After Chamcha survived a 30,000 foot fall to the ground from a hijacked, then exploded plane, his experience caused him to compare the person he had become with the life he lived before the fall. He realized that he had denied himself, rejected his past, and became a detested creature: I am the incarnation of evil, he thought. He had to face it. However it happened, it could not be denied. I am no longer myself, or not only. I am the embodiment of wrong, of what-we-hate, of sin. Why? Why me? What evil had he done—what vile thing could he, would he do? For what was he—he couldn’t avoid the notion—being punished? And, come to that, by whom? . . . No more of that, Saladin Chamcha told himself firmly. No more thinking of myself evil. Appearances deceive; the cover is not the best guide to the book. Devil, Goat, Shaitan? Not I. Not I: another. Who?15 The story of Chamcha and Irigaray’s analysis of homogeneity suggest that evil has been mobilized as an anti-democratic concept. As Rushdie’s character discovers, evil emerges everyday, in our poor choices and in the generally shabby way we treat one another. If this is evil, then we are all capable of the banality of evil, in Hannah Arendt’s terms. Our shortcomings and ignorance that we do not seek to correct—not some metaphysical power like

42

JENNIFER L. EAGAN

Satan—fuels evil. Whatever we call it, evil is the antithesis of the democratic values of respect, mutuality, and love. Since the events of 11 September 2001, the contrast between the use of force and violence to impose our will and the use of democratic deliberation as a respectful, just mode of engaging and including others as distinct equals, has become increasingly sharp to me. Mutual love and respect for others, not by terrorism, bombs, or the threat of death, should sway us. But we see force used more often than not because force is so compelling. Fundamentalism of any political or religious stripe is fundamentally opposed to democratic thinking. Fundamentalists are sure that they have found the absolute Truth. They believe their conviction gives them license to use force to compel others to accept their truth. This is the nature of tyranny, the forced ingestion of someone else’s (perceived) Truth. Democratic thinking, by contrast, is not morally or epistemologically relativistic. Truth still exists with a lower case “t,” but taking others seriously as people who search for truth with you means always and permanently remaining open to the possibly that they are right and you are wrong. Here reciprocity of the sort that Irigaray talks about comes into play; it insures that we respect our fellow citizens as responsible adults who make independent choices. Fundamentalism in this sense, irrational and anti-social, is currently justifying the use of force on both sides of our “new war.” Whether our Truth is, “Americans are infidels and deserve to die,” or, “We will never negotiate with terrorists,” both positions are impervious to other voices and to the force of a better reason. On the other hand, democracy requires us to accept the ambiguity of our ability to know and make claims. Tolerating other people’s truths and visions of the good life is not easy. Freedom of choice allows us to choose actions that are potentially damaging to others or ourselves. Many things that some of my fellow Americans do trouble me deeply. These include doing violence, driving gas-guzzling Sport Utility Vehicles, buying big houses in the suburbs, not caring where their products are made or by whom, being obsessed with consumerism, ignoring the poverty and suffering of other people, opposing the freedoms of others to live outside the norm, wanting to reduce social services, putting gum under seats in public places, smoking, not respecting the right of way of pedestrians, not picking up after their dogs, and insisting on doing all manner of selfdestruction. This list enumerates what I am against. But I would not have all of the people who do these behaviors or who hold such beliefs summarily shot. I am content to educate my fellow citizens and try to sway them to my position with the force of reason. I deliberate with them out of mutual respect. I also have to realize that others might not accept what I like or value what I do, and yet I have a duty to remain open. After considering their point of view, I am free, as are they, to remain unswayed by their arguments. I continue to stand for the freedoms that I desire for myself and for others.

Enforced Homogeneity or Mutual Difference?

43

After the 11 September 2001 attacks, Rushdie wrote: The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women’s rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex.16 It just so happens that I am for these things, but I am also for others’ right not to value these things. Many of us are questioning the meaning of being a member of Western culture. Rushdie gives us some suggestions: The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his worldview, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war, but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them.17 We do not have to agree on the virtue of bacon sandwiches, but on the right of people to choose bacon sandwiches (presuming that in deliberation we determine that bacon sandwiches should be legal and pose no immanent harm). Citizenship is the deliberation of citizens within a relationship of reciprocity. Genuine reciprocity defends the whole spectrum of human choices from the trivial to the sublime. Based on this premise of reciprocity, I am for diversity in every sense of the word; I am against enforced homogeneity. 4. An Irigarian Response to the Bush Doctrine of Preemption Reviewing Bush’s foreign policy reminds me that the notion of being positively convinced of being right and choosing sides is a potentially and perpetually dangerous one. I have asserted that Luce Irigaray’s view on mutuality requires that we not homogenize groups of people and their choices out of hand. This requires that we go beyond respecting or tolerating difference to seeing difference as a resource that we should preserve. In the United States since 11 September 2001, we have experienced the homogenization of all people into two abstract and overly simple categories of the “good” versus the “bad” and the unprecedented erosion of our civil rights under the stewardship of Attorney General John Ashcroft. Each of the two categories serves to fix individuals with essential and unchangeable characteristics without nuance or difference. Ultimately, the thinking behind the Bush doc-

44

JENNIFER L. EAGAN

trine of preemption advocates the limitation of personal choice and expression, as I demonstrate below. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” (NSS), illustrates several homogenizing factors at work.18 First, it asserts a narrow and ideological version of American values. These values, the goodness of which the document arbitrarily takes to be self-evident, are human freedom (narrowly defined), democracy (Western-styled, traditional), free enterprise, free markets, free trade, and economic openness (mentioned most frequently and in a variety of colorful phrasings). This suggests that the American system of belief is univocal and fundamentally incompatible with the view of all terrorists. Next, the NSS document announces the right of the United States to respond with force to all threats to its political and economic freedoms, without suggesting that other countries have a similar right. The NSS states, “[W]e will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country.” This suggests that conflict is unavoidable due to fundamental ideological differences, establishing a selffulfilling prophesy. The document reflects the unhelpful polarizing language of the Cold War, which led to the expensive and destructive battle between the friends and foes of capitalism, when a more nuanced understanding between the parties might have averted such a war and found common ground. We should not expect a different result with the war on terrorism. The NSS characterizes our enemy as a secret, covert, shadowy force organized around the hatred of “our way of life”: “The enemy is terrorism—premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocence.” We have a nameless, disembodied, and not personally responsible enemy that mimics and justifies our use of force. We similarly become an abstracted, univocal group of free consumers with no apparent need to dissent. The goods of freedom, democracy (by our definitions), and of capitalism remain both loosely defined and undefended. The homogenization of the “us” and “them,” who are either “with us or against us,” in President George W. Bush’s parlance, remains as both a threat to civil rights at home and to international peace. The Bush doctrine explicitly states this analogy; the White House is leading the way in this interpretation. In the NSS, freedom and democracy are inextricably linked to, if not subsumed under, capitalism. The second subheading, “Champion Aspirations for Human Dignity,” (which could be entitled “Our Way or the Highway!”), contains some liberal rhetoric. But at its core, this goal promises that the United States will use its economic and military strength to force the adoption of “principles we all cherish,” including the “respect for private property.” Section 6 explicitly mentions democracy: “Ignite a New Era of Global and Economic Growth through Free Markets and Free Trade.” It and section 7,

Enforced Homogeneity or Mutual Difference?

45

“Expand the Circle of Development by Opening Societies and Building the Infrastructure of Democracy,” are the longest and most detailed. As we can see from the titles, democracy is synonymous with, if not a mere vehicle for, free trade. Again, the rhetoric is that of compassionate conservatism, but the message is of securing United States’ economic interests at all costs. From an Irigarian perspective, the NSS document shows that enforced homogenization, especially economic homogenization, is the essence of the war on terrorism. Since this position appears to echo both the mistakes of the Cold War and the individualism of appropriation of the social contract, this message is nothing new and may be inherent in Western-style democracies. If democracy begins between two in a mutual recognition of difference, as Irigaray and I see it, the NSS (and the actions and rhetoric of the Bush Administration generally) is not democratic. This document acknowledges no plural voices or interests. Presuming that our leadership wants terrorism to end, I think it will require the mutual understanding that Irigaray is advocating.

NOTES 1. Luce Irigaray, I Love to You: Sketch for a Felicity within History, trans. Alison Martin (New York: Routledge, 1996); and Democracy Begins Between Two, trans. Kirsten Anderson (New York: Routledge, 2001). 2. Penelope Deutscher, A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 77. 3. Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 165. 4. Irigaray, I Love to You, p. 109. 5. Ibid., pp. 19 and 22–24 respectively. 6. Elizabeth Grosz, “The Hetero and the Homo: The Sexual Ethics of Luce Irigaray,” Engaging with Irigaray: Feminist Philosophy and Modern European Thought, eds. Carolyn Burke, Naomi Schor, and Margaret Whitford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 348. 7. Irigaray, Democracy Begins Between Two, p. 118. 8. Whitford, Luce Irigaray, p. 174. 9. Irigaray, Democracy Begins Between Two, pp. 102–104. 10. Irigaray, I Love to You, p. 110. 11. Richard Kearney, “Terror, Philosophy, and the Sublime,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 29:1 (2003), p. 41. 12. Irigaray, Democracy Begins Between Two, p.37. 13. Bat-Ami Bar On, “Why Terrorism is Morally Problematic,” Feminist Ethics, ed. Claudia Card (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991), pp. 116–120. 14. Irigaray, Democracy Begins Between Two, p. 37. 15. Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (New York: Picador USA, 1988). 16. Salman Rushdie, “Fighting the Forces of Invisibility,” The Washington Post, 2 October 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55876-2001Oct1 (accessed 25 May 2006).

46

JENNIFER L. EAGAN

17. Ibid. 18. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” 17 September 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html (accessed 25 May 2006).

Three RESPONSIBILITY AND/IN CRISIS Dianna Taylor How can we measure length if we do not have a yardstick, how can we count things without the notion of numbers? —Hannah Arendt1 We must restore the readiness to think, against the tendency to have everything prepared in advance and, as it were, placarded in slogans. —Karl Jaspers2 Freedom always implies freedom of dissent.

—Hannah Arendt3

Hannah Arendt’s experience of World War II led her to believe that harm stems not only from overt terror, violence, and cruelty, but also from more implicit but no less troubling phenomena. Among the most significant of these was the widespread uncritical acceptance of, and collaboration and complicity with, totalitarian regimes. From her perspective, insofar as uncritical acceptance allowed these regimes to remain in place, it functioned in the service of domination. Uncritical acceptance and the domination it facilitated were exacerbated because totalitarianism threw Western culture into what Arendt terms a “crisis in meaning.” By defying comprehension in terms of existing political concepts and invoking such concepts (most notably freedom, authority, and national identity) in the name of repression and mass destruction, the crisis in meaning simultaneously created a need for the development of new ways of making sense of the world and inhibited such development. Given the connection Arendt perceived between the uncritical acceptance of convention and domination, it makes sense that she also posited a connection between critical reflection upon contemporary reality and emancipation: Critical reflection might elucidate the destructive deployment of traditional concepts, categories, and principles and facilitate their reconceptualization in emancipatory terms. In this chapter, I argue that current conditions within the United States are analogous to those I have described above in the sense that the 11 September 2001 attacks on the New York City World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93 produced a crisis in meaning, the effects of which the United States is still experiencing.4 I will also show that within the post-11 September United States, both the federal government and the media have invoked

48

DIANNA TAYLOR

prevailing ethical and political concepts and categories in ways that promote conformity with the status quo and inhibit the kind of critical reflection upon and engagement with the present that might facilitate a productive negotiation of the current crisis. Ongoing concerns with identifying and bringing to justice those persons “responsible” for the attacks, formulating and executing a “responsible” governmental response to the attacks, and promoting “responsible” behavior among the United States citizenry illustrate the prominence of questions of responsibility within the post-Sept. 11 context. Given such prominence, my emphasis on the nature and function of the concept of responsibility within the context of a crisis in meaning appears especially instructive. While the country has been preoccupied primarily with the “hunt for bin Laden” and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I focus on the third issue: What might constitute a responsible response on the part of United States citizens to the events of 11 September? If we take seriously the claim that the United States is currently experiencing a crisis in meaning, then a responsible response needs to be conceived in terms of critical reflection upon our present reality, which aims at making sense of, and promoting freedom within it. I will show that government and the media have largely construed responsible action on the part of United States citizens in terms of obedience to authority, a conceptualization that promotes quiescence and the acceptance of prevailing conditions as necessary conditions instead of critical reflection. I begin my analysis by identifying and briefly discussing two broad types of responsibility that I refer to as “normative” and “critical” responsibility. Next, I turn to the work of Arendt, whose conceptualization and analysis of the crisis in meaning she experienced, I will show, provide valuable insight into how the United States crisis in meaning might be productively negotiated.5 This conceptualization and analysis reflect Arendt’s desire to confront and make sense not only of collaboration with the Nazi regime, but also complacency, indifference, and thoughtlessness in the face of its horrors. How, she wonders, could people have performed such acts in the name of responsibility and be perceived as responsible? Arendt also seeks to identify ways in which reflective, critical thinking,—which might have facilitated the production of alternative interpretations of such conduct—was considered to be irresponsible, with the result that such it was inhibited or rendered ineffectual. Finally, Arendt’s analysis reflects her attempt to begin developing new ways of thinking about what it means to behave responsibly within the context of a crisis, such that “responsible action” furthers the practice of freedom.6 Arendt’s work on these issues facilitates my outline of the nature of a crisis in meaning and helps to show that, while normative and critical responsibility are always in tension with one another, under crisis conditions this tension becomes heightened. I proceed by drawing upon Arendt’s analysis of the status of responsibility under crisis conditions to show how such condi-

Responsibility and/in Crisis

49

tions distort normative responsibility in ways that allow it to function in the service of domination and to inhibit critical responsibility, the performance of which might combat domination and further the practice of freedom. I then analyze current conditions within the United States to show that the events of 11 September 2001 can be understood as producing a crisis in meaning and as a result simultaneously intensifying the need for and complicating the performance of both types of responsibility. The essay’s conclusion reiterates my point regarding the value of Arendt’s work for negotiating the current crisis and identifies three directions in which that work pushes persons committed to the struggle for freedom. As I see it, persons are responsible in two general ways, which I refer as “normative” and “critical.” Larry May points out that responsibility in general arises out of the relationship that persons have to the world in which they live; normative and critical responsibility are not exceptions. Thinking about responsibility in this way is compatible with the work of Arendt, who conceives of the world as a space common to all persons that both brings them together and facilitates their distinguishing themselves as “unique, distinct” individuals.7 She says that the world is like a table at which multiple persons are seated: they form a group insofar as the space they inhabit is common to all of them, yet this same space distinguishes them from one another because each person occupies a separate place at the table. According to Arendt, all persons are responsible for sustaining or “caring for” the world, and we fulfill this responsibility by way of engaging in activities that endow the world with meaning. (The meaning-making activities that most concerned Arendt over the course of her life are understanding, thinking, and judging).8 The performance of normative responsibility is meaning-producing in the sense that it involves participating in, and as a result, supporting, and making meaningful existing social and political institutions and systems. Normative responsibility is akin to Immanuel Kant’s notion of the private use of reason in the sense that it involves persons fulfilling prescribed social roles to which some obligations are attached.9 Examples include professional obligations (tenure requirements, committee work), family obligations (caring for children or a sick parent), or general obligations of citizenship (voting, jury duty). Put differently, the nature and scope of normative responsibility is shaped by the social and political institutions that characterize a particular community. Critical responsibility, like the public use of reason as Kant conceives of it, is not similarly constrained. It is meaning-producing in the sense that it involves the interpretation—in the sense of critical reflection and analysis— of these same social and political institutions and systems.10 Edward Said’s description of the nature and function of “the intellectual” within society provides an effective way of thinking about what I am calling critical responsibility. This type of responsibility involves adopting a particular kind of attitude toward, or orientation within, the world, “a sense of being unwill-

50

DIANNA TAYLOR

ing to accept easy formulas, or ready-made clichés, or the smooth, ever-soaccommodating confirmation of what the powerful or conventional have to say, and what they do. Not just passively unwillingly, but actively willing to say so in public.”11 So conceived, critical responsibility entails persons engaging in and furthering public action and dialogue in ways that raise issues which would otherwise go unaddressed and give voice to opinions which would otherwise remain unarticulated. Said believes that intellectuals are most responsible in a critical sense. But from an Arendtian perspective, since all persons are responsible for the world, critical responsibility extends to all. As is the case with the public use of reason for Kant, from an Arendtian perspective, only critical responsibility is properly political; only its performance functions directly in the service of freedom.12 Arendt does not conceive of politics in terms of participation in existing political institutions. Instead, Arendtian politics consists of persons coming together for the purposes of action and speech and is characteristically spontaneous and agonistic in ways that both the activities of the state and organized “political” parties are not and cannot be. Politics, for Arendt, brings people together in such a way that their “unique distinctness” is preserved and fostered: within the context of normative responsibility, persons are defined, to greater and lesser degrees, as “whats”—in terms of their function within broader systems and institutions.13 This is not the case with critical responsibility, which entails—to some extent—challenging in the sense of critically analyzing and not prima facie accepting—our social roles and their functions; the performance of critical responsibility positions persons as “whos.” All of this is not to say that normative responsibility is politically irrelevant. Arendt observes that the world is full of things that are “the work of [human] hands,” and which endow the “human artifice” with its “durability.”14 By virtue of their durability, the things of the world possess a degree of independence “from men who produced and use them,” and this relative objectivity of things provides human affairs, characteristically unpredictable and unreliable, with a degree of stability: “the things of the world have the function of stabilizing human life.”15 Without normative responsibility functioning to give meaning to and thereby support existing sociopolitical institutions, which comprise the structure of society, no meaningful spontaneity and agonism in the sense of politics can exist, merely chaotic activity. Given this function, we need to understand normative responsibility as providing the conditions for the possibility of political activity and, by extension, for freedom. As described here, normative and critical responsibility, both required for world-sustenance, are in tension with one another. But persons are generally able to negotiate this tension without too much difficulty; they can fulfill their institutional obligations while also engaging in some activities that challenge the status quo. Still, under some conditions, to which I refer as condi-

Responsibility and/in Crisis

51

tions of “crisis,” the tension between the two types of responsibility intensifies. In a crisis, the performance of critical responsibility becomes more crucial and more difficult because under these same conditions the performance of normative responsibility may function in the service of domination. Works such as Arendt’s analysis of the oppressive nature of bureaucratic institutions and Michel Foucault’s examination of the workings of power within the context of modern societies show that good reasons exist for always approaching normative responsibility critically.16 But taking this insight seriously does not mean that crisis conditions cannot be considered unique. Such conditions compromise or even destroy the tools upon which persons have traditionally relied to make sense of the world; crisis conditions prove unique. They also curtail the development of new tools by fostering support for the status quo and inhibiting the kind of critical engagement with the present that might stimulate the development of new ways of thinking and acting. In this chapter, I conceive of a “crisis” in the Arendtian sense of a “crisis in meaning,” as a context in which persons’ ability to make sense of the world, and their existence within it, is greatly compromised. A crisis in meaning is generated by an unprecedented event such as, in the case of Arendt’s life and work, the phenomenon of totalitarianism. She argues that totalitarianism constitutes a new form of government: it arose out of sociopolitical and historical conditions, was characterized by exceptional forms of terror, and produced uniquely destructive effects. Yet newness as such is not totalitarianism’s most problematic aspect. “The originality of totalitarianism,” Arendt writes: is horrible, not because some new “idea” came into the world, but because its very actions constitute a break with all our traditions; [these actions] have clearly exploded our categories of thought and our standards for moral judgment.17 This “explosion” of existing categories and standards—tools by means of which persons make sense of the world—produces a crisis in meaning. According to Arendt, totalitarianism accomplishes the “explosion” of meaningmaking tools in two related ways. The first is by defying comprehension in terms of existing categories and standards. Totalitarianism cannot be understood as a “lust for power,” for example, nor is it the same as tyranny; likewise, the concept of “murder” (or even “mass murder”) cannot adequately express the nature and scope of its crimes.18 Second, existing categories and standards have themselves been used in the service of totalitarian domination. Under the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, traditional political, legal, and moral concepts and standards were invoked to justify unjust, illegal, and immoral acts. As Arendt puts it, “every moral act was illegal and every legal act was a crime.”19 Given this (mis)use, such categories and standards cannot be relied

52

DIANNA TAYLOR

upon to promote justice, nor can they provide a foundation upon which to base moral and political judgments. Within the context of a crisis in meaning, traditional modes of making sense—meaning-making norms, so to speak— are not merely inadequate but also potentially harmful. Arendt argues that the one meaning-making tool which remains after all others have been seriously compromised is lived experience. “Thought itself arises out of incidents of living experience,” she writes, “and must remain bound to them as the only guideposts by which to take its bearings.”20 Only through engaging reality will persons be able to critically analyze both it and their experiences within it, and so hope to develop new ways of thinking and interpretations, which might aid in making sense of their situation. Yet crisis also threatens the ability of persons to draw upon their lived experience. A terrible reality, of which no readily apparent way exists to make sense, promotes disengagement from reality. Such disengagement, in turn, promotes acceptance of, or resignation to, the status quo. Persons come to view the events of their time as no different from others that exist or have existed in the world and to subsume the new and terrible under the known and familiar. Acceptance or resignation may provide persons with a sense of comfort or normalcy insofar as they can tell themselves they know what they are dealing with, possess or are able to access the tools necessary to negotiate their situation, and can carry on in ways familiar to them.21 As Arendt puts it, we “console ourselves that nothing worse or less familiar will take place than general human sinfulness.”22 But within a context where norms and uncritical adherence to them functions in the service of oppression, humanity pays a high price when it seeks to achieve (or convinces itself that it has achieved) conviction in the face of contingency. The horror of reality causes people to disengage, but in doing so they reject not only horror but also reality, and deprive themselves of their only available meaning-making resource. While she understands why persons would be compelled to turn away from the reality of a crisis, Arendt argues that we must resist such an impulse because disengagement reinforces the crisis and functions in the service of domination. The situation as I have described it thus far is as follows: crises destroy or seriously compromise traditional meaning-making tools in the form of categories of thought and standards of judgment. One tool, lived experience, remains, but is also threatened, because of ways in which crises foster disengagement from reality. Within this kind of crisis context, the significance of critical responsibility is readily apparent: critical thinkers are more likely to engage reality, less likely to succumb to acceptance of and resignation to the status quo and so more able to resist domination and promote the practice of freedom. Arendt argues that within the context of crisis, “much more reliable will be the doubters and the skeptics, not because skepticism is good or doubting wholesome, but because they are used to examin[ing] things and mak[ing] up their own minds.”23 But as is probably already apparent from my

Responsibility and/in Crisis

53

description of the intensification of the tension between normative and critical responsibility that occurs under crisis conditions, crises also compromise persons’ critical and decision making capabilities—their ability to perform their critical responsibility—and they do so in two ways that interest me here. The first way is through the distortion and reconceptualization of normative responsibility as mere obedience to authority. The second way is through the subsequent masking of their destructive effects by way of depicting critique (and by extension critical responsibility) as irresponsible or even immoral. I want to turn to the provocative account of the status of responsibility under crisis conditions that Arendt provides in lectures she delivered on the subject of “personal” and “moral” responsibility “under totalitarian dictatorships” to address these two points. In her analysis, Arendt takes care to distinguish responsibility from guilt. She argues that guilt is always and only individual or personal: “It is only in a metaphorical sense that we can say we feel guilty for the sins of our fathers, or our people, or of humankind; in short, for deeds we have not done.”24 If an individual commits an infraction, denying guilt is morally problematic. But Arendt believes that erroneously claiming guilt is just as objectionable. From her perspective, feelings of guilt among the general German population, while Nazi criminals denied culpability during the Nuremburg Trials represents the “quintessence of moral confusion.” “Where all are guilty,” Arendt writes, “no one is.”25 In contrast, insofar as they are members of a community, persons may be held responsible for acts they have not committed. Arendt refers to this type of responsibility as “political” or “collective,” and argues that it can take two forms.26 The first and older form entails community accountability for individual actions. The second and more recent form entails community accountability for government actions committed in its name. For example, I live in a state that practices capital punishment. While I may personally oppose this practice, I can be considered responsible for its continuation, insofar as executions are carried out in the name of the “people of the state of Ohio.” For persons to extricate themselves from political/collective responsibility is virtually impossible. “We can escape this political and strictly collective responsibility only by leaving the community,” Arendt writes, “and since no one can live without belonging to some community, this would mean to exchange one community for another and hence one responsibility for another.”27 For example, I can move from Ohio to a non-death penalty state, or leave the country altogether and no longer be responsible for executions, but I have not left behind my political responsibility as such, given that I take up residence in some other community. Totalitarian states, on the other hand, present a different situation. Persons living within such states are deprived of their political responsibility not because they, like stateless persons and refugees, lack a place in the world, but because the states within which they live are not properly communities:

54

DIANNA TAYLOR

persons cannot come together for the purposes of action and speech, and no public sphere exists. Nor is there any private sphere, for everything persons do is open to surveillance and public scrutiny. Under such conditions persons are, according to Arendt, “condemned to impotence.”28 But being deprived of political responsibility does not mean that persons are removed from all responsibility. Arendt argues that “moral” or “personal” responsibility “begins where political responsibility ends,” which is under conditions of impotence where a person either cannot or will not “do anything for the world.”29 With respect to personal responsibility, then, Arendt analyzes two arguments made to excuse or even justify criminal and immoral actions within Nazi Germany, both of which contribute to the distortion and reconceptualization of normative personal responsibility. The first argument relies upon what she calls the “cog-theory,” which was invoked by the defense at the Adolf Eichmann trial to claim that he was only a “cog” in a larger, immoral system and not (or not fully) responsible for his actions. In attacking this argument, Arendt points out that systems cannot be held accountable for anything; if an individual “happens to be a functionary, he stands accused precisely because even a functionary is still a human being, and it is in this capacity that he stands trial.”30 Even if Eichmann were only a cog in a machine, as a human being, he was obliged to justify why he became or remained a cog. Arendt does not mean to imply that systems are completely irrelevant. She argues that they come into play in the form of “circumstances” which can mitigate but not totally excuse our actions. The second argument, and the one which most concerns me here, is that of “the lesser evil.” According to this argument, when faced with two evils persons have a “duty” to choose the lesser one because it would be “irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether.”31 I have chosen to focus on the argument of the lesser evil because not only does it contribute to the reconceptualization of normative responsibility as obedience, but also it functions to distort and inhibit critical responsibility. According to Arendt, persons who cooperated with the Nazi regime invoked this argument to justify their actions. Critics considered persons who, for example, worked for the Nazis so they could covertly aid and provide forged documents for some Jews (persons who chose the lesser evil), to be above reproach because they tried to do something to help. But Arendt challenges the idea that cooperating with the Nazis to engage in subversive activity might be an instance of normative responsibility. She argues that “choosing” the lesser evil is not properly a choice at all. “The argument of the lesser evil,” she writes: is one of the mechanisms built into the machinery of terror and crimes. Acceptance of lesser evils is consciously used in conditioning the government officials and the population at large to the acceptance of evil as such.32

Responsibility and/in Crisis

55

“Choosing” the lesser evil, then, is merely an aping and rearticulation of official, institutionalized norms and values—an instance of obedience to authority. Obedience, Arendt argues, has no place in political or moral discourse. “Only a child obeys,” she states, “if an adult ‘obeys,’ he actually supports the organization or the authority or the law that claims ‘obedience.’”33 Obedience is demanded and, as such, is anti-political; thought, deliberation, and decision making play no part in it. While social and political institutions do shape normative responsibility, Arendt’s work illustrates that they do not determine it. Normative responsibility is still premised upon the ability of persons to decide how they will in undertake it. Demanding obedience to authority in the name of responsibility also distorts and, as a result, inhibits critical responsibility. The argument of the lesser evil allows persons to perform evil because it masks the true character of the “less evil” action: persons believe themselves to be helping others and are able to see their actions as moral and responsible. It follows from the perception of choosing the lesser evil as moral that “those who did nothing”— non-participants—“shirk[ed] all responsibilities and [thought] only of themselves.”34 Non-participants are perceived as selfish, immoral, and irresponsible. Arendt challenges these characterizations by arguing that within a context of impotence or powerlessness—the context in which personal responsibility is relevant—non-participation is an expression of critical responsibility. Under ordinary political conditions, we may rightly consider refusing to participate in public affairs as “irresponsible,” insofar as such participation generally reproduces conditions for the possibility of freedom. Under the crisis conditions described above, no active public realm exists; all social and political institutions are controlled by, and serve the repressive regime currently in place. Insofar as participation is harmful, we can understand non-participation, what Arendt calls “withdrawal of support,” as responsible. Support, not obedience, legitimates political institutions: persons decide whether to give support— critical and deliberative processes form the foundation for support. Since persons give support, they can also withdraw it. Arendt believes that such withdrawal may be, in the case of crises that effect powerlessness, the only responsible course of action. Non-participants both refuse support and, she asserts, “those places of ‘responsibility’ where such support, under the name of obedience, is required.”35 If persons’ ability to perform their critical responsibility, in the sense of openly challenging the status quo, is compromised to the point that doing so functions solely in the service of domination, they may still exercise responsibility by deciding not to act. Arendt argues that through “this admission of our impotence . . . a last remnant of strength and even power can still be preserved under these desperate conditions.”36 Nonparticipation is a general strategy, but a strategy of last resort. It can be considered a responsible course of action only in situations where any action supports domination (situations where persons are reduced to a position

56

DIANNA TAYLOR

of “impotence”). For impotent persons nonparticipation is a decision made via critical reflection on the conditions of our present and must not be confused with mere thoughtless acceptance of the status quo. The 11 September 2001 attacks on the New York City World Trade Center, on the United States Pentagon, and on United Airlines Flight 93 are obviously different from the phenomenon of totalitarian domination. Still, attacks on civilians such as these were unprecedented in the United States. The reactions to, and effects of, the attacks within the country are analogous to those about which Arendt expresses concern.37 (Like Arendt, in making this claim about unprecedentedness, I do not intend to separate events from their broader social, political, and historical contexts. Neither do I intend to suggest that the attacks were somehow more serious than other violent and terrifying acts that have occurred and continue to occur in the world.) As is the case with any trauma, people reacted to the attacks with shock and horror, along with the understandable desire for an explanation, some assurance of safety, and the restoration of a semblance of normalcy. “Providing an explanation,” in the case of a crisis, needs to be construed in terms of making sense of the events by way of critically reflecting upon them— something which is not incompatible with promoting security and restoring social, political, and economic life. Yet the official governmental response to the events of 11 September 2001 greatly inhibited critical reflection among the citizenry. On one hand, the existing concepts of “war” and “terrorism” were invoked to make sense of the attacks in ways that have been not only ineffective but also harmful. On the other hand, the concept of “patriotism” has been invoked in ways that have distorted normative responsibility such that it has come to be conceived in terms of obedience to authority, whereas critical responsibility has been construed as irresponsible or even immoral. While in no way providing an exhaustive account of the complex, post-11 September United States political and moral terrain, I will discuss each of these points in turn. That the events of 11 September 2001 rendered problematic the means by which sense might be made of them is apparent in their (simultaneous) characterization as both acts of war and acts of terrorism. In addressing a joint session of Congress and the United States public on 20 September 2001, the President describes the attacks as “an act of war against our country.”38 Like major network news broadcasts at the time, George W. Bush proceeds to liken the 11 September attacks to Japan’s December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, stating that while the United States had participated in many “wars on foreign soil,” only once since the American Civil War—“one Sunday in 1941”—had an act of war been committed against it.39 Yet in that same speech, Bush states that the attacks were committed by terrorists, naming alQaeda under the leadership of Osama bin Laden. He describes al-Qaeda as being comprised of “thousands of terrorists in more than sixty countries” and

Responsibility and/in Crisis

57

having ties to many other terrorist organizations. Given the nature of the “enemy” in the war upon which the United States has embarked, Bush states that the “war on terror” will be “unlike any other we have ever seen.”40 Since Bush’s speech, the rhetoric of a “war on terror” has been adopted and expanded to the point of becoming institutionalized within United States culture in ways ranging from the establishment of an Office of Homeland Security and its terror alert system to increased security checks at airports. Yet David Luban argues persuasively that if neither concept—war nor terrorism—alone adequately makes sense of the attacks, combining them in the form of a war on terror(ism) will be no more effective for the purposes of making sense.41 According to Luban, the notion of a war on terror is the manifestation of a “hybrid war-law approach” to dealing with the events of 11 September 2001, an approach that has proven to function in the service of oppression. Treating the attacks as an act of war frees the United States government from traditional legal constraints. Treating them as terrorist—criminal—activity effectively applies those same constraints to persons (and nations) voicing opposition to the United States, even if such opposition in expressed in legitimate and peaceful ways. As Luban argues, “selectively combining elements of the war model and the law model” allows the government to “maximize its own ability to mobilize lethal force against terrorists while eliminating most traditional rights of a military adversary, and the rights of innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.” The suspension of the rights of large numbers of persons detained since the 11 September attacks and the situation of the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, provide perhaps the most compelling examples of Luban’s points.42 Among the United States population more generally, the official response to the crisis in meaning produced by the 11 September attacks has functioned to promote the kind of disengagement from reality that Arendt finds so problematic. First, the unprecedented phenomenon of the attacks has been subsumed under existing categories that do not adequately or accurately aid in the process of making sense of them. This subsumption was accomplished quickly and effectively by reading the attacks through the lens of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, a reading that both stemmed from and in turn facilitated an interpretation of the attacks as an act of war requiring a military response. But a frightening, complex reality was replaced by an ideology that rendered the situation no worse than an event with which United States citizens are all familiar and which, coincidentally, was eventually (and successfully) resolved through military action. Such a familiar account of unprecedented events is placating, but in uncritically accepting it, persons forfeit the meaningmaking tool of their lived experience. Official rhetoric shaping “our” collective reaction to the attacks is the second way in which disengagement has been encouraged. In the opening

58

DIANNA TAYLOR

remarks of his first address to the nation on the evening of 11 September, President Bush states that the attacks “filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger”; he reiterates this point in his 20 September 2001 address where he again states, “our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution.” 43 Bush employs two rhetorical devices here that have an impact upon the national climate. On one hand, he does not speak of his personal feelings regarding the attacks but voices those of the collective “American people.” In telling people what the rest of the country is (supposedly) feeling, Bush sends a strong message about what constitutes an appropriate response. On the other hand, he appeals to feelings, not thought. At no point in either the address of 11 or 20 September does Bush call for critical reflection upon what occurred; instead, already having provided an interpretation of the events, he emphasizes formulating and implementing a swift and decisive military response against “our” enemies.44 Although President Bush does not explicitly say it, his rhetoric implies that the official interpretation of, and response to, the events of 11 September are the only responsible ones. He articulates this implication most plainly and strongly in his 20 September speech: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”45 “Responsible” action (action opposed to terrorism) is action that supports the Bush Administration; all other action will be seen as supporting terrorism, therefore, “irresponsible” (or worse). While Bush refers to the actions of other nations in his speech, he has also applied these same equations domestically. One of the most effective mechanisms of this domestic deployment has been the rhetoric of “patriotism.” (The conflation of patriotism and obedience has been challenged but is still pervasive, as evinced by, for example, the recent failure of the United States House of Representatives to challenge key provisions of the United States Patriot Act.) Through such rhetoric, supporting the country and United States troops (action generally considered to be patriotic) has become synonymous with supporting the President, his administration, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Patriot Act, which gives broad discretion to the President himself with respect to determining what constitutes “terrorist activity” or even the “aiding of terrorists,” has played a major role in strengthening and institutionalizing the equation of patriotic expression with support of the Bush Administration and its military actions.46 The argument of the lesser evil is at work here: United States citizens are being presented with a choice of either “choosing” the evil of terrorism, or “choosing” the (lesser) evil of participating in political institutions that compromise civil liberties and perpetuate violence in the name of ensuring national security. Under these kinds of conditions, participating in existing social and political institutions and systems—what I have defined as normative responsibility—becomes interconnected with obedience to political authority as manifest in the figure of the executive.47

Responsibility and/in Crisis

59

While I do not think normative responsibility has been reduced to obedience, pressure in that direction obviously exists. Meaningful participation in political institutions consists of the ability to act in ways that make a difference and that reflect persons’ deliberative and decision-making processes. It consists of persons’ ability to give the support to political institutions, which comprises the source of those institutions’ legitimacy. I believe our ability to give this sort of support has been compromised. The ability of persons to perform their critical responsibility has obviously also been compromised. Given that the United States has not reached the point where all participation in political institutions functions in the service of oppression, critical reflection upon existing political institutions, including expressions of political dissent, is still possible. What we do see is an extremely broad construal of what constitutes political dissent and the labeling of all such expressions as “unpatriotic” or even supportive of terrorism and, by extension, irresponsible. Expressions of political dissent have been inhibited and censored in a variety of ways. Matthew Rothschild chronicles many examples of censorship that occurred in the weeks and months prior to 11 September 2001, including challenges to free speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, and academic freedom.48 Opposition to the war in Iraq has been decried as unpatriotic, and persons protesting the war have been accused of playing into the hands of terrorists by presenting to the world the picture of an internally divided and (so the argument goes) weak nation. The Patriot Act has curbed expressions of dissent by defining terrorist activities and the support of such activities so broadly and giving so much individual power to the United States President: a context in which persons are not quite sure whether their words and actions might be considered sympathetic to terrorism increases the likelihood of self-censorship. Individual citizens need not offer interpretations of their present that conflict with the official one; they are actively discouraged from or even punished for doing so. In recent months, the struggle over how to make sense of the post-11 September 2001 United States has become both more intense and more visible. Such struggle is apparent, for example, in the challenges that have been raised against the Bush Administration’s justification for the war in Iraq and the turmoil over photos of United States troops “abusing” Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib Prison. (The conflict over whether to construe the military’s treatment of prisoners as “abuse” or “torture” provides further illustration of this point). That official interpretations of these events are being challenged signals the existence of critical reflection upon prevailing ideas about what the United States stands for, its position in the world and policies vis a vis the international community, and what it means to be a United States citizen. Within the current context of crisis, I see the (re)emergence of intense struggle as a positive development that needs to be expanded for, as Zygmunt

60

DIANNA TAYLOR

Bauman argues, “[t]he voice of individual moral conscience is best heard in the tumult of political and social discord.” 49 If we take seriously Arendt’s claim that not only the “stupid . . . wicked, or . . . ill-informed,” but also persons who possess the best of intentions—in some instances because of those intentions—may (unwittingly) act in the service of oppression in a crisis, then struggle and discord do not signify, as has been suggested by some, weakness.50 They indicate participation in and support for social and political institutions, as opposed to mere obedience to authority. Struggle and discord help to insure that no single interpretation of reality gains precedence at the expense of all others. Struggle is an expression of (normative and critical) responsibility, and of the practice of freedom. Arendt did not intend to tell people “what to think or which truths to hold.”51 Telling others what to think and do is a way of dictating how they ought to interpret and participate in their reality; it effectively makes meaning for them, removing them from their world-responsibility, and threatening the world. Under conditions of crisis, seeking to provide guarantees or to convince ourselves and others that they are or might be possible are, from her perspective, endeavors that function in the service of domination. Instead, Arendt’s intention was to identify what she referred to as “guideposts,” exemplary lives, actions, and ways of thinking that (re)create the conditions under which the struggle over what to think and which truths to hold is possible at all. Guideposts do not dictate thoughts and actions; they function to prevent us from becoming totally lost as we engage in the practice of thinking, acting, and judging for ourselves within the particularities of our situations. I believe Arendt’s work can serve as a guidepost in the contemporary United States. United States citizens have not become totally complacent, nor are they in a situation of impotence. Because the United States has not reached the point where its citizens must say, “I do not want any part of this world,” we need to be concerned with what can done to prevent the country from reaching that point.52 To continue recreating the conditions under which struggle is possible—conditions for the possibility of freedom—persons need to keep sight of three guideposts to which my analysis here draws attention, each of which deserves further consideration and development. The first involves vigilance about how we perform our normative responsibility: this performance has to be grounded in reality and decision, not reduced to obedience. The second involves vigilance about how we perform our critical responsibility: we must identify current practices that have become oppressive; analyze their oppressive function; and develop new, non-oppressive modes of interacting with the world and with each other. The third involves vigilance about our consciences. “Having a conscience,” for Arendt, entails being in dialogue and “living together with” oneself; it entails “keeping one’s own company.”53 She argues that under totalitarianism persons who refused to

Responsibility and/in Crisis

61

participate did so not because they adhered to a prevailing moral code, but because “they were unwilling to live together with a murderer—themselves.”54 Some people do not keep their own company; they have no conscience. Yet those who do will be able to take responsibility for the world. Persons achieve this by working for emancipatory social transformation which bears in mind Arendt’s counsel about both “the unwilling[ness] [of] the human mind . . . to face realities which in one way or another contradict totally its framework of reference” and the relative ease with which people can be led “to conduct themselves in the unexpected and most outrageous manner.” 55

NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” ed. Jerome Kohn, Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), p. 313. 2. Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt (Bronx, New York: Fordham Univesrsity Press, 2002), p. 6. 3. Hannah Arendt, “Thought on Politics and Revolution,” Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, Thoughts on Politics and Revolution (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), pp. 201–233, quote p. 221. 4. Ibid. 5. See Giovanna Borradori, ed., Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); and Constellations 9(4), 2002. 6. See Susan Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996); Kimberley Curtis, Our Sense of the Real: Aesthetic Experience and Arendtian Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999); Jeffrey C. Isaac, Democracy in Dark Times (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); Melissa Orlie, Living Ethically, Acting Politically (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Pres, 1997); and Dana Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999). 7. Larry May, “Shared Responsibility and Racist Attitudes,” Sharing Responsibility (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 36–54. 8. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 176. 9. See Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” pp. 307–327; The Life of the Mind, Volume I: Thinking (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978); and Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 10. Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1983), pp. 41–48. 11. Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage, 1996). 12. Ibid., p. 23. 13. Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” 14. Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 175–247.

62

DIANNA TAYLOR

15. Ibid. pp. 136–174. 16. Ibid., p. 137. 17. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, 1973); Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). 18. Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” p. 310. 19. Ibid., p. 312; and Arendt, “On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding,” Essays in Undertanding: 1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), pp. 328–360. 20. Hannah Arendt, “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship,” The Hannah Arendt Papers, Library of Congress, Speeches and Writings File: 1923–1975, p. 32. 21. Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin, 1977), p.14 22. Arendt, “On the Nature of Totalitarianism.” 23. Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” p. 312. 24. Arendt, “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship,” p. 37. 25. Arendt, “Collective Responsibility,” Amor Mundi: Explorations in the Faith and Thought of Hannah Arendt, ed. James William Bernauer (Boston, Mass.: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), p. 43. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., pp. 44, 45. 28. Ibid., p. 43. 29. Arendt, “Moral Responsibility under Dictatorship,” The Hannah Arendt Papers, Library of Congress, Speeches and Writings File: 1923–1975, p. 1 30. Ibid., p. 6. 31. Arendt, “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship,” p. 19. 32. Ibid., p. 26. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., p. 38 (emphasis added). 35. Ibid., p. 39. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., p. 38 38. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, (New York: Verso, 2004). 39. George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People” (speech, Washington, D.C., 20 September 2001), http://www.whitehouse.gov/ news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html (accessed 27 May 2006). 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. David Luban, “The War on Terrorism and the End of Human Rights,” Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly, 22:3 (2002), pp. 9–14. 43. See Ronald Dworkin, “The Threat to Patriotism,” The New York Review of Book, (28 February 2002): pp. 44–49; Luban, “The War on Terrorism and the End of Human Rights,” p. 10; Judith Butler, “Guantanamo Limbo,” The Nation, 1 April 2002, pp. 20–22; and Butler, “Indefinite Detention,” Precarious Life. 44. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.” 45. Butler, Precarious Life.

Responsibility and/in Crisis

63

46. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.” 47. See Dworkin, “The Threat to Patriotism”; Adrew Arato, “The Bush Tribunals and the Specter of Dictatorship,” Constellations, 9:4 (2002), pp. 457–476; William E. Scheuerman, “Rethinking Crisis Government,” Constellations, 9:4 (2002), pp. 492–505; and Robin Blackburn, “The Imperial Presidency, the War on Terrorism, and the Revolutions of Modernity,” Constellations, 9:4 (2002), pp. 3–33. 48. Scheuerman, “Rethinking Crisis Government.” 49. Matthew Rothschild, “The New McCarthyism,” The Progressive Magazine, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/McCarthyism/New_McCarthyism_Prog.html (accessed 27 May 2006). 50. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 166. 51. Hannah Arendt, “On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding,” Essays in Understanding: 1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), pp. 328–360. 52. Arendt, Between Past and Future, p. 14 (Arendt’s emphasis). 53. Arendt, “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship,” p. 37. 54. Ibid., p. 36. 55. Butler, Precarious Life, p. 17.

This page intentionally left blank

Part Two DEMOCRACY AS A REMEDY FOR TERRORISM

This page intentionally left blank

Four JIHAD OR THE BELOVED COMMUNITY? BENJAMIN R. BARBER ON TERRORISM AND GLOBAL DEMOCRACY Mar Peter-Raoul Political theorist Benjamin R. Barber in a new, post-11 September 2001, Introduction to his Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy, delineates the global context that made possible al-Qaeda’s “fearsomely unprecedented and altogether astonishing assault on the temple of free enterprise in New York City and the cathedral of American military might in Washington, D.C.”1 Furthering a critical understanding of the why of both terrorism and today’s proliferation of terrorist groups, he offers an analysis of the global conditions in which the Osama bin Ladens of the world enlist new recruits into terrorist networks. He also advances a global agenda toward transforming these conditions—conditions in which poverty, disease, and domination are embedded—into those of a society socially and economically just, democratic, interdependent—and safer. Putting into practice his agenda he is a founding member of both The Democracy Collaborative and CivWorld, each working to bring together world alliances to institute democracy initiatives. Long before 11 September, Barber was an advocate for social justice and a participatory democracy rooted in civil society. His An Aristocracy of Everyone and A Passion for Democracy brim with notions of achieving a democratic citizenry taking responsibility for local communities and increasingly for global conditions, and cite academic-based community service as both a critical component of democratic citizenship and a crucial part of the process for achieving it.2 Increasingly, in post-11 September interviews and speeches, he advocates global democracy characterized by global citizenship and an international economic democracy. I will present Barber’s key thought related to global terror, especially the imperative of a “second front” in the war against terrorism; and in attending to his call to defeat the terrorists by creating a political and economic global democracy will consider the efficacy and sufficiency of the agenda he presents for this consummate task. In reflecting on Barber’s thought, I will also draw on ideas of Martha Nussbaum, Maxine Greene, and others who emphasize education for compassion, which is necessary for realizing Barber’s agenda. Finally, I will suggest an alignment of his vision with the prophetic “beloved community” of Martin Luther King Jr.

68

MAR PETER-RAOUL

Barber makes the sober point that on 11 September 2001, when terrorists compromised America’s sense of security, independence, and power, they disabused us of our illusion of invulnerability. The hellishness of their attack awakened us to a dark night of loss, alerts, threats, and in governmental response, arrests, and the erosion of freedoms. In his 1963 collection of sermons, Strength to Love, Martin Luther King Jr. prophetically warns of the lateness of the hour. In the sermon, “A Knock at Midnight,” he announces, “It is midnight within the social order. On the international horizon nations are engaged in a colossal and bitter contest for supremacy” and many are “left in the frustrating midnight of economic privation.”3 Throughout his sermons and speeches, King prophesied the crumbling of a nation’s edifice that did not live up to its civil and constitutional ideals, nor rid itself of the triple evils of racism, war, and poverty. The urgency of King’s message to America is heard now in Barber’s A Passion for Democracy both at home and beyond America’s borders, and in his critical agenda for confronting the causes and context of a terrorism willing, for its jihadic purposes, to visit terror on children and combatants, alike. Beyond a first military response to terrorism, he calls for a sustained and transforming second front, an essential front working for economic and political democracy, social justice, religious pluralism, and giving critical attention to educating for citizenship. In opposition to unilateral action against jihadic terror, the second front declares the necessity of interdependence. It is a summons to join in alliance with other willing countries to determine global policies, protocols, and combat poverty, a perceived breeding ground for terrorist recruitment. This second front he believes will ultimately be more determinative of the outcome of the war on terrorism than the first front of military force. 1. Terrorism In “The Second Front on the War on Terrorism: Democratizing Globalism,” his inaugural speech upon becoming the Gershon and Carol Kekst Distinguished Professor of Civil Society at the University of Maryland, and just days after 11 September, Barber brooks no quarter regarding the terrorists who plotted, activated, and took part in the perfidious attack on the New York City World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “They are to be extirpated root, trunk, and branch,” he declares. This is the “first crucial front”—to apprehend, prosecute, and punish the terrorists. Offering no rationalization and not admitting any justification for their unspeakable acts, he holds the terrorists “beyond the pale of anything but retributive justice,” deserving an “appropriate justice” to be fought for mainly “with military, intelligence, and diplomatic assets.” With no common ground between the terrorists and those committed to a new global order of justice and democracy, he insists that the terrorists in their murderous use of the globalization they oppose are not negotiating the terms of this globalization, but are jihadic warriors fighting

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

69

modernity, enlightenment, and “both the virtues and vices . . . of civilization in its modern, secular incarnation.”4 Theirs is a rabid response to colonialism, imperialism, exploitative capitalism, and to the incessant spread of the culture of “McWorld.” He recognizes that the terrorists are recruiting for terror in a globalized world where at the same time exists almost immeasurable wealth and a radically uneven distribution of goods exists, where those who are desperately poor and have no hope of participating in capitalism’s prosperity and benefits hear the rhetoric of jihad. The poverty in the developing world, on the other side of First World prosperity, fuels rage and despair, and gives a kind of “quasi-legitimacy” to the terrorist call for jihad. Corresponding to Barber’s analysis, Louis P. Pojman, Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy at West Point, writes of the causes of terrorism: although cultural attitudes, such as religious dogma, may be a significant cause of terrorism, despair or a sense of hopelessness rooted in oppression, ignorance, poverty, and perceived injustice may be the contributing causes, the soil in which fundamentalism can grow and flourish.” He continues that 11 September 2001 may become a Day of Opportunity: if we use it to take counter-measures against terrorism and the causes of terrorism, and to begin to ameliorate the oppression and injustice in our nation and the world.”5 Likewise, Nussbaum reminds us “Most of the preventable suffering and death in the world is not caused by terrorism. It is caused by malnutrition and lack of education, and all the ills connected to poverty. . . .” Barber identifies this environment of disenfranchised poor as a locus that “tacitly supports and nurtures terrorism.”7 Here the poor see themselves bearing the cost of America’s imperious reach of military and economic power. For them, globalization is not opportunity but oppression, not prosperity, but anarchy; anarchy as selfserving corporations demand conditions of total freedom from interference in the global markets and freedom from regulations, including minimum wages, hours worked, and workplace safety. Terrorists depend on this noninterference in the engines of globalization to resist Western domination and to attempt the defeat of post-modern civilization, just as they depend upon the interdependence of transportation and communication to render borders porous and sovereign oversight irrelevant. Making a mockery of sovereignty, they have mastered for their purposes the use of the Internet, banks, and modern technologies. They cross borders at will, globalize terror, and create across the world an effective, terrorist syndicate, one group calling itself “mujahadeen without borders.”

70

MAR PETER-RAOUL

In his 2003 text, Fear’s Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy, Barber makes a case for paralyzing fear as the most destructive consequence of terrorism’s “impressive display of brute power,” fear “seeded with a single and singular act of terror.” He writes, “Fear is terrorism’s tool and catalyst, the multiplier and amplifier of terrorist events that on the global scale are few.” We could argue that from Madrid, to London, to Iraq, to Indonesia, to Saudi Arabia, to Australia, and, horribly, to Russian schoolchildren, terrorism’s singular acts have multiplied, and that fear of mass attacks is not irrational. Still, we might agree with Barber that the “preventive war strategy,” devised by advisors to George W. Bush such as Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Dundes Wolfowitz, and Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney, beginning in Iraq and driven by fear tactics, will not prevent terrorism. Neither will such a strategy alter terrorism’s roots in political, non-state insurgencies, or the radically asymmetrical character of globalization, and as Barber puts it, a terrorism rooted not in the “axis of evil” but in the “axis of inequality.” Further, finding stateless terrorists elusive and hard to apprehend, the “greased logic” of preventive war strategy has elided from the terrorists themselves to “state sponsors of terrorism,” and even further to tyrannical heads of states, “territorial states who otherwise are innocent of an explicit aggressive act” toward the United States.8 Barber does not argue against the necessity of a first forceful front in confronting and targeting the terrorists, employing military means. But on this front, he remarks that most of the world’s people can only be spectators. Civilians around the world can only sit on the sidelines and watch, “holding their children, and hoping that there will be a future.”9 He insists that response to terrorism “cannot be exclusively military or tactical.” He calls on America, Britain, and their allies to “open a crucial second civic and democratic front”10 for what he calls “preventive democracy,” what he insists is the imperative for national security policy today. For Barber, a globalization characterized by justice and democracy offers an antidote to terrorism, diminishes its appeal, and eventually isolates the terrorists. There will always be terrorist zealots he says. But those among whom they have appeal “are themselves almost always impoverished, in despair, marginalized and disempowered and finally . . . humiliated.”11 Barber calls these disadvantaged recruits “tacit terrorists.” He writes, “Preventive war will not in the end prevent terrorism . . . only preventive democracy can do that.” Preventive democracy calls for “democracy within nations and democracy in the conventions, institutions, and regulations that govern relations among, between, and across nations.” To see “preventive war as a means to democracy is to misconceive both the consequences of aggressive war and the requirements for democracy’s founding and development.”12 The second front’s task of preventive democracy is daunting. He asks, “How will peoples who define themselves by the slaughter of tribal neighbors be persuaded to subscribe to . . . abstract

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

71

civic ideals . . . ?” Even with the most strenuous pitched battles of the first front and the most strenuous civic and economic work of the second front, he admits that terror may never wholly disappear. In Albert Camus’ The Plague, evil occurs and reoccurs, disappears and reoccurs again. “It is lodged,” Barber writes, “in a small but impregnable crevice in the dark regions of the human soul.” In our time evil is manifest in the “fires of jihad.” To be sure, in the face of these fires, global democracy “remains a distant dream.” But whatever the odds, Barber summons us to the hard work of global citizenship, as foundational to this democracy, and the urgent task of the second front. The war against terrorism, whatever the first front of tanks, tracking, intelligence, and interrogations must at the same time be fought on a second front as a war for justice and democracy, both political and economic. The second front in which all can participate in building the civic grounds for democracy, is a front that “transforms anxious and passive spectators into resolute and engaged participants.”13 Barber believes that however hard, the achievement of the second front—a global civic, political, pedagogical, and economic front— is the one most likely to determine the outcome of the war against terrorism. 2. The Second Front The second front is not the first front of direct military force but the immense struggle for global liberty and equality. The struggle is about structural regulations to reign in capitalism’s exploitative excesses, to win fair wages in the global market, and to distribute more fairly the profits from capitalism’s productive plenitude. The ultimate goal of the second front is to create a global participatory democracy, one socially, politically, and economically just. Undercutting terrorist appeal it aims to replace hopelessness with hope, exploitation with economic parity, political marginalization with a public voice. “The public voice,” remarks Barber, “turns out to be the voice of civil society, the voice of an American forum, a Russian civic forum, or a global civic forum.” Barber defines a citizen as “an individual who has acquired a public voice” and who actualizes the liberties and meets the obligations of civil society, civil society that grounds democracy, that precedes and makes possible a politically structured democracy. “Citizenship,” claims Barber, “whether global or local, comes first.” To prepare the ground for democracy—in transitional societies or globally—is first to create citizens “who will demand democracy: this means laying a foundation in civil society and civic culture.” To this end, Barber asks, “How can civil society be constructed in an international arena?”14 How does the second front in the struggle for those who are targets of terrorist recruitment finally create a global democracy? To these questions four categories are most central in Barber’s thought: the critical need to eliminate exploitation and poverty resulting from wild, unregulated global capitalism; to move from national independence to international interdepend-

72

MAR PETER-RAOUL

ence; to create civil society with civic institutions and responsible citizens; and for higher education to return to the mission of educating for citizenship with a focus on academic-based community service. I will briefly set out these lines of thought and consider each in terms of the war against terrorism. The second front is not a war against terrorists, nor a war for retributive justice, but is fully determined action for distributive justice: for the dispossessed, a fair distribution of the world’s goods, and for the labor of the poor, a fair share of economic gain and the end of exploitation. In his op-ed piece in The New York Times, Christian apologist Jim Wallis claims, “defeating terrorism is both practically and spiritually connected to the deeper work of addressing global poverty and resolving the conflicts that sow the bitter seeds of despair and violence.”15 Barber believes that neither brash, arrogant, American assertions dictating the terms of its associations nor manifestations of military might will persuade the poor and vulnerable to resist the jihadic call of terrorism. He sees those without their most basic needs met, as those open to terrorist recruitment, as mostly reluctant adversaries. Given a chance, these people would prefer to participate in modernity’s benefits. Instead, they are subject to the cruel caprice of uncontrolled markets, to little or no corporate restraint, and to the lack of international accountability, all conditions of anarchy that aids terrorism. They see our antagonism to global regulation and global democracy, to global institutions of political oversight, and to a just distribution of the profits of market capitalism, “as brute indifference to their welfare and to justice.” Yet, Barber believes that as these disenfranchised people are vulnerable to terrorist rhetoric, they are also “vulnerable to our actions as citizens, as members of communities and universities throughout the world.” Reclaiming the ideals of citizenship and a public good for all, and extending these notions into the international order, is essential to a civic appeal to those people marginalized by an oppressive globalization. Reclaiming the ideal of public citizenship means halting the increasing “rule of private power over public power.”16 Critiquing America’s past thirty years of privatization ideology, Barber perceives privatization as privileging “the private interests of corporations and banks and delegitimizing the common goods of the community.”17 Claiming that we have made war on the idea of the public per se, “what the ancients called the res publica . . . the things of the public,”18 he reminds his readers that democratic republics are constituted for the good of the public in the first place.19 The common good cannot be left to the caprice of capitalism, with some made into billionaires and others wasted in body and spirit. Private gain must be in parity with the public good. Adequate funds are necessary, through progressive taxation, to support projects and facilities necessary for maintaining a civic level necessary for human dignity and the well-being of all citizens, a bottom line of not only private profits, but of public profit.

