There are a lot of pacifists and anti-war folks who are very nasty—especially on the Internet.
The nastiest people are on the so-called patriotic right, who will attack and villify all who (in their mind) do not "support the troops". And what does this mean anyway? If it means we should support those who are fighting an unjust war, then, no, I do not support them. If it means we want to protect their lives and safety (equally with Iraqis), then yes, I do support them.
But this generic "support the troops" is just nonsense. I find it especially ironic (and soemwhat sick) as a sticker on a gas-guzzling SUV monstrosity.
They attack the troops because the troops dare to put themselves in harm's way for Evil America.
If America is evil, and a soldier is defending it, then said soldier is evil. So goes the misplaced hate/logic.
Of course they never stop to realize that the troops wouldn't be doing what they're doing unless Bush had sent them there. They just sort of gloss that fact over.
I wonder if these people would also attack a police officer for upholding an unpopular law; or attack a secret service agent for protecting an unpopular president.
I support the troops and their mission in Iraq. Much of the left in this country has a hatred and contempt for our military and the people who serve in it that is amply demonstrated each day on leftist blog sites such as Daily Kos and Democratic Underground. Of course, it is not sufficient to simply verbally support the troops. I urge all those who support the troops to take concrete actions such as sending care packages, organizing relief committees to help family members of mobilized troops and ensuring that troops receive employment when they return from abroad.
Tony:
Nice blame shifting. I failed to hear a trace of opprobrium for wishing troops dead, harrassing their families and threatening their kids, but you did do a nice job of changing the subject.
Tony A--there's plenty of nastiness to go around. You'd do better to try to set a good example than insist your opponents are "nastiest."
Tony,
Many on the left had a really hard time concealing for the last few years the fact that they consider anyone's having joined the US military to be proof of stupidity, desperation or bloodlust on the face of it. It's not surprising that they can't keep it in any longer.
Kos spoke for these people well in what he said about the contractors who were burned in Fallujah. They think that about the uniforms, too. But they rarely dare say so directly.
I'm going to be completely honest: if a war is deemed unjust, then in what sense is it right to "support" the troops? I can understand not wishing them harm and praying for their safe return. At the same time, if the war really is unjust, then aren't the troops who willingly participate in it behaving immorally? If not, why not?
It's a distinction I've never been able to wrap my head around. Some help here, please.
James:
If a man is a sinner, in what sense is it right to "hate the sin" and "love the sinner"?
This is (imperfectly) analogous to your question. It's imperfect because our troops are not sinning when they obey orders, nor are they personally committing sinful acts as a general rule (at least by fighting in Iraq). We make a distinction between troops who rightly obey their superiors and fight honorably, and the policy those superiors decide upon. For the same reason, we love our country, but do not fail to criticize her faults.
At the same time, if the war really is unjust, then aren't the troops who willingly participate in it behaving immorally?
If they know the war is unjust, yes. But soldiers following orders are entitled to presume the justice of a war their country gets into, until its injustice is proved to them. (I believe the traditional Catholic moral theologians say that a civilian who volunteers to go fight in a war is obligated to satisfy himself that the war is just before he signs up.)
But as Mr. Shea has pointed out many times, there is a difference between the war which was fought between March 19 and April 9, 2003, and the one which is being fought now. The first had as its goal the deposition of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of Iraqs stores of WMDs. The justice current war (or counter-insurgency, or police action, or whatever you want to call it) requires a separate analysis.
I think it's pretty clear that the current involvement meets at least some of the just war criteria. We are fighting in Iraq to prevent some seriously bad people from inflicting damage on their fellow countrymen (and indirectly, on the wider community of nations) that would be "lasting" and "grave." What's more, it's pretty "certain" that that damage would befall the people of Iraq if we weren't there. There is little question that "all other means" short of physical force "have been shown to be impractical or ineffective" to get the bad guys to stop killing their fellow Iraqis.
