Profiles and Terrorism
First, I have added this photo of Joe Comuzzi to my profile. Joe Comuzzi one of the few Liberals for whom I have respect. He voted against same-sex marriage on June 28, 2005, even resigning a Cabinet post to do so. (FYI: The issue, for me, is not homosexuality, but the arrogance of gov't. Comuzzi is a man who understands that public service is service for the public, not creating a public for whom you'd like to serve.)
Second, here is another Liberal strategist who I am beginning to like. Kinsella is promoting www.iamnotafraid.ca in response to the terrorist plannings in Toronto. The response? Get everyone out to go to a Blue Jays game, which is near where the terrorists had planned to strike. I love it! (Side note: I couldn't help but think of Jean Chretien giving the gears via a nasty choke-hold to a guy who tried to pie him a few years ago when I heard the Islam extremists wanted to behead the PM. That would have gotten ugly for any knifewielding terrorist. Methinks the current PM would be more apt to pull his opponent's shirt over his head hockey style.)
posted by Aaron Perry at
10:18 AM
12 Comments:
Serving the public, not creating a public we want to serve. Again, AP strikes gold.
that is AP changing something o'donovan said much better and much smarter!
I love the pic of Walleye Joe Comuzzi. Isn't he Tony Sopranos capo or something? If not, with a name and a crazy-man glare like that, he should be. This guy could take out Joe Pesci, Bob Deniro, and Al Pacino with one arm and one leg tied together.
On a serious note, and to tie this thread to the last one, it seems to me that here is the perfect place for pastors and theologians who want to be practical to be speaking. It don't get more practical than 2 500lb bombs dropped on Al Zarqawi's head.
While it is a sin to gloat over his death, let us thank God that at least he won't be beheading anyone anymore.
SGFMB
Thanks, Tim.
Your post both misses and illustrates the point I was making.
It misses the point in many ways. First, I'd like to comment on some assumptions that seem to me to be embedded in your post. First, you seem to assume (incorrectly) that I am, in fact, gloating over this man's death. But if you read what I wrote, you will find that I am relieved that he won't be killing anymore people (the vast majority of which were other Muslims, btw). Surely you are as well, no?
Second, you assume that I believe that killing innocent people (incl. his wife and child) is to be treated with a shrug. Inevitable. Even justifiable. Never ever extolable. Third, for the sake of nuance, will you grant that the vast majority of innocent Muslims that have been killed in the conflict have been killed by other Muslims? THis is surely the case. War--even for the just warrior--is a very tragic and messy business. Even the just warrior wages war in tears (St. Thomas).
Second, your post indicates to me that I need to clarify that the connection between practical and violent is merely occasional--in this post AP was talking about practical political matters (incl. terrorism). In the previous post we were all talking about the practical value of theology. Now is the time for theology to be at its most practical, that is public, accessible, and articulate. No Christian can endorse a necessary connection between violent and practical political means. My goodness! I need to take a communications class, I think!
I merely said that if theology was going to be practical, it had better be able to say something about these matters. These are the things people are thinking about. SPeaking as a layman, if theologians and pastors have nothing theological to say here, they have nothing to say. Period. If all they're going to do is parrot the prepackaged positions of "right" and "left", then they have lost their right to speak as Christian theologians.
Which brings me to the way in which you have excellently illustrated my point. Apart from one remark about the Crucified One, your post is not theological. On this point, we must agree, it seems to me, with O'Donovan (and with Saint Paul). The Crucified One compels his followers to speak to the powers because he is the Risen and Ascended One. We speak to them (theologically) because he rules over them. That is our Christian justification for theologico-political speaking. That is what should make our speech different.
Thus, to push your example further, what as a Christian makes your opposition to the war different from a liberal Democrat agnostic? Is it possible that your language is held captive by the false binaries of liberal Western culture in general and the remark about the Crucified is just Christianizing veneer?
Warmly,
SGFMB
Just a few points:
1. I agree with Tim that Some Guy's language was hawkish.
2. I agree with SG that Tim's position can be taken as theologically and politically liberal (knowing Tim, however, I think he would quickly and satisfactorily qualify his theological liberalism): I think that emphasizing the Resurrected Saviour provides the resources to deal hopefully with the non-combatants tragically killed.
3. A simple point of reference. The killing of non-combatants does not make a military action unjust, automatically. The principle delineated in the Christian tradition is "discrimination": that one may not *target* NCs directly. Direct attack is for combatants. (O'Donovan gives the example of a family losing a father and husband when the same man is sent to prison. Both suffer--some innocently. But hte family is not being 'punished' or targeted.) The tragic loss of NCs is then considered under proportion. Military gain cannot be made of NC death, although it must always be calculated if a direct attack against combatants will result in the death of NCs.
Personally, this is the hardest aspect of JW for me. In an age where so much fighting is conducted with airplanes, drones, and massive explosives, proportion seems to be a hill that has slippery slopes on all sides. It also makes, unashamedly, btw, ethics at least partially utilitarian: How much good is coming about to outweigh the bad of NC death?
