World cop or world bully?
Carlin, David R. Jr.
Son," knows when it will occur. But there are other doubts as well, doubts we are more likely to experience: doubt that God is real, for example, or that the universe has any inherent meaning at...
...In the long run the most important task George Bush has to accomplish in the Persian Gulf is not to get Iraq out of Kuwait but to use this crisis as an occasion for redefining America's post-cold war role in the world...
...capit- ulation after a long siege will do just as well...
...The most important of these new rules will have to govern that sole superpower, the U.S., just as the most important rules in civil society are those that govern the police power of the state...
...We won the great strug- gle that dominated the twentieth century, beginning in August 1914, and ending with the emancipation of Eastern Europe from Communism in 1989-90...
...It makes sure no one will push him around...
...With a reputation of that sort, the U.S...
...There is no sense wishing that we were Sweden or Switzerland or Singapore...
...and if any- one is to be the enforcer of law and order on a global scale in the decades to come, it will have to be the U.S., whether acting alone or, as in the Persian Gulf crisis, in conjunction with others...
...2) Even if it becomes necessary to attack at some later point, it is better to do so after the blockade and embargo have seriously weakened Iraq...
...The world badly needs a force that can maintain intemational law and order, and if the U.S...
...But it is not essential that we defeat Iraq in a great armed struggle...
...is a large, rich, powerful nation...
...If we can defeat them today, we can defeat them more easily six or twelve months from today...
...42: Commonweal And if the war does not end quickly, Arab public sentiment will explode--who knows with what consequences...
...One of the great religious strengths of Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov-- setting aside its obvious strengths as one of the most powerful and moving novels ever written--is that it does deal with the most serious religious questions in an hon- orable way, unlike those forms of Christian propaganda that fail to take the major chal- lenges to Christian belief seriously...
...One of the great risks involved in President Bush's plan to attack Iraq is that if the attack does not quickly succeed, if the war drags on and on, then public opin- ion in the U.S...
...It is not handed down from above, as has been pointed out by liberal and conservative scholars alike, but arises within a community...
...is the only great power left standing...
...3) Support for the war in the U.S...
...1) The attack is unnecessary...
...For it is the state that enforces the rules that govern the rest of society...
...If the U.S...
...packs up its sabers and goes home, there will be no one capable of filling the vacuum we have left behind...
...It is at work among us now, and gives us--if we are attentive--a spirit of discernment that can look for signs of Christ's continuing pres- ence among us...
...Ivan Karamazov's objections to Christianity, offered in the chapter entitled "Rebellion," are among the best possible arguments for a moral rejection of the Christian idea of God...
...unless the war is brief and resoundingly victorious, what little support there is will quickly erode...
...The United States is not exactly the new kid on the block...
...Who knew, for instance, that the bullet at Sarajevo would lead to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia little more than three years later...
...We did not win only the cold war...
...But we are entering a moment in history in which all the kids in the neighborhood, even the old and very familiar ones like the U.S., will have to redefine their roles...
...Indeed, it makes sure that he will be able to push others around should the need arise...
...Thomas and Plato Symbol as Need Theology and the Arts Modern Aesthetics and the Poetry of the Divine Comedy The Achievement of Henri De Lubac The World Crisis and Human Personality ANDRI~ BREMOND JAIME CASTIELLO JAMES COLLINS BERNARD LONERGAN JACQUES MARITAIN THOMAS MERTON JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY ANTON C. PEGIS WALKER PERCY KARL RAHNER DON LUIGI STURZO HANS URS VON BALTHASAR DIETRICH VON HILDEBRAND Available by individual copy--$10.00 each...
...and these may be coupled with a suspicion that our belief is a false consolation, a way of avoid- ing the autonomy of adulthood...
...In fact, it will do better, since it does not run the grave risks involved in armed conflict...
...quickly and decisively beats up Iraq, a tone for the new era will have been established...
...We are not bound in any narrow way, even by the New Testament, in trying to see these things clearly...
...Send check payable to THOUGHT to: THOUGHT Fordham University Bronx, NY 10458 25 January 1991:43...
...it is much better that we be the head cop than that we be the sole cop...
...Don't call their bluff...
...To this end, it is vital that we defeat Iraq...
...But if there is this one good argument in favor of attacking Iraq right now, there are many arguments against such an attack...
...To avoid those doubts or suppress them is to make them disproportionately powerful...
...knowing Jesus" comes from being able to see the continuing life of Christ among us where it is manifested--in suffering, in compassion, in forgiveness and forbear- ance...
