America's exceptionalist justice
Wild west vigilantism may work while the hero can outshoot
the villain and his friends, but real justice outflanks
escalation
Tom Wright
Friday May 6 2011
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/may/05/
america-lone-ranger
Consider the following scenario. A group of Irish republican
terrorists carries out a bombing raid in London. People are
killed and wounded. The group escapes, first to Ireland, then
to the US, where they disappear into the sympathetic hinterland
of a country where IRA leaders have in the past been welcomed
at the White House. Britain cannot extradite them, because of
the gross imbalance of the relevant treaty. So far, this seems
plausible enough.
But now imagine that the British government, seeing the
murderers escape justice, sends an aircraft carrier (always
supposing we've still got any) to the Nova Scotia coast. From
there, unannounced, two helicopters fly in under the radar to
the Boston suburb where the terrorists are holed up. They carry
out a daring raid, killing the (unarmed) leaders and making their
escape. Westminster celebrates; Washington is furious.
What's the difference between this and the recent events in
Pakistan? Answer: American exceptionalism. America is subject
to different rules to the rest of the world. By what right? Who
says?
Consider another fictive scenario. Gangsters are preying on a
small mid-western town. The sheriff and his deputies are spineless;
law and order have failed. So the hero puts on a mask, acts "extra-
legally", performs the necessary redemptive violence and returns to
ordinary life, earning the undying gratitude of the local townsfolk,
sheriff included. This is the plot of a thousand movies, comic-book
strips, and TV shows: Captain America, The Lone Ranger, and (upgraded
to hi-tech) Superman. The masked hero saves the world.
Films and comics with this plot-line have been named as favourites by
many presidents, as Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence
[http://www.eerdmans.com/Interviews/lawrenceinterview.htm" title=
"Eerdmans: Interview with John Shelton Lawrence] pointed out in The
Myth of the American Superhero and Captain America and the Crusade
Against Evil. The main reason President Obama has been cheered to the
echo across the US, even by his bitter opponents, is not simply the
fully comprehensible sense of closure a decade after the horrible,
wicked actions of September 11 2001. Underneath that, he has just
enacted one of America's most powerful myths.
Perhaps the myth was necessary in the days of the wild west, of
isolated frontier towns and roaming gangs. But it legitimises a form
of vigilantism, of taking the law into one's own hands, which provides
"justice" only of the crudest sort. In the present case, the "hero"
fired a lot of stray bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan before he got
it right. What's more, such actions invite retaliation. They only
"work" because the hero can shoot better than the villain; but the
villain's friends may decide on vengeance. Proper justice is designed
precisely to outflank such escalation.
Of course, proper justice is hard to come by internationally. America
regularly casts the UN (and the international criminal court) as the
hapless sheriff, and so continues to play the world's undercover
policeman. The UK has gone along for the ride. What will we do when
new superpowers arise and try the same trick on us? And what has any
of this to do with something most Americans also believe, that the
God of ultimate justice and truth was fully and finally revealed in
the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, who taught people to love their
enemies, and warned that those who take the sword will perish by the
sword?
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Thanks to Michael Gorman for alerting us about this commentary from
the former Bishop of Durham.
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