Liberals hate war, and they apply that hate to almost all war conditions. Conservatives also hate war, but are generally willing to go to war if the reason is morally compelling. This is an essential and irreconcilable difference between liberals and conservatives on war. To understand the matter more objectively, it is important to understand the limits of what each category of power faces.
We teach our children to obey the law, and to respect its creation and enforcement. We understand that law is the skeleton of civilization, and accountability under law is the first formula for any democratic republic. It is for law that constitutions are written, and under law that trust in any contract exists. Law is the foundation of cities, and of nations. But there is a limit to any law.
War is death and destruction, on a scale so terrible that many generations have come upon it naively, imagining it can be managed and controlled, and so wars have been started by fools and madmen who scarcely imagined the horrors they have unleashed. No man who has ever stood in battle is eager to face the next one. Yet even weary veterans have chosen war, not out of foolish pride or blindness to the cost, but because it had to be done. Strange that it continues to happen, but many people refuse to see evil for what it is, to understand that there are terrible things which must be stopped, but for which the law is powerless. War is terrible, but necessary.
Russell never acknowledged the primary implication of this point, that if and when a moral imperative cannot be accomplished by law, it must default to the rule of war. Whether or not we think a war is morally right, we must recognize that in many situations it is inevitable.
Which brings me to 9/11. The atrocities committed on 9/11 are indisputably heinous to all reasonable people, especially since they were planned and committed against people known to be innocent of any offense or provocation. The 9/11 attacks were pure terrorism, evil by any sane definition. And far beyond the scope of law enforcement. While terrorist acts are criminal by statute, they also create a strong imperative for war. The 1914 assassination of a single individual in Sarajevo was the spark for the first World War; so much more does the mass murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, targeted precisely because they were innocent, create a moral imperative for a response of outrage and deadly force. This fact in no way justifies indiscriminate use of force, nor does it claim that wars are wise by definition, simply because they are sometimes inevitable. Going back to law enforcement, it’s like a police officer confronted with an armed man and a threat to innocents – he does not want to have to shoot, but he carries the gun for a reason, and as terrible as it may be for a police officer to shoot to kill, if the choice is the criminal or innocent people, he must not flinch at his duty to use deadly force. In the situation caused by the terrorists on 9/11, the threat to innocent life is undeniable, and the evil of the monsters beyond question – what remains is how to carry out the duty.
Some people have criticized the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying they see no link to 9/11. They are blind, wrong, or lying. The condition of terrorism in the Middle East is worse than pervasive; it has become a chronic condition which infects almost every government in the region, either through attacks or through insidious corrosion of the nation’s moral fiber. Therefore, it was not only right but critically necessary for President Bush to demand the officials in the region choose between supporting terrorists or weeding them out. It was self-damning, that the governments of Iran and Iraq chose terror over democracy, and that the Taliban continued to hold Afghanistan hostage. They choose poorly, and it is too late now for them to pretend that they did not understand the choice. This is not to say that the people of those nations made this choice, but seeing the abomination of Al Qaeda, the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Saddam Hussein made their choice and there’s no denying it.
The Taliban controlled Afghanistan when the U.S. responded to 9/11, and they harbored bin Laden and many Al Qaeda agents. The invasion of Afghanistan is therefore as legitimate a war as any human enterprise can be. So naturally the Left focused their complaint on the war in Iraq.
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