Stephen Hand posted the following in the comments under the old debate.
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...75991794/
#49328
I took the liberty to post it here, with my response:
Hi Dave ---I placed this URL at TCR Musings. As I am constantly crushed for time, I doubt I'll have much time to check in, but will try from time to time.
As for analogies, they all fall short, clearly, but here's how I constructed it at Musings some weeks ago:
" I Think My Neighbor Has a Cache of Something Aimed at Me---
.....after all, we have fought before and he had them then. I kicked his arse good and made him burn his baseball bats. But I've seen his lights on late at night for too many months now; too many years. I know he's up to something and besides, his house is lying smack on a fertile field which my grandfathers said was rightly ours. He broke into a house next door once, about 15 years ago.
The other day when I circled his house as I do daily since the last fight, he threw rocks at me and my boys. I blew in two of his windows to retaliate. He's always watching me and I'm always watching him. He says I beat my wife but I know he beat his wife and kids. I've seen the welts. I'm going to kill the bastard, and he knows I can do it as others have learned too, get rid of him somehow if the cops don't do it by March, wail into him when he least expects it. Or maybe I'll tell him the exact day. It's all the same. Then his wife and kids can be free, whether they know it or not. Then I can claim what is mine anyway. Then the neighborhood will be safer for everyone, even if they hate me for it. I call the shots around here, not that SOB.
Stephen Hand, editor TCRNews.c | Homepage | 01.14.06 - 1:23 am | #
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As for analogies, they all fall short,clearly
This one is worse that that: I would deny that it is an analogy at all (sorry!).
. . . but here's how I constructed it at Musings some weeks ago:
" I Think My Neighbor Has a Cache of Something Aimed at Me---
The possibility of Saddam having possessed nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction was not a wild guess: it was the consensus of most of the free world's intelligence agencies, and even consensus in doomestic politics at the time (John Kerry and other liberals like him agreed with President Bush). After all, Israel destroyed an Iraqi nuclear facility many years ago (in 1981, I think it was). I have heard from at least two sources that these weapons were moved into Syria shortly before the invasion.
.....after all, we have fought before and he had them then.
Well, then if that was based on eyewitness testimony and hard evidence, then it is nothing to be scoffed at.
I kicked his arse good and made him burn his baseball bats.
Nice try at minimizing and ridiculing very serious concerns. Simply making fun of an opposing position with t
(cont.)
. . . this sort of tactic doesn't accomplish anything that I see.
But I've seen his lights on late at night for too many months now; too many years. I know he's up to something and besides, his house is lying smack on a fertile field which my grandfathers said was rightly ours.
We aren't in Iraq fighting over whether their land is ours or not. That would be far more applicable to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not this.
He broke into a house next door once, about 15 years ago.
And Saddam killed many thousands of his own people . . .
The other day when I circled his house as I do daily since the last fight, he threw rocks at me and my boys. I blew in two of his windows to retaliate. He's always watching me and I'm always watching him. He says I beat my wife but I know he beat his wife and kids. I've seen the welts. I'm going to kill the bastard, and he knows I can do it as others have learned too, get rid of him somehow if the cops don't do it by March, wail into him when he least expects it.
This war isn't about petty conflicts and "kicking someone's butt" for selfish reasons and motivations. This was a madman. He had designs on other countries (as we saw in the Gulf war). He had connections with terrorists (which is undeniable). We went over there to rid the world of that menace and to grant the people freedom. Prior to that Iraqis had to put up with being gassed or having their weddings crashed, and having Saddam's sons rape and kill the bride, etc.
Or maybe I'll tell him the exact day. It's all the same. Then his wife and kids can be free, whether they know it or not.
Another unworthy attempt to ridicule our efforts. We are willing to go and have some of our fine young men and women die so that Iraqis can have the freedom of self-governance and life without being watched by a thug or terrorized by inhuman barbarians who think nothing of life. We're not there to kill Iraqis, but to kill their oppressors: the sort of folks who will blow up a group of children as they were being given candy by US soldiers, or who will strap explosives on themselves and blow up a market.
I think Iraqis have sent a clear message that they want to be free and govern themselves, since they voted at a 70-75% ratio of the voting population: proportionately far more than we do in America.
Then I can claim what is mine anyway.
We are not "claiming" what we purport to be "ours," but rather, we are giving the Iraqi people back what is rightly theirs (freedom and self-determination).
Then the neighborhood will be safer for everyone, even if they hate me for it.
Iraq is clearly a safer place than it was, and (far from hating their liberators) Iraqis are most grateful for that. Now, that doesn't mean they would like a long occupation. I'm for withdrawing as soon as it is feasible, but not until significant risks to what has been achieved have been mi
(cont.)
. . . minimized.
I call the shots around here, not that SOB.
That's right: now the people call the shots: not the SOB and madman/tyrant Saddam Hussein. That makes me proud of the US military, not ashamed of it. Who else goes around fighting for the freedom of others? We fought for the British and French in WWII, for South Koreans and South Vietnamese, and for several Muslim populations in recent conflicts; also for the Muslim Kuwaitis. That's "anti-freedom" or "anti-Muslim"? I don't see how.
Thanks for visiting my blog and for the interaction.
That's why I disagree with your anaology. It ain't personal; it is strictly an ethical-political disagreement.
Well, we'll agree to disagree here. In 1991 or 92 the UN watched Saddam destroy his WMD's per UN mandate (which is why they were not found, nor pointed to bu nIraqi insiders). The rest (which had all been sold to him by the U.S, Holland, etc) had a very short shelf life as the UN weapons inspectors attested. By 2003 whatvery little that was left was useless on the shelfs. We have sensors which can dectect them easily.
Footnote:
See http://www.usatoday.com/news/wor...02-un-
wmd_x.htm
for only one report. There are many more.
The UN Weapons Inspectors wanted more time in 2003, which the Bush Administration would not allow them. Empirical evidence was rejected in favor of "preemptive" war which, as Cardinal Ratzinger said has no place in Catholic Just War theory and is not even in the Catechism.
Moreover, Iraq, was weakened by 10 years of sanctions, surrounded by Arab and other Islamic enemies, had virtually no friends and did not use WMD's against the invading U.S. troops which they surely would have if they had them.
Israel alone could have taken care of Iraq if it had truly possessed WMD's (as the earlier attack on their nuclear plant showed). No one really believed in any constructed scenario that there were intercontinental ballistic missles with range sufficient to carry WMDs across the Atlantic and thus pose a threat to the US.
The so-called "intelligence everyone had" was largely the partial speculations of The U.S. and Britain both of which ignored and supressed abundant intelligence which contradicted that scenario. This is in all very familiar the scholarly literature on the subject. No need to cite chapter and verse.
Last sentence should read:
This is in all the very familiarscholarly literature on the subject. No need to cite chapter and verse.
Richard Butler, chief weapons inspector 2002:
On American and Bristish Hypocrisy with respect to
WMD's
http://christianparty.net/
richar...chardbutler.htm
Bush's Nuclear Hypocrisy:
http://www.commondreams.org/view...s04/0213-
01.htm
Lew Rockwell: War and the Economy, 2003
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/H...0303/
S00041.htm
One could go on endlessly...
Rockwell again, This time on Fr. Neuhaus
Warmongers Who Change Their Minds:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
le...he_b_12032.html
To put a fine point on the last entry...
"As the blood lust of the Bush administration increased, many religious Catholics were getting nervous, since there was no sense in which an attack on Iraq could be reconciled with Just War teaching. It was not a defensive war, not a last-resort war, not a proportionate war, not a war aimed only at the military, and it was not authorized by the competent authority. It was an imperial adventure to satisfy the longings of a lunatic, and it has ended in complete catastrophe, economically and morally.
"Fr. Neuhaus played a very important role in urging people to mute their consciences, ignore the Vatican, and march in lockstep with the Bush administration.
"In 2003, Fr. Neuhaus, who lives and moves within the Bush intellectual camp, was asked about Pope John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraq War. He said "Whether that cause [Just War] can be vindicated without resort to military force, and whether it would be wiser to wait and see what Iraq might do over a period of months or years, are matters of prudential judgment beyond the competence of religious authority."
"In other words, what does the Pope know about war and peace?"
Much, Father Neuhaus, very much...
---Warmongers Who Change Their Minds, The Huffington Post
"Saddam killed many thousands of his own people"---Dave
With weapons we and Holland and others provided him to use on the Iranians. Iran used biological weapons too. It was a war.
Much more from TCR on all the above issues:
http://tcrnews2.com/controversies1.html
It is amazing, if one takes the time to do the studying, to see how many dictators the U.S. propped up all over the world. And not a complaint about how many people they murdered (usually the poor) while they were our "friends" doing our bidding...but then, if the Dictator tried to make his own decisions, apart from Washington, well then Washington exiled or killed or otherwise demonized him. The dictators placed or aided by Washington only had to act on their own apart from washington (regardless for good or for evil) and that was enough for the Masters in Washington to act against them. It was "interests" (not good or evil) that mattered.
We must become more realistic and humble about our country's footprints of greed and imperialism (with all major powers) which is now completely in the open for all who are interested in actually sudying it objectively.
Catholics, by contrast, are universal. We place no nationon earth above God and identify no nation with God's will. All are subject to the criticism of the Gospel. The fact is the poor today want after so many centuries of exploitation their share, and in order for them to have it we must lower our standard of living. This will require metanoia. Today the U.S. is resisting, but it is inevitable.
The Church is on the side of the poor.
"In other words, what does the Pope know about war and peace?"
Much, Father Neuhaus, very much...