Anyway...just my thoughts.
You know, I was going to say nothing more, but after AP's post and Tim's, I feel compelled.
Reinhold Neibuhr was never in the military. He was a theologian and political advisor. (He was also a liberal but that's a story for another day.) He was a Democrat (back when they believed in foreign policy), a realist, and a cold warrior against the USSR.
Thanks to Reinhold Neibuhr, we have smart bombs and drone planes and high-tech missle systems that are built on the assumed moral imperative that non-combatant casualties must be as minimal as possible.
Both "sides" in Iraq care about NC deaths. But in opposite ways. The ones with the high tech weaponry want to minimize it as much as possible. The other wants to kill as many as possible in order to make Iraq ungovernable by any one other than Islamist fanatics. For that, we have to thank the Just War tradition, its influence on American and European thought after WWII, and especially Christian theologian Reinhold Neibuhr.
That's how you influence. Withdrawal from the military (which is simply the power to enact a political judgment on an international scale) commits it to the strategists of total war who have no compunctions at all about the lives of civilians.
"Bomb them until you are bouncing rubble off rubble" That (or something like it) is what Winston Churchill is purported to have said about the fire bombing of Dresden (which killed more civilians than Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined). Nobody is talking like that today. Thanks to Reinhold Neibuhr.
The Iraq war could be concluded in 20 minutes of nuclear fury that would turn the desert into a sea of glass. Everybody knows it. Nobody (on the coalition side) countenances it seriously because of the Just War tradition's pervasive influence and because of Reinhold Neibuhr.
There is only one man in the world today talking about obliterating countries and wiping peoples off the face of the map. it is not President Bush. It is Mahmoud Ahmenijad. No Reinhold Neibuhr he.
To adapt Sean Connery, "You want to influence the military? That's how you influence the military."
SGFMB
Hey Tim and SGFMB: I think this brings to head why I am glad God has maintained both strains of thinking in the Christian tradition. SG, Thanks for the Neibuhr mention. I was waiting for the Paul Tillich flurry! :)
The resurrection--that God is not only capable, but has already raised the innocent sufferer--gives me great hope for those who die unjustly. I am glad that the OT points that God's faithfulness exceeds not only one's future heritage, but the individual life lived, too. Further, I think the resurrection gives us hope that the life of the child remains not "wasted": God can renew even that life. This was not denied in your post, in the least, but I think the resurrected Messiah gives us hope that goes beyond the Crucified One.
JW and politics is always about judgment and achieving the possible Christianly. It is a hard teaching. And always realist. It does not soothe me. But I do see its benefit--for many of the reasons SG highlights.
So, Hauerwas says Neibuhr lost his witness. Hauerwas regularly calls people who disagree with him liberals, or worse, Merdae Caputs. (Let those who read Latin understand). My question is, why should I believe Hauerwas?
Hauerwas is one of the the most rhetorically violent theologians currently publishing (exceeded only by Milbank. I'd add Yoder, but he's dead). By this I mean, he routinely misrepresents opponents, turning them into straw before "defeating" them. He has done so with Niebuhr in WGU. His pacifism is at best ironic and at worst deceitful insofar as he routinely holds others to standards to which he cannot measure up.
Don't get me wrong: I devour every word the Texas Bricklayer writes (except the swears. They're rude). He is wrong in such brilliant ways, I can't afford not to!
But at the end of the day, I'll take a liberal who removed total war from the US military's vocabulary as an excellent example of Christian witness to the powers.
BTW, on just who the real liberal is, you should read Peter Leithart. AP can give you the publication details if you're interested.
I have a couple of deadlines to meet. So I am indefinitely offline.
SGFMB
I find it an ingenious and frustrating argument that one who disagrees merely misunderstands. Ingenious because it presupposes that if I understand, then I will agree. Watch:
A: I disagree.
B: I misunderstand.
If A --> B.
~B.
... ~A.
The claim that I do understand leads to the logical conclusion that I agree.
It could be the case that those who have read have read rightly and yet disagree.
There were also prophets who used harsh language and got it wrong. Check Jer. 28 and Hananiah preaching--against the powers, no less! Jeremiah capitulating to the foreign rulers and his harsh tongued contemporary getting it wrong. Hmmm....
But, of course, I like Hauerwas in alot of ways and am anxiously awaiting his commentary on Revelation. However, case in point for misrepresenting someone, H'was' book on Bonhoeffer and his suspicion that O'Donovan might believe in capital punishment within the church.
I think the rhetorical violence was in misrepresenting those Hwas references (e.g., O'Donovan in Hwas' book on Bonhoeffer). The swears were simply "rude." Of course, that is just an opinion and not an argument. But it is much more serious to say, "He misrepresents," than to say, "He swears."
You are right about Matthew. Now I'm not looking forward to it, unfortunately. Will still likely read it, but it's not as exciting! ;)
I believe it was Dr. Seus who said "I said what I said and I meant what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100%." Oh yes I went there.
Or it's a typo.
SG
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