This piece is taken from the Reconciliation Walk website: it is a critical examination of ideas about 'manifest destiny' informing US thought on violence, foreign policy and Christianity from the Pilgrim Fathers to Iraq. 
I am sending it after a conversation yesterday on just this theme with someone else on this list.

Nick

url: http://recwalk.net/views_news/good_vs_evil_in_iraq.htm
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Good Vs. Evil?

Will the United States be doing God's bidding in a war on Iraq? Is it really a simple matter of good versus evil? Will American power infuse the region with democracy and justice? These questions are based on the American government?s justification for war against Iraq, which echoes the old American idea of manifest destiny. It is the notion that America is God?s benign shadow on earth, destined to extend a reign of goodness over 
less enlightened nations.

Once, such aspirations were confined to the American continent, a land that 
religious exiles from Europe considered their Promised Land. These early Americans had tremendous faith in their own goodness, so much so, that they 
acquired a shocking capacity to discount the value of those they encountered on the path to glory.

This is exemplified by the sentiments of a Mayflower Pilgrim leader, William Bradford, who testified in his diary that ?the good hand of God favored our beginnings by sweeping away great multitudes of the natives.? 
(Actually, it was a virus passed to the Native Americans, which in this case killed an estimated 90% of the New England population. ?They died in 
heaps, as they lay in their houses,? wrote a trader, Tomas Morton, describing heaps of bones and skulls that littered empty villages.)

This was no isolated view. The slave trade and then the lengthy process of dispossessing and killing the Native Americans were also seen through the eyes of an evolving world-view that came to be known as Manifest Destiny. It was a colossal case of the ends justifying the means. Just as the Crusaders justified themselves as an eternal benefit to the Muslims and Jews whom they killed, Americans too, projected their self-interest as part 
of God?s plan to bless the earth. They were a blessing even to the peoples they subdued; it was all just a matter of eternal perspective.


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Manifest Destiny Today


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Manifest Destiny is clearly analogous to the religious logic that informs Osama bin Laden or any of today?s Jewish, Christian or Muslim millenarians. They are all equally prone to justify the short-term suffering of war or terror as a necessary step to a divine future. This is how a Jewish settler 
finds moral justification for the domination of a Palestinian Christian, and the American Christian finds justification for his support of the Jewish settler. Many Jewish and Christian millenarians actually promote apocalyptic events, such as the destruction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, in order to hasten the day of the Lord. It?s a simple calculation: Buy tomorrow?s redemption with today?s nuclear holocaust.

As frightening as that is, what is of more concern is the way the logic of manifest destiny and millenarianism has seeped into the secular workings of 
government. Rooted as it is in our culture and historical mythology, manifest destiny has often been the underlying reason of American secular policy too.

The ideal pursued by this logic need not be the Kingdom of Heaven. It could 
just as well be the ?American Dream,? or ?Democracy and Freedom,? or even ?Free Market Capitalism.? Our world-view easily puts other ideals in the place of the explicitly religious. Moreover, Americans notoriously link one 
ideal with the other, as we see in the convergence of Republican Conservatism and Religious Right politics.

For example, in the defense of the world against communism, many had no trouble believing that we could ?save? a Vietnamese village by burning it to the ground. Even in the Cold War, Manifest Destiny was expressed in the moralistic terms of pure abstract good versus irredeemable evil. Already it 
was difficult to separate what was faith from what was politics.

Even so, the ideals of the Cold War were rarely articulated with the overt religious tone that is emerging today in the President?s public commentary. Now it is becoming even more difficult to discern whether the ideology is religious or secular, while many conservative Christians blur the line further by conflating fiscal and social conservatism with faith. As one brother in Christ said recently, ?I don?t see how it?s possible to be a Christian and a Democrat.?

Behind the scenes, the new priest of Manifest Destiny displays a curious mix of religious certainty and secular nomenclature. As has been widely reported, America?s new sense of divine purpose is inscribed in the favored doctrines of Mr. Paul Wolfowitz. Although Mr. Wolfowitz does not plate his strategic handy-work in Crusader armor as do his superiors, there is still something inherently religious about the prophetic certainty of the Wolfowitz doctrine.