This was an incrdibly disingenuous attempt at putting words in Neuhaus' mouth. He did not say that and the Neuhaus quote that the author uses does not even remotely imply it. This is such an offense use it saves me the trouble of having to go through the rest of the data-dump.
Scott, that was a reply to Neuhaus, not putting words into his mouth.
Here is Rockwell's context regarding "religious authority" and the historical context makes it a truism, it seems to me, that Rockwell understood correctly in making the most tragic choice of his Catholic career:
"Fr. Neuhaus played a very important role in urging people to mute their consciences, ignore the Vatican, and march in lockstep with the Bush administration.
In 2003, Fr. Neuhaus, who lives and moves within the Bush intellectual camp, was asked about Pope John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraq War. He said "Whether that cause [Just War] can be vindicated without resort to military force, and whether it would be wiser to wait and see what Iraq might do over a period of months or years, are matters of prudential judgment beyond the competence of religious authority."
In other words, what does the Pope know about war and peace?
But in the same interview, sent out to millions of Catholics the world over, Fr. Neuhaus didn’t apply this standard to himself. He said that war was just and that Catholicism bound us to embrace it."
---Warmongers Who Change Their Minds, The Huffington Post 12.10.05
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
le...he_b_12032.html
This seems a fair interpretation to me.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on definition of the legal indictment CRIME AGAINST PEACE
A CRIME AGAINST PEACE, in international law, consists of starting or waging a war against the territorial integrity, political independence or sovereignty of a state, or in violation of international treaties, agreements or (legally binding) assurances.
No legal authority exists for the definition of the terms "territorial integrity", "political independence" and "sovereignty". However, their face value would seem to disclose the following:
(a) The "territorial integrity" rule means that it is a crime of aggression to use armed force with intent permanently to deprive a state of any part of parts of its territory, not excluding territories for the foreign affairs of which it is responsible;
(b) The "political independence" rule means that it is a crime of aggression to use armed force with intent to deprive a state of the entirety of one or more of the prerequisites of statehood, namely: defined territory, permanent population, constitutionally independent government and the means of conducting relations with other States;
(c) The "sovereignty" rule means that it is a crime of aggression to use armed force with intent to overthrow the government of a state or to impede its freedom to act unhindered, as it sees fit, throughout its jurisdiction.
This definition of the crime of aggression belongs to jus cogens, which is supreme in the hierarchy of international law and, therefore, it cannot be modified by, or give way to, any rule of international law but one of the same rank. An arguable example is any rule imposing a conflicting obligation to prevent, interdict or vindicate crimes which also belong to jus cogens, namely aggression itself, crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, slavery, torture and piracy, so that a war waged consistent with the aim of repressing any of these crimes might not be illegal where the crime comes within the limit of proportionality relative to war and its characteristic effects.
For committing this crime, the Nuremberg Tribunal sentenced a number of persons responsible for starting World War II. One consequence of this is that nations who are starting an armed conflict must now argue that they are either exercising the right of self-defense, the right of collective defense, or - it seems - the enforcement of the criminal law of jus cogens. It has made formal declaration of war uncommon after 1945.
In 1927, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, known as the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War, said:
The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.
The United Nations Charter says in Article 1:
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
1. To maintain interna
Now, note the paragraph in the definition above:
"This definition of the crime of aggression belongs to jus cogens, which is supreme in the hierarchy of international law and, therefore, it cannot be modified by, or give way to, any rule of international law but one of the same rank. An arguable example is any rule imposing a conflicting obligation to prevent, interdict or vindicate crimes which also belong to jus cogens, namely aggression itself, crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, slavery, torture and piracy, so that a war waged consistent with the aim of repressing any of these crimes might not be illegal where the crime comes within the limit of proportionality relative to war and its characteristic effects."
The Bush administration waged war largely on the grounds that some intelligence could not rule out the presence of WMD's. Otherwise it would have been incumbent on the administration to seek a UN or ICC indictment / action on the gounds of genocide, torture, etc (but then why no concern for intervention in Rwanda where the evidence was horrific and fell on deaf ears?) and then waited for the international community, speaking through international organs, to decide whether and when war would be necessary, or merely indicting Saddam Hussein and bringing him to rial like that other dictator friend of the US, Senor Pinochet.
Likely the latter would have been chosen (indictment of Hussein) and none of us would have had a problem with that.
To launch aggression for genocide or torture not presently going on when the UN was asking for more time to decide all matters and when the intelligence was ambiguous at best as even CIA officials admit, and as the Downing Street Memo shows in cynical fashion, is arguably a crime against the peace as defined at Nuremberg.
The United States lately has backed off respect for international institutions because, many alledge, it fears its own leaders could fall under indictment.
Now, if one reads all the links provided, as I hope you will, and others similar and even more compelling which exist but which I don't have time to gather myself, I think I have made the case in an accumulative time of less than an hour and a half.
Nuremberg Prosecutor on Legality of Iraqi War:
The Legality of the Iraq War
The following essay was written by Ben Ferencz a few days after the secret information contained therein became public. Since the American Society for International Law had published a comprehensive scholarly review of the legal issues as seen from various perspectives, Ferencz submitted his essay, on April 10, 2005, as an informational postscript to the ASIL study. Whether the Society will publish it in any form is still uncertain. Readers are cautioned not to draw any final conclusions until the facts have been verified from US official records.
Postscript to Agora: Future Implications of the Iraq Conflict
The London Times and other media recently disclosed secret documents that contain information that merit a postscript to the excellent 2003 Agora, edited by Lori Fisler Damrosch and Bernard H. Oxman, on "Future Implications of the Iraq Conflict."
It appears that when British Prime Minister Tony Blair met US President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, they agreed that Britain would join the US in bringing about a "regime change" by removing Iraq's President, Saddam Hussein, from office. On July 23, 2002, Blair held a top secret meeting at Downing Street to discuss the subject with his key advisers. The chairman of the joint intelligence committee, Sir John Scarlett, opened the meeting by getting right to the point. The only way to overthrow Saddam was likely to be "by massive military action."
Sir Richard Dearlove, Chief of MI-6, Britain's intelligence agency, then reported on his talks in Washington with his American counterpart, George Tenet, Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency. Dearlove, according to the secret minutes, was convinced that the US had no patience with the United Nations or the Security Council. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction between terrorism and WMD." There had been little discussion of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. War was "seen as inevitable." Dearlove warned that the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.
The briefing papers prepared by the civil service staff for the July 23rd meeting noted that "US views of international law vary from that of the UK and the international community... Regime change per se is not a proper basis for military action under international law." Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the case for war was "thin." Attorney General Lord Goldsmith also expressed doubts about its legality. He seemed to feel that Security Council backing was vital. Other options considered as possible justification for the use of force included self- defense against WMD, or humanitarian intervention against terrorism. None of them seemed persuasive. Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, head of the defense staff was given to the end of the week to present the Prime Minister with the proposed battle
Part 2 Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz
...plans. The participants set about to devise the most acceptable justification for an invasion and to prepare for it militarily as well as politically by shaping public opinion to support the use of force.
On August 3, 2002, UK military spokesmen briefed the Pentagon and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the status of UK's preparation. The next day they briefed President Bush. Coordinated plans for the attack on Iraq continued, despite a reported private statement by Britain's Foreign Secretary Straw that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." His legal advisers in the Foreign Office had submitted a Confidential 8-page memorandum casting doubt on whether Security Council (SC) resolutions 678 (1990) or 687 (1991), that had authorized members "to use all necessary means" to restore peace in the area" could justify the forceful invasion of Iraq.
Straw made the interesting point that if the SC would again demand that Saddam allow UN inspectors to confirm that he had complied with earlier resolutions to destroy his WMD and, if the inspectors discovered that he had failed to do so, that might justify a renewed use of force. A refusal to accept inspection would also be politically helpful to justify the invasion. The best that could be achieved, however, was SC Res. 1441 of November 8, 2002, again demanding that Iraq disarm and allow UN inspectors to report back within 30 days. The Resolution ''recalled" that Iraq had repeatedly been warned that it would "face serious consequences as a result of its violations". The "decision" taken by the Council was to "await further reports" and then "to consider the situation." Troops were being mobilized for a combined massive military assault but there was still no clear agreement on the legal justification for such action.
On February 11, 2003. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith went to Washington where he conferred with leading lawyers in the Bush administration - including White House lawyer Alberto Gonzales, State Department Legal Adviser William Taft IV, Jim Haynes, Adviser for the Defense Department and US Attorney General, John Ashcroft. A 13- page memo by Lord Goldsmith dated March 7, 2003, still expressed doubts about the legality of the contemplated assault on Iraq but seemed to be softer than the firm stand taken by him at the meeting of July 23, 2002.
Ten days later, on March 17, 2003, and just two days before the war was scheduled to begin, Goldsmith made a summary statement in Parliament in which he noted that a reasonable case could be made "for war without a Security Council resolution." William Taft IV is reported to have commented that the Goldsmith statement "sounded very familiar" - presumably because it echoed the US position.
In his report to his Prime Minister, Goldsmith wrote: " I remain of the opinion that the safest legal
In the first Gulf war all Saddam had to do was tippy-toe back over the Kuwait border. In the Iraq War all Saddam had to do was allow inspectors without the games and not bluff that he had the stuff.
The devil's followers can be wily in an evil, worldly way, but God has them on a chain, and makes them do stupid things when necessary.
Any defense of Saddam's bloody tyranny - justified in any of the thousand ways his defenders justify it - is pure channeling of the displeasure of the devil.
Get your head screwed on right (and check your heart).
