Elshtain Speaks at Elizabethtown College: Presents "Just War Theory"

There can be no arguing that we do not live in a society which possesses its fair share of problems. Simply by watching a few minutes of nightly television, it becomes obvious that our country is one divided by political and economic view points. While it is definitely true that differences are what makes our world what it is, it would be a truly boring world if everyone thought the same way, their is also good reasoning that even if we do not agree with others views, we should at least be accepting or give some acknowledgmet of them.

If we choose to isolate ourselves and belief only the information that supports our individual opinions and biases, we are only hurting ourselves and transforming our views and opinoins into ignorance and stupidity. Their is no excuse as to why a person should limit themselves in their intake of information, or choose to ignore those views which tend to conflict with theirs. While this lesson may be a very important one, it is far from something that one can learn by listening to Jean Bethke Elshtain.

Elshtain, who was recently invited to speak at Elizabethtown College, presented a roughly one hour lecture on justified war and United States involvement and foreign affairs. However, it is worth noting that in that hour and fifteen minutes, she did not spend as much as a single second presenting any information which might have given the slightest bit of friction with her own opinion. Whether or not a person may right in believing in war is not the issue with this speaker. The problem comes because regardless of how a person may feel, their are boundaries and rules for acceptable conduct.

When, following her lecture, Elshtain was questioned by several members of the audience, including a former professor of Elizabethtown, the speaker was nothing except hostile and confrontational. When an elderly gentleman who can barely stand on his own questions your reasoning at justifiying violence in the world, their is no excuse for screaming "I am the speaker, your views are completely irrelevant" at him. Elshtain is a horrible model for action, and students would do well to learn nothing from her public mannerism and the way in which she conducts herself and answers to those around her.

Even if a speaker may be supportive of violence and death around the world, their is no reason for her to bring that violence into a church lecture hall. If students could only learn one thing from the Elshtain lecture, perhaps the best lesson to take away would be how not to act in a public forum.

However, while Elshtain may have presented her message excellenty in her actual lecture, I cannot say that I agree with her in any form. The idea that a president can go around every other government body in order to declare a war is ridiculous. War is doubtlessly the most horrendous thing we engage upon as a civilized society. We live in a country where the top ten percent of the people own roughly eighty percent of the wealth. We inhabit a place that despite being one of the most developed and advanced societies in the world, has citizens that starve to death, has elderly residents who must choose between food and life sustaining medicine, where students cannot afford college without placing themselves in signifigant financial peril.

Yet, despite all of this, their are no qualms whatsoever about spending billions of dollars in order to kill innocent people in a foreign country that had committed no recent wrong against us. Elshtain even confirmed in her lecture that war should not be illustrated as a component of revenge, however, simply looking at the Iraq war and the lies surrounding it, it seems extraordinarily difficult to find any kind of motivation towards the conflict.

When our president first tried to garner support for the war, he claimed that the country of Iraq threatened us through their weapons of mass destruction (a vague and scary term which has no real meaning), however, after years of searching, it seems Iraq had nothing capable of threatening the United States. The Iraq military was so poorly funded that its members threw down their weapons in the opening days of the conflict, effectively surrendering to the United States. If the war ended four years ago however, then why are United States citizens still dying?

The answer is because the war meets another one of Elshtains reasons for an unjustifiable war, being that it has no viable exit strategy. When we invaded Iraq for the first time, then President Bush pulled out his troops because he knew, and publicly wrote, that no strategy could be seen for long term development in the country, meaning that their was no reasonable exit strategy. His son, however, seems to have ignored this simple fact, risking the lives of soldiers and U.S. citizens in order to bring down a leader who was in no way threatening to our country.

Of course the ousting of Saddam Houssein has been a good move for the country, but we must remember that the motivation for the war took a drastic turn when it was discovered their were no weapons within the borders of Iraq. All of sudden our aim became liberating the Iraqi people. However, one must wonder how much "liberation" was going on when the United States unleashed a bombing campaign named "Shock and Awe" on the city of Baghdad, a place with roughly the civilian population of Los Angeles.

Elshtain can claim all she want that war has gotten civilized. But when a man can simply push a button and send a destructive and dangerous weapon towards families and civilians, war is anything but civilized. The idea of war and violence is just as barbaric and cold as it was one hundred years ago, if not more so.

The armed services of our country consist of men and women who have pledged their lives so that others may live in freedom. We can having nothing but the utmost respect for those who have fought so that we may have protection. When men and women are willing to give their lives so that others may live, it is perhaps the most attrocious crime to send those individuals to a place where they do not have to be, to sacrifice lives to accomplish nothing. The Iraq was has set us back in "our" fight against "terror".

It still stands to boggle my mind how one can declare war on a word, yet find no problem fighting this word the most conflicted and fundamental place in the world. Our leaders, as intelligent as they may be, have seemed to forget that terrorism, like all acts of violence, is a product of hate. When we invade a country, when we kill innocent people, when we destroy homes, business and lives, we are doing nothing except breeding hate and contempt for our own country.

When Palestinians watched their own people slaughtered by United States weaponry and military machines, it is obvious that those citizens would come to hate our country. Osama bin Laden has even cited the United States involvement in Israel as one of the primary reasons behind the terrorist attack of September 11th. When a child sees their house destroyed and their parents killed by soldiers wearing the stars and stripes of America, how can that child ever hope to have anything but hate in his heart for the United States. Vengeance is a universal idea.

It goes both ways. The best message we could ever teach is that vengeance is never justified. Yet, after the attacks of 2001, our leader stood amidst the destruction of our buildings and promised the American people yet more bloodshed. When a country has just had over 2,000 of its citiizens killed through violence, the worst possible message is that more violence can be used to justify and avenge their murders. Would the people who died that day in September really wish for children and innocents to be killed in their name?

Their is no way that the war in Iraq could ever be justified. And perhaps the best question to ask Jean Bethke Elshtain would be, "How could such a speech and treatment of the audience ever be just?"