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

73

In considering this first of Barber’s categories, I would press him to include jihadic recruitment rhetoric directed toward those who are poor as a root interpretive cause of terrorism. Jihadic rhetoric and ideology, exploiting poverty and Western dominance, not only poverty and imperialism themselves, powers the dissatisfaction of the oppressed who, as Bill Moyers puts it, “subsidize with their labor” first World prosperity. It justifies to the recruit the violence of terrorism, and even the violent self-sacrifice of a suicide bomber. In his essay, “Religious Fundamentalism, Terrorism, and Peace Prospects,” Arun Prosad Mukherjee, former Governor of Mizoram in West Bengal, remarks on the interpretive force of coupling jihadic belief in Islamic superiority with the belief that “the economic and educational backwardness of a vast majority of Muslims . . . is the result of discrimination and global conspiracy.” Though not to deny American indifference to, and actor in, this discrimination, Mukherjee charges Islamic extremists with ignoring that their madrassa system of education has “semi-literate mullahs” teaching only a narrow interpretation of the Koran, which ensures “the continued backwardness of a large segment of their own community.” He finds it no wonder that the madrasahs in Pakistan, Afganistan, India, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines “have been the breeding ground of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.”20 Mukherjee does not mention that the madrasahs exist in part because schools offering a broad curriculum with critical thinking and substantive learning are not available to the extremely poor in these countries, leaving impoverished youth with little choice of schooling outside the madrassa system. Though responsibility for much of the world’s misery lies with the United States given its wealth, power, and self-interested policies, a more complex jihadic interpretation of world poverty would assign a greater causal role to this educational backwardness of many poor countries, and with authoritarian governments. Peter Berger, author of Holy War Inc., challenges the charge that the madrasahs breed terrorism. He agrees that they breed religious fundamentalism but in a study of the educational backgrounds of seventy-five terrorists both of the World Trade Center attacks and the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania he found most had attended College, including two-thirds of the hijackers involved in 11 September 2001. He concludes that while “madrasahs are an important issue in education and development in the Muslim world, they are not and should not be considered a threat to the United States.”21 Barber would argue that regardless of whether the madrasahs directly support terrorism, they are a source of tacit approval of jihadic extremism. We also need a more complicated interpretation of terrorism by the United States. The scholar of Islam, Omer Taspinar, finds that though “socioeconomic deprivation leaves many young Muslims vulnerable to extremist ideology . . . the rise of terrorism has less to do with Islam than with repressive governance.”22 In a CNN interview, Robert A. Pape, author of Dying to

74

MAR PETER-RAOUL

Win, reports that data since 1980 on the motivations and make-up of suicide bombers show that “what the vast majority of suicide bombers have in common is not so much religion but a secular strategic goal—to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territories the terrorists view as their homeland.”23 He maintains that al-Qaeda attacks have come overwhelmingly from countries in which the United States has stationed tens of thousands of combat forces. Columbia University political theorist Mahamood Mamdani also argues, “Terrorism does not necessarily have anything to do with Islamic culture.” He sees the roots of terrorism in the United States CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) cold war policy that funded private militias of terrorist movements in Indochina, Africa, Latin America, and Afghanistan. He goes further than other theorists who argue, “American support for the mujahedeen in the 1980s helped pave the way of Islamic terrorism in the 1990s.” He posits a deeper connection of “the violent strain of Islam to a broader American strategy.” John L. Esposito an expert on political Islam cautions explaining Islamic terrorism “through international politics alone. He insists that we must consider religion: “It’s religion and politics together,” he claims.24 Exploring the more complicated roots of terrorism is the charge of the Center for International and Security Studies at at the University of Maryland. Gary La Free, the Center’s new head, sees terrorism as a more complex phenomenon than any single factor “such as poverty, a lack of democracy . . . poor education . . . United States foreign policy.” Terrorism, he says, is “an intricate mosaic that would have to be understood as a whole to be addressed.”25At the center, social psychologist, Arie Kruglanski, is investigating when and why terrorists use violence and asking what policy interventions might be taken. “Maybe it’s up to us to create conditions under which alternative means of attaining those populations’ goal would seem more feasible,” he says: “In the absence of alternatives, this is going to be the only game in town.”26 Creating alternatives with anti-poverty and civil society initiatives and supporting broad education are the tasks of Barber’s second front. A second key element of the second front requires America to join the rest of the world, not only to insist that the rest of the world join America. Barber, together with cultural theorists Greene, Pojman, and other social theorists, expresses pride in America’s democratic institutions and the achievements of its moral traditions. But the cry of global justice is knocking at the door of America’s isolationism and unilateralism, and demanding it open this door and join with other democratizing forces to defeat terrorist intentions. Crucial to this effort is overcoming the myth of national independence and innocence. Barber reminds his listeners that even when we came to this land to establish independence and to begin anew, and established “one of the first truly free constitutions in the history of the modern Western world,” we did it on the backs of slaves and the slaughter of those already

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

75

here. “We were not innocent even then,” he says, “and now too we are no better and no worse than many peoples around the world.”27 To advance the second front, Barber declares that the time for a new Declaration has come. The new society announced with the Declaration of Independence two centuries ago has now to open to a new global society. Barber argues for a new declaration of interdependence that would expressly acknowledge that both humanity and nations are interdependent, which includes depending on the good will of other persons and nations. Key to the proposal is the conviction that in a just world, no one nation would experience prosperity and plenty unless others did as well. Though largely unrecognized, interdependence is already a global reality. The terrorists have made us realize no one stands alone; “we need the world as the world needs us,” he remarks. Yet America has seen itself as supremely sovereign—a sovereignty shattered by the 11 September 2001 terrorists— expecting the rest of the world to join America—on America’s terms. We have made little effort to learn the languages of other peoples, expecting those who would communicate with us to speak English. So many times, we walk out on agreements that do not suit us, saying, “No, we will not join, we will not be a member, we will walk out.” We have problems with the United Nations, so we will not pay our dues. We refuse to participate in UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) because of some differences in ideology. Acknowledging that many of our complaints have validity, he insists that by not staying at the table and continuing to be a voice for our position, we will not be there the next time, when our voice might be better heard. Instead of joining the world in a real give and take, we walk out and invest in the supremacy of a missile shield, wasting American money better spent on language instruction, research into global warming, and better international intelligence. He urges that we make visible the best of America that the larger world knows little about, our jazz, poetry, religious observations, and our democratic institutions. As a substitute for real policy, Barber deems supremacist notions of defense as “dangerous nonsense.” Dependence on technology to keep us free ignores that “technology itself, science itself, is a community proposition,” and already crosses borders, is already interdependent.28 Technology ought not to be thought of as singularly protecting us from everyone else, but a symbol of our interdependence. “It is over,” Barber tells his listeners. “American innocence is over. Our independence is over. Our capacity to protect ourselves is over.” We have only one way now to protect ourselves—”with and through others, not on their terms, not on America’s terms, but on our terms, the community of peoples, the community of nations.” Terms of our interdependence have to be negotiated, not issued unilaterally. Alliances have to be formed and ways of cooperation found. The time has come to declare our interdependence and “to overcome the striking asymmetry of global society today.”29 The Declaration

76

MAR PETER-RAOUL

of Interdependence that he helped write states, “Without prejudice to the goods and interests of our national and regional identities, we recognize our responsibilities to the common goods and liberties of humankind as a whole.”30 Recognizing the difficulty of what he suggests: nuclear power in the hands of those hostile to the United States; territorial and ethnic hatred with corresponding national conflicts and “threats of retribalization by bloodshed”; closed theocracies; dictatorships antithetical to democracy—all jettisoning hopes of a global civil society committed to the common good, he writes, “Interdependence makes boundaries permeable not just for the good, but for the bad.”31 The Plague’s Oran remarks that plague appears to have the “whiphand.” But reflective Tarrou counters, “We shall know whether that is so . . . only when we’ve tried everything.”32 Barber would agree. Rogue states and other anti-democratic countries notwithstanding, he presses ahead for international, interdependent, and new post-nation-states’ institutions.33 He sees a confederalism of member states as a promising organizational strategy for moving to a more cooperative global order, a confederalism of member states, each strongly rooted in civil society. As an alternative to a centralized governing-frame that requires an international sovereign, he holds out hope that a confederalism, based on a non-compulsory form of association, each with full autonomy, rooted in common interests, will permit already existing nationstates to create a new global association. As a starting place, he suggests a loose alliance instead of attempting a strict uniting. Considering this loose alliance of a global association, a substantial distinction between confederalism and a working-at-its-best United Nations is difficult to discern, though he affirms in his work a robust participation of the United States in the United Nations. Membership in the United Nations is voluntary, but as philosopher Glen Martin, Secretary-General of the World Constitution and Parliament Association, remarks, the United Nations “is a profoundly nondemocratic organization, controlled by powerful nations.” Martin sees that the possibility of actualizing democratic ideals lies in “a nonmilitary world federation in which the nation-states give over their sovereignty to the people of the Earth, who then elect a government that operates in terms of a truly planetary framework.”34 His paradigm for world governance, critical of the organization of the United Nations, moves more radically to a global federation than Barber’s more cautious loose alliance. Both see a hoped-for humane world in the profound realization of an eventual global democracy. Barber’s third thrust of the second front, closely related to confederalism and interdependence, is forging civil society in an international environment. Though an extraordinary challenge, Barber’s first step is to recognize that it needs to be forged, that it demands “a methodical internationalization of civil society.” In the process, discrete parts of civil society “must be aligned by some form of global organization that permits cooperation without destroying their autonomy.” Barber identifies a global civil society as “a foundation for

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

77

but not yet the same thing as a global democratic government.” The first priority is to reconstruct civil society as a framework for democratic citizenship, beginning with “freely associated individuals and groups.” Civil society occupies a space somewhere between formal government and the private sector, yet related to both. Crucial to this process are civic associations and institutions that take responsibility for the public good that create a public sphere concerned with the res publica.35 Barber’s agenda means reconceptualizing, recreating, and repositioning civic institutions already in place nationally into an international setting. The task is to seek “a new set of transnational civic associations that link civic societies to one another and for individual citizens of different countries, across national boundaries, to join together in global civic movements.” He suggests, for example, that citizens take on schools, voluntary associations, churches, temples, mosques, and find ways of working together on social problems. Where possible, we should align these efforts with a larger movement. Achieving a global democracy “demands new-post-nation-states’ institutions” and a new willingness for citizens to take responsibility for their liberties. Taking responsibility for their public world is the “first obligation of both citizens and citizen institutions.” The process of democratization requires citizens, citizens require civil society; and civil society requires associations not bound by identity politics. Barber sees modern conditions immensely complicated for establishing a strong global democracy. As forbidding is this task to link the world through civic institutions and set the foundation for this democracy, since the 1990s, and especially since 11 September 2001, a rising public sector, from formal initiatives to grassroots protest, is drawing millions of participants. Barber sees such active participation as part of democracy’s history of “struggle, civic work, and economic development”36 and an alternative to paralyzing fear. Some of these civil/citizen initiatives include: (1) Campus Compact—an alliance of College and University presidents committed to “the civic purposes of higher education,” promoting service initiatives and helping campuses to “forge effective community partnerships”; (2) World Wide Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS)—“an international alliance dedicated to citizen action and civil society throughout the world,” especially where freedom of association is threatened. It aims to promote alliances among citizens, businesses, and governments, and “to increase the voice of citizens in public life.” Its vision is of a “world wide community of informed, inspired, committed citizens engaged in confronting the challenges facing humanity”;

78

MAR PETER-RAOUL (3) Alliance for the New Humanity—a new alliance “to connect a global compassionate citizenry that influences policies that are closer to the true principles of life, create a critical mass of peace consciousness, and project a new narrative that fully recognizes the oneness of humanity.” Begun in 2003 by, among others, Oscar Arias, Nobel Peace laureate; Deepak Chopra, physician and speaker of world wisdom; and Kerrie Kennedy Cuomo, world human rights advocate and author of Speak Truth to Power37; (4) The Democracy Collaborative—an international consortium of leading world academic centers and citizen organizations. It aims at “leveraging the resources of higher education institutions in support of democratic renewal, civic participation, and community building” (Benjamin R. Barber, a founding principal); (5) CivWorld: Citizens’ Campaign for Democracy—a project of the Democracy Collaborative, it “begins with the premise that people— citizens of their communities, their nations and the world—can and must be the driving force and the principal agents of change for a more democratic world.” Advocating democratic transnationalism as “the only realistic path to national security,” it envisions a world of democratic nations whose relations are democratically governed (Benjamin R. Barber, founding member); and (6) Civil, academic, and religious organizations working for social and economic justice, human rights, the common good, world unity, and a just peace, including: Doctors without Borders; Amnesty International, the anti-globalization movement; Human Rights Watch; War Resisters League; the International Society for Intercultural Studies and Research, organizer of a World Peace Congress; the International Philosophers for Peace; initiatives of the World Council of Churches; the Catholic international community; Mariapolis Luminosa, for interreligious unity; the worldwide International Partnerships for Service Learning; and increasingly academic-based citizenship projects in the United States and instituted in every secondary school in England.

A prime example of what we must pursue together, and itself subject to privatization, is Barber’s fourth crucial category of the second front, education. “We do it together or we don’t educate,” he argues. In the face of terrorism, he tells the students at the University of Maryland, “We educators are called back to our mission.” At the heart of the second front is the mission to educate citizens for civic responsibility. “The first aim and mission of any institution of education,” he claims, “has to be to forge responsible, thought-

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

79

ful, critical, competent citizens.”38 For Barber, community service (praxis) integrated into the whole enterprise of civic education is a crucial “spring board for broader reforms.”39 Embedding service in an educational framework, he believes, provides a “training ground for a participatory democracy.”40 Service promotes a realization “of how self and community, private interests and public good, are necessarily linked.” The idea is to “fold notions of community, democracy, and citizenship into pedagogy,” with community service a critical dimension of citizenship education and civic responsibility.41 Advocating service as “an indispensable prerequisite of citizenship,”42 and a condition for democracy’s preservation, he sees individuals learning the meaning of social interdependence and becoming empowered through acquiring the arts of liberty through community service.43 In a complex, challenging world, one often undemocratic, Barber holds that “creating new generations of citizens is not a discretionary activity,” but upon which liberty ultimately depends.44 He asks, “Is it possible . . . that our schools and universities might regain their civic momentum through . . . service-learning programs?” When experience in the community becomes the subject of critical reflection in the classroom, then an examination of the fundamental nature of both democratic communities and the role of the citizen reveal the links among liberty, democracy, and citizenship.45 Education for civic responsibility and participatory democracy is education for freedom: learning to be free citizens, taking responsibility for oneself and others, and making consequential moral decisions. Educating free, caring, public citizens preoccupies Barber as it does other theorists. In her The Dialectic of Freedom, Greene conceives freedom “as an achievement within the concreteness of lived social situations . . . with everything depending on the actions we undertake.” She identifies this achievement as “freedom in compassion for others or in solidarity with others.” She means that it is “important to find a way of developing a praxis of educational consequence that opens the spaces necessary for the remaking of a democratic community.”46 For Barber, the making of participatory, democratic communities of selfgoverning citizens is the entire point, “the beginning and the end of education,” the central concern of learning to be free, and permitting an “identification with others that is compatible with political liberty.” Further, he maintains, “the university is a civic mission . . . a social activity that can take place only within a learning community bringing together reflection and experience,” a communal enterprise.47 Identifying with others is at the core of Nussbaum’s sketch of educational reform. She writes, “We ought to invigorate our educational system . . . to make us more aware of our common humanity.” She finds a danger in the ongoing war on terrorism if we “fail to connect . . . to the daily sufferings of ordinary people . . . unless . . . the daily unremarkable lives of people distant from us become real in the fabric of our daily lives.” She proposes “an education in common human weakness and vulnerability,” one in

80

MAR PETER-RAOUL

which we learn to decode the suffering of another and connect with distant people, sympathizing with their plight. She calls on her readers to extend sympathy “to the whole of humanity and base our moral policy on such sympathetic cosmopolitanism.” The intent of this reform for Nussbaum is to “cultivate a culture of critical compassion . . . possibly awaken a larger sense of the humanity of suffering, a patriotism constrained by respect for human dignity and by a vivid sense of the real losses and needs of others.”48 Barber challenges higher education to recover this civic mission of critical compassion and to reignite its moral imagination, to ask how can things be better?49 I would raise three questions regarding Barber’s pedagogy. First, in seeing the entire point of education as graduating democratic, self-governing, caring citizens, is he neglecting other aspects of a university education? He might answer that informed citizens need to think critically, be exposed to broad learning, and acquire practical skills for taking responsibility for their world. Still, of the multiple purposes of today’s educational enterprise, he might better delineate the particular aspects of a broad education demanded by global citizens. The second question: is the community service he advocates voluntary or involuntary. Barber does offer a rationale for requiring community service as a necessary part of a broad education. In An Aristocracy of Everyone, he writes that civic education should be an integral part of liberal education, mandatory, and receiving academic credit. “There are certain things a democracy simply must teach,” he maintains, “employing its full authority to do so: citizenship is first among them.”50 Barber might also explain more fully how to implement education for civic responsibility. Apparently, he means that academe should integrate the theory and practice of citizenship across the curricula and reflect it in requirements, the grading system, the expectations of faculty, and in institutional priorities. The third question has to do with the madrasahs educating Muslim youth in the ideology of Wahabi Islam with its extremist reading of the Koran. Though he addresses their underlying poverty, given the radical contribution of these schools to religious fundamentalism and their lean toward tacit terrorism, he might more urgently appeal to moderate and progressive Muslims for alternatives. By increasing incorporation of community service with education on an international scale, including in Jordan and Indonesia, he might direct the same urgency for civic education in conjunction with the madrasahs as he does with education in a democracy. 3. Citizenship and Global Democracy If advocating global democracy appears utopian, Barber suggests that we think of the alternative: peace and stabilization “through foreign invasion, expulsion, partition, resettlement, United Nations Trusteeship, military intervention, or simple dismemberment.” He argues that unless we fight for an alternative to

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

81

extremist jihad and the spreading capitalist hegemony, our epoch—“postcommunist, post-industrial, post-national, yet sectarian, fearful, and bigoted”— may also become “terminally post democratic.”51 He insists, as utopian as it may sound, that global democracy is “the hard imperative for national security policy today.” He urges global democracy because he believes: the security of this nation and its peoples depend on a far more cooperative international environment . . . for large numbers of people who today feel oppressed and marginalized by a run-away wild capitalism that defines the international system.52 The urgent project is to “globalize democracy as we have globalized the economy and terrorism.”53 We must globalize social and economic justice, extend the public good to all peoples, become global citizens; reconstitute civil society toward a global community, and extend democratic oversight to global affairs through the civil and political institutions we create. He suggests that the European Union with its autonomy of nations, yet agreed upon political structure, may offer a beginning model towards a larger international union. Pojman, too, holds that the circle of community and active citizens must extend beyond “prevailing national borders, creating a new informal network of relationships,” making of the world a global village.54 In winning the world for democracy, the course for Barber, King, Nussbaum, and other prophetic voices is constituting a community of compassionate, global citizens, deliberative, participatory, and at work creating a political, civic, and economic public sphere that ensures “the impartiality of citizenship.”55 The trenchant point for Barber in the work of the second front is that democracy—local, regional, global—”starts with individuals taking responsibility for their family, community, and environment in which they find themselves.”56 In An Aristocracy of Everyone, Barber presents the logic of this ultimate project: “no community, no communication; no communication, no learning; no learning, no education; no education, no citizens; no citizens, no freedom; no freedom—then no culture, no democracy, no school, no civilization.”57 With Barber, Pojman sees that fundamentally “we must come to see all humanity as tied together in a common moral network.”58 King, too, held, “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny.”59 But, we might ask, whose morality, and a moral network common to whom? The terrorists have an idiosyncratic view of moral mutuality in an extremist Islam. For Barber, a common moral network recognizes the values of liberty, universal personhood, the common good wherein distributive justice resides, and a global, political, and economic democracy to which all have access. The hope of civil society, he writes in the Afterword of Jihad vs. McWorld, “is that the love of liberty will lend to democratic communities the necessary centripetal impetus . . .”60

82

MAR PETER-RAOUL

King would identify this impetus as soul force, and the community, constituted by citizens of good will and extending beyond America’s borders, as the global “beloved community,” the prophetic community of social, economic, and racial justice that was the aim and purpose of all of his work. The ideal of the beloved community, encompassing global democracy, hears the blazing, galvanizing call of the biblical prophets: Amos, “But let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.”61 It counters the fires of jihad with the burning bush of Yaweh’s call to liberation, the spiritual intervention to free enslaved Israelites. In his Where Do We Go from Here? King envisioned this hoped-for beloved-community as made up of all people—black, brown, bronze, red, and white—living together in the same neighborhoods, attending the same schools, mutually respecting one another.62 He envisioned a community comprised of all people of good will, and, ultimately, all nations, characterized by universal justice, and economic, social, political, and cultural well-being. This vision carried forth by King unfolds on the prophetic edge of a dynamic world and is stirred by what he called the power of soul force. In the spirit of this vision, Barber concludes his post-11 September 2001 address quoting an old gospel song: We are the Ones we’ve been waiting for, and our engagement, our energy, our caring, our work make a difference as engaged citizens working to make social democracy real at home and abroad.63 4. Jihad vs. the Beloved Community Barber unmistakably sees the civil carnage of our time and “all the horrors of the ancient slaughterhouse reenacted.”64 With King, he would agree that “evil is stark, grim, and colossally real.”65 The terrorists have hurled an evil flame onto the contested terrain of a hoped-for global democracy—burning, beheading, bombing. In the disguise of martyrdom, they call forth all the dark forces of death, murdering and maiming. Theirs is a war for supremacy of the spiritual, however diabolical, a spiritual vision trafficking in suicide and slaughter. Against this perfidious foe, I ask, is Barber’s agenda—his second front—strong and sufficient to win through to social justice, global citizenship, economic and political rights for all? I suggest that Barber stands at the threshold of the spiritual power with which we must contend on terror’s terrain. Though his second front is constituted by the spiritual values of compassion, economic and social justice, obligation for others, equality of persons, and achieving the “common good,” still, what primordial power does he draw upon in the struggle against both a death-dealing jihad and a predatory and unrestrained capitalism? What impels the struggle of the second front to the core of moral existence? In considering the sufficiency and efficacy of Barber’s pro-

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

83

posal, I urge that he enlist more radically the subversive power that “brings down strongholds,” power pregnant within faith traditions of the world, meeting jihadic warriors with soul force on their self-proclaimed spiritual terrain. To win the war for the common good, to thwart terrorist recruitment, to put global economic disparity on the track toward distributive justice, and to realize the beloved community of global democracy voices are being raised today that call for tapping “the wellspring of humanity’s intrinsic spirituality.” To gather the world’s wisdom, from the suspect Socrates urging the youth of Athens to pursue virtue over pursuing wealth, to the injunction of every worldwide religion to care for the poor, to the radical economic reversal of Jesus—sell all you have and give it to the poor—is to provide, as articulated by the late Harvard scholar, Vittorio Falsina, “an ethical compass to reorient the process of globalization toward a more human, sustainable, peaceful globalization.” Now is time, says Paul Knitter in Subverting Greed, to reclaim the spiritual core of life. He urges that the religious and economic worlds bring into conversation their global powers: “the market and global religions.” Knitter’s co-author Chandra Muzaffa claims, “In the ultimate analysis, it is apparent that the unjust global economy and the greed inherent in it can only be ‘subverted’ through a profound spiritual transformation of the self.” Toward this task of transformation the authors urge an intentional evolving of a “shared universal and moral ethic to under-gird the global economy” and to translate “such an ethic into tangible institutions and concrete polices.”66 Their view resonates with the proclaimed purpose of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, especially with King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and of others such as John Lewis and Fannie Lou Hamer. During the 1955–1956 Montgomery bus boycott, King insisted that the real purpose of the boycott, as with the larger movement was healing; “the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.”67 As today, the terrain upon which King and other civil rights workers struggled was one of rank injustice—rape, rope, biting dogs, billy clubs, bullets, and the bombings by white supremacist terrorists, including the blast that killed four little girls at Sunday School. King connected his dream of racial reconciliation to a transcendent value of right. In a Life Magazine interview, speaking of the movement, King said, “I know this is a righteous cause and by being connected to it I am connected with a transcendent value of right.”68 He understood this right as the spiritual horizon of the beloved community. The task was to translate this “transcendent value of right” into a restructured society, rid of racism and poverty. This goal was not only a local civil rights goal but a national, and increasingly, an international goal, as well. Just a month before his death, he called for a total reconstruction of society. “Let us be dissatisfied,” he rang out, “until every man . . . is lifted from the long night of poverty, illiteracy, and disease.” For this world restructuring, he called for a fundamental shift from

84

MAR PETER-RAOUL

selfishness to agape believing agape to be the “unifying force at the center of the universe.”69 At the heart of King’s message, he maintains: This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an allembracing and unconditional love for all men. . . . I am speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.70 Today we ask, whether the beloved community can be reclaimed as an enduring vision with the power to inspire and sustain the spirits of those forced to fight global terror. The Black Church of the Civil Rights Movement proclaimed confidence that it would not be “vanquished by evil in the world.” The communicants regarded themselves as “warriors in the midst of a great and bloody conflict between good and evil.”71 They believed with the Apostle Paul that “our struggle is . . . against superhuman forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”72 In “The Beloved Community: An American Search,” Charles Marsh remarks that Black faith, itself “exuberant, embracing, full of subversive undercurrents . . . spirited with energy, moving into action—might be the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest legacy in the American search for the beloved community.”73 Out of this tradition King is characterized as having “the capacity to engage in utopian discourse and to act boldly to achieve moral causes.”74 It also accounts, in part, for his prodigious faith, expressed in the theme of reconciliation, even to the making friends of our enemies. For King and others in the Movement, the theological mandate, “be ye reconciled” grounded the beloved community “in an ongoing ontology of reconciliation.”75 William Galston in his Justice and the Human Good sees utopian thought serving “as the basis for the evaluation of existing institutions and practices.” The utopian vision of the beloved community stood as an ethical norm for critiquing and inspiring public policy.76 As the theological commitments and religious convictions in the 1960s sustained the ideal of the beloved community, it can be said, they continue today to “shape conceptions of racial unity and civic responsibility. . . .” Recent retrievals of this vision have engendered new initiatives, alliances, “and spontaneous stirrings of the spirit.”77 New communities and coalitions of intention and conscience are forming. One example is the Beloved Community House begun in Binghamton, New York, in 2003, with a chapel open to the community, occasionally hosting communal meals, and engaging in projects locally and for Russian orphans and “pavement people” in Calcutta. Ann Chih Lin of the University of Michigan recently recovered theologically the ideal of the beloved community as a resource to invigorate a “newly configured Civil Rights Movement.” Appealing to religious coalitions to de-

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

85

velop “authentic, distinctive justifications for civil rights struggles . . . specific to each religious tradition,” she suggests that rooting civil rights activity in the sacred of each faith makes of it a “religious commitment, not merely a secular ideal.”78 This spiritually rooted fight for justice becomes not just generous action, but an imperative of faith, a conviction, “essential to creed,” and sustaining during defeat and discouragement. What matters is that the work for socio-economic justice is grounded in a particular theological understanding, creating its “songs, symbols, and practices that reinforce civil rights,” not only borrowing from the evocative and powerful Black Church tradition from which the movement sprung. Civic activities must strengthen a faith community and be local, personal actions, whether signing petitions, attending demonstrations, or aiding Latin American political refugees in the Sanctuary movement, or advocating for humane treatment for undocumented workers. The point, Lin emphasizes, “is to involve the congregation in the community [to] create activities that make a concrete contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.”79 As a direct expression of faith, faith communities can look closely at their neighborhoods, perhaps providing a soup kitchen and other services. For this faith-based civil rights work, Lin evokes the vision of not one beloved community, but plural beloved communities, “multiple faith communities, grounded in their traditions which incorporate civil rights as an essential element of that tradition.” Such a vision, she concludes, “allows the flame of civil rights to burn in many candles and lamps, in sanctuaries too many to ever be totally extinguished.”80 As Barber’s project builds civil society, educates for citizenship, and forms voluntary alliances it may move closer and closer to a larger community, in approximation to a global democratic community, ultimately, to a global beloved community. But we have learned a terrible lesson in Iraq. These civic efforts can become new targets of terror. Even the United Nations was not immune to terrorist murder, nor are humanitarian aid workers, even Doctors Without Borders having to finally leave Afghanistan. As horrific as are these new realities, we can also learn lessons from the spiritual core of the Civil Rights Movement, especially from those who were targets of supremacist terror. Recognizing the spiritual core of the battle for civil rights, those marching with SCLC first submitted to spiritual self-scrutiny, examining their consciences and their violent, selfish tendencies. It was an effort to prepare them for the use of soul force, to be able to not retaliate when assaulted, to sing as they filled the jails. During Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror, in response to the evil of her day, Simone Weil, a French-Jewish philosopher, called for “a new saintliness.” Conceiving a world committed to goodness, Weil writes, “Today it is not nearly enough merely to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the present moment, a new saintliness, itself without precedent.”

86

MAR PETER-RAOUL

Weil saw this new saintliness constituted by compassion and intentional contact with those afflicted, an empathetic contact today called for by Greene, Nussbaum, and Barber. She lived out her call for this new saintliness “seeking society’s lowest strata—the unemployed, exploited worker, farm hand, the refugee—and attempted to share their condition.”81 She identified this location of “the left out” as a privileged site of learning. Here at the periphery, with the oppressed and uprooted, we find the true foundation of knowledge. Harvard professor and psychiatrist, Robert Coles, writes, “Hers was, finally, a politics meant to give roots and ideals to a particular beloved community, instead of building barricades of power and privilege.”82 5. Conclusion Barber’s passionate plea for global democracy sees the stark choice at this midnight hour as between a global, democratic citizenship and the forces of terror. The alternative is not between terrorism and McWorld, nor terrorism and AmericaWorld, but between terrorism and creating together CivWorld.83 At its extremity, our choice is between an extremist jihad and an expansive loved community. The process of creating civil society and a confederalism of willing nations, as the foundation for working toward a political and economic global democracy, is the task of the second front: a task to eliminate exploitative poverty, to acknowledge and act upon our interdependence, to forge civil society, and to educate for global citizenship. “The choice is ours,” King’s prophetic voice reaches our time, “and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”84 NOTES 1. Benjamin R. Barber, “Introduction,” Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy, 2001 (New Ballentine Books, 1995, 2001), p. xi. 2. Benjamin R. Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and A Passion for Democracy: American Essays (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). 3. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Knock at Midnight,” Strength to Love (Philadelphi, Pa.: Fortress Press, 1963), p. 58. 4. Benjamin R. Barber, “The Second Front on the War against Terrorism: Democratizing Globalism,” Address, University of Maryland, 24 September 2001. 5. Louis P. Pojman, “International Justice and the Threat of Terrorism,” The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 966, 983. 6. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Compassion and Terror,” The Moral Life, p. 958. 7. Barber, “The Second Front.” 8. Barber, Fear’s Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), pp. 24–25, 30, 17, 106, 107. 9. Barber, “The Second Front.”

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

87

10. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, pp. xi, xiii. 11. Benjamin R. Barber quoted in Leta Hong Fincher, “Terrorism: Religious and Poverty Roots?”Voice of America, 2004. 12. Barber, Fear’s Empire, pp. 32, 146, 68. 13. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, pp. 10, xxxii, 277, viv. 14. Ibid., pp. 286, 279, 30. 15. Jim Wallace, “Putting God Back in Politics,” The New York Times (28 December 2003). 16. Barber, “The Second Front.” 17. Barber, Fear’s Empire, p. 162. 18. Barber, “The Second Front.” 19. Barber, Fear’s Empire, p. 162. 20. Arun Prosad Mukherjee, “Religious Fundamentalism, Terrorism, and Peace Prospects,” Culture and Quest, ed. Santi Nath Chattopadhyay (International Society for Intercultural Studies and Research, 30 March 2002). 21. Peter L. Berger, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: Free Press, 2001), discussed in Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey, “The Madrassa Myth,” The New York Times, 14 June 2005. 22. Fincher, “Terrorism.” 23. Robert A. Pape, interview by Lou Dobbs on Pape’s Dying to Win, CNN, 6 June 2005. 24. Hugh Eakin, “When U.S. Aided Insurgents, Did it Breed Future Terrorists?” The New York Times, 10 April 2004. 25. “Center to Study Mental Roots of Terrorism,” 2 November 2005, Reuters, http:www.americanclinic.ru/eng/news/2005/02/10/7 (accessed 15 August 2006). 26. Ibid. 27. Barber, “The Second Front.” 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Barber, Fear’s Empire, p. 210. 31. Ibid., pp. 4, 49. 32. Albert Camus, The Plague, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), p.149. 33. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, p. 277. 34. Glen Martin, “A Planetary Paradigm for Global Government,” Toward Genuine Global Governance: Critical Reactions to “Our Global Neighborhood,” eds. Errol E. Harris and James A. Yunker (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), p. 7. 35. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, pp. 287, 289, 281, 277. 36. Ibid., pp. 286, 277, 16, 291, 146. 37. Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World, ed. Nan Richardson (New York: Crown, 2000). 38. Barber. “The Second Front.” 39. Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, p. 232. 40. Vicki Goldberg, “The Soup-Kitchen Classroom,” The New York Times Magazine (27 September 1992), p. 50. 41. Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, p. 249, 254. 42. Barber, “The Second Front.”

88

MAR PETER-RAOUL

43. Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 250, 260. 44. Ibid., p. 260. 45. Benjamin R. Barber, “A Proposal for Mandatory Citizen Education and Community Service,” Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, vol. 1, no. 1 Ann Arbor, Office of Community Service Learning at the University of Michigan, 1994), p. 89. 46. Maxine Greene, The Dialectic of Freedom (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988), pp. 5, 18, 126. 47. Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 227, 229, 245. 48. Nussbaum, “Compassion and Terror,” pp. 930, 958, 956, 959, 937, 961. 49. Barber, A Passion for Democracy, p. 113. 50. Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, p. 256. 51. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, pp. 291, 20. 52. Barber, “The Second Front.” 53. Ibid. 54. Pojman, “International Justice and the Threat of Terrorism,” p. 974. 55. Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, p. 144. 56. Barber, “The Second Front.” 57. Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, p. 228. 58. Pojman, “International Justice and the Threat of Terrorism,” p. 970. 59. James M. Washington, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King Jr. (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper & Row, Publisher, 1986). 60. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, p. 298. 61. Amos 5:24, King James Version. 62. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here? Chaos or Community? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). 63. Barber, “The Second Front.” 64. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld, p. 3. 65. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Knock at Midnight,” Strength to Love (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress Press, 1963), p. 58. 66. Paul F. Knitter and Chandra Muzaffar, eds., Subverting Greed: Religious Perspectives on the Global Economy (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2002), pp. xiv, ix, 1, 154. 67. Washington, A Testament of Hope, p. 140. 68. Martin Luther King Jr., interview by Life Magazine, 7 November 1960. 69. John J. Ansbro, Martin Luther King Jr.: The Making of a Mind (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Oribis Books, 1982), p. 36. 70. King, Where Do We Go From Here? p. 190. 71. Robert M. Franklin, “Another Day’s Journey: Faith Communities Renewing American Democracy,” Religion, Race, and Justice in a Changing America, eds. Gary Orfield and Holly J. Lebowitz (New York: A Century Foundation Book, 1999), p. 34.

Jihad or the Beloved Community?

89

72. The Oxford Study Bible, Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha, eds. M. Jack Suggs, Katherine Doob Sakenfeld, and James R. Mueller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 73. Charles Marsh, “The Beloved Community: An American Search,” Religion, Race, and Justice, eds. Orfield and Lebowitz (New York: A Century Foundation Book, 1999), p. 66. 74. Franklin, “Another Day’s Journey,” p. 35. 75. Marsh, “The Beloved Community,” p. 65. 76. Franklin, “Another Day’s Journey,” pp. 38, 33. 77. Marsh, “The Beloved Community,” pp. 51, 61. 78. Ann Chih Lin, “From ‘Beloved Community’ to ‘Beloved Communities’: Inviting New Faith Partners in the Civil Rights Struggle,” Religion Race, and Justice, pp.175, 176. 79. Ibid., p. 177–179. 80. Ibid, p. 179. 81. Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans., Emma Craufurd (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1951), pp. 99, 91. 82. Robert Coles, Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage (Boston, Mass.: AddisonWesley, 1987), p. 86. 83. Barber, Fear’s Empire, p. 199. 84. Washington, “A Testament of Hope,” p. 242.

This page intentionally left blank

Five VIOLENCE, POWER, AND IDENTITY: WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS OF TERRORISM? Richard Peterson Critics of militarism and skeptics about violent solutions to social conflict have frequently made two kinds of claims in the face of the United States Government’s declaration of a war on terrorism. First, they argue on moral and strategic grounds that policy against terrorism should take into consideration the social conditions that give rise to terrorism. Second, they assert that a defensible policy would give violent means at best a secondary role. But, though general agreement exists among critics on these points, the same cannot be said of the accounts they give of the conditions that give rise to terrorism or of the kind of policy that would be appropriate to address them. As a result, we find no general understanding of why or how addressing the conditions of terrorism would best be undertaken by a policy that does not itself emphasize violence. Unless we unless understand relevant preconditions of terrorism, we cannot be sure that responding to them nonviolently will be effective. Without going into a survey of arguments, we can mention some of the conditions that critics cite as preconditions of terrorism: poverty, political subordination, humiliation, past military defeats, and the absence of individual or group prospects for the future (these are often claims about the legacy of European colonialism and United States imperialism). Those who favor a strong military response cite other preconditions: deep cultural differences between Islam and the West, long-term demographic trends, the tenets of Islam, and an authoritarian political culture in the Middle East. If the arguments of critics are often vague about where responsibility for terrorism lies, those who favor a military response usually focus on the perpetrators and the milieu from which they come. In any event, we can hardly deny that many, if not all, of these conditions should figure in an account of terrorism. It would be difficult to show which, separately or in combination, would figure in an adequate account. Poverty and historical oppression appear significant, but many instances of such conditions exist that have not led to terrorism. Cultural accounts also seem indispensable, but monolithic conceptions obscure complexity and conflict, and may make finding a nonviolent solution more difficult, not less.

92

RICHARD PETERSON

Quite apart from sociological and historical points of dispute, the problem also has a philosophical aspect. Speaking of conditions of terrorism can imply an objectivist understanding of social process, yet political debate addresses individuals as agents capable of choice and reflection. The point is not to go into metaphysical issues about freedom or action, but to notice that this kind of argument presupposes, in its prospective political concerns and in its retrospective analytical claims, that social conditions figure in action by way of practical understandings that are themselves typically matters of dispute. Global inequalities, political powerlessness, historical defeats, even religious beliefs do not automatically become operative political convictions or strategies. Their translation into political sense is itself a process we must address. In what follows I propose a democratic approach to the claim that attention to the preconditions of contemporary terrorism leads away from primary reliance on military and police strategies. We will have to clarify what a “democratic approach” involves as we proceed. But to guard against misunderstandings, I emphasize that a democratic approach is a substantive requirement regarding popular power, mutual respect, and individual freedoms. We cannot assume that establishing formally democratic institutions adequately meets the requirement, however crucial these institutions are. We could argue that terrorism generally is an undemocratic politics best challenged by expanding democratic possibilities, but my argument here will mainly address on one kind of terrorism, namely that associated with Islamic fundamentalist networks which have become the focus of contemporary debates in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks on 11 September 2001. This terrorism, I argue, is not just a defective politics per se, but figures in a wider complex of practices and relations not unique to the world of the terrorists. A distinctive interplay of identity assertion, domination, and violence figures widely in late-modern politics. If democracy is the antidote to terrorism, it needs to be cultivated in a way that counteracts these tendencies, including when they are associated with struggles against terrorism. 1. Terrorism as Tied to Historical and Political Conditions Associating terrorism with preconditions as they are understood by terrorists means following a historical and political approach to these preconditions. It means seeing how terrorist acts figure within a complex of meanings and conflicts proper to the contemporary world. Bearing this in mind helps forestall unilluminating appeals to primitive drives or timeless civilizational differences. It may also help us to avoid depersonalizing terrorists and to remember to contextualize their acts within contemporary political experience. This is not to deny that we need to think about institutional and structural matters or about the role of traditions or social psychology. But it helps

Violence, Power, and Identity

93

us avoid thinking that the raw violence of terrorism somehow puts it beyond politics. Hannah Arendt’s distinction between violence and power may tempt us to do just that, since both the instrumental character of terrorism and its physical destructiveness seem to place it beyond political discourse.1 Terror does work at cross-purposes with the discursive organization of joint or interrelated action, which is a crucial component of politics for Arendt. Arendt’s distinctions are attractive for those focusing on diminishing violence, since she suggests that a consistent politics can lead us away from violent solutions to conflict. But, at the same time, her distinctions risk blinding us to the respects in which politics, as we know it, is intertwined with violence and to how violence, like terrorism, functions within a kind of politics, or in relation to politics. Terrorism focuses on immediate impact at the expense of discussion or the precise articulation of political aims. But terrorism is also a symbolic practice that states its message within a wider political setting (typically one in which effective peaceful political means are not, or appear not, to be available). Seen up close, terrorism is instrumental and crude. But placed in its social context, terrorism is a complex phenomenon rooted in an intricate web of historical conditions. Generalizing about terrorism is difficult, since its contexts and agents vary a great deal.2 Terrorism has played a role in anticolonial struggles (for example, Algeria), right-wing reaction against popular revolts (for example, El Salvador), middle class revolts against capitalism (for example, the Red Army Faction in West Germany), conflict among religious groups (for example, Northern Ireland), and it has been the chosen instrument of isolated individuals. Often a weapon against states, terrorism has also become an instrument used by states (for example, Chile and Iraq). The complex web of terrorism and counter terrorism, such as the strategies of groups like al-Qaeda, and the war against them is the immediate occasion of this paper. Here terrorism is framed within a religious understanding linked to social conflicts that involve multinational movements and states and draw from a range of modern institutional networks and technologies. It may not be possible or even useful to state a single definition of terrorism, though general patterns exist, for example, the use of actual and symbolic violence in irregular combat for purposes of intimidation and pressure. In the case of Islamist terrorism, the complicated relation between politics and violence is closely tied to the assertion of a religious identity and political-military project. In speaking of “Islamism,” I draw on a term that refers to what is often termed (perhaps misleadingly) “Islamic fundamentalism.” As Fred Halliday notes, Islamism asserts a sweeping and timeless unity of Islam neither shared by most Muslims, nor reflective of the diversity of religious practices or variety of political understandings found in the Islamic world.3 Islamism projects the reassertion of a global community presently

94

RICHARD PETERSON

under duress and in need of internal purification through struggle. In this spirit, Osama bin Laden cites the United States occupation of the Holy Land (the Arabian Peninsula), its actions against Iraq, its support for Israel, and its political aims regarding Arab states in general as evidence of a sustained campaign against Islam as a whole. It becomes “a duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it” to pursue jihad against “the Americans and their allies—civilians and military. . . .”4 This linkage of identity and strategic violence is of special interest in the present discussion. By focusing on it, we can think of terrorist acts as emerging from a complex web of social change, inequalities, political problems, and cultural and technical conditions. 2. Placing the War against Terrorism within the Context of Identity Politics What conceptual approach might be fruitful for placing recent terrorism in its historical and political setting? My suggestion is that the notion of recognition conflict and a corresponding idea of identity formation hold promise for thinking about the intersection of violence and politics in contemporary terrorism. Instead of discussing these ideas at length in isolation, I will present them along with illustrations from the case at hand, and then try to show how they help us think about the political issue of responding to terrorism. Without accepting his systematic project, we can gain some initial orientation by drawing from the idea of recognition conflict introduced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and developed by such recent authors as Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth. The “dialectic of Lordship and Bondage” is the most famous development of this idea, but variations and elaborations of it figure throughout these and other works.5 The idea of recognition draws on the fact that individuals and groups establish who they are only in relation to others and depend on being acknowledged by others in both symbolic and practical ways. This idea also treats this acknowledgment as typically characterized by conflict, which organizes social practices and relations to material goods. In broad political terms, these insights help us see that conflicts sometimes involve outrage or indignation at insufficient or demeaning recognition and can lead to the assertion of new identities tied to projects of social change. These are general ideas but I will fill them out a bit and apply them to the case at hand. One historical thesis, as we have already seen, is that Islamism can be understood as including an identity assertion.6 Here I am thinking of identity as not only a subjective sense of self, but as a way of life, a way of being in the world. With this in mind we can see that recognition conflict concerns the existence of a group or individual, though not so much their immediate physical existence as their existence as determinate agents in his-

Violence, Power, and Identity

95

torical worlds. In this way, the religious articulation of Islamism contributes to the respects in which identity in this sense is at stake. On the one hand, this involves indignation and resentment about denied recognitions, for example, through the imposition of corrupt regimes, the occupation of foreign troops, and the denigration of Islam. To the Islamist, both the aggression of outside opponents and the capitulation of members of the Islamic community have resulted in degrading the conditions and possibilities of Islamic practice. On the other hand, the Islamist program also includes the assertion of a new regime and a new way of life, with implicit consequences for the conduct and well being of the individuals making up these societies.7 Not only must the offenses of outsiders be counteracted, but the community of believers needs to be purified. We should underline a few aspects of this notion of identity politics. First, we can understand identity assertion here as a response to the multiple conditions often cited by critics of United States policy as the preconditions of terrorism that should be the focus of concern (for example, poverty, neocolonialism, and the spread of Western consumer culture). The assertion of identity interprets and articulates these conditions through a kind of politics: a narrow politics, not just in its theocratic dimensions, but also in its historical relation to other movements and options in the region. We should see identity politics linked to terrorism as inseparable from the defeat of secular and more universalist-oriented movements and regimes. As such, we may also see it as a distinctively contemporary response, a part of a politics that has emerged with the evolving process of globalization.8 As an identity politics, Islamism is one of many attempts to respond to dilemmas of modernity by asserting a group identity. Nationalism and racism are others. This is modern in a structural sense, since it responds to the destruction of premodern traditions and involves new demands on identity proper to a differentiated market society.9 In response to such trends, modern politics has often made identity a special preoccupation, more a matter of practical politics than of theory, since identity issues have for the most part played a subordinate role in liberal and socialist thought. For both, the most extreme and dangerous instances of identity politics, those associated with fascism, have been difficult to understand and to combat. Given the features some strands of Islamism share with classic fascism—appeal to a mystified unity, authoritarianism, patriarchy, militarism, and repression of individuals—this historical background is worth bearing in mind. While I do not propose any new insights regarding the conditions and force of identity politics in this form, it involves not only a reduction of political and social issues to the assertion of the common identity or world or way of life. It also introduces an enormous amount of social energy directed to this assertion. Identity politics is quite modern, even contemporary, in this concentration of propaganda, policing, and education in what amounts to a

96

RICHARD PETERSON

reflexive political concern with the formation of individuals and groups. We see this reflexivity within Islamism, despite its appeal to ancient traditions and timeless truths. 3. Identity Assertion and Terror I suggest that the preconditions of terrorism include the emergence of a narrow identity politics to which terror as a mode of action is closely allied. Though instrumental in its immediate reasoning, contemporary terrorism is part of a self-assertion in which indignation and self-righteousness figure along with violence and hatred. Considered as violence against innocents or non-combatants, terrorism is immoral, but one need not adopt relativism to observe that terrorists typically see their actions as both moral and in keeping with the deepest order of things, and to be honorable, even heroic. Morality is preserved as a moment within identity politics but loses its universality through subordination to the requirements of the community, here conceived in religious terms. The many injustices often cited as preconditions of terrorism, for example, poverty, rule by corrupt elites, foreign military presence, and displacement of peoples, play a role here. But a role articulated through the language of an injured collective existence, not that of violated principles. In the words of bin Laden: All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries.10 The presumed relation to divine powers underlies the claim made on behalf of a community of believers. Not only the immorality of Western policies, but also the attack on this theologically conceived community justifies a call to arms that suspends the demands of morality when it sanctions the killing of non-combatants. If terrorism is linked to an identity politics impervious to the otherregarding imperatives of universal moral norms, the prospects for using this notion of the preconditions of terrorism to justify a diminished role for military response may seem limited at best. The bloody conflicts of former Yugoslavia illustrate how the assertion of particular identities can leave little room for negotiation or compromise. From a narrow logical perspective, this imperviousness to moral appeal follows from the particularity of identity, if we see the particularity of identity as asserting a way of life solely for its being that way of life and not because it embodies more general norms or values.