Part 3 Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz
safest legal course would be to secure the adoption of a further resolution to authorize the use of force...nevertheless, having regard to the information on the negotiating history, which I have been given, and to the arguments which I heard in Washington, I accept that a reasonable case can be made that Resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorization in 678 without a further resolution." He noted that such an argument could only be sustainable if there was clear evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation by Iraq. These qualifying conditions were not mentioned in the 1-page summary given to the Cabinet on March 17.
UK military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court in the Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. General Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in the Hague." On the eve of war, the British Attorney General's abbreviated statement of March 17 was accepted as legal approval of the official US/UK line. Not everyone in the British government could agree that the war that was about to begin was legal.
Prime Minister Blair chose to rely on the summary opinion of his Attorney General rather than the views of the Foreign Office which, ordinarily, would be responsible for opinions affecting foreign relations and international law. On March 18, 2003, the Deputy Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned. Her letter of resignation, after more than 30 years of service, stated: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution..." She had, for many years, represented the UK at meetings of the UN preparatory committees for an international criminal court and was recognized as one of the foremost experts on the subject of aggression. Her letter stated..."an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."
Elizabeth Wilmshurst remembered that the Nuremberg trials had condemned aggressive war as "the supreme international crime" That decision had been affirmed by the UN General Assembly and followed in many other cases. She demonstrated Professor Tom Franck's concluding appeal in the 2003 Agora that "lawyers should zealously guard their professional integrity for a time when it can again be used in the service of the common weal."
Benjamin B. Ferencz
A former Nuremberg Prosecutor
J.D. Harvard (1943)
In His 33 years, Christ started no war, nor advocated for any to start. 33 years of knowing every type of person, including soldiers, including those who oppressed people. His message was other than militarisitic, yet it either encompassed the entire world of human life, or it didn't. It did. If we adhere to Christianity, then loving neighbor as self means not warring upon neighbors. Who is our neighbor? They'd tell us, but they're dead. All of war is insane, but this one in particular. There is no just cause for war in this. Bush and his band of unmerry men will force it all to nuke stage, and then what? Who wins, who's right, when all are dead or poisoned? What's the point?
Christ had the point. He has it still. This country has, and has always had, a 'kill-the-bastards' attitude. We damped it down to 'sue-the-bastards' til Bush Junior needed to one-up his father. Genuine Christians will get nowhere during this Administration, as it is mired and orchestrated by minions that Bush's weakness in his lack of Christianity have unleashed; no one needs more proof of that than what goes on in detainment centers and outsourced torture chambers, and uh, spying on anyone who disagrees with him and corraling them behind one fence or another. What more do we need, than to know all this for fact, know for fact that he lied, what more do we need to see than videotape of civilians being targeted and annihilated? What more do we need to know than that under this administration, we made the list at Amnesty International? Do we need to see our own sons and daughters in waxy embalmers' makeup? Do we really think we can accomplish anything but death and destruction in the mid-east? Anything good? When will we wake up? The blind leading the blind would be honorable compared to what is really going on there.
All this is NOT of Christ. We must stop thinking as Americans, and put on the 'armor' of Christ alone, and be ready for the next administration.
Jus Cogens: Could humanitarian intervention justify the invasion of Iraq? By Troy Rollo
The humanitarian intervention argument stands out because it was not offered before the invasion. In fact the Prime Minister repeatedly said before the invasion that changing an oppressive regime is insufficient reason to justify war. Yet after the war, when he realised there were no weapons of mass destruction, he started arguing along the lines of "Nobody would suggest that Saddam Hussein should be put back in power" - implying that if you didn't want Saddam Hussein in power you should have supported the war. The closest this comes to entering the legal arena is in the area of humanitarian intervention.
But first, a digression. To understand the humanitarian intervention issue, you need to understand a little about how international law becomes law.
When most people hear the term "international law", they
instinctively think there is no such thing. After all, there is no
international "parliament" to make any international laws.
But even in Australia, not all laws are laws made by the parliaments.
Some laws - known as the "common law" and "equity"
have been "declared" by judges for the past thousand years,
without a single written law made by a parliament to give them force.
As recently as 1804, most of Europe still used "customary law",
where the law is based on what people in the society of the day felt
was the law. Again, this law could not be found in written laws set
out by a parliament, but it was law just as much as any other law. This
was changed by Napoleon, who set out laws in writing, effectively
abolishing customary law in almost all of Europe.
A thousand years ago, the laws of England were also predominantly
customary law. These customary laws were developed into what is now
the common law.
International law is still in a fairly primitive state, and relies to a
large extent on customary law. That is, it relies on what the countries
of the world, as represented by their governments, consider the law
to be. While this is primitive, it is just as much law as
the laws set out by a parliament.
In addition, treaties form a part of international law - they
are the only written form of international law, and are the closest
thing international law has to written laws issued by a parliament.
The single most important treaty of modern times is the
United Nations Charter.
Importantly, a rule in a treaty overrules any rule of customary international
law when dealing with the relations between the Nations who are party
to the treaty.
Now historically a lot of States have tried to justify their use of
military force against another country on the grounds of humanitarian
intervention, although usually this justification is claimed after
the fact to justify something that the aggressor was planning on doing
regardless.
On the other hand there are some recent examples where militar
Jus Cogens ...Part 2
On the other hand there are some recent examples where military force
has been used for humanitarian purposes. The use of force by NATO
in parts of the former Yugoslavia are in this category, as was the
enforcement of no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. These sorts
of things may point to a developing custom allowing the use of military
force to remove an oppressive regime - that is, humanitarian intervention.
It would be nice to think there was such a rule. We could then do something
positive about many oppressive regimes and ensure the protection of human
rights around the world. Of course you then run into problems of where to
draw the line. For instance, would Australia's treatment of refugees
justify another country using military force? Should military force be
used against any country that imprisons people for extended periods of time
without trial - something that until 3 years ago was unthinkable in a modern
democracy, but is happening now under the United States government?
But there is a bigger problem for those arguing that customary international
law supports a right of humanitarian intervention. The problem is that almost
all countries in the world are parties to the United Nations Charter.
The Charter prohibits the use of force unless it is in self-defence
or is authorised by the Security Council. And since treaty law overrides
customary international law, it is irrelevant whether humanitarian intervention
is permitted by customary law - it is prohibited by the Charter.
Can customary international law ever override a treaty? Yes - in one situation.
If there is a special type of rule of international law, called a rule of
jus cogens, any treaty that goes against the customary rule is void.
This applies even if the jus cogens rule came into effect after the
treaty was made. Only the most important rules become jus cogens rules -
for example, the rule against genocide. If there is a rule regarding humanitarian
intervention that is a jus cogens rule, then the rule will prevail over
the Charter
For the Charter to be contrary such a rule, there would
have to be a positive obligation to intervene with military force
in cases of severe humanitarian need. It is very clear that the nations of
the world are not prepared to claim there is such an obligation.
The other problem with claiming that there is a jus cogens rule
requiring humanitarian intervention is that it would require voiding the
whole United Nations Charter. This is an incredibly severe result
that should not be reached lightly.
So does that mean that the actions in Yugoslavia and the no-fly zones were illegal?
It seems that the no-fly zones were illegal. As for Yugoslavia, the NATO forces
may be able to escape the UN Charter because Yugoslavia as a State had ceased
to exist, and the new States that came out of it were not yet parties to the
United Nations Charter - thus as far as actions agains
Jus Cogens ---Part 3 / final
United Nations Charter - thus as far as actions against those new States were
concerned, only customary international law applied.
As Iraq was a member of the United Nations, it was protected from any rule of
customary international law permitting humanitarian intervention. Accordingly,
humanitarian intervention was incapable of justifying the war against Iraq.
I have now covered all the justifications offered and found that none could
justify the invasion of Iraq. This is the case even if there had been
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the next entry in this series I will
discuss what the consequences of this conclusion are.
As for Jesus supposedly being some sort of pacifist, see my papers:
Pacifism vs. "Just War": Biblical & Social Factors
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...cal-
social.html
Dialogue on Christian Pacifism and "Just War": Biblical and Social Factors (Dave Armstrong vs. Edward Hamilton)
http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ145.HTM
For an excellent web page which compiles a great deal of material on this subject (from both sides), see my friend Christopher Blosser's:
"The Catholic Just War Tradition and the War in Iraq - Resources"
http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/justwar/
Pope Benedict XVI wrote in June 2004:
"3. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."
("Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion - General Principles", in L'espresso)
http://catholicculture.org/docs/...cfm?
RecNum=6041
Fr. James V. Schall wrote on 8 July 2005:
The London subway and bus bombings of July 7 killed some forty people and injured seven hundred others. Such acts are yet another wake-up call to people in every country who evidently need constant graphic reminders that a real war is being fought against them on a world-scale.
Public life will not go on "as usual" so long as militant, aggressive Islam, however statistically and comparatively small in numbers, is active throughout the world. Its analysis of the moral decadence in the West encourages it to think it can undermine the will of particularly its most effective military and principled opponents. They are not yet proved wrong. They think, with such methods, that they have a winning formula.
Just at a moment when many liberal western media and political sources insisted that this war was "caused" by overreaction on the part of President Bush to 9/11, the Islamic militants oblige us with another graphic incident. They will not go away until actually defeated. They do not negotiate or give advanced warnings. They kill the innocent, in cold blood, precisely because they are innocent and unprepared to defend themselves. They see and justify this arbitrary killing as a legitimate means to their religious and political end, the conquest of the world for Islam.
If there is widespread, active opposition to these forces within the Islamic world today – and there is some – it is either too afraid or too silent to be particularly effective. Western Muslim spokesmen, whose position is rarely echoed within Islamic countries, generally deny any responsibility and seem to worry mostly about reaction, not about causes. On prudential grounds, we cannot expect Islam to cure itself by itself. The President’s program of setting up a "democratic" government in Muslim states when possible has an outside chance of succeeding, but probably no more than that.