Wolfowitz, according to detailed reports in both conservative and liberal newspapers, has crafted a US strategic doctrine of domination. It is this strategic blueprint that the White House and Department of Defense have adopted to guide America.

The Wolfowitz doctrine overtly calls for the United States to project power, no matter what the international consensus, for the world?s own good. As the New York Times stated, Wolfowitz's thesis centered on the "concept of benevolent domination by one power." PBS host Ben Wattenberg, writing in The Washington Times, summarized the strategy as a commitment to 
keeping "America No. 1." Why? Because, "We stand for something decent and important. That's good for us and good for the world. That's the way we want to keep it."

This doctrine is as paternalistic as it is condescending, making it a true legacy of Manifest Destiny. But Mr. Wolfowitz?s strategy expands the ideology to a global scale and equips it with prophetic powers. I say prophetic, because he calls for the use of history?s most potent military 
force based solely upon what other?s might do in the future. This, to me, 
is the most striking thing about the new secularized versions of manifest destiny, that it displays a religious certainty about future events. It?s 
as if America?s public servants had either absolute foreknowledge or the omnipotence required to control the most unpredictable and volatile potentialities.

Thus, secular or religious, this Crusader-like legacy marks all its descendants with an air of self-righteous certainty. Americans are not only 
prone to see every action they undertake as justified by utilitarian self-interest but as morally necessary. We are not likely to evidence any doubt about it, since our motives are held to be so pure. We do not quite get it when the rest of the world sees this unwavering faith of ours and inexplicable interprets it as a lack of humility. If we add to this the fact that Paul Wolfowitz is a staunch Jewish Zionist and that the Born Again Christians of the White House have a similar Zionist tradition, the entangling of secular and religious expressions of Manifest Destiny would seem impossible to parse. Is it our traditional religious convictions that lead our foreign strategic plan, or is it our rational self-interest that guides our policy? Whichever the case, we are sure about it, and sure that it is good.


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Just or Merely Justifiable?


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When we speak of a war being justifiable then, we spell it with capital letters: It is a Just War, in the theological sense. No ifs, ands or buts about it; it is not a question of ?maybe it is, maybe it isn?t.? However, such exalted notions demand an equally high degree of scrutiny. The loftier 
the ideal, the more reason there is to qualify and test it and the more humility that should be required.

Surely then, if such ideals are presented as moral imperatives, it is the Church?s role to evaluate them. Who else will hold worldly powers to account when they act with theological certainty and invoke God as their justifier? To not hold government to the highest degree of critical scrutiny would be to invite the principalities and powers of the world to simply hijack God and hold him hostage.

The question needs to be answered; is the American conflict with Iraq an exalted good versus an abject evil?

I have very serious doubts about this. In my view, evil poisons every aspect of this crisis. There is evil inherent in Saddam's survival in power, and there is evil inherent in every stage of attempting to remove him from power. His position is a great evil imposed on countless Iraqis, yet our attempts to control him with sanctions have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of them. A war may topple him, but his successor is not guaranteed to be a better fellow and the war itself may exacerbate the problem of grassroots terror against the West, not to mention the consequences to innocent Iraqis, mostly children. Evil is simply inescapable under the current conditions.

No one doubts this, but it is difficult for us to see that the evil is as much here as it is over there. There is no good to be found in this situation, not even in the land of Manifest Destiny. After all, our predicament is the result of our own global promiscuity.

Over the course of several decades, an elite group of Middle Eastern and Western leaders have engaged in illicit relations. They imagined that they could manipulate vast powers while controlling every consequence. Powerful men and organizations on each side have treaded on human freedom and dignity both for ideological reasons and out of sheer greed. In that environment, ?good? for Americans was defined by two things alone: First was the ideological battle against America?s enemies and second was economic power. No atrocity was deemed morally evil so long as it was the means to those two ends, both of which have a religious resonance in this country, and because it suited our ideological ends, we supported the ruthless greed of any number of Middle Eastern strongmen.

