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Seeing Beyond 'An Eye
for an Eye'
JUNE 24, 2004
By
GREGORY J. RUMMO
IF
YOU VIEWED the photos on the Internet of any of the victims
beheaded by al-Qaeda or Tawhid wa al-Jihad (Unification and
Holy War), you know how disturbing they are. And if you are
like me, then your first thoughts after overcoming the
revulsion are ones of payback.
Wouldn’t it be fitting, you
think to yourself, to see several American GIs drag a
kicking and screaming Abu Musab al-Zarqawi into a street in
the middle of Fallujah and, with the cameras rolling,
methodically cut off his head. Maybe play soccer with
it for a few minutes after the blood stops spurting out on
the dry, dusty ground. That would play well on Aljazeera.
Maybe even make the “Top 10 Plays of the Day” on ESPN Sports
Center.
Maybe then the terrorists would finally get the message:
“They send one of yours to the morgue, you send two of
theirs…” as Malone, the street-hardened cop played by Sean
Connery in the movie “The Untouchables” explains to the naďve
Elliott Ness, played by Kevin Costner.
But you would be wrong.
There is an unbridgeable,
ideological chasm between justice and revenge. Although in
this case the two may appear to be coincident, they are in
fact not. Americans must maintain their composure in the
face of this horrific evil and hold on to the moral high
ground if we are to ultimately prevail in the war against
terrorism.
The U.S. has waged a war in
Iraq against defined military targets and those people who
identify themselves as enemy combatants. Whether you agree
that our involvement is justified is immaterial to this
argument. The point is; our methods of warfare constitute a
world of difference from hooded terrorists torturing and
murdering innocent contractors, journalists or other
non-combatants.
The reasons are clear.
Over 200 years ago, we fled
from tyranny and began an experiment in self-government
based on the concept of “liberty and justice for all.” Our
system of laws, based on the intrinsic worth of every
individual was originally expressed by these words: “All men
are created equal.” In 1797, when America’s second
president, John Adams, was inaugurated, we proved to the
world that for the first time in human history, political
power could be handed over from one bloodline to another
without bloodshed.
But such noble principles
did not simply materialize out of thin air. Our nation has,
since its inception, been guided by an overarching, Divine
Authority. The evolution of our laws and institutions can be
traced all the way back to the Bible.
America is, in fact, a
Christian nation. It doesn’t matter if you are an
evangelical protestant or an avowed atheist. Every American,
regardless of his faith (or a complete lack thereof)
benefits from a society imbued with the divinely inspired
qualities of mercy, tolerance, justice, equity and human
dignity.
Samuel P. Huntington, who
is currently the Albert J. Weatherhead III University
Professor at Harvard, argued this point persuasively on the
opinion pages of the June 16, Wall Street Journal in
a column titled, “Under God.”
“Americans have always been
extremely religious and overwhelmingly Christian,”
Huntington explained. “The 17th-century settlers founded
their communities in America in large part for religious
reasons. Eighteenth-century Americans saw their Revolution
in religious and largely biblical terms… [The] framers [of
the Constitution] firmly believed that the republican
government they were creating could last only if it was
rooted in morality and religion. ‘A Republic can only be
supported by pure religion or austere morals,’ John Adams
said. Washington agreed: ‘Reason and experience both forbid
us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion
of religious principles.’ Fifty years after the Constitution
was adopted, Tocqueville reported that all Americans held
religion ‘to be indispensable to the maintenance of
republican institutions.’”
To abandon these noble
principles at a time when there is a growing clamor for
revenge is wrong. Americans must resist the urge to give in
to their baser instincts. It is impossible to embrace
barbarism in the name of justice.
Let the words of the
apostle Paul, written to the church in Rome during a time
when unspeakable atrocities were being foisted upon
Christians, serve as an appropriate reminder to us all: “Do
not be overcome with evil. Overcome evil with good.”
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Gregory J. Rummo is a
syndicated columnist. Read all of his columns on his homepage,
www.GregRummo.com.
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