Purim is supposed to be crazy joyous, the Jewish Mardi Gras or secular New Year’s Eve, celebrating a miraculous delivery of a Jewish population from a genocidal enemy the likes of whom has recurred too often in our history.
But a shadow definitely hung over our celebrations this year. As we went into the holiday and at this writing, it looks as though the United States is about to begin waging war on Iraq. Entering a war, even one more unambiguously justified than this one, is, or should be, always a somber and apprehensive time.
We have no doubt that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is a Haman-like monster, a murderer and a leader of murderers. To strike him down before he does more harm, as Esther and her uncle Mordecai managed to do to Haman, would be a mitzvah, taken in isolation.
The problem is it can’t be taken or done in isolation. Many other people, young American soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians, likely would have to suffer and die in order to get Hussein. But innocent civilians are suffering and dying and will continue to do so if we don’t go after him.
Much argument over this subject revolves around what at least one analyst (David E. Sanger in the Tuesday New York Times) described as a new doctrine of pre-emptive strikes for self-defense that President Bush articulated in his speech Monday evening.
“In this century when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on earth,” Bush said.
“Terrorists and terrorist states do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations. And responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide.”
As a generalized principle, this statement could hardly be truer. The fundamental idea, though, is not new. It has been a basis of Israel’s self-defense actions for decades. It was why Israel struck first in the 1956 Suez War, the 1967 Six Day War and the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981; and some say Israel’s failure to follow that doctrine in 1973 led to the Yom Kippur War being a near-disaster. In fact, a form of the idea can even be found in the Talmud: “If someone comes to kill you, kill him first” (Tractate Sanhedrin 72a).
But is Bush’s generalization true in this specific instance? Moreover, the doctrine of pre-emptive self-defense obviously lends itself to possible abuse as a cover for self-interest and even outright aggression. In the United States, argument is roiling over these issues in ways not seen since the Vietnam War era some 30 years ago; and the Bush administration’s insistence on determining its course alone has alienated governments and populations of countries all over the world.
Yet anti-war sentiments can disguise self-interest and immorality as well. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing,” goes an aphorism attributed to British parliamentarian Edmund Burke; and some of the anti-war arguments look like excuses to do nothing, or at least nothing effective, about Saddam Hussein.
So we wait, hoping that if war happens it will be swift and cost as few lives as possible; hoping that Hussein won’t strike at Israel, as he did in the first Persian Gulf War, in an attempt to rally the Arab world to his side.
Moreover, we also want to call attention to those who will be doing the actual work, the mostly young men and women of the U.S. armed forces. Most of us in the United States don’t have the direct and personal connections with the people in our all-volunteer military that Israelis have with their draftees and reservists. Yet they are the ones whose lives will be most directly affected, even lost, by policy decisions. Their well-being should be very high in our thoughts at this time.
But we also hope that if this war is to start that a great evil of our time will not only be removed but also replaced with a good and democratic Iraqi regime that may show the way for other countries in the tyrant-run Arab world. If this happens, an unambivalent, Purim-like celebration would be in order for the world.
Loading ...