For those who remain confused about whether the terror perpetrated at Beslan was evil…
They Knifed Babies, They Raped Girls
Nothing justifies or excuses this. No “cause” can explain or soften the brutality displayed. In Orthodox theology evil has no ontological reality, it does not exist as an entity unto itself. It cannot be rationalized or explained. It can only be named. Evil is moral chaos, represented in scripture as the swirling waters that drown life. (Now we may begin to understand what Christ entering the waters at baptism is really about.) Beslan is complete and utter moral chaos, a depravity drawn from the dark nights of Dachau, Lubyanka, or the killing fields of Cambodia.
Praise God that some Muslims have been so shocked by their brethrens behavior in this massacre that they are starting to call a Spade a Spade:
‘Innocent religion is now a message of hate’ by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed is general manager of Al- Arabiya news channel.
From the article:
“… let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing.”
“For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realise the seriousness of our sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realisation and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture.”
“We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.
“We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.
“We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to re-invent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people’s sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.”
To bad the Left in the United States and Europe can’t see things so clearly.
This response to a recent commentary by David Brooks also serves as a good response to the comments above.
David Brooks – Head in the Sand
Jonathan Weiler (8:42PM)
http://gadflyer.com/flytrap/index.php?Week=200437#756
In his Op-ed piece in today’s New York Times, David Brooks lambastes those who “avert their eyes” from the horror of the “death cult that is thriving on the fringes of the Muslim world.” For Brooks, the carnage in Beslan, in Southern Russia, like the terror of 9/11 and the many attacks carried out in Israel are evil, pure and simple, part of a thirst for blood by incorrigible and sadistic killers. Given this reality, Brooks suggests that any attempt to analyze or explain the context in which these attacks take place amounts to mere obfuscation, intended to gloss over or ignore the true nature of the evil. The primary target of Brooks’ piece is the mushy-headed, presumably liberal, press: “If you look at the editorials and public pronouncements made in response to Beslan, you see that they glide over the perpetrators of this act and search for more conventional, more easily comprehensible targets for their rage.” Brooks singles out a recent Boston Globe editorial which made “two quick references” to the horror in Beslan and then “quickly veered off with long passages condemning Putin and various Russian policy errors.” Brooks describes the Globe commentary as “typical” of the American Journalistic response to Beslan, part of an intellectual habit that “causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion.” When you’re dealing with evil, Brooks intimates, there’s no point in harping on mere policy errors.
Whether willfully or not, Brooks is utterly missing the point of the many criticisms of Russian “policy errors.” It is, of course, appropriate to condemn the heinous acts committed in Beslan and those who committed those acts. It also appropriate, however, to consider whether some policy choices yield greater possibilities for mitigating terrorism than others. There is no reason to assume that editorialists and analysts who criticize Russian policy in Chechnya are either less horrified or less disgusted by the actions of the terrorists in Beslan than is Brooks, given the universal condemnation of the school siege. There is, however, legitimate concern that conflating every security threat with terrorism only creates more terrorism. Contrary to Brooks’ insinuations, you will not find a single major American (or European) media outlet that found the massacre there to be anything other than beyond the pale. But, it’s Brooks who fails to comprehend reality. This is why Brooks omits mentioning the painful reality that Russian actions in Chechnya over the past decade have indisputably helped to create a cesspool of international terrorism where none existed previously. Or why Brooks, whose attack is also meant to apply to critics of President Bush and Ariel Sharon, neglects to note that President Bush has directed resources away from the hunt for Bin Laden to fight a war in Iraq on false pretenses, while making Iraq far more of a haven for terrorism then it had been before the invasion. Or, why he fails to point out that since Sharon became prime minister and promised to get tough on extremism, Israelis have been subjected to an unprecedented level of terrorist violence.
The Globe editorialists’ decision not to dwell exclusively on the evil acts committed in Southern Russia is not a consequence of their inability to face reality. Instead, they likely made the reasonable judgment that there’s no point in belaboring that which everybody agrees about – that the deliberate murder of school children is beyond all conscience. The Globe editorial in question, written while the siege of the school was still under way, began by observing: “It would be hard to imagine a more heartless crime than to take children hostage and threaten them with death if demands are not met.” The Globe also wrote: “[a]lthough President Vladimir Putin came to power as a strongman waging a savage war in Chechnya, and though he continues to rely on that dirty war to justify his increasingly authoritarian rule, there can be no justification for Chechen retaliation that targets innocent children, parents, and teachers.”
