By Maryann Cusimano Love

Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, was a brilliant, blue-sky morning in Washington, D.C. I set out to teach class in the Pentagon, as I did every week. Our Catholic University politics class that semester was about terrorism and non-state actors. My students were military and government officials in our politics off-campus graduate program in international affairs. A dead car battery kept me out of harm’s way that morning. My students were not so lucky. Our class studying terrorism found itself under terrorist attack.

I prayed and scrambled to reach my students, but phone and email connections were down.

Over the next hours and days my students checked in, one by one. Miraculously, although they lost colleagues, they themselves escaped, saved by the position of a water cooler or desk or some other unexpected protection. After emerging from the burning building, many of them turned around and went back to help others. Nathan Freier, a veteran, helped the first responders, then began planning the U.S. response. Chaplain Col. David Colwell blessed human remains as any were recovered and offered pastoral support to grieving families. Lt. Col. William Zemp briefed President George W. Bush.

Their actions represented a pattern of selfless service to be repeated in the days that followed. Themselves the victims of terrorist attacks, they were now charged with carrying out the U.S. war against terror.

I asked if we should cancel our class as the students were now at war, but they disagreed, noting they needed this information on terrorism now more than ever. So despite the pressing tasks to be completed before deployment, Sept. 11 was our only class that was interrupted. Greg Brady, now General Brady, missed class to attend the funerals of his colleagues.

Department of Defense civilian Brad Millick (who subsequently earned his Ph.D. in Politics at Catholic University), was determined to return to his fire-damaged and barricaded office to retrieve his copy of my book Beyond Sovereignty that he left behind on his desk when he evacuated. I told him I’d get him a new book, but he was insistent. He snuck behind the barricades and returned to his office. His smoke- and water-damaged copy of the book was on the conference table every week, a reminder of resilience.

We continued to meet on the site where 189 people had died, walking past the emergency vehicles (modified golf carts) that lined the hallways outside our classroom, holding stretchers and body bags ready for the next attack. Crayon drawings lined the walls from grade school children all over the country: “Our hearts are with you. Hope you find your friends. You are in our prayers.” 

Our meetings became a safe haven not only to assess the wisdom of various policy responses without worry of what others might say, but also to vent and process the events. Some students expressed that although they were veterans with combat experience, this attack shook them up more than the war zones they had served in, because this was supposed to be a safe assignment. They had to transition from a combat stance by day, to playing with their kids at night.

You might expect these military men would be first in line calling for the use of force. You would be wrong. Like General Colin Powell, then-secretary of state, they argued that combating terror should have only a limited military component. He noted that military response is a “blunt instrument” that should be “kept to a minimum.” Instead, effective counter-terror tools were political, diplomatic, legal, and financial. Countering al Qaeda was not a war against Islam, yet inevitable, unintended civilian casualties would make it seem that way.

The soldiers in our class voiced similar, realistic and prescient concerns. Starting a war would be easy, but accomplishing lasting good by the use of force in the region would be hard. Military attacks would “rearrange the rubble” in Afghanistan, already impoverished and reeling from a decade of civil war and the prior Soviet invasion. Yet protracted war would unleash further cycles of violence and retribution.

Officials who had long advocated for re-invading Iraq lost no time in tying their case to the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S. was attacked by a non-state group of terrorists primarily from Saudi Arabia. The U.S. responded by invading two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. The CIA and intelligence community found no connection between Saddam Hussein and either al Qaeda or the Sept. 11 attacks. Many career military spoke out against the invasion, such as Gen. Anthony Zinni and Lt. Gen. Gregory Neuboldt. Yet on Oct. 7, 2001, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began, followed by the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

I serve as a lay consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Holy See. After 9/11, many officials urged setting aside just-war moral and legal constraints in war against terrorists. St. John Paul II and the U.S. Catholic Bishops disagreed, urging us to retain just-war limits, while working to build a just peace, even against adversaries who so blatantly violated these norms.