Religious public opinion in Muslim states needs to be much more condemnatory against such attacks. Certainly some not insignificant percentage of Muslim opinion throughout the world approves these terrorist methods and their goals, especially when they seem "effective." This conquest mentality is not something new but has a long and recurrent history that needs to be more clearly recognized.
The purpose of such sporadic attacks, from Bali to Moscow to London to Madrid to New York and elsewhere, is to undermine any effective will to use force in the West. It seeks to stop military opposition to terrorism in their political foundations. Till now, the forces defining "what Islam really is" are not the so-called "non-terrorist" Muslims. These latter themselves become targets when they manifest coherent and effective opposition.to these same Islamic radicals. We see this in Iraq almost every day.
There are not "two" wars – one in Iraq and one against the terrorists. There is but one war, wherever it is fought, including in London or B
(cont.)
. . . Baghdad. The terrorists are fully capable of being everywhere. They are invariably Muslim radicals intent on a world mission at least claiming a religious duty. They are not primarily "caused" by poverty or any of the usual ideological reasons given to justify terror.
In fact, such Islamic apologists for this terrorist system see nothing wrong with what we habitually call terror. It is a legitimate means to their end to be deliberately and efficiently used. I have long considered suicide and other terrorist bombing initiatives to be cumulatively far more dangerous to world population than any threat once associated with nuclear war or other kinds of war. But I do not doubt that some of these terrorists would use nuclear weapons if they had them and were capable of delivering them. So this eventually must also be taken into consideration. In the long run, the terrorists will kill more people and cause more economic destruction and chaos than war, but it will be piecemeal, a little at a time, not easily noticed or calculated.
The London bombings, unlike 9/11, were apparently not suicide bombings. But it is probably just a question of time before we, as in Israel, see them in our streets. They are just too effective a propaganda and terrorist means. Suicide bombers are not needed against easy targets. I am, in fact, struck by how relatively little moral attention is paid to suicide and terrorist bombings as expressions of a religious purpose and what this view does to any truth claim. Pope John Paul II several times remarked on this incompatibility.
The main battlefield of the war is not Iraq or even London tubes. It is in the media and public opinion in the United States and Europe about whether the will to do what is necessary to prevent these attacks is firm enough over a long period of time. Civilian and suicide bombings have a political purpose and a religious purpose.
The political purpose is a calculated risk that continued bombings would show that Western powers cannot defend their own populations. Consequently, they should cease trying. They should rather, in return for "peace," submit to Islamic neutralization of their territories, a kind of compromised second-class citizenship. Likewise, they should withdraw from any effort to prevent such attacks in Muslim lands themselves
The religious purpose of this war, in the minds of its advocates, is to succeed in subjecting the world to Allah. This purpose, no doubt, sounds preposterous. But I think that we misunderstand the problem if we do not disassociate what these terrorists themselves say from our theories of "terrorism." The problem is not caused by fanaticism or some political, sociological, or psychological derangement.
The fact that not all Muslims in practice agree with this end is, in a sense, irrelevant. The more terrorism succeeds, the more it will seem that the Islamic radicals were right. Even in its own terms, however, a failure to co
(cont.)
. . . conquer on a world scale causes widespread doubt within Islam because it seems that its world mission is defeated.
British leaders naturally see this bombing in the light of the attacks of World War II and the IRA of the more recent past. They know that within the bosom of every Western nation today are sufficient numbers of organized Islamic militants ready to carry out serious disruptions and killings of the citizenry.
We forget, however, that many, many bombings of various kinds have been prevented since 9/11. A prevented bombing makes no headlines. But we are wrong to think that effective security and military forces have not been in place. The terrorists themselves know that they are more and more under surveillance and pressure.
Al-Qaeda forces may have seen their reputation so questioned by the effects of the Afghanistan and Iraq phases of the war that they felt it absolutely necessary to show some flashy sign of strength. If so, this too is in effect a sign of their weakness. They revealed themselves for what they are once more. It has been taken as a truism that it is better to fight these forces on their own grounds and not in London or New York or Madrid. The war overseas does not prove that it is not effective, but that it is. But the latter three cities, however orchestrated, are part of the same war.
In this sense, we can be grateful that the Islamic terrorists in London again called our flagging attention to the real war, the one against those who first declared war against us in the name of their religious and political mission. The first effort has been and still is to undermine any effective opposition. Whether this purpose can be achieved by terrorism and its effect on public opinion remains to be seen.
I suspect that the Islamic radicals still think they are on target. In the end, they will see the London bombings as a stunning "success." But if it finally makes us see the real scope and nature of the one war, they will have miscalculated both our understanding of what they are about and our will to do something about it.
(The One War; The Real War)
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/
f...ewar_july05.asp
"The Just War Case for the War"
By George Weigel
March 31, 2003
http://www.eppc.org/news/
newsID....news_detail.asp
It didn’t happen in France, when the question recently was what to do about chaos in Cote d’Ivoire. It didn’t happen in the European Union in the 1990s, when the questions were genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. But it did happen in the United States: for well over a year now, both in government and in the public arena, the question of what to do about Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi regime’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has been debated in terms explicitly drawn from the just war tradition.
Many American religious leaders and religious intellectuals have found the Bush Administration’s just war case for the war wanting. I have a different view; I believe that a compelling case can be made for using proportionate and discriminate armed force to disarm Iraq. Because the recent debate has focused on four key "war-decision" (ad bellum) issues, let me address these here, recognizing that the debate over the war’s actual conduct in bello will continue during and after the campaign - and that the prior ad bellum issues will be revisited if the critics’ case against the administration proves to have been based on false readings of the tradition and the contingencies.
A last preliminary note. The just war tradition does not "begin," theologically, with a "presumption against war." Rather, classic just war thinking begins with moral obligations: the obligation of rightly-constituted public authorities to defend the security of those for whom they have assumed responsibility, and the obligation to defend the peace of order in world affairs. That is one reason why Aquinas put his discussion of just war within the Summa’s treatise on charity: public authorities are morally obliged to defend the good of concordia - the peace of order - against the threat of chaos. That is why Paul Ramsey described just war thinking as a specification of the second great commandment of love of neighbor - even as he insisted that the same commandment put limits on what can be done in defense of security, order, and peace. In the classic just war tradition, armed force is not intrinsically suspect from a moral point of view. It depends on who is using it, why, for what ends, and how. All of this bears directly on the case at hand.
Just Cause. In classic just war thinking, "just cause" meant response to an aggression underway, recovery of something wrongfully taken, or punishment for evil. Contemporary just war thinking tends to limit the meaning of "just cause" to "response to an aggression underway" (although calls for "humanitarian intervention" to prevent or halt genocides may resurrect the classic idea of "punishment for evil"). So the question is, when do we know that "aggression" is "underway"?
This is neither 1776 nor 1812; an "aggression underway" is not a matter of waiting for the red
(cont.)
. . . redcoats to crest the hill at dawn. Modern weapons technologies, the character of a regime, and the hard lessons of 9/11 must be factored into today’s moral analysis of "just cause" and into our ideas of "imminent danger." Which brings us to Iraq.
When a regime driven by an aggressive fascist ideology has flouted international law for decades, invaded two of its neighbors, and used weapons of mass destruction against its foreign and domestic enemies; when that regime routinely uses grotesque forms of torture to maintain its power, diverts money from feeding children to enlarging its military, and rigorously controls all political activity so that effective internal resistance to the dictator is impossible; when that kind of a regime expands its stores of chemical and biological weapons and works feverishly to obtain nuclear weapons (defying international legal requirements for its disarmament), tries to gain advanced ballistic missile capability (again in defiance of U.N. demands), and has longstanding links to terrorist organizations (to whom it could transfer weapons of mass destruction) - when all of that has gone on, is going on, and shows no signs of abating, then it seems plausible to me to assert that aggression is underway, from a just war point of view.
A historical analogy may help. Given the character of the Nazi regime and its extra-legal rearmament, would it not have been plausible to assert that aggression was underway when Germany militarily re-occupied the Rhineland in 1936, in defiance of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations? The withdrawal of UNSCOM weapon inspectors from Iraq in 1998 was this generation’s 1936. Another 1938, a new Munich, is morally intolerable: the world cannot be faced with a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein and an Iraqi regime that had successfully defied all international legal and political attempts to disarm it.
Just cause is satisfied by recognizing that the present Iraqi regime, armed as it is and as it seeks to be, is an "aggression underway." The U.N. recognized that in 1991 when it demanded Iraq’s disarmament. To disarm Iraq now, by using proportionate and discriminate armed force if necessary, is to support the minimum conditions of world order and to defend the ideal of a law-governed international community. Thus military intervention to disarm Iraq is not "pre-emptive war," nor is it "preventive war," nor is it aggression. The war has been underway for twelve years.
Competent authority. This classic "war-decision" criterion reflects the tradition’s basic distinction between bellum and duellum. Duellum, dueling, is armed force used for private ends by private individuals. Bellum, war, is armed force used for public ends by public authorities who have a moral obligation to defend security and order. "Competent authority" once helped moral analysts distinguish between legitimate princes and marauding brigands. For the past several hundred years, "
(cont.)
. . . "competent authority" has resided in the nation-state. Over the past year, a new claim has entered the debate: that only the United Nations (which in effect means the Security Council, which in effect means the five veto-holding members of the Security Council) possesses "competent authority" to authorize the use of armed force.
