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| Kathmandu, Thursday March 20, 2003 Chaitra 06, 2059. |
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March
towards destruction
By GORDON
LIVINGSTON
As the United States
prepares to launch a pre-emptive war, it is worth looking at what is driving President
Bush to ignore the reservations of most of our allies and at least half the American
people in pursuit of his obsession with Iraq.
The answer clearly lies
in the combination of the myth of the Old West and Southern religion that informs his
every action. The former evokes images of the lonely gunfighter as a force for good; the
latter provides a moral justification for the constructive use of violence.
Deeply religious people
are, by definition, certain that they are right about life’s large questions. It is
in the nature of religious belief to have complete confidence about the (unprovable)
existence of a particular deity and assurance in a specific interpretation of some set of
religious writings that purport to reveal God’s will.
For some reason,
perhaps the love of a good story, it also appears necessary to create a metaphysical
adversary for our chosen divinity who, out of pure, unexplained corruption, competes for
our allegiance and immortal souls. It is this cosmic conflict that gives rise to the
two-alternative view of human events that has such destructive implications for
relationships between people and nations in a diverse and ambiguous world.
Moral certainty is the
reward of the true believer. The ambiguities that beset the rest of us do not weigh on
those who are sure that they are right. There is great comfort in this, and the deeply
religious among us think of themselves as "chosen." What is interesting is how
much fundamentalists of dissimilar faiths resemble each other in their conviction that
they have a monopoly on the truth and in their intolerance of those who believe
differently.
This is, as much as
anything, the lesson of 9/11: The defining belief of the suicide bombers was that they
were engaged in a profoundly religious act, striking at the secular hearts of the
infidels. Their degree of certitude cannot be doubted, and their last words almost
certainly were "God is great."
Though he has attempted
to separate the terrorists from their religion, Bush invokes his own faith in his call to
"disarm" (the preferred euphemism for attack) Iraq. Having identified Saddam
Hussein as evil, it only remains to remove him to achieve good. If this seems a
simple-minded solution to a complex problem, it’s because it is. That’s the
beauty of dividing the world into two camps: us and the evildoers. All ambiguity and moral
qualms evaporate.
In words that echo
Richard Nixon’s call to arms in Vietnam, Mr Bush says, "The price of doing
nothing exceeds the price of taking action.’’ As usual, we seem to have only two
choices.
In 1993, just before
running for governor of Texas, Bush told a Jewish reporter that only believers in Jesus go
to heaven. Contained in that statement was a foreshadowing of the arrogance that now
amazes (and frightens) much of the world as he prepares to impose a Pax Americana on an
Arab country. The justification here is that we are bringing freedom to the Iraqi people _
whether or not they have asked for it. This is, in the president’s words, "God’s
gift to every human being in the world.’’
There is a story told
of a man who is looking for something under a street light. A passerby asks what he is
looking for.
"My keys,"
says the man.
The passerby helps him
search for a while, then asks, "Are you sure this is where you dropped them?’’
"Actually,"
the man replies, pointing, "I dropped them over there.’’
"Then why are you looking here?" asks the passerby.
"Because
this is where the light is," replies the man. Why are we attacking Iraq and not the
much more evidently dangerous and belligerent North Korea? Because we think we can defeat
the Iraqis easily and at minimum expense in American lives.
We could be wrong, of
course. The eventual cost of this adventure could exceed what we are willing to pay. But
even to contemplate such a pre-emptive attack contravenes our historical reluctance to
make war first and is a violation of the sense of fairness and proportionality that we
consider to be bedrock American values. Former President Ronald Reagan defined the former
Soviet Union as "the Evil Empire," but he did not attack it. We are all alive
now as a result.
With the capture of an
important al-Qaida suspect, we speculate about whether representatives of our government
should torture him (or perhaps turn him over to another government that will). What’s
happening to us? Do we imagine that because we believe that God is on our side we have the
right to do anything to anyone in the name of protecting ourselves? How much like our
enemies do we have to become before we sacrifice those values that we are ostensibly
defending?
Perhaps Bush should pay
more attention to Mark 8:36: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the
whole world, and lose his own soul?’’
(Livingston is a
West Point graduate, Vietnam War veteran and Johns Hopkins-trained psychiatrist who
practices in Columbia, Md)
(LA Times-
Washington Post)
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