Terrorism is back in the news, at least in a way that requires us to revisit our definition of it. Jimmy Carter is apparently comfortable with meeting with the head of Hamas, and Obama is now tagged with his friendship with William Ayers, one who has admitted his role in various bombings of public buildings in the seventies here in the US.
Terrorism is to be rejected because it is radically inconsistent with the biblical and Christian understanding of and commitment to the concept of just war. Diligent Christians involved in warfare seek to apply those standards. Hypocritical and evil men stuck with those standards try to get around them while keeping a public reputation of commitment to them. Terrorists repudiate the standard openly, publicly, root and branch.
The Christian warrior seeks to avoid making war directly on civilians, non-combatants. The hypocrite pretends, for pr consumption, that he is not intending to war on civilians while he actually is doing so. He hides civilian casulties, or he attributes them to “collateral damage.” The fact that there really is something called collateral damage does not prevent (and indeed is the occasion for) “collateral damage, wink, nudge.” The terrorists target civilians openly and on purpose, and tells the world to just deal with it. This last kind of open, defiant wickedness is not to be reasoned with — only fought.
Timothy McVeigh did not kill civilians accidentally. He did it on purpose. Hamas does not kill innocent bystanders accidentally — it is their avowed purpose. They embrace it as a method, one which within their idolatrous system is just and good. Ayers was part of a self-important movement that had indeed “declared war” on the United States, but their methods were the standard methods of terrorists. The fact that such stark differences in approach are just simply glossed over simply shows the world the seared consciences of many of our public officials.
And of course, none of this is a defense of the hypocritical wickedness that uses the cover of “just war” to conduct murder in the shadows. That kind of thing happens in every war, and is one of the reasons why wars, even the just ones, are so terrible. Such war crimes should certainly be denounced, and prosecuted whenever there is evidence enough to do so. But we must exclude from the privilege of denouncing this kind of wickedness anyone who pals around with open terrorists — anyone, in short, like Obama or Jimmy Carter. Those who cannot bring themselves to condemn, roundly and utterly condemn, vile actions conducted in plain daylight cannot be allowed to condemn similar actions performed in the middle of the night. If you can’t condemn men who are proud of their murders, why should you be allowed to condemn men who are ashamed of them?
But this last question reveals the real culprit in this kind of thing — that culprit is the worship of “will to power,” anything that is not ashamed of the exercise of autonomous and murderous power. In Proverbs, Wisdom declares that all who hate her love death. The fact that the modern civilized states do not “avow what they do” is not seen as attempted virtue, whether false or true, but is rather seen as a sign of weakness or impotence. But these people worship and adore power, including the kind that blows innocents up. We live in a kind of world where men who claim that kind of authority over the lives of others will never lack for lickspittles in their entourage.