This claim actually outstrips anything the U.N. claims for itself. The Charter explicitly recognizes an inalienable right of national self-defense; if you are attacked, you do not need the permission of veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council like France, China, or Russia before you can defend yourself. A further, interesting question is raised by the claim that only the Security Council possesses the moral authority to authorize the use of force: how is moral authority (as distinguished from political throw-weight) derived from the acquiescence of states like China, Russia, and France, whose foreign policies are conducted on entirely amoral (i.e., Realpolitik) grounds? Here is something for the masters of casuistry to think about.
In the case of Iraq, the debate these past two months came down to one question: how many more "final" Security Council resolutions were required to satisfy the war-decision criterion of competent authority? When Resolution 1441 was meticulously negotiated last November, everyone understood that the "serious consequences" to follow Iraq’s material breach of the demand for its disarmament and its active cooperation in that disarmament meant intervention through armed force to enforce disarmament. Is it obtuse to suggest that the unanimous acceptance of 1441, by a Security Council which obviously understood what "serious consequences" meant, satisfies the criterion of "competent authority" - and precisely on the grounds advocated by those who argue for the superior competence of the U.N.? No. Absent another "final" Security Council resolution, would the use of armed force to compel Iraqi disarmament mean that brute force had displaced the rule of law in world affairs? No. It would mean that a coalition of states had decided, on just war grounds, that they had a moral obligation to take measures that the U.N., as presently configured, found it impossible to take - even though those measures advance the U.N.’s goals.
Willing ends without concurrently willing the means necessary to achieve them is not morally serious. Functional pacifism cannot help us traverse the hard, stony path from today’s world - in which homicidal ideologies are married to unimaginably lethal weapons - to the world envisioned by John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris: a law-governed international political community.
Finally, the criterion of "competent authority" involves the "location" of moral judgment in matters of war and peace. The Catechism is quite explicit: "the evaluation of these [just war] conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of
(cont.)
. . . those who have responsibility for the common good" [2309]. Responsible public authorities make the call. Religious leaders and religious intellectuals must teach the relevant moral principles, insist that they inform public and governmental debate, and bring their best prudential judgments to bear in those debates. But the call is made by others.
Proportionality. The most intellectually respectable arguments against military intervention in Iraq have involved weighing desirable outcomes (Saddam’s disarmament) against undesirable possibilities: the "Arab street" in chaos, further deterioration in the prospects for peace in the Holy Land, terrorists emboldened, a new and dangerous rift in Christian-Muslim relations. These are very serious concerns. Yet scholars and analysts with entirely respectable track-records have argued that these things will not happen. The "Arab street" did not rise up as predicted in 1991; the first Gulf War actually advanced the cause of Middle East peace by leading to the Madrid peace conference; terrorists struck the United States most viciously when Osama bin Laden had convinced himself that Americans were feckless. As for the future of relations between the West and the Arab Islamic world, the brilliant Fouad Ajami, a Lebanese Shi’ite, has argued that, for all its dangers, the disarming of Iraq, ridding the Iraqi people of a vicious dictatorship, and helping to build a new, democratic Iraq could have a galvanizing effect throughout the Middle East by breaking the patterns of corruption and repression we now mistakenly call "stability," and by challenging what Ajami calls the culture of "bellicose self-pity" in the Arab Islamic world.
This is, as always in the just war tradition, a judgment call. Reasonable people could differ on it. What should not have been in dispute is that the gravest damage would be done to the cause of world order and international law if Saddam Hussein were permitted to defy demands for his regime’s disarmament. That fact must weigh heavily in any calculus of proportionality.
Last resort. "Last resort " is also a matter of prudential judgment, not algebraic certitude. I judge that "last resort" was reached in the first months of 2003 for at least three reasons:
First, the experience of the late 1990s demonstrated that containment cannot work in Iraq, given the weaknesses of the U.N. system and the cravenness of those Security Council members who dismantled UNSCOM for commercial advantage. A prudent statesman could not assume that effective containment could be re-built. Moreover, a robust containment regime would have to include economic sanctions; the primary victims of those sanctions, thanks to Saddam’s manipulations and internal control, would be Iraq’s ill, elderly, and children. This would have been a morally superior policy option?
Second, the post-Resolution 1441 inspections process seemed almost certainly incapable of succeeding in its tas
(cont.)
. . . task: to compel the disarmament of Iraq. It could not succeed because the regime cooperation necessary to rid Iraq completely of WMD was manifestly not forthcoming - and never would be.
Third, "last resort" was reached because deterrence was not an option after containment’s failure. When Saddam Hussein got control of nuclear weapons - and prudent statecraft understood that, absent disarmament and regime change, the question was when, not if - the only forces that would be deterred would be the U.N. and the U.S. The Iraqi people would then be condemned to more torture, repression, starvation, and disease. Our capacity to protect the Kurds and Shi’ites would be lost. Moreover, no prudent statesman could bet on the long-term likelihood of deterring a man who, at many crucial junctures in the past, had made the wrong decision, with vast suffering as a result.
I took no pleasure in reaching this conclusion. People of decency and good will kept saying, "But surely there must be another way?" The hard fact of the matter, though, is that the other ways had all been tried and had all failed. It was true that we had been brought to this point both by Saddam’s relentless pursuit of power and by failed western policies in the past. But the failures of the past could not be excuses for further failures of wit and nerve now. Last resort was upon us in early 2003. A binary choice had been posed: appeasement, or military intervention to enforce disarmament. And the appeasement of Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime was, in my judgment, both morally loathsome and a profound threat to peace.
From War to Peace. The just war case for the war against the Iraqi regime must conclude with a viable concept of the peace that can be achieved after Saddam Hussein, his government, and the Ba’athist regime are deposed and Iraq’s disarmament of WMD is achieved. As President Bush and his senior counselors made clear, armed intervention in Iraq would not be a matter of "butcher and bolt" (as Britain used to describe some of its 19th century Third World adventures). Disarmament and regime change must, and will, be followed by a concerted effort to rebuild Iraq - to empower its educated and hard-working people to regain control of their own lives, and to facilitate the emergence of a modern, post-Ba’athist Iraq that is good for Iraqis, good for the region, and good for the world. In that way, the use of proportionate and discriminate armed force against the Saddam Hussein regime - not against the Iraqi people but against the regime that has brutalized and enslaved them for decades - can contribute to building the peace of order, justice, and freedom in a long-suffering country. And in doing so, it can set an example for the entire Middle East.
As the Holy Father has said, war is always a "defeat for humanity," a defeat for the forces of reason. Permitting Saddam Hussein to realize his ambitions to hegemony in the most volatile region of the worl
(cont.)
. . . world would also be a defeat for humanity and its quest for the peace of order that is composed of freedom and justice. The "defeat for humanity" that the last resort of armed intervention to enforce Iraq disarmament will represent can be redeemed by the emergence of a new, free, and stable Iraq - a living refutation of the debilitating notion that Arabs and Muslims are incapable of self-government and unsafe for the world. Thus "last resort" can, and I pray will, create an opening to new and welcome possibilities for the pursuit of peace, security, and freedom.
Followup on ...Jus Cogens:
Human Rights Watch: War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention
http://hrw.org/wr2k4/3.htm
Important analysis
St. Robert Bellarmine
... wrote, "As a second condition for legitimate warfare, a just, certain and not doubtful cause is required" De Officio Principis, Cap XXI ; and, "A powerful ruler is not a good judge, however, concerning the justice of his own [war] cause against a weaker ruler. His desire of expansion may influence him to presume a good cause to be present, when in reality it does not exist. Nor can he rely too much upon his own domestic counselors. Foreign, disinterested and impartial judges are better qualified to make such decisions." (quoted in Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, Bk 1. Ch III).
HAS THE HOLY FATHER CONDEMNED U.S. ACTION? [ Carl Olson ] 26 Comment(s)
No, he has not, despite those attempting to put words in his mouth
3/26/2003 10:23:47 AM
http://www.envoymagazine.com/Env....asp?
BlogID=572
As regular readers of Encore know, there have been some heated, but also enlightening, exchanges here about the war in Iraq. I have little hopes of settling the differences of opinion, but I do hope to clarify some points that were raised in a recent post and in the subsequent comments.
There are some who insist that the Holy Father has condemned the war with Iraq and, consequently, the actions of the United States and the decisions of its leaders. I do not think this claim holds up to scrutiny; in fact, I think it is quite misleading. Here are the comments the Pope has made about the war in the past week or so:
On March 18, Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls stated: "Whoever decides that all peaceful means made available by international law have been exhausted, assumes a grave responsibility before God, his conscience and history."
Some have understood this to be a condemnation of the war. No so. In fact, this remark is a no-brainer, whether or not you support the war. Those who make the prudential decision to go to war do assume a grave responsibility. I have no doubt that President Bush and other U.S. leaders would wholly concur. But saying that someone is responsible for an action is not the same as saying that action is evil. In fact, the Pope could have easily said: "This war is unjust and evil." He did not say so, and, I think, will not.
On March 20, Vatican spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls stated: "The Holy See has learned with deep pain of the development of the latest events in Iraq. On the one hand, it is to be regretted that the Iraqi government did not accept the resolutions of the United Nations and the appeal of the Pope himself, as both asked that the country disarm. On the other hand, it is to be deplored that the path of negotiations, according to international law, for a peaceful solution of the Iraqi drama has been interrupted."
Again, nothing surprising here. I certainly don’t expect the Holy See to endorse the war; on the other hand, I don’t see the war or the U.S. actions being condemned as evil or sinful in this statement. Lamenting war, saying that war should be a last option, and hoping for the possibility of a diplomatic solution are not the same as condemning the war.
On March 24, John Paul II declared: "When war, like the one underway in Iraq, threatens the future of humanity, it is even more important to proclaim, in a strong and decisive voice, that peace is the only way to build a more just and unified society." He added that "violence and arms can never resolve men's problems."
