[1](1) James Berardinelli in a review of Errol
Morris’ 2003 film, The Fog of War,
writes: “Long
before McNamara became president of Ford motor company or entered the public
spotlight, he served in World War II under the unrelenting command of General
Curtis LeMay, the commander of the 20th Air Force. In 1945, LeMay was in charge
of a massive firebombing offensive in Japan that resulted in the deaths of
nearly 1 million Japanese citizens, including 100,000 in Tokyo during a single
night. LeMay’s B-29 bombers raked 67 Japanese cities, sometimes killing more
than 50% of the population. McNamara points out that, had the United States
lost the war, he and LeMay would have been tried as war criminals. But, of
course, it’s the victors who write the rules and determine what is justified.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that McNamara has wrestled with this issue for decades
(Berardinelli2003).” As Elshtain has not!
[1] (2)The Chief of staff for Presidents Roosevelt and Truman wrote of
the atomic bombs dropped: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous
weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war
against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender
because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with
conventional weapons.
“The lethal possibilities of atomic
warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the
first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians
of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars
cannot be won by destroying women and children (Leahy, 1950, p. 441, italics
added). Leahy begs the question: when
has war been other than “in that fashion”, one that invariably is “barbarous”,
all just war theory notwithstanding? “War is hell”, observed Civil War
General William Tecumseh Sherman. Just
war theory claims: “War is peace”.
[1](3)David Cole, a
professor of law at Georgetown University, writers: “The Bill of Rights,
however, does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens. It extends its
protections in universal language, to ‘persons,’ ‘people’ or ‘the accused.’ The
framers considered these rights to be God-given natural rights, and God didn’t
give them only to persons holding American passports (Cole, 2004).”
[1](4) See also his website on “killology”, http://www.killology.com.
[1] (5)Pepper, a lawyer, claims in the book just cited that King was
executed by the US government, to silence his opposition to the Vietnam War and
leadership in an emerging “Poor People’s Campaign”.
[1] (6)Templeton Prize in religion winner (2004) theoretical
cosmologist George F. R. Ellis co-authored with theologian Nancey Murphy (Ellis
and Murphy, 1996) an inquiry into ‘the moral nature of the universe’ by a
similar title, in which they argue that a “particular moral vision – a
‘kenotic’ ethic – is supported ‘from below’ by the social sciences and ‘from
above’ by theology. Contemporary
cosmology, they argue, points ultimately to an ethic that centers on
self-sacrifice and nonviolence (back cover).”
This is consonant argues Stanley Hauerwas in The 2001 Gifford Lectures,
borrowing an expression from John Howard Yoder, “with the grain of the
universe” (Hauerwas, 2001). It is
presented highly imaginatively in Alison (1996) as “recovery of the
eschatological imagination”, whose work as well interprets theologically that
of René Girard, possibly the foremost living theorist on the origins of human
violence. (See Bellinger, 2001). It is given ‘systematically’ in McClendon,
Jr. (1986) as the true starting point of systematic theology.
[1] (7)See for starters, Christopher D. Marshall, (2001).
[1] (8)But do not hold your breath.
How one wishes Ms. Elshtain could be recruited to champion restorative
justice the world over!
[1] (9)See Glen Stassen, (1992 and 1998);Duane
Friesen (1986); Donald Shriver (1995); and Vern Neufeld Redekop (2002).
[1] (10)See for example Weitekamp and Kerner (2003).
[1] (11)See also Ignatieff’s recent books (2003 and 2004).
[1] (12)See Gabor
(1994).
[1](13)Political
scientist Mahmood Mamdani however, in a new book (Mamdani, 2004), says
international terrorist organizations are America’s creation. “Not only does he argue that terrorism does
not necessarily have anything to do with Islamic culture; he also insists that
the spread of terror as a tactic is largely an outgrowth of American cold war
foreign policy. After Vietnam, he argues, the American government shifted from
a strategy of direct intervention in the fight against global Communism to one
of supporting new forms of low-level insurgency by private armed groups… ‘In practice,’ Mr. Mamdani has written, ‘it
translated into a United States decision to harness, or even to cultivate,
terrorism in the struggle against regimes it considered pro-Soviet.’… ‘The real
damage the C.I.A. did was not the providing of arms and money,’ he writes, ‘but
the privatization of information about how to produce and spread violence — the
formation of private militias — capable of creating terror.’ The best-known
C.I.A.-trained terrorist, he notes dryly, is Osama bin Laden… Drawing on the same strategy used in Africa,
the United States supported the Contras in Nicaragua and then created, on a
grand scale, a pan-Islamic front to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Whereas
other Islamic movements, like the Iranian revolution, had clear nationalist
aims, the Afghan jihad, Mr. Mamdani suggests, was created by the United States
as a privatized and ideologically stateless resistance force. A result, he writes, was ‘the formation of
an international cadre of uprooted individuals who broke ties with family and
country of origin to join clandestine networks with a clearly defined enemy.’
(Eakin, 2004)” Elshtain counters this
idea somewhat in a section, “DID AMERICA CREATE OSAMA BIN LADEN?, (pp. 80 –
82)”, but knows nothing of Mamdani’s thesis.
[1](14) One wonders if Elshtain has ever read the classic on this: The
Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster by John Howard Yoder (1972 & 1974).
[1] (15)Tragically, there was Waco, Texas and M.O.V.E. in 1985…
[1] (16)Johnson described these four sorrow thus: “I think
four sorrows inevitably accompany our current path. First is endless war… As
it stands right now, since 9/11, Articles 4 and 6 of the Bill of Rights are
dead letters. They are over… Second, imperial overstretch… The third thing
is a tremendous rise in lying and deceit… The difficulty to believe anything
that the government says any longer because they are now systematically lying
to us on almost every issue. The fourth is bankruptcy. Attempting to dominate
the world militarily is a very expensive proposition… The United States, for
the last 15 years, has had trade deficits running at 5 percent every year. We
are on the edge… I do not find it easy
at all that any successor to George Bush would make any difference… That
leads me to the conclusion that we are probably going to reap what we have
sown. That is blowback (Nimmo, 2004).”