(Dr. Keyes is founder and chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles.)
Mrs. Bush suggests that it is important to notice Taliban treatment of women “not only because our hearts break for the women and children of Afghanistan, but also because in Afghanistan, we see the world the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us.”
It may seem implausible to say that America is fighting the al-Qaida to prevent the imposition of a regime of fanatical repression against American women. And certainly there are more immediate dangers that we are fighting to avoid – repetitions of catastrophic acts of terrorism, for example, and the associated temptation to trade our free institutions for the security of an American police state. But surely Mrs. Bush is correct to remind us that we fight not only in military response to bombings, but to defend a way of life we judge to be good from the comprehensive attack of those who have strayed fundamentally from fidelity to the principles of human decency.
The war against terror is a war in defense of those principles of human decency, and it is for that reason that we are right to insist that everyone take sides in it. Mrs. Bush reminds us that the defense of the innocent is a self-evident obligation of anyone who aspires to be a moral person. “Fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our common humanity – a commitment shared by people of good will on every continent.”
This basis for war obliges us to fight as the representative of the moral aspirations of humanity, and accordingly to give an account of ourselves and our practices which justifies that mantle. This seems easy enough when it is a matter of standing against those who pull fingernails out of women wearing nail polish or blow up thousands of innocent people. The Taliban, indeed, have made it fairly easy to fight a moral war. We should beware of how easy it seems.
There is no surer way for a nation fighting a war of moral purpose to lose than for it to lose confidence in the moral superiority of its own way of life. And in America’s case, that confidence must be a confidence that as a people we remain committed to vindicating the universal principles of human decency. America is worth fighting for, and dying to defend, not simply because it is our country – but because it is a beacon of justice and decency to the world.
For these reasons it is ironic, to say the least, that the Administration would single out the issue of opportunity and dignity of women and children as a fundamental criticism of the terrorist agenda. For however effective such a claim may be as a piece of wartime propaganda, the fact is that America is facing, and failing, its most profound moral challenge on precisely the question of our own regard for the dignity of innocent unborn children. And the assault on that dignity has come precisely through a false and pernicious claim of defending the dignity – the right to choose – of America’s women. The simple people around the world who know that America has led the global crusade to “plan parenthood” by enticing women to abort their children will surely wonder if that American vision of freedom for women is worth fighting and dying for.
I believe that America has been, and can continue to be, the champion of true dignity and opportunity for women, children, and all human persons. But it is crucial that we earn this role not simply by destroying its most grotesque opponents, those now dying for their insanity in Afghanistan. We must earn it as well, and more nobly, by facing our own demons and defeating them in the hard battle of conscience and moral aspiration here at home.
That means that our leaders should seize the opportunity of the war not only to educate the world about the monstrosities of the Taliban, but also to educate and lead the American people toward a more justified claim to be the world’s moral superpower. It would have been edifying indeed if a speech announcing that the war on terror is also a war to defend the dignity of women and children would have included at least a suggestion that the we have unfinished business on the home front.