Again, this is a no-brainer. War is never the ultimate, or even desired, solution to problems, but sometimes is a necessary solution. Sadly, as long as we live in
Jesus and violence?
Our Lord told Peter "one sword is enough" when Peter desired to take two into Gethsemane. The irony is exqustite since Our Lord knew one sword would never be sufficient repel the Temple police. How he pitied Peter's lack of understanding.
Then, poor Peter, after using the sword on a temple Guard hears the words "put back thy sword, Peter!" and...then... is forced to watch the man healed!
Lesson learned.
Jesus said, If my kingdom was of this world my men who have fought so that I would not be delivered".
He forgave His murderers who were Roman occupiers and was considered mad by the Jewish zealots who wanted nothing more than to overthrow the yoke o f Rome.
See my article for more on this: Christ Came to Perfect the Law The Matter of War at
http://tcrnews2.com/HandStephen.html
(cont.)
. . . a fallen world, such will be the case. Sometimes, in the face of evil and tyranny, war is necessary to move towards peace. Once again, there is not a condemnation of the war or the actions of the U.S., but an urgent plea for peace. Catholics should expect nothing less from the Holy Father.
Some comments were made on the previous Encore post (linked above) that need to be addressed.
One writer stated: "To the best of my knowledge, the US has no authority whatsoever, except its own power, to do as it pleases and start this war." We must keep in mind that "this war" started in 1991 when Saddam invaded Kuwait. A cease-fire was arranged based on Saddam’s promise to follow U.N. resolutions dictating disarmament. He has repeatedly ignored those resolutions, meaning that the cease fire, in essence, has ended. Since the U.N. failed to uphold its own resolutions, the U.S. made the decision to re-enter the war. It was a prudential decision based on a desire to stop attacks on the U.S. and Americans. Freeing the Iraqi people was also part of the decision, but secondary to the first. Catholics are free to disagree with this choice, but saying they are evil is quite another thing.
Rod Dreher of National Review is quoted as saying, "Pope John Paul II has endorsed the antiwar movement." I respect Mr. Dreher, but he is wrong. Pope John Paul II has endorsed peace, and always has, and always will. I fear that Mr. Dreher is overreacting in a similar fashion to those who are overreacting and claiming the Pope has condemned the U.S. and its actions. In times of intense anxiety and difficulty, such overreactions are tempting, as I certainly know from personal experience. I do hope that Mr. Dreher will not let his emotions continue to distort his understanding of where the Holy Father stands, and what he has actually said.
One Encore visitor commented: "So on Bishop Gregory's comments: I'll just go right out on a limb here and say I don't understand them. Certainly we can have a civil exchange, and even come back after the war and work together for the good. But I don't understand how the Bishop could be saying what the Pope is saying, and hold that their could be good wills on both sides of the argument."
I suggest that Bishop Gregory’s comments are, in fact, in total agreement with the Holy Father’s remarks. Both men desire peace, lament war, and urge that war not be seen as a normal or desired solution to political problems. But neither of the men condemn the war, because both know that a prudential judgement was made by the U.S. leaders. That judgement on the part of U.S. leaders could be right or wrong — it is not entirely clear at this time (which partially explains much of the strong debate). I personally believe it is the correct judgement, but I could be wrong. If so, I'll be happy to admit it. Again, the bishop's comments are in accord with the Holy See's statement that those (the U.S.) who decide to go to war
Let us prefer the Holy Father himself to Carl Olson and Weigel et al:
"There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'." ----Cardinal Ratzinger / Benedict XVI (Emphasis mine)
---Expect changes in the Catechism in light of new situations.
See also:
Bush vs. Benedict: Catholic Neoconservatives Grapple With Their Church�s Just War Tradition at
http://tcrnews2.com/BenedictBush06.html
(cont.)
. . . "assume a grave responsibility before God, his conscience and history."
I welcome dialogue and debate about whether or not this war indeed meets just war criteria. But I hope it is clear that the Holy Father, in very carefully worded statements, has not condemned the U.S. actions, nor has he simply endorses the antiwar movement (I would bet he is appalled by much of the anti-American/anti-Bush sentiment that exists). My prayer and hope is for peace, justice, and swift end to this war.
Lew again:
"there was no sense in which an attack on Iraq could be reconciled with Just War teaching. It was not a defensive war, not a last-resort war, not a proportionate war, not a war aimed only at the military, and it was not authorized by the competent authority (UN). It was an imperial adventure to satisfy the longings of a lunatic, and it has ended in complete catastrophe, economically and morally." ---Rockwell and see Bellarmine quote above
Hi Dave: I will forever prefer the prudential judgements of the Popes who process 2,000 yrs of infallible Catholic princples in making such judgements over the National review and Rod Dreher.
The Clinton View of Iraq-al Qaeda Ties
by Stephen F. Hayes
12/29/2003
http://weeklystandard.com/Conten...03/
527uwabl.asp
As I told Chris Blosser, when I shifted from integrist circles to the Ecclesia Dei model, where I have remained ever since, I took much good from integrism, which hearned also from my Catholic Worker days: abiding love of the Tridentine Mass, Byzantine Liturgies....and a healthy suspicion of imperialism (expansion of markets). The integrists are not given enough credit for their brave Catholic stance against power.
Some Catholic conservatives, who are much more sophisticated theologically, broke my heart by an apparent uncritical surrender of their Catholic discernment to government military adventures, the arms trade, etc.
Hi Stephen,
Are you claiming that popes possess all the intelligence information and knowledge of terrorist and realpolitik goings-on that US Presidents (or even Senators on intelligence committees) possess?
If you say yes, I'd like to see the reasons why.
If you say no, then, seeing that popes and the Church grant nations the right to render such prudential decisions, as part of ther divinely-ordained function, it is perfectly-permissible for Presidents and those who agree with them to respectfully differ with popes' judgments. The Catechism clearly states as much, as did Pope Benedict in a quote above.
And they make such decisions based on far-greater knowledge of the intricacies of these international crises and ethical dilemmas.
It's not "Pope Benedict's opinion vs. Rod Dreher's opinion."
Rather, it is:
"the prudential judgment of national leaders, whose function and right is to make such judgments vs. a contrary but not binding opinion of a pope, who has far less particular information upon which to make such a judgment, being a spiritual, not a political leader."
It is showing no disrespect whatsoever to differ in such a way. If I , for example, allow my children to have a different opinion from mine on some issue we are talking about, where I could just as easily have "pulled rank" and disallowed them to have a dissenting opinion, they neither violate the command to "honor thy parents" nor necessarily disrespect me in a dissent.
The Bible undeniably grants parents authority over children, but it also urges them not to exasperate their children. Likewise, husbands have headship in a marriage, but this is explained in such a way that husbands are to be servants of their wives, and love them as Christ loved the Church.
Even the sublime authority of popes does not wipe out all possible dissenting positions in good faith, by Catholics and leaders of nations, obliged to make serious decisions about war and the protection of the innocent and the furethering of justice and rescuing of the oppressed and downtrodden.
Here is an interesting response by George Weigel to a panel of Mennonite critics:
Responsum ad Dubia
June 2003
http://www.bethelks.edu/
mennonit...el_response.php
Some highlights:
(2) I do not assert my own authority in denying that the just war tradition begins with a "presumption against violence." Nor am I alone in arguing that beginning with a "presumption against violence" distorts the tradition's internal logic and impedes its capacity to illuminate moral choice. Rather, I rely on the authority and analysis of the Anglophone world's leading historian of the just war tradition, James Turner Johnson. As I have contended for more than twenty years now, the burden of proof rests with my friends Fathers Hehir, Langan, and Christiansen to demonstrate that their "presumption against violence" can be given a secure historical foundation and can be made to make sense in terms of the tradition's theo-logic. I fear that neither test has been met.
(4) As the author of The Final Revolution, the first book arguing that nonviolent Catholic resistance was crucial in the overthrow of European communism, I hardly dis-esteem the possibilities of Christian commitment and non-violent direct action to bend the course of history in desirable directions, under certain circumstances.
(
I flatly reject the notion that describing al Qaeda for what it is - an unmitigated evil whose only purpose is wickedness - shifts us into a crusading mentality. Nor does it make any sense to suggest that discerning a moral obligation to interdict an evil like that posed by al Qaeda automatically turns one into a holy warrior.
Here is an extraordinary article about the development and application of classic just war theory to the modern geo-political situation and technology:
Just War, As It Was and Is
by James Turner Johnson
Copyright (c) 2005 First Things 149 (January 2005): 14-24.
=======================
A few highlights:
. . . it is one of the great losses of just war thinking—and of modern societies—that from the middle of the seventeenth century through the middle of the twentieth, creative religious efforts to think through the meaning and implications of this tradition have ranged from occasional to notably lacking. In Catholic thought the idea of just war remained as an element in canon law and moral theology, but largely without substantive development, almost as a historical artifact. Perhaps more important in the larger picture, the concept of just war became increasingly disconnected from ongoing developments in Catholic thinking about the proper purpose of political order and the proper institutions to embody that purpose. The Catholic theory of international relations, which had originally been framed in terms of the Augustinian understanding of political order, justice, and peace within and among political communities, became increasingly tied to developments in secular international law, as we see in such works as John Eppstein’s The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations, published in 1935. Meanwhile, Protestant thought, influenced by the moral idealism and historical optimism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, followed a similar course but moved closer and closer to a form of utopian pacifism in which war would be eliminated because of the increasing perfection of human social institutions.
