Chanukah and the War on Terror
In a pointless nod to diversity, our nation’s leaders have taken to issuing official messages before religious holidays, extending warm wishes to those Americans who celebrate that particular day while reflecting on what the holiday “truly” means. Almost as a rule, these statements link the essence of the holiday with the particular political viewpoint of the person publishing the proclamation. This tradition was invoked no more incongruously than by our former President Bush in the wake of September 11th, 2001. That Chanukah, the president said in a press conference following the release of his holiday message, “I couldn’t imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Chanukah.”
The fact that the quote has become an oft-cited “Bushism” aside, it raises a debate-worthy point which the administration, in subsequent years, has sharpened: that the fight of the Maccabees in the Chanukah story against their Seleucid tormentors is analogous to America’s fight with radical Islamist terrorists. In 2001, the president remarked that Chanukah demonstrates the “power of faith” (which, in President Bush’s Red America, never seemed to be lacking) to make “the darkness bright,” and that he trusted that this “Festival of Freedom” will one day be celebrated in a world “free from terror.” Subsequent Bush presidential messages have categorized Chanukah as “a holiday of hope that encourages trust in God’s providence,” a holiday that “teaches us that freedom must sometimes be fought for.” The candles demonstrate that “in the face of darkness, goodness will prevail,” while the Maccabees teach that “we must remain steadfast and courageous as we seek to spread peace and freedom.”
And yet, despite Bush’s repeated assertions, an honest assessment of the history of the Maccabees’ plight reveals that, both tactically and ideologically, the similarities are strongest between them and the Islamist terrorists. The Maccabees were a small guerilla force driven by their devotion to God to combat the largest imperial power of the time, which sought to impose its incongruous Western values on a religious society. Furthermore, the Maccabees were willing to commit suicide to inflict maximal pain upon the enemy (Elazar slew the king’s elephant knowing he would die in the process, I Maccabees 6:43-6:46), did not hesitate to kill Hellenist Jews who they deemed as violators of the faith (2:24), forced others to conform to religious observance (2:46), and willingly slaughtered civilians (9:40).
Bush’s misreading of our historical moment confirms his administration’s failure to understand the true nature of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shallow motifs like “celebrating peace and lightness” obscure the understandable grievances that some might harbor against America. A more honest reading of our situation helps us understand the need to reframe America’s image in the Muslim world, so that our country is associated with freedom and choice, not imperial power and subjugation.
In that interest, I propose a more fitting contemporary analogy to the Maccabees. Following Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the United States supported the efforts of the ragtag mujahedeen to oust the Soviet army. While I am not so naïve as to think America championed the mujahadeen purely to promote Afghani self-determination, the oratory used by our leaders is revealing. In his proclamation of “Afghanistan Day” on March 10, 1982, President Reagan praised the “brave Afghan freedom fighters” that were standing up against “this assault on [the] Muslim religion.”
“The struggle of the Afghan people represents man’s highest aspirations for freedom, [which] is the strongest force in the world,” Reagan declared, as he dedicated the launch of the space shuttle Columbia to “the people of Afghanistan.”
Whether or not it was simply meaningless rhetoric exploited to obscure the fact that we were opposing the Russians wherever they stood, America at the time recognized that, in Afghanistan especially, efforts deemed to be against Islam were fated to face a long and indomitable resistance. Therefore, as a lesson for our times, the United States must stress that unlike the Russians in 1979 and the Greeks two millennia before that, our efforts do not seek to crush religion, but rather to enhance it through diversity of opinion and freedom of observance. Only then will America truly emerge victorious from this war, ba’yamim ha’hem ba’ziman hazeh.
