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there's a single message President Bush has communicated effectively
to the world since September 11, it's this: You're either with us,
or you're with the terrorists. It's all black-and-white. There are
no gray areas.
In 1998, however,
the Pentagon expressed the exact opposite idea in a series of antiterrorism
training videos: "Often there are no absolute answers and very
few black-and-white concepts in dealing with terrorists." It
even comes perilously close to suggesting that the 1986 bombing
of Tripoli, in retaliation for Libyan-sponsored violence, was itself
an act of terrorism.
The Washington
Times made a brief reference to the video series last month;
NR has obtained a copy. Much of its content is harmless —
and even commendable in offering sensible advice to U.S. personnel
at home and abroad on preventing terrorism. Yet the first episode,
called "Introduction to Terrorism," theorizes on the nature
of this grisly business — and is quick to sink into the moral
insensibility of cultural relativism.
"The use
of terrorism to influence political, religious, or social change
goes back hundreds of years," says the narrator. "For
example, Christian crusaders from Europe killing Muslims who refused
to convert to Christianity was a form of terrorism in the 12th century."
It is hard to know what purpose this statement serves, except to
make the inheritors of Western history feel less confident in the
rightness of their own causes.
If that were
an isolated statement, it might be forgivable. But the confusion
continues a few minutes later, when the program notes, "one
man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." It turns
out that some of the people we consider freedom fighters were in
fact terrorists: "We think of the French resistance in World
War II as freedom fighters even though they used terrorist tactics,
such as blowing up bridges, troop trains, and power plants against
the occupying Nazi force."
I've always
thought that bridges were legitimate military targets, but perhaps
not. The more important point is the moral equivalency of that statement;
it puts the French resistance on the same plane as the Nazis, and
cautions us against using such loaded terms as "freedom fighters"
and "terrorists." In this view, there's no such thing
as right and wrong, just different opinions.
What follows
is the most bizarre and jaw-dropping segment of the whole program.
"Sometimes governments are forced to place their own national
interests ahead of international efforts to reduce terrorism,"
says the narrator, as an image of Ronald Reagan appears on the screen.
"In 1986, the United States conducted an air raid on terrorist
training camps in retaliation for terrorist acts committed in Europe
by agents of the Libyan regime. While some Arab nations condemned
the raid as a terrorist act itself, most countries supported the
U.S. action, including a call for international economic sanctions
against the government in Tripoli. As we noted earlier, rarely is
anything black and white when it comes to terrorism. We are usually
dealing with varying shades of gray."
Got that? The
United States attacks a regime directly responsible for death and
destruction, and the actions it takes in response are morally suspect.
This is an extremist form of cultural relativism — and its
existence at the Pentagon four years ago is one of the keys to understanding
why the federal government was not prepared for September 11.
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