The Uses of War
The chattering class has duties, too.

September 14, 2001 4:15 p.m.

ven amid our grief and anger, Americans have been able to take heart from our response to Tuesday's mass murders. The lines at blood banks, the surplus volunteers, the unpettiness of our politicians, our willingness to do whatever it takes to win this war-all of it has reminded us that for all our failings we are still a good and resilient people. As many gas masks as there are in New York today, there are still more flags flying. This has been true even in my own trade, that of opinion journalism. Most of the coverage — whether in National Review, the New Republic, or the Washington Post — has been sober, responsible, patriotic, and morally and strategically intelligent.

There are, however, exceptions. The worst have been some anti-American outbursts. Noam Chomsky's reaction to the atrocities was to explain that Americans have been guilty of far worse and to fret that the fallout might be "a crushing blow" for Palestinians and good for "the hard jingoist right." What should suffer a crushing blow is Chomsky's (always wholly unmerited) reputation as a deep political thinker.

As should Michael Moore's as an amusing provocateur. Here's an excerpt of "Michael's Latest Message" (forgive the length, but this has to be read to be believed):

We abhor terrorism — unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing.
We paid and trained and armed a group of terrorists in Nicaragua in the 1980s who killed over 30,000 civilians. That was OUR work. You and me. . . .
We fund a lot of oppressive regimes that have killed a lot of innocent people, and we never let the human suffering THAT causes to interrupt our day one single bit.
We have orphaned so many children, tens of thousands around the world, with our taxpayer-funded terrorism (in Chile, in Vietnam, in Gaza, in Salvador) that I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when those orphans grow up and are a little whacked in the head from the horror we have helped cause. . . .
In just 8 months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms race — you name it, and Baby Bush has blown it all. . . .
Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California — these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!
Why kill them? Why kill anyone? Such insanity…
Let's mourn, let's grieve, and when it's appropriate let's examine our contribution to the unsafe world we live in.

Those of us on the Right should not imagine that anti-American reactions have been confined to the Left. Consider the exchange between Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson on The 700 Club, which was brought to my attention by Andrew Sullivan's website. Falwell said, "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'" Robertson replied, "Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted their agenda at the highest levels of our government."

There were almost certainly gays and feminists (and Muslims, for that matter) among the innocent victims of the massacres. However misguided we may consider American social liberals, they are Americans. And they did nothing to encourage Islamist fanatics to hijack our planes and fly them into our buildings. To use the attacks as a pretext to continue our culture wars is disgraceful. Even worse would be to suggest that America had it coming because it's sunk in sin. Conservatives, and especially Christian conservatives, should be glad that Robertson and Falwell are long past their prime as leaders.

This being a free country, nothing should be done to keep Moore, Falwell, et al from going off on whatever rants they choose. But civilized people should not let them into their houses.

Other commentators, while not falling into the sort of noxiousness quoted above, have nonetheless been unable to restrain their partisanship. In Wednesday's edition of the New York Times, its editors wrote that the mass murders showed the folly of missile defense. Whatever one thinks of this argument — and I happen to consider it wrong and, indeed, stupid — it was unseemly to rush it into print in their first post-massacre edition. (At least they avoided an I-told-you-so tone.)

Some commentators, finally, seem to me at risk — I hope this doesn't sound pompous — of spiritual danger. I refer to those who, though doubtless unaware of it at a conscious level, have seemed just the faintest bit pleased by the bombings. They say how good it is that America has at last woken up from its torpor, that we are turning serious again after a season of frivolity. This is a mistake not least because our "frivolity" has been a byproduct of our freedom, and it is freedom we are fighting to defend.

I think of this attitude to the war as "the Crouchback response," in honor of Guy Crouchback, the main character of Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy. At its end, a refugee muses to Crouchback that "'even good men thought their private honour would be satisfied by war. They could assert their manhood by killing and being killed. They would accept hardships in recompense for having been selfish and lazy. Danger justified privilege.'"

"'God forgive me,' said Guy, 'I was one of them.'"