Pointless Rage vs. Moral War

                                           by Michael Medved
                                     USA Today, October 3, 2001

All wars are bloody and ugly, but not all wars are qualified as immoral.  The American
people feel that the Islamic terrorist war that nas been launched against them counts as uniquely
evil, but it’s important we understand why it deserves such a harsh designation.
 
It’s not simply the targeting of civilians that makes the war against America so horrifying
and immoral.  As Osama bin Laden himself pointed out in a 1998 interview with the Western
media, the United States deliberately killed civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but we do not
remember World War II as an unjust struggle.
 
In fact, that war, from the American perspective, still stand as a prime example of a
moral conflict.  In fighting Japan and Germany, we defended ourselves from hostile, aggressive,
expansionist powers, and winning the war conferred a profound benefit on the American people,
providing increased security and the advance of freedom’s cause.  It’s possible to debate whether
specific wartime decisions, such as the firebombing of Dresden or the atomic bomb attacks on
Japan, effectively and appropriately served our purposes in the struggle, but it’s not possible to
deny that our fight involved the welfare - indeed, the very survival - or our nation.
 
Any war that advances or defends a nation’s interests can be justified in some sense as a
moral war, but a struggle waged merely out of hatred and irrational destructiveness cannot.
 
Hitler’s “war against the Jews” (to use historian Lucy Dawidowicz’s phrase for the
Holocaust) serves as the leading example of such immoral killing.  That bloody campaign not
only involved unimaginably cruelty against non-combatants, it also conferred no conceivable
benefit on the German people - or anyone else.
 
As a matter of fact, historians now agree that Hitler’s obsession with killing Jews
actually harmed his nation - diverting precious manpower, material and railroad facilities at
crucial moments of the war.  The Holocaust stand as uniquely evil because if served no
particular purpose to Germany: It involved an utterly pointless expression of bloodlust and
hatred.
 
The same can be said of other holocausts of the 20th century - including the Turkish
slaughter of more than a million Armenians in 1915-1916m or the Cambodian communists’
killing of nearly 2 million of their own countrymen, or the recent Hutu murders of some 800,000
Tutsis in central Africa.  No moral justification can be suggested for any of this butchery,
because it advanced the practical interests of no nation.
 
Radical Islam’s war against the West has yet to achieve the massive impact of these other
instances of crazed mass slaughter, but it already shares with them am immoral core: its utter
pointlessness.
 
The horrors of Sept. 11 brought unforgettable harm to the Unites States, but whom did
they help?  Are Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan or Iraq or the Palestine Authority or Islamic people
in generals stronger or richer or closer to some important goal because 19 suicidal killers
hijacked four jets and killed thousands?
 
In a bloody and horrendous struggle, it’s not possible for both sides to win, but it is
possible for both sides to lose - for all the sacrifices to count for nothing.
 
The importance of fighting for a positive purpose involves an ability to bring the struggle
to an end.  If you’re battling for territory or economic advantage or to defend your nation against
aggressive assault, then the war will, sooner or later, come to an end - either through
negotiations and compromise of through achievement of you predetermined war aims.
 
The history of the Gulf War demonstrated the advantage of this approach.  The United
States and its allies fought to liberate a nation that had been invaded and occupied by its
neighbor, and to secure the West’s essential supply of energy.  Having achieved those aims and
thrown Iraq out of Kuwait, our coalition went home.
 
Immoral wars, on the other hand, offer no natural point of conclusion.  Can anyone
imagine leaders of European Jewish communities trying to negotiate with Hitler to try to end the
Holocaust?  The killing stemmed from impassioned, unreasoning hatred rather than the service
of some practical purpose, and so allowed no chance for compromise or peace.
 
By the same token, the terrorist war of the moment threatens to last for many years
precisely because it bears so little connection to discernable, rational aims.  Most of Sept. 11's
suicide warriors lived in this country for months or years and patiently planned an operation that
not only claimed their own lives but also crushed and burned thousands of strangers.  Would
some changes in government policy suddenly cause such people to reconsider their rage, to smile
at their host nation, shake hands with Americans and desist from their murderous schemes?
 
Islamic fundamentalists view the United States as a source of moral pollution and
pernicious temptation for their own children, and a threat to the medieval, hierarchical faith they
frantically embrace and impose.
 
The truth about our current enemy may prove painfully difficult for Americans to accept.
Islamic fundamentalists don’t want America to change; they want America to die.  That’s why
they strike out with no goals in mind, with no lists of demands, with no suggestions of how and
when they and their colleagues might be placated.
 
In responding to such unfocused but ferocious hatred, we must provide a demonstration
of moral combat, pursued with clearly articulated purposes and with levels of force
commensurate to achieving them.  Demands for “justice” or “revenge” or “punishment” have
little place in the shaping of an ethical conflict, and a struggle launched on that basis threatens to
devolve into the same sort of angry, aimless and implacable fury that characterizes our countries
enemies.
 
The American people must pursue prevention and protection, not punishment.  The point
of this struggle is to defend the nation and its citizens and to reduce, as far as possible, the
danger of future terrorist attacks.  Every aspect of this new war must be judged according to its
ability to advance this righteous purpose.
 
If we apply that standard, we will conduct a moral conflict and avoid the evil excesses of
pointless rage that consume our adversaries.