Violence, Power, and Identity

97

Such a particularist self-assertion becomes an explicit repudiation of ethical reason in a politics like the racist self-assertion of Nazism, which included a rejection of humanism and other versions of modern universalism. Here the assertion of a particular group supersedes all other claims and undercuts in principle any basis for curbing the violence that may be required to make good on this assertion. Identity claims seem to be fundamentally different than normative, value, or cognitive claims, and cannot be reduced to their logic. If we must understand identity politics along these lines, then understanding one of the political preconditions of terrorism as the articulation of identity politics may seem to undercut the call for an alternative to military responses to terrorism. If terrorism is rooted in an intractable and irrational identity politics, then the prospects for a nonviolent response that stresses political reconstruction may seem unrealistic. But because a resistance to moral universalism, even irrationalism, can inform identity politics does not warrant treating all politics concerned with identity as being inherently beyond the reach of discursive reason. The problem of a religiously articulated identity politics, especially one such as Islamism, which draws on monotheistic and universalistic perspectives, raises theological and political problems we need not take up here. The more general problem of the kind of rationality that we can exercise in identity claims, and its relation to political and moral reasoning, is one that modern philosophy has not adequately confronted. Without pretending to address this problem, we can take note of features of the recognition idea itself: as constituted in a process of interaction, identity and self are inherently matters of social interdependence and potential mutuality. Concern with the uniqueness and authenticity of an identity does not inherently exclude attention to other-regarding commitments. In any case, the winning of recognition can come by way of mutual respect and shared engagements, instead of through raw self-assertion and the violence that often goes with it. Identity can be secured in joint undertakings and in the light of shared concerns, just as it can be developed in competition and uncompromising conflict (which often include shared background commitments in any case). Such considerations show that identity politics is not inherently violent, but they may not be relevant to the case at hand. We might think that the idea of holy war, with its emphasis on a religious and apparently non-rational affiliation, and its repudiation of previous secular and universalistic orientations, marks out Islamist identity politics as an inherently violent particularism. But historical reflection on Islamist identity formation tempers this impression. No consensus exists about politics or holy war within Islam, and even a fundamentalist revolution like that in Iran has proven to be increasingly pluralistic in practice. Issues like the role of women in Islamic society, the organization of political debate, the evolution of intellectual life, and Islam’s relation to the world market and its relation to new technology show that, for Islamism to

98

RICHARD PETERSON

function as a modern identity, it must respond to cognitive and normative claims that cannot be derived exclusively from an Islamist world view that bases itself on medieval texts.11 If we keep the ideas of identity and recognition at the forefront, we will notice that a collective identity assertion like that of Islamism does not exist in isolation from other recognition claims and conflicts, even though it may seek to supersede them. Even a monolithic group identity must function in relation to other identities, some involving leadership and organization, some tied to roles found in virtually any society, and some reflecting the complexities of the modern world. In this light, the collective self-assertion of Islamism directed outward also figures in the coordination of identities organizing the internal life of the movement or society. Especially significant in this regard are ongoing differences and conflict over ethnicity, class, and gender. These are especially striking in view of the aggressive patriarchy and puritanism of fundamentalist movements. Here, as elsewhere, we must sense the clash between the mystified unity projected by Islamist identity and the differential and dynamic processes of modern societies. As an integrative movement within a setting that is by no means homogeneous, static, or free of conflict, Islamism faces political conditions that require attempts either to bridge differences and conflict or to suppress them by force. In this light, we see the homogenizing projection of a collective identity into the world beyond to be the accompaniment of an authoritarian and repressive mode of governing within movements and societies. This is not a new pattern in politics: Islamism offers parallels with European fascist movements of the early twentieth century with its mix of an imaginary collective sustained by military mobilization, the reassertion of patriarchy, and the suppression of dissent and nonconformity. Islamism attempts to make identity the basis of social unity, and so functions not only as a matter of doctrine or political organization, but also as a comprehensive cultural program that probes the depths of social imagination, seeking to define the limits of possibility, desirability, and danger. Instead of being an isolated identity assertion, this kind of collective identity claim figures within a complex of identities and conflicts and does so by imposing a regime of power and violence. 4. Possibilities for a Democratic Response? Drawing on the idea of recognition relations and conflicts, I have moved from the claim that we should view contemporary terrorism as a kind of identity politics, to the suggestion that terrorism figures within a wider complex of political relations. This constitutes applied Hegelianism, since Hegel sees society as in part a network of recognitions, though one historically organized around the development of reason. We cannot follow Hegel in positing this kind of ideal unity, but instead we must think of a structure of contingently

Violence, Power, and Identity

99

interrelated practices and conflicts. On historical grounds, it remains plausible to think that close relations between different aspects of this structure exist, for example, between the imposition of theocratic rule and patriarchy or between the pursuit of external terrorism and the free use of violence in domestic government. So I am claiming that we should view terrorism as figuring within a complex of practices in which identity, power, and violence intersect in varying but interconnected ways. From this sort of analysis, we can see why, under some conditions, more democracy might undercut a politics of terrorism. If terrorism is part of the glue that binds together an authoritarian group identity, then democratization removes one of the functions that terrorism may play. By “democracy,” I do not mean only the introduction of formal procedures like periodic elections. We should be cautious with this term, given its susceptibility to political manipulation and to the real difficulties in projecting democratic possibilities in our historical world. For present purposes, it may be enough to stress the idea of effective power over social decisions and institutions for those affected by these decisions and institutions. We need not go into the material conditions of such power here, but power in relation to social processes requires individual freedoms and the ability to challenge reified social understandings that mystify actual relations and historical possibilities. Democracy requires room for debate and space for considering political alternatives. It does not rule out authority, but requires that the authority of traditions and traditional roles be open to scrutiny, just as it requires that common understandings and identifications be matters of possible reflection. Such requirements make possible a less apocalyptic relation to the world than is often found in reactionary revivalism. It encourages a greater sensitivity to the conditions and experiences of ordinary people. This would include protection of women’s rights and the rights of individuals generally, but also a greater role for popular views in decision making. Implicit here is recognition of a wide range of social identities, something that implies the weakening of the kind of authoritarian collective identity with which we have associated terrorism. As such, democratization fosters a political culture at odds with terrorism. In contrast, the authoritarian identity politics associated with contemporary terrorism is conducive to the narrow relation to politics that the strategy of terror embodies with its strategic and symbolic recourse to violence. Terror may be vivid, but also inarticulate. It may create effective disruption, but be too crude an instrument to foster political construction. The widened discourse yielded by democratization is inherently at odds with the language of the deed spoken by the terrorist. I am not saying that a discursively richer politics would automatically eliminate the strategic appeal of terrorism, especially to groups confronted by dire circumstances. By itself, democratization would not change conditions that may offer few good alternatives for achieving political goals. Speaking of democracy in such abstract terms ignores the

100

RICHARD PETERSON

questions of how we can promote democracy, what social preconditions are required, and what forms are appropriate. Before looking further at these questions, we should note two respects in which democratization is crucial in the context of the politics of terrorism as described here. First, we need to connect democratization to the articulation and recognition of identities subordinated or even suppressed under violent identity politics. In an authoritarian patriarchal setting, this would require, for example, the recognition of women as distinct agents, the acceptance of minorities as full members of society, and a secure place for political dissidents. But these recognitions are inseparable from democratic advances in a more traditional sense, for example, the recognition of rights for women and minorities, the possibility of more political space for debate, the possibility of more contacts across national borders, and the more general possibility of popular voice in policy making. Democracy here means in part an increase in political recognition and activity and it illustrates some of the general respects in which politics can supersede violence by replacing it with discursive process. Politics replaces violence, whether this is overt violence or the constant threat of violence associated with authoritarian rule. It replaces violence with discussion, compromise, formal procedure, shared decision making, or other means by which individuals and groups can come to some provisional agreement for confronting and reducing their conflicts. If I am right to reconstruct terrorism as a kind of identity politics embedded in an authoritarian but latently conflictual web of relations, we have some basis for arguing that the best policy against terrorism is one that promotes the conditions for genuine democracy. I have not outlined such initiatives, and must admit that their short-term prospects are often tentative at best. Violence may be an unstable form of rule, but it can be effective over considerable periods. Even if a social basis for quite different politics exists, often no immediate opportunity for effective resistance or the construction of an alternative order is available. But more general objections to the kind of argument I have been presenting may exist. 5. Contextually Minded Objections My emphasis on recognition relations and on democracy may seem to treat terrorism in an overly idealizing fashion. With this concern in mind, I will develop my theme further by considering two possible objections to the discussion so far. The first considers the one-sidedness to which a focus on identity issues may lead. In particular, as we have seen, such a political focus may seem to neglect the preconditions of terrorism that are most often cited by critics of a military response, for example, poverty, inequality, corruption, and the presence of Western economic and military force. This focus may

Violence, Power, and Identity

101

miss the conditions without which local political dynamics lose their meaning. In particular, it may miss the extent to which terrorism responds to material conditions on which the United States and the West more generally have had a major impact. Stressing identity assertion may obscure respects in which terrorists emerge from oppressive conditions. A second objection overlaps with this first one. Apart from being narrowly political and cultural in focus, this emphasis on democracy risks being little more than the external imposition of a Western idea that can function as ideological cover for further domination. It attributes terrorism to the internal workings of societies that then become targets for attack. In this context, appeal to democratic ideas must be careful to distinguish itself from the rhetoric of neo-colonial domination. I have already implied a response to the first objection by treating recognition and identity themes as ways of living and interpreting conditions of action. No doubt, a focus on identity can be subjectivizing and identity politics can likewise ignore patterns of inequality and domination. But here the notion of identity concerns lived forms of agency. I understand the emergence of identity as a political problem rooted in the connections between modern economic and political relations on the one hand and the ongoing transformation of forms of agency on the other. With the weakening and reworking of traditions, the flux of institutions, and the constant reshaping of technical and social powers, individuals and groups confront destabilized senses of self and world. A host of conflicting, sometimes overlapping, identities emerges and evolves in conjunction with shifting contexts of action. An adequate reconstruction of Islamist identity, for example, is hardly possible without reference to the vast transformations of life in the region, the movements of people, changes in work, shifts in demographic balances, the earlier legacy of colonialism overlain by corporate penetration tied to oil, the fate of past social movements, and so on. My emphasis on recognition relations and identity politics follows both from Islamism responding to this host of conditions by an identity assertion and from the more general condition that any political response must include some political reconstruction of identities. Such considerations inform my response to the second objection, too. The emphasis on democracy is not so much an appeal to a Western ideal as to actual conflicts and possibilities within and across the societies in question. Democracy is at issue in struggles over individual rights, oppression of women, minority representation, and against arbitrary rule. The West, despite the development there of liberal and democratic theory and institutions, has no monopoly on the ideals or further development of democracy. Ideas and practices of popular power have developed throughout the world and the socalled West is a synthesis of forces and influences that are by no means restricted to its later cultural or geographical boundaries. By the same token, adaptations of traditional institutions and practices (for example, forms of

102

RICHARD PETERSON

representative rule and respect for individual life and dignity) show that these are not somehow uniquely the property of Western societies.12 This point is especially crucial in relation to international institutions and international law. A different and perhaps more immediately telling ground for challenging the equation of democratic ideas with the West is the failure of Western societies themselves to live up to these ideals. The history of colonialism and imperialism bears witness to this. Resistance to Western domination is one source of democratic traditions in previously colonized societies. Drawing from post-colonial experience, different movements and intellectuals have contributed to a wider democratic tradition by raising questions about development and human rights in the context of Western power and corporate globalization.13 Islamist identity politics derives its wider significance in part from its relation to the difficulties encountered by these movements, again indicating its complicated relation to the problem of democracy. 6. Problems of Political Culture The contradictions of Western democracy are not only a matter of their relations to the rest of the world, but also are exhibited in the violent history of these societies, including the emergence in them of distinctively modern forms of authoritarian rule. We have already alluded to the parallels between Islamism and European fascism. The shift into irrationalist identity politics has often figured within Western political evolution, as we would expect if the issue of identity is so deeply ingrained in the modern experience, as I have argued. The linkage between identity assertions, terror, and undemocratic power is by no means unique to the fascist strands of Western experience, as reference to American racism makes evident. The parallels between Islamist terrorism and the West do not end there, since terrorism has not infrequently been an instrument of policy in Western societies, both directly in conflicts with colonial peoples (or in the Cold War), and indirectly in the support of terrorist regimes and movements, for example in United States policy towards Central America during the 1980s. Not only did this policy support death squads aimed against peasant movements in El Salvador, but also it collaborated with the Contra terror aimed to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.14 To find parallels between the United States and the regimes it condemns as terrorist is not to ignore real differences, much less to deny the presence of democratic elements in American politics. Modern political and cultural life presents us with a paradoxical complex, in which quite contradictory and even mutually destructive elements can coexist. For example, democratic guarantees exist side by side with militarism and universalist commitments exist side by side with racism and exclusionary fundamentalism. In view of these parallels, we may wonder whether something shared by formally de-

Violence, Power, and Identity

103

mocratic constitutional regimes and authoritarian regimes facilitates the recourse to explicit violence. Does the simultaneous presence in both of a fateful linkage between identity, terror, and power warrant our thinking that in some respects these different societies share a kind of politics? After all, not just parallels, but actual linkages between Western policy and Islamist terrorism confront us with some of the most remarkable paradoxes of recent history. Encouragement and support for these movements was part of the American Cold War strategy against the Soviet Union. Much of the infrastructure the United States now confronts in its war against terrorism has drawn from its past policies, for example, its support for Islamist groups, local warlords, the Pakistani secret police and military, and the Saudi regime.15 These policies find parallels elsewhere, such as in Central America. This has frequently been not only a matter of logistical support, but for example, in the case of anti-Soviet Islamism in Central Asia, also a matter of the encouragement of destructive identity politics as a strategic device. A similar strategic support for nationalist identity politics characterized one time support for Slobodan Milosovic in Yugoslavia and support for Saddam Hussein during the war between Iraq and Iran. The pattern is so long-standing and ongoing that writing it off as a few mistaken choices is problematic. Instead, it figures in a proclivity or disposition that may not always result in action, but that informs the grid of options and background conditions that organize political action. The conservative and eventually fascist thinker Carl Schmitt offers one way to understand this disturbing affinity between otherwise quite different regimes. For him, sovereign power enables states to switch from constitutional arrangements with liberal guarantees to states of emergency in which the fundamental features of state power become visible. Power consists of the ability effectively to constitute the political community by way of designating its enemy, others with whom one is prepared to fight to the death.16 This linkage of political power, recourse to violence, and the friend/foe dynamic offers a frame through which we can consider the proclivities of liberal regimes to adopt the politics of terrorism. We can resist Schmitt’s metaphysical generalizations about politics while thinking that his ideas may have some historical application. They provide a more general way of thinking about the crisis dynamics of modern states and of modern politics, including the contemporary politics of terrorism. Today this includes the pressures on national political structures (and identities) imposed by phenomena associated with the idea of globalization. Among these is the rise of cross-national terrorist networks. These observations remind us to keep in mind the limits of the nation-state and the need for a concept of politics that neither ignores the ongoing role for such states nor fails to explore other forms of politics that are either international or in some other way transcend the limits of nation-based public life.

104

RICHARD PETERSON

In any case, my hypothesis here is that we should consider a further dimension of the structural interconnection I posited earlier between terrorism and authoritarian identity politics. We should consider whether we can fruitfully posit an internal relation between this complex, as found in terrorist practices, and the political culture operative within the strategic practices of the United States. I am not suggesting that the United States is somehow responsible for terrorist attacks against itself. Instead, we can wonder whether we can conceptualize ways in which the framework in which such terrorism becomes an option may not be one in which the United States itself often operates. Such a framework is not just a recipe of choices; it organizes relations and interactions that connect in complicated ways the agents and the targets of terrorism. 7. Structural Interconnections: Violence, Power, Identity In suggesting a kind of internal relation between the identity politics of terrorism and the military emphasis of the war on terrorism, I am suggesting that in both cases identity, power, and violence intersect in ways that limit political action and block democratic innovation. Here is a kind of politics in which identity is asserted at the expense of discursive action, in which the particularism of identity eludes reconciliation by denying the universalism of ethics or the objectivity of knowledge. It permits irrationalism in politics, which is to say the introduction of violence as a kind of self-justifying assertion. This politics lets identity supersede other political and ethical considerations. In one way or another (for example, explicit denial of universalism, appeal to cosmological necessity, or reference to alleged scientific law), it subordinates ethical norms to collective self-assertions. This collective is “imaginary,” an object to which political leaders appeal while covering over differences and conflicts and suspending indefinitely the moment of the actualization of this community. Such appeals can be in the foreground, as one finds in Islamism or European fascism, or they can be a secondary but recurring complex, as they are in many liberal democracies like the United States. At issue is not just the organization of power around identity themes (racial, ethic, national, or religious), but also the use of violence, direct or threatened. A more developed account of this kind of politics would require more detail than I can attempt here. It would examine the terms and forms of recognition (for example, tendencies toward abstract, globalizing identities with reductive associations), related kinds of reasoning (for example, arguing from racial, religious, or national essences as forms of explanation), and corresponding forms of action (for example, cutting short political recognition in favor of strategic action). But we can sketch features of such an account by referring to features of the politics of al-Qaeda on the one hand and the war against terrorism on the other.

Violence, Power, and Identity

105

Al-Qaeda projects an identity of an authentic and timeless Islam that allows it to draw sharp contrasts between friends and foes, including contrasts among those who are Muslims. Similar distinctions are drawn in the rhetoric of the American security state, when its leaders draw sharp lines between those who support them and the rest, whose lack of support becomes equivalent to siding with the enemy. In both cases, distinctions of identity are used to justify actions that otherwise defy prevailing codes, moral and legal. The militarization of the notion of jihad undercuts the ban on killing innocents, just as it converts fellow Muslims into potential renegades who have implicitly gone over to the other side. Similarly, necessities of the war against terror are cited to preempt traditional legal guarantees not only for prisoners taken in combat, but resident aliens, and even citizens.17 In both contexts, not only does the militarization of politics cite a community whose needs justify otherwise unacceptable actions, but it also provides the leaders of this community language with which to declare who belongs and who does not. Abstract identity both provides license to manipulate norms and to give the community itself a potentially shifting meaning as the requirements of the conflict demand. This assertion of identity in defiance of heretofore prevailing normative codes gives this politics qualities that resemble racism.18 Within Islamist discourse, the “Jew” and the “Crusader” are identities that eliminate otherwise rightful claims to respect of life and personhood. Demonizing language aimed at “the Terrorist” likewise informs the war against terrorism. This resembles racism instead of nationalism, since it projects abstract essences that transcend any particular political community. On the other hand, it functions parallel to traditional nationalism insofar as the ascription of identity is connected to the assertion of political power by a state or an organization that aspires to be a state. The kind of politics mobilized in both terrorism and the war against terrorism follows the model of the war making of a nation-state. Even if the political organization and tactics of al-Qaeda are quite different, it operates within the logic of a structure of nation-states and aspires to power of this kind.19 Both al-Qaeda and the war against terrorism promote a relation to politics that does more than project identity and misrecognition as a way of justifying violence. The connection to a militarist political culture is more profound than references to justifications of violence alone would suggest. In both cases, necessities ascribed to violent conflict cancels political discourse. Such a politics is inherently authoritarian since the kinds of public understandings it promotes articulate power relations in which only strategy and tactics are matters for discussion. This authoritarian dimension affects the politics of identity itself, reflected in a similar assertion of patriarchal authority (and in a subordination of minority identifications). While this may be associated with the backward

106

RICHARD PETERSON

looking features of such politics, including a reassertion of “traditional values” associated with of a family structure made vulnerable by tendencies of modern society, it comes at the expense of autonomy for women and a rethinking of institutions that we can no longer plausibly view as beyond critical modification. We should view the patriarchal and puritanical aspects of fundamentalist identity assertion as resistance to freedoms that have come into reach and as hostile to aspects of a more democratic world. Why call this a kind of political culture or structure instead of a few distinct traits or characteristics? In such a problematic politics, something of general significance confronts us within the shifting nature of national and international politics in the present period. This involves an erosion of the discursive politics of liberal democratic practice, the rise of new conflicts, and the weakening of political institutions in the face of multinational economic power and mass media politics. These developments stand against the backdrop of the modern problem of identity, a long-standing feature of politics that assumes new forms, some of which are extremely dangerous. 8. Democracy against Terrorism? Now let us return to the theme of democracy and see if we can draw any implications from this argument. My initial discussion of democracy started from claims about the structural connection between terrorism and authoritarian rule. Even though the subsequent extension of the structural analysis to Western societies may shift the focus to reforming Western political culture, this does not lessen the value of promoting more democracy in authoritarian Islamist settings, though it puts in question the qualifications of a country like the United States to do this. These considerations do not constitute compelling reasons to abstain from supporting democratic possibilities abroad, though they imply the need for vigilance about the relevance, effectiveness, and consistency of such efforts. But we now have reason to think that, if democratic initiatives are the best long-term strategy against terrorism, then we should pursue these also within the United States and the West as well. Given the globalizing trends of our day, it may be unrealistic to think that the evolution of democracy in one part of the world is unaffected by political development elsewhere. An adequate democratic perspective must include thinking about issues that arise in all the different contexts in which the political culture that links identity, violence, and power is at work. If the foregoing discussion is sound, then the issue of democracy extends beyond the formal institutional emphasis found in mainstream liberalism or even the more material or economic focus recommended by traditional socialism. Good reasons exist to emphasize both political and economic democracy when thinking about challenging the preconditions of terrorism. But we have implicitly raised a further problem for democratic theory and prac-

Violence, Power, and Identity

107

tice by stressing the role of identity formation and assertion in the organization of political culture and agency. The parallels, or even structural relations, between Islamist and Western political cultures of identity, power, and violence call for distinctive political responses and alternatives. Here we are touching on crucial and difficult questions of political theory. We can only hope here to point to some relevant considerations. To address issues of violence, power, and identity is to confront questions about the formation of agency often only implicitly put in play by political struggles. For example, both liberal and socialist politics have presupposed and tacitly urged ideals of agency with their respective claims about desirable forms of action in or in contrast to market relations. Both kinds of politics have encouraged models of agency, though usually they have focused on the institutions and policy decisions within which these forms of action occur. But the issue of agency has become more explicit as questions of culture have come to the fore with movements that stress nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion. Here issues of motivation, interpretations, goals, and identities have become direct matters of assertion and conflict. These have become central themes for social movements that challenge oppression in which imputed agency and identity has been central, for example, in sexism, racism, and even consumerism. Political movements with much promise for a democratization of public life have raised issues proper to the political complex I described earlier—an authoritarian identity politics that pursues violent strategies as it subordinates morality to its goals. Both anti-racist and feminist movements have diagnosed ways that illegitimate power and inequality are advanced by organized white supremacist and patriarchal identity assertion. These insights have figured as well in the analysis of new kinds of warfare, in which chauvinistic uses of national identity organize a political response to economic crisis and the collapse of institutions.20 In the kind of warfare illustrated by Bosnia in the 1990s, nationalist identity not only takes on racist dimensions, but is combined with sexual violence, one dimension of an extension of violence from conflict between armies and the increased targeting of civilian populations. The critical politics of identity pursued by social movements has not only provided a lens through which the modalities of contemporary warfare become more visible, it also underlines the distinctive issues we must face if we are to combat domination and violence mediated by identity assertion. We can hope that such movements contribute to a linkage between identity themes and democracy. Unlike the emphasis in more traditional liberal and socialist challenges to oppressive identity politics, the emphasis of these movements is typically less a matter of demands for justice or democracy than the assertion of alternative identities. But the resistance to the injustice and domination that so frequently is implicit in these struggles means that

108

RICHARD PETERSON

sustaining their identity aims brings them into relation with issues proper to material justice and democratic power. A great, unsettled question about such movements remains whether they can develop this relation and construct a politics that binds their identity claims both to the identity claims of others and to general questions of democracy and justice. We may find the seeds of a hopeful answer in alliances of social movements, often around issues in which their different aspirations overlap, for example, issues about war and peace or social inequality. Similarly, we may cite the intersection of challenges to problematic identities (for example, racial, gender, or consumerist) with projections of alternative identities that embody democratic values and different ways of living in the contexts in which conflicts have arisen (one may see this, for example, in the establishment of alternative schools or alternative family practices). The problem of democratic identity politics poses intellectual challenges. In part this is a matter of understanding problematic identity politics, as I have been trying to do in this discussion of the preconditions of terrorism. Such reflection may also examine the identity dimensions of political conflicts that have not explicitly focused on identity as such. Historians have contributed to this kind of reconstruction in ways that may have continuing relevance.21 Other work has gone toward locating devices and strategies through which identities are framed and imposed (for example, studies of racism in the mass media, and critiques of the presuppositions at work in the education system and the criminal justice system). Since exposing the power relations in identity formation often goes hand in hand with the assertion of suppressed or alternative identities, we find here the elements of a challenge and implicit alternative to the kind of reductive abstract identities we have associated with the politics of terrorism. The social agendas inherent in identities and the mechanisms by which they are established and reproduced has also been a theme fostered by anti-colonial and anti-racist thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and academic thinkers like Michel Foucault.22 Sometimes in such thinking, the challenge to oppressive identities is explicitly linked to the assertion of oppositional identities, what one might call “resistance identities.” Here we come up against one of the more profound sets of issues in social and political theory, that of qualitative change of agency associated with social struggle. These are among the issues that our discussion must leave unresolved. Yet, from the standpoint of the abstract and repressively unifying politics of violent identity assertion we have discussed, these trends represent a challenge to totalizing identifications that we must view as promising for democratic reflection. They raise issues about power and require that we approach the processes of social recognition with an adequate sense of their complexity. Whether adequate democratic follow-through exists depends on whether we can translate these issues of power into questions of the relevant forms of

Violence, Power, and Identity

109

participation and aspiration that identity formation involves. Here we touch on themes that have not received significant attention in the history of political philosophy. They are themes whose development would lead to alternatives to the kind of reductive and authoritarian politics articulated in Schmitt’s use of the friend/foe distinction. These kinds of criticism expose how identity, violence, and power function in undemocratic ways and they can inform efforts to cast identities anew. The key issue posed by linking identity, violence, and authoritarian power relations remains that of an organization of political agency that must be transformed in democratic directions. The democratic argument implies that issues specific to identities and to the use of violence are not separable from issues about the control of foreign policy generally. Challenging the uses and formation of identities will be of limited consequence without corresponding changes in policymaking. Mystifying identities are inseparable from mystified relations to political power and to the understanding and debates that go with it. So a crucial part of any challenge to violence in foreign policy is a challenge to the power of policy makers. This proposal has a long term and a short-term aspect. In the long term, it implies institutional changes that may seem to defy our contemporary political imagination. These would be changes in education and in cultural formation, and would include a drastic rethinking of practices associated with mass media culture. But in the short term, this perspective also has implications to which we can point. These include, for example, demanding more accessibility to processes of political action, including more openness of process, more accountability of officials, and reasserting Congressional responsibility for war making. It requires challenging the mystification of expertise, opposing the reification of technological innovation, and the demand for open international discussion of political and military policies. It also means challenging the media’s coverage of these issues and developing alternative channels of information and communication. Further, it means raising the question of the price the United States pays in warfare as balanced against the price it refuses to pay in foreign aid and for imported resources. To see such initiatives as contributing to a democratic politics of agency formation is to see them as figuring in a rethinking of who and what the members of the public realm are. In the light of my references to the initiatives of social movements, we can expect that such a politics would challenge chauvinist identities with ones tempered by challenges to oppression. Included here would be self-reflection that opens up questions about the relation between our identities and the identities projected on others and exploring the basis for new mutual understandings based on the experience of struggles against different forms of oppression.

110

RICHARD PETERSON 9. Conclusion

In both the long term and the short term, more democracy is needed for challenging the politics of terrorism and a militarized counter-terrorism. If our discussion has brought the preconditions of a militarist response to terrorism into the discussion, it has not lessened the need to respond to the preconditions of terrorism itself. Though we may now have reason to think that urging democracy elsewhere is problematic unless we accomplish it by attention to the quality of our politics, noting this does not settle the question of how to address the combination of identity, violence, and power associated with the politics of terrorism itself. This brings us back to our initial question and asks what this discussion has yielded as a response to it. I argue that this combination of violence, power, and identity assertion is a political and cultural factor that contributes to what analysts often cite as the pre-conditions of terrorism. This combination figures in the articulation of agency, including the interpretation of economic and political conditions and the understanding of what kind of action is appropriate in response to these conditions. To call for more democracy is not only to say that we need economic and political reforms, but also to say that a different relation to possible political agency is required. The problem with a largely military response to terrorism is not just that it fails adequately to address key material and structural questions. It also embodies a relation to politics that reinforces the terrorism it professes to challenge. Here the point is not that fighting violence with violence is unlikely to succeed. Instead, violently asserted identities organize action incapable of approaching social relations in ways necessary to address the profound conflicts plaguing societies, conflicts that include the unresolved legacy of global inequality and power relations. Terrorism is both an abjuring of discursive politics and a crisis of the political realm as such. We can only base calls for democracy in the face of terrorism on the assumption that more democracy is the only path to a more viable political realm. This argument treats democracy as necessary to a politics that could make recourse to violence unnecessary by asserting the forms of agency and corresponding identities in whose terms we can achieve and exercise more equality and freedom. Though I have pointed to possible political initiatives that might encourage an altered politics of agency, this argument has not shown that an effective response to terrorism can altogether avoid recourse to violent means. It has remained too general to pretend to bear directly on practical dilemmas, for example, including those about policy in the wake of the World Trade Center attack. This argument offers no guarantees that violent tactics may not be necessary in the face of present dangers. It will not satisfy those who want a general argument against any military response or who think an appeal to preconditions rules out a military response under all conditions. But perhaps

Violence, Power, and Identity

111

it offers plausible reasons for thinking that moving away from the cycle of terrorism and violent response requires deepening our sense of the demands of a democratic relation to politics.

NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, “On Violence.” Violence and its Alternatives, eds. Manfred B. Steger and Nancy S. Lind (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). 2. Walter Laquer, The New Terrorism (New York: Oxford, 1999). 3. Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (London: I. B. Tauris, 1996), pp.107–132. 4. Osama bin Laden, “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders: The 1998 Fatwa,” The Middle East and Islamic World Reader, eds. Marvin E. Gettleman and Stuart Schaar (New York: Grove, 2003), p. 326. 5. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). 6. Ahmed Rashid, The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002). 7. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996); Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” Multiculturalism, ed., Amy Gutman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 25–73. 8. Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Juergen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 25–83. 9. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989). 10. bin Laden, “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders,” p. 326. 11. Tariq Ramadan, Islam, the West, and Challenges of Modernity (New York: The Islamic Foundation, 2000). 12. Patrick Hayden, ed., The Philosophy of Human Rights (St Paul, Minn.: Paragon House, 2001). 13. Richard Peterson, “Human Rights and Cultural Conflict,” Human Rights Review, 5:3 (April–June 2004), pp. 22–33. 14. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, War against the Poor: Low Intensity Warfare and Christian Faith (New York: Maryknoll, 1990); and Reed Brody, Contra Terror in Nicaragua (Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1985). 15. Dilip Hiro, War Without End: The Rise of Islamist Terrorism and Global Response (London: Routledge, 2002), chap. 6, pp. 179–263. 16. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1976). 17. David Cole, “Patriot Act’s Big Brother,” The Nation, 17 March 17 2003. 18. Richard Peterson, “Really Existing Globalization: Racism and the Politics of Violence in the War against Terrorism,” unpublished paper. 19. bin Laden, “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.” 20. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford, 1999).

112

RICHARD PETERSON

21. Edward Palmer Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966). 22. Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove, 1967); and Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 1997).

Six CRISIS, TERROR, AND TYRANNY: ON THE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC LOGIC OF EMPIRE Peter Amato Americans care deeply for the democratic ideals espoused by the founders and framers of our government, and rightly wish to see them realized, both in our country and in others. The Civil Rights Movement and the struggles of women, workers, and others to achieve full and free participation in civil and political life attest to the continuity and the vibrancy of the ideals of the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the pursuit of which has frequently set some Americans at odds with others and forced us into conflict with a variety of governmental and non-governmental institutions. In this paper, I take the American ideal of a democratic nation in a democratic world for granted. I will demonstrate that, contrary to this ideal, the foreign policy of the United States government has employed anti-democratic and at times tyrannical and terrorist methods in pursuit of an American Empire based on the protection of corporate profit. Instead of trying to establish democracy, as it has constantly claimed, it seeks to make democracy impossible, since real democracy would endanger the profits of elites. I believe that understanding the United States’ “war on terror” and its other ongoing international involvements and adventures is impossible unless we recognize their wider historical context. In part one, I catalogue some of this context. In part two, I consider the meaning of “democracy,” and the basis for a distinction between true democracy and a kind of sham democracy by a reading of Plato’s Republic, which is usually read by scholars and others as a simple repudiation of all forms of democracy. I read this text as rich enough to find in Socrates’ suggestions a sharp contrast between the flawed, unphilosophical, so-called democracy of Athens and what we could call a true democracy in the Socratic spirit. I believe this ideal “Socratic” democracy to be much closer to the notion shared by patriotic Americans than the cynical notion of democracy taken for granted in government, media, and academic discourse. With this distinction in mind, in part three, I connect the two main themes of the paper in drawing out some of their political conclusions.

114

PETER AMATO 1. Empire against Democracy

George W. Bush is not the first American president to direct United States forces in acts of aggression and atrocity and to invoke a real or imagined crisis as a justification for such acts. His crimes mark less a change in tactics than in scale and scope. Although I do not believe the United States has changed its overall foreign policy as reflected in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe these current wars have unleashed historic and horrific prospects and possibilities. Like those of his predecessors who have also used the military and diplomatic power of the United States to undermine the democratic impulses of people around the world, Bush’s crimes have been made possible by the debased public discourse of our so-called democracy. We forget that democracy in America remains an unfulfilled promise comparable in its compromises with elitism to the “socialism” of the Soviet era. The current wars “against terror” are closely bound up with this circumstance. Our collective fantasy that this nation is guided democratically makes seeing the mischievous and murderous policies our government pursues for what they are. We are rendered less able to make sense of the murderous mischief directed at the United States by others. I think this state of affairs has come about because, in a sense, terror is the highest stage of imperialism, since imperialism nurtures terrorism in its marginalized and immiserated enemy, and the persistence of terror at its core becomes more patent as capital reaches nearer to unchallenged hegemony. Postmodernism may be “the cultural logic of late capitalism,” but terror is its political and economic logic.1 What makes ours an especially “interesting time,” is that at the moment of its zenith, imperialism invokes its greatest and deepest crisis. But neither competition between nations or capitals nor conflict with a supposed or real anti-capitalist state drives this crisis. Today more than ever, imperialism is more directly engaged in a struggle with its real and final enemy—the world.2 The events of 11 September 2001 account for how an American president primed and poised to seize the opportunity could get away with removing all effective obstacles to the extension of United States power across the globe. But Bush’s wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, and covert campaigns of destabilization elsewhere tell a story much broader than the crisis invoked as their justification. That there is a much bigger picture to look at in trying to make sense of these wars and the claims made in their justification is most obvious in the case of Iraq. The Gulf War of 1991 and the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City during 1993 both preceded the current Iraqi occupation by more than a decade. The United States publicly justified that earlier war against Iraq based on only slightly less absurd and concocted rationalizations than the rationale offered for the present war, with

Crisis, Terror, and Tyranny

115

an intervening twelve years of crushing embargo and disarmament in search of a pretext.3 Both attacks on Iraq fit into the rationale of a larger campaign against no country or ideology or economic system but intimately connected with the fate of capitalism and the consolidation of American Empire. This larger campaign shows a pattern of political and economic intimidation and direct and indirect military intervention by the United States government on behalf of the interests of local elites and multinational corporations spanning the Twentieth Century. 4 A deplorable fact of United States history is that our government has relied upon terror, torture, and aggression to advance its perceived interests around the world for decades. The majority of these activities has been funded and promoted through the “back channels” of government and outsourced to paid and sometimes also trained mercenaries and “irregulars.” Accusations of torture and brutality by regular United States forces in the present wars are especially chilling because they renew recollections of reports of atrocities of twenty and thirty years ago, such as those associated with the “Dirty Wars” waged by United States allies like the Argentine, Guatemalan, and Chilean dictatorships, and more recently in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Instead of bringing democracy and the rule of law to other nations, United States forces are each day more directly involved in outright military repression than they have been since the Vietnam War. A jarring irony of the appearance of details of new United States atrocities in current wars in the press has been their juxtaposition with gruesome discoveries and legal proceedings concerning earlier campaigns emerging decades after their perpetration by United States’ friends and proxies in Indonesia, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil, El Salvador, and other places. To consider one example, in El Salvador, in 1981, the El Mozote massacre occurred. More than eight hundred unarmed peasant men, women, and children were murdered by United States-trained and equipped forces. Anthropological excavations completed in 2003 were found to be “highly consistent with witness testimony of the incident,” according to a member of the forensic team. Several of the victims had been shot several times at close range. The article reminds us that, “[a]t the time, Salvadoran officials denied reports of the massacre. . . . Hoping to avoid a Congressional halt to aid to the Salvadoran military, officials of the Reagan administration also dismissed the reports.”5 Today, a generation of American servicemen and women, mostly unaware of. or deceived about, the real aims pursued by the United States military and the range of illegal means employed in their pursuit, are being turned into accessories to torture and implicated in crimes before they are even able to recognize and understand what is being done by them and to them. Sadly, precedent exists for this, too. Two decades before Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons in the massacre at Halabja, as a friend and ally of the ad-

116

PETER AMATO

ministrations of Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush, part of the United States’ unapologetic and unpunished devastation of Vietnam was its sustained use over a period of years of the carcinogenic chemical defoliant Agent Orange. The use of chemical weapons and routine tactics of terror and intimidation against civilians in Vietnam are documented atrocities of our history about which the American people still harbor great anxiety and of which we remain largely in denial, as was apparent in how these issues were treated during the 2004 presidential campaign. Just as was the case in Vietnam, United States troops in Iraq and Afghanistan face deadly enemies in un-winnable wars. They are armed with contradictory orders designed to shield the policy makers from accountability. When inevitable abuses and atrocities occur, the soldiers are left to bear all the responsibility. We cannot write off atrocities such as those which occurred in the first years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as exceptions and isolated circumstances. The title of Andrew Sullivan’s review of books on the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib applies to a wide range of “atrocities in plain sight,” from Guantanamo Bay to Iraq and Afghanistan and suggests many more at innumerable unmarked and unnamed places where gruesome stories will remain untold and horrors un-photographed.6 We can be confident that more stories could be told than those we have already heard despite the government’s efforts to deny, minimize, and distance itself from its tactics. The United States Central Intelligence Agency’s now widely acknowledged practice of “rendition” serves to disown torture during interrogation. The ugliest and most indefensible practices of intimidation and torture are delegated to proxies in countries where their perpetrators need not fear legal challenges to their practices. According to a recent New York Times article: [T]he Bush Administration has refused to confirm [publicly] that the rendition program exists, saying only in response to questions about it that the United States did not hand over people to face torture . . . [But,] former government officials say that since the Sept. 11 attacks the CIA has flown 100 to 150 suspect terrorists from one foreign country to another, including Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan. Each of those countries has been identified by the State Department as habitually using torture in its prisons.7 Jane Mayer interviewed Dan Coleman, ex-United States Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, about the practice of rendition. He worked closely with the CIA on counter-terrorism cases for many years prior to 11 September 2001. The CIA, according to Coleman, “loved that these [suspects] would just disappear off the books, and never be heard of again.” As illegal and ineffective as this practice of outsourcing torture was prior to September 11, Coleman stated:

Crisis, Terror, and Tyranny

117

[A]fterward, it really went out of control. . . . Now instead of just sending people to third [party] countries, we’re holding them ourselves. We’re taking people, and keeping them in our own custody in third countries. That’s an enormous problem.8 The practice of rendition fits the larger pattern of rule by a government with no respect for democracy or the rule of law, willing to use Americans’ commitment to these values as a justification for apparent exceptions that characterize its rule. Reliable documentation indicates that the United States contributed hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and arms to direct a terrorist jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s.9 Twenty-five years later the United States finds itself steeped in the cauldron it helped create. Since 2001, the United States has been prosecuting a war in Afghanistan against former terrorist proxies, using the same ruthless and lawless approach it used to pay others to implement: Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Americans began torturing prisoners, and they have never really stopped. However much these words have about them the ring of accusation, they must now be accepted as fact. From Red Cross reports, Major General Antonio Teguba’s inquiry, James R. Schlesinger’s Pentagon-sanctioned commission and other government and independent investigations, we have in our possession hundreds of accounts of “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment—to use a phrase of the Red Cross, “tantamount to torture.”10 The war on terror is a war of terror. United States Army Criminal Investigative Reports recently obtained by Human Rights Watch unmistakably indicate that torture and intimidation tactics, sometimes with deadly results, were being used in Afghanistan as much as a year prior to the Abu Ghraib abuses.11 In one gruesome case, two prisoners at Bagram prison in Afghanistan were killed in United States custody in December 2002, as the result of sustained assaults implicating twenty-eight soldiers, reservists, and medical personnel. Although the Army’s initial reports said the two men had died of natural causes, it was later determined that the two had been chained to the ceiling of their cells and kicked and beaten by several American soldiers over several days. One of the two men had been struck repeatedly on the knees dozens of times over five days by military interrogators, “destroying his leg muscle tissue,” according to the Army report. It continued, “even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated.” But he and the second detainee who received similar treatment died within a few days. Medical personnel have been implicated in attempting to conceal the causes of these two men’s

118

PETER AMATO

deaths. John Sifton, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, was careful to point out that the Army’s report corroborated his group’s wider findings: Beatings and stress positions were widely used [at the United States operated prisons in Afghanistan], and that far from a few isolated cases, abuse at sites in Afghanistan was common in 2002, the rule more than the exception.12 These events all took place within the context of attempts by the Bush Administration to eliminate all obstacles to the exercise of executive power. For example, lawyers were trying to re-define “torture” in a series of internal legal memos drafted for the Justice Department and the White House as early as 2002. But even this blatant attempt to evade internationally recognized standards of conduct and international law may have been merely window dressing for the Administration’s true position—that they would not respect any restrictions on the President’s range of choices under any circumstances. John C. Yoo was a deputy assistant attorney general and participated in a group that produced legal memos concerning the Geneva Conventions and torture. As Mayer reports: Yoo . . . argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention against Torture when he was acting in the nation’s defense. . . . As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn’t have the power to “tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.” He continued, “It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.” If the President were to abuse his powers as Commanderin-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was impeachment. He went on to suggest that President Bush’s victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to [Bush’s selection for Attorney General of Alberto] Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was “proof that the debate is over.” He said, “The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.”13 During Bush’s second term, figures like Gonzales, who expressed the barest regard for the rule of law, were rewarded with greater influence over United States policy, even while the administration increasingly struck a more stridently ideological tone, justifying its contempt for democratic procedure as necessary to its crusade to spread democracy.14 The United States has offered the Iraqi elections of January 2005, carried out under military occupation and widely boycotted, as evidence of the success of an ongoing United States crusade to democratize the world. According to its propaganda, the United States has earned the enmity of terror-

Crisis, Terror, and Tyranny

119

ists because of this crusade. As Dan Coleman pointed out in his interview with Jane Mayer, even if spreading democracy were the sincere reason for sending troops anywhere, illegal, preemptive attacks featuring the abandonment of the rule of law and the widespread use of terrorist tactics and torture would be a misguided and futile way to do it: “Brutalization doesn’t work. We know that. Besides, you lose your soul.”15 My central point is that we are wrong to think of the wars the United States currently wages in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere as attempts, however misguided and inefficient, to bring about democracy. Instead, these wars are intended to extend the military, political, and economic reach of the corporate elite as far as possible. The main effect of United States foreign policy over the last one hundred years has been to increase the economic influence of multinational corporations on a global scale. Proponents see corporate involvement as a force for political stability and economic growth. But opponents regard this strategy as backward. They believe it makes democracy dependent on foreign corporate capital. The evidence strongly supports the position of the opponents of United States’ foreign policy. Considerable evidence from the history of the United States’ foreign involvements indicates that corporate profits have been a higher priority than democracy for our government. Not even the semblance of democracy is necessary for the United States to be a supportive and powerful ally of regimes that promise a stable environment conducive to the prerogatives of foreign capital. For example, when the elected regime of Mohammed Mossadegh began to take control of Iran’s oil revenues back from foreign oil companies, the United States assisted a coup d’etat in which the Shah of Iran was restored to power in 1954.16 After the elected regime of Salvador Allende tried to increase Chile’s control of decisions about its natural resources, the United States launched a campaign of economic and political subversion that culminated with a military coup that ousted Allende in 1973.17 Saddam Hussein understood the United States’ priorities well, and counted on them, as he carried out war crimes and atrocities against Iraqi Kurds and Shiites as a bastion of stability and a United States ally after the Iran-Iraq War during the 1980s. I think many believe the United States promotes authentic democracy primarily because they would like it to be true. What the government does propagate is a democratic veneer to cover and protect its autocratic and plutocratic client regimes. The United States government and military talk about democracy as if it could be installed like some massive social and political Operating System. If democracy is merely a matter of running the right procedures, then spreading it should be as easy as licensing and distributing a computer software product. The absurdity of this way of thinking about democracy becomes patent when we think the metaphor through:

120

PETER AMATO (1) Democracy from America™ works best in an environment prepared by months or years of political isolation, covert or overt economic destabilization, and sabotage designed to generate division and chaos in the host country. (2) If possible, prepare the installation by paying for the army’s support, or destroying it. (3) If the country is already democratic, Democracy from America™ is designed to seek out and destroy all remnants of incompatible earlier versions. (4) America will recruit dispossessed locals to take part in staged demonstrations and act as mercenaries and irregular forces to help “stabilize” and “secure” the environment necessary to install the product. (5) A buffer of ambitious local people will be provided to assist the installation in exchange for a small amount of personal power and profitable jobs in the bureaucracy. Their main role will be to facilitate the exposure of the country’s resources to the priorities of foreign capitalists and to sanctify the procedure by becoming rich on graft.18 (6) America will privatize all resources and assets held in common by the people or the previous government and make budgetary planning rely on policies dictated by the World Bank the International Monetary Fund, and other agencies of global capitalist integration. (7) Before running the elections program, America strongly advises that labor unions, civic institutions, and religious organizations, which might challenge corporate and military prerogatives, be infiltrated, intimidated, or destroyed. A tried-and-true method of accomplishing this is to announce a series of “democratic” meetings to discuss “Reclaiming Our Oil Revenues,” or “Our New Land Reform.” The brightest, most civicminded and courageous local people will turn up for these events. Having their names and addresses will make it easy for irregular forces to find their homes at night and make these obstacles to democracy disappear.19 (8) Once you have run the elections program, your installation is complete!

Government propaganda appears to assume that eliminating a tyrant and holding a questionable election could be sufficient to establish democracy. If such measures were enough to declare democracy imminent and freedom “on the march” as apologists for the United States wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have repeatedly asserted, a fair application of these criteria would force us to

Crisis, Terror, and Tyranny

121

reassess our actions with regard to nations like the Soviet Union and the Eastern European Soviet states. Most of these nations had regular elections and either toppled tyrants or suppressed fascistic and racist movements for decades. China, according to the criteria of holding regular elections and eliminating a tyranny, has been democratic since 1949, and Cuba suddenly leaps to the front of “the free world,” according to this line of reasoning. Most troubling are the many cases where revolutionary nationalist regimes threw out dictators through armed insurrection or elections far less problematic than those held in Iraq, but which the United States destabilized and attacked or overthrew anyway as threats to democratic freedoms.20 A democracy where effective power merely devolves to the highest bidders, or the highest bidders’ political and financial friends, is not democratic. When most people voice their support for the spread of democracy— believing falsely that this is the aim of United States policy—they have a false vision of what that goal means. A democratic society is one oriented toward the public good. All members have an equal voice in the aims, goals, and priorities of public life, pursued in a rational, dialogical way so much as possible. No ethnically, politically, or sexually defined group is directly or indirectly silenced, intimidated, or excluded from having an impact on public life and decisions that affect their lives. When they think about democracy, most Americans have these kinds of things in mind, which are not what the architects of United States policy envision. The United States government did more than any single force in the twentieth century to resist the democratic aspirations of people worldwide, and it continues to do so today. “Spreading democracy” is merely a euphemism for spreading capitalism on terms favorable to United States corporations oriented toward the investment and consumption preferences of elites. Capitalism can be spread by lies and force, democracy cannot. Spreading democracy has a powerful rhetorical force concerning the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many Americans think it sounds like the hoped-for rationale that allows them to sleep at night despite knowing they have sent two hundred thousand of their children to occupy other people’s nations and to brutalize others’ children with guns, bombs, and electric cattle prods. Bush is telling the truth when he explains that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere are justified in relation to their continuing long established and largely successful policies of the United States government with respect to the rest of the world. Bush is lying when he suggests that such policies’ intention is to spread or encourage democracy. If the administration were honest, I suppose they could admit that when they say they are interested in “democracy,” they mean they are trying to establish oligarchies run by local elites ultimately tied to the interests and profits of international capital, and that capital should be free to do as it pleases. They cannot admit this to the electorate, so they lie. But since the American people want to believe

122

PETER AMATO

their government’s foreign policy aims to spread democracy, and are surrounded by a media that effectively leaves the official views of government and corporate propaganda unchallenged, we tend to overlook the twisted logic and mental acrobatics required to hold such claims consistently in light of the facts. The public relations performances of the Bush Administration have already established a new low for a United States government’s willingness to consider facts as merely a resource to be exploited when they contribute to partisan plans, and as no hindrance at all when they do not.21 2. Socratic Suggestions Thinking about the relationships among democracy, truth, and power calls to mind familiar themes from many sources in the Western philosophical tradition, notably, Plato’s Republic. Although Plato’s thoughts on this nexus of ideas is open to a notoriously wide range of interpretation, most readers today regard Plato as an anti-democratic thinker.22 Many see Plato’s Republic as a forceful and direct repudiation of all forms of democracy. I regard fundamental aspects of Socrates’ discussion of the ideal state in Republic as offering illuminating and helpful insights for us to consider when trying to make sense of the relationships among democracy, truth, and power in our current time. Following Gerald Mara, I focus here on the ideas of Socrates, the character in Plato’s Republic, instead of those of Plato, the author of the dialogues. In this way, we can stress continuities with the Socrates of the earlier dialogues without forcing us to decide how much or how little Plato ultimately diverges from the ideas he attributes to his mentor. Also, I do not necessarily attribute the “Socratic” view of democracy unequivocally to Plato, either in the Republic, or in other, later works where the views of Socrates are notably less Plato’s concern. Often overlooked in excessively literal readings of Republic is the distinction between a kind of democracy Socrates is consistently and strongly critical of, and another that he does not directly describe, but which reflects a kind of Socratic ideal. The first is any kind of democracy in which the citizens reject the importance of the pursuit of truth and the “Good.” The citizens in such a state imagine that the Good is whatever they have “democratically” chosen, instead of seeing democracy as the activity of working through conversation and dialogue aimed at the truth in trying to identify the Good. The second corresponds to the Socratic ideal of critical philosophical conversation oriented toward the Good. The first is the kind of democracy Socrates saw in the Athens of his time, and that we encounter today in the United States. Academics often take well-known passages from the Republic on face value as evidence that Socrates endorses an anti-democratic state in which harsh censorship of the arts and garden-variety government propaganda exist. They often overlook that while Socrates criticizes the poets for using language without sufficient concern for truth or the Good, he defends the use of

Crisis, Terror, and Tyranny

123

propaganda on the exact same extremely strict principle. The government in each case would be one led by philosopher-rulers bred under intolerable, inhumane, and virtually impossible circumstances committed entirely to inculcating in them an unwavering and complete purity of philosophical purpose. Forms of censorship and propaganda were staples of political life in Athens, as they are today in America. Socrates often appears to defend such practices by saying that they would be justified if their executors were near-gods. Only a small sense of irony is needed to give such passages a more consistently Socratic interpretation—that the only legitimacy such practices might ever claim rests in their stemming from the will of a leader having been bred for nothing in life short of the all-out and only pursuit of the Good. Socrates sounds quite like he is making a criticism of real-world practices of censorship and propaganda than offering a defense of them. Socrates fundamentally equates justice with the strict pursuit of the Good. The difference between a merely fictive fiction and one that can be defended as a way toward the truth is the purity of philosophical purpose behind the one and not the other—not the number of votes the speaker won in an election, or a popularity contest. Socrates describes a state whose entire virtue resides in its orientation toward the Good, which requires that the state be led by the pursuit of wisdom and the love of truth above all else. Only that orientation could turn vices like those described—vices which lesser, real world regimes commit routinely and celebrate, into virtue. But the basic compromise that generates the discussion of the state in Republic from Book 2 forward is that this fundamental orientation is almost impossible to reconcile with motivations like the pursuit of wealth and luxury, and the expansion of the state’s power. Such motivations, Socrates tells us, subvert justice and force the state to strain in pursuit of its proper aims, generating tendencies toward crisis and dissolution. Since the speakers agree that, at present, the citizens of Athens care most for consumption, Socrates tells us, they will be incapable of achieving the ideal state. Democracy will be too good for them, and they will cause its devolution into the chaos of mob rule. The real philosophical question of the viability of democracy for Socrates, to this view, is not about a formal structure at all, but about the conduct of the souls of its citizens. If we imagine the soul as a kind of mini-state, its virtue, Socrates suggests, would depend on the harshest of disciplines designed to orient its ruling principle toward a lifetime spent in pursuit of the Good. The best soul is that ruled by a purity of philosophical purpose, guided by reason. To understand what the Socratic pursuit of philosophy might mean for democracy in this context, I think we must recognize where the limit of this parallel between the state and the soul is reached. One condition especially makes them different: The parts of the soul cannot associate with one another on equal terms, although the parts of the state can, and must, because each is ensouled. The possibility of real democracy begins where the literary and phi-

124

PETER AMATO

losophical parallel that structures most of the Republic ends. Once the interlocutors have agreed that the state they are conversing about is not ideal, but a state whose citizens are to one or another degree devoted to wealth, power, and luxury, they have removed the possibility of authentic democracy.23 The only topic of conversation left is only one or another form of non-democratic state more-or-less oriented toward the pursuit of the Good, in contrast with the orientations of most of their citizens, to whom they must sometimes lie for precisely this reason. An aristocracy like the one described in Republic wherein the rulers are strictly and rigorously concerned with the Good, Socrates suggests, would be preferable to a sham democracy in which the mob rules and might makes right. But a democratic ideal of the state emerges from the thought of how the souls who were guided by reason might organize themselves, especially if this is seen in a Socratic, fallibilistic, questioning light. The only appropriate form of association or organization for such citizens would be a dialogical one, oriented toward on-going self-critical rational examination in pursuit of the Good, modeled on philosophical dialogue and conversation. We could say that two republics are worth identifying in Republic. The “visible republic,” modeled on Athens, which merely espouses democracy and the virtues of heroes and gods, but whose citizens are committed to luxury, appetite, and the expansion of their power and pleasure, is one. Under such conditions, democratic form only legitimizes the rule of those powerful and unscrupulous enough to manipulate and control public discourse. By contrast, Socrates’ “invisible republic,” holds public discourse to the philosophical standard of aiming for the truth and the Good. The citizens in this republic take up Socrates’ most important challenge: to pursue the life of philosophical examination and conversation concerned with the truth. The political conditions for philosophy are, first, that the souls of citizens be organized in the “aristocratic” manner, guided by reason, as proposed in Book 4. Because of this, the state would not be regarded as a device to facilitate the unreasonable and unregulated rule of appetite by any group in the state, or by the state as a whole. The visible republic is the response of reason to a sham democracy, a kind of tyranny of those who have the power to stimulate and palliate the appetites of the largest number of citizens, which can never amount to anything beyond mob rule so long as the ability to conceptualize and pursue truth through public discourse is missing from it. Only the exercise of power by leaders able and willing to struggle with the citizens can move the state in the direction of virtue. Commentators often read Socrates’ statements as an argument that the forces that control the state have the right to lead their citizens undemocratically, even using deceptive and lying means. But it may be that Socrates hopes we will better see the ideal “invisible republic” by contrast with this unworkable “visible” one, in which our souls remain in their uncritical, disordered condition.

Crisis, Terror, and Tyranny

125

This is the main reason Socrates suggests comparing the orders of the state and soul in the first place—that without the fundamental orientation of the souls of citizens toward the Good, discussions of how the state and politics should be organized remain suspended in irony and aporia. If we are vacuous and uncritical in our personal encounters, and are basically liars and power mongers in our public and social lives with one another, then, yes, the only hope of virtue in the state is to have tyrants who are divine and whose power can be expected sometimes to be exercised in ways that appear arbitrary and deceptive to us. In short, Socrates suggests that Athens is much sicker on a much deeper level than a simple change in the constitution of the government can cure. Fixing what is wrong with Athens—and democracy— requires that we concern ourselves with the truth, and that we recognize that because none of us has it, free and rational discourse is necessary for its pursuit. In this way, we can recognize the dialogical social nature of the truth and its connection to a conception of a Good that also is public, and beyond the mere expression of personal or group appetites. Another way to put the point is that Socrates in the Republic establishes that a form of collective life based solely on the universal pursuit of personal interests is unlikely to result in anything but chaos unless these interests are effectively connected with a larger philosophical pursuit of truth and the Good. In Republic, the famously extreme and at times inconsistent measures necessary to envision the formation of a true “guardian” caste are the best a state might do given such conditions, backwards-engineering a way out of pure chaos. But even if we could succeed in establishing this ‘visible republic,’ it would remain in a state of constant siege, threatened by the tendency of most of its citizens to deteriorate again into simple mob rule because of the “feverish” tendencies of a population always ready to allow public life to facilitate the personal pursuit of property, power, and luxuries. A democracy not oriented toward the pursuit of the Good will not be a democracy because it will tend to serve the interests of the powerful, and, unless they are gods, the state will tend toward dissolution, crisis, terror, and tyranny. 3. Conclusions: Democracy, not Empire George W. Bush is not the first American president to direct United States forces in acts of aggression and atrocity and to invoke real or imagined crisis as a justification for them. Let us make him the last. The question I now ask is the one I have been most interested in answering as I write, one to which we all must return every day: What can be said and done toward accomplishing this goal? We have now in the United States a debased discourse in which truth has been detached from language. As George Orwell famously warned, such a separation allows the contradictory to be accepted as coherent, so that, in our powerless condition, our desire for democracy is used against us as a

126

PETER AMATO

justification for denying it to the world’s peoples. Our desire for peace, stability, and development is used to get us to support policies of aggressive war making and destabilization. Our hatred of terror and the arbitrary use of force is used to keep us from seeing that capitalism makes the defenseless and the poor its perpetual and final enemies, and that capitalists can only view the desire for justice as a threat to their way of life—because it is. We must revive the pursuit of democracy here and stop resisting and distorting it elsewhere. I think such a re-orientation of American politics would quickly make apparent to the American people who the real enemies of democracy, liberty, freedom, and humanity are. The handful of corporations that own the commercial media in this country effectively control the news, information, and entertainment the American people have access to. With little to compare to the images of world events provided to us, no wonder we are so susceptible to distortions, distractions, and outright lies. The American media increasingly reduces itself to a propaganda delivery system on behalf of the interests of corporate profit. In a true democracy, these interests would have to confront the interests of the people at large on equal terms, in the full light of day. This cannot occur without deep and radical reforms in the structure of the media. Taking active steps to promote authentic democracy in the world would be the only way to make our moral pronouncements about promoting democracy and freedom ring true. Immediately impeaching the current president of the United States and disavowing the illegal wars and war crimes committed in their prosecution would be a way to start. We should prosecute those responsible in a fair and aggressive manner for their crimes against the United States Constitution and against humanity. But the most important results I would like to draw from this discussion are the ones that point to a different future, in which calls for democracy in the rest of the world are not merely a cover designed to excuse the opposite. Significant debt relief and assistance to help other nations build or rebuild themselves in ways that reflect their decisions about development would be a start in promoting this. The United States government does not currently make, and has in the past avoided and obstructed, serious attempts to help people build authentic democracies in much of the world. Democracy is not having the privilege of your opulent elite to assist international capital in ransacking your local resources and ways of life. The real crisis humanity faces today is a world in poverty and chaos. But the world’s peoples are increasingly aware of themselves and their poverty and powerlessness. They will continue to resist and oppose the United States and its proxies and the “shocking and awful” forces of torture and terror we have now indelibly identified with the way of life we are defending. Although imperialism needs dispossessed enemies, they do not need us. For the masses of people who have nothing to lose, and no stake in the future as

Crisis, Terror, and Tyranny

127

we have defined it, war can seem to be a struggle that makes life meaningful. For we who are the richest and most powerful nation in the world, and who own the future, to make war on the weak and desperate by using the most desperate of means only signals our weakness to all and makes us moral pariahs. As Seymour Hersh has noted, earlier colonial and imperialist regimes had an easier time recruiting mercenaries to carry out their services than the United States has today. Increasingly, our children will have carry out the dirty tricks and dirty wars necessary to sustain corporate rule in the future. As a result, we will have to see in our mirrors and in the faces of our children the brutality inherent in the social arrangements we are each day more committed to imposing upon the world. I close with a final question motivated by hope, because I believe we do have reasons for optimism in the possibilities for a better future. This optimism starts with having the audacity to demand that democracy be democratic, and that it not fail to pursue the truth. Take a moment and imagine America acting on behalf of policies reached in debates and democratic struggles oriented toward the truth, and free of manipulation by corporate interests and narrow-minded politicians. Imagine policies designed to advance the causes of peace, freedom, and democracy in the world, instead of being devoted to protecting and increasing our levels of personal consumption. What if the strongest and most influential nation in the world did everything within its power to establish authentic democracy around the world?

NOTES 1. Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991). 2. Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature (New York: Zed Books, 2002); David Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), and Hardt and Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York, Penguin, 2004). 3. John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry, (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1998); and Sheldon Rampton and John C. Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2003). 4. Michael Sullivan, American Adventurism Abroad: 30 Invasions, Interventions, and Regime Changes since World War II (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Press, 2004); Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (New York: Henry Holt, 2006); and Steven Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2006).

128

PETER AMATO

5. Ian Urbina, “O.A.S. to Reopen Inquiry into Massacre in El Salvador in 1981,” New York Times, 8 March 2005; and Larry Rohter, “Buenos Aires Journal: A Struggle With Memories of Torture Down the Street,” New York Times, 8 March 2005. 6. Andrew Sullivan, “Atrocities in Plain Sight: A Review of The Abu Ghraib Investigations: The Official Report of the Independent Panel and Pentagon on the Shocking Prisoner Abuse in Iraq,” ed. Steven Strasser, Public Affairs, 2005; “Torture and Truth: America: Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror by Mark Danner, New York Review Books, 2005,” in The New York Times Book Review, 13 January 2005. 7. Douglas Jehl and David Johnston, “Rule Change Lets CIA Freely Send Suspects Abroad,” New York Times, 6 March 2005. 8. Jane Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture: The Secret History of America’s ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ Program,” The New Yorker Magazine (14 February 2005). 9. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York, Penguin, 2004). 10. Mark Danner, “We Are All Torturers Now,” New York Times, 6 January 2005. 11. Douglas Jehl, “Army Details Scale of Abuse in Afghan Jail,” New York Times, 12 March 2005. 12. Ibid. 13. Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture”; and Noah Leavitt, “Redefining Torture,” 24 August 2004 http://www.alter net.org/rights/19646 (accessed 21 June 2006). 14. Lisa Hajjar, “In the Penal Colony,” The Nation, 7 February 2005. 15. Mayer, “Outsourcing Torture.” 16. Stephen Kinzer, All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003). 17. James Petras and Morris Morley, The United States and Chile (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975) 18. Brian Knowlton, “U.S. Catalogs Rights Abuses by Iraqi Government in 2004,”New York Times, 1 March 2005. 19. Matthew Harwood, “Pinkertons at the CPA,” The Washington Monthly, April 2005. 20. Michael Sullivan, American Adventurism Abroad: 30 Invasions, Interventions, and Regime Changes since World War II (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Press, 2004). 21. David Barstow and Robin Stein, “Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News,” New York Times, 13 March 2005; and “White House Defends Video News Releases,” Associated Press, 14 March 2005. 22. Anton Hermann Chroust, Socrates, Man and Myth, the Two Socratic Apologies of Xenophon (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957); Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992); Gerald M. Mara, Socrates’ Discursive Democracy: Logos and Ergon in Platonic Political Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997); and S. Sara Monoson, Plato’s Democratic Entanglements, Athenian Politics, and the Practice of Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). 23. Plato, Republic, 372c-374e.

