Reading notes

Brilliant! Christopher Dickey captures what I’ve been trying to say since before the Iraq war started — and, unlike me, he says it very effectively. It’s central to what Richard Clarke aims to get across: Our current approach to fighting terrorism is flawed. Our current approach makes the situation worse, not better.

And — this is my take now — our current approach is profoundly un-Christian. Our approach cares not one whit about the persons involved; it cares only about power, power, power. Retaliation, humiliation, power. Note, for example, that we don’t even bother to count Iraqi dead.

It’s as if those in the U.S. who support this approach and identify as Christian have completely forgotten what Christianity is about, because Christianity is about love, relationship, cooperation, community. Not one of these values figures into the neoconservative path we’re following; in fact, advocates of love, relationship, cooperation, and community are dismissed as hopelessly weak and feeble-minded.

When we, people of faith, label that which opposes God’s will — the Bush Doctrine and related U.S. responses to terrorism so far — as instead being God’s will itself, as some of us are near unto doing, we put ourselves in grave jeopardy: we are, as I see it, bearing false witness against God himself.

Until we change the entire dynamic by which we engage the Arab world — from one characterized by domination to one characterized by cooperation — we fan the flames instead of fighting the fire.

Okay, off my soapbox and on to Dickey:

[Clarke,] the former coordinator for counterterrorism in the Clinton and Bush administrations is a thoughtful pro when it comes to the nuts and bolts of eliminating terrorists, and his recommendations for what should have been done after September 11 — and still might be done — are the best antidote I’ve found to the kind of fatal absolutism promoted by Netanyahu [who promoted “with us or with the terrorists,” “retaliation and preemption” in 1986] and his sympathizers. …

[Our] absolutist approach refuses to consider the real grievances that help terrorists recruit. Even to raise the issue is portrayed as a lack of moral clarity. The only way to deal with people who are on the other side is to break their will, humiliate them, vilify them, even if that means subjecting whole societies to occupation and repression, first in the name of self-defense and then, curiously, in the name of freedom. …

As a matter of obvious fact, anger begets more anger, more violence, more “inexorable, built-in escalation.” …

As a matter of common sense, anger should be minimized whenever and wherever possible. Yet this notion that force is all “they” understand — not only the terrorists, but the societies from which they come — is hard to shake. …

[several important Clarke recommendations for future U.S. counterterrorist policy elided]

All of this will be harder to find money for, and harder to do at all, because of the Iraq war. But it’s still necessary, and possible, if we put aside that received wisdom that tells us “anger precedes respect,” that dismisses the political element of the conflict, and, while telling us “how to win,” lays the groundwork for war without end.

Read the whole thing; it’s worth it. Thanks, Christopher.