The Unknown Candidate: The Religious Wrong

Saturday, July 22, 2006

The Religious Wrong

Why is it so difficult for the world to realize that wars of aggression do not lead to lasting peace. They lead to more wars.

"Thou shalt not kill," a tenet we all learned in our various Religious Schools, is part of the moral code by which we are expected to live. Yet it is OK to kill anyone at all -- as long as you do it under the auspices of a holy war.

In fact, our leaders realize this all to well. Endless, immoral war is exactly what our administration wants. (All the more money to line their pockets, my Dear!) Encouraging Israel in an effort which can only lead to humanitarian horrors on both sides -- that's the kind of Religious Right Morals we've come to know and love.

It's immoral to use stem cells (otherwise destined for the dust bin) for medical research that could save lives -- but killing innocent babies in a war? Hey, bring it on! Nothing immoral to the Moral Majority crowd about that!

If there is a God, I pray he's taking copious notes.

Spanish Lessons for Israel
By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times

In 1982, many friends of Israel vigorously supported its invasion of Lebanon, arguing that it was only assuring its own security.

In retrospect, though, that assault undermined the long-term security of Israel. The invasion spawned Hezbollah, whose perceived success in driving Israel out of Lebanon encouraged Hamas and other Palestinian groups to adopt more violent tactics.

Today again, Israel believes that it is improving its long-term security by attacking Lebanon. And once again, I believe, that will prove counterproductive.

Israel is likely to kill enough Lebanese to outrage the world, increase anti-Israeli and anti-American attitudes, nurture a new generation of anti-Israeli guerrillas, and help hard-liners throughout the region and beyond. (Sudan’s cynical rulers, for example, will manipulate Arab outrage to gain cover to continue their genocide in Darfur.) But Israel is unlikely to kill more terrorists than it creates.

More broadly, one reason this bombardment — like the invasion in 1982 — is against Israel’s own long-term interest has to do with the way terrorism is likely to change over the next couple of decades.

In the past, terror attacks spilled blood and spread fear, but they did not challenge the survival of Israel itself. At some point, though, militant groups will recruit teams of scientists and give them a couple of years and a $300,000 research budget, and the result will be attacks with nerve gas, anthrax, or “dirty bombs” that render areas uninhabitable for years.

All this suggests that the only way for Israel to achieve security is to reach a final peace agreement, involving the establishment of a Palestinian state (because states can be deterred more easily than independent groups like Hamas). Such an agreement is not feasible now, but it might be five or 15 years from now. Israel’s self-interest lies in doing everything it can to make such a deal more likely — not in using force in ways that strengthen militants and make an agreement less likely.

It’s certainly true that if America were raided by a terror group next door, we would respond just as Israel has. When Pancho Villa attacked a New Mexico town in 1916, we sent troops into Mexico. But that expedition was a failure (just as our invasion of Iraq has been, at least so far).

On the other hand, there are two democracies that endured constant and brutal terrorism and eventually defeated it. Neither Spain nor Britain was in a situation quite like Israel’s (Palestinian terrorists have been more brutal in attacking civilians), but they still offer useful lessons. And both the Northern Ireland and Basque problems were often considered insoluble a couple of decades ago, perhaps even more than those in the Middle East today.

Spain could have responded to terror attacks by sending troops into the Basque country, or by bombing the sanctuaries that ETA guerrillas used just across the border in France. (France was blasé about being used as a terrorist base.) Instead, Spain gave autonomy to the Basque country and restrained itself through gritted teeth, over the objections of those who thought this was appeasement.

Likewise, Britain endured constant bombings by the I.R.A., which enjoyed support in both Ireland and the U.S. and obtained weapons and Semtex plastic explosive from Libya.

Yet Margaret Thatcher didn’t bomb Dublin (or Boston), nor even the offices of the I.R.A.’s political wing in Northern Ireland. When she saw that Britain’s harsh tactics were strengthening support for the I.R.A., the Iron Lady moderated her approach and negotiated the landmark Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985. At the time, that agreement was widely denounced as rewarding terrorists and showing weakness.

Frankly, neither British nor Spanish restraint was a huge or immediate success. Spain had hoped that democracy would end Basque terrorism; instead, it increased. And Mrs. Thatcher acknowledges in her memoirs that her results were “disappointing.”

Yet in retrospect, the softer approach gave London and Madrid the moral high ground and slowly — far too slowly — isolated terrorists and made a negotiated outcome more feasible. That’s why Britain and Spain are today peaceful, against all odds.

That admirable restraint should be the model for Israel, with the aim of making a comprehensive peace agreement more likely — in 2010 or 2020 if not in 2007. The record of Spain and Britain suggests that restraint and conciliation can seem maddeningly ineffective — but they are still the last, best hope for peace.

Photo credit: Nicholas D. Kristof. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)