Bush's Preventative War Doctrine

In Humanities Core Lecture Aaron James has been arguing that the Bush Doctrine is one of “preventative,” not “preemptive” war, the former being done when there is no manifestly immanent threat, the latter when there is one; the former being immoral and illegal, while the latter is permissible. I think this is a really useful distinction, but does it help us to determine the morality of Bush’s war in Iraq (and those to come in Syria and Iran)?

It seems the best argument against Bush’s “Preventative War Doctrine” is that it depends on U.S. exceptionalism. To allow everybody to engage in “preventative war” would be to recreate a Hobbesian “state of nature” on the international scale. We would all be compelled to see every inter-national relation as a site of potential conflict. But why should the U.S. be an exception? The only argument that would seem valid is to claim that as the “only remaining superpower” the U.S. has an obligation to act to prevent aggression and lawlessness.

This argument fits if the reason for the invasion of Iraq was to deprive a dangerous dictator of WMD’s, but it doesn’t work if the reason was to “liberate” the Iraqis from an oppressive region. The former rationale fits the U.S.’s (self-appointed!) role as enforcer of the world order, but the latter rationale does not. It represents an attempt to violate the sovereignty of another nation in order to install a regime that more resembles our own.

The truth is, I prefer the “liberation” rationale, even though I think it’s much harder to defend. The truth is, I don’t think we, or anyone else, was particularly threatened by a Saddam Hussein under U.N. sanctions. But I do think people were suffering under his brutality (though they may be suffering more now under our gentelness), and I hate brutality. I hate to see people tortured and brutalized, and no doubt this has something to do with my own experience with this first hand, and no, I don’t mean in Belgrade, I mean in the home I grew up in, so I hate to see people subjected to this kind of oppression. So, in 2003 I was outwardly opposed to the war, but inwardly hoping that it would turn out just the way the neo-cons were predicting--our soldiers greeted with flowers and cheers, elections soon to follow, and teenage girls playing soccer, studying Sylvia Plath, and wearing belly-shirts--but none of that happened.

Yes, I realize that creating democracy in the Middle-East may be an act of self-defense. If Iraq can become a real democracy, and if democracy can spread, then, yes, it might lead to a kindler, gentler world. But can we create that kindler gentler world by killing tens of thousands of people? Can we create that world by imposing our ideology, even if I do think it superior, on others? And even if, ten years from now we look back on the invasion and see it as a significant turning point when this kindler, gentler world was being born, will I be able to say we did the right thing?

Maybe I should, but I probably won’t, but not for the reasons my liberal colleagues give. They are people of principle. They will argue what they are arguing now: the ends don’t justify the means. But I am a not a person of principle; I am a person of raw emotion. The tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people killed will haunt me. Could their deaths have been avoided? That’s what I’ll still be thinking about ten years from now.

Ten years, or so, after the conflict in Bosnia that is what still haunts. So, though I know it’s inconsistent, though I urge restraint/inaction now, I thought we should have intervened then. I should intervened. I should have learned to fire a Kalashnikov and staked my life with the innocents in Sarajevo. But I didn’t. I was in seminary. I was worried about my own wife and children. I did nothing while tens of thousands of Bosnians were slaughtered. Sometimes I can still see their blood on my hands.

LOM Article on Coupland

Here's the pretty lame short review I wrote for my church newsletter; but seriously, read Coupland.