Part Three THE UNITED STATES’ “WAR ON TERRORISM”

This page intentionally left blank

Seven BUSH’S NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: A CRITIQUE OF UNITED STATES’ NEO-IMPERIALISM William C. Gay Many individuals, domestically and internationally, who strive for peace and justice are concerned about the new National Security Strategy issued by the George W. Bush Administration in September 2002.1 William Galston, for example, writes in a recent issue of Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly: A global strategy based on the new Bush doctrine of preemption means the end of the system of international institutions, laws, and norms that we have worked to build for more than a half a century. To his credit, Kissinger recognizes this; he labels Bush’s new approach “revolutionary” and declares, “Regime change as a goal for military intervention challenges the international system.”2 Does the new Bush doctrine end the international legal system? Is the new Bush doctrine making policy declarations that are unprecedented in United States history? While I share many of the concerns critics are expressing about the new national security strategy, I contend that the more serious issue is not the ways in which this strategy represents a departure from those of prior United States presidential administrations but the practices of the Bush Administration that appeal to this strategy. I will indicate how this new national security strategy does not represent much of a shift in policy, capability, or practice. Instead, Bush is using the strategy as an enabling device for a disturbing resurgence of United States global imperialism that serves interests opposed to the political rhetoric of the value of nations aiming for democracy and a market economy. I conclude by commenting on pursuing genuinely democratic values. While in a direct democracy this consent should involve a referendum on whether to go to war, in a representative democracy, such as the United States, the legislative representatives of the people should express this consent in a vote on a declaration of war supported by a majority of the total number of the legislators who vote. Otherwise, what the United States refers to as “bringing democracy” to a people will be more like a militarily enforced authoritarianism that too closely resembles old-style exploitive imperialism.

132

WILLIAM C. GAY

The National Security Strategy document lapses into fundamental logical fallacies. George W. Bush opens with a three page statement he signed on 17 September 2002, followed by thirty-one pages of text. By my count, Bush’s rhetoric-filled preface contains eight question-begging epithets and a minimum of four false statements. The following text contains twenty-two question-begging epithets, nine instances of special pleading, and over a dozen false statements. The document also has over a dozen references to weapons of mass destruction, but directly or indirectly refers to preemptive military strikes only five times. Some of the indirect references are euphemistic, including phrases such as “destroying the threat before it reaches our borders” and “proactive counter proliferation efforts” to designate a preemptive military attack.3 In this regard, members of the Bush Administration are like almost all political and military leaders in their misleading use of the language of war.4 If students submitted such highly fallacious work in an entry-level college course that stresses complying with basic principles of critical thinking, they would deserve a failing grade. Unfortunately, political documents, on which hinge the fate of the Earth, do not adhere to the standards of logic; so, I will forego giving primacy to a logical critique of this national security strategy. Instead, I will turn to an assessment based on a comparison of the Bush Administration with prior administrations. 1. Not a New Policy Many Americans think that the Bush Administration’s national security strategy represents a departure from past policy of the United States government. On the contrary, the national security strategy document admits: The United States long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. . . . To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.5 Since the beginning of the nuclear era, the United States has never had a “No First Use” policy. At a time when the threat of weapons of mass destruction is touted by the United States government, we need to remind ourselves that the first United States policy on nuclear weapons was a policy of use.6 Atom bombs were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, as a different but more effective means to execute the practice of “obliteration bombing” inaugurated in World War II, such as was done as done in Leipzig and Dresden, Germany.7 Obliteration bombing refers to the intentional targeting of civilians to instill terror. Then, throughout the Cold War, the United States maintained within NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) a pol-

Bush’s National Security Strategy

133

icy of first use of tactical nuclear weapons. The list goes on. We need to be careful about how terms such as weapons of mass destruction are used. Too often, we have a case of special pleading where our weapons are “defensive” and our opponents “threaten” us with weapons of mass destruction.8 My point here is descriptive, not prescriptive, with respect to the United States retaining the option of first use. From a moral perspective, this position has obvious limitations, as Steven Lee has so effectively shown. He notes: What are the moral issues raised by first use policy? It is, of course, a moral imperative to keep the risk of nuclear war, and the risk of aggression, as low as possible. Thus, a first use policy would be morally preferable only if it was a more effective deterrent. As the usability paradox suggests, however, the judgment of deterrence effectiveness must take account not only of the risk of aggression, but also the risk that a conventional war would escalate to the nuclear level.9 Unfortunately, just as political documents are not held to the standards of logic, even so policy statements are not restrained by principles of morality. 2. Not a New Capability Many Americans think that the Bush Administration’s national security strategy requires capabilities not possessed previously by the United States military. After all, we are fighting a supposed “war on terrorism” that requires different methods than conventional war. The national security strategy puts the issue of capability in the following way: The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy—whether a state or non-state actor—to impose its will on the United States, our allies, or our friends.10 I am afraid the capability that the United States needs in its war on terrorism requires a quantitative increase in killing, not a qualitative change in capability. As David Luban observes in another recent article in Philosophy and Public Affairs Quarterly: The aim of war is not to kill the enemy—killing the enemy is the means used to achieve the real end, which is to force capitulation. In the War on Terrorism, no capitulation is possible. That means that the real aim of the war is, quite simply, to kill or capture all of the terrorists—to keep on killing and killing, capturing and capturing, until they are all gone.11

134

WILLIAM C. GAY

The United States has long had the capability of killing and will continue to do so but without any defined end in sight. Assessing capability is different than assessing policy declarations. Since World War II, the United States has always had the capability of a first strike.12 As I observed in an earlier essay on the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative (popularly known as “Star Wars”): Assessment of systems should not occur in abstraction from their possible use. Since they can be used to help initiate attack or to help respond to attack . . . the designation . . . defensive introduces a vacuous contrast that can be quite deceptive. Just as the Defense Department is in charge of war, even so defensive systems are instruments of war.13 The United States already had the capability to kill terrorists and can now designate the execution of this capability as a war on terrorism. Likewise, since the United States government controls the politics of definition, the United States government can define the war on terrorism as defensive. Over a decade ago, Robert Holmes observed: The killing of children does not become less reprehensible because done from a plane, by soldiers trained in warfare and acting under orders from a duly elected leader than when done clandestinely by men acting on their own or in concert with a few conspirators.14 3. Not a New Practice Many Americans think that the Bush Administration’s national security strategy involves practices not undertaken by prior administrations. It initiates preemptive military action and does not restrain its actions based on a lack of United Nations support. The Bush Administration acts unilaterally. It overthrows governments and assassinates political figures in other countries. I do not believe that the Bush Administration is engaging in new practices. But critics could challenge my position because the Bush Administration is changing some definitions make its actions sound as if they are in line with practices of previous administrations. The new national security strategy states: Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat . . . We must adapt the concept of immanent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries.15

Bush’s National Security Strategy

135

Here, Bush admits a history of preemptive military strikes. The difference is that he wishes to expand the scope of what counts as a threat that warrants a preemptive attack. Despite this difference, the historical record plainly shows how the United States has regularly taken preemptive military action. Since World War II, almost every United States President has ordered initiation of military action. The United States has threatened and taken military action every decade for many decades. Recent examples include, among others, Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti. With the Bush Administration, we can add Afghanistan and Iraq to the list. While the mainstream media do not say much critical of these interventions, some professional groups have taken on this responsibility. Concerned Philosophers for Peace is an organization that has tried to expose and assess such military actions; over the last twenty years, it has published five issues of its newsletter on these military actions, and several individual articles and special sections in other issues of the newsletter.16 4. New Readiness to Intervene Militarily So, if the new national security strategy in many ways represents continuity in policy, capability, and practice, how is it different? I contend that the significant difference is in the new readiness of the Bush Administration to execute military interventions. The dissolution of the Soviet Union may have been a necessary condition for this shift, but it was not sufficient. The Bush Administration is dismantling the strategy of the deterrence wing of national security strategists and is implementing the strategy of the war-fighting wing of national security strategists. Not only in words but also in deeds, the Bush Administration has abandoned the self-deterrence that prevailed throughout the Cold War. The shift is not only expressed in policy but also in action. Only a decade ago, this position was neither policy nor practice, though it was advocated by the war-fighting wing of the strategic community who wanted a theory of victory not curtailed by self-deterrence.17 Anatol Rapoport, famous for his work in game theory, connects this position with the ways in which the strategic community altered revulsion to war in the latter half of the twentieth century. He states: Whatever inhibitions against the use of war as an instrument of national policy may have been generated by the “de-romantization” or “deglorification” of war throughout most of our century, these inhibitions were apparently neutralized by the concomitant “intellectualization” or “rationalization” of war.18 The Bush Administration’s national security strategy explicitly rejects deterrence as an adequate means of protecting the interests of the United States.

136

WILLIAM C. GAY

Section 5, titled “Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction,” makes the assertion: Deterrence based only upon the threat of retaliation is less likely to work against leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks, gambling with the lives of their people and the wealth of their nations.19 The approach of Bush’s war on terrorism is self-defeating. In David Luban’s article in Philosophy and Public Affairs Quarterly, he also observes: Of course, no one expects that terrorism will ever disappear completely. Everyone understands that new anti-American extremists, new terrorists, will always arise and always be available for recruitment and deployment. Everyone understands that even if al-Qaeda is destroyed or decapitated, other groups, with other leaders, will arise in its place. It follows, then, that the War on Terrorism will be a war that can only be abandoned, never concluded. The War has no natural resting point, no moment of victory or finality. It requires a mission of killing and capturing, in territories all over the globe, that will go on in perpetuity. It follows as well that the suspension of human rights implicit in the hybrid war-law model is not temporary but permanent.20 Continuing loss of lives will be coupled with continuing loss of human rights. The Bush Administration places its version of national security above the traditional understanding of a democratic society as one in which basic human rights are respected and protected. In his article on “Human Rights,” David Boersema notes the both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States “incorporated the concept of natural rights into the framework of governmental systems.”21 In a related article, Ioanna Kuçuradi contends that human rights articulate “ethical principles for the treatment of individuals” and “ethical demands” for the laws and policies of social organizations and governments.22 Kuçuradi, like Boersema, connects the giving prominence to human rights with the emergence of the United Nations. Of particular importance in this regard is the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” that was passed by the United Nations in 1948.23 Subsequent conventions have made additional and more explicit assertions about civil and political rights (1966), economic, social, and cultural rights (1966), and women’s rights (1979). Alison Dundes Renteln echoes these views in her prior and even more extensive article on human rights. In her article, she treats explicitly the applicability of human rights even to military interventions, wars, and civil conflicts.24 Since the United States has been a signatory to these declarations and conventions,

Bush’s National Security Strategy

137

when the Bush Administration fails to follow these fundamental principles of human rights in its “war on terrorism,” democratic values are eroded. 5. Conclusion: Neo-Imperialism without the Ring of Gyges In the Republic, Plato uses the story of the Ring of Gyges to show how the lure of invisibility illustrates the desire to do wrong with impunity. Plato thinks that, since we lack such a ring, we settle for a situation intermediate between the extreme of ourselves being able to do wrong with impunity and ourselves suffering wrong with no means of redress.25 If an individual were strong enough, a ring of Gyges would be unnecessary. One could take what one wants, one could do what one wants, and no one could do anything about it. This scenario is quite similar to the one described by Thomas Hobbes in the Leviathan. For Hobbes, in the state of nature, such a situation leads to the “war of all against all.”26 We know well that under his system, once nations form, supposedly to protect the lives of their citizens, the different nations stand relative to one another in the same relation as did individuals in a state of nature. Instead of a community of nations, we have nation-states standing in a potential, if not actual, war of all against all. One of the purposes of establishing a common authority with the capability of enforcing its dictates is to end the state of war. Within their borders, nation-states have long been able, many times for decades or even centuries, to achieve such peace (negative though it often is). Internationally, no common authority has yet to be forged by means of the consent of nations, though many leaders have worked to strengthen the United Nations in the hope that it might some day function in this manner. The other route is imposition. Imposition of such authority with the capability of enforcement is non-democratic. The usual term in political philosophy and political science for the nondemocratic pursuit of global hegemony is imperialism. The Bush Administration is implementing a neo-imperialism that does not listen to dissenting voice abroad or even at home and that acts unilaterally when other nations do not join forces with the United States. The national security strategy even states, “[w]e will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively.”27 The Bush Administration may at times use clandestine operations in a manner analogous to the possibilities offered by the ring of Gyges. The Bush Administration is quite prepared to pursue its interest in full public view because it feels confident that it can take military actions with impunity. No more “speak softly and carry a big stick,” but “speak loudly and swing that big stick.” Or, as Robert Kaplan puts it in his book Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, which reads like a manifesto for the Bush doctrine, “In the twenty-first century, . . . we will initiate hostilities . . . and we will justify it morally after the fact.”28

138

WILLIAM C. GAY

If American citizens want to promote democracy around the world, instead of seeking to impose democracy, then regime change may need to begin at home. While we should not exploit the absence of self-deterrence that the current mono-polar world facilitates, we likewise do not want to return to the self-deterrence that was attained at the price of the “balance of terror” during the bi-polar Cold War. That form of self-deterrence was not only insufficient but also dangerous. Instead, what we need is a multi-polar world that promotes not only mutual deterrence but also, and maybe for the first time, real democracy determining United States foreign policy and international relations.29 True democracy would require that the civilian population control foreign policy and international relations in some meaningful way. Such a world could then attain the prospect that neither the United States nor any other country would engage in unilateral military intervention, either overt or covert. As Immanuel Kant realized over two centuries ago, whenever the consent of citizens is not necessary for waging war, genuine peace is not possible. He supported the formation of “republican states,” commonly referred to as democratic nations.30 In such a world, neither the United States nor any other country would any longer engage in the economic domination and exploitation of other nations.31 The achievement of real democracy would truly usher in a new national security strategy and a new world order worthy of these titles.

NOTES 1. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” 17 September 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html (accessed 25 May 2006). 2. William A. Galston, “The Perils of Preemptive War,” Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly, 22:4 (Fall 2002), p. 3. 3. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, pp. 6, 14. 4. Cf. William C. Gay, “The Language of War and Peace,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, vol. 2, ed. Lester Kurtz (San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, 1999), pp. 303–312. 5. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, p. 15. 6. William C. Gay and Michael A. Pearson, The Nuclear Arms Race (Chicago, Ill.: American Library Association, 1987), p. 42. 7. John C. Ford, “The Morality of Obliteration Bombing,” War and Morality, ed. Richard A. Wasserstrom (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1970). 8. William C. Gay, “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Global Studies Encyclopedia, eds. Ivan I. Mazour, Alexander Nikolaevich Chumakov, and William C. Gay, (Moscow: Raduga, 2003), p. 537. 9. Steven Lee, “First Use,” An Encyclopedia of War and Ethics, ed. Donald A. Wells (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 144. 10. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, p. 30. 11. David Luban, “The War on Terrorism and Human Rights,” Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly, 22:3 (Summer 2002), p. 13.

Bush’s National Security Strategy

139

12. Gay and Pearson, The Nuclear Arms Race, p. 41. 13. William C. Gay, “Star Wars and the Language of Defense,” Just War, Nonviolence and Nuclear Deterrence: Philosophers on War and Peace, eds. Duane L. Cady and Richard Werner (Wakefield, N.H.: Longwood Academic, 1991), p. 250. 14. Robert Holmes, “Terrorism and Violence: A Moral Perspective,” Issues in War and Peace: Philosophical Inquiries, eds. Joseph C. Kunkel and Kenneth H. Klein (Wolfeboro, N.H.: Longwood Academic, 1989), p. 119. 15. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, p. 15. 16. “Special Issue on The War against Iraq,” Concerned Philosophers for Peace Newsletter, 11:1 (Spring 1991), pp. 1–16; “Special Issue on Bosnia and Somalia,” Concerned Philosophers for Peace Newsletter, 13:1 (Spring 1993), pp. 1–20; “Special Issue on Haiti,” Concerned Philosophers for Peace Newsletter, 14:1 (Fall 1994), pp. 1–20; “Special Section on Kosovo,” Concerned Philosophers for Peace Newsletter, 192 (Fall 1999), pp. 13–16; “Special Double Issue on Terrorism and War in the 21st Century,” Concerned Philosophers for Peace Newsletter, 21:1-2 (Fall and Spring 2001), pp. 1–40; and “Special Double Issue on Assessing War against Iraq and Terrorism,” Concerned Philosophers For Peace Newsletter, 14:1 (Fall and Spring 2002), pp. 1–40. 17. Colin Gray, “Nuclear Strategy: A Case for a Theory of Victory,” International Security, 4 (Summer 1979); cf. Strategic Studies and Public Policy: The American Experience (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982). 18. Anatol Rapoport, “Decision Theory and Game Theory,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, vol. 1, ed. Lester Kurtz (San Diego: Academic Press, 1999), p. 548. 19. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, p. 15. 20. Luban, “The War on Terrorism and Human Rights,” pp. 13–14. 21. David Boersema, “Human Rights,” Global Studies Encyclopedia, pp. 240– 245, esp. 244. 22. Ionna Kuçuradi, “Human Rights, from the Philosophical Point of View,” Global Studies Encyclopedia, pp. 245–249, esp. 245. 23. United Nations, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948, http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html (accessed 26 May 2006). 24. Alison Dundes Renteln, “Human Rights,” Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, vol. 2, pp. 167–178. 25. Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Francis MacDonald Cornford (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945). 26. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 27. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, p. 6. 28. Robert D. Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (New York: Random House, 2002), pp. 130–131. 29. Tatiana A. Alekseeva, “Living in the World of a ‘Unipolar System’: Alternatives and Trends,” Democracy and the Quest for Justice: Russian and American Perspectives, eds. William C. Gay and Tatiana A. Alekseeva (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 9–20.

140

WILLIAM C. GAY

30. Immanuel Kant, “Zum ewigen Frieden,” Kants Leben und Werke, Band 8, Abhandlungen nach 1781 (Berlin: n.p., 1923), p. 349; English tran., Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1983), p. 112. 31. William C. Gay, “Economic Democracy: The Final Frontier,” Democracy and the Quest for Justice, pp. 121–136.

Eight WOULD THE UNITED STATES DOCTRINE OF PREVENTIVE WAR BE JUSTIFIED AS A UNITED NATIONS DOCTRINE? Harry van der Linden On the same day, 23 September 2003, that President George W. Bush defended his Iraq policy to the General Assembly of the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan also spoke to the Assembly. Annan reiterated his opposition to the view that states may independently be justified in using military force “preemptively” to avoid the dangers posed by the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) among states and terrorists, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. He added: But it is not enough to denounce unilateralism, unless we also face up squarely to the concerns that make some States feel uniquely vulnerable, since it is those concerns that drive them to take unilateral action. We must show that those concerns can, and will, be addressed effectively through collective action.1 Accordingly, Annan proposed that the members of the United Nations Security Council “may need to begin a discussion on the criteria for an early authorization of coercive measures to address some types of threats—for instance, terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction.” The Secretary-General promised to establish a “high-level panel of eminent personalities” with the task of addressing the new security concerns. He requested the panel examine standards for collective humanitarian intervention and consider how to reform the United Nations and make the Security Council more representative. Emphasizing the importance of these issues, Annan said, “Excellencies, we have come to a fork in the road. This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the United Nations was founded.”2 While Annan did not mention the United States by name, he obviously attacked the idea of unilateral preemptive war as defended in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS), issued in September 2002 and implemented by the Bush Administration in its war against Iraq.3 President Bush had previously suggested the need for preemptive war in the post-11 September 2001 world in his State of the Union Address of 2002 and in his graduation speech at West Point in June of the same year.

142

HARRY VAN DER LINDEN

Preemptive war as construed by the Bush Administration is more accurately called “preventive war.” Many commentators and scholars of international relations have criticized the Bush doctrine of “preemptive” war, but have paid little attention to the issue raised by Annan’s speech. (One exception is John W. Lango’s “Preventive Wars, Just War Principles, and the United Nations,” upon which I commented at the Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in 2003.4) Would a doctrine of preventive war to meet the threats posed by WMD be morally defensible as a collective doctrine? Should the Security Council have the authority to initiate preventive wars in response to emerging WMD threats? My aim here is to show that even though some of the main objections to unilateral preventive war are not, or are to a lesser degree, applicable to collective preventive war, it still would be a mistake for the United Nations to adopt this doctrine. I will defend my view on basis of the just war tradition. I will first articulate and assess the Bush doctrine of preventive war, and discuss how United Nations-authorized preventive war is less objectionable than its unilateralist variant. 1. The Bush Doctrine of Preventive War The NSS argues that we have arrived at a historical turning point in that the security tasks of the government have fundamentally changed. In an apparent reference to 11 September 2001, President Bush states in the Introduction to NSS that in the past only enemies with “great armies and great industrial capabilities” were able to threaten the national security of the United States, whereas now “shadowy networks of individuals can bring great chaos and suffering to our shores for less than it costs to purchase a single tank.” Strictly speaking, the possibility described by the NSS that terrorists would “turn the power of modern technologies against us” existed long before 11 September. 11 September only vividly and tragically brought this possibility to the awareness of the public. The security policy statement continues to point out that the “gravest danger” facing the United States is that “our enemies” would acquire WMD. These enemies include “terrorists of global reach,” who commit “premeditated, politically motivated violence . . . against innocents,” and a small number of “rogue states” that emerged in the 1990s. What characterizes these states is that they sponsor global terrorism, seek to acquire WMD and may make them available to terrorist groups that they harbor or sponsor, reject the United States and its liberal values, brutalize their people, and have engaged in aggressive conduct and even war against their neighbors.5 The NSS offers a variety of broad strategies of dealing with the new security concerns, including reducing poverty through free trade and markets, promoting democracy and the rule of law, strengthening alliances against terrorism,

U.S. Doctrine of Preventive War Justified as a UN Doctrine?

143

and preventing regional conflicts through negotiation. It also seeks to more effectively track and intercept the export or traffic of WMD materials and knowledge. Most controversially, it argues that a new military response is necessary. Noting that “traditional concepts of deterrence” will not work against global terrorists who “seek martyrdom in death” and rogue states that sponsor them, the NSS maintains that the old notion of preemption must be adapted to the new security situation of the United States. In the past, international law allowed a first strike when an attack was imminent. Unambiguous measures of when a threat became imminent were patent: for example, troops would mobilize at the border or the air force would start preparing for attack. Today, we must expect that attacks against the United States by rogue states and terrorists will be nonconventional, sudden, undertaken with easily concealed weapons, and potentially disastrous when WMD are used. The NSS concludes: The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction—and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack (emphasis added). To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.6 The NSS continues, when the “enemies of civilization” seek WMD, the United States “cannot remain idle while dangers gather.” The adaptation of the traditional preemption doctrine, then, involves that the Bush Administration has embraced what is more accurately called a doctrine of preventive war, which holds that to attack is just, even if when and where a great threat will materialize is doubtful. The doctrine is also unilateralist. The NSS states, “we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right to selfdefense by acting preemptively against . . . terrorists [and] by convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities [of not supporting terrorists in any way].”7 The crucial difference between preemption and prevention lies in the certainty and immediacy of the threat. As put in a recent discussion of the Bush security doctrine, “preemption . . . is nothing more than a quick draw” (in a gun fight), while “preventive war is based on the concept that war is inevitable, and that it is better to fight now while the costs are low than later when the costs are high.”8 In the case of preventive war, the perception of the inevitability of war might be wrong and contribute to its occurrence, while in the case of preemption the threat is undeniably present, ready to be unleashed, and only force can meet it. A classic example of a preventive strike is Israel’s bombing in 1981 of an Iraqi nuclear plant under construction at Osiraq. On the assumption that Israel had convincing evidence that Egypt would attack, which is nowadays no longer held to be the case, its first strike against Egypt in the Six Day War of 1967 fits the notion of preemption.

144

HARRY VAN DER LINDEN

In the “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction,” published in December 2002, the Bush Administration also embraces preventive war, calling it preemptive war. Again, since deterrence against terrorists and their state sponsors may not be successful, “preemptive measures” may be necessary. This requires the military to have “capabilities to detect and destroy an adversary’s WMD assets before these weapons are used.”9 Recent claims made by the Bush Administration about the threats posed by Syria and Iran, and how these threats may be met by military force, illustrate that the concept of preventive war guides this administration. The concept was also pivotal in the Bush Administration official defense of its war against Iraq. The NSS appears to justify using preventive military force against a variety of poorly distinguished targets. They include (1) states that are in the process of acquiring or further developing WMD and fail to respect broadly recognized international norms, (2) states that might enable terrorist organizations to acquire WMD in the near future, (3) states that harbor or support terrorists of global reach, (4) global terrorists that seek to develop WMD, and (5) global terrorists. What is confusing about the account of preventive war in the NSS is that only (1) and possibly (2), depending on its more detailed specification, involve preventive military force. Military force in (4) and (5) is defensive. This is so because the terrorists that are targeted by the Bush doctrine declared war on the United States and its allies many years prior to 11 September 2001. Seeking to prevent our enemies from harming us is not a preventive act if hostilities already have been declared.10 The William J. Clinton administration was already involved against the war on global terrorism. The term “war” is a misnomer here in that combating terrorism is mainly a matter of intelligence work, legal measures, and police work; it may involve limited military strikes, but those do not add up to war as commonly understood, as conflict involving the use of military force on a large scale, typically between states. Case (3) involves extending military force directed against the terrorists to the state that harbors or protects them. This would still be an instance of defensive military force, but we will see that it would seldom be justified because the harm it would bring about would likely be disproportionate to its possible benefits. Prior United States presidential administrations have recognized this point, but not the Bush Administration: the NSS boldly asserts, “We make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them.” This suggests that war may be rightfully waged at any time against states that have global terrorists on their territory. The concept of terrorists of global reach is not well-defined (the only example given is al-Qaeda), leaving open the possibility that the Bush Administration aims to justify that the United States has the right to wage war at any moment against states of its choosing that are linked to terrorism in general. The war against terrorism is a

U.S. Doctrine of Preventive War Justified as a UN Doctrine?

145

war without a definite end because, as the NSS declares, progress will only come “through the persistent accumulation of successes.”11 I am mainly concerned here about Bush’s security doctrine as a preventive war doctrine, directly aiming at political regime change through military force to avoid expected future WMD threats. This is also what the NSS emphasizes most and how Annan appears to interpret the Bush doctrine. I assume that Annan also wishes the Security Council to consider adopting only a United Nations version of this more narrowly interpreted Bush doctrine, even though he gives the misleading example of early United Nations authorization of force against global terrorists with WMD. On any reasonable account of self-defense, we may use multilateral and even unilateral force against terrorists in possession of such weapons. States that actively protect these terrorists may become legitimate targets of a self-defensive war if it is the only way to meet the terrorist WMD threat. The real controversial issue is whether states may wage preventive war against states that might in the future provide terrorists with these weapons. The war against Iraq shows how unilateral preventive war can easily be a cover for aggression. The Bush Administration did not heed its warning in the NSS against the danger that “nations use preemption as a pretext for aggression.”12 This war was not preventive, humanitarian, or self-defensive, leaving the option that it was aggressive. Iraq under pressure allowed inspections of its suspected WMD sites, had no WMD that posed a threat to its neighbors (let alone the United States), was not recently trying to develop these weapons on a large scale, lacked the resources for doing so, and had proven to be responsive to deterrence. The humanitarian case for war was also weak in that Saddam Hussein’s oppressive and brutal regime in recent years had no genocidal policies against its people, while any argument of reactive self-defense was implausible in that Iraq did not harbor many terrorists with declared aggressive intentions toward the United States. Incompetence of intelligence or the culpable failure to seek or accept the relevant facts might factor into the act of aggression against Iraq, but growing evidence indicates that the United States deliberately and intentionally pursued war for the sake of serving the economic and geopolitical interests of the United States. 13 The imperial and hegemonic rhetoric of the NSS accentuates the worry that the doctrine of preventive war may function as a pretext for aggression. It proclaims that a “single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise,” exists and commits the United States to bring this model “to every corner of the world.”14 The Bush security statement holds that the realization of this goal would bring lasting security. In the meantime, national interest and the promotion of security require that “we must build and maintain our defenses beyond challenge,” “dissuade future

146

HARRY VAN DER LINDEN

military competition,” and create new “bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia.”15 This process of creating new military posts is well on its way in Eastern Europe, the Caspian Sea region, and the Persian Gulf region. No wonder, then, that the global community has reacted with distrust and disapproval of the Bush preventive war doctrine, a tool of expanding and maintaining United States hegemony. The situation is made worse by the NSS leaving the possibility open that the war on terrorism is a preventive war without a definite end and one that may be waged against all states harboring or sponsoring terrorism. The doctrine of unilateral preventive war has a strong destabilizing effect. As Annan put it in his recent speech to the General Assembly, if all nations would “reserve the right to act unilaterally,” we might see “a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force.” The problem is not only that there would be an increase in aggressive wars under the cloak of prevention, but also that nations sincerely might have distorted perceptions of when such wars might be justified. Longstanding conflicts between nations lead to distorted perceptions of the other nation’s aims and intentions, and a unilateralist universe has no requirement that we seek to correct such perceptions through international dialogue. The result may be especially disastrous in the case of conflicts between nations with WMD capabilities. A final objection to the Bush doctrine is that it violates international law. The NSS obscures this fact by equating preemptive war and preventive war and then by arguing that traditional international law allows the first. Preventive war has always been a violation of customary international law, while with the adoption of the United Nations Charter even unilateral preemptive war may no longer be legal. Its article 51 allows unilateral military force only in the case of “self-defense [against] an armed attack.” But perhaps a case can be made that since the Charter does not explicitly reject prior customary international law on this score it may be assumed that self-defense includes narrowly defined anticipatory self-defense—preemption in the strict sense—and is not limited to reactive self-defense only. 2. The Lesser Evil of a Collective Preventive War Doctrine These objections to a doctrine of preventive war are primarily objections to unilateral resort to preventive war and to the United States in particular acting on this principle. It leaves the possibility open that United Nations authorized— collective or multilateral—preventive war against states might be justified as a response to future WMD threats. United Nations-authorized preventive war would reduce the worries of escalation and of preventive war as pretext for aggression. Once the decision to initiate preventive war is placed in the hands of the Security Council ulterior motives or distorted perceptions are less likely to determine the decision making process because of the impact of dialogic in-

U.S. Doctrine of Preventive War Justified as a UN Doctrine?

147

teraction. As proponents of discourse ethics and deliberative democracy have shown, through dialogic interaction, limited and particular perspectives can be overcome, so that the parties in dialogue arrive at a more generalized and impartial understanding of what decision or policy best takes into account the interests of all.16 Here Annan’s call for an expanded and more representative Security Council is relevant in that the logic of deliberation is that its just outcome requires all those affected be involved in the dialogic process. A further requirement is that all participants should be on equal footing to prevent the phenomenon that vulnerable parties are silenced or unduly influenced in their views by more powerful parties. In this regard, the economic and political dominance of the United States, and more broadly that of the North (the developed world), poses an obstacle to fair decision making. Still, as the Security Council’s deliberations about the United States push for war on Iraq show, this body can come to a greater degree of objectivity than is true of any individual state, such as the United States. These same deliberations also suggest that a doctrine of United Nations-authorized preventive war would have a lesser risk of expanding and strengthening American hegemony than its unilateralist variant. If the Security Council had had its way, the United States would not have succeeded in expanding its military presence in the Middle East. The United Nations Charter does not preclude that the Security Council authorizes preventive war, solving the issue of international law. Chapter VII of the Charter discusses how the Security Council may respond to “threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression.” The spread of WMD may be classified as a threat to the peace. Article 41 calls for nonmilitary solutions, but Article 42 stipulates that when these have failed an armed response by member states under the authority of the Security Council may be warranted. Accordingly, on the assumption that non-military solutions would fail to eliminate the treat of nations with aggressive designs acquiring WMD or enabling terrorists to obtain WMD, the Security Council has the right to authorize preventive war. 3. Objections to a United Nations Doctrine of Preventive War Should we conclude then with some scholars of international relations and security, such as Joseph Nye, that the United Nations should embrace the concept of preventive war in response to the emerging danger of WMD falling into the wrong hands?17 Critics from both the left and right have objected to unilateral preventive war on basis of the principle that the world community should uphold the sovereignty of states if they are not engaged in acts of aggression toward other states. This principle has been the dominant policy of the

148

HARRY VAN DER LINDEN

United Nations since its inception and precludes Security Council authorization of preventive war. The international community increasingly accepting humanitarian intervention within the international community shows that they have called the principle into question. Annan’s request that the panel investigating preventive war also studies the norms of collective humanitarian intervention reflects his view that claims of sovereignty lose their force once states inflict gross human rights violations on their people.18 In defense of Annan’s view, what warrants the treatment of the state as a sovereign entity is that the state approximates the just state as an expression of the will of the people. Not the state as a mere legal order or instrument of power, but the state as the collective self-determination of the people, deserves moral recognition. Humanitarian emergencies typically involve struggles of self-determination suppressed by states. The state no longer provides many citizens even the minimal condition of self-determination, the protection of human life itself, and so the state loses its legitimacy and normative claim to sovereignty. To value sovereignty as such is to value a shield behind which brutal oppression can triumph.19 A United Nations doctrine of preventive war would mean taking an additional step beyond the traditional standard of when sovereignty must be upheld. Considerations of “just cause” show that we should not take this additional step. Following traditional just war theory, a war has a just cause only as a response to some definite wrong. In the words of Thomas Aquinas, “those against whom the war is waged deserve such a response because of some offense on their part.”20 During the period of the colonization of the Americas, Francisco de Vitoria made the same point, “the sole and only just cause for waging war is when harm has been inflicted.”21 A state may engage in war in response to an attack, but the state may not go to war to achieve some perceived good, such as conversion, “civilizing” people, and, in our time, promoting democracy. Humanitarian intervention has a just cause as a response to the wrong of massive human rights violations. The aim is to prevent the wrong from occurring in its full scale, but a military intervention is only justified if a history of rights violations exists and other undeniable evidence exists that indicates a humanitarian disaster is about to happen. Including narrowly defined anticipatory self-defense as a just cause is more problematic. The wrong here is mostly about to happen, and we must acknowledge that those who consider a preemptive strike may be mistaken about the intentions and aims of the enemy nation. If so, they would unleash the harms of war without being a victim of an unavoidable harm, making the war initiative an act of aggression. The risk of this injustice becomes intolerably large in the case of preventive war against other nations seeking to acquire WMD.

U.S. Doctrine of Preventive War Justified as a UN Doctrine?

149

Consider nuclear weapons. No doubt, proliferation of nuclear weapons increases tension in international affairs, but the harm done by any given state merely seeking to acquire or obtain these weapons is too diffuse and too limited to count as a just cause. So it must be argued, for example, that dictatorial and repressive regimes with suspected aggressive designs cannot be entrusted with these weapons, while their possession by established democracies is not a serious threat. This standard, though, is less than convincing since the United States is the only state with a track record of using nuclear weapons. It also has a history of threatening to use these weapons against both its nuclear and non-nuclear enemies. The Bush Administration publicly has reserved the right to use nuclear weapons against any nation attacking the United States or its allies with chemical or biological weapons, while according to its classified but leaked Nuclear Posture Review of January 2002, it also might be prepared to use these weapons to prevent such attacks. Partly for this second purpose is the Bush Administration interested in developing new and smaller nuclear weapons, increasing the likelihood of their use. 22 We could alternatively argue that since almost all states have signed the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT), entered into force in 1970, it would be a definite wrong for most states to acquire these weapons. A mere violation of this treaty, or a withdrawal from the treaty, is not a wrong of such proportion that it would be a just cause for war. It would be morally untenable to militarily enforce nonproliferation as long as the NPT parties in possession of nuclear weapons ignore article 6 of this treaty, committing them: to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.23 We should support this article because people around the world lack knowledge about the conditions that may trigger a nuclear war, so to accept the status quo of a limited number of nations having possession of nuclear weapons would be a mistake. Only the total abolition of nuclear weapons could provide us with real assurance that no nation will use these weapons. We can make similar observations concerning biological and chemical weapons. The world community is, in theory, committed to their abolition. But notwithstanding the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) entered into force in 1975, and the new Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) entered into force in 1997, a dozen or so counties that are known or strongly suspected to have programs of developing or actively maintaining biological or chemical weapons still exist, including China, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Israel, and North Korea.24

150

HARRY VAN DER LINDEN

Again, mere acquisition is not a sufficient wrong for war, and we do not know which nations’ development of these weapons is undeniably a great threat. What further complicates the picture is that several nations committed to destroying their chemical weapons (required by the CWC) still have huge stockpiles of them and that research programs focused on defense against biological weapons (permitted by the BTWC) can easily turn into programs with offensive purposes. Intelligence especially with regard to biological weapons is difficult and unreliable. International teams monitoring compliance would be helpful, but the Bush Administration has rejected international efforts to add an inspection regime to the BTWC.25 In sum, the justification of preventive war is based on the flawed notion that we can know which nations will inevitably commit a great wrong to other nations once they have acquired WMD. Terms like “rogue nations” and “axis of evil” have little descriptive and predictive value, but they make it easier, if it turns out that a preventive war was based on a false premise, to fall back on what has been called “altruistic permissivism” with regard to the use of military force.26 This is the view that war may be waged for the good of the people of the other nation. The case of Iraq is instructive. Now that WMD have not been found, some moral reason has to be provided for causing thousands of deaths and wounded. The most common rationale offered for the war and the occupation is that it will bring democracy, freedom, and higher living standards to people. But the people were never asked whether they wanted to pay the price for these still elusive benefits. Seldom noted, this reasoning blatantly contradicts the just war tradition and the main tenet of international law concerning resort to military force: war is defensible only to right a great wrong, not to bring about some good. Once we accept the second standard, no significant restrictions on initiating war remain. After all, regime change may be desirable in many, if not most, countries across the globe. The preventive war doctrine is, to some extent, self-defeating, even if adopted by the United Nations instead of unilaterally, in that nations may come to the decision to acquire WMD as deterrence against counter-proliferation wars. Another problem with United Nations authorization of preventive war is that the current composition of the Security Council is such that its decisions will be selective, even if more impartial than unilateral decisions. The Council would veto preventive war against Israel or China, and obtaining its authorization for a preventive war against North Korea would be improbable. But envisioning that the Security Council would approve of war against Iran or Syria is easy. No impartial standard that warrants such outcomes exists. Power politics would significantly determine preventive war authorization instead of threat assessment alone. Perhaps the problem would become manageable once the United Nations authorization of military force would become more democratic and less subject to the national interests of the permanent members of the Security Council, but it would be a mistake to argue for a

U.S. Doctrine of Preventive War Justified as a UN Doctrine?

151

United Nations preventive war doctrine now on the basis of what the United Nations might become. Considering the great potential harm nations with WMD might inflict on other countries, inconsistent action, action with the risk of a wrong assessment of the threat posed by the enemy, or even action that might contribute to proliferation, might appear to be better than no action at all. In response, to act justly is crucial, and the risk of harm that we must accept to avoid inflicting a great wrong is extremely high. That we initiate war, with its great human costs and often unexpected and unintended harmful consequences, based on the justification that in so doing we have a small, modest, or even significant likelihood that we can prevent another nation from doing harm to us is morally indefensible. To be morally defensible, we must have almost absolute certainty that the potential for harm to us is imminent. This level of certainty—except in hindsight—is typically not within our grasp. War must be a last resort measure, which points to another major objection to a United Nations doctrine of preventive war. I believe that most states could be effectively discouraged from acquiring WMD through peaceful means such as conditional economic support and negotiations. It would further help if countries of the North would cease to support or put into power militarily and economically dictatorial regimes in the South (the developing world), turning a blind eye to these regimes acquiring WMD as long as they stay in line. Even when states have acquired WMD, deterrence from employing them is still possible. The NSS sidesteps this point by failing to differentiate between so-called rogue states and the terrorist groups these rogue states allegedly sponsor. Correctly noting that global terrorist groups that seek martyrdom cannot be effectively deterred, the NSS jumps to the conclusion that rogue states cannot be effectively deterred. Iraq is not a counterexample because the United States never tried to deter its use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds and enemy soldiers in the war with Iran. This leaves the problem of whether United Nations-authorized preventive war may not be necessary to avoid the risk that some state would enable global terrorists to acquire WMD. At the outset, we should note that the NSS overstates the interests of terrorist groups in seeking to acquire WMD and their capability to use them effectively, creating a fear among the public conducive to the Bush Administration’s hegemonic purposes.27 The political objectives of most terrorist groups are not well served by inflicting many WMD-caused casualties. If they did, they would lose the public support and sympathy needed to realize their goals. Also, many technological obstacles to creating and using WMD effectively exist. To date, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo has been the only non-state actor that has created and used WMD on a significant scale. Between 1990 and 1995, the cult used biological and chemical weapons on no fewer than seventeen occasions. Only its chemical attacks were successful, the most devastating one being the

152

HARRY VAN DER LINDEN

attack with the nerve agent sarin (in low-grade and impure form) on the Tokyo subway on 20 March 1995. The attack exposed approximately 5000 people to the nerve gas, killed 12 persons, and left hundreds with minor injuries and dozens with severe injuries.28 Horrendous as the attack may appear, the harm done was small compared to the harm that Aum Shinrikyo could have inflicted with conventional weapons if the cult had invested similar efforts and resources in doing so. A strong disincentive for terrorist groups to use WMD exists in that doing so successfully would likely lead to their destruction and the destruction of their enemies, either because of the dangers inherent to using WMD or because of a devastating retaliatory response. The events of 11 September 2001 give credibility to the view that some terrorist groups might be prepared to use WMD. In political, cultural, and geographical terms, their supportive audience may be far removed from the location of their destructive act. They may not care about their survival. So the issue we need to address is how a terrorist group seeking to obtain WMD with the assistance of some state might materialize, keeping in mind that most terrorist groups will not seek to pursue this course of action. One possibility is that some state with WMD will provide these weapons to global terrorists harbored in another state, or that this state might welcome terrorists within its borders and then provide them with WMD. Waging war against a state suspected of planning to act in one of these ways would be a preventive war, and it would be a wrong war because the anticipated harm is too speculative and doubtful to count as a definite wrong and so as a just cause. Since tracing the source of WMD used by global terrorists would be fairly easy, concealing complicity would be nearly impossible. The risk of incurring retaliation deters states from providing such weapons to terrorists. The greater risk is that global terrorists, through force, theft, or deception, acquire WMD materials from states with nuclear weapons, civilian stockpiles of highly enriched uranium or plutonium, biodefense programs, stockpiles of chemical weapons, and the like. The solution includes greater security, stricter control regimes, a more rapid destruction of all chemical weapons (as required by the CWC), curtailment of biodefense, the elimination of fissile material from civilian nuclear programs, and, ultimately, the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Another possibility is that a state sponsoring or harboring global terrorists is assisting these terrorists in acquiring WMD capabilities. Again, this scenario is not likely to occur because any state engaging in such conduct knows that the probable outcome is war. War in this case would not be a preventive war but a defensive war because a state targeted by global terrorists has a just cause to go to war with states that actively protect these terrorists. A state may remain neutral in a conflict that spills over on its territory, but a state cannot legitimately demand neutrality when it actively supports a war-

U.S. Doctrine of Preventive War Justified as a UN Doctrine?

153

ring group.29 In most situations, initiating war would be wrong because other alternatives might be available for addressing the harm done, such as pressuring the country to turn the terrorists over to the courts. Significantly, a justified war, following the just war tradition, must satisfy the principle of proportionality, and extending the war on terrorism to a war on states would generally not satisfy this principle. The principle requires that the expected costs of war are proportionate to its anticipated benefits. Estimating the costs of war is difficult since it often has many unexpected consequences. The benefits of waging war against states to combat terrorism are also difficult to ascertain in that the goal of getting rid of terrorists in a given country might appear successful, but terrorists can regroup in different countries or new terrorists can be recruited. War may motivate new volunteers. Overall, the harm generated by war between states will typically outweigh the harm that terrorists will inflict, and so it would be wrong to go war with states that sponsor terrorists. The Bush doctrine sets aside considerations of proportionality in suggesting that we have no need to distinguish between sponsoring states and terrorists as potential targets of military force. Only one situation exists in which the proportionality principle definitely tilts towards war: when the sponsoring state enables the terrorists to acquire WMD. Even so, we should not exaggerate the dangers of WMD in the hands of terrorists abroad by ignoring the problem of effective delivery systems needed for creating largescale human destruction. Prior to extending the war from the terrorists to the sponsoring state, the United States government would have ample time to seek Security Council authorization and submit the case for war to the world court of opinion. 4. WMD and United States Military Hegemony In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Annan distinguished between “hard” and “soft” threats. The first are the threats of terrorism and WMD; the second are the threats to peace and security posed by the persistence of poverty, income inequalities across the globe, the spread of communicable diseases, environmental destruction, and the like. Annan called on the United Nations to deal with both threats, arguing that both tasks are related. He continued: “We now see, with chilling clarity, that a world where many millions of people endure brutal oppression and extreme misery will never be fully secure, even for its most privileged inhabitants.”30 We would be hard pressed to disagree with Annan. The NSS acknowledges a similar point by observing that “poverty does not make poor people into terrorists,” but “poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks.”31 Yet, the NSS offers little in terms of how poverty, weak states, and other social conditions conducive to

154

HARRY VAN DER LINDEN

terrorism and violent conflict can be eliminated. The emphasis is on the military response, and so are the commitments of the Bush Administration. Since 11 September 2001, the United States has followed a course of building up its military and developing new weapons programs, while peace efforts and resources assigned for reducing “soft threats” remain relatively minuscule. The United States spends close to half of the world’s military expenditures, and it spends about thirty times as much as the states that it has declared at one point or another to be rogue states, including Syria, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Sudan.32 The increasing United States military hegemony is a crucial factor in the spread of WMD. Theorists frequently espouse that terrorism emerges in situations of asymmetric conflict. The terrorist, the underdog, sets aside the rules of war, and fights dirty, in the anticipation that it will be effective against the militarily much stronger opponent.33 What adds to the use of terrorist methods by non-state actors is that the United States has a long history of terrorist actions, ranging from the bombing of civilian centers to supporting covert actions against dissenting civilians. Less often noted is that states may seek to acquire WMD in response to United States military hegemony. The NSS acknowledges the point to some extent. After stating that rogue states see WMD as “tools of intimidation and military aggression against their neighbors,” the NSS observes that these weapons may be acquired with the intent to deter the United States from responding to these aggressions. The NSS continues, “Such states also see these weapons as their best means of overcoming the conventional superiority of the United States.”34 We cannot fully understand even the current use and popularity of the phrase WMD without reference to United States military hegemony. Current international security literature commonly defines WMDs as biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.35 The Bush Administration and the media popularized the term with the same meaning especially in the months before the war against Iraq in 2003. Why are these three types of weapons grouped together as weapons of mass destruction? True, nuclear weapons stand out due to their enormous destructive potential, but many chemical and biological weapons are less destructive than some conventional weapons. Alternatively, the indiscriminate nature of these three types of weapons might appear to warrant the WMD label, but many other weapons are similarly indiscriminate, inevitably killing large numbers of civilians. We do not call economic sanctions WMD. Yet the economic sanctions against Iraq during the 1990s claimed hundreds of thousands of lives because the sanctions restricted the import of water purification equipment, medical equipment, drugs, and the like, and created food shortages.36 Depleted uranium, land mines, and cluster bombs are not included, even though they have left behind countless dead children and civilians. The

U.S. Doctrine of Preventive War Justified as a UN Doctrine?

155

United States is developing space weapons such as space-based lasers, negating several United Nations resolutions calling for use of space for peaceful purposes only.37 We can predict that most people will never call these weapons WMD, but they can be equally destructive. All this suggests that the notion of WMD in its current use is partly ideologically tainted. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons are grouped together and popularized as WMD because the United States views their acquisition by countries from the South as a (varying) challenge to its military superiority. Nuclear weapons can fulfill this role due to their sheer destructive potential alone, while biological and chemical weapons pose a challenge because they are difficult to detect and have a surprise and unpredictable element in their potential application. To stop the proliferation of WMD, then, will require that the United States ends its military build-up, because the more the United States seeks to assert its military superiority the more its pushes countries resisting this hegemony toward developing WMD.38 Instead of seeking to articulate standards of preventive war, the United Nations would do better to focus on the problem of how the organization can be effective and able to contribute to global democracy and peace in the face of increasing United States military hegemony and the new weapons that the United States is developing for this purpose. 5. Postscript The High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, formed by Annan after his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, issued its report A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility (MSW) in December 2004.39 In accordance with my arguments here, that report rejects the legality and morality of unilateral preventive war and objects to any weakening of article 51 of the United Nations Charter to accommodate a broader notion of selfdefense. In accordance with my view, MSW also offers valuable non-military recommendations for dealing with the threat of the spread of WMD among states or terrorist groups, such as: the current nuclear weapon states should move toward disarmament in accordance with the NPT; negotiations should be renewed among parties to the BTWC concerning a verification protocol; and we must reduce poverty and promote democracy and human and political rights so as to diminish fertile breeding grounds for terrorism.40 In opposition to my view, MSW favors a collective preventive military response to meet the threat posed by the spread of WMD among terrorists and some states. The Panel rightly maintains the Security Council has the authority under Chapter VII to declare a preventive war, but it wrongly continues to claim that the Security Council must prepare for this option in our present situation:

156

HARRY VAN DER LINDEN In the world of the twenty-first century, the international community does have to be concerned about nightmare scenarios combining terrorists, weapons of mass destruction and irresponsible States, and much more besides, which may conceivably justify the use of force, not just reactively but preventively and before a latent threat becomes imminent. . . . The Council may well need to be prepared to be much more proactive on these issues, taking more decisive action earlier, than it has been in the past.41

MSW here makes the same error as the NSS in failing the distinguish between a variety of scenarios in which military force might be used against states or terrorist groups seeking to acquire WMD, only some of which would be properly characterized as preventive war. Lack of accuracy invites abuse of preventive military force, or fear of such abuse, and so collective security would be reduced if the Security Council adopted the Panel’s preventive war doctrine. Other objections to the doctrine as espoused by the Panel are: (1) the problem of inaccurate intelligence concerning WMD programs is not solved; (2) no attempt is made to define “irresponsible States” (an apparent euphemism for the “rogues states” referred to in the NSS); and (3) the document fails to explain why deterrence against “irresponsible States” that have acquired WMD might not be effective. MSW addresses only one objection raised in my paper against a United Nations preventive war doctrine, the Security Council, due to its composition, lacks the capability to make objective decisions about when preventive war might be warranted. The Panel proposes two models for expanding the Council: they have in common that all major regions in the world would be equally represented with a total of twenty-four members, while the number of countries with veto power would remain the same.42 It will be difficult to realize this proposal, and in the meantime preventive war decisions by the Security Council will be highly selective. Finally, MSW proposes that the Security Council and all United Nations Member States use the following “five basic criteria of legitimacy” in considering when to authorize the use of military force in general: “seriousness of threat,” “proper purpose,” “last resort,” “proportional means,” and “balance of consequences.”43 The second and third of these criteria correspond to the traditional jus ad bellum (“right to war”) principles of “right intention” and “last resort,” while the fourth and fifth combine the principles of “proportionality” and “reasonable chance of success.” The jus ad bellum principle of “legitimate authority” is not mentioned, understandably so, because MSW assumes that the United Nations Charter answers the question of where right

U.S. Doctrine of Preventive War Justified as a UN Doctrine?

157

authority is to be located. The second through fifth criteria constitute significant constraints on the authorization of military force, if properly applied. The problem with the Panel’s list of criteria is the standard of “seriousness of threat.” It replaces “just cause” in just war theory with the standard that force may be warranted when a state is seriously threatened. This substitution is quite broad and vague and allows so much leeway in its application that its general acceptance would lead us to a less secure world.

NOTES 1. “Adoption of Policy of Pre-emption Could Result in Proliferation of Unilateral, Lawless Use of Force, Secretary-General Tells General Assembly,” press release SG/SM/8891, GA/10157, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/sgsm8891.doc.htm (accessed 26 May 2006). 2. Ibid. 3. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” 17 September 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html (accessed 25 May 2006). 4. John W. Lango, “Preventive Wars, Just War Principles, and the United Nations,” The Journal of Ethics, 9 (March 2005), pp. 247–268. 5. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” chap. 3 and 5, pp. 5 and 13–14 respectively. (Page numbers refer to the pdf version.) 6. Ibid., chap 5, p. 15. 7. Ibid., chap 3, p. 6. 8. James J. Wirtz and James A. Russell, “U.S. Policy on Preventive War and Preemption,” The Nonproliferation Review (Spring 2003): 113–123, esp. p. 116. 9. “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction,” p. 3, http:// www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/WMDStrategy.pdf (accessed 26 May 2006). 10. Benjamin R. Barber, Fear’s Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), pp. 104–105; and Wirtz and Russell, “U.S. Policy on Preventive War and Preemption,” p. 119. 11. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” chap. 3, p. 5. 12. Ibid., chap. 5, p. 15. 13. See Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, eds., The Iraq War Reader (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003). 14. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” Introduction. 15. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” chap. 9, p. 29. 16. See Iris Young, “Modest Reflections on Hegemony and Global Democracy,” Theoria, 51:1, issue 103 (April 2004), http://www.berghahnbooksonline.com journals/th/abs/2004/51-1/TH510102.html (accessed 26 May 2006). 17. Joseph S. Nye, “Before War,” Washington Post, 14 March 2002, http://www.ksg. harvard.edu/news/opeds/2003/nye_before_war_wp_031403.htm (accessed 26 May 2006). 18. Kofi Annan, “Two Concepts of sovereignty,” The Economist, 18 September 1999.

158

HARRY VAN DER LINDEN

19. Harry van der Linden, “The Left and Humanitarian Intervention as Solidarity,” Greg Moses and Jeffrey Paris, eds. Liberation between Selves, Sexualities, and War, Radical Philosophy Today Series, vol. 3 (Charlottesville, Va.: Philosophy Documentation Center, 2006), chap. 10. 20. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, question 40, in Paul Sigmund, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), pp. 64–65. 21. Francisco de Vitoria, Anthony Pagden, and Jeremy Lawrance, eds., Political Writings (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 303. 22. See Arms Control Association, “New Nuclear Policies, New Weapons, New Dangers,” http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/newnuclearweaponsissuebrief.asp. See also Federation of American Scientists, “White House Briefing: Excerpts on Nuclear Posture Review, GAO Lawsuit,” http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2002/03/wh031402.html (accessed 30 June 2006). 23. NPT text at http://www.fas. org/nuke/control/npt/text/npt2.htm (accessed 1 July 2006). 24. Center of Nonproliferation Studies, “Chemical and Biological Weapons: Possession and Programs Past and Present,” http://www.cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/possess. htm (accessed 26 May 2006). 25. See Nicole Deller and John Burroughs, “Arms Control Abandoned: The Case of Biological Weapons,” World Policy Journal (Summer 2003), pp. 37–42, esp. 38–40. 26. Kenneth W. Kemp, “Just War Theory & its Non-Pacifist Rivals,” paper presented at the International Studies Association, South Regional Meeting, 10 October 1993, p. 14, http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/kwkemp/Papers/JWTR.pdf (accessed 26 May 2006). 27. See Barber, Fear’s Empire. 28. Center for Nonproliferation Studies, “Chronology of Aum Shinrikyo’s CBW Activities,” to be found in pdf file at http://cns.miis.edu; and Richard A. Falkenrath, Robert D. Newman, and Bradley A. Thayer, America’s Achilles Heel (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1998), pp. 19–26. 29. Richard W. Miller, “Terrorism, War, and Empire,” Terrorism and International Justice, ed. James P. Sterba (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 186–187. 30. “Adoption of Policy of Pre-emption Could Result in Proliferation of Unilateral, Lawless Use of Force, Secretary-General Tells General Assembly.” 31. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” Introduction. 32. Anup Shah, “High Military Expenditures in Some Places,” http://www. globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp (accessed 26 May 2006). 33. See Shannon E. French, “Murderers, Not Warriors: The Moral Distinction between Terrorists and Legitimate Fighters in Asymmetric Conflicts,” Sterba, Terrorism and International Justice, pp. 32–34. 34. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” chap. 5, p. 15. 35. Susan B. Martin, “Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Brief Overview,” Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, eds. Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 16–17. 36. Anthony Arnove, ed., Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2000). 37. Karl Grossman, Weapons in Space (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), pp. 9–31.

U.S. Doctrine of Preventive War Justified as a UN Doctrine?

159

38. Harry van der Linden, “Just War Theory and U.S. Military Hegemony,” Rethinking the Just War Tradition, eds. Michael Brough, John Lango, and Harry van der Linden (forthcoming Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007). 39. United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change (New York: United Nations, 2004). 40. Ibid., ¶ 120, 126, and 148. 41. Ibid., ¶ 194. 42. Ibid., ¶ 197 and 250–257. 43. Ibid., ¶ 207–209.