What isn't so certain is whether there are "serious prospects of success" or whether "the use of arms" will "produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated." That's a factual question, requiring prudential judgment. I'd like to think that the balance of harms supports our continued presence.
(By the way, that question of the justice of our current involvement, requiring a weighing of the overall harms and benefits, is a different question from the *prudence* of our being there. That requires a weighing of the harms and benefits to *us*. It might turn out that we are fighting in Iraq for a good and noble cause, but one that ultimately does us little or no good.)
There are a lot of pacifists and anti-war folks who are very nasty—especially on the Internet.
That's because they're such strong believers in peace and love.
Mark,
You call it changing the subject, I call it providing balance.
It's also a typical right-wing straw man to say that liberals/ leftists/ Demoracts (whatever the favored term) are anti-military and wish ill of the troops. That's absolute horse manure, even from extremists (that I have little time for) like Kos and Michael Moore. In fact, a great number of the anti-war Democrats actually have military experience, unlike the parade of chicken hawks on the right who are far too willing to risk the lives of others, but not their own.
"the anti-war Left" has its extremes. There are some who, I'll argue, are not really concerned about peace & justice, but are interested in trying to put the U.S. in its place.
For example, how many anti-war protestors took to the streets, pre-2003 Iraq War, demanding Saddam allow UN inspectors access to weapon sites, etc.?
Or going back further in time, how many anti-war types protested the persecution the Vietnamese boat people faced in 1975 and after? Where was the peace & love crowd then?
No, this time Mark is distinguishing "anti-war" left from all others onthe left (I think).
I'm against the Iraq war because it does not meet the Just War criteria but Pat Tillman (along with many unnamed others)is a hero in my book.
My newspaper prints an obituary of every serviceman killed in Iraq and Afganistan every Saturday. I consider it my duty to read each of those obituaries and silently thank each service member for the sacrifice.
Mr. Shea,
Thank you for your explanation. It clarifies some matters, but I'm still befuddled. I can see how troops who arrived in Iraq only after the invasion occurred and who behave honorably and report any dishonorable behavior they encounter and refuse to participate in it would be free from sin. However, I still can't see how soldiers involved in the invasion, if the invasion itself was unjust, could escape sin. They may not have set the policy, but they did assent to it. And even if they carried out their orders in a completely upright fashion, I can't see why their cooperation in injustice wouldn't rise to the level of sin.
Again, forgive my obtuseness. I am trying to figure some things out and the distinction you make is intellectually satisfying, yet it leaves me with many questions on a purely practical level.
Thanks again.
Or going back further in time, how many anti-war types protested the persecution the Vietnamese boat people faced in 1975 and after? Where was the peace & love crowd then?
I believe Joan Baez protested the persecution.
"I believe Joan Baez protested the persecution."
It's unfortunate they did not take to the streets by the tens of thousands like they did during the war. My assumption is some were motivated by fear of being drafted, and their silence of the post-war persecution speaks loudly of their lack of commitment to peace and justice.
I know a priest who worked for many years in the refugee camps in Thailand serving the boat people. There should have been more of us.
You call it changing the subject, I call it providing balance.
Because, you know, this blog is *so* pro-war.
It's also a typical right-wing straw man to say that liberals/ leftists/ Demoracts (whatever the favored term) are anti-military and wish ill of the troops.
And, you know, that would be a really cogent point if I'd said that all Lefties wish ill of the troops. Much like my combox torture apologists would have a point if I said that all conservatives were torture apologists like them.
But do keep avoiding the point, Tony.
dpt,
You got it. Once selective service was off the table, the mass anti-war movement went the way of June snowflakes.
Anybody recall the "American Myrmidon" parody of a Time cover? The one with the troops wearing Totenkopf (Death's Head) patches? I have liberal friends from college who could understand that I *would* object, but did not see that the objection was at all fair. There is a substantial part of the anti-war movement that hates the US military, period, and nothing Tony says about the ones who aren't and accusations of chickenhawkery will make that segment go away.
