|
|
Article: War, peace & Jean Bethke Elshtain: an exchange.
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- October 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Jean Bethke Elshtain is rightly admired for her courage, for her trenchant critiques of peculiarly American pathologies, and for the wisdom of her political judgment. We think, however, that her current attempt morally to justify the Bush presidency's "war against terrorism" along with its entire National Security Strategy--in Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (Basic, 2003)--is nothing more than an uncritical justification of the ideology of America as empire. It is itself a deeply ideological work rather than one of careful and critical thought.
Elshtain's argument presents itself as an answer to the question, "What is ...