Abstract

Despair Is Not an Option

The author comments on U.S. President George W. Bush's war on terror, and calls upon Americans to pursue justice and to seek peace in the coming year. Many people believed at the time that the trauma of 9/11 would change the world. My feeling was that our American response would be far more crucial. The President, after all, did not have to declare war. He could have said to the American people and the world, "We will respond, but not in kind. We will not seek to avenge the death of innocent Americans by the death of innocent victims elsewhere, lest we become what we abhor. What we will do is build coalitions with other nations." But instead of deepening our kinship with the world's suffering, the President chose to invoke an almost unlimited sense of entitlement to pursue in our own way what he termed a struggle "to rid the world of evil." But an election year is upon us, another ripe moment for educating and for changing regimes in Washington. Although still claiming moral clarity, the President is clearly losing moral authority. Like politicians, clergy can be so cautious as to become moral failures. Now, however, they are signing on by the hundreds to the Clergy Leadership Network, recently formed to counter the influence of the Christian right. They are eager to resurrect two great biblical mandates -- to pursue justice and to seek peace. So much is at stake in the new year that despair is not an option.