[this 3 part blog entry contains a summary of a band of US intellectuals arguing for the Just War cause, a series of responses from German Intellectuals, and a series from Saudi Intellectuals]

A very interesting tit for tat exchange between intellectuals on both sides of the Pond has been heating up.   The Washington Post has this article describing the censoring of an English language Saudi daily newspaper for publishing the latest round of the debate

Saudi Arabian censors banned yesterday's editions of the London-based newspaper al Hayat because it printed an open letter from 67 American intellectuals defending the U.S. campaign against terrorism and calling on Saudi intellectuals to denounce "militant jihadism" as un-Islamic.

... "The Saudi government doesn't like this debate, particularly because the people who wrote the Saudi response are mostly Wahhabi conservatives and fundamentalists," said Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Saudi Institute, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that promotes democracy and civil society in Saudi Arabia. "They don't want the dialogue, and I think the reason is they don't want nongovernment elements to have a voice internationally."

American Values.org has the most comprehensive compendium I could find of the entire debate.  Below is my (VERY BIASED) summary of the exchanges.  THIS is a perfect example of what intellectuals can/should do to really make a difference (and how wannabe's like myself can sit by and fan the flames  ;-) .

LETTER 1 -- US to WORLD

The first round of letters from the Americans can be found here.   It's authored/signed by a series of US intellectual heavyweights such as Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington.  A choice quote describing the "Values" landscape:

...our attackers despise not just our government, but our overall society, our entire way of living. Fundamentally, their [Al Qaeda's]grievance concerns not only what our leaders do, but also who we are.

The authors directly address the question of universalism & values and enumerate a series of core "values" that transcend culture, race, etc. (for ex., freedom of religion, speech, scientific inquiry, etc.).   The heart of the matter, of course, is are we faced with a case of Just War? The authors are specifically writing about Afghanistan although the arguments are also applied to the general War on Terror.

Yet reason and careful moral reflection also teach us that there are times when the first and most important reply to evil is to stop it. There are times when waging war is not only morally permitted, but morally necessary, as a response to calamitous acts of violence, hatred, and injustice. This is one of those times.

...Wars may not legitimately be fought against dangers that are small, questionable, or of uncertain consequence, or against dangers that might plausibly be mitigated solely through negotiation, appeals to reason, persuasion from third parties, or other nonviolent means. But if the danger to innocent life is real and certain, and especially if the aggressor is motivated by implacable hostility - if the end he seeks is not your willingness to negotiate or comply, but rather your destruction - then a resort to proportionate force is morally justified.

The authors make a preemptive jab against the Post Modernists:

...To be sure, some people, often in the name of realism, insist that war is essentially a realm of self-interest and necessity, making most attempts at moral analysis irrelevant. We disagree. Moral inarticulacy in the face of war is itself a moral stance - one that rejects the possibility of reason, accepts normlessness in international affairs, and capitulates to cynicism.

With this ball rolling, several rounds of formal responses and rebuttals were issued from Germany and Saudi Arabia.   To keep article length manageable, I'll split the summaries into 2 separate articles -- the German responses and the Saudi responses.

---