Fire and Knowledge

An enemy [has] to remain a caricature if he [is] to be kept at a safe distance: an enemy should never come alive. The generals were right—no Christmas cheer ought to be exchanged between the trenches.

–Graham Greene, The Human Factor (1978), p. 203

A more correct definition of “terrorism” would be this: violence perpetrated unexpectedly without the authorization of a national government. Violence perpetrated unexpectedly with such authorization is not “terrorism” but “war.”

–Wendell Berry, “A Citizen’s Response” in Citizenship Papers (2003), p. 3

September 11 shattered the American sense of invulnerability. But instead of accepting the vulnerability that most of the rest of the world already lives with, and even learning from it, we seem to want something nobody can give us—to erase our vulnerability. We want it to just go away. If the government says more wars can do that, many people will say fine. If they say suspending civil liberties can do that, many will say fine. If they claim spending more and more of our tax dollars on the military and homeland security will do it—at the expense of everything else—many will say fine. But we simply can’t erase our vulnerability, not in this world and not with the human condition being as it is. To be prudent and vigilant in the face of danger is good. But when a government offers to take away our vulnerability, it borders on idolatry.

–Jim Wallis, God’s Politics (2005), pp. 88-89

Today, in the United States, we have a foreign policy based primarily on fear. We move back and forth between new national color codes indicating the level of danger from terrorist attack. The Office of Homeland Security regularly moves the nation to Orange Alert—the second highest state of risk from terrorist violence.

September 11, 2001, changed our lives, and since then, we have become a nation always living in fear. We were terrified by the murderous attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, and even after dramatic war victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, America is still afraid. Indeed, the war in Iraq was argued and justified, entirely, on the basis of fear. It was the Trappist monk Thomas Merton who said many years ago, “The root of war is fear.”

–Jim Wallis, God’s Politics (2005), p. 88

Thanks to our overweening preoccupation with Communism at home and abroad America became the first nation in modern history to build a war economy in peacetime. Defense spending in the fifties ranged between $40 billion and $53 billion a year—or more than total government spending on everything at the dawn of the decade.

–Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (2006), p. 132

Altogether between 1946 and 1962, the United States detonated just over a thousand nuclear warheads, including some three hundred in the open air, hurling numberless tons of radioactive dust into the atmosphere. The USSR, China, Britain, and France detonated scores more.

–Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (2006), p. 125

Blessed are the peace makers is, I suppose, to be understood in the other world, for in this they are frequently cursed.

–Benjamin Franklin, as quoted in H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000), p. 598

After much occasion to consider the folly and mischiefs of a state of warfare, and the little or no advantage obtained even by those nations who have conducted it with the most success, I have been apt to think that there has never been, nor ever will be, any such thing as a good war, or a bad peace.

–Benjamin Franklin, as quoted in H.W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000), p. 620