This page intentionally left blank

Nine IS THE UNITED STATES-LED OCCUPATION OF IRAQ PART OF THE “WAR ON TERROR”? Gail M. Presbey 1. Introduction United States President George W. Bush has described those fighting against United States forces in Iraq as people who oppose freedom and democracy in the Middle East. He calls them “terrorists.” He and Vice President Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney had suggested, even before the United States led incursion and occupation, that Iraq and al-Qaeda had connections. The paper begins by looking at the Bush-Cheney rhetoric about the “war on terror” and then shows that the Iraq-al-Qaeda links that Bush and Cheney insinuated did not exist. I will also explore who is fighting against United States, and why. The most recent forum for oratory about the war on terror was in the United States House of Representatives, where they cast a vote on a resolution regarding the Global War on Terror. I will argue that that resolution shows a persistence of these mistaken notions of the problem of, and solution to, terrorism. Next, I will describe some terminological difficulties with the word and concept, “terrorism,” and show why terrorism is neither morally acceptable nor pragmatic. I will then describe “counter-insurgency” and “counter-terror” measures. My moral analysis of these concepts will show that some of the counterterrorist methods share the same moral faults as terrorist methods do. To suggest that one will fight and stop terrorism using methods similar to terrorism is morally wrong and counterproductive. In effect, the war on terror does not rid the world of terror but instead adds an additional source of terror. In this way, the war on terror is unwinnable. I conclude with a description of a method to lessen terror without the shortcomings characteristic of the militaristic, “counter-terror” approach.

162

GAIL M. PRESBEY 2. Bush and Cheney’s Speeches on the War on Terrorism

During the summer of 2003, after the United States-led “liberation” of Iraq was considered “accomplished,” United States troops in Iraq continued to suffer casualties.1 Bush and L. Paul Bremer III, Chief American Administrator in Iraq called those who inflict these casualties on the troops “terrorists.” But this label does not help our understanding; it obscures the dynamics of what is happening in Iraq. In a speech in London, 19 November 2003, Bush explained the attacks in this way: The violence we are seeing in Iraq today is serious. And it comes from Baathist holdouts and Jihadists from other countries, and terrorists drawn to the prospect of innocent bloodshed. . . . The terrorists have a purpose, a strategy to their cruelty. They view the rise of democracy in Iraq as a powerful threat to their ambitions.2 In contrast, Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the United States Central Command, stated a few days later that the number of foreign fighters fighting with the insurgents was small.3 Bush, in the quote above, rules out the possibility that insurgents could be fighting not because they want to destroy democracy, but because they ardently pine for self-rule and autonomy. In Iraq in April 2003, United States soldiers opened fire during an anti-American rally, killing fifteen people and wounding sixty-five others.4 During May and June 2003, many Iraqi political leaders voiced their opposition to United States plans to control Iraq’s government.5 In October 2003, a suicide car bomber in Baghdad killed himself and nine others, wounding forty-five other people. Commenting on the violence, Bremer “emphasized his government’s commitment to fighting terrorism, branding the perpetrators of attacks in Iraq as individuals who have shown ‘wanton disregard’ for the lives of innocent people.”6 But the same article later explains that in this part of Baghdad where the bombing took place, “The area has been tense for days, with supporters of the younger [Muqtada ] al-Sadr demanding that the United States-appointed local council be replaced by one they say was democratically elected in polls they organized.”7 This larger context could provide a clue to the possible motivation of the blast, which, instead of being a protest against democracy, might be a demand for more democracy. In his speech to United States troops stationed in Iraq delivered on Thanksgiving Day in 2003, Bush stated, “You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq, so that we don’t have to face them in our own country.”8 I contend that Bush’s rhetoric misleads American citizens in three ways. First, it encourages listeners to conclude that the same people who attacked the United States on 11 September 2001 are now attacking United States forces in Iraq. Second, it labels all people fighting against the United States in Iraq as terror-

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

163

ists. It still labels combatants internal to Iraq believing they have just cause in repelling an aggressor and who target military installations and personnel as terrorists. Third, it suggests that a static number of terrorists exists and if this group of terrorists were not fighting in Iraq, they would be fighting in the United States. The passage neglects to note that the group of people fighting the United States could shrink or enlarge based on factors such as United States political and economic policy and United States deployment or non-deployment of troops. Nowhere in Bush’s rhetoric quoted above is an acknowledgment that the actions of the United States forces, in invading Iraq, could themselves be a major factor in creating more terrorists in Iraq. Instead of a static conception of the number of terrorists, who must be fought either in Iraq or the United States, it makes more sense that the inspiration to become a terrorist waxes and wanes. The United States waged a preemptive war against another country with an appeal to weapons of mass destruction, even though United States troops later occupying Iraq could not find the weapons. Also, an interest in Iraq’s oil reserves appears obvious. Given these considerations, Iraqis might become newly interested in fighting the United States forces. The Italian member of the United States-led coalition Provisional Authority of Dhi Qar hinted that United States actions might be creating more terrorists when he resigned from his position in November 2003, explaining, “the failure of the coalition to understand Iraqi society had created ‘delusion, social discontent and anger’ among Iraqis and allowed terrorism to ‘easily take root.’”9 Bush presumes that the United States has the prerogative to decide to fight its global enemies in other’s countries instead of on its home soil. We can imagine how comforted Americans felt at home on Thanksgiving Day, knowing that the war against terror was happening in Iraq instead of in United States’ cities. Even Bush admits that these terrorists in Iraq create casualties not only for United States forces but also for “innocent Iraqis.” How can concern for the liberation of Iraqis be the primary concern of the Bush Administration, if it knows that it will catch innocent Iraqis in the crossfire? While the death tolls on both sides mounted, Bush continued his triumphalist speeches during June and July of 2004. In Arlington cemetery, speaking of the United States soldiers who had died in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush said, “Because of their fierce courage, America is safer, two terror regimes are gone forever, and more than fifty million souls now live in freedom.” In July, while admitting inaccuracies had been discovered in the pre-invasion intelligence, Bush said, “Today, because America has acted and because America has led, the forces of terror and tyranny have suffered defeat after defeat, and America and the world are safer.”10 Bush’s trend of claiming victory reached absurd proportions when he addressed the United Nations in 2004, regarding the situation in Iraq. He left many listeners incredulous, as he appeared to stubbornly refuse to see the

164

GAIL M. PRESBEY

scale of degeneration of order in the country.11 In contrast to Bush’s message of victory, in January 2004, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned that Iraq was headed for a possible civil war.12 Despite a spike in violence rates in Iraq, during the summer of 2005 Cheney declared that the insurgency was experiencing its “last throes.” A month later, Donald Rumsfeld discounted Cheney’s estimation, explaining that insurgencies typically go on for five to twelve years. Rumsfeld clarified that United States forces were not committed to staying until the insurgency was over. Instead, United States forces, he said, would stay until they can hand the job of fighting the insurgency over to Iraqi forces.13 While killing al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in May 2006 brought hope to some that without its most strident leader, the insurgency would die down, violence after al-Zarqawi’s death has not waned.14 A chart based on information from the Defense Department and State Department, published in the New York Times, shows that while United States allied forces’ daily casualty rate decreased from just over twenty per day in 2004 to just under twenty per day during 2005 and 2006. Concurrently, Iraqi security personnel and civilians have been experiencing increasing casualty rates, climbing from over twenty-five per day in 2004 to over seventy-five per day by May 2006.15 In Bush’s 2006 State of the Union Address, he directed his attention to the global war on terror. He told Americans to brace for more struggle and sacrifice. He admonished that dictators anywhere in the world threatened the security of the United States, which he characterized as promoting freedom and democracy. He suggested only a completely democratic world could provide a zone of safety in which the United States could relax. Until then, he warned that costs and casualties would be the inevitable price the United States must pay to secure a peaceful future.16 In this way, Bush dismissed criticisms of the ballooning costs and rising troop casualty rates of the Iraq War, seeing it as a small price to pay for such an essential goal. He described those who want the United States occupation of Iraq to end soon as impatient and bluntly stated this is only the beginning of a long generational war that we will need to fight on many fronts. He asked Americans to take responsibility for fixing world problems that no other countries are willing or competent to fix. I think this expressed attitude is paternalistic since it diminishes (by charging incompetence) the active role that other countries must provide for a realistic peace. In my opinion, Bush’s vision contains many flawed ideas. He failed to acknowledge that some anti-democratic governments, like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan are still in power partly because, by being United States allies in the war on terrorism, they get funding and immunity from criticism for their domestic repression from the United States. He suggested that the United States could, if only it had the guts and commitment, install

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

165

democracies in countries that do not have them now—a claim upon which the current problems in Iraq cast doubt. Elsewhere, I have shown in detail that United States attempts to bring democracy to Iraq have been flawed in both conception and execution.17 Commentators noticed that the kind of rhetoric used in 2006 had been recycled from the 1997 white paper by William Kristol, head of the think tank Project for a New American Century.18 Commentator Tom Englehardt finds even earlier precedents for this kind of rhetoric. The long-standing myth about Americans prevailing over their less-than-human or non-White enemies stretches from Manifest Destiny arguments for Westward expansion to the fighting the “evil empire” during the Cold War. Englehardt thinks this “good versus evil” myth has to be replaced with a more realistic model, especially in the light of the Vietnam war experience. But Bush’s rhetoric attempts to strengthen the trend.19 3. Iraq-al-Qaeda Links? From the start of talk about a preemptive attack on Iraq, Bush, Cheney, and others kept mentioning terrorists. Even saying “9/11” in the same sentence as Iraq, encouraged listeners to draw the inference that Saddam Hussein had something to do with terrorist attacks on the New York City World Trade Center, United Airlines Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on 11 September 2001. For example, Cheney said that democratizing Iraq would strike a blow at “the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”20 President Bush admitted, in September 2003, that evidence did not exist to show that Hussein was involved in the 11 September 2001 attackes.21 But by Cheney saying that Iraq is the “central front” in the war against terror, he suggested that the same group of terrorists that attacked the United States was now active in Iraq and responsible for attacks on United States troops. In July 2004, after the September 11 Commission released its findings that found no link between Iraq and 11 September 2001, Bush reiterated, “This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda. . . . We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.”22 Bush referred to a meeting between Iraqi intelligence leaders and Osama bin Laden in Sudan. The Iraqi document which the 9-11 Commission consulted, judged by the U.S. Government to be authentic, explained that those meetings, over ten years earlier when bin Laden was not well known, were about a request that bin Laden’s sermons be re-broadcast in Iraq. Iraq granted that request. But bin Laden also asked that Iraq participate in joint operations with the objective of getting United States troops out of Saudi Arabia. Journalist Thom Shanker points out that no evidence exists to show that the Iraqis replied to that request, or to a later request, in 1994, to establish training camps in Iraq. Bush and Cheney’s

166

GAIL M. PRESBEY

allusion to meetings between Iraq and al-Qaeda was intended to conjure in the minds of listeners the idea that they met much more recently to plan the 11 September attack. Cheney also often referred to a presumed meeting between Mohammad Atta and Ahmed al-Ani, an Iraqi Intelligence officer, which occurred five months earlier during April 2001. The CIA repeatedly attempted to convince Cheney that no evidence of such a collaborative relationship existed. CIA director George Tenet argued, “Although we cannot rule it out, we are increasingly skeptical that such a meeting occurred.” Cheney continued to repeat the story of the meeting, arguing that “it’s never been refuted.”23 Finally on 16 June 2004, the September 11 Commission claimed to have evidence that the meeting never took place.24 In the meantime, talk aimed at creating the impression was influential. As early as October 2002, a PEW Research Center poll reported that two thirds of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein had a role in the 11 September attacks on the United States.25 Perhaps this confusion is not completely Bush and Cheney’s fault. The mass media shares some of the responsibility. In general, the media covers terrorist acts because viewers perceive them as newsworthy. Media companies rate stories as newsworthy according some criteria. Is the story sensational? Is it novel, and does it evince examples of deviance? Coverage typically follows the details of the harm done and the government’s response. Reporters give little attention to reasons or the larger context of the attacks. Media analysts of the 1980s found that less than six per cent of news coverage and less than three per cent of television coverage of terrorist acts discussed possible causes for the acts. Analysts found the same pattern for coverage of the 11 September 2001 attacks. Michael W. Traugott and Ted Brader conducted thirty-minute interviews with over 750 people in 2001, and again in 2002. They also analyzed the coverage of 11 September in U.S. News and World Report over a one-year interval. The authors, a Sociologist and a Political Scientist, charged that the media’s lack of focus on explanations, and its emphasis on episodic details, does not serve the needs of most citizens, who will not, in the absence of such discussions, be able to contextualize such critical events.26 In such a vacuum of information and discussion, no wonder people could easily jump to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein caused the attacks on 11 September 2001. The topic of the evidence allegedly supporting the decision to go to war with Iraq is long and convoluted. The Senate Intelligence Committee Report, released 9 July 2004, argued that the CIA and other agencies made many misjudgments of evidence due to an “assumption train” which colored how they interpreted the often-sketchy evidence they had gathered.27 The Bush Administration also bears some responsibility for misreading the evidence, because the only questions they asked regarding evidence presented to them were one that would strengthen the case for war. David E. Sanger and Doug-

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

167

las Jehl mused, “Now the Sept. 11 attacks have become a case study in the dangers of failing to connect dots, and Iraq a case study in the opposite.”28 Based on what they believe to be reliable evidence, many Bush critics speculate that greed for oil or a desire to finish what President George H. W. Bush had started during the first Gulf War in 1991 was the real motive for invading Iraq. Others opine that we can explain Bush’s actions as a desire to gain popularity by winning a presumably easy-to-win war. Some critics claim that such motivations provided incentive for Bush to “connect the dots” in a way that led him to declare war for reasons unrelated to United States national security. Paul Krugman, of the New York Times, opined that Bremer replaced Jay Garner, the first, short-lived United States administrator of Iraq, so that the transitional government “could impose economic policies that no electoral Iraqi government would have approved.” He claimed these measures included “slashed tariffs, flattened taxes and thrown Iraqi industry wide open to foreign investors.”29 Critic of United States foreign policy Joseph Mulligan, after hearing a speech that Colin Powell made to delegates from Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, General Motors and Ford in Detroit, Michigan, in September 2004, commented that he no longer thought that the Iraq War was a war for oil. Instead, he claimed, “American soldiers have shed their blood and millions of working-class Americans have sacrificed their vital interests in health, jobs, and education, to fuel a war machine which is paving the way for an entire Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) for corporate profit.”30 Simon Harak, of the War Resisters League, has catalogued the growth of Dick Cheney’s personal fortune during his years as Vice President, as result of his futures options in Halliburton stock.31 While such speculations are intriguing, I do not hinge my arguments on the idea that the war on terror is merely a ruse to accomplish other self-interested goals such as gaining personal fortune or benefiting businesses that will then become loyal campaign contributors. Even if the Bush Administration sincerely intends to conduct the war to attack enemies of America, I view it as wrongheaded in method and goals. In his recent book, The One Percent Doctrine, Ron Suskind bases his opinions on interviews with former CIA director George Tenet and other CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and United States State Department officials.32 Suskind claims that Bush’s style during national security briefings was to follow his “gut,” and that Tenet put pressure on his staff, diverting their scarce resources to answering questions Bush and Under Secretary for Defense Douglas Feith asked about al-Qaeda-Saddam Hussein links. Suskind said his anonymous informants got the impression from their attendance at government security meetings that Bush wanted to invade Iraq to make an example of Hussein for his flouting of United States authority.33 Paul R. Pillar, the CIA national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, has claimed that any mistakes in intelligence

168

GAIL M. PRESBEY

by the CIA about weapons of mass destruction were not the driving force behind Bush Administration policies in the Middle East. He has charged that the administration did “cherry picking” to find which intelligence to quote to back up a pre-ordained policy. Charging that Bush bypassed sound intelligence analysis, Pillar opined that the most serious error was not the mistaken belief about Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction, but in fabricating a link between Hussein and al-Qaeda: The reason the connection got so much attention was that the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the “war on terror” and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country’s militant post-9/11 mood.34 Telling intelligence analysts to focus their attention on one particular issue instead of listening to the data and seeing where the data points to problems, is a way of politicizing intelligence work. Pillar continued, “[Insistence by Bush to find an al-Qaeda-Hussein link] obscured instead of enhanced an understanding of al-Qaeda’s actual sources of strength and support.”35 Those who argue that Bush and company had been misleading in their stated reasons for pursuing war in Iraq turn to the “Downing Street memo,” a “leaked” memo recording a discussion between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2002. According to the memo, senior British intelligence officers recorded their impression that in the United States, “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A later secret memo also “leaked,” of a Bush-Blair meeting at the Oval Office on 31 January 2003, claims that already by that date Bush said that the military operation in Iraq would go forward regardless of whether weapons of mass destruction would be found. If true as claimed, the memos create the impression that Bush and Blair were not sincere in their professed attempts to find diplomatic solutions that would avert war, and that they were not basing their decision to go to war on a realistic threat posed by Hussein’s weapons.36 The memos by themselves do not prove that Bush did say what the memos attribute to him. When Bush did not respond to a letter signed by 122 members of Congress asking about the truth of the Downing Street memos, Representative John Conyers of Michigan, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, commissioned a report to investigate the allegations. The House Judiciary Democratic Staff wrote the "minority report" released in July 2006. The report says that it found evidence of Bush and Cheney lying to Congress about the war in Iraq. The report based its conclusions on "tens of thousands of documents and materials, including testimony submitted at two hearings held by Rep. Conyers concerning the Downing Street Minutes . . . including interviews with past and present Administration employees and other confidential sources . . . and the Administration's own words and state-

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

169

ments." The report includes a request that the President appoint an independent commission to look further into the issues. If the allegations are false, then Bush should be willing to go forward with an investigation to clear his name. Authors of the minority report instead complain that the Bush Administration has repeatedly blocked them from access to materials needed to clarify the issue, apparently involved in a cover-up.37 Rulers enjoy some distinct advantages to ruling during times when an enemy is attacking their country. People unite in the face of a common threat. One commentator thought the point of a Bush speech in June 2004 was to both frighten Americans and to offer himself as the only person who could keep Americans safe from the danger.38 On 1 August 2004, United States citizens expressed concern when the Bush Administration raised the risk of terrorist attacks to code orange (high risk) for several financial institutions. Later, many of those same people felt manipulated when they learned that the intelligence upon which the alert was based was not recent.39 Some suggested that the terror alert was timed to shift focus away from the recently concluded Democratic convention. In July 2004, the United States Office of Homeland Security placed fullpage ads in newspapers suggesting to citizens that they should remain prepared for a possible terror attack by creating an emergency kit with three days’ supplies of food and water, flashlights, plastic sheeting, and a batterypowered radio. Reminiscent of the “duck and cover” films of the 1950s and 1960s, suggesting how to survive nuclear attacks, today we have a hard time imagining how such precautions would be effective if terrorists were able to attack with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Perhaps the intention of the ads was to scare people so that they would depend even more upon their government to protect them. 4. Who is Fighting in Iraq, and Why. In April 2004, Blair continued the theme of fighters in Iraq being part of a global terrorist network “from Kashmir to Chechnya, to Palestine and Israel,” despite the contrary opinion of British foreign secretary Jack Straw, who insisted that most insurgents are Iraqis. Echoing Bush’s claims, Blair insisted that if the United States-led coalition forces did not succeed, “the hope of freedom and religious tolerance in Iraq would be snuffed out. Dictators would rejoice; fanatics and terrorists would be triumphant.”40 While Tony Blair’s government and the Bush Administration have claimed that freedom-hating terrorists are fighting United States forces in Iraq, other accounts see the Iraqi insurgency as a broad-based religious movement. In April 2004, reporter James Risen claimed that while Shiites were joyous when the Americans invaded in 2003, by April 2004, “hatred of the occupation [had] spread rapidly among Shiites, and is now so large that Mr. [al-]Sadr and his forces represent

170

GAIL M. PRESBEY

just one element.”41 At the same time, reports indicated that Sunnis (even those with no former ties to Hussein’s government) were also rebelling.42 Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, Thomas E. Ricks, explained that from evidence found in Iraq after the United States invasion, such as weapons caches, captured documents, and movements of money, we could conclude that Saddam Hussein had intended to fight an insurgency after the United States military invasion. Ricks thinks that United States actions helped to make that insurgency broader. For example, prolonging the foreign occupation, along with de-Baathification of the Iraqi Government and armed forces (which was interpreted as a punishment or revenge), and economic upheaval in the country, encouraged opposition to the occupation and swelled the ranks of the insurgency. If Iraqi troops were left intact, they could have, under new leadership, been put in charge of monitoring large weapons caches so that these could not be looted and distributed to the insurgency. Also, the United States military made some strategic errors due to not understanding Iraqi culture. For example, in the Balkans, troops had successfully reduced fighting through extensive patrolling of the streets. As long as they made their presence known, the population would stay in line. But in Iraq, the constant patrols hurt Iraqi pride and were experienced as humiliating.43 Some United States military officials and soldiers have expressed the view that regardless of military victories, if the political situation in Iraq did not improve, military dominance would not be useful there. One officer said, “We can beat these guys . . . but unless the political side keeps up, we’ll have to do it again after July 1 and maybe in September and again next year and again and again.”44 Many soldiers have commented that the allegiance of the Iraqis was still undecided and that the insurgents were getting their message out more effectively than the Americans disseminated theirs. Captain Charles Fowler admitted his inability to win over noncommittal Iraqis who were just waiting to see what will eventually happen. Some soldiers were upset that support for the United States effort among Iraqis was waning. First Lieutenant Erik Iliff expressed his frustration: “One week they’re waving at us; the next week they throw rocks at us. Then we build a playground, and they’re waving at us again.”45 Major General John R. S. Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division in the northern Sunni triangle stated flatly that “This war cannot be won militarily.”46 Instead, he believes that Iraq needs political and economic solutions. Part of the insurgency in Iraq consists of foreigners such as Jordanianborn Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Undeniably, some terrorist cells operate in Iraq and are responsible for some of the car bombings and kidnappings.47 One foreigner, Muhammad Hussein Muhammad al-Turki, was surprised to be arrested by Iraqi police. While blindfolded and handcuffed, he pleaded, “I am here to help you and to fight the Americans, so how can your arrest me?”48 But to over-emphasize the foreign fighters neglects the point that since April 2004, in Baquba, Iraq, both Sunni and Shiite Muslim insurgents have been

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

171

participating in a broad-based uprising. Ahmad Hashim, a professor at the United States Naval War College, notes that the insurgency is now populist and is based on a mix of nationalist and Islamist sentiments. A military victory against such a popular movement is impossible. United States commanders in Baquba note that if they respond to insurgents with overwhelming firepower, “the insurgents simply melt away into the alleyways and farm fields.”49 Captain Travis van Hecke also notes that the insurgents are good at getting out their message to the people, the base of their power. They distribute many fliers, warning storeowners when to close their shops, and threatening those who might collaborate with the occupation forces. Fiery clerics play a role as well. Shiekh Shehad Ahmed al-Badri, imam of the main Sunni mosque in Baquba, complained, “Is there a country that is subjected to occupation, abuse, looting and the stealing of his fortunes and killing of his people, but that when he raises his voice and says ‘No!’ it’s called terrorism?”50 While Bush and Cheney may call the insurgents terrorists, this Shiekh rejects the label as unfair. The United States government has made the error of being willingly blind to insurgencies rooted in home countries made before. In her analysis of the Pentagon Papers (United States government documents about the Vietnam war leaked to the press in June 1971), Hannah Arendt noted that the Pentagon received evidence from its intelligence community that 80 to 90 percent of Viet Cong were local, indigenous people, with no access to outside supplies. Regardless, the Pentagon still insisted on believing in a monolithic Communist conspiracy directed from a non-existent Sino-Soviet bloc. The United States believed it had to mobilize vast resources to “contain” China. Many critics believed then, and still believe that all of this was erroneous, but it resulted in the United States “pouring its resources down the drain in the wrong place,” according to then Under Secretary of State George Ball, who counseled immediate withdrawal from Vietnam at the time.51 5. 2006: Congress Vows to Prevail in the Global War on Terror On 16 June 2006, the United States House of Representatives passed resolution H. Res. 861, which asserted that the United States would prevail in the global war on terror. It also firmly placed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of this global war on terror and asserted that no arbitrary date should be set for withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq. The Resolution opens with a description of the global war on terror: “a long and demanding struggle against an adversary that is driven by hatred of American values and that is committed to imposing, by the use of terror, its repressive ideology throughout the world.”52 The document posits a unity of terrorists and their purpose, and creates for this unified group a long history of “two decades.” In their speeches, Congress members referred to a long list of attacks they considered

172

GAIL M. PRESBEY

to be parts of this war of terror waged against the United States, culminating in the 11 September 2001 attacks. The list included the February 1993 bombing of the New York World Trade Center, the June 1996 Khobar Towers attack (where nineteen United States troops died in Saudi Arabia), the August 1998 United States embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, and the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in port in Aden, Yemen.53 While part of H. Res. 861 stipulates that there exist “Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other terrorists,” the rest of the document always refers to “the terrorists” as a group. The resolution also states that Saddam Hussein and his regime “supported terrorists,” without mentioning which terrorists. This is part of the repeated conflation of Hussein’s regime with the 11 September 2001 terrorists in the popular imagination. The resolution passed by a vote of 256 to 153, mostly along party lines, with Republicans being in the majority. Many Democrats expressed frustration that the Resolution had restrictions against any amendment. They were also frustrated because the Pentagon had prepared a “prep book” for Republicans to use when debating the issue, which encouraged Republicans and the press to characterize any Democrat dissent from the resolution to a shirking of responsibility for the fight against terror, and advocating short-sighted and cowardly “cut and run” tactics in Iraq.54 As Rep. Michael J. Rogers (Republican - Michigan) stated, the only people who want the United States to withdraw from Iraq early are the terrorists and some United States politicians. His comment appears to be a not-so-veiled swipe at Democrats who opposed the resolution.55 Rogers is sure that the Iraqi people, United States armed forces, and citizens all want to stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to quash the terrorists. H. Res. 861 declares, “the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the noble struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.”56 But the declaration has some problems. Like other Bush rhetoric, it unifies terrorists struggling against the United States. It presumes to know the goal of the terrorists, which is to destroy the American way of life based on freedom. It presumes that some future point of time exists at which we can declare that the United States has prevailed and the war is over. How can a resolution predict that one country will prevail in such a conflict? Is this sort of claim akin to a sports team declaring that it will win the next tournament? The answer to the question of who will “prevail” must be borne out by history, not “declared.” Representative Charles W. “Charlie” Norwood (Republican - Georgia) has exclaimed, “Our troops can defeat any enemy on Earth. Our volunteers, our patriots, our heroes, our warriors, under any conditions they can win if we have the will, if we have the backbone to do what is right.” For him, the only question is, do we, as a country, have a will to prevail in this war on terror? If we have the will, he believes we will prevail. Drawing on his earlier experience with the Vietnam era, he suggests that if only the American people and

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

173

the United States media had not given up on that war, we would also have won that war. He saw voting in favor of the resolution as a way of demonstrating this country’s will to win.57 Norwood’s statements not only evince his belief in the United States Armed Forces’ omnipotence, but also his confidence that the correct solution is a military one. What might he make of United States military officers, past and present, who would assert that an effective solution must be political, not military? Democrat critics of H. Res. 861 characterized their dissent as their rejection of a flawed Bush Administration policy toward Iraq and the war on terror. They charged that the resolution presumed that the current United States policy and strategies were good ones. The resolution states, “[T]he terrorists have declared Iraq to be the central front in their war against all who oppose their ideology.” In the debates on the resolution, some Congress members like Tom Cole (Republican-Oklahoma) echoed their belief that al-Qaeda websites and al-Qaeda spokespersons state Iraq is the center of the war on terror, and they used those quotes to justify United States troops staying there. But critics like James P. McGovern (Democrat-Massachusetts) admitted that while Iraq today may well be a training ground for terror, it was not so prior to the United States invasion. He claimed, “The very thing we wanted to prevent by going to war was actually created by the war.”58 He also noted that only 6 to 8 percent of the fighters in Iraq are foreign fighters, debunking the idea that we should equate the “global” war on terror and the problems within Iraq. Also, United States presence is not unequivocally reducing levels of killing there, since the United States has, by arming Shi’ia police forces, contributed to the creation of armed militias which are committing atrocities against Sunnis in Iraq today. Rep. Ike Skelton (Democrat-Missouri) pleaded with his colleagues to distinguish the majority of insurgents within Iraq from terrorists, who are part of an international war of terror aimed at harming the United States. In Iraq, he clarified, we have Baathists, Fedayeen, and Sunni fighters who are not the terrorists the United States was looking for in Afghanistan while pursuing bin Ladin. He concluded, “This is a disingenuous resolution before us.”59 We can see that the question of “who are the insurgents” is still central to the debate over Iraq’s role in the war on terror today. Rep. John P. Murtha (Democrat-Pennsylvania) argued that no evidence exists to support the claim that United States troops were reducing the insurgency. In 2004, estimated levels of insurgents in Iraq was around 15,000; in May 2005 estimates reached 16,000; in May 2006, approximately 20,000. Many lives were lost, but the insurgency did not diminish. Murtha was also concerned that the war damaged the global image of the United States, with many countries considering the United States as a threat to world peace instead of its guarantor.60

174

GAIL M. PRESBEY

Despite reinforcing sloppy thinking about who the terrorists are, and what the war on terrorism is, politicians passed H. Res. 861 and most Americans went about their business without noticing the debate. Now Congress has taken a stand that it should not declare a withdrawal date for troops in Iraq. The resolution passed in the House just as John F. Kerry (DemocratMassachusetts) and Russell Dana Feingold (Democrat-Wisconsin) authored a resolution in the Senate to set a timetable for Iraqi troop withdrawal in the Senate. The Senate measure was defeated in an eighty-six to thirteen vote.61 Yet Iraqi leaders had called for a timetable for withdrawal of United Statesled forces when they met in Cairo, Egypt, on 21 November 2005, at a reconciliation conference sponsored by the Arab League. Shiite, Kurdish, and Sunni leaders present at the meeting ratified the joint statement. At the time, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr estimated that the United States could withdraw its troops by the end of 2006.62 Hopes of United States troop withdrawals bind disparate groups of insurgents in Iraq, eight of eleven of whom have mutually agreed that they would stop fighting if the United States would agree to a two-year timetable for withdrawing its troops from Iraq. The eight groups called themselves the 1920 Revolution Brigade and approached Jawad al-Maliki’s government for negotiations in late June 2006.63 Such an offer would raise a host of tactical questions. The House has already passed a resolution against setting a withdrawal timetable. Many proponents of the occupation of Iraq would look with suspicion upon an offer made by insurgents. Skeptics could postulate that such an offer might be made to lure the Americans away so that insurgents could engage in another bloodbath after the troops’ departure. More problematically, for the United States to agree to withdraw at the suggestion of terrorists would constitute appeasement. Traditionally, negotiating with known terrorists or hostage takers is strictly against policy. But not to withdraw merely because some “terrorists” have now proffered the suggestion means that both sides will consider their only alternative to continue fighting. Let us hope that the United States rhetorical commitment to continuing the war on terror for a long time in many places, but principally in Iraq, does not lead the United States to squander opportunities for ending the insurgency and allowing Iraqis to construct their democracy. 6. Terminological Analysis of Terrorism Before we can judge acts of terrorism to be right or wrong, we must define what acts of terrorism are. Currently, the definition of terrorism is the subject of hot debate in many circles. Interested parties can shape the definition so that parties’ opponents can be accused of terrorism while the defining parties hold themselves to be immune from such charges. Still, we can find some consensus on what terrorism means, even if each attempt at definition

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

175

includes differences in detail or emphasis. Many definitions stipulate that terrorists target innocent civilians for violent actions to instill fear in a government or its civilian population in general, as a strategy to force political change. According to a definition offered by C. A. J. Coady, terrorism is a tactic that state and non-state actors can use. He points out that a Hobbesean definition of terrorism would be narrower, allowing only non-state agents targeting states to constitute terrorism. 64 Besides needing to consider the definition of insurgency, where to draw the line between “terrorists” and “insurgents” is also a key issue. Both terrorists and insurgents are irregular forces that do not wear uniforms. But a 1998 United States Army “broadsheet” manual stipulates that if fighters follow the rules of war, they should be called insurgents.65 Haig Khatchadourian uses the terms differently, subdividing terrorists into categories of “statesponsored” or “insurgent,” depending on who is doing the fighting and what backing they have. But Katchardourian does not, by that distinction, clarify whether sometimes calling insurgents by the term, terrorists, is improper. Those fighting against an occupying army, abiding in large measure by the rules of war (targeting military personnel and militarily strategic targets while avoiding civilian casualties), despite being irregular forces out of uniform, may insist that they are not terrorists. We could turn for a moment to the related term, “guerrilla,” instead of terrorist. Bruce Hoffman explains that guerrillas fight for, and sometimes hold and administer, territory. Some of the controversy surrounding what constitutes a terrorist, Hoffman explains, has to do with the use of the term during struggles against colonialism. Using a Hobbesian-guided definition, colonial powers, or their protégés such as white-dominated South Africa, used the term “terrorists” to describe guerillas who fought for national independence or ethnic separatism. Those who supported the guerilla movements fought back linguistically by declaring themselves freedom fighters.66 A famous case of a linguistic battle between the terms came in the 1980s when United States President Ronald Reagan called contra fighters in Honduras who were trying to topple the Nicaraguan Sandinista government “freedom fighters.” Another name for the contras used by the United States government was “resistance forces” to capitalize on the connotation of resistance groups that fought the Nazis during World War II. Critics of contras’ tactics of targeting civilians and infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, and farms, and the contra goal of toppling a democratically elected government, called the contras terrorists.67 Such linguistic battles are relevant to our current discussion since critics of the United States-backed (financed, trained, and organized) contras charge that the United States was, in this case, involved in State-sponsored terrorism. Philosophy professor Tom Rockmore argues that the United States government’s definition of terrorism contained in United States Code (1984) re-

176

GAIL M. PRESBEY

lies too heavily on the notion of an act being contrary to United States law for it to be a workable definition of terrorism. The United States definition of terrorism focuses on the use of methods such as assassination and kidnapping. Rockmore charges that this definition focuses on such “criminal” means so as to divert attention from even larger “legal” violence. For example, we could say that farmers in some countries suffer “violence” when they are deprived of their living through being undersold by cheap, subsidized, United States food imports. Economic violence of this sort, commonly termed international capitalism, is not called terrorism, even if people are terrorized by its threats and effects, while the United States terms protests against the skewed system of subsidies “terrorist.”68 Mahmood Mamdani’s definition of terrorism is any military action “for whom the preferred method of operation is destroying the infrastructure of civilian life.”69 Mamdani does not stipulate that civilians must be direct targets; attacks on infrastructure that supports civilian life are included, since these attacks ultimately hurt civilians. According to this definition, directly targeting the water and sanitation systems of Iraq during the Gulf War of 1991 constituted terrorism, since it knowingly produces hardships, even casualties, among the Iraqi citizenry.70 Mamdani’s definition allows for both state sponsored and insurgent terrorism as defined by Khatchadourian.71 Mamdani analyzes the dynamics of violence and counter-violence in his book on Rwanda, When Victims Become Killers. He recounts a cautionary tale regarding political violence.72 While not all political violence reaches the scale of genocide, the dynamic of original domination met by resentment and resistance is all-pervasive. Sometimes revolutionary movements fighting for freedom from colonial domination use methods that fit Mamdani’s description of terrorism. Sometimes revolutionists refrain from targeting civilians and their life-support systems but their political enemies who wish to discredit them still label them terrorists. In other situations, in the interest of selfprotection against insurgents, states sometimes engage in state-sponsored terrorism. This makes the current war on terror complicated and often hypocritical, especially when governments and the media unevenly apply the label “terrorist” to state and insurgent forces. 7. Moral Analysis of Terrorism Some philosophers have advanced moral arguments that would justify the use of terrorism in some cases. For example, Ted Honderich argues that if we can show that acts of terrorism will help a group reach its end of overcoming wretchedness and attaining the six great goods of human existence, then terrorism can be morally justified.73 Others argue that a group can morally resort to terrorism in selfdefense, or example, if it is about to be obliterated and has no other military means at its disposal. Critics and proponents hotly debate such ideas.74

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

177

Moralists like Khatchadourian argue that previous subjection and violation of a people does not morally justify retaliation through terrorism. He makes a two-pronged argument against terrorism, practical and moral. (Khatchadourian means both insurgent and State-sponsored terrorism). In his view, terrorism violates its targets’ right to treatment as moral persons: “[Terrorists] driven by passion or paranoia, often baselessly enlarge, sometimes to a tragically absurd extent, the circle of alleged noninnocent persons” who then become “legitimate” targets of violence in their eyes.75 If terrorists mean to punish transgressors, they do so without giving the victims of their punishment a fair trial. In addition to moral arguments against terror as a method, Khatchadourian also introduces practical arguments. He argues that in the twentieth century, no terrorist movement has successfully reached its aim; resorting to terrorism has always hurt their causes.76 Echoing some of Khatchadourian’s concerns, Hoffman says terrorists always deny that they are terrorists. They go to great lengths to explain to the public that they altruistically fight for justice and they use their brand of violence regrettably as a last resort. They will sometimes complain that their methods are a “poor man’s” weapons, since states’ traditional armaments are more expensive than homemade bombs. Martha Crenshaw explains that those who use methods of terrorism always search for “frames of reference and comparisons that place them in a morally advantageous light.”77 Frank Cunningham says that those who resort to terror as the only way in which they can overthrow oppression and reach justice, make an erroneous moral argument based on faulty utilitarian calculation. He points out that terror campaigns require passive support of many people and may continue for generations. Terrorism engenders group enmity. This kind of hatred of a whole group of people can become all consuming and mold character in detrimental ways. Those who engage in terror think they are calling attention to an intolerable situation through their theatrical action to rectify the situation. But due to the group enmity, the concern for oppression is eroded. Each side blames the other, and both sides engage in revenge-motivated violence. In this context, cross-group alliances needed for peacemaking become difficult. Utilitarian calculations that characterize terrorism as a temporary expedient are wrong because they do not recognize that their choice of method makes future peace elusive and fragile.78

178

GAIL M. PRESBEY 8. Moral Analysis of Counter-Terrorism Methods

While insurgent terrorism is both morally wrong and impractical, we can say the same of counter-terrorism or state-sponsored terrorism. Before we delve into that analysis, first we must arrive at a definition of counter-terrorism. Martha Crenshaw says the term is understood in two different senses: a government’s use of terror to oppose terrorism from a challenger, and any official response to terrorism.79 In the first sense, reactive terrorism is still terrorism and is as wrong as the original terrorism. But obviously people do not consider all forms of counter-terrorism to be examples of terrorist acts. For example, the Terrorism Research Center views counter-terrorism measures as falling into three broad categories: spoiling terrorist actions, deterring future attempts at terrorist attacks, and responding to attacks. Discovering and defusing a bomb, as a counter-terror method, has no negative consequences. Likewise, some counter-terror methods, like installing more security equipment in airports and re-strengthening United States embassy structures abroad do not terrorize any persons. But other methods, such as retaliation against countries which have harbored terrorists or have been the source of a terror attack (such as Libya, Afghanistan, or purportedly Iraq), harm many civilians and often harm the infrastructure upon which civilians depend. Likewise, deterrence methods that include torture of current prisoners terrorize individual prisoners, their families, and the community that sympathizes with them. The Terrorism Research Center’s government document acknowledges that over-reaction to terrorist attacks can be counterproductive, since by antagonizing the civilian population, terrorists’ causes could gain sympathy from the people and new recruits for their movement.80 I will suggest that counter-terror methods that constitute terrorism are both morally wrong and counter-productive in the war on terrorism. As Ricks reports, from August to October 2003, the United States Army had been making sweeping raids and arrests, most in the middle of the night, netting tens of thousands of detainees. Such actions were making gratuitous enemies in Iraq and were probably feeding the Iraqi insurgency instead of fighting it. Ricks interviewed Colonel Christopher Holshek, who had been stationed in Baqubah. Holshek told his Superior, Colonel David Hogg, that breaking down doors in the middle of the night is counterproductive. According to Holshek, you cannot just kill all the “bad guys,” since more will be created, because such tactics put Iraqi’s honor at stake. Major Isaiah Wilson, stationed in Iraq, said that according to his studies, much of the fire aimed at United States troops was from “honor shots,” meaning that an Iraqi man did not necessarily want to kill a United States soldier, but felt required to fire back to protect his honor. In the first eighteen months of the occupation, 30-40,000 detainees flooded Iraqi prisons, according to a legal statement by General Ricardo Sanchez. But why did the coalition detain so

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

179

many, when more than 90 percent of these detainees had no helpful information to fight the insurgency in Iraq? It turns out that the captors feared they might release a prisoner who might have had useful information. General Raymond Odierno explained that he had once found ten suspected insurgents whom the army had earlier caught and released. The experience made him reluctant to release any detainees.81 Holding onto such a vast number of prisoners helped create the conditions for prisoner abuse. On 4 August 2003, the United States re-opened the Abu Ghraib prison. Captain William Ponce, working at General Sanchez’s office, sent out an E-mail on 14 August 2006, explaining to his staff, “The gloves are coming off regarding these detainees.” In the E-mail, he told his subordinates that his superior, Colonel Steve Boltz (the second highestranking intelligence office in Iraq), wanted the prisoners “broken.” Ponce said guards could use dogs and snakes, and slap faces with an open hand. Some army personnel replies to his E-mail suggested that they should be allowed to use closed fists and low voltage electricity. Such communications set the tone for standards of treatment at the facility. On 14 September 2003, Sanchez approved twenty-nine interrogation tactics. He knew that they were not all approved by the Geneva Convention. Later, he scaled back the list. On 4 November 2003, soldiers hooded Abu Ghraib prisoners, stripped them naked, and forced them to stand on a box with wires attached to them. They told these prisoners that they would electrocute them at any moment if they tried to leave their perch on the box. This scene later became famous in released photos, but Sanchez, when he saw the photos, did not agree to their release.82 A United States internal army investigation into the extent of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal uncovered over one thousand photographs and ninety-three videotapes of detainee abuse, including sexual assaults. Publication of the images of abuse at Abu Ghraib was confirming evidence of what some detainees had experienced or heard about. The images gave rise to anger among prisoners and their family members.83 A Pentagon spokesperson said the release of these images of prisoner abuse “could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world.”84 Let us clarify the issues here: Do the photos per se “incite violence?” Are the photos the result of any subsequent violence? Are United States actions of prisoner abuse the cause of inflamed passions, resulting in subsequent violence against the United States? If the last alternative is accurate, then I argue that the problem lies not with publishing the photos, but with engaging in the prisoner abuse in the first place. With already crowded prisons, United States Army personnel, acting on orders to stop the looting in Baghdad, did not want to arrest and imprison looters, which would swell the prison population beyond capacity. So the troops got into the habit of trying to scare those caught looting, and then let them go. Ricks reports that the troops had the idea that making their captors cry would deter them from looting again. In one of the accounts, a soldier told

180

GAIL M. PRESBEY

a father caught with his two sons that he would have to choose which of the two sons the soldier should shoot. When the father refused to choose, the soldier took one son behind a vehicle, out of sight, and fired into the air, before letting all three go. While acts of cruelty like these were not ordered, they were tolerated.85 The effects of traumas such as these on the Iraqi population is difficult to estimate. Treatment like this could play a role in finding recruits for the insurgency. Problems of mistreatment of prisoners arose not only in Iraq but also at the United States army base in Guantanamo, Cuba, where United States officials were holding suspected “Taliban” fighters indefinitely without charges. A series of Justice Department memos reportedly written in late 2001 and early 2002 allegedly outline ways to engage in torture while bypassing Geneva Convention restrictions. Bush has openly claimed to avoid legal liability for any actions taken with detainees by arguing that detainees not held in the United States, are not in United States’ custody, and are not prisoners of war (P.O.W.s) at all. He coined the term “unlawful enemy combatants,” linguistically removing the entire group from the rights afforded to them by the Geneva Conventions and removing the onus to care for them as outlined in the convention rules. Future Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez accepted this legal argument, while Colin Powell of the State Department argued against it, as he has said publicly since he left government service. Powell “strongly suggested that the advantages of applying the Geneva Conventions far outweighed their rejection,” since not only would troops be put in danger by their Geneva Convention rights being weakened, but also United States allies would reduce support of United States policies.86 A 2004 report by the nonprofit organization, Amnesty International, detailed the many ways in which United States apparently neglects the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international laws, which prohibit inhumane treatment to prisoners. The organization charges that United States actions set a bad precedent and make the world a more dangerous place.87 Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and counterterrorism official argues that using torture to try to gain information is counterproductive for two reasons. First, information given by detainees under duress may be inaccurate and needs to be corroborated, a lengthy process. Second, torturing detainees makes enemies, since the person tortured, their family, and possibly their whole village will now be turned against you.88 Senator John McCain (Republican-Arizona), a victim of extreme torture as prisoner of war in Vietnam, argues that the search for reliable intelligence counsels against using torture as a method. He also expressed concern that if the United States would not uphold laws banning torture, that United States troops could be made more vulnerable by the erosion of this principle. Also, United States troops are motivated to fight for the honor of their country; that honor is tarnished by practices of torture.89 The Senate, under McCain’s leadership,

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

181

voted to ban “cruel, inhumane, and degrading” prisoner abuse as a legitimate method of interrogation, passing the measure by a ninety to nine vote in 2004. David Cole notes that the United States tortured some of its most important terror suspects during their detention. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, alleged mastermind behind the 11 September 2001 attacks, has been water-boarded by CIA operatives (simulated sensation and fear of drowning). Mohamad alQahtani, called the would-be twentieth hijacker of 11 September, according to Army logs, had been threatened with dogs, made to strip naked and wear women’s underwear, made to put on a dog leash and bark like a dog, injected with intravenous fluids and then made to urinate on himself. How does the government hope to convict these persons of terrorism if it coerced any “confessions” by subjecting them to such techniques?90 The same Army Inspector General’s report explained that Donald Rumsfeld had weekly discussions with Major General Geoffrey Miller, in charge of al-Qahtani’s interrogation. We may ask, how much of this the inhumane treatment did Rumsfeld know about, or even order? The nonprofit organization, Human Rights Watch, thought that, based on the evidence of the Miller-Rumsfeld link, Rumsfeld should be indicted for his role in the prisoner’s abuse. But the Military’s internal investigation concluded that the treatment added up to abuse but not torture, due to the vague wording of Rumsfeld’s guidelines for prisoner treatment, approved in December 2002 (and rescinded in January 2003). While one military panel faulted Rumsfeld for drafting unclear rules, none held him responsible for the prisoner abuse.91 Another form of abuse at the prison in Guantanamo Bay is holding prisoners without charges. The Terrorism Research Center document includes internment without trial as a counter-terror method.92 Critics have attributed several Guantanamo Bay detainees’ suicides to the psychological suffering of being held for many years in legal limbo. Thirty-nine have reportedly attempted suicide since the prison opened in January 2002. In May 2006, a United Nations panel that monitors an anti-torture treaty called for the prison to close.93 The United Nations based its decision on an earlier report of February 2006, the result of an eighteen-month study, by five of their expert staff on prisoner treatment and rights. It concluded that the Guantanamo Bay detainees are entitled to be brought to court, informed of the charges against them, and given a chance to defend themselves. It criticized United States attempts to justify controversial methods of interrogation by redefining torture. It said that guidelines currently used by the United States Department of Defense could, especially if used simultaneously, constitute degrading treatment, which violates the Convention against Torture. It voiced concern that health professionals at the facility may be complicit in abusive treatment of the detainees. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan endorsed the report, but the Bush Administration took exception to it. Spokesperson Scott McClellan said the report did little more than repeat the charges made by the prisoners' lawyers, taking the position that the

182

GAIL M. PRESBEY

report was flawed because the researchers did not visit the facility. But one of the researchers, Manfred Nowak, explained that the United States would only allow the team to visit the facility on the condition that it did not interview any prisoners, conditions researchers judged unacceptable.94 David Luban has argued that the Bush Administration has tried to take advantage of a situation in which they can choose between competing models of war and criminality to decide what kind of treatment of the prisoners will work in favor of administration goals. Traditionally, armies can detain P.O.W.s without trial until the cessation of hostilities. That ruling only applies to soldiers captured in uniform, where their identity as soldiers is not in doubt. The Bush Administration has treated the Guantanamo detainees like POWs, despite Bush’s admonishment that the war on terrorism could continue indefinitely. At the same time, when convenient, the Bush Administration has called the prisoners “unlawful combatants” (also unlawful enemy combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent) because they are “soldiers out of uniform” and so would not have Geneva Convention rights, or in the case of United States citizens or residents, “unlawful enemy combatants” who have supposedly gotten through enemy lines without a uniform. Even so, I agree with Luban that enemy combatants should face trial in a military court and not held indefinitely.95 In June 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that persons deemed “enemy combatants” are still entitled to trials. They also held that even the potential for a person to eventually divulge useful information is not in itself a good enough reason to hold a person prisoner indefinitely. Some justices argued “detentions may not exceed the duration of traditional combat operations,” appearing to reject the notion that people may be held for as long as efforts to combat terrorism persist.96 United States Supreme Court rulings in June 2006 overruled Bush’s plan of setting up military commissions to have war crimes trials of those held at Guantanamo, saying that Congress must approve trying terrorism suspects before military tribunals. This decision limited the administration from abusing its wartime powers.97 Albert Bandera explains that typical counter-terrorism conceptualizations project a grave threat that justifies killing innocents while going after terrorists. Proponents appeal to utilitarian grounds to emphasize overall benefits to humanity and the social order. A fearful public easily comes to embrace this kind of calculation. At the same time, countries do not want to look impotent as they suffer from terrorist actions, so they also accept such justifications. This utilitarian calculation presumes that retaliative counter-terror efforts will have a deterrent effect, thereby reducing suffering generally. Yet Bandera points out that counter-terror action can have worse effects than the initial terror acts. Government retaliation can engender sympathy for the terrorists’ cause, in turn justifying further acts of terrorism, resulting in escalation of violence.98 Witness the popularity of Osama bin Ladin in some

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

183

corners, with sale of t-shirts taken as a small sign that some people admire his daring to fight the Americans. Ann-Marie Slaughter, international affairs specialist, says that the current administration’s “insistence that Islamic fundamentalist ideology has replaced communist ideology as the chief enemy of our time . . . feeds al-Qaeda’s vision of the world.”99 It gives them more importance than they would have had otherwise and ironically may bring more people to its cause. Criminologists Victor E. Kappeler and Aaron E. Kappeler note that the rhetoric surrounding terrorism is similar to the rhetoric found surrounding some crime problems. Some see terrorism and crime to be threats to society’s physical safety and to fundamental societal values. Like other crime problems, commentators have called terrorism epidemic, vast, and global in its proportions to justify the extent of resources devoted to fighting it and severity of means used. As with some other cases of criminal behaviors, the number of people involved in terrorism and crime, perpetrators and victims, is often exaggerated. Kappeler and Kappeler cite Bush speeches that illustrate his rhetoric charging that global terrorists have the control of all of human life as their goal. Bush also describes the terrorists as hiding in dark corners of the earth, until they “slither” into cities where he hopes to hunt them down. Such metaphors call for constant vigilance against a less-than-human and allpervasive enemy.100 Counter-terror operations always have the challenge of figuring out who the terrorists are. Walter Lacquer explains that the only reliable way of uncovering terrorists is undercover infiltration of their organizations and the use of informants. As such, work becomes more difficult, intelligence organizations have turned to surveillance technology.101 Yet, use of new surveillance technologies threatens to sacrifice innocent individuals’ right to privacy.102 All forms of terrorism being morally and practically condemned, we must find a way other than terrorist counter-terrorism or state-sponsored terrorism to fight terrorism. But, to say, as Khatchadourian does, that counter-terrorist government measures (viewed as examples of Statesponsored terrorism) will eventually fail, ignores the many years in which control and persecution of dissent has kept an iron grip on a country, or where genocide has wiped out entire populations. In 1978, P. Schlesinger noted that counter-terrorism techniques are a domestic adaptation of techniques used during Western colonial and imperial expansion. The approach focuses on a militarized response, exceptional legislative measures, and preemptive intelligence collection, all of which compromise political and legal rights.103 A government fearful of reprisal from its oppressed people can always try to avoid future retaliation by committing genocide. But those who calculate the costs of genocide as too high must live with the fear of retaliation unless they desist from oppressing and work to heal the wounds of injustice.