James,
I think Mark is wrong in his interpretation. A soldier, sailor, marine or airman are all moral agents. The claim that they are merely following orders does not absolve one of cooperation in an immoral act. Before one acts, one is obliged to determine, as far as possible, the morality of the act he is being called to perform.
There was certainly plenty of doubts raised to the morality of the war before it was actually started. As moral agents, members of the armed forces were obliged to determine their conscience accordingly.
Perhaps it reduces their moral culpability for acting according to orders.
I think Mark has pointed this out in other postings, but we effectively "broke" the country---so now we have to do our best to put it in working order. I believe even the Vatican which opposed our going into the country, now says that we must stay. We can argue all day about this, but God bless the men and women and their families who are trying hard to bring security to the people of Iraq.
I think Mark is wrong in his interpretation. A soldier, sailor, marine or airman are all moral agents. The claim that they are merely following orders does not absolve one of cooperation in an immoral act. Before one acts, one is obliged to determine, as far as possible, the morality of the act he is being called to perform.
The moral theology manuals I've looked at all say that a soldier is entitled to presume the justice of a war he is sent to (as opposed to volunteers for), and that he is only required to refuse material cooperation if he *knows* the war to be unjust. (Perhaps an analogy might help: While a hangman may not execute a convict that he *knows* is innocent, he is not obligated to inquire into the evidence and satisfy himself of the condemned man's guilt; in the absence of personal knowledge, he may licitly presume that the court got it right.)
Mark, here's a question for you. Answer only A or B. Just A or B, no long winded explanation. Any answer other than A or B will be interpretted as A.
A: Supporting people in waging unjust war is not evil.
B: Supporting people in waging unjust war is evil.
Skeptical:
You offer a false dichotomy.
I did not offer a false dichotomy. Is slaughtering prisoners evil, yes or no?
I will assume you have not yet read my post asking people like you to stop making excuses for murder. So I will not delete your moronic post. However, I will delete your next moronic attempt to make excuses for grave evil, skeptical. And on the third moronic attempt, I will ban you.
Comprende?
Seamus,
I guess that's fine. I worry that from the tenor of much of the talk on this blog, that the injustice of the war was quite clear from the beginning.
Is that not true?
doubting thomas--you may be interested in this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac...1&
notFound=true
and this:
http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/peace/...ce/
stm31903.htm
"The moral theology manuals I've looked at all say that a soldier is entitled to presume the justice of a war he is sent to (as opposed to volunteers for)..."
I also know a number of soldiers who volunteered for duty in the war zone. This may narrow down the culpability for those who were sent. But what about those who volunteered?
Ed,
This from the Romanian Byzantine Catholic Bishop:
"With moral certainty I say to you it [the war in Iraq] does not meet even the minimal standards of the Catholic just-war theory. Thus, any killing associated with it is unjustified and, in consequence, unequivocally murder," Botean wrote.
"Direct participation in this war is the moral equivalent of direct participation in an abortion," he continued. "For the Catholics in the Eparchy of St. George, I hereby authoritatively state that such direct participation is intrinsically and gravely evil and therefore absolutely forbidden."
For those under his jurisdiction, was it obviously immoral to take part in the war?
Not true, doubting thomas. I (tentatively) supported the war at the start, because I believe the Administration when they repeatedly assured me they knew for absolute certain that Iraq had WMDs. When it became clear they had no such certainty, I changed my mind.
However, as I've also said, I think we have an obligation to help Iraq get on its feet. However the baby was concieved, it's been born and needs care.
But the Romanian Bishop offers absolute moral certainty for his charges. Is this morally binding on any Romanian Byzantine military personel in his diocese?
I'm more confused than ever now. Such is life, I suppose. Thanks for your efforts, though. I appreciate them and will do my best to muddle through all these contradictory statements from various parties as best as I can.
Thanks.
James,
I agree. I think the bottom line is that the individual soldier in such a situation must inform his conscience and act accordingly - even if that means disobeying orders.