The past forty years have brought a recovery of the idea of just war in Christian ethical discourse, and this has invigorated a larger engagement with the just war idea in policy debate, in the military sphere, in philosophical thought, and in dialogue between moral reflection and international law. As a result of these developments, just war debate is more robust and widespread than in any period since the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth century, the age of Vitoria and Suarez and Grotius. But important elements of the connection with the earlier tradition, the idea of just war in its classic form, have been lost in much of this debate, including in recent Catholic thought. On the one hand, confusion has emerged between the Church’s commitment to its teaching on just war and what has come to be called “the Catholic peace tradition,” a tradition of avoidance or renunciation of participation in armed force historically associated with the religious life but, since the Second Vatican Council, made over into a case for pacifism for Catholic laity as well. On the other hand, a line of interpretation has developed that has been influenced by the secular philosophical concept of prima facie duties, by prudential (and contingent) j
(cont.)
. . . judgments about the inherent immorality of contemporary war, and by well-intentioned but rather utopian investment in the United Nations system.
. . . As progressively shown in the Gulf War of 1990-91, the bombing of Serbia over the oppression of the Albanian Kosovars, the campaign in Afghanistan aimed at al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and most recently (and most fully) in the recent use of armed force to remove the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, the United States, and to an important degree also the British, have channeled high technology in ways that allow war to be fought according to the actual principles of the just war jus in bello: this includes avoidance of direct, intended harm to noncombatants and avoidance of disproportionate harm in the use of otherwise justified means of war. The results, for those who care to look at them, are simply astonishing, especially by contrast to the level of destruction and the harm to noncombatant lives and property found, say, in carpet-bombing. This, too, is the face of modern war.
Today we see a new kind of confrontation. On the one hand, we see non-state actors, as well as warlords and heads of state who use relatively unsophisticated means to gain their ends by targeting, terrorizing, and killing noncombatants and, as in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers or the bombing of the Madrid trains, intentionally causing lasting property damage, civilian deaths, and widespread fear. On the other hand, we find a state that has used its intellectual and economic capital to develop weapons, tactics, strategies, and training directed toward maximizing discrimination and proportionality in the use of armed force. Both of these developments in the actual face of war need to be taken seriously and integrated into a contemporary moral assessment of war based on a recovery of the classic meaning of the just war tradition.
------
James Turner Johnson is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University and author of several books on the historical development and contemporary use of the just war tradition, including Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War (1981) and Morality and Contemporary Warfare (1999).
Saddam's WMD Moved to Syria, An Israeli [Top General] Says
By IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun
December 15, 2005
http://www.nysun.com/article/24480
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
You cannot negoiate with terrorists, this is common sense
If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the
> Iraq theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112
> deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.
>
> The rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000.
>
> That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our
> Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the
> nation, than you are in Iraq.
>
> Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington D.C.
Hi Dave:
At one level it has always been the case that government officials say they know more than the Pope, but the Holy Father has access to the whole spectrum of global opinion. The Holy See reserves the right to declare its prudential judgement, which Catholics above all cannot take lightly, on the morality of any world conflict, based on Catholic morals, Just War criteria and other immutable principles, all of which go into the processing of such prudential judgements.
Even atheists who read JPII and Benedict know what they are saying, though Catholic Americanist Neocons do not.
But along other lines, I cannot trust Islam as a brotherly egalitarian religion, quite frankly, and this is why I think we should not be stirring a global bees nest that could set the world on fire for the next century and beyond. It is insane to do so.
Saudi Arabia is one of the most hideous nations on earth relative to human rights abuses (Syria is much more "modern" with respect to treatment of women, etc, though I don't trust Syria itself. How the US---apart from oil---could make friends with the Saudi's while aggressing on an already weakened Iraq (10 years of sanctions) some 15 years after its last claims on Kuwait, is beyond me.
President Bush and his neo-con friends have, it seems to me, shown reckless disregard for the peace of nations in jumping on Iraq, which, to the Arab mind (Read James Laffin) can only be interpreted in the most dire light. Poor Bush, ten years before he became President was hitting the bottle. Quite frankly he was not equal to what he recklessly started. Iraq was surrounded by Arab enemies who should have been left to take care of the problem as the Arab League requested. Bush disregarded wisdom and only God knows how long we will reap the consequences. Iraq has become a recruiting propaganda the likes of which we have not seen. As Murtha says, "we have beome the enemy".
Read the Arab Mind by James Laffin to consider more of what I mean.
Hi Stephen,
>At one level it has always been the case that government officials say they know more than the Pope, but the Holy Father has access to the whole spectrum of global opinion.
I didn't ask that; I asked whether he has all the intelligence that governments have. If you concede that, then that is a crucial component for possible situations in which it is permissible to dissent from the pope, without any diminishing of respect whatsoever.
>The Holy See reserves the right to declare its prudential judgement, which Catholics above all cannot take lightly, on the morality of any world conflict, based on Catholic morals, Just War criteria and other immutable principles, all of which go into the processing of such prudential judgements.
Of course no one who is a faithful Catholic takes it lightly. But since the pope himself and the Church give governments the right to make the final decisions in these matters, there will inevitably be times when they dissent from the pope's opinion. What is so hard to understand about that? Why does it bother you so much?
>Even atheists who read JPII and Benedict know what they are saying, though Catholic Americanist Neocons do not.
Which "neocons" do not understand what the popes are saying? I want hard evidence, please.
>But along other lines, I cannot trust Islam as a brotherly egalitarian religion, quite frankly, and this is why I think we should not be stirring a global bees nest that could set the world on fire for the next century and beyond. It is insane to do so.
Note the reasoning here. What if we had said this about Communism?:
"But along other lines, I cannot trust Communism as a brotherly egalitarian political system, quite frankly, and this is why I think we should not be stirring a global bees nest that could set the world on fire for the next century and beyond. It is insane to do so."
Based on this reasoning, we would not have opposed the Communists. There would have been no Cold war, no Korea, no Vietnam. There would also have been no collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism in Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall would still be there. We obviously should have let them be, because it would have been "insane" to oppose them. Millions more would have died than already did. President Reagan and Pope John Paul II wouldn't have brought about the downfall of Soviet Communism.
How about the Nazis?:
"But along other lines, I cannot trust Naziism as a brotherly egalitarian political system, quite frankly, and this is why I think we should not be stirring a global bees nest that could set the world on fire for the next century and beyond. It is insane to do so."
Naziism wasn't global, of course, but it was rapidly expanding all over Europe, and the similar system in Japan was taking over the other half of the world.
Based on your reasoning, we would not have opposed Nazi Germany. There would have been no World War II. There would also have been no collapse of the Third Reich. The concentration camps would still be there (and scarcely a Jew would be alive in Europe). We obviously should have let them be, because it would have been "insane" to oppose them. Millions more would have died than already did. President Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII and Winston Churchill wouldn't have brought about the downfall of Nazi German tyranny and genocide.
On the other hand, we are not opposed to Islam in the first place, but a gross perversion of it. That's why we have defended several Muslim populations in the last 15 years (Somalia, Bosnia, Kuwait, etc.).
So anyway you look at it, this particular argument of yours doesn't fly.
"You cannot negotiate with terrorists".. Matt, that's what bin Laden's been saying, too. And alQaeda's "just war" fits the same criteria as the one trumped up by Bush -- not the one intended by the Catechism.
I've read of about six Iraqis happy to see an occupation.. the rest are too busy pulling Humvee parts out of their faces and trying to secure artificial limbs that fit, their medical facilities having met a similar fate as their ancient art.
These are people, not animals.
Dave, we all, one by one, including all the sources you quote, will have to answer to the Lord Himself one day for whatever we helped bring about on earth, be it decimation via our nod to war, or working for peace from the inside out.
The only just war possible, considering America's obscene arsenal, would be in any of the many ethnicides being waged in Africa which leaves millions dead, and millions more destitute, and millions more in terrible oppression. Are we there? Is anyone there to "liberate".. where's Operation Freedom where it's needed, begged for-- where children cannot even sleep in their homes for fear of being abducted in the night?
If Bush had sent our people there, to where there isn't anything we want from them in return.. he'd have not only helped millions of people who have so little recourse in helping themselves other than via the Church, but he'd have given this country what God intended for her. He blew it, and he's trying to cover it all these years. How many coffins came home today for his agenda/vendetta? How many families has he met with?
My daughter served in the Marines, and my son in the Navy, tho' both vow never again. Everyone in my family served in some branch, except for my husband. His family were teachers, and he went into the Peace Corps. Wait.. to help the world, in the name of America? How novel!
May the American-Catholic decrease, as His Catholic-American increases. May the Patroness intercede, and may God move us toward goodwill, before the whole world pays the price of Bush's extraordinarily sinful and far-reaching arrogance.
Regarding Jihad and prudential judgement vis a vis this war, it is precsiely military occupation which is guaranteed to increase and foments Jihad, which is why makes this aggression so tragic and born of the most grievous myopia.
As for prudential judgement, as Daniel McCarthy puts it succinctly,
" The new pope and his predecessor have been consistent; some, like Osterberg, would say to a fault in taking the most restrictive possible view in favor of life in matters of capital importance, whether abortion, the death penalty, or war. Neoconservative Catholics have met this papal position with defiance. They point out, correctly, that abortion and war are not parallel, the former is wrong in all instances, the latter permissible in some. Novak and Neuhaus also take care to emphasize the wording of Section 2309 of the Catholic Catechism, which states that deciding when the conditions for a just war have been met "belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good" meaning the Bush administration, as they would have it.
