I am a supporter of the war.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, and their aftermath, have profoundly affected me psychologically as well as politically. I was horrified by these attacks. I have no doubt that the attackers are the enemies of the United States, of liberal democracy, and of universal values. I also have no doubt that these enemies are violent and that military force must be used to destroy their terror network; perhaps -- if possible -- to bring them to justice, and to provide some measure of security against the possibility of future terrorist acts.
I am a believer in human rights and in international law. I believe that the survival and flourishing of humankind requires us to develop new forms of global responsibility, practices and institutions rooted in civil society, but also new forms of legal authority and international criminal enforcement. And yet I do not believe that current intimations of these new forms of responsibility are robust, effective, or possessed of global legitimacy. And so I believe that critics of war who appeal to "international law" are naïve, and indeed, that their appeal is really a call to do nothing in the face of terror.
And so I am a supporter of the war.
But as I have spent innumerable hours over the past nine weeks thinking about current events, and thinking about my support for the war, I have also been caused to think about the meaning of the very words with which I began this piece: "I am a supporter of the war." This has not been an academic exercise but an effort to think hard about what I am doing with these words of mine. For it seems to me that it is natural, and inevitable, in this time of crisis that we feel forced by circumstance to speak in such terms, declaring our support for-or, for some, opposition to -- the war. And yet it also seems to me that at the same time that we are pressed to issue such declarations, we also should think about what such declarations mean.
The first thing to note about my statement is its beginning. "I am." By using such a phrase we fix our selves in time. And of course we must do this. At any given moment, each of us is likely to have an opinion, and, in declaring this opinion we are saying what we believe at that moment. But the simple statement "I AM a supporter of the war" leaves no room for the qualification that is implied by the very statement -- that right now I am a supporter of the war, but this might change; that I am a thinking being who is constantly evaluating events and strategies and who may be caused to change his mind. A public discourse of simple declarative statements obscures the inherently dynamic character of our opinions. This is why it is important to step back and interrogate our grammar.
The second thing to note about my statement is its concluding words -- "the war." What does this mean? Does it mean the general policy of military response to terrorism? Does it mean every aspect of the strategy and tactics behind the Bush administration's actual military response? The concluding two words of my statement do not answer these questions. But these questions are crucial. And the ambiguity of the words "the war" accurately encapsulates my own deeply complex feelings. For, while I know that I support a military response, and that I see no alternative, I also know that I have had serious doubts about our current strategy.
I wonder whether the "alliance" of so-called anti-terrorist states-an alliance that includes Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and perhaps even Syria--is a serious or viable alliance against terrorism. At a deeper level, I wonder whether the Bush Administration is truly serious about a real political and economic policy to accompany the military policy, a policy that would attack the causes of despair and violence and promote real liberalization and democratization in Central Asia and elsewhere. And tactically, I wonder about where the policy of bombing has taken an unacceptable toll in civilian casualties, whether the Northern Alliance is a serious military force for the long haul, whether the U.S. really supports it, and whether either anti-terrorist goals or a decisive defeat of the Taliban can be accomplished, or a serious alternative government for Afghanistan can be established, without putting many more U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan.
I support a military response, and thus I support the war because it is the only military response at hand. In the best of all possible worlds, I would have the luxury of choosing from a range of military responses. But in this messy world I do not have this choice. And so I support this military response rather than none at all.
But at the same time I have all of these questions. They do not prevent me from supporting the war and from declaring this support. But they are important questions, and they need to be considered. Right now, while I have these questions, and while I am genuinely uncertain about their answers, I have provisionally decided that I continue to support the war. But this may change as events unfold and as new truths come to light. While recent events have in fact seemed to affirm the wisdom of the war strategy, future events may alter this perspective. And so these questions of mine must be articulated and publicized. And yet the discourse of declarative statements prevents this, or at least obscures it.
The third thing to note about my statement is what it does not say. It does not say anything about what I think about many other things -- human rights; the requisites of true global responsibility; the limits of unilateral foreign policy; the importance of defending civil liberties in a time of war; the folly of attacking and dismantling the public sector, as conservatives have practiced and preached for the past two decades; the need, here at home and elsewhere, to attend seriously to problems of economic inequality, environmental degradation, racial injustice, and national chauvinism.
The above list is simply a sampling of what matters to me politically. Many of the issues listed relate, directly or indirectly, to the prosecution of the war. Many of them do not, and are no less important for that. At this moment many of these issues have taken a back seat to the question of war, for the nation but also for me. And this is perhaps warranted. But these questions are nonetheless important to me, and they raise questions of importance to our politics. At this moment, indeed, none are more serious than the civil liberties questions. These questions must be pressed and politicized. And yet my simple declarative statement in support of the war, by its very nature, is silent about these things.