Anyone engaging in activities to persecute military families is not a proponent of peace, but a militant ideologue.
I personally do not support the war. Nor do I believe that it can be plausibly presented as being a just war by any means. However, that has not prevented me from publicly praying for those who serve in the military, or from offering words of support to military personnel when I meet them.
As Christians, whether we support the war or believe it to be a great evil, we need to condemn any action of violence committed against the families of those involved in the conflict. Yet we need also to consider our relation to one another in the Body of Christ.
In my experience being Catholic has been the one factor that has transcended race, language, ethnicity, and nationality. However, recently I've been seeing the left/right polarization working at slamming Catholic doors in faces of their Catholic neighbors.
Seamus's 1:20 p.m. post is an impressive one showing a clear grasp of classical just war theory and one way of applying it to Iraq. I'd like to point out that the PRESUMPTIO JURIS aspect of just war teaching (the traditional scholastic insistence that the soldier could presume that his country was fighting in a just war) was considered at Vatican II. There was a deliberate intention to leave out this, however, because many bishops thought that it would be misunderstood after widespread "blind obedience" during World War II. Part of the process that assists governmental officials in a democracy in making prudent decisions about war is an active and engaged public.
doubting thomas:
My Dad asked me to cut the grass today. However, that would inevitably contribute to glaobal warming. Therefore, I must obey my conscience and disaobey my father to avoid complicity in the looming environmental catastrophe.
The ugliest elements in the leftist anti-war constituency are, as a rule, not radical pacifists, but revolutionary socialists and anarchists. And then there are the legions of naughty "boys" engaged in oppositional behavior toward their conservative dads!
"The ugliest elements in the leftist anti-war constituency are, as a rule, not radical pacifists, but revolutionary socialists and anarchists."
I agree...at least what I have seen of a good number in the demonstrations in neighboring San Fran and Berkeley (Bush=Hitler...blah blah blah... Bush=Hitler).
Some of the same bunch showed up at to protest the "Walk for Life" here too.
I agree with Tom: Seamus' 1:20 post is great.
"The ugliest elements in the leftist anti-war constituency are, as a rule, not radical pacifists, but revolutionary socialists and anarchists."
'I agree...at least what I have seen of a good number in the demonstrations in neighboring San Fran and Berkeley (Bush=Hitler...blah blah blah... Bush=Hitler).'
So that's where they all are! Someone must have tipped up the side of the US quadrilateral and they slipped down to one side.
I haven't seen a revolutionary socialist since Gus Hall's palmy days on W. 23rd Street in NYC. At least that's what he said he was.
(Anarchists are probably the reckless idiots who drive that way on the Beltway.)
No kidding! Are they organized? Are they going to overthrow the government? How many votes did they poll in the last two elections? Who were their candidates in 2004?
Having seen what a real Communist Party looks like (and it wasn't Gus Hall's), am I supposed to take this seriously? Leftists meaning whom? Ted Kennedy? Does he have a picture of Joe Staleen in his living room? Does he sing the Internationale in the shower every morning?
I think there might an old Commie in Death Valley, and if so the Dept. of the Interior has probably listed him as a member of an endangered species.
The CPUSA could probably hold a mass meeting in a broom closet.
Such innocence!
My, my! I dreamt I saw Joe Hill last night, but it was only the peppperoni pizza with anxhovies I'd eaten.
Here's a stitch: We're devoted around here to the great Slovenian Catholic missionary Bishop Baraga.
We have a cup in which we drink our tea. On one side of the cup it says:
"One thing is necessary, that we love and serve God well and so make happy our souls. No occupation is more important, namely, tht we serve Our Lord God."
-- Bishop Frederic Baraga
On the other side of the cup is a line drawing portrait of the saintly bishop.
Guess what it says on the bottom of the cup. Yes! Made in China.
