The U.S. military raid that killed Osama bin Laden presents a
test case for the growing neo-pacifist wing of evangelical,
oldline, and Roman Catholic Christianity. If the pacifists hold
true to their convictions, then they must say that the strike
against Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, cannot be
justified. On the other hand, if they share the instinctive popular
sense that, in the words of President Obama, “justice has been
done,” the pacifists will be forced to reassess the biblical
interpretations and moral judgments that led them to their
absolutist stance of non-violence.
So far most prominent Christian pacifists have ducked the
question. They acknowledge that Osama bin Laden had much innocent
blood on his hands; however, they do not say how he might otherwise
have been held accountable.
The pacifists have expressed discomfort along all sorts of
lines tangential to the main question regarding the just use of
force. Popular author Brian McLaren, for example,
wrote of his distress at seeing televised images
of “American college students reveling outside the White House,
shouting, chanting ‘USA’ and spilling beer.” Many others have
echoed similar misgivings about celebrating the death of an enemy
that Christians are called to love.
But would the pacifists have been satisfied if they could
have been assured that the crowd outside the White House was
rejoicing at the end of the al Qaeda leader’s crimes, not the end
of his life? Of course, the two are practically inseparable, and
mixed motives are inevitable in any crowd of people. The harder
question is: Did the Navy SEALs who shot bin Laden do a good deed
for which their countrymen could be grateful in some
fashion?
Many pacifists (and others) have expressed the wish that
bin Laden could have been captured alive and put on trial. It is
the Church’s godly prayer that every sinner have further
opportunity to repent rather than perish. But the SEALs storming
the fortified compound had to act quickly under fire, risking their
own lives as well as bin Laden’s. Again, the question presses: If
lethal force was the only way to stop him, was lethal force
justified?
Many pacifists have also noted that bin Laden’s death will
not end the threat of terrorism. Undoubtedly, there were be further
cycles of violence. But if bin Laden’s death was the appropriate
payment for his crimes, and if it would diminish al Qaeda’s
abilities and appeal, was it not right for the U.S. military to
bring about that death?
Jim Wallis of Sojourners tried to slip past the question
by portraying the Abbottabad operation as a mere police
action that pacifists might support — “a very
focused effort to bring one perpetrator to justice, rather than
just another act of war.” But, on the contrary, the raid on the bin
Laden compound was an unambiguous act of war. Heavily armed U.S.
troops entered a property in another country, without permission
from that country’s government, and opened fire. Osama bin Laden
had declared war against the United States, and our nation was
finally able to bring the war to him. Would it have made any
moral difference, from a pacifist perspective, if the uniformed men
with guns blazing had been police rather than Navy
SEALs?
The crucial question for the neo-pacifists is whether
Romans 13:1-7 — written by the apostle Paul during the reign
of the Roman emperor Nero — applies to the U.S. government
today. Does our modern democratic state rightly “bear the sword” as
“the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer”? The bin
Laden situation would seem to offer a straightforward case of the
U.S. government acting in precisely that manner. The al Qaeda
leader was harming, and threatening to harm, large numbers of
law-abiding U.S. citizens. It was the government’s duty to stop him
— by lethal force, if necessary.
This has long been the mainstream church interpretation of
the Romans passage. Even classical Christian pacifists
recognized the state’s duty to defend its citizens, although they
felt that as Christians they could not participate in the use of
force. But more recent neo-pacifists, influenced by Gandhi,
champion non-violence as the best strategy for the state to pursue.
They leave no room for any actor to resort to force under any
circumstance.
Would non-violence, however, have been the best strategy
for dealing with Osama bin Laden? If the absolutist neo-pacifist
stance fails in this one case, then it needs to be reassessed from
top to bottom. Are the neo-pacifists right in taking Jesus’
commandment, “Do not resist an evildoer” (Matt. 5:38), as a
prescription for U.S. foreign policy? Or are they taking that verse
from the Sermon on the Mount out of the larger context of
Scripture? Is it possible that the commandment was given to Jesus’
disciples in the Church, not to the officials of the state? Is it
possible that the state has a distinct divinely imposed duty
— that God not only allows but requires governments
to resist the evildoers?
The neo-pacifists may also have to re-evaluate their
contention that “War is not the answer.” Sometimes, unfortunately,
war is the answer to a particular injustice. It does not solve all
problems. It does not solve problems permanently or perfectly. It
does not solve the deepest problems of human sin. But sometimes —
as in the case of Osama bin Laden — a wise application of force
does bring a certain measure of justice.
Today’s neo-pacifists would not be the first forced by
history to reconsider their absolutist convictions. World War II
similarly tested the pacifists of an earlier generation. Some held
firm in their opposition to any use of force, while others — such
as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr — decided that justice
sometimes did require the state to take up arms against a great
evil. There will probably always be a pacifist current in the
Christian community. But it will likely always be a side current,
as the mainstream retains the larger biblical and historical view
of the state’s responsibility to see that “justice has been
done.”
