A senior bureaucrat in the US bishops’ conference, speaking about the War on Terrorism, sounds more like a member of International A.N.S.W.E.R. He compares the Bush administration to the brutal reign of the Roman emperor Caligula, complains of the creation of an “ethic of fear,” and the US is engaging in intimidation.
Post September 11 2001 jitters are leading the US to embrace a formula of instilling fear of the United States as a protection from catastrophic attacks that echoes the philosophy of the brutal Roman emperor Caligula, acording to the director of the Office of International Justice and Peace at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Gerry Powers was speaking at a forum to evaluate the legacy of the use of “preventive force” in the recent US invasion of Iraq.
He said: “While a doctrine of preventive war may derive in part from an ethic of responsibility - to protect ourselves and the world from catastrophic attacks - it also has elements of an ethic of fear.”
Powers acknowledged that that “ethic of fear” comes from the understandable preoccupation of Americans with their own fears and vulnerabilities in the face of global terrorism.
“Let them hate us if they will, provided only that they fear us,” he said, chacterising the new phenomenon.
He sounds like a talking points memo from the Democratic Party. Let’s review: a group of men, all adherents of a particular religion, used that religion as well as the approbation of certain spiritual leaders of that religion as justification for murdering 3,000 US citizens, and they did it with the implicit or explicit support of various international criminal organizations and rogue nations. In response, the US has captured members of this organization, deposed leaders of the supporting nations, and asked the countries of the world to support it in ending this scourge once and for all.
None of that matters to people like Powers. In their minds, the US is always the bad guy and anything she does is wrong and people like al Quaida terrorists are always justified in attacking her. In what way is this thinking representative of justice and peace? It’s a travesty that this man purports to represent the US bishops and, hence, all US Catholics.
Credit to Lane Core for pointing me to the story.
I’m not even going to bother responding in substance because you obviously have no desire to do anything but find problems with whatever I write. Me disagree with you, me bad man. Buzz off.