An Eye For An Eye

An Eye For An Eye

(What follows is something I wrote several years ago and just rediscovered. It still applies so I just added a few notes. I'll slip it in between my regular posts.  I don't know where all the lines came from and I don't know how to get rid of them.)

Every now and then I see a bumper sticker that reads, "An eye for an eye leaves the world blind."ⁱ

It’s nonsense, of course; it’s the kind of self-righteous and vacuous pronouncement that characterizes much moralistic rhetoric; the kind of philosophy that produced "Make love, not war" and "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came" stickers some decades ago -- stickers sported by people blinded to reality, who felt morally superior to those aware that the world contained individuals who preferred war to love -- who would come to a war -- people with whom we had to deal.ⁱⁱ

The unwritten message is that if someone attacks you, turn the other cheek; don’t fight back. But that leaves you blind while the attacker can see. Or perhaps you were already blind. Turn a blind eye to evil and only the good are disabled.

An eye for an eye won’t work. Certainly no eye for an eye rewards the "bad guy," putting him further ahead of the good. Even "an eye for an eye" merely allows him with more eyes to continue, coming out even or benefiting from the situation. It’s the strategy of the war of attrition, of the uncaring who force those who do care to capitulate to prevent further loss of life. It’s carried out by those who don’t value the lives they sacrifice -- especially if they’re other people’s lives, most especially children. President Reagan said, "History teaches us that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap."

But must we wait to be blinded before responding? Should we not care when not directly involved? We tried isolationism and it failed.ⁱⁱⁱ And what’s a "proportionate" response to mass murder? Should parents in Beslan be satisfied that those directly involved were killed? How do you dissuade those willing to die, or have others die, for their cause: those who know they’ll ultimately be freed if captured before completing their missions -- given another opportunity to commit acts of terror? How do we discourage murderous acts, apart from giving in to terrorists or blaming their victims for existing? Sadly, the views of too many are governed by politics and economics rather than concern for right, wrong or justice. But I doubt that the families of the Lockerbie victims are comforted by the "rehabilitation"^iv of Muammar al-Qaddafi, or that the families of those killed on September 11th, 2001 get closure knowing that Saudi Arabia is our "good friend" and ally.

But what, if not "an eye for an eye?" If we cannot prevent murderous acts, two eyes for an eye or three or four will lessen the advantage, punishing the ones who choose violence. Those who would try only to limit rather than stop terrorists may feel morally superior, but any tyrant will gladly yield the moral high ground for the terrestrial low ground. Terrorists mustn’t be appeased. Those who send others to murder are themselves murderers and should be punished appropriately. In times of peace the death penalty may be fit for debate, but wars must be fought with complete victory as the goal. Were we too quick to reject Senator Goldwater’s 1964 "[E]xtremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!" and to veto our generals’ call to fight wars to win rather than to achieve a stalemate? Nearly one hundred years before Goldwater, President Lincoln spoke of "firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right ..." Perhaps these should be our watchwords. "Firmness" and "Right." We shouldn’t be embarrassed by fighting for what we know is right. We mustn’t be blinded to what is right by moral relativism or self-defeating breast-beating. Our actions should be swift and overwhelming. "Shock and awe" may have been too limited geographically and ended too soon. If our acts seem harsh, the costs of inaction must also be considered. After the "War to end all Wars" came the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) which outlawed war entirely. Then came Chamberlain’s proclamation of "Peace in our time." But these were followed by the Holocaust and, more recently, Rwanda. And now we have Darfur and Taba.^v But we have not reacted. The world is not Hollywood. Wishing won’t make it so. Action is required.

Turning the other cheek, accepting less than justice may make us feel morally superior, but there is no superiority in death over life, no virtue in slavery over freedom. Refusing to fight back may make us feel good, but it will leave us, and the world, blind and in chains.





 

i      Mohandas Gandhi said it and Martin Luther King used it in his exhortations. Both were assassinated.

ii     What I've written sounds a little self-righteous as well. But I still think the ideas are correct. At least for the most part.

iii    I'll have more to say about isolationism and interventionism in a future post.

iv    Now it's his death.

v     And many more since.