Does Brooks really need the Boston Globe to prove that they are as righteously indignant as he is? Surely he can think of better ways to use his column space than by decrying editorial reactions to an attack that has manifestly horrified the entire civilized world? The fundamental issue is not whether these are evil acts (of course they are), or whether the rhetoric used to condemn them passes a Brooksian litmus test for proper outrage. The real question is whether policymakers are making us more or less safe by their actions. The choices, as well as constraints, facing world leaders are proper subjects for editorials and political analysis more generally. Diverting our attention to supposedly reality-averse editorialists is just a cheap shot by a guy who cannot face the truth – that the war on terror, as currently being fought, is a miserable failure. Brooks cannot seriously argue that Boston Globe editorialists are making us less secure. However, it is fair to question whether our (not just American) leaders are.
Daniel,
Not enough that some media type does it. Where are the religious leaders on this? Mr. Rahman al-Rashed mentions fringes Sheikhs… well, where are the non-fringe Sheikhs?
What occurred in Beslan is utter depravity. The “cause” is incidental to their desire for bloodshed … they may as well be fighting for the rights of the American buffalo, it doesn’t matter.
I think it is hard for those of us in the civilized world to grasp that there are people who glorify and take pleasure in the suffering of others, hence we try to find some “reason” for such events. That is why it is terrifying: there is none.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that the US need not re-evaluate its Middle East policies. It simply means that there will always be monsters who roam the world, no matter how beneficent our foreign or domestic policy is. Some things can be attributed to serious mental illness (as in Jeffrey Dahmer and the likes), but I’d doubt that such carnage as occurred in Beslan can be explained by “mass insanity”.
I would like as much as any other to see the Islamic Imams start condemning terrorism rather than sending their followers out to conduct terrorism. At the same time I’m not going to spit in the face of Muslims who do have a microphone and who use it responsibly to condemn the acts of their religious leaders. May God enlighten the hearts and minds of other Muslims as He has done for Mr. al-Rashed.
Mr. al-Rashed and like minded clear thinkers are displaying great moral courage.
Yes, especially as their outspokenness in the Islamic world has a much greater chance of incurring physical retaliation than ours does in the West.
Daniel writes: “To bad the Left in the United States and Europe can’t see things so clearly.”
When it comes to terrorism there’s a lot of selective outrage on the right as well. Take, for example, the infamous massacre at El Mozote in El Salvador, in which the U.S. trained and funded Atlacatl Batallion murdered around 800 people, mostly women and children. The brutality of this incident was almost beyond description, though detailed descriptions are available on the internet. The irony, if that is the correct word, is that the people in that region were evangelical Christians who had no interest in supporting the guerilla army, which was the supposed “reason” for the massacre, if “reason” makes any sense in this context.
This massacre came at an inconvenient time for the Reagan administration. Congress had insisted that the administration certify that the human rights situation in El Salvador had improved in order to continue funding the Salvadoran government. Of course, the presence of hundreds of dead Christians, shot, beheaded, stabbed, raped, burned alive, might have put a crimp on the funding. After all, it is rather embarrassing when your allies and friends have decapitated small children and raped and tortured teenage girls en masse. Or rather, it’s embarrassing if you officially know about it.
So the Reagan administration could not be bothered to do an actual investigation of the incident, and thus was able to certify that progress in human rights had indeed been made, and the obligatory Wall Street Journal editorial assured everyone that the incident was nothing but propaganda.
So as far as the title of the article “They knifed babies, they raped girls” — that’s old hat really. Our good friends and allies have been there and done that. The true genius of the Salvadoran military is that they were able to knife babies and rape girls at our expense and using our equipment, get our government to deny that it ever happened, and then get additional funding so as to continue doing it! The Atlacatl Batallion was still open for business when they later killed the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter. You have to admire people like that.
The Chechen terrorists have made the fatal error of not aligning themselves with the interests of the U.S. government. They have to pay for their own weapons, they are all killed or captured, and then after the atrocity there is no spin machine to soften the blow of public opinion.
One has to be vigilant around evil because of the risk of being contaminated by it — like Dresden in WWII, and your example above.
