{"id":25524,"date":"2013-08-07T15:00:47","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T20:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/?p=25524"},"modified":"2013-08-07T15:00:47","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T20:00:47","slug":"al-qaeda-and-the-christian-moral-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2013\/08\/07\/al-qaeda-and-the-christian-moral-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"Al-Qaeda and the Christian Moral Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The following is intended primarily as a thought experiment.\u00a0 As such, I think it reasonable to request from the outset that it be given some thought.\u00a0 Since I am addressing a highly charged subject that may evoke a variety of passionate responses, I invite those wishing to comment (and yes, this goes equally for those who agree with me as for those\u00a0who don\u2019t)\u00a0to give at least five minutes of serious reflection \u2013 I mean genuinely reflecting<\/em>, not just reacting \u2013 to the questions I will end with before doing so.<\/p>\n

The purpose of this is to set what I am calling a Christian moral imagination as the paradigm\u00a0from which we (Christians)\u00a0examine any charged subject, especially ones that involve those we consider our enemies.<\/p>\n

Now then.\u00a0 The inspiration for this thought experiment comes from a recent Washington Post op-ed<\/a> by Eugene Robinson, whose argument is capsulized in his opening sentence:<\/p>\n

If the new, decentralized al-Qaeda is such a threat that 19 U.S. embassies, consulates and other diplomatic posts have to be shuttered<\/a> for a week, we have a decade of wrongheaded U.S. policy to blame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is the heart of his argument:<\/p>\n

The truth is that U.S. foreign policy helped to create the decentralized al-Qaeda, a branch of which is believed to be trying to launch some kind of strike.<\/p>\n

The most fateful choice, and the biggest strategic error, was the decision to invade Iraq. George W. Bush\u2019s epic misadventure diverted resources and attention from the war in Afghanistan, giving a reprieve to the Taliban. The Iraq war also provided new focal points for jihadist grievance \u2014 Abu Ghraib<\/a>, for example \u2014 and gave new oxygen to the simmering intra-Muslim conflict between Sunni and Shiite.<\/p>\n

Al-Qaeda put down roots in chaotic Iraq [ahem<\/a>]<\/strong>. It did the same in lawless Yemen \u2014 home to the al-Qaeda \u201cbranch\u201d or \u201caffiliate\u201d responsible for the current alert. While the original al-Qaeda may be moribund, its surviving leaders hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan, terrorist groups bearing the name are trying their best to continue the fight.<\/p>\n

First Bush and then Obama discovered the expediency of remotely piloted drone aircraft as instruments of war. Obama has waged what amounts to a campaign of targeted assassination<\/a>, decimating the ranks of the various al-Qaeda branches. This strategy has the obvious merit of not putting American lives at risk. But the inevitable collateral damage \u2014 deaths of civilians, destruction of infrastructure \u2014 helps recruit new al-Qaeda conscripts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The principle behind Robinson\u2019s argument is a simple one, and one that has played out countless times through human history: violence breeds violence.\u00a0 Thus it is not only morally but also strategically foolhardy: give your enemies an excuse to demonize you and you\u2019re playing right into their hands.\u00a0 That\u2019s why some al-Qaeda leaders expressed hope<\/a> for a victorious outcome for John McCain, who\u00a0appeared at the time to be the more hawkish candidate, in the 2008 presidential election.\u00a0 Unfortunately, as few would have predicted,\u00a0they have\u00a0essentially gotten their wish anyway as Bush-style foreign policy has largely continued \u2013 and even expanded, in the case of the military\u2019s drone program \u2013 under President Obama.<\/p>\n

Now, lest we be tempted to bracket our Christian faith in our discussions of national and international politics, let me pause this trajectory a minute to inject a dose of Christian moral imagination into it.\u00a0 We can and likely will\u00a0debate the practical viability and\/or moral permissibility of violence until the eschaton.\u00a0 But what we absolutely cannot<\/em> do, as Christians, is to praise violence as a positive good<\/em>.\u00a0 Indeed, Catholic blogger Mark Shea\u00a0has\u00a0drawn the line even\u00a0further, arguing that attempts to justify the use of evil means\u00a0for the sake of\u00a0good ends rely on morally and anthropologically flawed consequentialist premises<\/a>, rationalized with \u201cthe dichotomy between Evil Them and Noble-But-Slightly-Flawed Us by the expedient of judging others by their actions while demanding that we be judged by our good goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

I must confess I tend to be better at\u00a0naming problems than providing concrete solutions, but for a recent example of effective nonviolent resistance, recall Turkey\u2019s duran adam<\/a>, the \u201cstanding man\u201d who sparked a nationwide\u00a0wave of still, silent protests.\u00a0 The genius of this was\u00a0precisely in the fact that these protesters were doing nothing but\u00a0standing there<\/em> \u2013 stopping the cycle of violence by depriving the Turkish government of any conceivable claim to justified retaliation.\u00a0 These acts, by virtue of their potency,\u00a0were anything but passive.\u00a0 If the\u00a0government had responded violently, it would only be exposing its own brutality to the world.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, though, there are some significant differences between statist and anti-state violence.\u00a0 But that\u2019s the thing: anti-state terrorism\u00a0thrives on a David-and-Goliath narrative, with its proponents billing themselves as the underdog taking on the overwhelming thuggish power.\u00a0 This narrative is of course deeply misguided (and oddly familiar if you look at the consequentialist narrative).\u00a0 Regrettably, however,\u00a0the past 12 years of U.S. foreign policy haven\u2019t done much to disprove it.<\/p>\n

Here, then, is the question I want to leave you with: what\u00a0would happen to\u00a0terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda if we denied them a Goliath to fit their narrative?<\/p>\n

Or, for a more modest proposition: what if more Christians in the U.S. started asking this type of\u00a0question?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is intended primarily as a thought experiment.\u00a0 As such, I think it reasonable to request from the outset that it be given some thought.\u00a0 Since I am addressing a highly charged subject that may evoke a variety of passionate responses, I invite those wishing to comment (and yes, this goes equally for those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2932,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,186,732,534,154,295,174,307,1243,132,105,310,15,319,126,155,264,41,36,359],"tags":[1241,1222,1242,437],"class_list":["post-25524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consequentialism","category-foreign-affairs","category-george-w-bush","category-imagination","category-iraq-war","category-mccain","category-middle-east","category-militarism","category-moral-theology","category-morality","category-nonviolence","category-obama","category-prophetic-witness","category-public-policy","category-question","category-terrorism","category-us-affairs","category-violence","category-war-and-peace","category-war-strategy","tag-al-qaeda","tag-duran-adam","tag-eugene-robinson","tag-mark-shea"],"yoast_head":"\nAl-Qaeda and the Christian Moral 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