Engaging in a Cosmic Struggle?
Faith in the Public Square
Lompoc Record
Dr. Bob Cornwall
March 4, 2007
You may remember “Get Smart,” a 1960s sitcom in which Maxwell Smart, a bumbling CONTROL secret agent battled the agents of evil - known as KAOS - in a spoof on Cold War intrigue. In the show, the forces of evil are part of a grand conspiracy to undermine all that is good, and if that plotline sounds strangely familiar, consider the current verbiage about a “War on Terror.”
The ideology standing behind the “War on Terror” is full of cosmic and conspiratorial images. We are engaged, so we've been told, in a battle between good and evil, with our “enemies” seeking to do us harm because they hate our way of life and our freedoms. Soon after 9-11, President Bush “mistakenly” spoke of launching a crusade against those who had attacked us. Although he retracted this politically and religiously charged word, the idea of a crusade resonated with huge numbers of Americans, who did envision America as a Christian America battling a Muslim enemy.
Unfortunately, many in the Islamic world also heard this usage as confirmation of their worst fears that the “War on Terror” and the war in Iraq are part of a religiously inspired war against Islam. The demand that the world choose between them and us in this battle against evil has cosmic overtones, and when the choice was put to millions of Muslims around the world, what they heard was a choice between a “Judeo-Christian” West and Islam. It shouldn't surprise us, then, that many Muslims chose “them” and not us.
Lompoc Record
Dr. Bob Cornwall
March 4, 2007
You may remember “Get Smart,” a 1960s sitcom in which Maxwell Smart, a bumbling CONTROL secret agent battled the agents of evil - known as KAOS - in a spoof on Cold War intrigue. In the show, the forces of evil are part of a grand conspiracy to undermine all that is good, and if that plotline sounds strangely familiar, consider the current verbiage about a “War on Terror.”
The ideology standing behind the “War on Terror” is full of cosmic and conspiratorial images. We are engaged, so we've been told, in a battle between good and evil, with our “enemies” seeking to do us harm because they hate our way of life and our freedoms. Soon after 9-11, President Bush “mistakenly” spoke of launching a crusade against those who had attacked us. Although he retracted this politically and religiously charged word, the idea of a crusade resonated with huge numbers of Americans, who did envision America as a Christian America battling a Muslim enemy.
Unfortunately, many in the Islamic world also heard this usage as confirmation of their worst fears that the “War on Terror” and the war in Iraq are part of a religiously inspired war against Islam. The demand that the world choose between them and us in this battle against evil has cosmic overtones, and when the choice was put to millions of Muslims around the world, what they heard was a choice between a “Judeo-Christian” West and Islam. It shouldn't surprise us, then, that many Muslims chose “them” and not us.
That evil was perpetrated on 9-11 is not to be denied. But, the use of cosmic imagery by our nation's leaders only adds fuel to the fire of a conflict that's much more nuanced and complex than our conspiratorial terms convey. In reality, American use of such language plays into the hands of those who wish to fight a cosmic war with us. And such a war, where casualties are irrelevant, can't be won, at least not militarily. (To continue reading click here).
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