But your overall point is unclear. Are you arguing for a moral equivalency between say, Syria or Libya, and the United States? You imply as much, or at least imply that no criticism of terror ought to take place because the United States bears some culpability in the terrorism of others.
Terrorism is so very shocking to as Christians because it represents the polar opposite of what our faith teaches. Jesus Christ lived in what was one of the most aggressively repressive political environments of any time. People who criticized the Roman authorities were literally Crucified, their excruciating suffering put on public display as an example to others.
Yet Christ, to the disappointment of many of his oppressed countrymen, never expressed sympathy or support for the Zealots who advocated violent resistance against the Romans. Later Christians themselves were targeted for the most horrific persecutions under the Emperor Nero, yet Christianity again, never articulated any policy of resistance.
The position of Christianity is that fighting evil with evil is like pouring gasoline on a fire. Love is a better weapon with which to fight evil because love basically shuts off the oxygen evil needs to survive. We turn the other cheek, we go the extra mile, and those looking for a pretext for evil can only stand there frustrated. Evil thrives on negative human emotions such as fear, envy, greed, anger and hate. These give satan a lever with which to manipulate us. Without these satan has no where to go and is shut down. Standing under God’s loving umbrella, the voices of the evil dictator and rabble-rouser lose their appeal and all we hear is something that is shrill, tinny and unpleasant.
If we are to combat evil with love we cannot refrain from denouncing all acts of terrorism, but neither can we ignore the greater socio-economic and political ills that lead to acts of terrorism. As Christ has taught us we must be comforters and advocates for the sufferring, the oppressed and the afflicted.
My overall point is unclear because such situations are unclear.
There are a couple of issues here. First, one issue is the extent to which an act is “pure evil.” When we say that an act is “pure evil,” I think we’re saying that the there is no possible moral justification for the agent to have performed the act, because the act itself is evil.
A second issue is the extent to which we tolerate, fail to condemn, or even facilitate such acts for the sake of some perceived greater good. For example, in the case of El Salvador many people did argue that in spite of the many evil things done by the government it was better overall for the U.S. to support the government than not to support it.
I suppose these two views really reflect the difference between ontological and consequentialist moral theories. In other words, is the morality of an act an ontological property of the act? Or is the morality of an act determined by the overall consequences of the act?
If I’m a member of the Reagan administration, I’m going to say yes, I know that the money going to El Salvador supports death squads and military atrocities, but if our support leads to a non-Marxist society then that outweighs the evils spawned by the Salvadoran military. If I’m a member of the Bush Sr. administration I’m going to say yes, supporting Saddam Hussein against Iran means enabling Saddam’s evil, but holding Iran at bay outweighs that evil. If I’m a Chechen terrorist, I’m going to say yes, it’s a terrible thing to kill children, but if it leads to our independence, then that outweighs the evil inherent in the act.
Fr. Jacobse, Perhaps Mr. Holman is arguing that since everyone has been tainted by one form of evil or another in the past, no one is justified in fighting evil today. Of course, we all know that that is nothing more than a recipe for paralysis when action is required.
Good questions, Jim. Perhaps the issue is whether those who benefit by our support use terrorist means as a primary method of carrying out their goals or whether it’s simply a fringe element that we cannot control and is almost inevitable in any movement.
For example, we may rightfully give aid to those in Afghanistan who were attempting to repel Soviet invaders via conventional tactics. Some Afghanis may misuse what we provide them by committing atrocities, most may not. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a valid reason for providing assistance.
The issue is whether we recognize and attempt to prevent or stop any such misuse and not sweep it under the rug and deny what’s happening. Therein lies our responsibility I think. Even if we had a valid moral cause for being in Vietnam, for example, John Kerry was right to bring up the atrocities that occurred on our side. I’d suggest it is not unpatriotic to do so.
What is unclear about terrorism? If US aid supports terror, even inadvertently, then it must stop. Remember though, terror has never been part of US military or political doctrine.
(BTW, I heard Colin Powell on the radio earlier referring to the carnage in Sudan as “genocide.” In diplomatic terms, the use of this term is very significant. It’s an example of the US using its moral authority for good in the world.)
