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Countering Terrorism: Power, Violence and Democracy Post 9/11 [PDF]
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Issue
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Sep 26, 2005 03:25pm |
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| Category | Report |
| News Date | Monday, September 26, 2005 09:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | A REPORT BY A WORKING GROUP OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND’S HOUSE OF BISHOPS [Anglican Church]
Although Christians make their contribution along with others to the formation of public policies, we believe that the churches have a particular role to play at this time. This is for two reasons: first, because of the complex relationship between religion and violence; and secondly, because the churches, with their tradition of self-examination and penitence, could make a distinctive contribution in the quest for reconciliation.
All governments have a proper responsibility to take the necessary steps to safeguard their citizens. People in Britain are acutely aware of this following the London bomb attacks of July 2005. But citizens need to be vigilant that these steps do not infringe hard won civil liberties, particularly the right to due process of law. The churches have a particular message here based on Biblical insights about fear and how playing on the fears of enemies makes for unwise policies.
From the perspective of many people in the world today, however it is not terrorism, but American foreign policy and what they perceive as American expansionism which constitutes the major threat to peace. We believe it is important to look at American power dispassionately. It is clearly a reality, the supreme reality in the power politics of the world today, with all the potential for harm as well as good that this implies. We suggest that the United States, like all major powers in history, does indeed seek to expand its economic, political and military influence and power. What distinguishes it from many other empires in history is its strong sense of moral righteousness. In this there is both sincere conviction and dangerous illusion. This sense of moral righteousness is fed by the major influence of the ‘Christian Right’ on present United States policy. This has a very worrying political aspect in the way in which Christian millennialism has been taken up by so many evangelical Christians, with its apocalyptic overtones and its very clear political agenda in relation to the Middle East. We argue that not only is this political reading of current history in the light of apocalyptic texts illegitimate, but that those texts need to be read in a different way altogether, as a critique of imperialism rather than as a justification of a particular form of it.
‘War on terrorism’, like the talk in the 1980s about a ‘war on drugs’ is a piece of dangerous rhetoric. It implies that modern terrorism is to be understood primarily as a military threat that must be opposed by military means.
To gain the wider support of the Muslim world he needs to keep alive an overwhelming sense that the enemy to what most Muslims want is the United States and their allies in the West and the Middle East. What is crucial for Al Qa’eda’s cause is the continuing support, overt or tacit, of Muslims.
The torture and ill-treatment of detainees, of which there has been substantial evidence in the war on terror, is, to quote Talleyrand, worse than a crime: it is a mistake. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have provided propaganda gifts to adversaries. |
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