Pat Robertson: War? With Whom?
When the clock radio goes off in the morning, the news occasionally brings something that shocks or surprises enough to make my mind race past all the fog and actually focus. Sometimes it’s something tragic, sometimes just stupid, but it’s generally bad news. Well, Tuesday was the latest instance of this, as I woke up hearing of Pat Robertson’s call to assassinate Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
There’s so much wrong with this, both theologically and politically, that I immediately wanted to write about it, but after a while I figured most everything had been said. Marvin Olasky has a pretty good article, for example. As often happens, though, I realize after a while that there’s another side to the story that’s not really being told, but needs to so we can understand what’s truly going on. Of course, that’s the main reason I started this blog.
Because assassination is generally an act of war, the real issue here is the definition of war, and what it means to enter into and to end a state of war. Unfortunately, since the end of World War II and the formation of the U.N., the constitutional process of Congress’ declaring a war has been set aside. This has caused all sorts of problems, with various ill-defined “police actions”, both large and small, ensuing over the past 60 years.
Since 9/11, things have gotten even more muddled, as we fight a “war on terrorism”. I don’t use the quotes sarcastically, but simply to point out that nobody really knows what a “war on terrorism” is! This is a new kind of war, at least at the level of weaponry terrorists either have or are thought to be seeking. It’s understandable that things must be worked out somewhat as we go along.
On the other hand, there’s a tremendous danger here as we pursue such an ill-defined “war”, and Rev. Robertson’s unfortunate comments point right to it. The danger is, the longer we go without clearly defining what the war on terror is, the easier it will be to justify all sorts of mischief. Chavez supposedly is friendly to terrorist types, etc., so if we simply brand him a terrorist, then we can justify getting rid of him. Never mind that we’re not at war with Venezuela.
This is a serious problem. As we muddle along, ultimately we effectively risk putting the U.S. at war with potentially most everyone and everybody. Is there not really a point at which even the British would say we’ve gone too far? Would we then label them friends of terrorists for disagreeing with us? Obviously I’m exaggerating to make a point, but there’s a sort of open-ended logic that needs to be closed, the sooner the better. In other words, we can’t really define what a war on terror is until we clearly define what it is not. We need limits, and since we’ve chucked requiring a congressional declaration of war, we don’t have any except public opinion.
Indeed, we don’t really have enough political will to efficiently carry out a long war, yet we do have enough to start a lot of things. Surely, the goal behind requiring a congressional declaration of war was just the opposite of our present situation: to make it politically difficult to get into a war, but then easier, politically, to stay in it and carry it out properly once the line was passed. Now we cross the line back and forth and don’t even know where we are much of the time.
It doesn’t take a lot of reading between the lines to figure that the Bush administration is trying to strike a delicate balance between applying enough resources in Iraq to do the job, but not so much as to cause a political backlash. Unfortunately, this this kind of politics-driving-strategy will eventually break down. The longer a war goes (and they have indicated the overall war on terror will be long), the more resources (and lives) will be squandered, and the weaker our position will become.
Pat Robertson’s remarks beg the question, “Do you want to start a war with Venezuela?” Of course, this sounds preposterous, but without a clear structure for defining why and how we would decide to start a war, is it just a matter of time, or pressing circumstances, before the U.S. stumbles into a dumb call such as this?
