The West at War

Edited by Bradley C. S. Watson

Not available to order

Publication date:

17 August 2006

Length of book:

234 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739162422

In The West at War, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together renowned scholars and public policy experts to reflect on perhaps the most pressing problem of our time—the West's increasingly bloody conflict with forces that seek nothing less than its destruction. In eleven provocative chapters, contributors deal with the internal challenges and external conflicts facing Western civilization in the context of the 'war on terror.' Ranging from the nature of Islam and the West, to ethics and terror, to the western way of warfare, the volume deals thematically with major issues raised by this conflict in a way that no other single-volume does. Contributors bring to bear arguments on the philosophic, political, religious, ethical, and policy dimensions of the war. As the title of the book suggests, this conflict implicates all of Western civilization, demonstrating that this not merely an 'American' concern.

Chapter 1 A Stomach for this Fight? Terrorism and the Western Way of Life and Thought
Chapter 2 Islam and the West
Chapter 3 A Failure of Imagination: Thinking About Culture, Tradition and Society After 9/11
Chapter 4 Understanding Radical Islam
Chapter 5 Understanding Jihadist Terrorism After 9/11
Chapter 6 Western Identities Versus Islamist Terrorism: Liberals and Christians in the New War
Chapter 7 The Liberal Regime Under Attack
Chapter 8 The Rise of Toleration in the West and Its Implications for the War on Terror
Chapter 9 Ethics and Terror
Chapter 10 The Christian Just-War Tradition: Neither Niebuhr nor Yoder
Chapter 11 Ethics and Terror: A Moral Vocabulary for Statesmen
Chapter 12 What Doth It Profit a Man?: Preserving Liberty and the Rule of Law in the War on Terror
Chapter 13 The Western Way of Warfare
Chapter 14 The War on Terrorism and the Western Way of War
Chapter 15 Media Bias in Iraq: The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Americans

Bradley C. S. Watson, a political science professor at St. Vincent's College, has skillfully assembled eleven essays that examine the current struggle with Islamic jihad from a philosophical perspective too often lacking other studies. Correctly viewing jihad as an attack on the West and all it stands for, these essays approach the struggle by trying to define the nature of the enemy and the nature of the West, and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of both....