Christian Realism and Iraq

Theologian Gary Dorrien of Columbia and Union Seminary (NYC) talks to the Times' Peter Steinfels about Reinhold Niebuhr's "Christian realism" and its insights for Iraq and other foreign-policy dilemmas of today.  According to Dorrien, most relevant today are Niebuhr's

sense that elements of self-interest and pride lurk even in the best of human actions. His recognition that a special synergy of selfishness operates in collectivities like nations. His critique of Americans’ belief in their country’s innocence and exceptionalism — the idea that we are a redeemer nation going abroad never to conquer, only to liberate.

Of course, the same realism also made Niebuhr assert the need to stand up militarily to those whose projects are far worse than America's -- first the Nazis (againet the great weight of mainline clergy opinion before Pearl Harbor) and later the Soviets.  But the willingness to use force even for a relatively just cause will prove disastrous if it's not sobered by the recognitions above.  All of which has so much to do with why the Iraq war was dubious in the first place -- why, for example, it was unlikely to be received and acted on by others as a model action of liberation -- and why the administration officials who pushed hard for it were prone to be cavalier in handling its aftermath.

Tom