May 6, 2002

Is U.S. on same level with terrorists?

"Is the U.S. Government on the same moral level as the terrorists, or is it in imminent danger of descending to the same level?"

The question is the seventh in a series of essays on the Sept. 11 attacks in Straight Answers to Moral Confusion in National Crisis by the Institute on Religion and Democracy. The series authored by Alan F.H. Wisdom focuses on the role of AmericaÕs churches in response to the attacks.

The question seems ludicrous to me, and was to a group of 26 mostly conservative church leaders who visited the White House on Sept. 20 for conversation and prayer with President Bush.

The group released a statement urging Bush to respond "not in the spirit of aggression, but as victims of aggression who must act to prevent further atrocities of terrorism," Wisdom reports.

However, Wisdom adds that following the attacks, "some of the more extreme leftist church statements asserted a direct moral equivalence between America and the terrorists."

Rev. Vernon Broyles, a senior staffer with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) "said the only difference is that Americans use the term 'terrorism' to describe the actions of their enemies and 'war' to describe the actions of their own nation," Wisdom said.

Broyles compared the World Trade Center attacks to the World War II atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as equivalent. He referred to the terrorists as "victims" who "reacted violently" to "redress their grievances," Wisdom said.

General Secretary Wesley Granberg-Michaelson of the Reformed Church in America asks, "Are we now to declare war on anyone who ideologically and religiously despises America?"

To give my short answer to Granberg-Michaelson, "Yes!"

Wisdom responds that America is "a legitimate government empowered by God and the American people to defend those people. There is no legitimate government that gave the sword to Osama bin Laden and his associates."

Wisdom adds, "Our troops have aimed to defeat the military forces opposed to them, while minimizing civilian casualties when possible. Our ultimate goal has been to rebuild even the nations that attacked us...

"By contrast, Bin Laden and company have announced a strategy that targets non-combatants indiscriminately."

To compare our American sons and daughters in uniform who are fighting the war on terrorism to the bloody terrorists themselves is what I would call blasphemy against humanity.

We have ridiculed the Taliban for their harsh religious dogma. But any religious leader here in America who can't see the difference between Osama bin Laden and President Bush makes the Taliban seem like religious moderates by comparison.

With "friends" like these, America doesn't need any enemies.