Consider the personification of evil himself, Saddam Hussein. A man like that, with that much power, does not arise in a vacuum. If the USA had not been willing to assassinate democratic leaders in the Middle East in the 50's, had it not been willing to use Saddam Hussein as an informant to make 
lists of enemies to be assassinated, if the US had not armed him and supported his use of banned chemical weapons in the 80's, there would be no 
Saddam Hussein and no threat of weapons of mass destruction to deal with today. And that is just Saddam, not to mention similar actions elsewhere in 
the Middle East, where we systematically worked to destroy Freedom and Democracy in order to preserve it. (If that sentence made no sense to you, I rest my case.)

How can we argue that this is a theologically Just War without at least first publicly acknowledging our role in the very atrocities that President 
Bush outlined in his State of the Union speech as the evidence of Saddam?s evil?

Mr. Rumsfeld and the Reagan and Bush administrations' involvement with Saddam is well-documented. It was once a source of pride that the USA was able to take revenge against Iran through our staunch ally Saddam Hussein. (During Rumsfeld?s brief foray as a Presidential candidate, his role in restoring relations with Saddam Hussein was even touted as his greatest foreign policy credential.)

According to findings by the United State Congress, we facilitated the development and the use of chemical and biological weapons against Saddam's 
enemies as a matter of policy. Yet, Saddam?s use of these weapons is still repeatedly trotted out as our method of determining that Saddam is evil and 
that our leaders are good. That is illogical. If the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war reveals how evil Saddam is, doesn?t it also reveal the same thing about the leaders of the United States?

The idea that we can now pretend that this was not the case, and based on nothing more than a declaration of our own innocence and purity march into Baghdad and redeem the Middle East is ludicrous. We simply are not that good. Decades of short-sighted policy in the Middle East has tainted our blood, making the imagined transfusion of American purity and democracy to the Middle East an impossible feat.

But we don?t like to be told things are impossible. The old pious certainty of Manifest Density urges us to act with blind faith in our own power to control the cascade of reciprocal violence. If we hit it the problem again, 
only a little harder this time, that will fix it.

Such thinking is patently unreasonable. We have repeated this pattern to no 
avail. Remember this: The Islamic militants in Afghanistan who formed the Qaeda network and the Taliban were once our answer to what President Reagan 
described as the Soviet "Evil Empire." Saddam himself was once our answer to the diabolical Khomeini. When Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 1983 and 1984, he said that Saddam ?made it clear that Iraq was not interested in making mischief in the world.? Rumsfeld then said of the Evil One that it would be ?useful to have a relationship, given that we were interested in solving the Mideast problems.?

At the time, Khomeini was evil and this, it seems, made Saddam good. We were certain of it. More to the point, Donald Rumsfeld was certain of it. Perhaps the same flawed logic has been tweaked now to mean that if Saddam is evil, that we are good. This would obviously be a facile and hypocritical assertion, but it is very close to reality. When we take a hypocritical pose of purity such as this, it is an insult to the world?s intelligence.

The world knows our history, and in the minds of those who suffer under our 
manipulations, it all eventually adds up to equal hatred for the USA. An Iranian, one of a minority of survivors among the hundreds of thousands gassed by Saddam under American auspices, spoke to the New York Times last week. Between breaths on his ventilator, he asked why the United States was 
now so concerned about the evil that befell him. ?Iraq developed these weapons with the help of the United States and the West.  No matter how many times Iranians shouted that Iraq was using chemical weapons, they were 
ignored. I don?t know why the United States has suddenly become kinder than a mother for the suffering of us chemical weapons patients.?

No, Mr. President, this is not Good at all. At this point, since neither leaving Saddam in place nor invading Iraq are really ?good? choices, we 
should at best take pause to consider how dangerous this situation is. It is shot through with a host of volatile agents that could, by the slightest 
miscalculation, set off a global epidemic of violence. That being the case, 
with no truly good proactive courses available, the best thing would be to tread very, very carefully. One misstep and we will spill the noxious poison all over ourselves.


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No Good, Then Maybe the Lesser of Evils?


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I realize there is a utilitarian argument that says the war may be conducted as the lesser of two evils. Then this war would be an act of contrition, something to be undertaken with a heavy and reluctant heart. It 
should not be a matter for pride or a platform for bravado. After all, it would only be necessary because of our own selfish actions in the past, for 
which we took no responsibility. It is doubtful, however, that we have even 
met the criteria for a justifiable war of lesser evil.

