Crimes against humanity

WORDS are not adequate to express the world?s revulsion at Tuesday?s devastating terrorist attack on New York and Washington. It was an evil act without peacetime precedent, the deliberate murder of hundreds, indeed thousands, of ordinary decent people going about their daily business. It was a stupifyingly wicked crime not just against them, not just against America, but against humanity itself. Americans should know that they are not alone at this time. The attack on New York in particular was an attack on everybody, everywhere. So the real question now is not what will America do next, but what will we do next, we the human race, to expunge this evil in our midst?

But it is right that America should take the lead. It has the power, it has the moral stature, and it has the greatest pain. It would be utterly wrong, however, for the rest of the world to retire to watch from the sidelines, as if this conflict was America versus the rest. Whatever disagreements there may be about methods and tactics, the extraordinary moral energy of the American people is as essential to the progress of civilisation in the future as it has been in the past. And it is not just as friends and allies that Britain and other countries have extended their hand of support. It is as fellow targets, fellow victims. Nowhere on the planet is safe from terrorists who are prepared to hijack aircraft, crash them into crowded buildings, and die in the process regardless of the carnage they cause. There is no hiding place, no neutral territory. Those who do not resist such a crime against humanity to their utmost become guilty of it themselves.

Almost as shocking as the terrifying scenes of the last moments of the World Trade Center were the images of jubilation in the streets in Palestine and elsewhere in the Arab world when the news first broke. Palestinians in particular should feel shame at the way their name was thus dishonoured. But the scale of the disaster quickly sunk in, and even America?s most implacable enemies were soon lining up to express their varying degrees of sympathy and sorrow. Some may have mixed motives, not least the fear of revenge attacks. But the shock and disgust were surely genuine. Tentative though some of this sentiment may be, it would be foolish to alienate it when it could be put to good use.

That requires that any response has to have a superior moral quality to the attack. The demand for justice is correct, but reprisal is as abhorrent as a political concept as it is useless as a military one. The insidious character of terrorism ? the suicide bomber lost in the crowd, the unremarkable passenger on a check list ? demands precise and careful surgery. Terrorism succeeds if it provokes its victims to such anger that they hit out wildly, triggering another phase in the cycle of violence. The leaders of America and the West well know that they must be careful not to become captives of their own rhetoric. Their own societies are free, and despite their vulnerabilities, most remain so. It is obvious that those willing to die for their cause cannot be deterred by threats or acts of punishment. They will simply rejoice that the cause is demanding further sacrifice, and that new martyrs have appeared whose memory has to be honoured by imitation. Impressive though it is, it is not America?s brute strength that is its most effective weapon against them, but its cleverness, its moral courage, its imagination, and its friends. Fortunately, it has them in abundance too.

Cardinal Cormac's call to the nation

CARDINAL Cormac Murphy-O?Connor was not the only one taken aback by the extent of reaction to the unscripted remarks he made to the National Conference of Priests. His off-the-cuff observation that Christianity as a backdrop to people?s lives and moral decisions has now almost been vanquished in Britain was not new. It struck a chord, although the Cardinal would be regretful if his lengthy address which outlined his strategy for the Catholic Church in England and Wales were remembered only for this bleak assessment. But the media welcomed his candour. So too have many clergy, who have grown tired of hearing about future dawns and second springs. They know better than anyone the loneliness of singing the Lord?s song in an alien land.

Sometimes the press can bring to the surface a public mood that is almost subconscious. The current one is uneasy about whether a British society which is ceasing to be Christian will be able to continue to uphold values which the British hold dear. Though religious practice has never been more unfashionable, people are alarmed to see Christianity retreating to the periphery because that may herald a final breakdown in the moral fabric.

It is true, as humanist philosophers have clamoured to insist, that to be good does not require one to be Christian. Natural law is written on people?s hearts. But no healthy society in the past has succeeded by separating natural law from divine sanction, moral instinct from revelation, relying on only the former pillar. So the question facing a secular Britain is not whether it can manage without a Christian framework, but how well. In many areas, the verdict is not impressive. And most of the moral principles that young people hold dear ? anti-racism, individual rights, care for the planet ? have arisen out of a Christian culture even where that is not acknowledged.

In other respects, however, Britain is showing signs of losing that heritage. Its citizens fear what seems to be an increasing materialism and self-obsessed individualism, more violence, more anxiety, less respect for human life, a readiness to blame others. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O?Conner asks if this is because the divine has retreated to the periphery, leaving not natural law and rational morality but the dynamic of the unchecked free market? Secular Britain knows it cannot develop a more robust non-religious morality ? as one newspaper called for last Sunday ? without this being instilled by the state. Yet history shows that state-sponsored moralising is necessarily authoritarian, even totalitarian. The paradoxical genius of Christianity is that it understands how obedience to morality can be the key to true freedom. That is why there is really no alternative to it, and why Cardinal Murphy-O?Connor?s analysis provoked such instant cries of recognition.

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