“And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” II King 6:15-17
This is a great bible story. The king of Syria was trying to destroy Israel. But every time he felt he had the Jewish army cornered, they escaped. In his frustration, he asked his advisors to find out who the spy was in his midst because that was the only explanation he could come up with for the uncanny ability of Jews to anticipate his every move. What his advisors discovered is that the Jewish generals were depending on the advice of Elisha, who prayed to God for guidance. The Syrian king figured he could fix this problem in a hurry and sent an elite group of warriors to surround this Elisha guy and kill him. When Elisha’s servant woke to find them surrounded, he was concerned for his life. Elisha, however, knew that there was no material power that could oppose the spiritual power that protected him and demonstrated that to his fearful servant. Ultimately the powerful Syrian army was defeated.
Six years after the attacks of September 11 in New York and Washington, we’re in a similar situation. Unfortunately we seem to be in the role of the King of Syria with bin Laden in the role of Elisha.
I don’t want this to turn into a rant on God visiting punishment on sinners. That’s not the way that I look at the world.
What I do see, however, is that our leaders have used the fear of another attack to manipulate the American people into viewing ourselves as vulnerable. What that fear specifically suggests is that our values and our freedoms are what make us vulnerable. The convoluted argument suggests that in order to maintain our way of life, we have to give up our way of life.
For example, the fact that individuals have basic rights to privacy and the presumption of innocence in this country does in fact make it more difficult for government to identify those that may want to do us harm. As a result, we’ve agreed to allow our government to spy on our own citizens, ignore the basic principles of legal due process, and even use torture to coerce information from prisoners.
We are so fearful of our enemies that we have willingly abandoned many of the ideals of freedom and law that we claim our enemies are trying to take away from us. The result is wonderfully paradoxical because in the process of protecting ourselves from this chimera, we are in fact making our enemy stronger in the eyes of the world.
I’m not suggesting that there isn’t a threat in the world or that there aren’t people who wish to do us harm. What I am saying is that this threat is an ideological one and not a military one. We are losing the war against bin Ladenist Islam because we view it as a physical battlefield where those with the best bullets and soldiers will win. As many experts have already said, this is a conflict where we will not be able to kill our way to victory.
Just as Elisha knew that all power comes from God, we have to realize that this is still true today. This conflict is not about bullets, it is about culture and ideas and ultimately the ability to demonstrate that you can live up to your ideals.
The first step to victory is to recognize that we aren’t going win minds and hearts through force (this one is particularly hard for conservatives to grasp). The second is to realize that the Muslim world views this as a conflict between Christianity and Islam. It is actually a conflict between fundamentalism and modernism. Until we are able to alter that mindset, even our military presence in the Middle East that we feel sends a message of strength, actually re-enforces a deep seated fear in Muslims that is at least as powerful as our fear of terrorists. Before we can begin to correct this misconception in the Muslim world, we have to overcome the fundamentalist view in this country that this is a struggle between good and evil.
Christian and Islamic fundamentalists actually have a lot in common. Just like fundamentalists in this country yearn for a revisionist golden age of American piety, bin Ladenist Muslims aspire to a new golden age of Islamic empire. Both are dangerous fiction when allowed to drive public policy. We’ve already seen that fundamentalist Islamic states quickly erode into dictatorial prison camps, but we haven’t given the Islamic world a very attractive alternative. Our self righteous adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have done nothing to reassure Muslims that we can be trusted. Much to the contrary, we’ve demonstrated that we are the brutish, arrogant, morally corrupt thugs that bin Laden says we are.
Finally, the Muslim world is not going to take us or any other western nation seriously until we engage completely in solving the conflict over Israel.
Democratic pluralistic progressive open societies are the way forward. Countries where mutual respect, accommodation, and equal opportunity are the norms will ultimately starve terrorist movements of new recruits. Those countries attract investment and create hope in their populations. You don’t have to look any further than Northern Ireland to see the progression from stability, to investment, to economic prosperity, to reconciliation.
That’s where we have an opportunity to lead and that’s how we are going to win. In order to regain the world’s respect, however, we have to start walking the talk, just like Elisha did. We can win as long as we are true to our ideas and values and show the world that we will not waver even when we appear to be threatened. That’s because those ideas and values that we hold dear reflect those of our Creator who is the source of all power.