...will be able to enforce a high degree of interna- tional good conduct (good conduct, at least, as we define it) by rattling a few aircraft carriers from time to time...
...All of the Bible comes from the assumption that there is something that precedes, informs, and continues the living truth found in Scripture...
...Don't mess with the Americans" will be the message...
...This is not to say, of course, that we should do it alone...
...We have to cultivate a different set of col- lective virtues...
...But abuse is not the only sin connected with power...
...may recoil not only from this particular war but from the whole idea of America-as-policeman...
...the world's top cop may eventually turn into the world's top bully, a misfortune for both the world and the cop, and perhaps more for the latter than for the former...
...5) Besides all this there is the law of unanticipated consequences, which is always at work in history, but seems to work overtime during wars...
...Given enough time, the blockade and embargo will defeat Iraq at far smaller a cost in money and lives than war...
...We believe that the Holy Spirit informs the community of Christians, allows it to discriminate, gives it the antennae that allow it to include the Epistles of Paul, the Gospels, even Revelation (which barely made it) in the canon, and exclude other writings whose way of talking about our relationship to God are less appropriate...
...They are not answered by his brother Alyosha in a point-by-point way, with log- ical refutations...
...As much as possible we should follow the splendid example George Bush has set during the Persian Gulf crisis: We should win a United Nations mandate before exercising what- ever police functions may come our way from time to time...
...There is much truth in the old maxim that power tends to corrupt...
...in certain circumstances refusal of power can also be a sin...
...THE GULF & OUR FUTURE s far as I can see, writing during the second week of January 1991, there is only one really good reason for going to war against Iraq at the present moment...
...for once the U.S...
...Will these governments even remain in place in the future...
...And the great juvenile delinquents who run certain nations will understand that the cop who waits you out is just as much to be feared as the cop who hits you over the head with his billy club...
...But there are other doubts as well, doubts we are more likely to experience: doubt that God is real, for example, or that the universe has any inherent meaning at all...
...There is no point aspiring to the virtues that would do credit to a small, industrious, mind-your-own-business kind of country...
...For better or worse, the U.S...
...Unlike prize- fighters, who would do well to go into retirement immediately upon winning the title, thereby preserving what is left of their brains, great nations do not have the right to retire the morning after victory...
...I~ David R. Carlin, Jr...
...If this happens, then the attempt to stand up for interna- tional law and order in a critical region of the world will have jeopardized law and order for the indefinite future...
...they play for keeps...
...Will friendly Arab governments be able to remain friendly in the future...
...refuses to fill that role there is no one who can pinch-hit for us...
...is not strong to begin with...
...We are now in the post- cold war era, an era in which there will be only one superpower for many years to come, and the roles of the global game have to be rewritten...
...Thought A Review of Culture and Idea THE SESQUICENTENNIAL EDITION L~on Bruns'chvicg's Religion of the Spirit The Psychology of Classical Training Przywara's A nalogia Entis The Form of Inference A Maritain Anthology on Art and Poetry Ascent to Truth The Problem of Pluralism in America Cosmogony and Knowledge: I. St...
...After three-quarters of a century of global hot wars and cold war, after a protracted battle royal among the world's leading nations, the U.S...
...What is wonderful in the work of such important Christian writers as Dostoevski (or Endo, in Silence) is that it shows that OF SEVERAL MINDS WORLD COP OR WORLD BULLY...
...Instead, we are shown other things: the life of Father Zosima, the gen- erosity of Alyosha's spirit, the power of compassion and repentance and forgive- ness...
...These are in fact the only real answers or clues we get when we are faced with doubt...
...It quickly estab- lishes the new kid's reputation...
...It goes without saying that there are grave dangers connected with playing the policeman role, the gravest of which is that we may lose our national soul...
...Should we therefore reject the role of global police officer which history seems about to thrust upon us...
...4) Even if the war is brief, there will be little or no support for it among persons- in-the-street in most of the Arab world...
...and to be defensive about belief in the face of the most profound questions is never to grow into a belief worthy of encountering those questions...
...The novel is available now in a brilliant new translation, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, from North Point Press...
...That's the reason the new kid in school has for beating someone up on the first day in the new school year...
...Apart from our encounters with God in sacrament and prayer, encounters which often confront us more with a sense of our own emptiness than the feeling of Christ's living presence (and this sense is itself a kind of mercy, a revelation), these are the places where we truly can say we know Jesus, and not in argument, or even in the most deeply felt conviction...
...The fact that there was a Christian community for a couple of generations before there was a New Testament means that the New Testament alone cannot be considered absolutely normative for us...
...By no means...
Vol. 118 • January 1991 • No. 2
