You might have to click on the photo and zoom to see that bumper sticker, but just in case; it says "It's God's job to judge the terrorists; it's our job to arrange the meeting." - Marines
Two questions:
1) What makes us believe in the myth of redemptive violence? What I mean to say is, how do we expect violence to beget anything but violence. (I'm not saying there aren't things worth fighting for, but we should be, if anything, very sober about being at war)
2) Isn't this the same idea the terrorists have about us? hmmm.
4 comments:
redemptive violence has worked in the past...for a period of time.
plus redemptive violence feeds into the automatic reaction many of us feel when we're angered: vengeance.
for a period of time. But it is rare, and the exception rather than the rule. But I agree.
The reaction is the difficulty. What to do?
Some people distinguish between "just war" and "justifiable war." All wars will entail "double effects" or unintended injustices (civilian casualties etc.)and thus some people say that the best moral conception is "justifiable war," which is really another way of saying that we must either choose the best possible choice among imperfect ones or opt out--which still may leave blood on our hands.
My take is that even the conscientious objectors who opt out of the process ought to realize that they may have serious blood on their hands for not actively defending the defenseless, just as the defenders may be 1.) wrong about whether the specific war at hand is justifiable and 2.) guilty of double effects as they carry it out.
But that's life: I think we often must have dirty hands to avoid having blood on our hands, which is to say we choose the best possible because the ideal is not available, and opting out IS choosing.
For instance, I voted for Bush based on the abortion issue: I wonder if the Iraq blood is on my hands...?
But if I had chosen, like several people I know, to not choose the lesser of two "evils" but to vote for someone who WILL NOT be elected to prove a point, am I not throwing away my vote to simply prove a point? And if I vote not at all because both top candidates have bad policy, then I'm still accountable for not speaking out for the unborn, or the poor, or whatever.
I hope all of us are uneasy about our attempts to choose the best and whenever possible the good.
I think what you guys are saying is to some degree the point I was going for. War and responsibility for our choices (or lack thereof, which I agree are still choices) are very sobering things. Not to be taken lightly.
The thing that scares me is the flippancy of putting something like that on a bumper sticker. And I don't think the person who I saw is even close to alone in their thought.
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