184

GAIL M. PRESBEY

In Mahmood Mamdani’s study of the Rwandan genocide, he noted that those who advocated for, and fought in, the genocide saw it as a preventive war. Some had suffered during the last time the Tutsi army had tried to march into Rwanda and recapture power. Some were refugees from Burundi who had suffered under Tutsi power there. They became convinced that the only way to avoid a repeat of that event was by genocide against the Tutsis. They were also able to convince others that they, too, would become victims of Tutsi power in the future, if they did not kill Tutsis now. Mamdani notes, “by portraying opponents as potential perpetrators and ourselves as potential victims, war tends to demonize opponents and sanctify aggression as protective and defensive.”104 Such an outcome should give us pause when we ponder the precedent of preventive war and the hysteria that can arise when we imagine a possible attack and discern what we can do preemptively to protect ourselves. Ron Suskind based his book title, The One Percent Doctrine on Cheney’s post 11 September 2001 comment, “[i]f there was even a one percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction . . . the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.” Suskind suggests that suspicion, not evidence, is now the new threshold for action.105 But as early as 1985, George Schultz said that the United States might have to use force against statesponsored terrorism attacks even before the facts and evidence are known. His emphasis was on swift action; careful sorting of facts could come later.106 If countries act quickly on scanty evidence, innocent parties can get hurt. Repressive government measures often reduce or crush rebellions within the society, but their success in stifling criticism may lead to desperate actions on the part of those who think they have no choice. As Cynthia Irvin explains, terrorism most often happens in “blocked societies” where political dissent is stifled. Unfortunately, the counter-terrorism measures, activated in response, further block the flexibility of the government, with the result being the higher probability of future terrorist actions.107 On a subtler level, Irvin notes that societies in which the media ignores nonviolent protests may unwittingly be encouraging groups to turn to terrorism to capture media attention.108 As Mamdani explains, the violence of the “native” (and in our context here, the violence of terrorists), is due in large part to the lack of constructive alternatives. He quotes Frantz Fanon: He of whom they have never stopped saying that the only language he understands is that of force, decides to give utterance by force . . . the argument the native chooses has been furnished by the settler, and by an ironic turning of the tables it is the native who now affirms that the colonialist understands nothing but force.109 I personally agree with Khatchadourian that terrorism, targeting unarmed civilians to destroy or induce fear in others to achieve political goals, is wrong

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

185

and we should not condone it done by either insurgent or state actors. I am convinced that long term consequences of such actions will not be favorable to the groups who engage in such actions. Yet, I have realized that a milder, more moderate stance will suffice to condemn the current occupation in Iraq. A more moderate argument, put forward by Davis Bobrow, goes like this: Terrorism is bad. Killing civilians is wrong. Sometimes to stop insurgent terrorism, we have to engage in state terrorism (or vice versa). If we do this, we must be sure that our actions will reduce the overall level of terrorism. We cannot realistically call a war that heightens the levels of terrorism a war against terrorism.110 For example, we could not consider a “war against drugs,” that raised levels of drug use, a success. Neither could we consider a “war on poverty,” that heightened levels of poverty, a success. On these grounds, we cannot justify the current occupation of Iraq as part of a war on terrorism, since we can show that United States actions in Iraq are increasing, not decreasing, acts of terror, both by committing acts of state terror, and instigating acts of insurgent terror. Bobrow is unsure whether this means that the United States has chosen the wrong means to win the war on terror, or if we should conclude that the United States is not engaged in a war on terror at all. Regardless, we need to change what we are doing there. In September 2004, the Iraqi Ministry of Health released a report that had counted 8,487 deaths and 13,720 injuries in fifteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces between 5 April and 19 September 2004. While United States Military spokesman Steve Boylan explained such high civilian casualties as due to insurgents living in residential areas, Juan Cole admonishes that high casualties result in coalition forces losing the “hearts of minds” of the Iraqi people. The report concluded that “Operations by United States and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis—most of them civilians—as attacks by insurgents are.”111 In addition to high casualty rates from current fighting in Iraq, exposure to depleted uranium might also kill people more slowly but surely. Despite grave concern that its radioactivity is a health hazard, the United States armed forces continue to use shells strengthened with depleted uranium for their military advantage. The United States used 300 tons of depleted uranium during the first Gulf War. Oncologists were already finding high levels of cancer in the aftermath of that war. During the second United States invasion and occupation, the Gulf War of 2003, estimates of depleted uranium use are around 1,700 tons. Losses due to this unfortunate development are currently incalculable. Popular utilitarian calculations, which justify high casualty rates in Iraq as necessary to win the global war on terror, do not weigh, or even consider, the rates of death from this cancer.112 Potential suffering from depleted uranium exposure includes United States soldiers, who may show symptoms later. Another casualty factor, often neglected by too-narrow focus on physical

186

GAIL M. PRESBEY

casualty rates, is that of psychological damage. Many United States soldiers returning from Iraq suffer stress-related disorders from their exposure to attacks or their active involvement in killing Iraqi fighters or civilians.113 Conflating terrorists and insurgents could play a role in the neglect of counter-insurgency warfare tactics. Ricks, who does not criticize the military model of containing or quelling an insurgency, still criticizes current military strategy in Iraq. He says these methods are not good counter-insurgency technique. Not merely his personal opinion, he quotes many United States military experts and others who say that military tactics used during 2003–2005, in Iraq, exacerbated the insurgency problem. Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl opined that due to an inflexible institutional culture in the armed forces, they repeated in Iraq some errors they made earlier in Vietnam. They depended too much on firepower and neglected their immediate goal to separate insurgents from their popular support. Major Isaiah Wilson, of the 101st Airborne, stated that only in the north of Iraq was a true counter-insurgency campaign active—one based on winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Everywhere else, only an “anti-insurgency” campaign is present.114 In 2003, the occupation in Iraq became known as the war of the roadside bomb. United States forces could not depend on their technological superiority to protect them from harm produced by such low-tech bombs. Iraqi cells planting bombs always included one camera operator, whose job was to videotape the damage created when the bomb went off, and to send that tape straight to Iraqi television and news companies, showing that the attacks were meant to send a message beyond the immediate physical damage. As Ricks explains, “The fact that insurgents were able to place so many bombs, . . . made a political statement, because it meant that the locals weren’t reporting on them.”115 Major General Peter Chiarelle, head of the First Cavalry Division in Iraq, said that the constant encounters with roadside bombs meant that troops always had a defensive posture toward the Iraqi population, which made it difficult for United States troops to reach out to and build bridges with Iraqis.116 Having troops live on heavily fortified bases supplied with the accoutrements of an American lifestyle like internet and ice cream was also a flawed counter-insurgency strategy according to some. Not only were troops cut off from the people, but the convoys needed to send in supplies were subject to constant attack.117 Ricks refers to a key counter-insurgency text written in 1963, by French army Lieutenant Colonel David Galula, called Counter-Insurgency Warfare, Theory and Practice. According to Galula, depending on conventional warfare tactics when dealing with an insurgency is like using a fly swatter to reach your enemy. Galula’s book has advice such as, treat your prisoners well. This will help win the insurgents over to you. The people are the prize, and so refrain from doing anything to antagonize them.118 In a similar vein, Kalev Sepp, a retired Special Operations Forces officer, wrote a series of les-

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

187

sons distilled from studying twentieth century counter-insurgency campaigns. He came up with a list of twelve best practices, and nine unsuccessful characteristics of counter-insurgency campaigns. The United States had only done one of the twelve good practices (gathering intelligence), and had done all nine of the worst practices.119 Perhaps this lack of good strategy gave rise to increased levels of insurgent activity. In 2004, 26,496 attacks, and in 2005, 34,131 attacks occurred.120 Ricks does give some accounts of military men who wanted to change their approach away from military encounter to understanding and winning over insurgents. Marine Major General James Mattis wanted to try a different approach, but his superiors denied his proposal; instead, his superiors ordered him to attack Fallujah in retaliation for four contract workers killed there.121 Ricks suggests that recently the Armed Forces have learned from their mistakes and are trying more humane tactics, including treating prisoners well.122 Such rethinking on the part of the military is a necessary part of an overall shift of both tactics and strategy in Iraq. 9. Charting a Way Forward In Terrorism and the Media, David L. Paletz and Alex Peter Schmid address the effectiveness of counter-terrorism measures or the war on terrorism.123 They include studies showing that responses to terrorism that do not address underlying political or economic issues do not get at the root of the problem and fail to stem the tide of terrorism. Having thoroughly studied the memoirs and journals of many terrorist leaders to gain insights on their goals and motivations, Robin Gerrits concluded that terrorists aim at psychological defeat of their enemies. Terrorists reasoned that if their issue and cause were lagging, a successful hit against a target could boost the morale of those in the movement and help to make their issue high profile. All terrorists commented upon how increased repression as a response to their act could work in their favor and increase recruits to their cause.124 Based on these accounts, those planning counter-terror measures should consider that increased repression may have the opposite effect as intended. Sociologist Christopher Hewitt counters that while terrorists often get media attention, they do not get the kind of coverage that will help their cause, since it emphasizes the brutality of the act without clarifying the context or the possible political motive.125 One crucial preventive measure is to address the root causes or the larger context of terrorist actions. Correct and incorrect ways to accomplish this exist. Mamdani rejects the idea that the causes of terrorism reside in a culture. He rejects arguments that good Muslims and bad Muslims exist, and that the bad ones are the fundamentalists locked in a time warp, doomed to unthinkingly repeat a tradition. He argues instead that “fundamentalism,” as we know it now, is a contemporary, manufactured term. For example, he credits the

188

GAIL M. PRESBEY

CIA with “creating” the fundamentalist group of mujahadeen, and handpicking its leader, bin Laden, to fight the Soviets.126 A recent study of suicide bombers, reported in Robert A. Pape’s Dying to Win, indicates that bombers are not primarily motivated by “religious fanatics looking for a quick trip to paradise.” Instead, 95 per cent of bombers have a strategic goal of compelling a country to “to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.”127 Cairo professor Hassan Hanafi offers insight into the causes of terrorism in Islamic societies. Instead of looking to the “culture” as culprit, he outlines seven forms of injustice with a causal relationship to terrorism. Among the factors he names are the occupation of land as a continued pattern from the colonial era (such as Palestine and Kashmir, and the United States bases in Turkey and Saudi Arabia); extremes of wealth and poverty within Muslim societies and the draining of national capital as it is invested abroad; and the underdevelopment of many Muslim countries, with lack of infrastructure for development; and a host of problems like corruption, consumerism, and rising crime based on people’s frustrations. Accordingly, we must address these problems for violence and terrorism in Islamic societies to subside. He argues that people need a legal channel to voice their grievances so they are not left with violence as their only hope.128 While Muslim theologians like Riffat Hassan and others point out multiple interpretations of Islam and possible meanings of “jihad” that do not include fighting or killing people, such an interpretation alone will not put an end to terrorist acts. 129 People will resist peaceful interpretations if such interpretations do not help them make sense of the social context, which confronts them. Competing interpretations see terrorists as martyrs willing to give up their lives for the cause of Islam and preservation of their traditional societies. A concerted effort to better the conditions under which people despair may challenge people to rethink their interpretation of sacred texts and God’s will. Martha Crenshaw outlines three main motivations for terrorism: concrete grievances, lack of opportunity for political participation, and government use of unexpected force as a response to protest or reform movements. Her first two categories echo Hanafi’s concerns. But she adds some emphasis on the dynamics: if the masses are dissatisfied but passive, a small elite group’s dissatisfaction could turn to terrorism out of frustration that nothing else is happening. They could perhaps hope that they can dissipate the passivity of the masses by their actions or government reactions. Proof exists that extraordinarily repressive government responses are not effective in preventing terrorism, and so we should abandon it for practical reasons.130 Even the United States Government’s Terrorism Research Center includes attempts to remedy longstanding inequities, and addressing complaints, which form the basis of terror, as examples of counter-terrorism

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

189

activities.131 But then, if the terrorists demand that recognized leaders address these complaints, then the governments fighting against them can say that they do not negotiate with terrorists. We know that capitulating to kidnapper’s demands for ransom may encourage future kidnapping. Does the same principle apply to terrorists’ demands? What is the correct response if insurgents say they will stop fighting if the government will address and rectify an injustice? Should we categorize cessation of injustice in the same class as we conceptualize ransom? Does the opposed government have a duty to say that it will not agree to look at the injustice because of the way in which the insurgents made their demand? Will governments argue that rectifying injustices because insurgents asked for redress, will only encourage insurgents to return to violent means to draw attention to other injustices? Will insurgents lose face or risk being ignored should they abandon their violent methods? Thinking like this leads to a dead end, with both sides refusing to change. The better way to go about this is to be pro-active, to allow people to voice their criticisms of the government freely, and to take criticism seriously, so that unresolved issues result in frustrated persons taking up violence to redress their cause. An example of such a conundrum is a debate flowing from the recent capture, in London, of young Muslim men suspected of planning terrorist attacks aboard airline flights from England to the United States. After their capture, thirty-eight British based Islamic organizations, three Muslim members of the House of Commons, and three Muslim members of the House of Lords wrote an open letter saying that in their opinion, the current British foreign policy of cooperating with the United States in the war on terror is jeopardizing lives in Great Britain. They thought the British Government should not rely solely on police actions to uncover terrorists. Without a change in foreign policy, which they interpret as anti-Islam, they predicted new terrorists would be motivated to act in harmful ways. Foreign secretary Margaret Beckett criticized their letter, saying that blaming foreign policy for the creation of terrorists is a grave error. Instead, they place blame on individuals who decide to perpetrate terrorist acts. Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander said that to allow terrorists to shape his country’s foreign policy would be wrong.132 True, we must hold individuals personally responsible for their actions. We cannot refer to a crass determinism to suggest that youths have no choice but to engage in violent activity. On the other hand, with a stubborn refusal to reconsider foreign policy, how can the situation progress so that individuals do not feel enraged by an intolerable and apparently unjust system? A foreign policy that tries to reduce incidents of terror by understanding their causes, and one that addresses the underlying issues, has a chance of being successful. Retired General Wesley Clarke, drawing on his many years

190

GAIL M. PRESBEY

of war experience, stated his belief that in the current Iraq context, we cannot fight our enemies and win against them. He recommended the best procedure would be to “assimilate” our enemies. He thinks the United States should try to win over insurgents by engaging them in dialogue and offering amnesty.133 A recent survey of 100 foreign policy and national security experts said that the United States was doing poorly on the war on terrorism. Eighty-seven percent of respondents said that the war in Iraq was having a negative impact when it comes to protecting the American people from global terror attacks. They argued that to win this war against terrorism, the United States had to rely more on diplomacy. Responses appeared to indicate respondents’ belief that the United States has thus far put too much faith in military measures. Answers indicated that the United States needed to be smarter, learn more about the societies and groups they were fighting, and engage in a debate of ideas and values. While the experts focused on need for more diplomacy, they rated current diplomatic efforts of the State Department the lowest of any current policy initiative. They also argued that it would be a top priority to increase the budget of the State Department.134 I agree that we need more diplomacy. But as practiced by current governments, not all diplomacy aids in mutual understanding. Some diplomacy involves threats of force. According to Jürgen Habermas, the language of politics is the language of strategic action, manipulation, and pressure strategies are a normal part of the relationships between countries.135 Yet more diplomacy is not always better; diplomacy is an issue of quality and quantity. Diplomatic efforts can gain support because they present a convincing solution to an entrenched problem, or they can be effective because another government cowers from the threat of the more powerful government. But if governments, under the rubric of diplomacy, make explicit or implicit threats to target civilians of the opposed government with mass death, should we judge such threats to be morally acceptable? Such threats of extermination have been pervasive throughout postHiroshima and Nagasaki United States diplomacy. Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod document all the times the United States government has “used” its nuclear arsenal—not firing the missiles but the threat of them to get other countries to capitulate to United States demands.136 Since the weapons would necessarily kill millions of non-combatants, we should judge the threat to use them as morally wrong. Ethicists can split hairs and suggest that as long as the government does not intend to use the weapon, even if it says it does, that it may absolve itself from moral blame for the threat. But if people were assured that the government did not intend to follow through with the threat, the threat would lose all force. Issuing such a threat then constitutes a kind terrorism because it frightens civilians into feeling that they are at the mercy of politicians in their country and other countries to decide whether they live or die.

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

191

Army Major Generals Paul Eaton and Charles Swannack Jr., have been criticizing the Bush Administration’s diplomatic efforts toward Iran. As public relations efforts and military strategy, they argue that military action against Iran at this point would be disastrous, and would have harmful effects not only for Iran but also for the fledgling Iraq democracy about which the Bush Administration has said it cares so much. To their credit, the Pentagon, through the insistence of General Peter Pace, current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently got the White House to take a nuclear attack against Iran off the list of possible responses to Iran’s current nuclear power debate. Yes, we should support and strengthen diplomatic efforts in the war on terrorism. I find it ironic that currently, the Pentagon, traditionally at the forefront of military action, is more concerned about diplomacy than the White House. I conclude that the blanket grouping of all fighters as unified terrorists with nebulous goals does not aid in reducing terrorism because it does not clarify the situation and does not encourage communication and mutual understanding, which could become a basis for a cease-fire or de-escalation of conflict. We need a new diplomatic effort based on truthfulness and mutual understanding. To answer the question of this paper’s title, is the Iraq War part of the “War on terror?” I consider it unproductive to group the Iraq conflict under the subheading of a global war on terror. To continue to see the conflict in this way will encourage the continued misdiagnosis of the problems facing Iraq. Reducing terrorism and providing security are good priority goals for governments to have. An emphasis on understanding the causes of diverse terrorism movements in our world, and the devising of strategies to deal with these threats (within the confines of a moral response that will not backfire), is a good and realistic alternative to what I see as the current wrong-headed approach.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to acknowledge the help of Gregory Sumner who commented on this chapter in its draft form.

NOTES 1. Patrick E. Tyler, “G.I.’s in a Desert Town Face Rising Iraqi Hostility,” New York Times, 30 May 2003; Kevin Sullivan, “Randomness of Attacks Has United States Troops on the Edge,” Wall Street Journal, 1–3 August 2003. 2. George Bush, “Remarks by Bush at Whitehall Palace: Speech to Academics During London Visit at Royal Banqueting House,” Wall Street Journal, 19 November 2003. 3. Hamza Hendawi, “United States Says Fewer Iraq Attacks on Troops,” Associated Press, 25 November 2003.

192

GAIL M. PRESBEY

4. Ian Fisher, “United States Force Said to Kill 15 Iraqis during an AntiAmerican Rally,” New York Times, 30 April 2003. 5. Patrick E. Tyler, “Iraqi Politicians to Issue a Protest of Occupation Rule,” New York Times, 21 May 2003; Patrick E. Tyler, “Political Leaders Resisting United States Plan to Govern Iraq,” New York Times, 5 June 2003. 6. Hamza Hendawi, “Baghdad Suicide Blast Kills 10, Wounds 45,” Associated Press, 9 October 2003. 7. Ibid. 8. George W. Bush, “President Bush Meets with Troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving: Remarks by the President to the Troops Baghdad, Iraq,” 27 November 2003 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/print/20031127.html (accessed 22 July 2006). 9. Robert H. Reid, “American Troops Seek Ex-Saddam Deputy,” Associated Press, 17 November 2003. 10. Richard W. Stevenson and Jodi Wilgoren, “Bush Forcefully Defends War, Citing Safety of United States and World,” New York Times, 13 July 2004. 11. Patrick Tyler, “European Press Criticizes Bush Address to United Nations as a Denial of a Worsening Situation in Iraq,” New York Times, 23 September 2004. 12. Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay, “CIA Officials Warn that Civil War Looms in Iraq,” Free Press Washington, 22 January 2004. 13. Sappenfeld, Mark, “United States Tempers its View of Victory in Iraq,” Christian Science Monitor, 16 September 2005. 14. James Glanz, “Bomb Kills 12 Worshipers at Sunni Mosque in Iraq near Site of Zarqawi’s Death,” New York Times, 24 June 2006. 15. “Looking for Corners Turned in Iraq,” New York Times, 18 June 2006. 16. George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address by the President,” www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2006/index.html (accessed 22 July 2006). 17. Gail Presbey, “Challenges of Founding a New Government in Iraq,” Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 12:4 (December 2005), pp. 521–541. 18. Jason Leopold, A Night of Fear Mongering, Big Time,” Truthout, 1 February 2006. 19. Tom Englehardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (New York: Basic Books/ Harper Collins, 1995). 20. Terence Hunt, “Bush: No Proof of Saddam Role in 9/11,” Associated Press, 17 September 2003. 21. Ibid. 22. Tom Shanker, “Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says.” New York Times, 25 June 2004. 23. Douglas Jehl, “Central Intelligence Agency Director again Disputes Hijacker’s Iraqi Contact.” New York Times, 9 July 2004. 24. James Risen, “No Evidence of Meeting with Iraqi,” New York Times, 17 June 2004. 25. Lee Feinstein, “Most Americans Support War with Iraq, Shows New PEW/ CFR Poll,” Council on Foreign Relations, 10 October 2002.

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

193

26. Michael W. Traugot and Ted Brader, “Explaining 9/11,” Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government, and the Public, eds. Norris Pippa and Montague Kern (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 183–202. 27. David E. Sanger, “Bush’s Pre-Emptive Strategy Meets Some Untidy Reality,” New York Times, 12 July 2004. 28. David E. Sanger and Douglas Jehl, “Behind 9/11: Old Miscues and New Twists. Bush Didn’t Challenge Data at a Crucial Point, Reports Suggest,” New York Times, 25 July 2004. 29. Paul Krugman, “Battlefield of Dreams,” New York Times, 4 May 2004. 30. Joseph E. Mulligan, “Colin Powell: Crusader for U.S. Multinational Corporations.” The Witness Magazine, 2004 http://www.thewitness.org/agw/mulligan121504. html (accessed 15 August 2006). 31. Simon Harak, Stop the Merchants of Death, public presentation at University of Detroit Mercy, 22 March 2006, Erik Eckholm, “White House Officials and Cheney Aide Approved Halliburton Contract in Iraq,” New York Times, 14 June 2004. 32. Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of its Enemies (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). 33. Ibid., pp. 123-24, 151, 168-71, 225. 34. Paul R. Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy, the War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006. 35. Ibid. 36. Don Van Natta Jr., “Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says,” New York Times, 27 March 2006. 37. Anita Miller, ed., George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution, compiled by the House Judiciary Democratic Staff (Chicago Ill.: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2006). 38. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Addressing Cadets, “Bush Sees Parallel to World War II,” New York Times, 3 June 2004. 39. Eric Lichtblau, “United States Warns of High Risk of Qaeda Attack: Finance Centers are Said to be the Targets,” New York Times, 2 August 2004. 40. Alan Cowell, “Blair Defends the War in Iraq as part of a ‘Historic Struggle,’” New York Times, 12 April 2004. 41. James Risen, “Account of Broad Shiite Revolt Contradicts White House Stand,” New York Times, 8 April 2004. 42. Ibid. 43. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2006), pp. 165, 190–192. 44. Thom Shanker, “Some in Military Fear a Return to Iraqi Battles Already Fought,” New York Times, 12 April 2004. 45. Edward Wong, “Divided Mission in Iraq Tempers Views of G.I.’s,” New York Times, 17 May 2004. 46. Edward Wong, “In Anger, Ordinary Iraqis Are Joining the Insurgency,” New York Times, 28 June 2004. 47. Ibid. 48. Edward Wong, “Undeterred, Insurgents Keep Up Deadly Attacks across Iraq,” New York Times, 2 July 2004. 49. Wong, “In Anger, Ordinary Iraqis Are Joining the Insurgency.” 50. Ibid.

194

GAIL M. PRESBEY

51. Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), pp. 25–27. 52. “Declaring that the United States Will Prevail in the Global War on Terror,” House of Representatives, 15 June 2006, p. H4024. 53. Ibid., pp. 4024, 4025, 4035. 54. Robin Toner, “House Rejects Timetable for Withdrawal from Iraq,” New York Times, 17 June 2006. 55. Declaring that the United States Will Prevail in the Global War on Terror,” p. H4036. 56. Ibid., p. H4024. 57. Ibid., p. H 4021. 58. Ibid., p. H4016. 59. Ibid., p. H4071. 60. Ibid., pp. H4027–H4028. 61. “Kerry and Feingold Form Alliance on Iraq,” Associated Press, 27 June 2006. 62. Salah Nasrawi, “Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable,” Associated Press, 22 November 2005. 63. Steven R. Hurst and Qasim Abdul-Zahra, “Iraq Insurgents Offer to Stop Attacks,” Associated Press, 26 June 2006. 64. David J. Whittaker, ed., The Terrorism Reader (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 3–4, 9; Frank Cunningham, “Counter-Oppressive Terrorism,” Moral Issues in Global Perspective, vol. 1, Moral and Political Theory, 2nd edition, ed. Christine M. Koggel (Orchard Park, N.Y.: Broadview Press, 2006), pp. 331–340, esp. pp. 331–332; and C. A. J. Coady, “War and Terrorism,” Analyzing Moral Issues, 3rd edition, ed. Judith A. Boss (Boston: McGraw-Hill Publishers, 2005), pp. 649–657, esp. p. 655. 65. Terrorism Research Center, United States Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 31 December 1998, in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, p. 18. 66. Bruce Hoffman Inside Terrorism (London: Indigo, 1998), in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, pp. 6–7. 67. Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: United States Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace (Boston: South End Press, 1985), pp. 1,121. 68. Tom Rockmore, “On the So-Called War on Terrorism,” Metaphilosophy, 35:3 (April 2004), pp. 386–400, esp. pp. 398–399. 69. Mahmood Mamdani, “Turn Off Your Tunnel Vision” Washington Post, 6 January 2002. 70. Thomas J. Nagy, “The Secret behind the Sanctions: How the United States Intentionally Destroyed Iraqi Water Supply,” The Progressive, September 2001 http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0808-07.htm (accessed 22 July 2006). 71. Haig Khatchadourian, The Morality of Terrorism (New York: Peter Lang, 1998). 72. Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 2001). 73. Ted Honderich, “Terrorism for Humanity,” Metaphilosophy, 35:3 (April 2004), pp. 15–39. 74. Whitley R. P. Kaufman, “Terrorism, Self-Defense, and the Killing of the Innocent,” Metaphilosophy, 35:3 (April 2004), pp. 41–52. 75. Khatchadourian, The Morality of Terrorism, p. 25.

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

195

76. Ibid., pp. 33, 28. 77. Hoffman Inside Terrorism, in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, pp. 6–7; and Martha Crenshaw, Terrorism in Context (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, p. 12. 78. Cunningham, “Counter-Oppressive Terrorism,” pp. 337–338. 79. Crenshaw, Terrorism in Context, in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, p. 265. 80. Terror Research Center, in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, pp. 259–260. 81. Ricks, Fiasco, pp. 199, 238–39, 250–52. 82. Ibid., pp. 197, 239–40, 292, 297. 83. Ian Fisher, “Brutal Images Buttress Anger of Ex-Prisoners,” New York Times, 10 May 2004. 84. Suzanne Goldenberg, “Abu Ghraib Leaked Report Reveals Full Extent of Abuse,” The Guardian, UK, 17 February 2006. 85. Ricks, Fiasco, pp. 272–273. 86. Neil A. Lewis, “Justice Memos Explained How to Skip Prisoner Rights,” New York Times, 21 May 2004. 87. Amnesty International report, “United States of America Undermining Security: Violations of Human Dignity, the Rule of Law and the National Security Strategy in ‘War on Terror’ Detentions,” http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510612004 (accessed 15 August 2006). 88. Larry C. Johnson, “Why it Should Never Be Done,” Los Angeles Times, 11 November 2005. 89. John McCain, “Torture’s Terrible Toll,” Newsweek, 21 November 2005. 90. David Cole, “How Not to Fight Terrorism,” The Washington Post, 5 May 2006. 91. Charlie Savage, “Documents Link Rumsfeld to Prisoner’s Interrogation,” Boston Globe, 15 April 2006. 92. Terror Research Center, in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, p. 262. 93. Ben Fox, “Guantanamo Prison Guards, Inmates Clash,” Associated Press, 19 May 2006; and “Three Guantanamo Detainees Committed Suicide,” Reuters, 10 June 2006. 94. United Nations Press Release, “Human Rights Experts Issue Joint Report on Situation of Detainees in Guantanamo Bay,” http://www.unhchr.ch/hurricane/huri cane.nsf/view01/52E94FB9CBC7DA10C1257117003517B3?opendocument (accessed 15 August 2006); and “Annan: Shut Guantanamo Prison Camp,” cnn.com, 17 February 2006. 95. David Luban, “The War on Terrorism and the End of Human Rights,” in Boss, Analyzing Moral Issues, pp. 681–688. 96. Adam Liptak, “For Prisoners, Only Certainty Is Right to a Court Hearing,” New York Times, 29 June 2004. 97. David E. Sanger and Scott Shane, “Court’s Ruling is Likely to Force Negotiations over Presidential Power,” New York Times, 30 June 2006. 98. Albert Bandera, “Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement,” in Origins of Terrorism, ed. Walter Reich (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, p. 253. 99. “The Terrorism Index,” Foreign Policy, July/August 2006, pp. 49–55, quote p. 51. 100. Victor E. Kappeler and Aaron E. Kappeler, “Speaking of Evil and Terrorism: The Political and Ideological Construction of a Moral Panic,” Terrorism and CounterTerrorism: Criminological Perspectives, Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, vol. 5, ed. Mathieu Deflem (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2004), pp. 175–198, esp. pp. 177–180.

196

GAIL M. PRESBEY

101. Walter Lacquer, The New Terrorism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, pp. 263–264. 102. Gail Presbey, “Scrutinizing Justifications for Increased Surveillance,” Human Rights Global Focus, 2:4 (December 2005), pp. 4–14. 103. David L. Paletz and Alex Peter Schmid, eds., Terrorism and the Media (London: Sage, 1992), p. 99. 104. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, pp. 216–217. 105. Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine pp. 62, 168. 106. Brian Jenkins, “Defense Against Terrorism,” Political Science Quarterly 101:5 (1986), in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, p. 247. 107. Cynthia Irvin, “Terrorists’ Perspectives: Interviews,” Terrorism and the Media, eds. Palety, David L. and Alex P. Schmid (London: Sage, 1992, pp. 101–102). 108. Ibid., p. 83. 109. Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 66 quoted in Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, p.13. 110. Davis B. Browbow, “Losing to Terrorism: An American Work in Progress,” Metaphilosophy, 35:3 (April 2004), pp. 345–364. 111. Nancy Youssef, “More Iraqis Killed by U.S. than by Terror,” Detroit Free Press, 25 September, 2004. 112. Robert C. Koehler, “Spreading Cancer,” Tribune Media Services, 29 June, 2006. 113. Anahad O’Connor, “1 in 6 Iraq Veterans is Found to Suffer Stress-Related Disorder,” New York Times, 1 July 2004. 114. Ricks, Fiasco, pp. 222. 115. Ibid., p. 221. 116. Ibid. 117. Ibid., p. 256. 118. Ibid., pp. 264–266. 119. Ibid., p. 393. 120. Ibid., p. 414. 121. Ibid., pp. 313–318, 332–333. 122. Ibid., pp. 368–369, 421–424. 123. David L. Paletz and Alex Peter Schmid, Terrorism and the Media (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1992). 124. Robin Gerrits, “Terrorists’ Perspectives: Memoirs,” Terrorism and the Media, pp. 31, 38–39. 125. Christopher Hewitt, “Public’s Perspectives,” Paletz and Schmid, Terrorism and the Media, pp. 170–207, esp. p. 178–179. 126. Mahmood Mamdani, “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim—An African Perspective.” Social Science Research Council, 2001 http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/mam dani.htm (accessed 15 August 2006). 127. Caryle Murphy, “Scholar: Terror Acts Misread,” Detroit News, 17 July 2005. 128. Hassan Hanafi, Islam in the Modern World, vol. 4: Tradition, Revolution, and Culture (Cairo, Egypt: Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1995). 129. Riffat Hassan, “Islam and Human Rights,” The Philosophical Quest: A CrossCultural Reader, eds. Gail Presbey, Karsten J Struhl, and Richard E Olsen (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995).

Is the U.S.-Led Occupation of Iraq Part of the “War on Terror”?

197

130. Martha Crenshaw, “The Causes of Terrorism,” Comparative Politics (July 1981), in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, pp. 14–16. 131. Terrorism Research Center, in Whittaker, Terrorism Reader, p. 261. 132. Alan Cowell, “British Muslims Criticize Blair and Policies: Police Broaden Search for Evidence,” New York Times,13 August 2006. 133. Wesley Clarke, “The Next Iraq Offensive,” New York Times, 6 December 2005 134. “The Terrorism Index,” Foreign Policy, July/August 2006, pp. 49–55. 135. Jürgen Habermas, “Hannah Arendt’s Communications Concept of Power,” Social Research, 44:1 (Spring 1977), pp. 3–22, esp. pp. 17–18. 136. Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod, To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans (Boston: South End Press, 1987).

This page intentionally left blank

Ten THE MORTAL GOD TO WHICH WE OWE OUR PEACE AND DEFENSE D. R. Koukal Since it was installed into power by judicial fiat1 and especially since 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration has projected the unparalleled power of the United States across the world unilaterally and without apology. This power has not been constrained by the United Nations Charter and other treaty obligations or the concerns of long time allies.2 The “preventative war” in Iraq has shown that the Bush foreign policy recognizes no national boundary as its natural limit. Presenting the nation to the world as a model of democracy and liberty’s champion, the Bush Administration mongers fear to its citizens, curtails civil liberties, usurps power from an intimidated Congress, and tortures prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Having proclaimed a perpetual “war on terrorism,” the United States now strides across the globe as Leviathan, the mortal god to which the world owes its peace and defense, master of all and subject to none, a purportedly benevolent empire in a Hobbesian state of nature. In this context, “Leviathanism” is to be understood as a particular kind of empire where a paranoid style of geopolitics is conjoined with the more classical features of empire: monopolized coercion, the domination of weaker nations, unilateralism, and an ethos of cultural superiority. Though scores of commentators have drawn attention to this emerging global Leviathan, none have bothered to more closely analyze the parallels between Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy and the vast expansion of geopolitical power claimed by the Bush Administration.3 In this essay I intend to do just that. Focusing on this administration’s response to 11 September 2001, I will begin by laying out the Hobbesian premises underlying this response, and illustrate its radical departure from the Lockean contract theory that serves as the foundation of American governance. Second, I will show that despite its claim that we can best understand the world in Hobbesian terms, the current administration appears incapable of exercising the foresight necessary to confront this purportedly Hobbesian world as a prudent and effective Leviathan. Finally, I will point to a key unfounded assumption within Hobbes’ political philosophy, which will show that even if the administration exercised more prudence in the exercise of its power, its Hobbesian strategy in the purported “war on terrorism” would still be misguided and bound to fail. This entire

200

D. R. KOUKAL

analysis will show how the United States under the Bush Administration, far from introducing a Pax Americana, is an increasingly dangerous world citizen. 1. A Hobbes Primer Before beginning this analysis, a brief overview of Hobbes’ political philosophy is in order. Recall that this philosophy begins in Hobbes’ view of human nature, grounded in a materialist empiricism. On his account, we perceive objects, which in turn give rise to all of our thoughts, memories, passions, and experience. We move away from the objects to which we have an aversion, and toward those objects we desire. We achieve felicity (happiness) through the continual success of attaining the objects we desire. Where we cannot share objects of desire, we are lead to the miserable condition of war “of every man against every man.” This condition of war is brought about by our natural passions of partiality, pride, revenge, and dominion over others, which marks us as fundamentally egoistic. In Hobbes’ (in)famous phrase, our conflictual relationship with others brings us into a state of “continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”4 Hobbes holds that at the same time we all aim toward our preservation. This causes us to recognize two laws of nature, the first being to seek peace, and the second being to contract with others to establish peace whenever possible. His idea is that peace is that which best guarantees self-preservation, so we should seek it whenever we can. According to him, this requires the establishment of a common power to keep all in awe and fear to coerce us into honoring our contracts. This in turn requires us to confer by our consent virtually all of our rights upon a sovereign power. In making this contract, all have given up their power and put it in the sovereign. The power of subjects vanishes in the presence of the sovereign, who in effect has absolute power to keep the peace as it sees fit. The sovereign power is the monstrous Leviathan, an entity sufficiently free and powerful to keep the peace through naked threats and overwhelming force. Freshman in my introductory philosophy class rightfully ask, “But why would anyone give up so many rights and freedoms?” A good question, and one to which Hobbes has a ready answer: living under such absolute authority is better than living in a condition of war of all against all.5 The trade-off is one of freedom for security. Given Hobbes was inspired to write the Leviathan by the chaos of the English Civil War this attitude is understandable, and his point may be dramatically furthered by considering the terrifying violence following the disintegration of a post-Tito Yugoslavia in our time. As a further aside, Hobbes’ account of sovereign power greatly displeased his fellow Royalists, despite that the Leviathan is one grand apologia for absolute monarchy. Instead of depicting the monarch as a quasi-divine person with a God-given and absolute right to rule, Hobbes shows him to be

The Mortal God to which We Owe Our Peace and Defense

201

nothing more than a thug—someone with enough muscle to unilaterally exercise sufficient coercive power in the interest of peace. These points will be relevant later in this essay. 2. The Hobbesian Power-Grab through False Dichotomy. After the horrific attacks on America on 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration moved quickly to consolidate power in the executive branch of government, on grounds quite Hobbesian in nature. Claiming the primacy of national security, George W. Bush demanded and received, from a compliant Congress, sweeping new powers in the form of the United States Patriot Act, signed into law on 26 October 2001. Though Bush has recently taken to intoning that “freedom is on the march,”6 the Patriot Act greatly increases the government’s surveillance powers, allows for secret searches, and in many instances has eroded the accountability of intelligence agencies to judicial overview.7 More ominously, a year later Congress gave the administration carte blanche to pursue a potentially perpetual “war on terrorism” as it saw fit, up to and including the summary assassination of foreign nationals and launching a “preventative” strike on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, this despite the lack of any credible evidence connecting his regime to the 11 September 2001 attacks.8 These events signify a disturbing departure from America’s traditional governing philosophy as derived from the other great English contract theorist John Locke and toward Hobbes’ infinitely more absolutist theory of government. Locke is the primary source of the notion that the different dimensions of political power be limited, separated, and balanced against one another. To the extent that Locke considers the legislative the “supreme” power in government, the usurpation of Congress’s war-making powers by the Bush executive branch violates this fundamental Lockean principle, as does the legislative’s transfer of this power to another entity without the consent of the governed. This principle makes up the fundamental structure of the United States Constitution, and since 11 September 2001, both the Bush Administration and the United States Congress have been complicit in violating it. Locke held the principle of separation of power so highly that he would consider this shifting of legislative power to the executive as a usurpation and grounds for the dissolution of government.9 Though the diffusion of war-making power has a long history in the United States, never before has the legislative granted the executive such power in a potentially endless war with countless fronts and unnamed enemies.10 The success of the Bush Administration’s power grab rests on its ruthless exploitation of the legitimate fears of the citizenry since 11 September 2001, and its constant invocation of the patently false Hobbesian dilemma: You can have freedom or security, but you cannot have both. On 7 December 2001,

202

D. R. KOUKAL

Attorney General John Ashcroft took this demagoguery to shameless extremes when, during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he accused critics of aiding terrorists by providing “ammunition to America’s enemies.”11 Despite the crudeness of this ploy it worked, and Congress has until recently remained largely mute in regard to the Bush Administration’s conduct of the war on “terror.” Just a month before Ashcroft’s testimony, the Hobbesian George W. Bush presented a variation of the same false dilemma by publicly declaring to the world community, “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.”12 3. The Demise of the United Nations and the Emergence of United States Geopolitical Leviathanism The United States has not always been an especially good global citizen. Like most powerful nations, it has generally acted unilaterally and almost always exclusively in terms of its self-interest, especially since it began to emerge as a “superpower” in the middle of the twentieth century. After the unprecedented bloodletting of World War II the United States realized that its interests were best served by helping to found the United Nations in 1945. The United Nations is the most enduring testament to Immanuel Kant’s proposal in Perpetual Peace, that nations contract among themselves for the purpose of promoting peace and insuring the collective security of all nations. These imperatives were rendered all the more urgent by the eventual proliferation of nuclear weapons, starting with the Soviet Union’s acquisition of atomic weapons in 1949. For the United States, the goals of peace and security were to be accomplished by the regulation of international life by law.13 Though perhaps inspired by Kant, the United Nations embodies four of the chief Lockean principles that also serve as the foundation of the American system of government. First, the United Nations embraces the idea that the rule of law should prevail over the rule of force. It also holds that individuals enjoy inalienable (read: human) rights, that the security of one is bound up with the security of all, and that all must sacrifice their absolute freedom to act on their personal volition except when in imminent danger, and instead be ruled by positive law. Absent an imminent danger, signatories of the United Nations Charter are bound to these principles and member states are required to bring their grievances to the Security Council for adjudication and to submit to the will of the majority, along Lockean lines.14 The Lockean objection that no nation can transfer its sovereign power to the United Nations without the consent of civil society is countered by stating that the United Nations makes no claim on the sovereignty of its member states. True to Kant’s original vision, the United Nations is “a federation of nations . . . not a nation consisting of na-

The Mortal God to which We Owe Our Peace and Defense

203

tions.”15 The United Nations is not a world government, but an instrument of world peace and security, and it derives its authority from its members. Since member states can effect world peace and security only through cooperation, each must respect the principles annunciated in the United Nations Charter—if only in spirit. True, the United Nations cannot command this respect. But for a member state to act wantonly and unilaterally in violation of these principles is to undermine both the efficacy and the legitimacy of the body of which it is a voluntary part. To flagrantly disregard United Nations resolutions is to give up the rule of law and return to the rule of force, which subverts the entire purpose of this international body. It must be admitted that the problems involved in transferring these Lockean governing principles from the national to the international context are formidable. If each nation-state is to sacrifice its “natural” powers to preserve itself and to unilaterally punish those nations that transgress the law, there must be in place established and known law to be enforced, a known and indifferent judge to interpret this law, and the means to always enforce the law in a consistent way.16 The problem here is that international law is ambiguous because it is still being formed. No widely accepted, indifferent judge exists to interpret these vague laws, and member states with their agendas, often withdraw their assistance to ensure that United Nations resolutions are consistently enforced. For these reasons, the United Nations has been a weak institution from its inception. Powerful member states have often used it to promote their interests with the result that United Nations resolutions are arbitrarily enforced, thereby undermining the United Nations’ fundamental mission and its credibility. Yet despite these significant flaws and failures only the most die-hard critics of the United Nations would deny that the body has overall brought a significant measure of stability to international relations. For years, the United States generally respected the authority of this body in word if not always in deed. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s, one began to discern an emerging United States Leviathanism. The first expression of this occurred during the Kosovo crisis, when Secretary of State Madeline Albright was moved to declare the United States the “indispensable nation” by virtue of it being the sole remaining superpower left standing after the Cold War.17 This was echoed in 1997, when the “Project for the New American Century” organized by several prominent neoconservatives, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Dundes Wolfowitz, and Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney, declared itself dedicated to the shaping of “a new century favorable to American principles and interests” and to the preservation of an “American peace.”18 With the ascendancy of these same neoconservatives to power, this worldview of a dominant America, threatened by shadowy and emerging threats, found a congenial home in the Bush White

204

D. R. KOUKAL

House, as is evinced by the National Security Strategy of the United States (NSS) published by the administration in September 2002. Among other things, NSS reserves for the United States the right to employ overwhelming military power unilaterally and preemptively against any perceived potential threat.19 It claims the United States has a duty to use its unique position of power in the world, not to press for unilateral advantage, but to create peace and stability at the global level.20 On these grounds, the United States invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq, with the second action being taken against the express wishes of the United Nations Security Council. This open contempt for other member states of the United Nations was a relatively benign demonstration of America’s newfound unilateralism. But this unilateralism is entirely consistent with the Hobbesian mode. Hobbes has nothing but disdain for what he calls “multi-personed” representative bodies, meaning elected representatives who are accountable to constituencies other than the executive power. On Hobbes’ account, such multi-personed assemblies tend to lead to civil discord, confusion and inaction, all of which are problematic in times of crisis. Hobbes thinks it far preferable to centralize power in fewer hands in the interest of the decisive and rapid deployment of sovereign power.21 It follows naturally from these Hobbesian premises that the Bush Administration would chafe at having to go through the motions of seeking approval from Congress or the United Nations before launching its “preventative” military strike against Iraq.22 In summary, in launching its attack against Iraq despite unprecedented domestic and foreign opposition, the Bush Administration has not only betrayed the political tradition of the United States in favor of a Hobbesian absolutism; it has also demonstrated that it no longer has “a decent respect for the opinions of humankind,” as demanded by the Declaration of Independence. Having a decent respect for the opinions of humankind is not the same thing as seeking approval for an act. Having a decent respect for the opinions of humankind in this instance is to treat other people and nations who have a stake in global peace and stability as rational and legitimate parties to a situation of common concern. Having a decent respect for the opinions of humankind is to refrain from deceiving these parties with at best questionable claims as to the true state of affairs. Having a decent respect for the opinions of humankind is to present in good faith credible evidence of a clear and present danger to these parties. Having a decent respect for the opinions of humankind would involve admitting the fallibility of our knowledge, and allowing that another party might possess knowledge that gives them a firmer grasp of a situation. If this administration had shown this elemental respect for the opinions of humankind, it would have perhaps taken more seriously the 6 August 2001 President’s Daily Brief which reported intelligence from several sources that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike the United States. 23 It might pos-

The Mortal God to which We Owe Our Peace and Defense

205

sibly have possibly listened to retired Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser under Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H. W. Bush, who warned of the likely consequences of an invasion of Iraq— virtually all of which have come to pass.24 It might have more carefully weighed the report of its State Department, which predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq.25 Perhaps it would have heeded General Eric Ken Shinseki’s professional assessment that the occupation of Iraq would require several hundred thousand more troops than were being allocated by the war’s planners.26 Perhaps, when Shinseki’s assessment was later confirmed by the head of the Iraq Occupation Authority L. Paul Bremer III, the administration would have given more weight to his on-the-ground evaluation of the situation.27 But having a decent respect for the opinions of humankind is not the manner of Leviathan. 4. The Fatally Flawed Assumption: Why United States Leviathanism Cannot Win the “War on Terrorism” Having at this point demonstrated the trend toward Hobbesian absolutism on the part of the Bush Administration, I will now bring this analysis to bear on the United States-declared war on “terrorism” to show how this global strain of Leviathanism cannot succeed as a strategy in this war. This will require us to first appreciate the breathtaking scope of what United States’ Leviathanism proposes in this context. Although Hobbes, like Locke, could not have conceived of applying his governing principles to an international context, this task is far less problematic for Hobbes because of the intrinsically unilateralist dimension of his political thought. Leviathan cares not for international law, because it considers itself at once legislator, judge and executor of that law. The Bush neoconservatives implicitly see international relations in precisely these terms.28 For example, despite its claims to the contrary in the NSS, the Bush Administration has, in practice, dismissed multilateralism and declared itself the sovereign of all nations in the fight against “terrorism.” It has asked for the cooperation of other nations, but has demonstrated by its actions that it will act unilaterally to protect the peace of the world against “terror,” with or without allies. In claiming this international sovereign power, the United States has also implicitly claimed many of the rights of the sovereign put forth by Hobbes in the Leviathan. First and foremost, since the end of sovereign power is the peace of all men (read: nations), the sovereign is the sole judge of not only the means of securing this peace but also of the things that disturb this peace. By extension, the sovereign has the sole right to make war and peace for the common good, as it alone thinks best.

206

D. R. KOUKAL

Since the majority of all men (read: nations) have united their will with the sovereign power, its every action is authored by every subject (nation) according to Hobbes, so no subject can accuse the sovereign of injury or injustice. Consequently, no subject can punish any sovereign. Finally, Hobbes holds that the minority cannot protest against a sovereign power conferred by the majority, and any subject (nation) who refuses to submit to a duly established sovereign may be destroyed.29 At this point, we can raise an obvious objection: when did the majority of the congregation of nations ever consent to be ruled by the United States Leviathan? Hobbes again has a ready answer. Sovereign power can be legitimately established not only by consent but also by force. We owe our obedience to that which preserves us, or, as Hobbes bluntly puts it, “Every man is supposed to promise obedience to him in whose power it is to save or destroy him.” Hobbes’ understanding of valid contracts extends to those extorted by fear, since by such covenants one receives the benefit of life. 30 If we view the Bush Administration’s unilateral power grab as an extension of this logic, then we can justify it on Hobbesian grounds. Despite the United Nations’s opposition, by virtue of its might this new Leviathan is free to keep the peace as it sees fit, up to and including the destruction of dissenting nations. In this context—and assuming for the sake of argument the now discredited premise that the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a legitimate part of the declared “war on terrorism”31—the thuggish logic of Hobbesianism permits the American Leviathan to bring Iraq (or Iran or Syria) into line, or preemptively destroy it. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has approvingly quoted the gangster Al Capone to this effect: “You will get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.”32 If we turn our distracted attention from Iraq and instead consider the 11 September 2001 attacks and those purportedly responsible for them, we should be able to see the chief reason why the Hobbesian strategy of unilateral and overwhelming force cannot ultimately ensure peace. Al-Qaeda, the militant and fundamentalist Islamic organization funded by the Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden, does not accept a key Hobbesian premise—that selfpreservation is paramount. Hobbes’ entire argument leans heavily on the presumption that in the end all prefer survival to death, even if it means living under the boot of an all-powerful sovereign. But what happens to this logic if Leviathan’s opponents are not materialist egoists but religious fundamentalists who believe that in dying for their cause they are reserved a place in Paradise? What happens if the new Leviathan cannot intimidate its opponents through sheer and unprecedented firepower because these opponents are more than willing to turn their bodies into bombs? From a Hobbesian perspective, the reason the 11 September 2001 attacks were so audacious is because they defied Hobbesian logic. As horrific as these attacks were, Osama bin Laden could not have thought that they would

The Mortal God to which We Owe Our Peace and Defense

207

bring Leviathan to its knees. To the contrary, bin Laden had to know that Leviathan would respond as Leviathan—with overwhelming force. If bin Laden were lucky, Leviathan would overreact and attack, invade and then clumsily occupy a significantly weaker Muslim country on the flimsiest of pretexts. All the better to help bin Laden recruit one more generation of human bombs.33 5. Power without Prudence and the Pseudo-Leviathan. The purpose of allowing Leviathan this much unilateral power is to increase stability and security. Even Locke allows the executive power a measure of prerogative so that it can act, even against established law, in times of crisis, provided that its power is exercised to preserve the public good. But what should be done when Leviathan, which is not constrained by a supreme Lockean legislative power and which promises security in exchange for freedom, instead increases insecurity in the absence of legitimate crisis by exercising what Locke would call bad prerogative?34 Hobbes, unfortunately, is silent on this point. Conservative in the traditional sense, he is resistant to any mechanism whereby sovereign power can be removed or diminished, once established. Hobbes appears to pin his hopes that Leviathan will not misuse its power on the notion of “natural prudence.” Natural prudence allows us to overcome our most egoistic passions and realize that our self-interest is best served under an absolute sovereign power. This natural prudence must extend to the sovereign power as well. The great unstated premise of Hobbes’ argument in Leviathan is that the sovereign too must possess enough natural prudence to understand that it must exercise its awesome powers judiciously, and not just for the sake of peace and stability for its subjects. The self-preservation of the sovereign itself rests on its judicious use of these powers. If the exercise of these powers creates conflict and instability, the Hobbesian sovereign subverts its purpose, instead initiating another war of all against all, which puts its existence at risk. This is a Leviathan without natural prudence, a quite dangerous thing. One of the many dismal ironies of America’s foreign adventures since 11 September 2001 is that in Hobbesian terms both Afghanistan and Iraq were relatively stable states prior to United States intervention. Though true that a cadre of fundamentalist Muslim clerics ruled one and a ruthless secular despot ruled the other, both regimes maintained a level of social order through the exercise of absolute or near absolute power. After the fall of these regimes, both countries have been plunged into situations that closely resemble Hobbesian states of war, with no central authority willing or able to exercise sufficient power to restore stability. At this writing, the occupation in Iraq is confronted with a full-blown, well-organized, stubborn insurgency. If one of the purposes

208

D. R. KOUKAL

of the invasion of Iraq was to demonstrate the might of the United States military, we saw the vulnerability of its might revealed instead. This unexpected outcome might appear to be puzzling, given that the United States has demonstrated its capability of ruthlessly projecting overwhelming military power halfway across the world. I strongly suspect that the inability of United States forces to restore order after their victory in Iraq is due to an irresolvable tension between the de facto Hobbesian means and the ostensible Lockean ends of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Having claimed the Hobbesian right to unilaterally “liberate the Iraqi people” from a absolutist dictator, installing another absolutist regime on the Hobbesian model would be awkward, especially in light of the promise to deliver onto Iraq Americanstyle—Lockean—democracy, which derives its right to rule not from force but from the consent of the governed. These conditions have resulted in continuing chaos in Iraq—another dismal irony.35 By these actions, the Bush Administration has in effect abandoned the best of Enlightenment political thinking—with it’s stress on humanism, contracts and consent, the limitation and separation of powers, and the rule of law—for the absolutism of Hobbesian authoritarianism. But this is a Leviathan which exercises power without prudence and instead acts out of the Hobbesian passions of partiality, pride, and the desire to dominate others, as perhaps best exemplified in the person of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The false intelligence claims, missing WMD, presumption of liberated Iraqis “dancing in the streets,” dearth of competent post-war planning, and apparent lack of any consideration that invading a virtually defenseless state in the heart of the Muslim world without credible provocation might generate deadly long-term consequences all testify to a pseudo-Leviathan embarked on a wayward course. The highly likely result will be our having to exchange even more freedom for even less security, at home and abroad. Though true that no nation-state will dare directly challenge the military might of this pseudoLeviathan, its imprudent use of force will inspire not only the fear that Hobbes considers necessary to maintain order, but also chaos which is order’s antithesis. Yet another irony exists here: the pseudo-Leviathan’s “war on terror” is being fought through preemptive and lawless violence both threatened and real (terror). This irony assumes a tragic dimension when those of us with natural prudence realize that while this state terror may compel obedience or acquiescence, it will also generate deep resentments, and only strengthen the resolve of those not beholden to the Hobbesian logic of egoistic selfpreservation at any cost, such as militant Islamic fundamentalists. Both sides in this purported “war on terror” are irrational from Hobbes’ point of view. Each side lacks either the foresight or the inclination to exercise natural prudence. We cannot bomb technical knowledge of weapons of mass destruction out of existence, and such weapons in the hands of such committed enemies can gravely wound the pseudo-Leviathan and make the

The Mortal God to which We Owe Our Peace and Defense

209

world infinitely more dangerous. These realizations should make us experience true terror.

NOTES 1. Ronald Dworkin, “A Badly Flawed Election,” The New York Review of Books, 11 January 2001, pp. 53–55. 2. Eric Alterman, “USA Oui! Bush Non!” The Nation, 10 February 2003, p. 12. 3. See John Gray, “Where There Is No Common Power,” Harper’s Magazine (December 2001), pp. 15–19; and Robert Kagan, “Power and Weakness,” Policy Review (June/July 2002), http://www.policyreview.org/JUN02/kagan.html (accessed 26 May 2006). 4. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), chap. 12, ¶ 8, chap. 13, ¶ 9. 5. Ibid., chap. 20, ¶ 18–19. 6. George W. Bush, Weekly radio address, 5 March 2005, cited in “Bush: Freedom is on the March,” http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/05/bush.radio/ (accessed 26 May 2006). 7. American Civil Liberties Union, “USA Patriot Act,” (14 November 2003), http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12126&c=207 (accessed 1 November 2006). 8. Jill Zuckman. “Congress Oks Iraq Mandate” Chicago Tribune, 11 October 2002. 9. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. Crawford Brough Macpherson (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980), chap. 17, ¶ 198; chap. 13, ¶ 153; chap. 11, ¶ 141, chap. 17, ¶ 198. 10. See Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973). 11. Neil A. Lewis, “Ashcroft Defends Anti-terror Plan and Says Criticism May Aid Foes,” New York Times, 7 December 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/ politics/07CIVI.html?ex=1008721374&ei=1&en=b5acdf5a138dbf11. 12. “You Are either with Us or against Us,” CNN, 6 November 2001, http://www. cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror (accessed 26 May 2006). 13. John Morris Roberts, The Pelican History of the World, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 883. 14. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chap. 8, ¶ 95–98. 15. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983), p. 115. 16. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chap. 9, ¶ 127–130, ¶ 124–126. 17. Richard Lister, “America’s Kosovo: The View from Washington,” BBC News, 2 October 1998, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/184078.stm (accessed 26 May 2006; and Cindy Yee, “Unilateral Action May Hurt U.N.,” The Chronicle Online: The Independent Daily at Duke University, 20 March 2003 http://www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2003/03/20/News/Unilateral.Action.May Hurt.U.n-1462942.shtml?sourcedomain=www.dukechronicle.com&MIIHost=media. collegepublisher.com (accessed 4 September 2006).

210

D. R. KOUKAL

18. Elliott Abrams, et al., “Statement of Principles,” The Project for the New American Century, 3 June 1997, http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprin ciples.htm (accessed 26 May 2006); and Thomas Donnelly, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resource for a New Century: A Report of The Project for the New American Century,” September 2000, p. iv, http://www.newamerican century.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf (accessed 26 May 2006). 19. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America” 17 September 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html (accessed 25 May 2006), esp. pp. 3 and 12. 20. Ibid., p. 3. 21. Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 16, ¶ 13–17. 22. Sharon Otterman, “Cheney Outlines Case against Iraq,” The Washington Times, 26 August 2002; and Pamela Hess, “U.S. Does Not Need U.N. Approval for War,” The Washington Times, 3 December 2002. 23. “Text of the President’s Daily Brief for Aug. 6, 2001,” New York Times, 11 April 2004. 24. Brent Scowcroft “Don’t Attack Saddam,” Op-Ed, Wall Street Journal, 15 August 2002. 25. Eric Schmitt and Joel Brinkley, “State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq,” New York Times, 19 October 2003, http://www.nytimes.com. 26. Dave Moniz, “Ex-Army Boss: Pentagon Won’t Admit Reality in Iraq,” USA Today, 3 June 2003, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-06-02-whiteusat_x.htm (accessed 26 May 2006). 27. Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks, “Bremer Criticizes Troop Levels: ExOverseer of Iraq Says U.S. Effort Was Hampered Early On,” Washington Post, 5 October 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7053-2004Oct4.html (accessed 4 September 2006). 28. See Abrams, “Statement of Principles”; Donnelly, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”; “The National Security Strategy of the United States”; and Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York: Knopf, 2003). 29. Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 18, ¶ 3–15. 30. Ibid., chap. 17, ¶ 15; chap. 20, ¶ 5; and chap. 214, ¶ 27 respecitvely. 31. See Philip Shenon and Christoper Marquis, “Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes a Wider Plot for 9/11,” New York Times, 17 June 2004. 32. “Where Bush Went Wrong,” Newsweek, 24 March 2003. 33. Don Van Natta and Desmond Butler, “Anger on Iraq Seen as New Qaeda Recruiting Tool,” New York Times, 16 March 2003, http://www.nytimes.com. 34. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chap. 14, ¶ 154–168. 35. See, for instance, Reuters, “U.N. Appeals to NATO Amid New Afghan Poll Attacks,” New York Times, 21 June 2004, http://www.nytimes.com.

