by Martin Eliasson
2011-06-09 00:21:50
public

What the just war tradition eroded

Quote from: The killing of Osama bin Laden may only have turned us into our enemies

In essence, Jesus was warning that violence is dangerously mimetic, that if we respond in kind then we will gradually turn into our enemy. As Rowan Williams put it, after his own close brush with death with the falling towers of 9/11: "If we do act in the same way as our enemies, we imprison ourselves in their anger, their evil."...

...All war is a form of moral failure, even when defending the weak from the strong. What the just war tradition has eroded is precisely the idea that non-violence must be the Christian default position.

Go read the whole pice, it's well worth a read.