The fourth, and perhaps most important thing to note about my statement, is not a feature of its grammar but of its very character as a declarative statement: how situationally specific such a statement really is.
We are inclined to think that political opinions are best expressed in the form of such declarative statements. A culture of polling and punditry surely helps to sustain the idea that we can and should state our opinions in simple, declarative form: "I am in favor of X, I am against Y." But this is not wholly an artifact of certain unfortunate features of our political culture. It is a feature of political reality itself. There are occasions when it is necessary to formulate what one thinks in such terms. Such occasions are moments of singular decision. One such occasion is in the act of voting, where one must decide who or what to vote "for," whether a candidate, a party, or a referendum item. Another such occasion is in the course of compliance with specific laws. The payment of taxes, for example, involves a decision to comply with the tax law. One might decide, as did Thoreau, that one does not wish to comply with the payment of taxes that support a war. One may thus feel compelled to declare one's opposition to war in the course of such a decision. There is, finally, the decision to fight, whether as a conscript, an enlistee, or volunteer. Perhaps more than any other individuals, soldiers are pressed by circumstances to decide, in the starkest of terms, whether or not they support a war, and are willing to place their lives on the line or to willingly take the lives of others.
The above situations are not, to be sure, the only situations in which it makes sense to offer declarative statements about war. There are others -- letters to politicians, public demonstrations, arguments with friends or adversaries -- where one may reasonably feel moved to make such statements. But unlike voting, tax payment, and war fighting, such situations do not require that we make a decisive choice for or against.
Indeed, for most of us, the general situation of being an individual and a citizen is rarely like the situation of the voting booth. It rarely places us in a position where we must articulate our thoughts in terms of clear-cut declarative statements. We may sometimes choose to speak in such terms. But we also have the option of speaking in more complex terms. This is not a luxury that politicians and soldiers can typically afford. But it comprises, I would suggest, the main virtue of ordinary democratic citizenship.
The virtue I have in mind is intellectual complexity and openness, a willingness to speak with subtlety and depth, to listen to others, and to be attentive to changing circumstances and open to changing one's mind. What I am talking about is not indecisiveness. It is a certain kind of serious and intelligent civic responsibility. It involves an acknowledgment of the need to take positions and to offer support or, perhaps more typically, to refuse to oppose or to offer resistance. It involves an acknowledgment of the need to issue declarative statements. But it also acknowledges the limits of such statements, and the importance of thinking and talking in other ways, keeping questions and doubts open, keeping the possibility of change open.
In a democracy, political accountability and freedom of expression make all political decisions provisional. The government needs to make decisions. And we, as citizens, sometimes need to make our own decisions about whether to support or oppose these governmental decisions. But all of these decisions are provisional. And it is communication about the issues, in all of their complexity, that helps to ensure that political decisions are never dogmatic, never set in stone, never artifacts of coercion or inertia, but instead are the products of public intelligence. Public intelligence is a precious feature of a democratic society, all too rarely appreciated, all too rarely achieved. It is never more needed than now, at a time of national crisis and war.
So, I am a supporter of the war. I tell people this when asked. Sometimes I volunteer this information when not asked. I wear a FDNY cap as a sign of my solidarity with my attacked native city, and of identification with those public servants who are now working on our behalf to provide safety and security. I buy bagels for Army reservists when I encounter them in the local café. I watch the war in Afghanistan, from a distance, with the hopes that those now fighting there on behalf of the United States succeed in destroying al-Qaeda, in definitively overthrowing the Taliban regime, and in helping to replace it with a more legitimate regime.
I have many questions -- and much ambivalence -- about the war. And I am also deeply pained about those innocent people who will die and suffer as a result of this just war, because there is no war in which innocent civilians do not die and suffer. But I do not protest against the war because I believe it just, because I can envision no plausible alternative to it, and because my questions have not led me to the point of concluding with confidence that the war is wrong or mistaken. Indeed, I do not really understand those, including some friends, who do protest the war. They possess a certainty about absolute justice or about alternative methods that I do not possess. They are sure that because the war has costs it must not be undertaken, and they are sure that these costs outweigh the costs of not fighting. But their confidence about this is not, in my opinion, based on serious inquiry. It is dogmatically asserted. And so I do not join them. Instead, I say that I support the war.
In the weeks, months, and years ahead, it is important that each of us is very clear about what we are doing with our words. We will be pressed to make declarative statements. And such statements will have their place. But it is just as important to remember that the qualifications, and the questions, and the ambivalences have their place. We need to make sure that they have their place in our individual minds. And, even more important, we need to make sure that they have their place in our public culture. The struggle against terrorism is a struggle on behalf of security and of life. But it is also a struggle on behalf of freedom and democracy. Right now the defense of our democracy requires us to be attentive to the things we do with weapons. But above all, democracy requires us to be supremely attentive to the things we do with words.
