Opponents, Enemies, and Courage
By: Matthew Cook

In an article entitled, “Reading between the Lines and Other Thoughts,” authors claim that the study of language is a “deadly serious topic.” We use language to make sense of the world around us. Essential for survival is our safety and security. When we sense danger, we feel threatened. “How and why we perceive the threats around us the way we do determines how we respond to those threats.” All aspects of the conceptual process—thinking, feeling, and speaking—involve language. Therefore, the importance of semantics, which concerns the meaning of words and language, should not be underestimated. One of the authors’ main points is that our safety and security depend upon understanding the distinction between two critical concepts: opponent and enemy (http://sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com/2007/01/31). The logical next step is that safety and security depend upon our courage to act once we recognize the difference.

The authors define an opponent as “someone like ourselves, with whom we have a disagreement or who might have offended us personally.” The dictionary defines an opponent as a person who is on an opposing side in a game, contest, controversy, or the like; an adversary. An enemy is defined as “someone with whom we, as individuals and as a community, have fundamental differences. An enemy has values and beliefs that are very different than our own. An enemy wants to deprive us of our beliefs and values, because that enemy finds our beliefs repulsive or threatening to their own.” According to the dictionary, an enemy is a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another. Note two key phrases here: “deprives us of our beliefs and values” and “fosters harmful designs”

Consider the athletic arena. Opposing teams face off for a water polo game. Both teams are highly competitive. Both are determined to win. The score is tied. A player on one team carefully rams his foot into the groin of a swimmer on the opposing team but claims it was an “accident.” The victim is not just offended, he is injured. Such sabotage in sporting events happens all the time. Everyone knows the act was intentional. The player’s injury costs his team the game. Despite the vicious attack, the players remain opponents, not enemies. The aggressor likely does not hate his victim. It was a high stakes game that the aggressor wanted to win, and he acted impulsively. As a cheat and saboteur, he might be reprimanded or expelled from the team. Still, it is only a game. The possibility remains that the aggressor might eventually apologize, the victim might forgive him, and they might one day be friends.

Now consider terrorism and the world arena. Recall two defining characteristics of enemies. Enemies want to “deprive us of our beliefs and values” and they “foster harmful designs.” Are terrorists our enemies? Sadly, not all people are convinced. Many believe that “enemy” is too strong a word. They would prefer that we take a more “mature” position and engage terrorists as opponents with whom we can reason in order to find common ground. Is there any doubt that terrorists breed hatred, embrace violence and racism, are determined to deny people free will, and vow to murder all who disagree with them? Such attitudes and behavior do not exactly facilitate rational dialogue. The authors assert that some don’t want enemies because enemies require from them a commitment that they don’t want to make. These are the voices recommending appeasement. But history has proven that appeasement does not work. “Those enemies that declare war on us must be beaten. They must be forever vanquished, so their evil will not find even a moment’s repose, to collect itself, rest and fight another day. Fighting an enemy is a long and dirty business.”

…many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of not being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind.
…The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever. Facing such a danger, with such historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and apparently of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

…A decline in courage [. . .] may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

The above excerpts are from Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Commencement Address, Thursday, June 8, 1978. He delivered it long before madmen flew two jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Flight 93 was downed in the Pennsylvania countryside, and thousands of other diabolical, barbaric acts of terror were launched against the civilized world. What would Solzhenitsyn say about courage in the West today? I shudder at the thought. I might even feel desperate were it not for reminders by heroes like retired Chief Petty Officer and award winning novelist, Jeff Edwards:
Our Service members are not blind or stupid. They know what they're risking. They know what they're sacrificing. They've weighed their wants, their needs, and their personal safety against the needs of their nation, and made the decision to serve.
Thank heavens our military understands the difference between an opponent and an enemy. And may God bless them for having the courage to act.