Eleven CONSEQUENTIALISM, NEGATIVE RESPONSIBILITY, AND SACRIFICE: MORAL DILEMMAS POSED BY THE POSTSEPTEMBER 11TH “SHOOTDOWN” POLICY Edward J. Grippe The attack on our nation was also [an] attack on the ideals that make us a nation. Our deepest national conviction is that every life is precious, because every life is the gift of a creator who intended us to live in liberty and equality. More than anything else, this is what separates us from the enemy we fight.1 All Persons are deemed to have a right to equal treatment, except when some recognized social expediency requires the reverse.2 The fault of utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.3 As American fighter jets soar over the cities of North America for homeland security, a grim awareness enters my consciousness: the plane flying overhead, like so many I and my loved ones have flown on, might become a target for one of the fighter jets if a terrorist situation should occur onboard. One only need recall the hijacked United Airline Flight 93’s supposed destination—the White House or the Capitol—and President George W. Bush’s statement, made soon after its demise in a field in Pennsylvania, to the effect that saving American lives might require a “downing” of any commercial airliner that poses a threat to the public safety, to grasp how serious such a possibility is for the harming of any citizen who happens to be passenger.4 What is striking is how the utilitarian calculation necessary to justify the ending of tens, if not hundreds, of innocent American lives for the good of the aggregate population was obscured, intentionally or not, by the President’s rhetorical phrase “to save American lives.” This choice of words was not utilitarian in tenor, but spoke to the intrinsic worth of each American life and the importance of securing their survival. Bush repeated this sentiment even more plainly on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 in his address to the nation. Obviously, to save the many, we must make a choice to sacrifice the few (and this “few” may number upwards

212

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

to three hundred United States citizens if suicidal hijackers were again to seize the controls of a fully occupied jumbo jet). Common sense suggests this would be a tragic but necessary action to prevent the risk of death and injury to as many as twenty million people if an attack were to be made on a nuclear power facility near a densely populated area such as New York City, creating a radiation zone up to a radius of fifty miles. The ratio of one death for every 70,000 lives saved appears to demand the Shoot Down Policy as the rational option. No sane person could oppose this rational policy without forsaking his or her humanity. Or so it would appear. But are we sure that sanity and not some unexamined and non-rational belief or conviction that leads us to accept the policy so readily? It appears that we are positively sure, for even the mere suggestion that the 1:70,000 ratio is not based on objectively solid calculus appears patently absurd, perhaps causing the reader to confidently and immediately dismiss a challenge to the United States government’s current Shoot Down Policy. There was a total loss on life of 2,973 persons due to the 11 September 2001 attacks. American Airlines’ Flight 77, which struck the United States Pentagon causing 125 deaths, had 64 people on-board. The combined impact of United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 (with 185 passengers) resulted in 2555 deaths at the New York City World Trade Center. The remaining 44 deaths were due to the forced crash in Pennsylvania of United Airlines Flight 93. This made the ratio in the World Trade Center attack was closer to 1:14 and the Pentagon was closer to 1:2.5 We may have to consider these sorts of ratios if similar terrorist schemes develop and we thoroughly protect our nuclear facilities. If the shoot down option is a self-evident proposition, one must question why the Bush Administration needed to cast the non-consensual, and obviously uninformed, sacrifice of air travelers strictly in terms of saving American lives (as opposed to the reported consensual self-sacrifice of those brave passengers and crewmembers on Flight 93)? I would speculate that the thought of the killing of innocent fellow citizens, our neighbors—our brothers and sisters so to speak—is appalling under any circumstances, and must be rationally defended, or rhetorically redefined, to deflect or conceal the moral horror of acting in this manner towards fellow citizens, even in the defense of our country. In short, it comes down to whether non-consensual—and not fully informed—human sacrifice of another is ever morally allowable. Conversely, in whose authority does the ultimate decision to sacrifice a human life rest: in oneself or in a surrogate? This question is especially urgent after 11 September and problematic for any United States administration given its inherent duty to value all American lives. But the dilemma is most acute for George W. Bush’s administration because of its firm stance on the inalienable right to life of all persons—especially highlighted in Bush’s pro-life speeches—with

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

213

its implication that the non-consensual termination of the life of innocent human beings is morally abhorrent. To clarify this issue of current and enduring interest, in this paper, I will consider the works of two authorities on the subject of utilitarian consequentialism: Samuel Scheffler’s The Rejection of Consequentialism, and Bernard Arthur Owens Williams, mainly through his writings in Utilitarianism: For and Against.6 The reason these texts are appropriate as the primary focus is that the synergy of their points and counterpoints best defined the structure of the shoot down dilemma, and their vintage offers the opportunity for the reader to question the Shoot Down Policy’s rationality through a debate disconnected from passions of the moment yet most apropos to the topic. I present my analysis in two stages. In the first part, I will provide a brief outline of Williams’ argument against negative responsibility followed by a description of Scheffler’s rejection of Williams’ stance on the grounds of the irrationality of agent-centered restrictions necessitated by Williams’ notion of Integrity. Next, I will consider Scheffler’s Hybrid Thesis (HT) a viable synthesis of Utilitarian consequentialism and the Integrity argument will be entertained, leading to the conclusion that the HT is unable to ground itself in the sort of rationality Scheffler demands for Williams’ position. It collapses into the standard utilitarian position. The paper then reconsiders the core Utilitarian idea of the good in the light of Scheffler’s anti-foundational challenge of agent-centered restrictions. Within this evaluation of consequentialist notions of “best,” the Shoot Down Policy is considered and provisionally found to be an arbitrary, non-rational taking of human life because of the assumptions of negative responsibility embedded therein. In the second part, I make tentative recommendations designed to bring the requirements for national security in line with the principle of nonmaleficence, a principle which is more in line with preservation of the freedom and integrity of those for who life in a democracy and for whom government policy is meant to serve and preserve. I will then deal with the rationality of applying the principle of nonmaleficence to post-11 September 2001 crisis situations. Entertaining Philip Pettit’s defense of Utilitarian consequentialism found in Three Methods of Ethics, I will assess whether, when properly elucidated, the Utilitarian approach to ethics justifies the rationality of negative responsibility.7 After a critical review of a pertinent aspect of Pettit’s ideas, I conclude with the contention that if the distinction David Chan makes between intention and desire is applied to the horrors of 11 September, Pettit’s defense of utilitarian consequentialism cannot stand as rationally consistent. Because of the shortcomings and internal contradictions within Utilitarian consequentialism, I will show that the Shoot Down Policy as currently practiced is discredited. Finally, I restate the provisional recommendations made at the end of the first part, and reinforce them by appeal to Charles Taylor’s notion of

214

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

“strong evaluation” within what he terms an ad hominem approach to rational decision making. 1. Negative Responsibility and Human Sacrifice: The Moral Arbitrariness of the United States Shoot Down Policy In The Rejection of Consequentialism, Samuel Scheffler examines whether an agent can hold utilitarian consequentialist principles and still act from its personal prerogative or if the agent must hold the utilitarian position exclusively. If we can concede the possibility of agent-centered prerogatives, must we also concede that absolute restrictions concerning some actions such as murder or human sacrifice are incumbent upon that same agent, in opposition to utilitarian consequentialism? Central to the issue is the doctrine of “Negative Responsibility”—the claim that a person is as responsible for unfortunate outcomes that he or she fails to prevent as for outcomes that obtain due to the person’s direct action, even when the outcome the person fails to prevent is directly caused by another agent. This doctrine is linked to the amalgam of Karl Popper’s concept of “Negative Utilitarianism”8 and the traditional utilitarian principle of the primary of happiness by way of the J. J. C. Smart. For it follows that if, given that the aim of human life is to minimize the suffering of the world to clear the way for, and hopefully, to promote the greatest happiness for the aggregate number, then it would be incumbent upon people to shoulder the responsibility for all outcomes within their sphere of action. What this would mean for the present study is that if a person’s personal projects, commitments, or principles should stand in the way of the calculus for the maximization of happiness via the minimization of harm, then the person’s projects, commitments, or principles, should be abandoned in favor of the calculus’ impersonal (objective) viewpoint.9 For after all, do we not want to prevent as much harm as we can, and thereby avoid an objectively worse state of affairs regardless of our personal projects and commitments? As persuasive as this argument appears, Williams, in his portion of Utilitarianism: For and Against, offers a cogent counter argument to this position. He holds that the doctrine of Negative Responsibility demands too much and offers too little. It expects too much in the sense that it attributes to an individual, who refrains from an action that could prevent a greater harm, a control over the world that he or she does not have.10 Utilitarianism assumes a causal link between the agent who refrains and the agent who reacts violently in response to the first agent’s refusal. For example, Williams’ “Jim” Case, where agent Jim (A) refuses to kill one innocent Native American (X) to prevent agent Pedro (T) from taking the lives of other innocent persons (C . . . N), causing the other people’s death at the hands of Pedro. Williams asserts that Jim’s refusal to act in a particular manner in no way forces Pedro to perform his action. Williams argues, “it is certainly not enough . . . for us to

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

215

speak of Jim’s making those things happen . . . he would have made them happen only by making Pedro shoot, and no acceptable sense exists in which his refusal makes Pedro shoot.11 Here Williams suggests that a person should not necessarily identify the outcome of an event that involves that individual with his or her causal responsibility for it. The assumption is that the impersonal point of view is to be held as suspect on the grounds that it was alien to an individual as a person of integrity. For Williams, the focus ought to be on the intrinsic quality of an individual’s act and not merely its extrinsic outcome. We should consider the “rightness” or “wrongness” of a given act in itself as it springs from oneself instead of the “goodness” or the “badness” of the act’s outcome. At this juncture, an argument might be made that this is a moot point for this paper, because no true parallel exists between Williams’ hypothetical Jim Case and the actual case of 11 September 2001. Whereas the passengers of a 11 September-style hijacked airliner are doomed anyway and should be counted as if already dead, those, in addition to the doomed, who would die on the ground as a result of failure to act to kill the terrorists will die unnecessarily. As such, the deaths of the additional number are the moral responsibility of the causal agent A in a way that those who are on the hijacked plane and destined to die at the hands of T are not. The Principle of Proportionality applies here. This argument overlooks the Flight 93 case where the possibility for survival of the passengers existed. Flight 93 offers, in principle, the possibility that passengers on a hijacked plane are not automatically doomed and might, due to heroic actions, survive the ordeal, even prevent an act of terror, or at worst offer their lives in self-sacrifice for the lives of those on the ground. Scenarios may exist where the deaths of passengers due to the current Shoot Down Policy will also be the responsibility of those who intend to take out the terrorists. I maintain that if one were to associate Bush, representing the United States Government, with (A), the passengers of an ill-fated flight with (X), and the many citizens who might be affected if the hijacker (T) forces the plane to hit a target adversely affecting many United States citizens (C . . . G), then the two cases form an exact parallel. To continue, for Williams, Negative Responsibility offers too little because, unless persons coincidentally believe in the projects urged by the calculus from the impersonal standpoint, then persons must subordinate their cherished beliefs and commitments (for example, a person, cause, institution, career, or a nation), to the optimum decision-process of utilitarianism. While such a “sacrifice” would appear to be an altruistic act, Williams maintains that by acting from the impersonal standpoint for the maximization of a general happiness (perhaps never felt by the agent), agents would be uninvolved in life decisions, and alienated from themselves. Agent’s actions would be severed from beliefs; motivation would be external to the agent and thereby vulnerable to manipulation by others in authority.

216

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

Let us consider a relevant example. The fighter jet crewmember’s obligation is to follow orders and unconditional obedience is expected. Since the 1970s debate that lead to an all-volunteer armed service, all those who enlist have shared a free and conscious commitment to homeland defense. At the time of their sign-up, crewmembers would have made a calculus placing them in a position to harm and be harmed in the act of protecting their country. Prior to 11 September 2001, the mission of homeland defense meant the interception and possible shooting down of invading foreign aircraft bent on harming Americans. Since 11 September, the mission has expanded to include the Shoot Down Policy of hijacked domestic aircraft. The current fighter pilots did not commit to a period of years of service with this possibility in mind. But their tour of duty is not open to reconsideration even in the light of the drastic alteration of the conditions of service. The obligation to serve takes precedence over personal calculation, since the narrative of the commander supersedes that of the pilot. The projects of others would greatly tend to dominate the commander’s decisions. With no internal motivations, consequentialist guidelines instruct us to treat them as another set of options among the many from which to choose the best. In short, we must treat the concerns as if they were external objects, alien to the narrative. This scenario is not hypothetical; the struggle over the changed nature of homeland defense occurred on 11 September 2001.12 Can treating what and who is dearest to us as just other options be possible? What if the consequentialist perspective conflicts with some commitment that we have? Williams firmly claims that it would be foolish and wrong for persons to carve away their actions from the commitments that are the source of their actions, the essence of themselves: How can a man, as a utilitarian agent, come to regard as one satisfaction among others, and a dispensable one, a project or attitude round which he has built his life, just because someone else’s projects have so structured the causal scene that that is how the utilitarian sum comes out?13 He appears to be saying that we are what we hold and stand for, and if we act in a manner contrary to our basic projects and attitudes we compromise, or allow others to compromise, our integrity. To subject ourselves to the concerns of an “impersonal ranking of overall states of affairs” is to abandon our moral decision-making prerogatives in favor of a role as a conveyer of the optimal good, a mere means to an end. The rules of utilitarian calculus, that assign the values to actions, people, and things in strict proportion to the impersonal ranking, rob agents of the meaning of their actions and the meaning of their lives by removing from the agents the power to independently determine where the right and the good may lie. The imposition of the utilitarian rule to produce the “best overall available outcome,” Williams suggests, results not in the best impartial out-

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

217

come obtaining, but in the submission of our integrity to the projects of others and to the values they assert.14 Given a powerful personal preference for (or against) a particular action, Williams would find such a submission unacceptable because it undermines the agent’s autonomy in favor of the impersonal, which is, in practice, the moral authority of others. While Williams’ remarks have much to be valued, I believe that he overreaches. By attempting to state his position on integrity in the strongest terms possible, he appears to have overstated his case for individual prerogatives to the point of psychological egoism. Appearing much like a modernday “conatus,” the agent’s integrity insists that its projects and commitments be served and considered primary before any others as individuals, or even before those of the group as a whole—expressed and highlighted within the impersonal standpoint—to avoid alienation from itself. Scheffler points out: virtually any moral theory will make the permissibility of pursuing one’s own projects depend at least in part on the state of the world from an impersonal standpoint . . . (and) if things get bad enough from the impersonal standpoint, the agent’s projects become dispensable.15 Any discussion about integrity must be tempered by the realities of the world. Andrew Failia has suggested that Williams does address this concern by allowing the sacrifice of an innocent in extreme conditions. The only way I can see this to be a consistent aspect of Williams’ stance is to make this part of his particular project. But to do this reduces the stance to a subjective preference, the kind that Scheffler is challenging here. In a moral universe without some external necessity or the existence of a guarantor of such necessity, a social interdict must be promulgated to restrain others’ projects so as to allow for the free exercise of strongly held personal commitment. Yet such injunctions could easily place a constraint upon the personal commitments and integrity of other individuals. To give carte blanche to an agent’s prerogatives without some countervailing measure is to invite injustice and to encourage tragedy. (We need only to know of Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin’s Tahiti Project and of the family he left behind for the sake of his unfolding genius in this far away land to see these negative possibilities.) But in what form should this counterbalancing measure assume to fairly reflect the moral person’s position in the world (as a responsible yet independent decision maker)? In Chapter Four of The Rejection of Consequentialism, Scheffler has two such measures in mind when he considers agent-centered restrictions (Restrictions) and that the HT. Both seek to tether an agent’s projects to a rational decision-making policy without destroying the natural independence of the personal point of view. Both agent-centered devices deny the propriety of always reducing the agent’s independent point of view to merely another project to be considered and calculated into the consequentialist impersonal

218

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

standpoint. For as valuable as Scheffler considers consequentialism to be, he does not believe that the impersonal standpoint is the only moral point of view possible. He thinks that Utilitarian consequentialism cannot stand adequately independently, hampered as it is by the narrowness of its vision concerning the individual’s power to make valid moral decisions. He is not prepared to reject this form of consequentialism out of hand, for he sees a value to it—the value of the impersonal viewpoint in relation to the production of the best overall state of affairs—when put into proper context. That context, Scheffler contends, is contained best within HT, especially in the agent-centered prerogative (Prerogatives). The Prerogatives “serves to deny that agents are always required to produce the best overall state of affairs.”16 Scheffler apparently is not prepared to travel the route of inviolable integrity as far as Williams travels. He appears to be prepared to allow for individuals a priority system, which places greater weight on family, friends, and commitments to them, or to causes, institutions, or national affiliations, than upon some impartially calculated “good,” unless the need is so pressing that it requires attention to the demands of some project deemed worthy by an impartial analysis. This stand allows for the possibility that an individual might, under some circumstances, choose and be consistent with actions that are in accordance with Negative Responsibility, and for a choice that allows for an independent course of action in possible opposition to Negative Utility. For example, we can generalize Williams’ Jim Case: (E1) An agent A is given a choice of either killing stranger X to prevent the deaths of the innocent persons C,D,E,F, and G, or to refrain from killing X with the result that agent T will kill C . . . G, and agent T controls the situation. Then, under Prerogatives, in the context of (E1) A would be permitted (but not required) to take X’s life to prevent identical and more many violations of the innocent. Again: (E2) Agent A is faced with a similar situation as in E1, with the exception that in the place of X it is now A’s brother, B, who is to be the potential single victim. For case (E2), under Prerogatives, A is permitted to spare his or her brother B’s life and to sacrifice the lives of the five others (to produce overall optimum states is not required) assuming that A’s devotion to B is sufficiently high. While the example (E2) is not stated explicitly in Scheffler’s account, his definition of agent-centered prerogatives implies it. For if such a decision is not possible, then the HT is a mere cover for a more traditional view of utilitarian consequentialism and not a serious proposal in itself. Scheffler be-

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

219

lieves Prerogatives to be a reasonable and rational system of decision making in that it accounts for the duty of negative responsibility while not sacrificing an individual’s power of decision. As it turns out, what Scheffler finds to be irrational as a moral decision device is Restrictions. For him Restrictions—such as Williams’ Integrity Thesis—are limits which serve to deny that any non-agent-relative principles for ranking states of affairs such that agents are always permitted to produce the best state of affairs exist.18 Restrictions are designed to override all other projects and programs to insure that the agent never performs specified harmful actions. The object is for an agent to exercise caution and to avoid the doing of restricted actions that are within our control to avoid. From this position, performing an act that would violate another even to prevent say five other identical or highly similar violations would be impossible. Restrictions claims to supersede the “calculations of overall impersonal value” and thereby uphold the value of a person’s integrity and intrinsic viewpoint by liberating the agent from the constraints of an external and foreign arrangement of priorities. By this assertion Restrictions denies the doctrine of “Negative Responsibility” on the part of the agent, since under Restrictions she would be restricted from carrying out the supposed duty of achieving the fewest (in number) violations of innocent people by any means available. By extension, Restrictions also limits an individual agent’s prerogatives and so restrains and overrides the individual’s claim of sovereignty to choose any project, even consequentialist ones, on a given occasion of moral seriousness. For a fully agent-centered scheme, agent-centered prerogatives must be linked to and modified by agent-centered restrictions. So in our examples, Restrictions would always tend towards the same result as we find in E2, but for a different reason. The outcome would be based on a general interdict against murdering and fortified by B being A’s brother, and not based solely on A’s preference for B’s safety. In E1, Restrictions would follow the pattern of E2, again with the restriction against murder being the deciding factor for allowing X to remain alive while regretfully permitting the deaths of C . . . G at the hands of another agent (T). But this close association runs directly counter to Scheffler’s Hybrid system, especially its Independent Thesis, which states “someone who is motivated in this way to accept a prerogative can at the same time consistently refuse to accept such restrictions.”18 In the cases we are considering, Scheffler would desire an ability to separate prerogatives from restrictions, for he generally accepts as a moral goal the minimization of the number of violations to the fewest possible. He would want to distance an agent from the restrictions that he argues to be irrational. For Scheffler, the irrationality of Restrictions stems from an apparent contradiction in the logic of restrictions. If the goal is to minimize a type of harm, why eliminate as an option perhaps the one and only—or the best— method of ensuring the desired outcome in most cases? Why command as

220

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

“virtuous” an action, or non-action, that results in more extensive violations of the same type from which the restricted agent refrains? Scheffler considers these restrictions to be an arbitrary and unnecessary burden placed upon an agent capable of independent choice. The main problem is the apparent air of irrationality surrounding the claim that some acts are so objectionable that one ought not to perform them even if this means that more equally weighty acts of the very same kind or other comparably objectionable events will ensue, and even if there are no other relevantly morally relevant consequences to be considered.19 Scheffler contends further that each and every attempt to rationalize the position of Restrictions via the victim falls short of their target if we consider situation E1 and assume that the doctrine of Negative Responsibility is in effect. He is attempting to establish a “logical boomerang,” because regardless of what we can say in terms of a pro-restrictive argument for the preservation of the life of X, we can and must apply to the lives of the five others equally seriously, perhaps with five times the weight considered from the impersonal standpoint. For example, if we view the killing of X (say, one or several innocent passengers in a hijacked plane) as a violation of someone’s inviolability as a person of physical integrity, then we must also be equally concerned over the identical harm befalling C . . . G (for example, several thousand people on the ground threatened with death by the hijacked plane). In each and every case someone loses. Scheffler argues that saving the larger number makes the best sense: “Why isn’t it at least permissible to prevent the violation of five people by violating one?”20 The same will hold for the consideration of the violation as a corruption of the relationship between the agent and the victim, and so forth for any other disvalue cited relative to the victim or the relationship between agent and victim. If a Restrictions strategist attempts to isolate some aspect of the violation and use it to ground a restriction, his or her efforts will be doomed since ex hypothesi someone in E1 must fall victim of that disvalue. According to Scheffler, the restrictions are superfluous and irrational in the face of a negative responsibility of a moral agent to minimize the overall harm. The purported weakness in the Restrictions argument which contributes towards the charge of irrationality, can be traced to the aforementioned assumption that the impersonal point of view was to be held as suspect and avoided on the grounds that it was alien to an individual as a person of integrity (in Williams’ sense of the word). The focus was to be on the intrinsic quality of an individual’s act and not merely its extrinsic outcome, where the “rightness” or “wrongness” of a given act in itself springs from oneself instead of the “goodness” or the “badness” of the act’s outcome.

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

221

But Scheffler argues: One can also intend to do and actually do that which will have the best outcome. . . . Moreover, one can identify with these wants, intentions, and actions to promote the good of particular people one cares about. The promotion of the general good, like the promotion of the good of one’s intimates, can be undertaken from within one’s personal stand-point.21 Scheffler agrees with Williams that we should put the standpoint of the agent and not the position of the victim at the hub of our inquiry. In this vein, Scheffler asks the following question to deepen the challenge to the Restrictions conception: What is it about a person that makes it impermissible for him to victimize someone else even to minimize victimizations which are equally objectionable from an impersonal stand-point?22 Scheffler claims that no special quality is inherent in an agent that would serve as an explanation and rationale for Restrictions. Appeals to the limits upon personal responsibility will not do, since they are just as much in question as are restrictions. Ultimately, the issue reduces to the question of which of two moral worldviews is the most rational. One accepts, in principle, the possibility of Negative Responsibility as the HT does. The other rejects Negative Responsibility, instead restricting an agent’s culpability strictly to those personal actions or non-actions, which the agent willfully and independently intends, as does the fully agent-centered conception. Obviously, Scheffler considers the unrestricted prerogative to choose our moral course as the most rational, and restrictions as the least rational way to conduct our life. Subsequently and consistently, Scheffler, defines the rational normatively as “optimal from the standpoint of reason” and correspondingly, “‘irrational’ means ‘nonoptimality from the standpoint of reason’”23 But is this assessment accurate? On what does he base his criterion of “rationality”? Is he truly consistent even within his project? In his “Asymmetric Thesis,” Scheffler asserts that Prerogatives has an underlying rational principle which Restrictions does not contain. Prerogatives takes account of the independence of the person’s point of view while still permitting the liberty of producing, or not producing, the best available state of affairs ranked from the impersonal viewpoint.24 But how can we ground this permission rationally? A danger exists that an agent might slip into egoism of the worst sort unless some sort of counterweight constrains his or her prerogatives. Scheffler proposes that the solution would depend on the balance of good to be produced (or evil to be averted) and the amount of sacrifice required to achieve the impersonally preferred outcome, expanding the

222

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

utilitarian calculus to include as a best consequence our best possible outcome, our “reasonable” personal preference. Granting that our interests carry more “weight” than that of other people, he asserts that the agent may: promote the non-optimal outcome of his own choosing, provided only that the degree of its inferiority to each of the superior outcomes he could instead promote in no case exceeded, by more than the specified proportion, the degree of sacrifice necessary for him to promote the superior outcome. If all of the non-optimal outcomes available to the agent were ruled out on these grounds, then and only then would he be required to promote the best overall outcome.25 What does the preceding quote mean? It sounds quite reasonable and a straightforward way to humanize the principle of Negative Responsibility. But is it? For instance, who will decide the “degree of inferiority” of someone’s project; or the degree of superiority of an optimal outcome? Who will gauge the amount of sacrifice so that a person will be sure that it does not exceed the specified proportion? By what standard will we specify the proportion? In reality, will not the tasks fall upon the shoulders of the same agent who must make the choice? Will it not be the agent’s responsibility and decision to assign “weights” and “proportions,” and to define the entire situation into which these “measurements” fit? A naive attitude about human nature appears to exist within Scheffler’s terminology. Unless motivated by some other consideration, the free reign of the agent’s prerogatives could and would be corrupted by the expectation for self-regulation by an agent, negating the (alleged) obligation to prevent the harm to a greater number of innocents as a real option. To be fair, let us assume for the moment that Scheffler is correct and accept at face value the possibility of the establishment of precise measurements subjectively. A family of difficulties would remain. At each step of such an analysis, would not an agent who acts out of HT be confronted with a new decision requiring his or her choice between one preference and a neutral standard? If so, then a collapse to either an optimizing utilitarian neutral consensus or a psychological egoist perspective would occur. For example, if we reconsider E2, a situation would confront agent A, in which he or she must decide whether to spare his or her brother B. According to Scheffler’s model, A would have to consider several things, among them being “the size of the sacrifice he or she would have to make to achieve the optimal outcome.” The optimal outcome in this case would be the death of the brother, B, and the sparing of the lives of C . . . G. Suppose the agent rates the “size” of the sacrifice as a high 15 on a scale of 1–20, while the “neutral” consensus (if one could be found in the heat of the moment) rates it at a low 5. A would be confronted again with a decision of the same kind beyond which he or she just

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

223

tried to move, but at a different level of choice making. Should the agent choose the neutral viewpoint or opt for personal choice? According to the model, the agent could be forced to reanalyze his or her preference versus the impartial consensus. The same pattern would be repeated when the agent came to rate the amount of good (or evil) produced by following his project instead of the optimal project. Regardless what part of Scheffler’s model on which we focus, the dilemma between unregulated prerogatives and the optimizing neutral point of view HT was designed to circumvent would reassert itself at increasingly deeper levels within the agent. One way to break this pattern is to consider all relevant information about the decision at hand and then to form an educated subjective course of action. Scheffler appears to allow for this possibility in Prerogatives’ structure. If we compare cases E1 and E2, we will see that far from being grounded in a rational base, as he claims, Prerogatives is immersed in non-rational (and perhaps irrational) considerations. Scheffler must hold that the task of discerning “the best” from “my best” falls upon the shoulders of the same agent who must make the choice. Prerogatives permit us to promote the “general good” at which we arrive impartially or the “good of our intimates” as an acceptable promotion of the general good. Scheffler claims that this permissibility makes Prerogatives rational. A logical and rational basis available must be available to enable individuals to choose which good they should prefer to optimize and promote between the two options. In case E1, the conflict appears not to materialize since all six people are unknown to the agent A. We can rationally conclude that five strangers C . . . G dying to allow stranger X to live would be worse. After all, we can argue that the prevention of suffering in five lives is worth more than its prevention in one, and we must make a choice one way or the other. Scheffler would probably argue that the agent should identify his intentions with the impersonal standpoint in this case to secure the best outcome overall (but I argue the conflict is to be found in case E1 as well when set into its proper context). In case E2, the agent’s prerogatives favoring B’s life over C . . . G could follow from HT’s rule of permissibility for the promotion of “the good of particular people one cares about.” Given this, it becomes possible to ask what the rational element is which differentiates the life of stranger X from that of brother B so that agent A could spare B, permitting five to die on one hand, while on the other, sacrificing X’s life to prevent the death of the five? In both cases the numbers line-up in total and proportion, so we may conclude that these are not the deciding factors for which we search. X not being a relative of A’s cannot serve as the rational differentiator. How can an accident of birth and the concomitant occurrence of a longlasting relationship—that may or may not include emotional attachments—be thought to function as a rational distinction that would allow the suspension of the Conception of the Right? This principle holds that an agent must aban-

224

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

don his or her projects and plans any time some alternative set of activities would be productive of a better overall state of affairs in service to the common good. But ex hypothesi this is the only characteristic that separates X from B. (At one point in time, each reader’s significant other (B*) was once a stranger (X) to them.) Apparently, A’s preference for B, not rationally grounded, stems from a non-rational (not necessarily irrational) source: the emotional, associated with family ties and close relationships, reinforced by traditional beliefs.26 Conversely, the lack of these emotional attachments allows A to take the life of X in E1 in the name of Negative Responsibility guided by the Conception of the Right. No other reason appears to exist for A’s decision deeper than this rock bottom, conceivably evolutionary-driven, preference for kin and familiars over strangers. Any further attempt to classify such psychological or biological impulses merely describes and rationalizes the preference already rooted in a person’s psyche, and in no way delves deeper into the matter. Nor do such attempts alleviate the suspicions that these preferences are subjective and arbitrary at best (and thereby threaten to bias assessments of utility during crises when emotions and the stakes run high). For human beings, no logical necessity exists for ranking familiars high on the scale of a person’s priorities. Feeling or claiming to know that we “ought” to save a relative over a stranger does not force us to prefer this action, per se. In any event, a counterexample that would have A say words to the effect, “even though I do not care for my brother, he is my brother, and because he is, I ought to save him,” simple moves A from holding an emotive preference directly being applied to sibling B and attaches him to the impersonal, culturally inculcated rationalization. For example, “I do not want to promote a world where siblings are sacrificed in lieu of the sacrifice of strangers” without making the underlying assumption of the rationalization more rational. In Human Morality, Scheffler tries to address this concern. He writes that what he calls “claims of overridingness” is “not that some people do treat moral considerations as overriding, but that nobody can ever rationally fail to do so.” He updates his HT to an appeal to “moderate morality” where “it is morally acceptable in such cases to do the humanly correct thing” instead of the overly morally stringent requirement (such as Restrictions). To support this moral moderation he makes a distinction between decisions between desired-based and authority-based motivations. The goal of this distinction is to provide a naturalistic account of the traditional notions about the authority of morality. The second motivation differs from the first: while in the first account, fear and need are the driving forces to action, the second account is the integration of the super-ego with its authoritative ideal so that an “action may be performed or rejected because it is perceived as required or excluded by considerations whose salience for the individual is explained by

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

225

his or her internalization of the ideal.”27 We perceive some sorts of actions as mandatory while we rule out others. This naturalistic account overlooks the original source of the authoritative ideal: the moral beliefs and concerns that “help to determine what we do or feel, and how we react and relate to each other.” Who we are, must be social constructs.28 As such, though Scheffler thinks the contrary, the persons’ acceptance of their super-ego and their identification with it reduces it to a species of the desire-based rationalization of a culture’s preferences because ipso facto all non-natural sources have been eliminated. If this analysis is correct, then Scheffler’s assertion that Prerogatives was a more rational approach morally than Restrictions is doubtful. In his use of the term “rational,” perhaps Scheffler means to refer strictly to the overall logic of having the permissibility option over restrictions per se. He might mean that to permit the free play of preferences is a more logically human thing to allow and will produce a better overall outcome than will the imposition of restrictions upon a free agent’s actions and decisions. But this cannot be. As we have seen, Scheffler saw the need to tether the arbitrary free reign of an agent’s prerogative that he associated with Williams’ Integrity Thesis. HT’s Prerogatives alternative tends to break down as we unpack it and display its claims. The ultimate appeal that HT allowed for a rational choice in serious moral matters runs into trouble at the point where a person must choose between personal wants and the alleged neutral position. By allowing for the agent’s prerogative to subjectively choose an option that, for emotional reasons, contravenes the conception of right, Scheffler opens the door again to preferences that run counter to, and question, the legitimacy of, Negative Responsibility. HT’s integrity as a coherent system is compromised, resulting in a bifurcation along the original lines of dispute between Williams’ Integrity Thesis and Utilitarian consequentialism, as follows: When we seriously consider the Scheffler’s version of HT, especially the Maximization Strategy, to maximize the number of people who are successfully pursuing their projects and plans, we are faced with two alternatives. Either we must admit that no real rational explanation exists for the preference to choose accepting or rejecting the Utilitarian neutral position and the associated notion of Negative Responsibility—acknowledging that Prerogatives reduces to a form of subjectivism. Or we must posit that such choices come within the general scope of the traditional utilitarian explanation of what can be termed the best. Either we confess that all our choices are our subjective opinions based on personal preferences without regard for optimal concerns. Or we are forced to subject our personal plans to a scheme devised by utilitarian consequentialists, or the utilitarian reformists such as Scheffler, with its doctrine of Negative Responsibility, its rule for the maximizing the good, and its particular definition of the good already in place.

226

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

If we choose the first option, we are still left with the task of controlling the unstable vacillations of any individual’s unchecked prerogative. If we go with the second, utilitarian choice—especially if modified according to Scheffler’s suggestion that it be expanded to include as a best consequence our best possible outcome or our “reasonable” personal preference—we must still establish the ground for that which is claimed to be the best or the good. This entails especially when the best involves the non-consensual direct sacrifice (killing) of another, as is required in the Shoot Down Policy. Perhaps we can ground the good in the principle of self-defense. The usual notion of self-defense will not fit easily within our post-11 September 2001 considerations. The classical definition includes the right to kill an attacker if the attack is unprovoked and unwarranted, and as a last resort, extreme violence is necessary. But in the shoot down case, one must kill a sizeable number of innocent fellow citizens to stop the attackers. The rationale that this act would defend the homeland is held up as a self-evident justification. But in truth, whether the act constitutes self-defense is not self-evident. The issue is not “one should not stand by while others are being sacrificed.” How could I disagree with this proscription? With regard to the 11 September situation, the dilemma we face is as follows: Should a person kill individuals, bent on a massacre for their cause when they take hostages (whom they will kill when they are no longer useful) to use as human shields as they attempt to kill many innocent people and you, their defender? Is the only way to prevent the intended massacre to kill (shoot down) the hostages to kill hostages to kill those who would commit a massacre? Before the reader answers, consider that the injustice that the other does, or intends to do, does not automatically render our actions just in opposing them. In non-consensual situations where non-violent options are not apparent, it follows that no options exist that do not risk—in the employment of violence—corrupting ourselves. Albert Einstein has a famous quote in his “Atomic War or Peace” article to the effect that the Germans and the Japanese initiated the bombing of civilian centers during World War II, and that the Allies’ response in kind to this aggression was moral and justified. Two paragraphs later he writes, “We have emerged from a war in which we had to accept the degradingly low ethical standards of the enemy.”29 Whereas soldiers, professional and drafted, have been sacrificed many times by generals or field commanders (such as Ulysses S. Grant’s policy of attrition during the latter part of the American Civil War) to inflict heavy losses on the enemy, there has never been one case of intentional harm to civilians toward the same end that has been deemed moral. (For example, the 1950s of testing nuclear and biological weapons on soldiers and civilians to assess their effectiveness and potencyhas been rightly condemned.)

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

227

But even if we allow that these are new times with unique conditions, if the line between combatant and non-combatant is blurred as it must be for the Shoot Down Policy to be effective as an action or as a deterrent, then, paradoxically and tragically from a moral perspective, the policy tacitly justifies the al-Qaeda ideology. This ideology makes no moral distinction when condemning as kufu—the intentional diversion of the faithful away from submission to Allah and His law—the corrupting influence of the American policy makers and enforcers, and all those whose work in business, finance and trade make United States foreign policy viable. The Shoot Down Policy is based on the same rationale that allowed the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. This will not do. As Charles Taylor states: “To show that your interlocutor is committed to some good proves nothing about what he ought to do. To think it does is to commit the ‘Naturalistic fallacy.’”30 We still may wish to agree with Scheffler and say that we may both intend and do that which will have the best overall outcome, but what is considered to be the optimific consequent still will involve a highly subjective element: the definition and identification of what we claim is best. A third alternative to traditional Utilitatianism and HT, Restrictions, is also an attempt to account for the independence of persons while acting to control the unrestrained thrust of individual’s projects. With the provision to override all other projects and programs detrimental to other agents, Restrictions is meant to insure that the agent never performs specified harmful actions that are within a person’s control to avoid. But this is the bone of contention between Restrictions and advocates of HT consequentialism and those who promote the standard utilitarian consequentialist view. We must ask, what is within our control, for what are we responsible? 2. Sacrifice, Consistency, and Dialogue: The Contradictory Nature of the 11 September 2001 Shoot Down Policy Utilitarian Consequentialists in general, and Scheffler in particular, claim that the agent is responsible for all outcomes that involve him either directly or indirectly. So we have in both cases E1, and E2 (but not in the original Jim Case) A is responsible for the entire outcome of this situation. A’s duty is to bring forth the best possible outcome available. But why is it A’s duty? The utilitarian claim is that humankind has the ability to perfect the world (contribute to its reformation for the good or the retardation of the bad), and each agent is required to produce outcomes that will contribute to this end. But from where does this obligation arise? Apparently, this obligation must be intrinsic to human nature, imposed by some outside (supernatural?) entity, required by persons sufficiently powerful, or determined through an ongoing process of interpersonal dialogue and debate. I suspect that consequentialists in the tradition of John Stewart Mill would reject the first two suggestions as, re-

228

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

spectively, empirically undecided and empirically unsupportable, and vehemently oppose the paternalism of the third in favor the Mill’s respect for autonomy. But is this democratic type of progressive improvement possible without an appeal to Scheffler’s now suspect HT? Let us assume that the possibility exists. In the most favorable scenario, each utilitarian agent would act in such a way to produce outcomes that will contribute to the greatest amount of good and the least amount of harm for the aggregate of all concerned. In this way, all humankind would maximize the quantity of happiness in the world. What would be the purpose in building up this vast store of “humanity,” which is a generalized notion and not an entity itself? For the benefit of persons—not a generalized notion of a person but particular, concrete persons, like you and me. Supporting this focus, Leslie A. Mulholland writes: The central difficulty in the achievement of the greatest happiness of the greatest number is securing not merely happiness now but also the course of future happiness. But the course of future happiness can be taken account of only through considering persons as persisting subjects with the potential for future experiences. So the utilitarian quite easily can regard the individual living subject as being morally important apart from any experience he has at any given moment. This importance lies in the individual’s being the potential subject of future experiences. The need to consider future happiness leads to the justification of institutions through which the individual and his property can be protected. . . . Recognition of the importance of the individual as a living subject is what leads the utilitarian to justify the rights to life, property, and basic freedoms which are sanctioned by legal coercion. These provide the fundamental protection of the individual which is necessary for the security through which there can be expectation of future enjoyment.31 So in the last analysis the utilitarian emphasis to maximize the best outcome would be translated into the bestowal of benefits upon each and every person—if this were possible. Yet we know that in real life situations, such as the suicide terrorist hijacking of a plane, this is not always (and seldom is ever) possible. So something must give. Either some less idealistic concept must replace the notion that the world is perfectible and with the replacement, the altruistic motive behind optimizing the aggregate good over evil loses it force, or the notion of perfection must, in some critical cases, be modified to allow the harming of some for the benefit of most (Scheffler’s Maximization Strategy). Utilitarians such as Peter Singer, and by extension Scheffler, opt for applying the modified notion of perfection, conjoined with the doctrine of Negative Responsibility, as the only rational alternative.32

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

229

This sort of perfection allows the possibility of a non-consensual sacrifice of the life-plans and even the life of some would-be beneficiaries of the forms of consequentialist-based system of ethics covered in this paper. This might not be an obvious issue for non-democratic institutions where the value of the individual is derived from his or her relationship to, or place in, the community. But it appears to be a contradiction in thought and hypocrisy in action for any type of ethical system that involves some level of personal prerogatives or a democratic-style system for the construction and designation of goods to be sought by the people, for the people, in an environment where such goods are ontologically underdetermined. For the determination of what is seen as the best outcome must involve a sincere inclusion of a diversity of well-informed and consenting voices in a free and open dialogue prior to or soon after the implementation of a policy or procedure designed to promote this goal. Otherwise, decision makers may be subject to the charge of strong paternalism.33 Without any firm grounding in objective standards (for example, the inviolable integrity of individual persons) to delimit choices for policies of action, under the apodeictic model assumed by utilitarianism the decision makers (few or many in number) must merely assert that their preference for any future outcome is rational. Otherwise, they assume the risk that self-centered interests cloud and compromise their responsibilities as civil authorities to the citizens under their protection. No administration of a country is an ideal spectator capable of achieving a “god’s-eye” objective point of view. Even if the leaders strove, in good faith, to approximate this objectivity in practice, any resolution of a conflict of interests by means of a calculus would be perceived by an non-altruistic losing party as unfair, because she would be deprived of the opportunity to judge the matter for herself; all particular standpoints having been subsumed under the position of the ideal benevolent spectator role who would choose the allegedly best course for all concerned as assumed in utilitarian theory. This conflation of a plurality of positions into one ideal point of view does harm to the recognition of the separateness of life and experience, and eliminating the distinction of persons as individuals. To cement this point on the ills of paternalism, consider the following: To date, we have had no concrete examples of an ideal leader. Neither have we enjoyed any perfect society or perfect world. A good deal of evidence exists, past and present, to support the thesis that humankind includes imperfections of many sorts—such as misjudgments about the best method to bring about general goodness or the best outcomes for humankind. (Consider as recent evidence the misjudgments made by Osama bin Laden on this point relative to the means used on 11 September 2001 to challenge the Occidental modernism of the West.) Once the Restrictions is denied on ontological grounds, any plausible narrative that holds open the possibility for the perfectibility of the world is merely stating a belief, a conviction, or a cultural preference, and noth-

230

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

ing more.34 As optimistic and hopeful as schemes for perfecting the world may sound, their hopefulness does not make them automatically rational (objectively true for humankind), especially if they will not obtain practically or can be attained only at the cost of their internal logical consistency (the incoherence of a non-consensual sacrifice of those of unqualified value, be they described as “a gift of life from the creator” or as “innocent citizens”). With the reassignment of the Utilitarian best from a rational item to a committed belief, we are free to reconsider the entire situation. If we can question the consequentialist’s optimal assumptions then we can question afresh both the appropriateness and the depth of commitment that an agent has for its relations, be they familial, national, cultural, or, most broadly, human. With that ability to reassess, we can now evaluate the rationality of the particular case of the American Shoot Down Policy. Can we take American lives both as unconditionally valuable and as neutrally valued as a utilitarian unit, as the current Shoot Down Policy demands? Are Americans simultaneously our brothers and sisters to be protected and yet strangers to be sacrificed in the name of the common good? Is it case E1 or E2 that applies here? Can Negative Responsibility be legitimately applied to this situation without violating the integrity of someone in the way we find so objectionable when done by the terrorists? Who is our brother (or sister) in this case? The accident of birth, location, or the choice of migration by our ancestors, ancient or recent, that causes some people to be designated fellow Americans (United States citizens) appears equally, and perhaps more, arbitrary than family connections. We may now extend the non-rationality of preference of the sort between A and B (A’s brother) to U (any United States citizen) if the post-11 September rhetoric is embraced. Most of the approximately 280 million United States citizens are strangers (X) to any given A (for example, decision makers and the members of a supporting constituency—you and me). As we have seen previously, it was emotional attachment or the lack thereof that drives the choice of A in a sacrificial situation. Bush’s valuation raising American lives to the status of an intrinsic good to be safeguarded leaves no logical distinction possible for ranking American over American. I believe no way to devalue a few innocent American lives to the status of abstract units exists without opening the door to some future outcome where the saving of a terrorist life at the cost of Americans becomes possible if a net aggregate good will be produced. Scheffler’s HT was supposed to prevent this repugnant sort of consequentialist outcome. Philip Pettit would object to my conclusion that a logical distinction cannot be drawn in cases like ours. He draws the distinction between what is best to do, from what we cannot reasonable denounce an individual for doing. He states that the distinction rests on the treatment of other agents as parametric, “as given aspects of nature with which I cannot expect to en-

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

231

gage,” and agents that “are treated as being on par with me . . . as potential interlocutors . . .”35 He continues that what he has drawn is a distinction between the best that can be asked of me in a world where I am the only relevant agent, the only relevant decision maker, and the best that can be asked of me in a world where the demand is addressed simultaneously, and for similar reasons, to others. Pettit cautions that treating others as parametric quite often produces much disvalue. This ranges from issues of prediction about moral shortfalls and condescension on the part of the agent to a preemption of others’ decision making and treating them like instrumentalities. Possibly counterproductive in the consequentialist’s lights, he holds open the possibility that some situations will exist where the treatment of others as parametric will be justified. Whenever another fails “to contribute to the good,” or through “their evildoing,” a redefinition of the other from a status of coequal interlocutor to the status of natural force is warranted. This applies to the 11 September terrorists. Two thought occur here. First, does Pettit hold other people as primarily coequal interlocutor (brothers and sisters) or as causal forces? On one hand, if the default status of people is as coequal interlocutor, then their choices, when expressed in action, redefines them and reduces them morally to the standing of natural objects or causal events. The interlocutor’s moral standing is not a designation made from an impersonally neutral point of view. The agent potentially redefines oneself when the agent redefines the other as object or obstacle. If so, then we can more accurately say that the change in status from interlocutor to parametric hinges upon the understanding, by the redefining agent, of what counts as doing evil or failing to contribute to the good. Again, relativism looms unless we can ground the definitions of good and evil in more than public opinion about preferred outcomes. On the other hand, if the primary view of the other is as parametric, then any change in the status of the other is merely arbitrary and subjective, perhaps due to their instrumental or emotional value to the agent. Second, and more important, even if we accept Pettit’s parametric/interlocutor distinction, the potential victims of the Shoot Down Policy do not fall under either criterion that allows for an agent to treat them as parametric, as persons who fail to promote the good or as doers of evil. Not all cases where the innocent are sacrificed for the good of the aggregate fall under either criterion. The innocent more than anyone else deserve a voice in all decisions that will affect their lives. They, more than anyone, should not be treated with condescension or as mere instrumentalities to be manipulated for the best overall outcome. The innocent people, on board a jetliner or elsewhere, should, and must be treated as coequal interlocutors and not as sacrificial parametric “strangers” in the pursuit of an alleged good designated by consequentialism, whether in a traditional or modified form of utilitarian ethical system. To do otherwise is to believe that a person or the person’s group

232

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

is the only relevant decision maker. This is paternalistic and indifferent to the proper understanding of the moral status of the other individual(s), and worse, the reduction of the other to mere objects; causal events to be manipulated for some abstract (and non-rational) notion of power masking itself as the good. This is true in general for any appeal to Negative Responsibility, and for the particular case of the Shoot Down Policy we have been pondering. We may conclude that the current Shoot Down policy as the “best” policy when dealing with events like those on 11 September 2001 is, most charitably, a subjective projection about what the good is. This idea of the good is based on what must be the right action (saving many Americans by the sacrifice of a few Americans without the sacrificee’s consent or their being fully informed). Yet the sacrifice of X/B in favor of C . . . G/U restricts this benefit to a favored many at the expense of the expendable few. When determining whether the American victim is to be treated under the status of stranger/parametric or sibling/interlocutor is difficult, the terms of the sacrifice becomes arbitrary and ambiguous, especially in the light of our recent discussion of Scheffler’s HT. Regardless of the status, under the present Shoot Down Policy, the personal plans of the several Americans sacrificed will be subordinated to the narrative set out by policy makers in the federal government, and their supporters, who tacitly (and unwittingly?) assent to the utilitarian doctrine of Negative Responsibility. But this doctrine is obviously not universally embraced as good or best, and it cannot be rationally grounded, as we just noted. So any decision must be open to further evaluation to avoid the undue imposition of alien narratives upon the life plans of non-consenting individuals. Conversely, in situations where potential for grave harm exists and we have no clear-cut rational understanding of the morally proper action, we ought to invoke the principle of nonmaleficence—notably absent from Scheffler and Williams’ theses. Why? In our case, the assumption should to be that human sacrifice for the good of the community can be morally grounded if and only if the sacrifice is consensual and not imposed on individuals, even when a terrorist threatens human life on the ground with an airplane full of fuel and American citizens. For this reason, the only ethical form of sacrifice is selfsacrifice. This is the only way to make sense of Bush’s rhetoric noted above. But is this appeal to nonmaleficence in itself a rational position? Let us be consistent and evaluate this appeal in turn. As argued, William’s Integrity Thesis, the traditional utilitarianism, and Scheffler’s HT are currently in question. And since committed, yet conflicting, narratives concerning the world’s perfectibility were at the heart of the 11 September events (the Western liberal secularism vs. Fundamentalist Islam), is it possible to reach a rational position about the way the world ought to become and by what means? Some will answer: “Yes! The way is through a free, democratic process, not through terrorism.” If this process is

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

233

to be more than the appearance of egalitarian democracy, then the process must be one of active participation by the citizens. It follows that those who assert democratic means to a rational decision must commit to a thorough, tolerant dialogue of beliefs, convictions, and preferences, (as in the Yahweh-Abraham exchange) encompassing even those ideas considered to be radical and beyond the pale of what is taken by the community to be “rational,” including this challenge to the Shoot Down Policy. Why? Until the unlikely event that the ontological grounding for truth and justice is irrefutably established, reasonable people will debate political and moral ends and the practical means of achieving them. Some still try to ground the rational on a foundation of certainty. The utilitarian attempts to rationalize the moral decision-making process by naturalizing ethical judgment following the apodeictic model of the sciences. She posits a morally neutral universe in which actions may take place. She believes that such an environment is the ideal forum for achieving objective outcomes through the impartial observation of, and engagement in the unfolding events. In this universe, the distinction between what Charles Taylor terms strong and weak evaluations is blurred, conflating desires with the desirable. According to Taylor a “weak evaluation” is a moral goal judged favorable because, de facto, we are committed to it. “Strong evaluation” is a moral goal that we see as, as Taylor puts it, “demanding, requiring, or calling for this [moral] commitment.”36 With weak evaluation, we desire a goal because we perceive it to be desirable. In the utilitarian worldview that accepts weak evaluation, the means to an end evaluated as desirable is supported by a quantified description of that end making it possible, even mandatory, to achieve the preferred goal by the most efficient means. The mandatory nature of the goal is merely apparent. Nothing intrinsic to this desire makes the preferred end causally or logically imperative. To translate the qualitative into the quantitative may simplify the process of evaluation, but does nothing to justify the terms to describe the end. The end as a vision of a world perfected is, instead, an intuition of a good yet to be instantiated. Any ideal rendering of the good, such as envisioned by consequentialists, cannot be unambiguously determined, especially when outcomes are reduced to targets along a causal chain independent of the values and principles—taken to be merely instrumental to the achievement of the desired ends, while those same targets are dependent upon the values and principles that give the targets meaning and make the outcomes desired targets in the first place. In effect, utilitarianism’s effort to remove the confusion associated with moral intuitionism by quasi-scientific methods merely succeeds in obfuscating a favored intuition of the good within the abstraction of calculation without ontologically anchoring it. Taylor remarks that in its efforts to emulate the sciences, the utilitarian attempt to:

234

EDWARD J. GRIPPE separate out a language of neutral description, which combined with commitments or pro/con-attitudes might recapture and make sense of our actual explanations, analysis, deliberations, etc., leads to failure and will always lead to failure.37

Consequently, while the aim of both Negative Responsibility and Restrictions is to minimize human suffering, to prevent or limit suffering the adherent of utilitarian-inspired consequentialist schemes must commit to a paradigm of abstraction, which conflates an agent’s objectivity with the objectification of the participants. By conflating objectivity with objectification, the agent confuses impartiality with the impersonal, allowing for the possibility and in some cases the likelihood, of viewing the infliction of suffering on some innocent person as an inevitable, morally allowable, part of agency. Only a short step is necessary for us to view the agent, or for the agent to view oneself, as a parametric function–an aspect of nature that an interlocutor cannot expect to engage as an agent. Grave internal discord exists within an agent who believes in Negative Responsibility, one that does not exist in Restrictions, lying in the conflict between a human being as a conceptual abstraction and as a person with a biography. To clarify this crucial distinction, consider David Chan’s insightful argument for the Doctrine of Double Effect being a matter of desire instead of intention. Intention, being the output of practical reasoning, may or may not be overridden by desires acquired during character formation. Chan argues that a sincere agent can both strongly desire not to harm the innocent and intend action that will (regrettably and foreseeably) do harm to them in some demanding circumstances. The strong desire not to harm the innocent morally separates this sincere agent from, say, a terrorist who has no or little desire to avoid the harming of innocent persons, and intends that harm. To illustrate the point, Chan contrasts the targeting of children by a sincere agent, a Strategic Bomber, from a Terror Bomber. Chan says of the Strategic Bomber: His not having any desire to kill the children, or his positively desiring not to kill them, counts in his favor when evaluating the extent of his moral responsibility or blameworthiness for killing them. But in the course of his practical reasoning, any desire of his not to kill the children, that may provide him with a reason not to kill then, has been overridden by his desire to secure victory over the enemy and his commitment to do so by bombing the munitions plant [containing said children]”38 An additional factor complicates the illustration. The Strategic Bomber must also accept the consequentialist notion that the world will be a better place (a desired outcome) as a result of the plant being bombed (and the enemy is demoralized into surrendering). The way to do this is the regrettable, but al-

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

235

legedly necessary human sacrifice of the innocents. Human sacrifice in cases such as these is morally acceptable. Several assumptions are contained herein: (1) The enemy is an obstacle to a better world (a belief that, in the 11 September 2001 case, Bush and bin Laden share about each other and their respective ideologies). (2) The desire to protect the innocents en mass against that enemy allows for the sacrifice of a particular subsection of those innocents. Oddly enough, only Bush appears to believe this. Bin Laden saw the financial and trade community as consciously aiding and abetting the United States military’s projection of American culture and power, directly responsible and blameworthy of kufu against Allah through the degrading of His ummah or Islamic community. (3) Human sacrifice as a side-effect of the acts involved in defeating the enemy is morally allowable under Chan’s modified form of the doctrine of double effect (apparently believed by both bin Laden and Bush). The first assumption rests on the definition of a better world. As I argued above, this definition is quite subjective, and in every case, we need to submit it to a full and open discussion. Otherwise, the question “A better world for whom?” may and should be raised (and is this not at the heart of the current strain between the Occident and Islamic worldviews?). The second and by implication the third assumption often goes undetected, as in Chan’s quote above, and in the Shoot Down Policy under discussion. I claim the invisibility of the allowance for non-consensual human sacrifice by decision makers is at the root of not only issues concerning double effect, but also in all cases of Negative Responsibility, from the governmental and executive suites, to the military command posts. The reason for this claim is that an additional and incommensurate desire within the sincere agent’s psyche exists side-by-side with the desire not to harm the innocent. This desire of beneficence is the aspiration to promote the most good and least harm for humankind. Under non-stressful conditions these two desires—of nonmaleficence towards innocent persons and of beneficence toward humankind—do not come into conflict and appear to be in harmony. But when crisis events such as 11 September 2001 arise, these two desires may and do clash. Then it becomes primarily not a difference between desires and intentions that allows for the possibility of a non-consensual sacrificing of human life, but a difference in the lexical ordering of desires. What guides this ordering? A serious psychological conflict emerges from the claim that while desiring to inflict no harm on innocent persons, an “I had to do what was necessary” intention (the willing sacrifice of a few for

236

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

the sake of the many) is invoked.39 The inauthenticity of such a remark— couched in terms of alleged causal necessity, as if choice were taken out of our hands—is to be found in the submerging of the personal desire to avoid harming any innocent person through an appeal to the principle of nonmaleficence. The overwhelming desire for beneficence (“internal” desire inculcated at an early age, in Chan’s sense of the term, as opposed to an instinct) causes the agent to see the promotion of the optimal outcome to achieve what one abstractly constructs as “the good” as causally compulsory and morally justified. This is true even with non-consensual sacrifice of innocents (the preservation of whom is equally a desire inculcated into character early on). Obscured, intentionally or not, behind a wall of rhetorical comments and rationalized intentions, is the unresolved conflict of the desire to harm and not to harm flesh-and-blood innocents. The desire to promote a better world by protecting the innocent, especially the voiceless, from harm, must remain the motivating force for the achievement of some overall good, regardless whether we see it as an outcome or as an imperative. Even the Utilitarian must appeal to this desire to avoid harming the innocent as an ideal when intellectually calculating the means to the goal of minimizing harm of the innocent. Otherwise, the distinction between a “terrorist,” who, by definition, both desires and intends harm to innocents, and a “sincere agent,” who, again by definition, only intends but does not desire such harm, dissolves. With this dissolution, we will be forced into the position that the maximum benefit for humankind is relative to a person’s culture or cause. But if the distinction between terrorist and sincere agent is to be preserved, then the principle of protecting the voiceless innocents from harm is and ought to be the bedrock ethical maxim for all sincere agents, with any other maxim subordinate to it. If so, then any action performed by an agent not in service to this bedrock maxim gravely undercuts it, and creates within a psyche (and by extension within a society) an illogicality: to achieve this worthy principle of the preservation of the innocent, a person must violate the principle by violating the innocent. The lack of palatability for this schism between “internal” desires leads an agent to find extrinsic rule exceptions or to project beneficial future outcomes to relocate the disquieting moral split beyond him or herself to an external and absolute dichotomy between evil terrorist and good agent. All evil lies in the terrorist, all good lies in what the good agent is doing to prevent terror. But as I have just argued, without the unaltered concern for the innocents, a distinction between the terrorist and the sincere agent is an illusion even under the Doctrine of Double Effect. A moral inversion looms.40 As with Scheffler’s HT and with what Pettit’s calls virtual consequentialism, the belief that consequentialism of either ilk preserves the psychological integrity and autonomy of the individual qua feelings and desires while leaving open

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

237

the ultimate validity of judgments from the utilitarian neutral viewpoint is brought under serious question.41 Negative Responsibility would lead to a psychologically unhealthy bifurcation in our relations to our voiceless, innocent, fellow human beings, considering them simultaneously as persons of intrinsic value and as parametric objects to be instrumentally manipulated for beneficent outcomes. The ambiguity surrounding these two (incompatible) characterizations of innocent persons would dramatically increase the likelihood of a decision maker slipping from the role of protector into it destructive opposite when a crisis presents itself and desires conflict, the hallmark of moral inversion. This is the dilemma Scheffler sought to escape through Prerogatives, but could not because of his tacit acceptance of the apodictic model for solution of moral issues with its possibility of rendering any interlocutors as a parametric. If we are to avoid this dangerous ambiguity, only one way to proceed is open to us: to restrict inflicting harm on the innocent without first obtaining their free and informed consent. Taylor provides the route via his notion of strong evaluation. To preserve the distinction between strong and weak evaluations, an appreciation of the shortcomings of objectivity as conceived by the Enlightenment scientific mindset must take place. Martha Nussbaum concurs, “we ought to reject disengaged pseudoscientific understanding of the human beings, in favor of conceptions that give a larger role to people’s commitments and self-understandings.” But what prevents this larger role from becoming egotistical, militating a return to a construct like the HT? Taylor’s position implies that Scheffler’s untenable dichotomy will not form if the quasi-scientific notion of objectivity upon which it rests is eschewed and a strong evaluation of options is invoked. Taylor argues that someone making a moral decision must understand that “(t)o abandon a moral goal strongly evaluated” would show a person to be “insensitive or brutish or morally perverse.”42 A moral decision involves an intuition of the good intrinsic to an action and not abstracted from it. But as an intuition, a strong evaluation is neither arbitrary, nor capricious, nor is it absolute, but fundamentally comparative in the sense that no recourse to neutral standards as independent criteria exists. A strong evaluation is achievable only through authentic dialogue. Thrown as we are in an existential situation from which we cannot attain a god’s-eye perspective on the truth, the temptation is to either surrender to a skeptical relativism or to uncritically assert that we have found the methodological escape route to unfettered objectivity. Taylor avoids these related temptations by making modest claims about truth and morality. Starting from an interlocutor’s commitments (P) the job of the questioner is to uncover hidden assumptions within P or even within an alternative opinion (P´) not seen at the outset of the exchange. These assumptions are held up for comparison, not to ascertain a winner from a loser, but to dialectically sift out contradiction, confusion, and to expose to the light relevant facts

238

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

that had been unrecognized or ignored. The result is a better understanding of the meaning of the original commitments, perhaps in a less conflicted, or more comprehensive form (Q). The aim of this sort of discussion is not to change the world for the better, or to change the world to our liking—both intentions being fundamentally subjective, but to bring about a self-justifying transition within the interlocutors’ consciousness. This Taylor calls an ad hominem argument. The work being done in an ad hominem argument is internal to the participants, in that through self-reflection of those participating in the inquiry the grasping of the prima facie rightness of an idea (such as sense of “human importance” found in some fashion in all societies) extends beyond cultural constructs and instrumental calculations.43 The qualification of prima facie is properly attached to the rightness of a strongly evaluated idea for two related reasons. First, the rightness of the reevaluated commitment is prima facie because it must be instantiated into a context where a variety of relevant definitions has currency. Second, being comparative, a strong evaluation is always open to revision in the face of a comparatively still better (less conflicted) account. What Taylor’s strong evaluation does not mean is that the evaluation is tentative relative to an allegedly claim of unfettered objectivity which was originally assumed but found to be confused, partial, or contradictory. Here, the rationality behind a prima facie notion emerges. Whatever idea has a greater consistency with the intuitive demand or call for our commitment than its rival(s) it ought to be taken to be more rational. Scheffler’s definition of the rational as “optimal from the standpoint of reason” is circular and assumes that moral evaluations can be made from a transcendent “god’seye” perspective. Taylor challenges this assumption and speaks of rationality as ideas coherent with one another together with the adequate grounding of this matrix of principle and its manifestations in a trans-cultural sentiment, such as “human importance.”44 This is the understanding of the rational that I employ and which the Bush Administrations’ policy on terrorism appears to lack. To the point, President Bush has defined “terrorism” as violence against Americans, according to Daniel Shore during Weekend Edition on National Public Radio, 8 August 2002. I contend that all such non-informed, non-consensual violence (against Americans and others) is morally wrong, and in Bush’s words, terrorism. For the United States Government, headed by this president, to have a policy that sacrifices innocent Americans for the safety of other American citizens under current circumstances is incoherent and irrational. Bush apparently views the legal sense of human rights found in the United States Constitution; precedents of civil rights laws of the United States; the idea that people ought to be treated as ends and not merely means; the Judeo-Christian command “Thou shall not kill”; and the political notion of popular sovereignty captured in the United States Declaration of Independ-

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

239

ence; as manifestations of “our deepest national conviction (which) is that every life is precious . . .”45 Taken together, these principles comprise a prima facie conviction. I submit that this conviction, with its many manifestations, coheres better with the moral principle of nonmaleficence than that of beneficence that rests on Negative Responsibility, and is objectively better. Pettit mounts a significant challenge to the implication of my last point, which can be succinctly stated, “consequentialism requires the agent often to take what is intuitively the wrong option . . .”46 He instructs us that objections to consequentialism follow a pattern. First, objectors identify a role or office where what constitutes correct behavior on the part of the office holder is intuitive. By way of example, he offers the role of an authority, who deals with others who can expect to be protected or not to be violated by the office holder. Next, they cite a neutral good or value that any utilitarian will regard as imperative and relevant to the discharge of that role or office. Duties towards citizens comprise such a good. Finally, they find a situation where the promotion of the identified good or value leads the office holder to break role and do what is intuitively wrong for them to do. (We can apply the shoot down issue with relative ease to the steps just outlined.) Pettit holds that some situations will exist wherein the office holder breaking role to do the intuitively wrong thing would be proper and rational. He argues that some point will always arrive—when a moral catastrophe looms—when acting out of role will be right. He believes this objection “may not be capable of being used quite frequently against the consequentialist”47 because the disutility of role breaking will usually be too great even for consequentialists. He explains: It is unlikely that it could justify (any official), as we say, in taking the law into their own hands and in judging that by denying a citizen their rights . . . they can thereby increase overall the degree to which citizens enjoy such rights, and enjoy non-domination at the hands of officials.48 and: The damage that role-breaking is likely to do to the realization of the value in question is so great that it is hard to see how any contribution it might be expected to make in a particular unusual instance could justify the risking that damage.49 In the end, Pettit concludes that less room for consequentialist zealotry exists than critics usually suggest. So when role breaks do occur it would likely be for a good reason, for instance in an extreme emergency where the normal rules of action stand as obstacles to the promotion of the good. In my argument, I shed light on a way to consider that human sacrifice is a practice

240

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

of not only those who perform the literal terrorist-like act, but also any person willing to embrace Negative Responsibility in well-meaning political (and social and economic) endeavors. These occurrences are not as rare as Pettit would like us to believe. On 11 September 2001, the people of America awakened to learn that terrorism was not an abstract, distant happening, but a real and possible event in their cities. With worldwide media coverage of other similar or worse tragedies, in Spain, Sudan, England, Rwanda, Bosnia, and East Timor, and the threat presented by the growing availability on black markets of weapons of mass destruction, the provincial naivete that decisions to sacrifice others are uncommon stands easily contradicted. What I argue is that we need to extend this consciousness raising. We should become aware that only uncivilized “evil-doers” who ruthlessly kill innocent American civilians (or others) for their political end are not the only zealots that concern us. Our government, in its desire to do good, may exhibit the same pattern of zealotry when it engages in “breaking rules” to defend liberty and to protect the lives of Americans on the grounds it sacrifices the few to save the many. Examples of these practices are evident in reported abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and in post-11 September violations of United States citizen detainees’ right of Habeas Corpus. While the John Brown-style of zealotry linked to blind commitment for a cause is atypical, the pattern where conflicting desires exist, notably when a desire to achieve a “greater good,” even by lethal means, overrides the desire not to kill innocents, is not rare. Locke’s caution that the loss of liberty opens persons to the threat of harm to life is relevant here. I would suggest that the founding fathers of the United States recognized this potential for life-threatening abuse when they instituted the Bill of Rights as the concrete safeguard for their declaration of the inalienability of life and liberty. I challenge Pettit’s presumption (that assumes the principle of Negative Responsibility) that a legitimate breaking point exists where authorities in a democratic society, founded upon the notion of Popular Sovereignty, may violate the contracted expectation of life and security with any law-abiding, innocent persons. Put differently, a breaking point exists when authorities might legitimately perform acts that involve, or indirectly—but likely—lead to, human sacrifice. Petit’s words of caution against the damage of role breaking ring true. Unfortunately for his position, a substantial number of circumstances exist (from Hiroshima, Japan, and the Vietnam War to the Iraq War) in which the human sacrifice of non-consensual citizens in the name of protecting national security violates the letter and spirit of the principles on which the United States was founded.

