Peacebuilding is every Catholic’s responsibility, this international relations expert believes. And with our government continuing in a wrong direction, we have our hands full.

Maryann Cusimano Love knew that it was only a matter of time before terrorists would hit the United States, but it was a dead car battery that kept her out of harm’s way on September 11. An expert in international relations who had advised both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Love was supposed to be teaching a class on terrorism in the wing of the Pentagon that was hit. All of her students survived, and one briefed the president that night.

“It was so frustrating to be right and to be just questioning, ‘What could I have done differently?’ ” Love says. Her pre-9/11 warnings were left unheeded as the Bush administration focused on threats from other countries. Despite her frustration, her military students encouraged her to keep speaking out on terrorism. “That was the only class we missed. We were back even with the smell of smoke.”

Since 2001 Love has had three children, written four best-selling children’s books, and continued to teach about terrorism at the Catholic University of America and the Pentagon. She serves the U.S. Catholic bishops’ International Justice and Peace Committee and the steering committee for the Catholic Peacebuilding Network.

“There are times as experts when you don’t like to be right, and that was one of those days,” Love says of September 11. “But it was also one of those days when you roll up your sleeves and say: We can do better than this.”

How can Catholics best commemorate the anniversary of September 11 and make sense of the last 10 years?

The Bible verse that’s most telling to me is “The Lord has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7), and I think we really need to approach the anniversary with that in mind.

We are followers of the Prince of Peace. Our God is not a God of fear. What does it mean to be followers of the Prince of Peace after 10 years of the War on Terror? Can we imagine a different future, one that is not perpetual warfare?

And if we believe that the killing of innocents on September 11 was wrong, then we need to be doing more to protect civilians and noncombatants around the world—not just in New York City and Washington but also in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are our actions making them—and not just us—safer? We’re all part of the same family.

Are our actions at least making us safer?

People think that, because we’ve spent a whole lot of money since September 11, we are safer. The dirty secret is that most spending on the War on Terror has had nothing to do with combating terrorism. A lot of defense contractors have gotten very rich off our fear and have not made us one iota safer, while a lot of the programs that actually could and do make us safer are struggling for financial and political support.

Sometimes the simple things are the most effective ways to make us safe. Updating our roads and bridges, improving air traffic safety, and protecting our food supply and public health systems protect us against an array of everyday threats and from terrorists exploiting our civilian infrastructure.

Instead we’re spending billions on a Cold War military architecture, like aircraft carriers and the latest fighter jets for the Air Force, when Al Qaeda doesn’t have an air force. There’s a real mismatch between our values and what we’re doing to combat terrorism, and also a mismatch between what we’re doing and what actually works.

What works in fighting terrorism then?

The good news is that terrorists have never defeated a democratic state. Terrorism doesn’t win. It is, by definition, a desperate attempt by a minority group that does not have mass public support. Al Qaeda isn’t organizing mass social movements in central squares in Egypt and Jordan because they don’t have that kind of support.

Al Qaeda is of great concern to the United States, but groups that deliberately target noncombatants have been around since at least the 1700s. When terrorist groups have been defeated, it’s been by slow, long-term pressure, using law enforcement and intelligence, and addressing the larger-scale grievances that give greater sympathy and support to the cause.

The good news is that there’s a lot that works to combat terrorism. The bad news is that a good deal of what we’re doing now—military force—is what doesn’t work.

Can we win the War on Terror?

Terrorism will never be zeroed out. It is like crime. You will never get rid of murder, but you shouldn’t stop trying.

It will never be zeroed out in part because the stronger U.S. military forces are, the less likely a potential enemy will take us on militarily. This is Strategy 101: Go for your opponent’s weakest point. Our military is very strong, so enemies will attack our weak, unprotected civilian infrastructure.

Our future is in some ways that of Israel or of European states who know that the opportunity for terrorist attacks is always with you and that you need to minimize the risk. You have to protect your largest targets, your critical infrastructure, and use old-fashioned law enforcement and intelligence techniques to prevent terrorist attacks before they occur.

It’s wrong to assume that because we have killed Osama bin Laden this whole nightmare is going to be over. But the upside of acknowledging that there is no risk-free future—that we face risk every day, much more so from dying in a car accident than in a terrorist attack—is that it can help us remember our reliance on God and our connections to each other.

How have we fought the current War on Terror from an ethical point of view?

In 2001 you could find reasons to argue that invading Afghanistan was a just war in terms of self-defense, last resort, and probability of success. Although we were not struck by the government of Afghanistan, it was aiding and abetting those who did. We had taken other measures to try to rein in Al Qaeda and arrest Osama bin Laden.

But the question is: Do any of those criteria still apply today? Certainly last resort doesn’t anymore. We have many other means now. The government in Afghanistan is not supporting Al Qaeda or the Taliban. The war has assumed a logic of its own that is outliving the original justifications.

Invading Iraq was presented as being a part of the War on Terror, but it had nothing to do with it. The CIA’s own testimony to Congress said there was no Al Qaeda presence in Iraq prior to the U.S. military invasion. In fact, it was the U.S. military invasion that created Al Qaeda in Iraq.

That’s one of the things I was talking about as the wrong thing to be doing: The war in Iraq created a greater source of support and a basis of operations for Al Qaeda. Let’s not do that, and instead let’s do what works.

Why do you think the pope’s condemnation of the war in Iraq wasn’t considered?

I think we have a faith formation issue within our church. Catholics understand very clearly the church’s position on abortion or premarital sex, but they don’t understand what it teaches on war and peace. We have to ask ourselves how good a job we are doing of educating our youth and our adults.

Why is what the popes and bishops had to say about the war news to people? Why aren’t they hearing it from the pulpits and discussing it in their parishes?

Sometimes it seems to be a matter of what pastors feel comfortable speaking on. It’s easier to speak out about protection of babies. Who doesn’t like babies? It’s harder to speak out on the protection of people who are different from us and live in other countries, to say that they have just as much fundamental dignity as we do and that not all methods of protecting ourselves are equal. Some don’t work, and some are not morally permissible.

Coming to this realization requires that our religious educators, including clergy, and all Catholics do more soul-searching about how our faith plays out in daily life.

What would you like Catholics to know about Catholic teachings on war and peace?

More than 25 years ago the U.S. bishops published their peace pastoral, The Challenge of Peace, in which they said peacebuilding is everyone’s responsibility—as a church, in our schools, as individuals. It’s not just something for governments to do.

The pastoral was narrowly focused on nuclear weapons in the Cold War, and the bishops were criticized: “This is too idealistic. We’ll never see a world where the countries willingly give up nuclear weapons, or where there won’t be a rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.”

Well, the bishops were prescient. Everything they said came true. Now the rest of the world has been catching up. The United Nations has created a new Peacebuilding Commission. The U.S. Department of Defense states that we need to do more to build peace at the individual and grassroots level. We don’t realize how much our own tradition has to offer to the current debate.

That nonviolent resistance can be very effective is something most Catholics don’t understand, but we’ve seen it in Egypt and Tunisia. Sometimes it takes an outside example to help us draw on our own tradition.