That 9/11 Again - FATHER FRANK’S RANTS

Rant Number 318 10 September 2008

That 9/11 Again

A wolf once reproached a newborn lamb: ‘I know you. You are the one who dirtied my water last year!’

‘It wasn’t me’, bleated the poor creature.

‘Yes, it was you!’ the wolf growled.

‘I wasn’t even born last year!’ the lamb pleaded.

‘Well, it must have been your mother then!’ the wolf grinned, and quickly devoured the lamb. The lamb’s poor mother was helpless. With horror, she witnessed her little lamb torn to shreds by the wolf’s sharp teeth. Can you blame her when afterwards, in a fit of motherly passion, she butted the wolf?

A simple story. Actually, Osama Bin Laden narrated it. Just after 9/11. In a video shown on Al Jazeera TV. A straight allegory, folks. The big bad wolf is America. The ewe lamb stands for the worldwide victims of her unjust policies, notably towards Muslims. The harmless sheep which dares to hit back at the nasty wolf…well, you’ll easily figure that out.

Somehow, Bin Laden’s curious use of this parable reminds me of a stock rhetorical question that WWI judges investigating the motives of conscientious objectors often asked: ‘If a German was about to kill your mother, what would you do?’ Nasty one, eh? It usually confused the objectors. Until the day a bright one refused to be intimidated. He countered: ‘Well, there is one thing I would certainly not do. I would not set out to kill the German’s mother in return.’

He was right. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Tendentious as the question was, whatever the moral dilemmas involved in how to stop an unjust attacker, the solution cannot lie in committing another, similar or worse injustice. Such as the killing of other innocent persons. Too bad that’s precisely what Al Qaeda’s ghostly leader got wrong. Let Uncle Sam’s foreign policy sins be as scarlet as those of the harlot in the Book of Revelation. No matter. Still, the people massacred in the twin towers were innocent. Pace homely raconteur Bin Laden, they were not like savage wolves. Nor were they intent on killing anyone. They were not fighting a war. They wore no military uniforms. As civilian non-combatants, they were strictly morally innocent. As objectively innocent as the mother of my imaginary German soldier. Anyone endowed with a shred of moral sense would grasp that to murder her would have been a crime. And so indeed a great crime it was to massacre the innocent civilians in the twin towers. Sad Bin Laden couldn’t get that.

My son Linus, with whom I was sharing these thoughts online, objected. ‘But dad, you forget Bin Laden was the Americans’ own creature. Virtually a CIA agent he was. Suited their purposes pretty well when they armed him and his men to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets. To me it’s like the Frankenstein’s story. The monster they created turned against them. It’s kind of poetic justice, isn’t it?’ And he went on to quote Noah Chomsky: at the time the CIA funded and backed the Afghani jihadists because ‘they were the best killers around.’

It grieves me to agree with my cantankerous lad (takes after his dad, I confess) but he has a point. Only a small one, however. It is true, for example, the American feminists who howl loudly about the Taliban’ attitudes towards women don’t seem to notice Afghani females were never as free as under the socialist Soviet-backed, Najibullah regime. That never stopped the Reagan administration from waging its ferocious proxy war against the Rousskies. Surely they knew the Afghani resistance was outright misogynist, measured by Hillary Clinton’s standards. Brutal power politics overrode the rights of women, clearly. Sigh… what’s new?

Dear Linus, you are right. In using Bin Laden’s services, Uncle Sam made a rod for his own back. Similarly, the Israelis way back nurtured and supported Islamist Hamas against the secularist PLO. Bet they wish they hadn’t now. Kind of karmic, isn’t it?

Nevertheless the Soviets had no right to invade Afghanistan. And Bin Laden way back was definitely a hero in the eyes of Muslims. But all that still does not make 9/11 right. Call me old-fashioned, the deliberate, direct killing of innocent people is never justified. That principle has an important intellectual pedigree, rooted in natural law thought. In the 16^th century, the great Spanish theologians Vitoria and Suarez affirmed it in the face of the abuses of the conquistadores in the Indies. The Indians were children of God, endowed with natural rights. They could not be deprived of their properties, enslaved or killed. Indeed, Vitoria taught that the Muslim enemy had rights too. He thus stressed the vital matter of moral innocence. ‘The children of the Turks…should not be killed. Because they are innocent.’ Of course, the conquering Spaniards often ignored the teachings of the Church, just as today no Western government gives a damn for the laws of Christianity. Yet the natural law theologians’ achievements were later incorporated into international law. To ignore those teachings and norms today is to sink back into barbarism.

‘Dad, could you get me an interview with Bin Laden? I’d make a great film.’ Eh? Cheek! To explain. Linus trained in London as a film director. Now based in Sweden, he isn’t exactly the new Ingmar Bergman, believe you me. He also overrates his long-suffering father’s powers. I rather fancy the idea, though. Discussing theology with the Al Qaeda leader is an old ambition of mine. Not easily realisable, I grant you. Knocking around Peshawar souks, inquiring after old Osama’s mountain address might strike the locals as a bit quirky. And land the poor priest into some pretty grotty jail. The Yanks might even ship me off to Guantanamo. No, thanks.

Should I, however, ever make it to meet Bin Laden, I’d risk telling him my own wolf story. Better, more optimistic than his own. One involving that wonderful Christian dervish, St Francis of Assisi. Look it up in the Saint’s Little Flowers. About the wonders of God’s grace. How it can turn even a ravenous wolf into a friend…

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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