Stephen Graham, "What Would Jesus Do About Terrorism?  Christian Realism vs. Christian Pacifism."

Excerpt:  "The Bush doctrine of preemptive war is the President's strategy for dealing with nations which sponsor, support, or harbor terrorists. Many commentators questioned the moral consistency of waging preemptive war against Iraq while other nations like Syria and North Korea, which are more deeply involved in providing aid and comfort to terrorists than Iraq, are apparently immune from military attack by the United States. However, few observers question the rationale for the policy of preemptive war in the first place. In this paper, I propose a twentieth century Christian framework for analyzing and evaluating the moral and spiritual justification for the twentyfirst century doctrine of preemptive war. I construct this twentieth century framework using the work of two preeminent Christian leaders, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), who was known as a Christian realist, and E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973), who was a Christian pacifist.

Reinhold Niebuhr (once he abandoned his early belief in pacifism) is the most persuasive Christian apologist for the Bush strategy of preemptive war. Indeed, the story of Niebuhr's long and agonizing struggle to answer the question, "Is war of any kind ever compatible with the Christian faith?" parallels the struggle of many contemporary Christians to answer the question, "Would Jesus approve of preemptive war to protect the United States from international terrorism?""