Secrecy, citizenship and war

With all the debates over secrecy and false claims about war, these comments from the Trappist monk Thomas Merton seem relevant, 42 years after they were first written. From Breakthrough to Peace (1962):

Moral decisions have to be based on adequate knowledge. The scientist must tell us something reliable about the behavior of bombs and missiles. The political commentator must keep us in touch with the development of strategy and with the plans that are being made for our defense or for our destruction. He must tell us what underlies the fair assurances we read in the mass media or hear in the speeches of the statesman and publicist . We must be informed of what goes on in the rest of the world, what is hoped an feared by our opposite numbers in the land of "the enemy." We must try to remember that the enemy is as human as we are, and not an animal or devil.

Finally, we must be reminded of the way we ourselves tend to operate, the significance of the secret forces that rise up within us and dictate fatal decisions. We must learn to distinguish the free voice of conscience from the irrational compulsions of prejudice and hate. we must be reminded of objective moral standards, and of the wisdom which goes into every judment, every choice, every political act that deserves to be called civilized. We cannot think this way unless we shake off our passive irresponsiblity, renounce our fatalistic submission to economic and social forces, and give up the unquestioning belief in machines and processes which characterizes the mass mind. History is ours to make: now above all we must ry to recover our freedom, our moral autonomy, our capacity to control the forces that make for life and death in our society.