JUST WAR AGAINST TERROR:

Jean Bethke Elshtain debated Clyde Prestowitz on C-Span Book TV, June 16, 2002.
The Burden of American Power in a Violent World
Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain
Publisher: Basic Books
March 2003

>From the Publisher

Inspired by the events of September 11, one of America's foremost political philosophers mounts an impassioned defense of "just war" against terror. Jean Bethke Elshtain has been hailed as one of this country's most influential public intellectuals. Michael Walzer called her award-winning Democracy on Trial "the work of a truly independent, deeply serious, politically engaged, and wonderfully provocative political theorist." These rare qualities are once again vividly in force in Just War Against Terror. In this hard-hitting book, Elshtain advocates "just war" in times of crisis and mounts a reasoned attack against the defenses of terrorism that have abounded since September 11. Arguing that those who defend terrorist acts on the basis of their "root causes"-poverty, political conflict, infringement of Western values on Islamic culture-minimize the responsibility of terrorists, Elshtain interrogates the sources of root-cause reasoning and traces them to a fundamental misunderstanding of the Judeo-Christian ethic of war and peace, compounded by "faux-pacifist" positions and retro-sixties cultural romance. Why, she asks, are pacifist alternatives so palpably inadequate? So implausible? often so irresponsible? How indeed does one respond to acts of terror that constitute an act of war perpetrated against one's own citizenry? Advocating an ethic of responsibility, Elshtain forces us to ask tough questions not only about the nature of Islam but also about ourselves.

Elegantly written and forcefully argued, Just War Against Terror offers a badly needed and refreshingly clear look at responses to terror in the modern world.

Author Biography: Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago. A former contributing editor of The New Republic, she is the author of more than 400 essays in scholarly journals and journals of civic opinion, as well as of some 175 book reviews. Among her books are Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy, Women and War, and Democracy on Trial, all of them published by Basic Books. She lives in Chicago and Nashville, Tennessee.