I don't know that Tony A's original comment wasn't just. The link went back to a story about a CANADIAN group pulling out of a parade because it felt that it couldn't be part of an event where t-shirts with the slogan "Support the Troops" were sold. A mild-mannered, if overly prissy, attempt to make a moral statement about the war that says more about cultural mores in Canada than anything about the anti-war left as a whole. And a few dozen nutcases on Daily Kos aren't even representative of the left blogosphere, let alone the whole movement.
Communists in the anti-war movement would probably be new left survivors like Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party and the Progressive Labor Party which have infiltrating mass anti-war movements and causing trouble since the late 1960s rather than Depression-era remnants like the CPUSA.
My dad was an adult convert to Catholicism. His extended family contained a number of Communists and even more fellow travelors. One was the famous labor writer, Carl Haessler, who was a conscientious objector during World War I. Since he was not a pacifist (insisting that he would fight when the socialist revolution came to America), he was imprisoned in Alcatraz. He surreptitiously edited a radical newspaper that was edited and printed within the prison and shipped out to the rest of the country. When the warden asked him if he knew who the editor of the paper was, he said "yes". "Who is it?" "I am", he said. [He never mastered Marxist ethics! LOL] So he was demoted from his work in the library to working in the kitchen where he saved the best steaks (which were supposed to be for the warden and his friends) for his radical buddies. My brother Steve wrote a five hundred page thesis on Carl Haessler and the labor press for the University of Wisconsin. Steve is now an Acton Institute type who hob nobs with Fr. Siricio, and is as orthodox as the day is long! {Fr. Siricio himself was a leftie in his youth! LOL] He even tries to refute my spin on the Iraq War using just war categories on his blog PRUDENTIAL JUDGMENT.
I suffered from some cognitive dissonance because I'd been taught in grade school that Communists pushed pornography, but all my Communist relatives were extremely prudish, refusing to laugh at my grampa's slightly off color jokes (really more scatological than obscene). They were really nice to me and could be overheard saying things like "Tom is a really nice young fellow who cares about the poor and the oppressed workers, but his bourgeois religiosity interferes with his reason so he'll never be a communist." LMAO
I visited my Uncle Carl in Detroit when he was ninety-six. He still took his "daily constitutional" - running around the block four times in shorts that looked like men's underwear from the Sear's catalogue! He was a Rhodes scholar who got his degree at Oxford studying Scottish empiricism. He loved John XXIII and was very upset that I greatly admired Thomas Aquinas! At breakfast in the morning he cried when he read about body bags from Vietnam in the New York Slimes. He was very proud of his only daughter who taught in Havana. He died at 106.
Hi, Pavel,
Back in the sixties, the CPUSA held mass meetings in about a hundred telephone booths. Fifty were reserved for the the members who were FBI agents!
The war: This morning we read that 60 people are dead in a car bombing in a market in Baghdad. That was an evil act, committed by evil people, who were not American soldiers. I think that we can all agree on that.
However, as bad as the Saddam regime was, innocent people were not being slaughtered by the dozens in markets in Iraq under his police state.
We, Americans, invaded Iraq, took down Saddam's police state. It is now, therefore, our responsibility to protect the good people of Iraq--the *good* people of Iraq--our brothers and sistes--our neighbors who are Iraqis--from death and dismemberment at the hands of evil people. We are patently, and to our eternal shame, doing a piss-poor job of that. We are failing. We have already failed all the thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, who would not be dead had we not invaded their country. We should come home. Now.
Anybody who was around to witness the "Vietnamization" of the Vietnam war can see where the Iraqiization of this war is headed. Those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it.
"Back in the sixties, the CPUSA held mass meetings in about a hundred telephone booths. Fifty were reserved for the the members who were FBI agents!"
Tom,
Yeah, I know. I doubt that the gov. was too worried about them.
As for the Trots, their political impact would fit into a mosquito's
carpet bag (bawdlerized metaphor). Their agenda is simply too far out of the main stream to matter.
BTW, I was sorry I'd made that joke about Joe Hill. The man had guts. He was a pre-1916 Wobbly.
