The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has generously
taken time out from his busy schedule coping with the crisis
provoked in the Church of England by the appointment of a
homosexual bishop in New Hampshire to instruct us barbarous and
ignorant Americans that terrorists can have “serious moral goals.”
Who knew? Speaking to the Royal Institute for International
Affairs, according to the Daily Telegraph of London, His
Eminence (or is it His Grace?) said that, “while terrorism must
always be condemned, it was wrong to assume its perpetrators were
devoid of political rationality. ‘It is possible to use unspeakably
wicked means to pursue an aim that is shared by those who would not
dream of acting in the same way, an aim that is intelligible or
desirable.’”
So let me see if I’ve got this straight, Archbish: the whole
terrorism thing is all to be understood in terms of, like, means
and ends? And it may occasionally be the case that the ends don’t,
like, justify the means? And just because even pacific Anglicans
like yourself may occasionally make so bold as to object when
terrorists blow up non-combatant women and children, it does not by
any means follow (does it?) that the reasons why they have
chosen to blow up non-combatant women and children are bad reasons?
Hm, yes. I see. By Jove, I think I’ve got it. What a thing learning
is!
It was a Christian deed to relieve us of our burden of
ignorance, the more so because, as Dr. Williams also said, “in
ignoring this, in its criticism of al-Qa’eda, America ‘loses the
power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a self-referential
morality.’” All very true, no doubt, though I don’t think I myself
am quite up to following him through these dense intellectual
thickets. Say, just for the sake of argument, that America’s
“criticism” of al Qaeda were directed at the means (blowing people
up, remember?) rather than the ends (er, what were they again?).
Say, further, that that criticism took the form of military action
to reduce al Qaeda’s capacity for blowing people up. By what logic
does he find that America thereby “loses the power of
self-criticism”?
Maybe he only means that, in criticizing al Qaeda by making war
on it, America shows no evidence of such self-criticism —
though it would be very odd if it did. But granted that
self-criticism is a very good thing in general, is it also a good
thing for al Qaeda? Is it also a good thing for Lambeth Palace?
Does he see any evidence of it in either of those places? Could it
be that the terrorists and even the Archbishop himself are also
“trapped in a self-referential morality”? How would they know if
they were — any more than America knew before he so kindly set us
straight? Whew! It’s all too many for me. At least I’m capable of
that much self-criticism.
And my bewilderment grows with Dr. Williams’s statement that,
again according to the Telegraph, the more general purpose
of his speech was “to challenge violence ‘as the tool of private
interest or private redress’” — by which he meant “that no
government should act as its own judge on whether to launch
military action against a rogue state.” But wait! Isn’t
“government” the opposite of “private”? Oh, I see. He explains
himself. “If a state or administration acts without due and visible
attention to agreed international process, it acts in a way
analogous to a private person. It purports to be judge of its own
interest.”
Analogous, eh? More big words, Mr. Archbishop! So if the
violently-acting state or administration is “analogous to a private
person” what is the terrorist group attempting to kill him
analogous to? Or does the burden of analogousness, and with it the
presumed denial of the right to self-defense — or even “to be
judge of its own interest” — fall on the state or administration
alone and not on the terrorist group with its “intelligible or
desirable” motives for blowing people up? Do they, the terrorists,
then act with due and visible attention to agreed international
process? Do they not judge of their own interest? And if violence
confers privacy, does that mean that everything public must be
non-violent? How then can any war ever be fought in the public
interest?
There must be something that they teach in archbishop’s school
that enables a man to understand such reasoning — or else the
dwindling but increasingly gay and female flock of Anglican
worshipers is now so bright and frightfully educated that Dr.
Williams has grown unused to dumbing down the homilies for the rest
of us. Suggestions as to what he could possibly have meant by
everything said after saying that terrorists can have “serious
moral goals” will be gratefully accepted.