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

241

In conclusion, if I have been correct in my argument, the consequentialist claims of being a preferred ethical system because of the consequentialist’s rationally objective point of view does not hold. That opens the field to Taylor’s notion of an ad hominem argument as the more viable alternative50 and with it, the strongly evaluated conviction that because of “human importance” only with the American electorate being fully informed through a debate about the Shoot Down Policy and its implication for the flying public can the sacrifice of another be morally acceptable.51 We must give voice to all—perhaps by a nation-wide referendum or by a signing of a wavier presented to airline ticket buyers at the point of purchase effected. This would offer them the opportunity to give meaningful assent to the possible termination of their life-plans or life modeled on United Airlines Flight 93’s self-sacrifice as opposed to bin Laden’s paternalistic sacrifice of others for the good of humankind and the sacrificee’s soul.52 The logic of nonmaleficence is consistent with the intuition behind the Bush Administration’s pro-life stance, which holds that the human fetus can never have a voice in the life or death decisions concerning them and the state must speak for them. But persons eighteen years or older do have such a voice and can exercise it through their informed act of volunteering for service. Only by opening the way for the right to a fully informed decision by the flying public in this time of “war,” analogous to the ideal of voluntary military service, can American policies be consistent with American rhetoric that says: More than anything else, this is what separates us from the enemy we fight. We value every life; our enemy value none—not even the innocent; not even their own. And we seek the freedom and opportunity that give meaning and value to life. There is a line in our time, and in every time, between those who believe that all men are created equal, and those who believe that some men, and women, and children, are expendable in the pursuit of power.53 To insure that the freedom and opportunity that give meaning and value to life is not thwarted by the powerful in pursuit of their plans and projects, citizen questions about governmental policies, such as the Shoot Down Policy, must be allowed voice. Otherwise, a possibility exists that what appears rational, and trumpeted as such, is reducible to dogmatic assertions about a partial and conflicted consideration of the good, or worse, to a manipulation of language that conceals the unsupportable assumption that power used for goodness’ sake is never misguided. When that narrative uncritically assumes that the promotion of an objective good allows (per act, or as a rule exception) the taking of the lives of a few non-consenting Americans for the best overall outcome (under conditions of Negative Responsibility)—as do the varieties of consequentialism just con-

242

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

sidered—the claim of rational choice paradoxically collapses into alternatives of felt preference. When the rational slips into preference, logic crumples into rhetoric and the pursuit of the good more easily becomes a matter of unquestioning authority and unfettered control. With this failure of civil discourse, a crucial check against misuse of lethal power is by-passed, causing the demarcation between terrorist tactics and policies of national security to become dangerously blurred as the notions of perfectibility and power politics become fused in policy.

NOTES 1. George W. Bush, “Transcript of President Bush’s Address to the Nation on September 11 Anniversary,” The New York Times, 12 September 2002, vol. 151 Issue 52239, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020911-3.html (accessed 2 June 2006). 2. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1979), pp. 61–62. 3. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Balknap Press of Harvard University, 1971), p. 190. 4. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (New York: Norton, 2004), pp. 40–45. 5. Ibid. 6. Samuel Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1982); and John Jamieson Carswell Smart and Bernard Arthur Owens Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973). 7. Marcia Baron, Philip Pettit, and Michael A. Slote, Three Methods of Ethics: A Debate (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997). 8. Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), chap. 5, n. 6, pt. 2, p. 235. 9. Smart and Williams, Utilitarianism, pp. 28–30, and Smart’s rationale, p. 68. 10. Ibid., pp. 108–118. 11. Smart and Williams, Utilitarianism, p. 109. 12. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp.29–31. 13. Smart and Williams, Utilitarianism, p. 116. 14. See Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 29–34; and “Feminism and Pragmatism,” Pragmatism: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Russell B. Goodman, (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 128. 15. Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 8. 16. Ibid., p.81. 17. Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 81.

Consequentialism, Negative Responsibility, and Sacrifice

243

18. Ibid.; and Baron, et al., Three Methods of Ethics, p. 158. 19. Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 82. 20. Ibid., p. 88. 21. Ibid., p. 97. 22. Ibid. 23. Samuel Scheffler, Human Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1992), p. 53. 24. Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 94. 25. Ibid.,p. 20. 26. See Bernard Arthur Owens Williams, Moral Luck, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1983), pp. 17–18. 27. Scheffler, Human Morality, pp. 56–59, and 89 respectively. 28. Ibid., p. 129. 29. Albert Einstein, “Atomic War or Peace,” The Atlantic Monthly (November 1947), 192–193. 30. Charles Taylor, “Explanation and Practical Reason,” The Quality of Life, eds. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), pp. 230; see also 210–212; and Leslie A. Mulholland, “Rights, Utilitarianism, and the Conflation of Persons,” The Journal of Philosophy, 82:6: (June 1986), p. 331. 31. Mulholland, “Rights, Utilitarianism, and the Conflation of Persons,” p. 325. 32. See Peter Singer, “Killing,” The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 445–446. 33. See Barton Gellman, “Government is Slow to Offer Safety Plans” The Washington Post, 6 August 2002. 34. See William David Ross. “The Right and the Good,” Ethics, ed. Oliver A. Johnson (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), p. 393. 35. Baron, et al., Three Methods of Ethics, p. 165. 36. Taylor, “Explanation and Practical Reason,” p. 210. 37. Ibid. p. 212. 38. David Chan, “Intention and Responsibility in Double Effect Cases,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 3 (2000), p. 422. 39. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 190. 40. Hugh Lacy, The “Apted” Word, commencement address to the Swarthmore College Class of 2003. 41. Mulholland, “Rights, Utilitarianism, and the Conflation of Persons,” p. 333. 42. Taylor, “Explanation and Practical Reason,,” pp. 235 and 210 respectively. 43. Ibid., pp. 225, and 228–229 respectively. 44. Ibid., pp 225–230. 45. Bush, “President’s Remarks to the Nation.” 46. Baron, et al., Three Methods of Ethics, p. 151. 47. Ibid., p. 154 48. Ibid., p. 155 49. Ibid. 50. See Beth Singer, Pragmatism, Rights, and Democracy (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999), p. 125. 51. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 190–191.

244

EDWARD J. GRIPPE

52. See Andrew Sullivan, “It Is About Religion,” New York Times Magazine, 7 October 2001. 53. Bush, “Transcript of President Bush’s Address to the Nation on September 11 Anniversary.”

Twelve JESSICA LYNCH: MULTIPLE IMAGES, MULTIPLE REALITIES Laura Duhan Kaplan On 23 March 2003, the United States Army reported Pfc. Jessica Lynch missing in action in Iraq. On 1 April 2003, she was the severely injured object of a glorious rescue by United States Marines from Saddam General Hospital. The United States public learned that that she fought bravely, firing on her Iraqi attackers. We learned that she had not fired a single shot because her gun had jammed. We learned that she had been raped, and that she had not been raped. We learned that Iraqi military personnel had interrogated and tortured her in the hospital, and we learned that doctors and nurses, trying to heal her with quite limited resources, had treated her compassionately. We learned that the rescue was a dangerous expedition into Iraqi military and Fedayeen headquarters, and we learned that the headquarters had been abandoned, and that the rescue was a contrived media event. Lynch faded from the public imagination without our ever hearing any definitive version of the facts. Many of the facts will never be available to us. Battles are chaotic. Angry guerilla fighters rarely create files of memos subject to eventual declassification. Medical professionals treating enemy soldiers may not keep entirely truthful records. Heavily drugged patients do not recall their ordeals accurately. We cannot analyze the actual event. Only the media event is available to us. The media event created a symbol out of Jessica Lynch, a poster child for the American military effort in Iraq. Lawrence Hoffman, writing in a non-philosophical context, offers the best philosophical definition of the work of a symbol that I have ever read. According to Hoffman, “symbols symbolize.”1 We cannot pin down exactly what they symbolize in a single analysis. Powerful public symbols gain their power from their openness, from their ability to speak in different ways to different people. Jessica Lynch is one such powerful symbol. To some she symbolizes women’s ability to endure the dangers of war, a move forward in gender equality. To others, she symbolizes a pin-up caricature of the damsel in distress, a mark of our country’s reactionary stance on gender. To others, she is the Caucasian woman singled out for praise to the exclusion of her black sister soldiers, an expression of our country’s reactionary stance on racial issues. Some see her as an inspiring hero; others see her as a pathetic victim.

246

LAURA DUHAN KAPLAN

Here I propose to offer a sketch of possible feminist analyses of each of these symbolic roles Lynch plays. I do so in the context of a caution. Feminist cultural critics have spoken endlessly against the objectification of women and their exploitation in the media. For years, we have criticized the facile division of women into virgins and whores, and the reduction of women to two-dimensional images for consumption by heterosexual men. So let us try to resist reducing the real Jessica Lynch, a young woman adjusting to a life with disabilities, into nothing more than a set of powerful symbols about gender, race, and politics. 1. An Account of the Realities Because of this caution, and in spite of my reservations about the availability of reliable facts, I will tell one version of the facts of Lynch’s capture and rescue. This version relies heavily on Rick Bragg’s book, I Am a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story. I choose this version because I resonate with some aspects of the ideological perspective Bragg presents.2 Lynch, a nineteen-year-old supply clerk in the 507th Maintenance Company, was riding in a 100-mile long convoy of supply trucks heading towards Baghdad. Her end of the convoy became separated from the lead trucks. Her commanding officer—exhausted, unable to distinguish one desert landscape from another, and working with poor directions given by apathetic Marines— took a wrong turn and brought the trucks straight into downtown Nasiriyah, Iraq. Local Iraqis, thinking they had been invaded, fought fiercely. The American soldiers of the 507th Maintenance Company, driving slow-moving heavy trucks, wielding guns that had filled with blowing sand, and psychologically unprepared for combat, had limited means of resistance or escape. Lynch’s best friend, Lori Piestewa, drove up to Lynch’s truck in a Humvee. Lynch jumped in, and cowered in the back seat, as Piestewa drove a slalom course through the chaos. When Piestewa also was shot, the Humvee careened into a tractor-trailer. Three hours later, Lynch arrived at Saddam General Hospital. She spent ten excruciatingly painful days on gurneys and beds, with broken arms, legs, and spine. Gradually, she regained consciousness. Nurses surrounded her with care and sang to her. Doctors performed surgeries to repair her shattered bones. At one point, American soldiers fired upon doctors trying to return Lynch to an American checkpoint. Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, an Iraqi lawyer whose wife, Iman, was a nurse at the hospital, and whose sympathies opposed Saddam Hussein, reported her presence to American soldiers. At their request, he and his wife gathered information to help plan a rescue.3 On 1 April 2003, a team of United States Special Forces, accompanied by a video camera recording at night vision level, stormed the hospital and airlifted Lynch to a United States military base in Germany.

Jessica Lynch: Multiple Images, Multiple Realities

247

As you can see, Bragg’s aim in writing about Lynch is not to wave the flags of patriotism or to glorify military heroism. He takes every opportunity to criticize George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, pointing to untruths, incompetence, and miscalculations. He takes great care to remind the reader that behind the propaganda, exists a real young person facing lifelong disabilities with the support of her family. Finally, he does not take a position on women in the military. He portrays Lynch as a complex individual who does not fit neatly into gender stereotypes. 2. Gender Schemas According to Bragg, Lynch, an avid high school athlete, always supplemented her softball and basketball uniforms with a perfectly made-up face. In 2000, Lynch was Miss Congeniality at her County Fair. In that same year, she raised a steer and entered him in a livestock competition. She was intelligent and determined, a straight B student, who wanted to go to college and teach kindergarten—after she had seen the world and had an adventure. Her organizational skills and attention to detail made her an excellent choice for an army supply clerk. Even as a supply clerk, forcefully holding people to the requirements of paperwork and rations, others experienced her, according to Bragg, as a “blonde-haired Miss Congeniality.” One of Lynch’s comrades in basic training described Lynch’s two sides, saying about her physical performance, “She was really tough,” and about her relationships with superior officers, “She was meek.” If this is an accurate portrait of Lynch, she is a wonderful choice for the icon of a female soldier. She is not stereotypically feminine enough to evoke the complaint that women ruin the army, and she is not stereotypically masculine enough to evoke the complaint that the army ruins women. Psychologist Sandra Lipsitz Bem coined the phrase “gender schema” to describe the level of gender dichotomization individuals apply in their perception of the world.4 Individuals with a strong gender schema filtering their experience would see every reported event in Lynch’s story as strong evidence of her masculinity or femininity. Bragg appears to be aware of the power of gender schemas. He both plays on them and short circuits them. He uses stereotypes and categories recognizable to readers as evidence of masculinity and femininity—and then shows painstakingly that Lynch has both. In this way, Lynch functions as a “poster child” for women in the military and possibly for all of our youthful soldiers in Iraq. This genderneutralizing analysis is only one perspective. From another perspective, Lynch’s value as an inspirational poster child comes from her being a female.

248

LAURA DUHAN KAPLAN 3. Women Inspiring Warriors

Susan Griffin, in A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War, tells of the women whose names and images adorned the greatest instruments of destruction in World War II. She speaks of Paul Tibbetts, the pilot who led the mission to drop the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. His mother, a tender woman, told her son that everything he did would turn out all right. Carrying her words with him on this mission, as if they were a promise, he named the plane he was to fly after her: the Enola Gay.5 Griffin tells of another woman, an unlikely companion to Enola Gay Tibbetts, whose image adorned the test bomb dropped over Bikini Atoll. Rita Hayworth’s studio, who owned her image, agreed to allow the bomb’s creators to attach her poster to the weapon. Perhaps someone with a twisted sense of humor decided that a bombshell ought to adorn a bomb; or perhaps, as Andrea Dworkin might say, heterosexual sex and violence are inseparable.6 Perhaps another reason exists, one that parallels the pilot’s choice in carrying his mother’s promise with him. Hayworth’s studio-contrived sexy image sold a promise that raised men’s sexual excitement and hinted they could find fulfillment with her. Hayworth’s image on the bomb offered a subtle promise, the promise of the sexual relationships men might return to when the world was safe again. In the physiological language popular today, Hayworth’s image raised men’s testosterone level. In their minds, they connected the feeling with sexual desire and fulfillment. Lacking the opportunity for fulfillment, soldiers channeled their testosterone into fervor for the fight. Not surprisingly, Rita Hayworth objected to people using her image in this way. She cried when the bomb was detonated, speaking of the scars the war left on her soldier brothers. She said she was against all wars. Unlike Hayworth, the media did not heavily sexualized Lynch’s image. If publicists sold Hayworth to the movie-going public as the wild “whore” of their fantasies, reporters sold Lynch to the American public as the innocent “virgin” next door. In November 2003, The Charlotte Observer reported that Larry Flynt, of Hustler magazine, claimed he had purchased nude photos of Lynch taken in an army barracks, but that he had decided not to print them. Flynt described Lynch as a “good kid” who became “a pawn for the government.” He did not agree with the soldiers who allegedly sold him the photo, because they “wanted to let it be known that she’s not all apple pie.”7 Unlike Hayworth’s image, Lynch’s image does not offer the promise of a post-war lover. Instead, it hints at the promise of a post-war return to a wholesome life not racked by ambiguities of good and evil. It hints at a return to her family of origin and brothers and sisters, who grew up playing together in loving innocence. Like Rita Hayworth, Lynch objects to her image being used to sell the war. “I am not a hero,” she says. On the other hand, as I will note below, she is willing to exploit her image if it helps others.

Jessica Lynch: Multiple Images, Multiple Realities

249

4. Racial Stereotypes For some Americans, Lynch’s image raises racial issues and gender issues. She presents the face of the all-American pageant winner, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Miss Congeniality. Her image does not evoke racial anxieties for white majority culture. Yet her image alone does not fairly represent the racial and ethnic composition of the United States Army, a composition that raises crucial questions about economic opportunities in the United States. Lynch’s unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, was a multicultural collage. Lynch is from a white working class family in small-town West Virginia. Pistewa, who died at Nasiriyah, was a Native American woman from the Hopi Nation. Her army boyfriend, Ruben Contreras, whose truck was not in Nasiriyah, is Latino. Her African-American comrade Shoshanna Johnson, wounded and captured in Nasiriyah, held as a prisoner of war for twenty-two days (longer than Lynch), sustained serious, long-term injuries. Johnson, equal in heroism to Lynch, received much less publicity. She also received a much less generous compensation package from the military—30 percent of pay to Lynch’s 70 percent. The Army insists that it bases compensation on the amount of bodily injury, and that its staff mechanically applied the criteria. Johnson’s family, supported by prominent AfricanAmerican activists, claim racial discrimination.8 They argue that the cultural discrimination that led to Lynch being raised to iconic status, while ignoring Johnson’s similar sacrifice, played a role in the financial disparity of the compensation packages. Recently Johnson and Lynch have posed together and participated in joint magazine interviews in an effort to highlight Johnson’s situation and bring pressure to bear on the army. In photos, both are smiling, looking much healthier than they are. From a cynical perspective, forces on both the political right and the political left are using Lynch’s image to advance their causes. I choose to give Lynch more credit as an autonomous agent. While she could not control releases by the White House News Service during her hospitalizations, she can control which interviews and photo shoots to which she now consents. Moved by her experience in a diverse multicultural unit and by her friendships with people she never would have met in Palestine, West Virginia, she has chosen to lend her image to the cause of racial equity. This situation reminds me of the work of Maria Lugones and Vicki Spelman on friendship. They argue that the best way to break down long-entrenched prejudices, suspicions, and barriers among women of different races and backgrounds is for them to reach out in friendship. 9 5. Hero or Victim? Bragg argues that Lynch’s status as poster child was also a matter of timing. Her capture and rescue came at a time when United States morale, among

250

LAURA DUHAN KAPLAN

citizens and troops, was low. No quick victory of American military might was in sight, and citizens were beginning to question the Bush Administration. Sleep deprivation, harsh weather conditions, and civilian resistance confused and weakened soldiers. Civilians and soldiers badly needed a hero to galvanize and energize them. Lynch’s story hit the news at this time, and she became the hero Americans were waiting for. Lynch brought Americans hope, promising that soldiers could fight, endure capture, and be blessed with rescue. Elaine Scarry’s work suggests that Lynch was not the hero we had been awaiting, but the victim. In her book The Body in Pain, she argues that in the initial phases of war, political leaders do not look towards easy victories. Loss of life is part of the process of building support for a war. Citizens, she argues, buy into war when they feel they have something at stake.10 When casualties rise, so does citizen commitment. At a time when many Americans began to wonder why they were fighting to expand the Bush family oil business, one of their youth was threatened, possibly raped and tortured. Suddenly Americans felt they had a personal stake in a war against those who could bring a young soldier so close to death. Scarry does not bring gender into her analysis or tell the stories of individual hero-victims. But a female casualty evokes some special dynamics. She may appear as a damsel in distress and stimulate public discussion about the way the enemy treats women. Critics often condemn foreign cultures for the status they accord women. The role of women—whether too free or too constrained—becomes a benchmark for judging the humanity of a culture. In this case, many Americans considered Lynch especially vulnerable in the hands of foreigners “known” to treat women brutally. Imagined as a victim of inhumane, backwards men, Lynch’s image fueled the view that Iraq would deteriorate into chaos without a civilizing United States presence. 6. Images and Realities Jean Baudrillard argues that for those who spend a good deal of time consuming virtual reality, the image becomes reality. In the case of war, he suggests that in modern times, media warfare has replaced actual warfare. In his book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, he argues that Operation Desert Storm was a war of images. The victor would be the one who could convince the right people of the worthiness of their cause.11 If I apply Baudrillard’s theory to the Jessica Lynch story, I can describe Lynch’s image as a weapon in “defending” the administration’s “position” on the war—to use a few militaristic metaphors highlighted by Mark Lakoff and George Johnson.12 Lynch’s presence argues that women can be soldiers. It inspires soldiers with a promise of a speedy return to normality and increases the investment American citizens have in the war effort. In this sense, we could view the Lynch media event as a victory in the administration’s fight

Jessica Lynch: Multiple Images, Multiple Realities

251

for public support of the war. But the official weapons of the presidential administration also could be—and were—used in ways they did not control. The militaristic media blitz contained seeds of resistance that have sprouted. Obviously, papers like The Guardian took the opportunity to continue to question the integrity of the Bush Administration. But even Rick Bragg, Lynch’s official biographer, wove into his book many criticisms of the war’s misguided aims and tactics. Larry Flynt found a way to grab enough spotlight to accuse the federal government of using Lynch as a pawn. Shoshanna Johnson’s family with the support of African-American activists have used Lynch’s image to argue for racial equity. The Iraqi doctors and nurses who saved Lynch and tried to save her comrades were true “doctors without borders,” ignoring divisions between human beings imposed by warring states. Finally, Lynch herself and her family have shown little interest in capitalizing on their hardships. More than anything, they must long for what Jean Bethke Elshtain calls “civic peace.”13 Civic peace is the condition under which citizens can live normal lives, sharing time with family and friends in safety, raising children—and steers, going to college, becoming kindergarten teachers. May we achieve it soon.

NOTES 1. Lawrence Hoffman, The Art of Public Prayer, 2nd ed. (Woodstock, Vt.: SkyLights Publishing, 1999), p. 54. 2. Rick Bragg, I Am A Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). 3. Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief with Jeff Coplon, Because Each Life is Precious (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). 4. Sandra Lipsitz Bem, The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Equality (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994). 5. Susan Griffin, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (New York: Doubleday, 1992). 6. Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse (Boston, Mass.: Free Press, 1997). 7. Sara Kugler, “Flynt: I Bought, but Won’t Print, Nude Lynch Photos,” The Charlotte Observer, 11 November 2003. 8. Farai Chideya, “A Double Standard for Heroes?” Alternet, 14 November 2003, http://www.alternet.org/story/17189/ (accessed 29 May 2006). 9. María Lugones and Elizabeth V. Spelman, “Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for ‘a Woman’s Voice.’” Women’s Studies International Forum, 6 (1983), pp. 573–581. 10. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and the Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press,1985). 11. Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).

252

LAURA DUHAN KAPLAN

12. Mark Lakoff and George Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 3–5. 13. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 125-138.

Part Four TERRORISM CASE STUDIES

This page intentionally left blank

Thirteen RUSSIA, CHECHNYA, AND THE GLOBAL WAR AGAINST TERRORISM Oidinposha Imamkhodjaeva The end of the Cold War conflict led many political philosophers, theorists, and increasingly, international relations scholars, to observe that the speculative ideas articulated by Immanuel Kant were finally bearing fruits. The Democratic Peace Thesis captured the imagination of many, including Francis Fukuyama, as they reflected on “the end of history,” the triumph of democracy and capitalism. In the midst of this theorizing about the future emerged ideas that conceptualized the Russian Federation as a possible beneficiary of the democratic peace, these states and regions participated in the “third wave” of democracy or independently forged their “fourth wave.” We will conduct a philosophical interrogation to examine why the perils of war and conflicts that plagued the former Soviet Union during the Cold War (such as the Sino-Soviet conflict, Ethiopia-Somalia War, ChineseVietnamese border skirmishes) persist today. Of concern is the Russian war with Chechnya with reference to the resurgence of Islam among ordinary citizens, as these folks seek to return to their history and critical dimensions of their identity, which Soviet authorities sought to eliminate. 1. The End of the Cold War as the “End of History” Francis Fukuyama has emerged as one of the most important social theorists as a result of his book, The End of History and the Last Man.1 The 11 September 2001 attack and its after effects have brought about a philosophical examination of the supposition underlying Fukuyama’s ideas. Fukuyama contends that the collapse of the Soviet Union, communism, and the triumph of Western capitalism and democracy in the 1990s constituted “the end of history.”2 For Fukuyama, the disintegration of the Soviet Union represented “the end point of humankind’s ideological evolution and the universal application of Western liberal democracy as the ultimate form of human government.” Although conflicts would persist primarily in the Third World and Africa and the Middle East in particular, Fukayama had high expectations for liberal democracy. He thought that market capitalism would continue to succeed, and the resulting politics would devolve around resolving routine

256

OIDINPOSHA IMAMKHODJAEVA

economic and technical problems. The future, accordingly, would be quite mundane and lackluster. Fukuyama’s theory revolving around the idea of the “end of history,” which gained prominence during the late 1980s and the 1990s, offers a simplistic interpretation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Emmanuel Todd observes, “history would be teleological after all, and its goal is the universalization of liberal democracy.”3 The fall of the Soviet bloc and communism would be only the latest stage in this march toward human liberty, following on the heels of another phase, namely the decline of authoritarianism and dictatorships in Spain, Portugal, and Greece. This movement celebrates the so-called third wave of democracy, which includes Turkey and the transition to democracy throughout Latin America. This model of history, projected at the same moment of the collapse of the Soviet Union, was quite hopeful. A careful reading of Hegel reveals that he was living under Prussian domination, deferential of Lutheran despotism to the point of worshiping the state making the depiction of him as a democratic individualist appear problematic.4 Hegel drew attention to the expansion of the mind through history as a representation of freedom. Although Fukuyama emphasizes knowledge acquisition and education, he privileges economic forces and is closer to the Marxist interpretation of Hegel’s grand philosophy.5 Conversely, Karl Marx gave a different interpretation of the “end of history.” The definitive contribution of German idealist philosophy to Marxism was to etch on to it the logical system of the dialectic, ideas of History as Freedom and the proletariat as the Subject of History, and the more perverse legacy of a Eurocentric view of history.6 Fukuyama’s analysis fixates history using economic determinism of global capitalism and American intellectualism and vindication. Fukuyama reiterates the perspective outlined by Michael Doyle7 in the early 1980s and derived more from Kant than Hegel. Doyle contends that war is nearly impossible between democracies. Modern liberal democracies tend to be peaceful. At the same time, democracies do not go war against one another. The democratic peace thesis has emerged as a key indicator of the merits of Kant’s thesis concerning reason and morality governing the international system. The question arises whether liberal democracy replaces other forms of political systems at this critical juncture. Have we reached “a perpetual peace” as outlined by Kant and Fukuyama’s notion of the “end of history?” Cedric J. Robinson observes that as an intellectual and philosopher, Kant’s interests were expansive. According to Robinson, Kant lectured and wrote on logic, metaphysics, mathematics, natural philosophy, natural law, moral philosophy, theology, geography, and more mundane subjects such as state censorship, civil obligation, and political authority. He was also preoccupied with the power of good reason to provide an internal order that would ensure a lasting peace.

Russia, Chechnya, and the Global War against Terrorism

257

For this reason, at the end of the eighteenth century, in the midst of fierce conflict between warring houses of Prussia and Austria and the colossal historical force of the French Revolution, Kant took the initiative to construct a system of moral philosophy, which would serve the protonation-state of Prussia. Kant rejected the total anarchy and lawlessness that Thomas Hobbes had discovered in his imagined state of nature. He proposed an origin tale of a “state of wild freedom” in which some restraints on force existed, for example, strictures against assassins, poisoners, and breeches of agreement.8 In a world system where long established authority was aggressively challenged, Kant sought justification for political order, spiritual and intellectual compliance and rationality, a catechism for state bureaucrats. Kant elaborated a system to resolve the dualist antagonism between materialism and idealism. To some extent, this was a manifestation of the conflict among the power of reason, the restraints on Prussia’s civil service and the imperative of scientific inquiry, the ends of philosophers, and the ends of the city.9 For Kant, idealism, the disconnection of human destiny from the empirical world, gave authorization for the creation of a political order based on philosophic reasoning—the preserve of the enlightened middle class. Kant’s articulation of this opposition between materialism and idealism is fascinating. He contends that within each human being is a duality revealed as opposing impulses. According to him, the sphere of the anti-Christ, of the Satanic in the Manichaestic and Catharist heresies, becomes the body. He transposes their cosmology into a psychology of sensuality and materiality. The body is the origin of our vice, our deterioration, and our misery. The body is sensual; the body has compelling needs, desires. He assigned this aspect of human life as the phenomenal. Sensual beings had to overcome their obsessive behavior. For human beings to advance, the defeat of obsessive behavior of the sensual being was a precondition. At the same time, he contrasted it with the noumenal: the compulsion towards ultimate reality and perfection.10 The impulse toward perfection, the submission to superior authority, he insisted, must inevitably deny, and negate the body.11 By revealing the inalienable moral vocation and the unavoidable frailty of human being, Heiner Bielefeldt observes, Kant’s moral law implicitly points to the idea of an absolute, divine justice which on Earth can never be achieved. For Kant, “the state of nature,” the long memory of civil strife and war (“what is, what has been”), was entirely insufficient and an improper field upon which to interrogate the destiny of the species. The historical authentication of the text of European peoples could provide only a fragile apprenticeship for statecraft. Bound to nature, the guarantees of history lack all theoretical certainty. The State served to facilitate war not peace and this conditioned his class, (the civil and professional classes of Prussia) to support the war efforts of the state.

258

OIDINPOSHA IMAMKHODJAEVA

Kant effusively summarizes Frederick the Great’s principle: Argue as much as you like and about what you like, but obey. Kant’s philosophy pointed toward the disillusionment which some in his class articulated from the long history of futile wars and apparently never ending cycles of war. Kant sought to release the frustrated energies of his class by arguing that morality was discoverable not in the state or its authority, but through individual reason. Susan Meld Shell observes, “It is a doctrine of absolute responsibility, of taking reason-given ends as the motive of one’s action.”12 Kant was concerned with the nature and limits of understanding. His epistemology had a direct, political purpose: a soul-deep desire for a new social order. The Thirty Years’ War marked a major juncture in international politics and the philosophies and theories that influence our understanding of the world system and inspired Kant’s quest for perpetual peace. This war (which involved armies representing the Germanies, Sweden, France, Spain, England, the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, and Denmark-Norway) ended in 1648. Its conclusion led to the Peace of Westphalia, albeit only a nominal peace, since it was necessary to conclude the war with Sweden, Poland, and Denmark in 1660, with the Treaty of Oliva. This, too, was insufficient. One Germany or another subsequently required many conclusions of war: the Peace of Nimeguen (with France and Holland, 1679), the Peace of Carlowitz (with Poland, Vienna, and the Turks, 1699), the Peace of Ryswick (with France, 1697), the Peace of Utrecht (with France, 1713), the Treaty of Rastadt (1714), the Peace of Pasarowitz (Turks, 1718), the Peace of Vienna (with France, 1738), a war with the Turks, (1737– 1739), the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (the War of Austrian Succession, 1748), the Peace of Hubertsburg (to end the Seven Years War, 1763), and the Peace of Teschen (the Bavarian Succession, 1779). Robinson calculates that there were thirteen wars in 130 years.13 Instead of a new political order, one could say the Peace of Westphalia was followed initially by political disorder. Immanuel Wallerstein suggests that the Thirty Years War might be thought of as the first world war of the capitalist world economy.14 These wars were not the results of excessive militarism in German and Prussian mentality. The uneven international political and economic interests behind these wars methodically combined to invent the Prussian militarist order. In the overlapping histories (Fernand Braudel’s phrase) of Europe’s world economy, the regression of Spain, Italy, and Portugal made possible the challenges for hegemony from first Holland, and then England and France—the zones of greatest political and economic dynamism.15 In his assessment of Kant’s paradigm for international relations, Andrew Hurrell observes: There is no single Kantian solution to the international problem. Kant’s writing on this theme is characterized by a tentative and exploratory ap-

Russia, Chechnya, and the Global War against Terrorism

259

proach and he is keenly aware that all solutions involve trade-offs and costs. Hence, Kant was conscious of the challenge that went to the very foundation of his philosophical system. He believed that social life under a rule of law was a prerequisite for the flourishing of rational and moral capabilities and the achievement of maximum individual freedom.16 This new order resonates in Kant’s Perpetual Peace, written in 1795. Kant envisioned the free exercise of reason, and the full exercise of the freedom of thought and the movement toward self-government with the demise of European dynastic regimes. According to Kant: (1) No state having an existence by itself—small or large—shall be acquirable by another State through inheritance, exchange or donation.17 He asserted further that people should regard no state as property, patrimony, or soil on which to settle, but as a society of people over which no one but its citizens has the right to rule or dispose. He was categorical about the problems of European imperialism. He outlined several additional articles that would create eternal peace among states: (2) In the course of time, states should abolish standing armies. (3) No state should interfere by force with the constitution or government of another State. (4) No State at war with another shall adopt such mode of hostility as would necessarily render mutual confidence impossible in a future peace; such as the employment of assassins or poisoners, the violation of a capitulation, the instigation of treason and such like.18 Kant asserts that standing armies contribute to the arms race among states, fueling conflicts. He also states that standing armies also lead to the evolution of conflicting and entangling alliances that also exacerbates war among states. Kant was also concerned with states intervening in the internal affairs of others. We can see from this that Kant was opposed to reprehensible subterfuge. Kant was concerned that punitive wars might escalate to mutual massacre, which in the process of total destruction would strike at both parties, reaching perpetual peace only in the final destruction of the human race. Kant would have found the logic of mutual assured destruction (MAD) and Nuclear Utilization Theory (NUTS), two code words from the Cold War era as contributing factors to the conflict.

260

OIDINPOSHA IMAMKHODJAEVA

Kant did not conceptualize the “state of peace” as a natural state. His notion of the natural or normal state of interaction among states mirrored the ideas of Hobbes. According to Kant: A state of peace among men who live side by side with each other is not the natural state. The state of nature is rather a state of war; for although it may not always present the outbreak of hostilities, it is nevertheless, continually threatened with them. The state of peace must be established; for the mere cessation of hostilities furnishes no security against their recurrence, and where there is no guarantee of peace between neighboring States,—which can only be furnished under conditions that are regulated by law—the one may treat the other, when proclamation is made to that effect, as an enemy.19 He proposed three additional definitive articles as a precondition for his perpetual peace among states: (1) The civil constitution in every State shall be republican. (2) The law of the nation shall be founded on a federation of free States. (3) The rights of men as citizens of the world in a cosmopolitan system shall be restricted to conditions of universal hospitality.20 Kant believed that a republican form of government requires the consent of its citizens before a declaration of war. This is a crucial principle in his ideas concerning the “perpetual peace.” He also believed that the state of peace could not be established or secured without a compact among the member states. Kant assumed that constructing a special pacific confederation, distinctive from a mere treaty or compact of peace, is key. He believed that the social relations among different peoples of the world had reached the stage that a violation of rights in one place on Earth is felt everywhere.21 At the same time, the emergence of sovereign territorial states provided a model of governance under the rule of law. A large part of the ensuing increase in material powers was being employed not to advance social life, but instead, to support ever-more powerful military forces and, all too often, to launch wars of barbaric devastation that were horrifyingly antithetical to civilized ideas. The the potential for an enlightened social life inherent in the territorial state model for governance under the rule of law was evident.22 2. The End of the Cold War: Towards a New Order The end of the Cold War marked another stage in world politics in which Kantian philosophy might find some applications. The disintegration of the Soviet Union led to the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States

Russia, Chechnya, and the Global War against Terrorism

261

(CIS) and similarly to the construction of the Russian Federation. There was enormous hope that the former Russian Empire would develop into democratic capitalist states with elected leaders, civil constitutions, and a democratic peace would govern their mutual interactions. Instead, civil wars and terrorism in North Caucasus and Central Asia have plagued the Russian Federation. The third wave of democratization hit another “iron curtain” with reference to the Russian Federation and Central Asia, raising doubts about Fukuyama’s “end of history.” It may also question the idea that Kant’s Perpetual Peace thesis is reaching fruition with the end of the Cold War conflict. These conflicts have pitted the Russian Republic against Islamic movements in both areas. Do these wars and conflicts represent a global war against terrorism among Russia, Chechnya, and the local and regional Islamist that they confront? Are these conflicts the artifacts of an empire state of the former Soviet Union and revolving around the narcissism of nationalism and Islam? Does Samuel Huntington or Francis Fukuyama’s analysis of one world with no alternatives to democratic capitalism or the clash of civilizations explain the Russian Federation’s emergence as a zone of conflict and instability instead of Kant’s idea of a compact of perpetual peace? To what extent do these conflicts represent local and regional resistance to globalization? Huntington has articulated a competing vision from the one world scenario of Francis Fukuyama, in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order.23 He envisions a series of conflicts pitting “the West against the rest” especially the world of Islam. Huntington no longer conceptualizes the nation-state as the appropriate tool of analysis to examine world affairs. He states that competitive civilizations revolving around culture and religion are the heart of the crisis that fuels global conflicts in the post-Cold War era. Huntington contends that culture is the bonding agent of order and cohesion, and from within dominant cultural formations emerges different civilizations likely to compete with and fight each other, including Islam, China, Russia, and the West. Huntington’s thesis operates on the premise that religion is the fundamental force that stirs and mobilizes people and embodies the core of civilizations.24 Tariq Ali contends that Huntington exaggerates the power of religion while negating the competing roles of economics and politics. He suggests that Huntington negates the historical factors and complexity that contributed to the radicalizing Islam and he also fails to critically examine the conflict within Islam.25 Neither Fukuyama nor Huntington adequately addresses the rise in ethnic conflict and nationalism in the post-Cold War era that has cast its shadow over the Russian Federation and the CIS. We need to review how Marxism-Leninism dealt with the national question and how the Bolsheviks implemented their theory into practical policy in the Soviet empire. Embedded in the national question is also the issue of self-determination, autonomy, and separatism.

262

OIDINPOSHA IMAMKHODJAEVA 3. Marxist-Leninism on Nationalism

Marx and Friedrich Engels had a basic consensus over the historical fundamentals and distinctiveness of European nations in the mid-nineteenth century. Some differences existed between them over nationalism or what they came to call the national question (their point of departure revolved around Engels’ contempt for Slavs). In The Communist Manifesto and The German Ideology, Marx had stressed proletarian internationalism over nationalism observing that it was the nature of bourgeois society to have national interests and retain them, but to overcome capitalism one must dissolve national interests politically (through the formation of an international class: the proletariat), and economically (through the creation of a world system). Soon after, Marx began to deal with the question of national liberation more deliberatively (see his consideration of the Irish question), and perhaps, more realistically.26 Marx was unwavering on his stance that national liberation was a precondition for proletarian internationalism, and the destruction of bourgeois economic, political, military, and ideological hegemony.27 He did not extend his analysis to include India, Mexico or Italy. Engels, in contrast, tended to recognize and emphasize a counter-revolutionary tendency of national liberation movements, which he had sensed since observing the social upheavals of 1848–1849. Together with the Scots, Bretons, and Basques and Southern Slavs, Engels had classified these peoples as non-historic nations:28 remnants of a nation, mercilessly crushed, as Hegel has said, by the course of history, this national refuse, is always the fanatical representative of counterrevolution and remains so until it is completely exterminated or de-nationalized as its whole existence is in itself a protest against historical revolution.29 Along the same line as Marx and Engels the most significant contributor to the national question were Bolsheviks, the Radical Left (Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, Josef Strasser, and Leon Trotsky), and Austro-Marxists (Karl Renner, and Otto Bauer). Luxemburg berated the idea of the right to self-determination as theoretical, metaphysical, bourgeois, and utopian.30 Her line of reasoning was established principally on the economic strains in Marx’s philosophy, which underscored the cultural element of national divisions, and on Engels’s characterization of “non-historic nations.” Anton Pannekoek and Josef Strasser saw the nation as an ideology analogous to religion, which evaporates with the advent of socialism. Challenging Otto Bauer’s position, which understood the national question in psycho-cultural terms,31 Pannekoek and Strasser rejected the theory of a national culture that could be appropriated for its interest by the working class.32

Russia, Chechnya, and the Global War against Terrorism

263

Nationalism was a backward ideology, often a means of deflecting the class struggle into imperialist wars, and in any case not a fit subject for serious study since it was merely a politically convenient conduit of other forces and interests. In his interrogation of Marxism, Cedric J. Robinson observes that the dismissal of culture as an aspect of class consciousness did not equip the Marxist movements for the political forces that would not only erupt in Europe and the Third World but within the movement itself. For many Marxists it would be left to the new ideological and political order instituted by the Bolsheviks’ triumph in the Russian Revolution, and not received theory or philosophy, to sort out a Marxist orthodoxy on the national question. Ultimately, the decision was a political one clothed only partially by theory.33 The conflicting perspectives of Trotsky, Vladimir I. Lenin, and Joseph Stalin competed for hegemony on the national question, with Stalin’s position becoming the stated policy after the death of Lenin. Trotsky, although initially committed to the notion that nations had the right to self-determination, was also of the opinion that the centralizing needs of economic development would ultimately lead to the dissolution of the nation-state. “The nation divorced from the economy and freed from the old framework of the state, would have the right to self determination . . . in the sphere of cultural development.”34 Robinson notes that Lenin did more to expand Marxist theory on the national question. Lenin’s prominence as the architect of the October Revolution, as leader of the Soviet state, and founder of the Third International gave his opinions the requisite authority to become dogma. Robinson has noted that the complexity and colossal character of his writings on the national question left his ideas susceptible to oversimplification. Lenin’s successor would supply the most straightforward and commanding declaration on the national question. In 1913, with the instruction of Lenin, Stalin wrote his now famous pamphlet, Marxism and the National Question. In it, Stalin defined a nation as: A nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a community culture. . . . It is only when all these characteristics are present that we have a nation.35 He also declared his support for the right of national self-determination: The right of self-determination means that a nation can arrange its life according to its own will. It has the right to arrange based on autonomy. Hence, the Marxist philosophical framework put a premium on autonomy rather than secession, which would dog the post-Soviet era. It has the right to enter into federal relations with other nations. Soviet leaders emphasize federalism rather than separate political entities. It

264

OIDINPOSHA IMAMKHODJAEVA (the nation) has the right to complete secession. Nations are sovereign and all nations are equal.36

Stalin’s modus operandi would dominate the discourse on the national question for three decades after Lenin’s death. This is especially unfortunate since socialist organization and thought had the most persistent encounter with the ideology of nationalism during this period.37 Robinson tells us that Marxists did not grasp that the political and ideological phenomenon of nationalism was not (and is not) a historical anomaly (of proletarian internationalism). The converse—the belief that nationalism is a developmental stage of internationalism is not necessarily true either. According to Robinson, nationalism defeated the Marxism of the Second International (World War I). Ironically, nationalism was a basis for the Marxism of the Third International (Russian: Ʉɨɦɦɭɧɢɫɬɢɱɟɫɤɢɣ ɂɧɬɟɪɧɚɰɢɨɧɚɥ, Kommunisticheskiy Internatsional–Communist International Organization)—the Russian Revolutions; Stalin’s socialism in one country; the condition for membership in the Comintern—yet its primary world-historical significance was denied. It remained for most northern Marxists a secondary phenomenon (to the class struggle). The First International was a response to the meeting of the International Workingmen’s Association, heavily influenced by Karl Marx. It sought to institutionalize Marx’s call to arms for a fellowship of workers against capital. The Second International sought to mobilize workers against the First World War, but the forces of nationalism were too strong and workers gave their loyalty to the state instead of the Communist International. The Third International pitted the supporters of Stalin and his policies of socialism in one state against Leon Trotsky and his idea of supporting communist revolutions throughout the world, creating a supporting environment for socialist forces. Lenin saw the character of nationalism as principally political, Luxemburg as principally cultural. The error resided less in the mythic, analytic, or theoretical treatment of it, than in “a defective grasp of the overall nature and depth of capitalist development.”38 Robinson holds that Tom Nairn captures the role of nationalism even as capitalism expands on a global scale. Nairn observes: The unforeseeable, antagonistic reality of capitalism’s growth into the world is what the general title uneven development refers to. In the traditional philosophical terminology, this amounts of course to a “contradiction.” The contradiction here is that capitalism, even as it spread remorselessly over the world to unite human society into one more or less connected story for the first time, also engendered a perilous and convulsive new fragmentation of that society. The sociohistorical cost of this rapid implantation of capitalism into world soci-

Russia, Chechnya, and the Global War against Terrorism

265

ety was nationalism. . . . The world market, world industries and world literature predicted with such exultation in The Communist Manifesto all conducted, in fact, to the world of nationalism.39 At the same time as the expansion of capitalism has resulted in the continuation of some aspects of non- (“pre-”) capitalist modes of production, nationalism, in many places, has assumed forms largely organized through ideational systems indigenous to those peoples exploited by the world market. Robinson argues that this variety of socialism is capable of changing economies without necessarily changing their character. No single model of socialist industrialization or development has resulted from the revolutionary social orders of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Vietnam, Kampuchea, Mozambique, or Angola. Each of these revolutionary social orders is informed by political, moral, and ideological presumptions and priorities that precede their envelopment into the modern world system.40 Robinson’s observation resonates with references to the crisis confronting the Russian Federation in the wake of the end of the Cold War era and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. 4. Tackling the National Question in the Soviet Union In Ethno Nationalism: The Quest for Understanding, Walker Conner observes that consonant with the Marxist explanation of history and the principles of Lenin, Soviet leadership has, since 1917, consistently maintained that the prevalence of antagonism among nations can be explained as the consequence of economic forces. Eliminate exploitation of one nation by another, Lenin and his disciples have contended, and national antagonism will disappear. Equality within the nation-state has been a cornerstone of the Soviet nationality policy from the beginning. With the advent of the United Soviet Socialist Republics, Soviet leaders sought to promote progress among those nations who were part of the Russian empire. They wanted to remove socio-economic obstacles that had contributed to strife among these nations, accelerating the processes for economic development and ending the inequality among different regions that comprised the new federation.41 Solomon Samuilovich Gililov stated: Throughout the Soviet period, the Party had ensured higher economic growth rates in the non-Russian republics than the average for the country as a whole. In 1968, growth of industrial output for the Union was 79 times the 1913 level, but in Kazakhstan it was 125 times, in Kirghizie 152 times, in Armenia 146 times, and even higher in some autonomous republics (Komi Republic, 223 times; Bashkira, 477 times). The Party and the state set aside a relatively larger share of

266

OIDINPOSHA IMAMKHODJAEVA capital investments for national areas so as to raise them to the level of advanced countries.42

Following more than fifty years of experimentation with nationalities policies Russian leaders admitted to errors and problems. Their problems with Chechnya eventually became a crisis in 1991, at the same the Soviet Union also disappeared as a political system, replaced by the Russian Federation. The calamity, stemming from policies to obliterate the Chechen people’s national and Islamic identities with Chechnya, threatened to destroy the Federation. During the Soviet era, these areas retained vital dimensions of their national character. From beginning to end, Soviet authorities characterized all ideas of ethnic nationalism, especially in some Union republics, whether moderate, democratic, or authoritarian, as backward looking. The Soviet “terms of order” for its empire revolved around Russian nationalism under the guise of socialism. They only recognized one form of nationalism, the Sovietized Russian, with its rudeness and bigotry had more than a cursory correspondence to fascism. One of the primary objectives of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ nationalities policies was to give the empire’s ethnic groups the facade of autonomy while denying it in practice. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was divided into a string of ever-decreasing stratum of territorial units. The republic’s essential constituents were the fifteen union republics instead of one territorial unit under the support of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic. These consisted of the Russian Federation, which was by far the largest republic within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, surrounded by fourteen smaller republics.43 The former Soviet Union was fashioned around a dual identity: on the one hand, ethnic/national identities (including Russian); on the other, Soviet identity as the base of the new society, the Soviet people, would be the new cultural identity to be achieved in the historical expectation of Communist construction. Soviet policymakers developed an incremental but highly structured model for interpreting the Leninist-Stalinist approach toward federalism.44 The former Soviet Union was a centralized, but flexible institutional system whose structure should have remained open and adaptive to receive new countries as members of the Union, as the cause of communism would advance throughout the world. Five concentric circles were designed as security areas and waves of expansion of the Soviet state as the vanguard of the revolution. The first was Russia, and its satellites republics, organized in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR). Ironically, Russia and the Russian SFSR were the only republics with no autonomous Communist Party, no President of the Republican Supreme Soviet, and the least developed republican institutions existed there: it was the exclusive domain of the Soviet Communist

Russia, Chechnya, and the Global War against Terrorism

267

party. To make this stronghold safer, Russia did not have land borders with the potentially aggressive capitalist states. Consequently, around Russia, Soviet Republics were organized, in far-flung borders of the Soviet Union, so that they would eventually safeguard, at one fell swoop, Soviet power and their national independence. This is why some ethnically based areas such as Azerbaijan became Soviet republics because they were bordering the outside world, while others, equally distinctive in their ethnic composition, like Chechnya, were kept in the Russian Federation because they were geographically closer to the core. People’s democracies under Soviet military power constituted the third ring of Soviet geopolitics; this was originally the case for Khoresm, Bukhara, Mongolia, and Tannu-Tura, and set the precedent for the incorporation of Eastern Europe after the World War II. Distant socialist countries, such as, years later, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam, would form the fourth circle. China was never included in this category because of deep distrust of future Chinese power. Finally, allied progressive governments and revolutionary movements around the world constituted the fifth circle, and their potential would depend on keeping a balance among their internationalism, their pro-Soviet stand, and their national representativeness. The Soviet model of federalism created the continuous pressure between the class-based universalism of communist utopia and geopolitical interests based on the ethnic/national concerns of potential allies that determined the schizophrenia of Soviet policy toward the national question. The results of the contradictions associated with Soviet federalism established a rambling hodgepodge of people, nationalities, and state institutions. The more than one hundred nationalities and ethnic groups of the Soviet Union were sent away all along its immense geography, according to geopolitical strategies, collective punishments and rewards, and individual caprice. Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh was included by Stalin into Azerbaijan to satisfy Turkey by depositing its ancestral enemies under Azari control (Azaris are Turkic people). Volga Germans ended up in Kazakhstan, in whose northern territory they are now the dynamic economic force, supported by German subsidies to keep them out of Germany. Cossack communities proliferated in Siberia and in the Far East. Ossetians were split between Russia (