Further, morality is intrinsic to an act through the person committing it. (I’m not sure what you mean by morality being an “ontological property of an act” since actions cannot be separated from actors.) Consequentialism on the other hand, would lead us down the road to situational ethics. The last century (and much of American culture today) shows us the bankruptcy of this view, IMO.
Dean’s view is logically coherent, but it functions only for the person holding it and no one else. My hunch is though, that if an armed attacker entered Dean’s home, he would quickly call the police since they possess the force to stop the intruder. Dean is free to choose death over resistance, but he has no moral authority to impose this choice on others.
I still see, however, a reluctance to call evil by its name in Dean’s post. My view is that Dean holds more to consequentialism over pacifism, ie: one man’s terrorist may indeed be another man’s freedom fighter. Dean’s pacifism actually functions, I think, as a way to resolve the tension of making clear moral distinctions.
James’ comments are good with this proviso: we don’t know if John Kerry was telling the truth.
Fr. Hans writes: “What is unclear about terrorism? If US aid supports terror, even inadvertently, then it must stop.”
The problem is that in many situations we don’t apply a single moral principle. While consequentialism is usually not the only consideration in a situation, we often do apply consequentialist reason in conjunction with other moral principles. Sometimes consequentialist thinking is the only relevant thinking.
During the Salvadoran civil war, it was no secret that the Salvadoran government was behind a large number of murders and other terrorist activities. Everyone knew this, and everyone knew that to support the government was in effect to (perhaps unwillingly) support the terror sponsored by the government. Nevertheless, a conscious decision was made to support the government as a way of retaining El Salvador in the non-Marxist camp. Whether that reasoning was correct or prudent is beside the point; however you look at it, it was consequentialist reasoning.
The problem then is, having actively supported El Salvador, Saddam Hussein, et al, in order to advance the larger causes that we favored, in what sense do we now have standing to condemn other atrocities? As I see it, it’s not that terrorist attacks aren’t evil. Rather, it’s that having been consequentialists ourselves, it’s a little late in the game to suddenly become moral absolutists.
By this logic, no moral decisions can be made at all. If coming down on one side or another constitutes moral “absolutism,” then not to decide becomes the only decision one can make. This ostensible neutrality however, is still not free of culpability, except of course in the mind of the equivocator.
Human affairs are a messy business and the failure of people or nations to behave in a morally consistent way (witting or unwitting) does not mean that right and wrong don’t exist. In fact, in times of grave moral collapse, some clear headed (and clear-hearted) people nevertheless spoke clearly and truthfully, often suffering martyrdom as a result (think Dietrich Bohnhoeffer among many others like him). They were absolutists according to your definition, but in hindsight who dares argue that they were wrong?
My complaint with modern liberals is that they don’t really believe evil exists. They are loathe to call anything evil, because they don’t really believe right and wrong exist. Naming evil as evil in other words, implies that moral distinctions do indeed exist and must be drawn, and this is something many modern liberals don’t want to do.
Moral equivalency — the notion that the United States possessed no more virtue than say, the Soviet Union or Saddam’s Iraq — arises from this relatvism of the heart. Of course, the equivocator doesn’t understand that by jettisoning moral distinctions he will ultimately relinquish the right to critize his own country. Even worse, he will relinquish it voluntary convinced he is serving a greater good. Equivocation always serves the tyrant, never the liberator.
Mr. Holman’s latest post confirms to me that his position is that since the United States has done bad things in the past, it no longer has the “standing” to fight Islamofascists today.
Sorry Sudanese Christians and others; since the U.S. stopped a Cuban backed Communist insurgency in El Salvadore, and people suffered along the way because the government of El Salvadore wasn’t populated by saints and angels, it can’t help you. You must suffer today because the U.S. no longer has the “standing” to stop the terror forced on you by a radical Islamic government.
Gee, I was just thinking, what gave us the “standing” to stop the Nazis since American’s owned slaves and some horrible things happened to Native Americans during this nation’s founding?
I wonder who has the standing to fight the Islamofascists? Germany? France? Russia? We all know their history isn’t tainted.
Daniel demonstrates through satire what has always been true in the Christian community, that repentence and turning again to a correct way is always possible. This is not just an individual principle, but also a communal one. And because a government makes mistakes (or commits wrongs intentionally) does not mean that it cannot later see the error of its ways and right its course. In Jim’s view, it seems, there can be no recourse to repentence after a fall. In such a view, God cannot be present, and only anarchy may prevail, making the weak truly vulnerable to the ruthless.