This is the crux of the matter: The only possible utilitarian justification 
is that the war will prevent a greater evil than the war itself. But without humility and accountability, this war will likely create more of these problems, not prevent them.

The world sees our posture of arrogance and is profoundly disgusted by our hypocrisy and self-righteousness. To go to war with this attitude is to inspire new Qaedas against us. This reality undermines the argument that it 
will enhance our security, protecting us from terrorists. Until our history 
is addressed and our arrogance put aside, any action we take will only exacerbate the escalating enmity towards the US and its allies. As I remind 
you above, we have tried this over and over again with each promised dream of future security only dissolving into the next nightmare. Why will it work now, when the situation is even more complicated and bitter?

(We also take a risk by backing Saddam into a corner. He has never used WMD?s except under our auspices. He has never passed them to terrorists. The only Qaeda base in Iraq is in the Kurdish controlled north, outside of Saddam?s control. Do we want to force him to pass these weapons on to terrorists? Should we take the risk of creating a power vacuum in Iraq, in which WMD?s are left outside of Saddam?s and our control?)


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Is There a Good Course of Action?


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I would offer one proactive step. Evil is everywhere because real goodness, 
the moral issues that underlie the politics, have never been addressed; there has been no willingness to confront our past offences. We need reconciliation and healing, we need our relationships restored to have peace. That?s a matter of common sense. But we cannot have peaceful relations if we do not own up to our behavior in the past. If we are to pose as champions of good, we must face up to this.

Good versus Evil? Yes, Saddam is evil, but the fact of his evil does not automatically make us good. Goodness now is to acknowledge that we bear responsibility for our predicament and then, most importantly, to acknowledge that there is no device of power by which we may rescue ourselves. From a true faith perspective, the only genuine good is a redemptive one, and this can only come from a humble confession of our intractable dilemma.

Forgetting good and evil, from a utilitarian or humanist perspective, this display of humility in and of itself will de-escalate the spiral of violence. We would find the circumstances that require war would be greatly 
reduced, and that solutions to Saddam - a monster of our own making - and to terror itself, would come much more easily.

What I am calling for is not to reform the powers of the State as a moral force. That?s the problem to begin with, to mistake the State for the Kingdom of Heaven or as a moral authority. Instead, I am urging human beings, with human consciences, to tell the power of the State what its limits are.

This means to limit State power?s use by means of common rules of human relationship. Morality is human and relational; it is not institutional. We 
should not allow the State to assume the role of acting out our relationships in a way that differs from our interpersonal relationships; we should let this be the limit of State power.

Leave the lofty ideas of holy empires, communist paradises and god-like global markets behind. These ideas simply empower institutional monsters. We end up serving the ideologically empowered State, offering our children to fight its wars, and now promising the vastness of our wealth to feed its 
desires. Enough! Let?s get back to common human kindness and allow that moral benchmark to limit State power by demanding that the State serves us, 
as it was meant to.

Muslims must do this in refuting the idea of the theocratic state, Leftists 
must do this to renounce the necessity of totalitarianism, Jews must do this to demolish the priesthood of extreme nationalism, and American Christians should do this to keep the State from hijacking goodness and perverting it. Goodness is to love your neighbor as yourself. Let this be the standard that constrains the arrogance of the State. In that way, we will be able to maintain our religious beliefs as individuals while relating to the State in a manner consistent with that faith.

Matthew Hand


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Sources:

Charles C. Mann, 1491, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2002,

Bill Keller, The Sunshine Warrior, NY Times Magazine, Sept. 22, 2002,

Ben Wattenberg, More Feck, Less Hoc, Washington Times, April 12, 2001,

Said K Aburish, Saddam Hussein, the Politics of Revenge, Bloomsbury Publishing, PLC,2000, London;

Said K. Aburish, A Brutal Friendship, St. Martin?s Press, 1997, New York.

Kenneth R. Timmerman, The Death Lobby, Houghton and Miflin, 1991, New York

Bruce W. Jentleson, With Friends Like These, WW Norton & Co., 1994, New York

For citations on the Rumsfeld quotes and documentation on US relations with 
Iraq, refer to my essay, Winning the War on Terror: A Patriotic and Christian Approach