Religion and Life

A New Weapon in the War on TerrorMay 31, 2006

Johann Christoph Arnold

President Bush’s speech to West Point graduates on May 27, 2006 worries me. His vision of taking the fight against terrorism “to every shore and outpost in pursuit of enemies everywhere” is frightening. This is not the America that I know and love. We have always been a country that was ready to give generously to the needs of other nations--a country that was respected all over the world. All this is being destroyed now. Bush’s new agenda reminds me of how, with a similar vision of world domination, the Nazis swept across Europe in the 1930s.

Terrorism can never be overcome with violence. For every terrorist that we kill, one hundred others will come to the forefront. The Cold War (a struggle the president referred to in his address) was not won militarily; it was won through God’s intervention in history, with the peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall. Earlier, America fought communism with only one result: we produced more and more communists. President Eisenhower’s “domino theory” came true as one country after another fell under Soviet dominance. We will have similar results with Bush’s plan. Through using violence, we will do nothing else but produce more terrorists who will wreak devastation on the next generation. We can never export true democracy. It has to be given from within a nation.

There must be a better way to protect our nation and the lives of all people who long for peace. In these last years, despite the endless religious talk that goes in Washington, we have become a heathen nation that completely disregards the dignity of human life and the integrity of other peoples on the planet.

If we truly long for freedom and democracy, we have to spread a different message--one of peace and nonviolence that respects all nations and all people from Damascus to Tehran and from Kyoto to Darfur. If we want peace, let’s remember Jesus, the “Prince of Peace,” who told us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. This is the most powerful weapon to combat terror.