"My Dad asked me to cut the grass today. However, that would inevitably contribute to glaobal warming. Therefore, I must obey my conscience and disaobey my father to avoid complicity in the looming environmental catastrophe."
Woebegone Kenobi,
Perhaps the level of cooperation between your cutting grass and global warming is rather remote and, theoretical. I suspect a soldier cooperating in a war is quite material and real.
I could be wrong.
Tom,
I suspect you are quite right on Vatican II and following orders. At a minimum, it seems that a faithful catholic soldier, when faced with this situation, would at least evaluate the moral rightness of his acts given the level of debate prior to the war. In the end he might choose to participate based on the legitimate public authority saying there was just reason, but I think this only modifies one's cooperation, not eliminates it.
Thoughts?
Hello, doubting thomas,
The American bishops have been on record for some time now as supporting selective conscientious objection (based, not on pacifism, but on the application of just war principles to a specific war).
I think the presence of discussion WITHIN the military about all aspects of the ethics of modern warfare works as an enhancement of the professionalism and character of our troops and is a factor that prevents the emergence of fascist attitudes. When I taught a dovish type course on the war/peace problematic at Saint Peter's College in the late sixties and early seventies, my strongest supporter was the head of the military science department. We often discussed Ghandi, just war principles, conscientious objection, etc. I had great respect for his integrity. We didn't agree in certain areas, but I always knew I was disagreeing with a higly principled man. And I see now that I was wrong on some points and that he was right.
The "presumption juris" aspect of just war theory developed at a time when most of the soldiers were knights. Because of the medieval concept of loyalty to one's king, there was no sense of the public being involved in public policy discussions. That was the king's job. As more and more of the body politic has access to high school and even higher education, the "presumption of justice" rule seems oddly outdated to me. In new (democratic) circumstances, aren't there new responsibilities of candor and transperancy on the part of government officials about our goals and the real reasons we need to fight a particular war. I know things can get complicated, but isn't there more danger that the reasons for secrecy have to do with the government knowing that, if people knew the whole story, they wouldn't support the war policy?
Tom,
We have disagreed on many things before but on this I believe we agree. I think it is too facile to say support the troops but not the war under the assumption that the troops were lied to or otherwise deceived. I think today's troops - volunteers all - are as a whole better educated and more appropriately questioning then any in history.
I also know this from experience. During the first Gulf War, when there was plenty of talk about that war being unjust, I talked to my confessor about whether I could participate. The bottom line was he deferred to my conscience on the matter.
Where we do disagree on how much secrecy there is, at least as far as the military is concerned. The officers at least, have far more information then the vast majority of Americans. I know one Marine Major who is quite sincere in his faith. He said to me that if people really knew the information that he knew, there would be no doubt about the justness of the war.
I guess we have to disagree about something 
Hello, again, doubting thomas,
You were fortunate to have a confessor that understood that it was not his job to make the application of just war principles.
While I've stated my position on the war before, I hope I won't bore you by stating it succinctly again. I support the troops AND the mission, if the mission is understood as defending the lives of Iraqis unjustly attacked by both Jihadists and nationalists. The nationalists unjustly attacked because the majority of Iraqis (including Sunnis and Kurds) participated in the elections. I also support endeavors to rebuild infrastructure, help with schools, etc., etc. But I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of supporting a government, per se, with the party in power being the Party for Islamic Revolution. Once the Iraqis themselves are able to defend themselves, we should butt out. The grand plan of supporting democracy as opposed to self-interested support of despotic regimes sounds good. But why should we support a process that will almost certainly issue in more Islamist regimes?
Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967). Counter-Attack and Other Poems. 1918.
18. Glory of Women
YOU love us when we’re heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight, 5
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed.
You can’t believe that British troops ‘retire’
When hell’s last horror breaks them, and they run, 10
Trampling the terrible corpses—blind with blood.
O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.
Pavel,
A theme of the film "The Americanization of Emily" is that women are as responsible for militarism (in the pejorative sense) as war mongering men by their uncritical support of their men.
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