In their letter “Living With Faith and Hope After 9/11,” the bishops noted the costs of military action on civilians, the inadequacy of a military response to addressing the root causes of terrorism, the need to abide by just-war limits, while working to create more sustainable just peace. St. John Paul II urged President Bush not to invade Iraq but to pursue a just peace. The U.S. invasion would destabilize the entire region, cause worse bloodshed, and endanger minority communities. Unfortunately, all these sober warnings came to pass.

"Starting a war would be easy, but accomplishing lasting good by the use of force in the region would be hard."

When military and religious leaders agree about the limitations of military force and the importance of retaining just-war constraints while building more sustainable just peace using non-military means, we ought to notice.

I recount this story not to say, “We told you so,” but to point out that it’s never too late to do the right thing. Peace is breaking out around the world today, in places where conflict has reigned for decades — such as Ireland and Colombia. A just-peace approach is slowly ending these previously intractable conflicts.

After 9/11, when terrorists sought to weaponize religion, the Catholic Peacebuilding Network was founded to help strengthen the peacebuilding capacity of religious actors in war zones. Catholic University, the Holy See, and the USCCB have collaborated in this work. I’ve spent these years documenting the ways religious actors work to build just peace in war zones around the world, and I’ve been working to help the U.S. government better understand religious actors and factors in world politics.

All wars end. Whether they end well, with a sustainable just peace, or badly, in continued cycles of violence, depends on engaging in just peacebuilding. The principles of just peace recognize the sacred dignity of all people, even those who have blood on their hands. No one is beyond redemption, beyond engagement. Just peace requires the participation of all — including women, youth, and religious actors — in creating right, respectful relationships. Reconciliation and restoration of the human beings and communities — not just roads and bridges — are key to creating a sustainable peace.

This is not “pie in the sky” theology, but practical guidance for transforming war-torn communities, with a track record of success. The number of wars around the world has drastically declined from the early 1990s to today, even while the global population and numbers of countries have increased. Peacebuilding works.

Our students worked hard to build peace. Lt. Col. Zemp promoted respect for and cooperation with the local communities among his troops, minimizing civilian casualties, earning the Bronze Star and Purple Heart and implementing peacebuilding partnerships with local populations. In a deadly area of Iraq known as the “Triangle of Death,” he worked with civilians, NGOs, and military authorities to bring together tribal leaders to a reconciliation conference. As Zemp described it, the peacebuilding work of civilians was transformative. “They’re necessary to any success that can happen in any of these conflict areas… In the end, the impact that it had on the Iraqi population was substantial. We went from it not being uncommon for people within the urban areas to be beheaded, for mass gravesites to be discovered … to actually open markets, and bringing commerce in from the villages surrounding.”

Chaplain Col. Colwell worked to expand the ministry of military chaplains to also include peacebuilding and interfaith dialogue with faith leaders in conflict areas. In Afghanistan, Colwell practiced interfaith dialogue, including an innovative program in which the Jordanian and U.S. military partnered to identify key Afghan community leaders, including former Taliban, and helped them to make the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca and interact with Islamic leaders outside of Afghanistan. For these Afghans, it was pivotal. Experiencing learned views of Islam helped them to move away from the manipulations of their faith offered by the Taliban.

Everywhere these just-peacebuilding tools have been used, they have improved conditions for war-torn communities. Everywhere these tools have been ignored or underutilized, they still remain available to us. U.S. troops have left Afghanistan after 20 years of war. But U.S. citizens and the Church, including Catholic Relief Services and Jesuit Refugee Services, work to build peace in Afghanistan. Religious actors work on long time lines. We accompany war-torn communities in the work of expanding peace.

Inclusion and participation, right relationships, reconciliation, restoration for sustainable peace — it is never too late to do the right thing.

Dr. Maryann Cusimano Love is associate professor, politics. She serves on the Vatican’s COVID-19 Commission, the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ International Justice and Peace Committee, and the Advisory Board of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network.