Camus and Car Bombs

On the same day that thirty-one students were gunned down at Virginia Tech, at least the same number fell in Baghdad. Days have passed with Virginia Tech at peace, and across the ocean men and women and children are still being kidnapped, shot, and dismembered and burnt by the shrapnel and flames of car bombs.

Yet the latest atrocities in Iraq received minimal media attention, while Virginia Tech made front-page news all over the world. In America, people argue about gun control legislation; meanwhile there is still no coherent strategy or clear long-term goal for America's most significant foreign policy venture of the decade, even after more than four years (or five, if one includes the extensive secret preparations in 2002.)

Yesterday I had a lengthy conversation with a prominent local businessman regarding the motivation of people who set car bombs. He was disgusted, to an extent: "Kill the Iraqi soldiers, fine! Kill the Americans or the Jews, fine! But don't kill innocent people!" (His comment is a reminder that "innocent" can be a weasel word; after all, according to some people I've spoken with, 9/11 victims were contributing economically to the (perceived) international crusade against Islam (cf. any of the al-Qa'ida recruitment tapes) and were therefore legitimate targets.)

But I also had a conversation with a local college student, who sympathized with the bombers. They were in revolt, he said, against an occupation; they were striking a blow for justice. He mentioned the battles of Badr and Yarmouk. When fighting an oppressor one cannot be merciful. (Mercy and turning the other cheek, in the Christian view, is a moral imperative. In Islam, one turns the other cheek only if it is just to do so. And it is never just to bow to a Pharoah or tyrant.)

"What is a rebel? A man who says no."

This latter viewpoint reminds one of what Camus wrote in his L'homme revolte: in a revolution, rebels do not die and kill because they are full of hate. On the contrary, they are inspired by a vision - a vision of justice, of beauty, of a better world just around the corner. Bathed in the light of this vision, convinced of its truth, everything is justified and nothing is forbidden. Saint-Just would not have hesitated to use car bombs against the monarchists. The Russian Communists were similarly driven. It is not that these people were without scruple, but that all scruples paled before the light of the ultimate scruple, the vision of perfection.

This same vision of perfection drove nobles across medieval Europe to abandon their material possessions and "take up the cross" (and their swords) when they heard the heir of the Apostles proclaim: "God wills it!" It is what drove the Turks to drive their gunpowder-laden boats straight into their Russian opponents during the Crimean war. It is what drove Cromwell's followers to turn against even their own family members if they were infidels. It is what led Hegel (and his intellectual descendant Marx) to imagine a utopia at "the end of history." And it is, one might argue, exactly the same combination of fanaticism, romanticism, love, and quixotic desire for perfection that inspires young men from Tetouan to Brussels to Baghdad to plot the mass murder of Iraqi citizens, day after day, week after week.

Camus also argued that the true rebel must never "demand the right to destroy the existence and the freedom of others." I find this viewpoint less convincing (as have most rebels) since the objective of a rebellion is often to replace one master or system of justice or beliefs with another, rather than to establish the kind of total freedom Camus has in mind. Most rebels do not even remain true to the vision of their ideal societies, as these usually do not involve mass murder as a matter of course; the rebel instead "claims for himself the relative freedom necessary" to achieve the unachievable. (Camus praises the Russian anarchists because they felt bad about their murders, which, in theory, would have prevented murder from being acceptable in their ideal future society.) The customary failure of rebels to remain true to their principles partly explains why most rebellions against dictatorship and injustice end in dictatorship and injustice (French, Russian, Iranian, etc.)

For those in Iraq behind this week's car bombings, surely, the promised world of justice will arrive. Until then, many, many more people will have to die.