Are we better now, 12 years later?

It's beyond belief that it happened 12 years ago. Twelve years ago?

I was getting ready for work, which was in that previous life and career. It was so long ago I still was in management at a newspaper. Since then management has gone away, as has, well, newspapers in general.

Twelve years ago I was told by my wife, Mary, to come into the bedroom. She had a little TV  playing there, maybe even a black and white if you could believe it, and on it was a building with huge amounts of smoke flowing out of it.

She said, simply, "Something is going on."

We went into the living room to the big TV, and indeed, something was going on. While there, before I left for work, we watched a replay of the first plane hitting the tower. Not long after that, we saw another hit a tower and I thought for a few minutes that I was watching another replay.

I told Mary goodbye and headed across the Crescent City Connection to New Orleans to help where I could at the office. Long before this, another six or eight years I think, I was called back from sports to news at The Clarion-Ledger to design a front page for the paper when the U.S. bombed Iraq the first time. I assumed there was something I could do at the Times-Picayune 11 years ago, though I never was asked to help.

From the moment we were hit, including the aircraft that landed hard in Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon was hit, we had the moral question about just wars hanging over us.

This is the United Methodist reaction after 9-11, 12 years ago from Bishop C. Dale White.

United Methodists have been ambivalent about war from our beginnings. Throughout the warring 20th century, The United Methodist Church demonstrated its diversity as it offered support and counsel to men and women who believe it their duty to participate in the military, while at the same time supporting conscientious objectors in their plea to do alternative service.

There are three major strains of thought that were examined at length following that morning:

Pacifist tradition
The founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley condemned all war as the prime example of human depravity. Many prominent leaders of our denomination in the 20th century were pacifists.
For decades the legislative body of United Methodism -- the General Conference -- had taken an essentially pacifist stance. The Social Principles, paragraph 69C in The 1996 Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, said:

"We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ. We therefore reject war as an instrument of national foreign policy and insist that the first moral duty of all nations is to resolve by peaceful means every dispute that arises between or among them."

Just-war tradition

Among Roman Catholics from the time of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, a just-war tradition has flourished. Its principles, which place strict controls over any resort to war, include:

• Just cause: A decision for war must seek justice in response to serious evil, such as a war of aggression.
• Just intent: The ends sought in a decision for war must mean the restoration of peace with justice, and must not seek self-enrichment or devastation of another nation.
• Last resort: Like pacifism, this tradition is based on a strong moral presumption against going to war. Every possibility of peaceful settlement of a conflict must be tried first.
• Legitimate authority: A decision for war may be declared only by properly constituted governmental authority.
• Reasonable hope of success: A decision for war must be based on a prudent expectation that the ends sought can be achieved.

The crusade tradition

The fusion of political and religious authority in the Middle Ages fostered a third Christian tradition in matters of war and peace: crusades against infidels. The capture of Jerusalem's holy places by the Turks at the end of the 11th century was cited to make warfare a holy cause and a path to sainthood. Unlike the pacifist and just-war traditions, the crusade tradition assumes unrestrained conduct of war is a religious obligation.

If crusade tradition seems a relic of past centuries, look at the excess of self-righteousness and barbarism with which most modern wars have been waged. Moral restraints have been overwhelmed. Nations and warring groups have used poison gas, fire raids, nuclear weapons and napalm against civilians and military personnel.

The Bishop is certainly correct that nothing was ever the same for this country, and I believe it has been for the worse. Our economy is wrecked, and at least a small part of that is the money we spent on a war on terror that wasn't budget for and perhaps wasn't even won. I'm not sure that the idiots who flew those planes into the towers, the pentagon and the ground in Pennsylvania didn't actually win, because things haven't been the same.

Then came Katrina.

Then came the reaction to the president's policies.

Then comes the affordable heal care.

And now we're debating the morality involved in the Syrian use of gas on its own citizens.

Next comes I don't known and don't particularly want to know..

These are serious matters that require serious discussion, and they began -- again -- one morning 12 years ago on this date.

The major question for Christians hasn't change.

A Christian theologian, Miroslav Volf, wrote a piece a while back that says, "
One way to approach the question is to ask whether, as a result of the 9/11 trauma, we have become better people? "Better" measured by what standard? ... Have we become better people? Some of us and in some regards have, and others of us and in other regards have not. Let's look first at the debit side of our moral account:

1. Prejudice. In 2002 39 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view of Islam and Muslims, whereas in 2010 that number jumped to 49 percent. The increase was not a fruit of deepened insight but of stronger prejudice. Prejudice is a form of untruthfulness, and untruthfulness is an insidious form of injustice.
2. Multiplication of Enemies. After 9/11 we set out to punish the perpetrators and their supporters, and to ensure our own safety. In the process, we have not diminished the number of our enemies. To the contrary. After (12) years of chasing the dream of impregnability and now trillions of dollars poorer, we have more enemies then ever. From a Christian standpoint, reducing enmity should have been our moral and not just security goal. We have failed.
3. Exceptionalism. In an inter-connected and inter-dependent world we insist on going our own way. We don't hold ourselves accountable to the norms we hold others accountable to -- the moral principle of reciprocity enshrined in the Golden Rule does not apply to us. As a result, we are less liked abroad than ever, and in some parts of the world we have come to be despised as bullying hypocrites.
 And now to the credit side of our moral account, which only sometimes balances the debit side of it:

1. Civility. Many Christian leaders (Adam Hamilton, Rick Warren, and Brian Zahnd, to name three very different people) have discovered that part of their calling is to promote civility and understanding among all religious groups, including Muslims. Theirs is the following rule: the better Christian you are, the more truthful, just, and loving toward others, including Muslims, you will be.
2. Pluralism. There is a growing sense even among conservative Christians, most pronounced among young evangelicals, that America, far from being a Christian nation, is irreversibly a pluralistic nation. Muslims and Christians, along with people of other faiths and no faith at all, will continue to live side by side under the same roof. When Christians bring their vision of good life into the public realm, they should do so on equal terms as any other group. For that's what it means to treat others as you want them to treat you.
3. Common Values. Even though they recognize that Christianity and Islam are and will remain two very different religions, many are acquiring a clearer sense that these two religions share some fundamental common values -- love of God and love of neighbor and the moral code enshrined in the Ten Commandments. Gradually awareness is growing that it is possible for Christians and Muslims to have meaningful moral debates in public life and to push each other to better articulations of the common good.

This I know. The questions that began the moment the towers were hit are still among us, though we've forgotten in some ways that the discussion needs answers.