Douglas Coupland is best known for giving my generation a label--characteristically ironic--describing us as a generation that “doesn’t have a name—an X generation—purposefully hiding itself.” In that first novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991), Coupland established himself, not only as one of my generation’s most defining voices, but as an important representative of one Gen. X’s most defining characteristics: the religionless spiritual quest.
He developed this idea much more explicitly in his 1994 book, Life After God, in which he describes my generation as the first generation to grow up “after God,” by which he means, we were the first (and. in retrospect, the last?) generation to grow up in a world in which God was not considered relevant. He claims, especially, I think, for those of us growing up in western North America, our life was “the life of children of the children of the pioneers—life after God—a life of earthly salvation on the edge of heaven.” But he has doubts about how ideal our life has really been. He suspects “there was a trade-off somewhere” and the “price we paid for our golden life was an inability to fully believe in love; instead we gained an irony that scorched everything it touched” and he wonders “if this irony is the price we paid for the loss of God.” But then he says he must remind himself that “we have religious impulses—we must—and yet into what cracks do these impulses flow in a world without religion?”
One can read all of Coupland’s writing as a persistant exploration of these cracks, but his most explicit exploration of them to date is in his 2003 novel, Hey Nostradamus. Though I’m a die-hard Coupland fan, I’ve only recently read this remarkably sensitive exploration of religion, violence, and sorrow. In a historical situation in which religion seems to be dividing us more than ever, Coupland’s novel offers us more than clichéd pleas for tolerance. He gives us insight into the role religion plays in people’s lives, considering how it both helps and hinders personal transformation.
Early on, one of the characters announces Coupland’s theme: “to acknowledge God is to fully accept the sorrow of the human condition.” He pursues this theme as four very different characters reflect on their involvement in a Columbine-style-schoolhouse-massacre set in 1988. Using this violent episode as a launching pad, he attempts to understand how time and sorrow change all of us. But these changes do not occur in simplistic or stereotypical ways, and religion, though the driving force in these transformations, does not remain static, but changes with them.
Coupland’s hip, ironic, pulp-culture-laden voice is still present in this novel, so those of you put off by ubiquitous references to cultural artifacts like “twenty-ounce Aladdin souvenir plastic drinking cups” and similes that require an at-least-cursory familiarity with sit-coms, or who can’t seem to feel nostaligic for Windows 95 and Moebis strips, may be put off a little by his style. But I think most readers will find this is an easy, but engaging read.
Ultimately, I hope some of you will read it this month because Hey Nostradamus is a resurrection a story. Coupland quotes a prominent Christian resurrection text in the frontspiece: “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed . . .” (I Corinthians 15:51-52). It is this mystery of life and change in the face of death and sorrow that we pursue during the Easter season, and so I invite you to consider reading this novel and reflecting on how your own losses have opened up new insights into this mystery of human change.

Struggles in Humanities Core

Okay, I know I haven't written in awhile, so I guess I'm writing this for myself, knowing nobody will read it.

I am so discouraged with my Humanities Core students right now. They are so worried about grades, but seem so little interested in learning. In my 2:00 section i have two students who consistantly sleep through discussion. They literally put their heads down on the desk and sleep. I've another have a dozen who stare off in the distance like they're mental patients. I don't know if they are bored, or angry, or what. Plus, when they are not sleeping they are complaining about their grades, even when they get "B's." Do they think everyone should get an "A?" There really are very view students who seem to really master the material, and that's okay, I understand, life is short, students are busy, and the course is challenging, but then why be so angry and bored? I'm trying to help them get what the texts and lectures are about, but they sit there sleepy, bored, and angry.

Of course, this could be my fault. If they're not learning, I'm not teaching. But I don't know how to be both interesting and helpful at the same time. They want to get good grades, so I tend to focus class on those things that will contribute to that, but then they don't pay attention, they don't talk, they don't do the reading, and at least a third of them don't go to lecture.

I'm also really frustrated because I don't think they treat their biology and chemistry teachers this way. I get the feeling they think science is real education and the humanities are something to be endured. This reminds me of something I read recently in Karen Armstrong's book, _The Battle for God_. In describing the condition of universities in Egypt in the 1970's she writes:

"The humanities, law, and the social sciences were known as 'garbage faculties,' and virtually written off. . . In this setting, the students were not trained to think creatively about the problems of humanity or of society. Instead, they were required to absorb information passively and soullessly. Their introduction to modern culture was chronically suuperficial, therefore, and left their religious beliefs and practices entirely untouched." (p. 1949)

I've got to think of a way to overcome this. I hope its not too late. I only have four weeks left in the quarter.