Evaluating political action

In my Oct. 9 column, I rejected calling the terrorists evil since their action was really no different in principle from the actions taken by other states and political entities throughout history. The terrorists had a political and religious agenda that they felt would be best implemented through a campaign of violence against the civilians of the United States. Another strain of thought circulating around this country, in opposition to calling the terrorists evil, states that since the United States is not morally unimpeachable and since its foreign policy 'drove' the terrorists to their violence, the United States is not justified in retaliating. This position, however, is as equally mistaken as the first and for the same reason. If it is impossible to characterize the terrorists' actions as evil, then it is impossible to characterize any political actions as evil. Thus we must consider political actions only in light of their political consequences and not by their relationship to any subjective moral norm.

The apologists claim that the United States brought the attack on the World Trade Center upon itself as a result of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, a policy that has antagonized the Arab community into creating these terrorists. Professor Paul Kennedy at Yale, for example, asked his students to imagine themselves as Arabs and to try to imagine if there were any U.S. policies that would provoke their hatred.

Criticism of the apologists' viewpoint has mainly focused on attempting to refute the claim that our foreign policy is to blame by justifying it. In doing so the critics fall into the same trap and in fact are most likely the same people as those who claim that the terrorists are evil.

Both assume that there is one side that is ultimately Right and one side that is ultimately Wrong. Under these arguments, the debate becomes nothing more than a futile attempt to justify competing ideologies. The fact of the matter is that it is absolutely meaningless to talk about Right and Wrong as absolutes in politics. Thus, the answer to professor Kennedy's question is: Of course our actions are hated by some in the Arab community, but what of it? The apologists are absolutely right in claiming that the terrorists were motivated by the foreign policy and weltanschauung of the United States. It would be naive to assume that the terrorists attacked without any semblance of cause or any sort of objective. Such a motive cannot be determined under any circumstances to be Wrong, as I demonstrated in my Oct. 9 column. However, if such a motive cannot be unequivocally considered Wrong, there is no reason to consider it unequivocally Right. The entire question of who is Right and who is Wrong must be dismissed, and ideological concerns thus are rendered moot. It is simply not relevant to discuss and attempt to judge whether political motives are sufficiently valid to justify political action. Neville Chamberlain had the best of motives when appeasing Hitler by giving him the Sudetenland, yet the outcome was wholly negative.

If motives and ideology are irrelevant to the discussion of international politics, then international politics must be concerned with only one thing — and that is national interest. Political action can only be judged by its ability to advance the interests of the party taking that action. Since the terrorists' goal was to affect U.S. foreign policy, their action could be judged successful only if it forced the United States to alter its foreign policy. As long as we do not, they lose. Furthermore, any action we take in retaliation can only be judged successful if it protects our national security in the future. Attacking Afghanistan, therefore, is justified if it lessens the chances of our being attacked in the future.

If we are all on the same barren moral plane, with no recourse to any universally recognized principles —and any who believe that there are universal principles should consider the terrorists' actions as refuting such a belief — war is an extension of politics, and politics is the tool of national interest. Dan Ostrow is a politics major from New York, NY. He can be reached at dtostrow@princeton.edu.