Bill writes: “And because a government makes mistakes (or commits wrongs intentionally) does not mean that it cannot later see the error of its ways and right its course.”
Dean responds: We will see if that’s true in November.
“Governmental repentance” (an unwieldy phrase, to be sure) doesn’t depend on the election of one or another party to power, but on recognizing mistakes from the past and striving to correct them. Blatant partisanship is not the answer.
You’re drifting towards cheap shots again, Dean.
Daniel writes: “Mr. Holman’s latest post confirms to me that his position is that since the United States has done bad things in the past, it no longer has the “standing” to fight Islamofascists today.”
In the situation in El Salvador, or during the Iraq/Iran war, it’s not that the U.S. did bad things, but that we looked the other way when our allies did bad things, and provided support that enabled them to do bad things. The reason we did that was to support a larger strategic goal. And that’s fine. Personally, I don’t think those were good decisions, but I understand the reasoning.
But I think that realpolitik comes at a price. If you’re going to move in the world of realpolitik and thus *ignore* various horrendous crimes when it is convenient, then on what basis does one *denounce* horrendous crimes? Sure, as a practical matter we can fight Islamic militants, but given our own record how we can do so on the basis of having a morally superior position that is utterly different from theirs?
Bill writes: “In Jim’s view, it seems, there can be no recourse to repentence after a fall. In such a view, God cannot be present, and only anarchy may prevail, making the weak truly vulnerable to the ruthless.”
Ok, but where is the repentance?? I am unaware of any substantive change in the direction of U.S. foreign policy. Do we now operate in the world based on morality rather than on realpolitik? I don’t think so. Do we even understand what we’ve done in the world?
Please understand that I’m not saying that the U.S. is evil. I’m saying that the U.S. in certain situations supports or turns a blind eye to evil when it is felt that doing so is in our larger interest. (In some cases those might even be good decisions, though in many cases they are not.) I remember before the start of the war in Kuwait/Iraq, when the U.S. government suddenly started talking about what a terrible person Saddam Hussein was. As if on command, newspaper editorials started comparing Hussein to Hitler, etc. Having in the recent past provided Hussein with chemical precursors and biological materials, we were now shocked, shocked, to find out that Hussein was developing chemical and biological weapons!
The first step in repentance is understanding what one has actually done. Through understanding the actions of our own country we can begin to cut through the domestic rhetoric and understand how people in other countries see us.
What I’m suggesting is that if we take a long look in the mirror at ourselves we’ll be less likely to see the world in terms of demons and angels, with us as the angels and the enemy du jour as the demons. This may be a first step in having a country that acts more from righteousness than from a self-righteous realpolitik.
There are substantive changes in foreign policy, many in our own lifetime. Take Reagan and the collapse of the Soviet Union, for example. In fact, read this article by Nathan Sharansky A View from the Gulag about Reagan calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” roundly denounced in the free West, but received with great hope by those imprisoned by the barbaric regime.
Without intending to sound partisan, had America elected a leader of the McGovernite wing of the Democratic party, this editorial would never have been written.
The same is true of Colin Powell’s most recent condemnation of the genocide in Sudan. Under the Clinton administration, Rawanda was ignored. I don’t think that Al Gore has the moral vision for this kind of leadership either. Most likely Sudan too would have been ignored had Gore been elected.
This is not to argue that Republicans don’t have their share of problems. However, it simply is not true that policy does not change, or that leaders of both parties engage in a kind of amoral realpolitik where moral distinctions are washed out in the end. The fact is that America has done great good in the world despite some grave failures.
Further, the kind of moral self-reflection that can put the brakes on immoral policies requires a cultural climate where moral distinctions and rectitude matter. Otherwise we become a slave to events, to the daily grind that makes vigilance seem pointless and we surrender to whoever is strongest. The necessity for this rectitude, for a culture of virtue, imperfect as these things always are, is something the cultural left has largely abandoned.
One cannot legislate a moral program, but one can act morally. Jimmy Carter tried to institutionalize human rights, but the end result was that it alienated dictatorships (and thus lessened US influence in alleviating human rights abuses), and coddled tyrannies. The Carter human rights record ended up being very weak despite his effort to make it the centerpiece of American foreign policy.