AmericanPapist Comments
You're going to think I'm some kind of sad sack nitpicker for not even commenting on the content of your post. So I apologize in advance, but . . . "preempt" is a single word with no hyphen. I have a little bugaboo about this particular word as I see it transcribed incorrectly so frequently that most people seem to have assumed the hyphen is correct. Okay. That's my proofreader's 2 cents for today.
If we really want to have a thorough assessment, then we must also admit that the whole idea of a "pre-emptive" strike is misleading (with or without hyphens).
If the United States were to go and pre-emptively bomb a country like Switzerland, on the chance that they might some day present a theoretical threat to us, that would be wrong. But Iraq and Iran are not Switzerland, and the threat presented by them was not and is not theoretical. Iraq made credible and substantial threats against the safety of the world, not merely the U.S., and they took substantive aggressive and provocative steps toward accomplishing those threats. Iran likewise has made numerous threats about destroying the U.S. and Israel and has now taken substantive aggressive and provocative steps to acquire nuclear weapons, in addition to providing assistance to various terrorist groups around the world. In short, Iran is already at war with the U.S., just as Saddam was already at war with the U.S. when that conflict began.
To attack Iraq or Iran now is in no real sense of the word pre-emptive. On either an individual level or a national level, you do not have to wait for someone to shoot you in the head before you are morally entitled to defend yourself.
If you someone has threatened to kill you, and you see that person pick up a gun and some ammunition, load that gun with bullets, point that gun at you and take aim, you do not have to wait for them to pull the trigger to engage in self-defense. Well, Iran has threatened the U.S., Israel, and all of the non-Muslim world. Iran has picked up a gun and ammunition. Iran is now in the process of loading that gun. We do not have to wait for me and Thomas to see a bright flash in our windows, as downtown D.C. is destroyed in a nuclear blast, before we take action. Indeed, to sit idly by while aggressors seek to kill us would be the immoral thing. To stop them now would not at all be pre-emptive.
The last principle of Just War Doctrine states that the decision to use armed force should be delayed whenever possible until every reasonable peaceful means for settling the dispute have been exhausted. My understanding of preemption is that the threat actually has to be imminent for it to be justified. Estimates from the intelligence community suggests that Iran's nuclear program wouldn't be able to build a nuclear bomb until at least 2010 and possibly 2015. The threat is hardly imminent.
Regardless, I read in the Oct. 1 Newsweek that an official says there are no war preparations taking place. According to this source, we're merely threatening war to get Iran to cave to ending its nuclear program. Now this informant could be engaged in subterfuge, but what the person says makes sense given that we absolutely lack the troop strength to conduct a war, unless we continue to remain stupid and use low-yield nuclear weapons. Also, given the unpopularity of the Iraq war, Bush would get himself impeached conducting a war Congress would never approve of. It's disappointing the administration has someone as smart as Condi Rice (and Powell before her) running the State Department and we can't figure out how to turn the Iranian government's dysfunctions against it both domestically and internationally. She's doing the best she can, along with SecDef Gates, but Cheney still has too much sway with the President. So while I don't think we have the capability to actually conduct another war, nothing would surprise me with the cowboys in the White House, and also keep an eye on Israel as they might take matters into their own hand (see the Syria incident) and drag us into conflict.
The trouble with alot of Catholic voices on the Just War Theory is...they don't know the theory or the history.
Take for example, the Christian victory at LePanto celebrated on Sept.15th every year. The combined fleets of Christian Europe - including the Papal States set sail and converged on the Turkish fleet in their sheltered harbor of LePanto. It was THEIR Pearl Harbor. LePanto is off the coast of Greece, not off the coast of Rome. It was an OFFENSIVE campaign set in motion a year before to PRE-EMPT a Turkish invasion: to sink their fleet before it was ready to sail...
Take the battle of the Seige of Vienna in the 1600's. That was the combined armies of Europe, especially Poland leaving their lands to go and rescue Vienna from the Turks. Most of the soldiers were NOT fighting an immediate defense of their homelands, but were fighting for fellow Christians.
Take the actions of the Polish division in WW2 praised by John Paul II for their sacrifices at the battle of Monte Casino: he praised their defense of the homeland, even though they were on the offense against Germans in Italy 1000 miles from Poland.
So the "imminent" threat people talk about is not all that it's cracked up to be. In fact Bush argued repeatedly that it was NOT imminent, that waiting until the threat was imminent would be TOO late to act.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that in 2002, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and North Korea were the powers most supportive of the types of proxy 'delievery service jihadi suicide bombers' that were used on 9/11 to attack us.
It wasn't the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that sent the 19 to attack us... they were Saudi nationals, but not acting on behalf of the country or kingdom. So attacking SA would have been immoral as the Kingdom did not send terrorists to attack us. But Al Qaeda in Afghanistan did. And this same group had contacts with Iran, Iraq, Syria, and North Korea.
So following the shock of 9/11/01, we had to re-think what threats were and how to best respond to them to preserve the "tranquilitas Ordinis".
Ignoring attacks or trying a few terrorists in civil courts in long drawn out cases was tried in the 1990s and resulted in ever greater attacks. Hoping for the best is not a strategy.
If the goal in the GWOT was to rid the world of regimes who used terrorists as a means of proxy war (as it was) then taking down all those regimes one at a time would take time.
North Korea never signed a peace treated ending the Korean war...so technically they're still at war with us. Now maybe we haven't acted like that, but they HAVE.
Iran since the time of their seizing our embassy has done repeated acts of war against us - and officially has called for "death to America" since the 1980s. Iraq in 2002 had been violating the terms of the 1991 armistice ending the Gulf War by shooting at our planes routinely during the 1990s (flying UN mandated missions) as well as their refusal to disarm
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