"Yet war is a matter of both moral judgment and prudential judgment. The church is not competent to deduce the likelihood of strategic success or to address other purely prudential considerations of Just War doctrine. But there remain moral considerations in going to war about which a pope certainly can speak with authority, if not with infallibility. Neither John Paul II nor Benedict�whose intellect neoconservative Catholics have in other contexts praised �needs reminding about what the Catechism says. In Benedict's case, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he supervised its recent abridgement. In a May 2003 interview reported by Rome's Zenit news service, Ratzinger was asked about the justice of the Iraq War in light of the Catechism. He agreed that Just War doctrine may require revision, as Weigel and other Catholic neoconservatives have suggested�but in a more, not less, restrictive direction.
"The pope [John Paul II] expressed his thought with great clarity, not only as his individual thought but as the thought of a man who is knowledgeable in the highest functions of the Catholic Church. Of course, he did not impose this position as doctrine of the Church but as the appeal of a conscience enlightened by faith. The Holy Father's judgment is also convincing from a rational point of view: There was not sufficient reasons to unleash a war in Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a "just war."
"As for "preventive war," Ratzinger flatly stated in September 2002, the "concept of a 'preventive war' does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church." The then-cardinal's remarks also suggested that the United Nations, rather than George W. Bus
Let me try that one again:
Pt 1 / Regarding Jihad and prudential judgemen of the popest vis a vis this war, it is precisely military occupation which is guaranteed to increase and foment Jihad, which is what makes this aggression so tragic, born of the most grievous myopia.
Daniel McCarthy puts it succinctly,
" The new pope and his predecessor have been consistent, some, like Osterberg, would say to a fault in taking the most restrictive possible view in favor of life in matters of capital importance, whether abortion, the death penalty, or war. Neoconservative Catholics have met this papal position with defiance. They point out, correctly, that abortion and war are not parallel, the former is wrong in all instances, the latter permissible in some. Novak and Neuhaus also take care to emphasize the wording of Section 2309 of the Catholic Catechism, which states that deciding when the conditions for a just war have been met "belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good" meaning the Bush administration, as they would have it.
"Yet war is a matter of both moral judgment and prudential judgment. The church is not competent to deduce the likelihood of strategic success or to address other purely prudential considerations of Just War doctrine. But there remain moral considerations in going to war about which a pope certainly can speak with authority, if not with infallibility. Neither John Paul II nor Benedict, whose intellect neoconservative Catholics have in other contexts praised, needs reminding about what the Catechism says. In Benedict's case, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he supervised its recent abridgement. In a May 2003 interview reported by Rome's Zenit news service, Ratzinger was asked about the justice of the Iraq War in light of the Catechism. He agreed that Just War doctrine may require revision, as Weigel and other Catholic neoconservatives have suggested�but in a more, not less, restrictive direction.
"The pope [John Paul II] expressed his thought with great clarity, not only as his individual thought but as the thought of a man who is knowledgeable in the highest functions of the Catholic Church. Of course, he did not impose this position as doctrine of the Church but as the appeal of a conscience enlightened by faith. The Holy Father's judgment is also convincing from a rational point of view: There was not sufficient reasons to unleash a war in Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a "just war."
"As for "preventive war," Ratzinger flatly stated in September 2002, the "concept of a 'preventive war' does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church." The then-cardinal's remarks also suggested that the United Nations, rather than George W.
Pt2 /
...would be the proper public authority to decide upon war with Iraq: "the United Nations" should make the final decision, he said. "It is necessary that the community of nations makes the decision, not a particular power."
"The doctrine of papal infallibility does not, of course, extend to Benedict�s remarks as a cardinal nor even, for that matter, to any of John Paul�s opinions about the Iraq War, however well informed they were. But there is no mistaking the gravity of their views. If, as both men believed, the attack on Iraq in 2003 was unjust, support for the war becomes unconscionable. Novak, Neuhaus, and Weigel have spent much of their careers battling relativism, arguing forcefully that there is moral truth at the core of even the most contentious and divisive issues. There is a moral truth, they would surely agree, at the heart of the Iraq War, the justice of the war is not something that is ultimately moot or merely a question of perspective. The war in Iraq is a matter of moral right and wrong. Catholic neoconservatives say it was right; Benedict says it was wrong.
"Faithful Catholics of conservative disposition face a difficult choice here. Their president, the Republican Party, and the leading Catholic intellectuals who identify themselves as conservatives all support a policy that the pope opposes. The American Conservative August 29, 2005 Issue
Dave, you write, "Note the reasoning here. What if we had said this about Communism?..the Nazi's...?"
As serious scholars note, the Cold War was the contest between two imperialisms that ultimately proved horrific beyond belief in the loss of lives and needless since neither side could morally or economically afford the unbelievable expenditure on arm at the expense of the poor and middle class. A nation (whether theirs or ours) which uses war to create jobs is bankrupt morally..
Catholic theology does not question the right of a people to defend themselves if they are directly attacked, even if there is a higher way as I state here http://tcrnews2.com/
Activenonvio...onviolence.html
which will likely cost far fewer lives.
In Vietnam we were not directly attacked. The warcruelly wasted over 50,000 (!) American lives and untold numbers of Vietnamese. We interefered with a people's right to self-determination which they had decided to resolve via civil war.
In WWII we were directly attacked at Pearl Harbor. But, even here, WWII bombardier Howard Zinn (who directly bombed Germany and killed many by his own testimony) says there was a better way http://tcrnews2.com/ZinnWWII.html
We could be a wonderful country, leading by example, if we would only cease waging war to protect our "interests" which are based on a disproportionate consumption of the world's wealth and natural resources.
But back to Iraq and war in general: again, St. Robert Bellarmine is apropos:
"As a second condition for legitimate warfare, a just, certain and not doubtful cause is required" De Officio Principis, Cap XXI ; and, "A powerful ruler is not a good judge, however, concerning the justice of his own [war] cause against a weaker ruler. His desire of expansion may influence him to presume a good cause to be present, when in reality it does not exist. Nor can he rely too much upon his own domestic counselors. Foreign, disinterested and impartial judges are better qualified to make such decisions." (quoted in Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, Bk 1. Ch III).
Bellarmine believe in international law.
A note on pacifism:
My approach to theology is dialectic. It has always seemed to me that saying "I am a pacifist" is like saying "I am a saint, I am a martyr". One cannot know for certain until one is in that position.
However, pacifists are, with others, clearly peacemakers and so I will hitch my wagon to any who are exploring the alternatives to war. My greatest mentors are pacifists, but not all.
If someone came into my house in the middle of the night and I lived alone, and pointed a gun at me, I HOPE....I can only say HOPE....I would have the spiritual courage to plead with them to consider their souls fate in killing me. If it was clear they were going to do so, i HOPE...again I can only say HOPE....I would have the love to lay down my life as Christ did for my mudere, for the world and Church, and to atone for my sins.
But if someone came in to the house at 3 AM and my wife, who has MS, is with me, I have an obligation to fight, if reason and pleas fail, in order to protect her. Someone else is involved.
Tom Cornell, a good friend and for years editor of the Catholic Worker in its early and best days, says people were always asking him 'what if your sister or someone was being raped in the park?" he said he always replied, "I would fight to save her, but war ain't no rape in the park, brother!"
War is so often related to the expansion of markets, the grasp for territory, the vanity of leaders, etc., etc, history shows.
We must find ways to resolve international conflicts apart from war. Police actions (limited in scope and force) of an international nature to capture war criminals and bring them to justice, in my opinion, should be left open and immediately after the direct attack on 9/11 TCR advocated just that openly in an editorial. Iraq however is something altogether different, a geopolitical construct and strategy. That aggression in my opinion cannot be justified. There were other ways. Again, Bellarmine, JPII, Benedict...
We are living in a nuclear world. We must put all of our efforts into stopping the chain reactions that could lead to it.
Dr. John P. Hubert
I would really encourage anyone who wants to understand our views to read Dr. John Hubert, contributing editor of TCR, and former supporter of the war.
http://www.tcrnews2.com/Hubert1.html
His thought and writing on this matter is meticulous and there is hardly an objection raised here that he has not almost exhaustively treated.
Dr. John Hubert:
"The war in Iraq was based tragically on faulty premises that is; an incorrect diagnosis of cancer (the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction which Saddam intended to use against the United States). . . . now that we know there were no WMD’s in Iraq prior to the invasion."
Okay; I deny this premise, and I do based on the following evidence. I already cited an article above in which an Israeli general stated that WMD's were moved to Syria 6 weeks prior to the invasion.
Here is corroborating evidence:
Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief
By Con Coughlin
(Filed: 25/01/2004)
The Daily Telegraph
David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria.
In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.
"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."
Dr Kay's comments will intensify pressure on President Bashar Assad to clarify the extent of his co-operation with Saddam's regime and details of Syria's WMD programme. Mr Assad has said that Syria was entitled to defend itself by acquiring its own biological and chemical weapons arsenal.
Syria was one of Iraq's main allies in the run-up to the war and hundreds of Iraqi officials - including members of Saddam's family - were given refuge in Damascus after the collapse of the Iraqi dictator's regime. Many of the foreign fighters responsible for conducting terrorist attacks against the coalition are believed to have entered Iraq through Syria.
A Syrian official last night said: "These allegations have been raised many times in the past by Israeli officials, which proves that they are false."
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/
news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/
25/ixnewstop.html)
(cont.)
And another similar article:
Russia Moved Iraqi WMD
Moscow Moved Weapons to Syria and Lebanon
Charles R. Smith
Thursday, March 3, 2005
NewsMax.com
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/.../2/
230625.shtml
Excerpts:
According to a former top Bush administration official, Russian special forces teams moved weapons of mass destruction out of Iraq to Syria.
"I am absolutely sure that Russian Spetsnatz units moved WMD out of Iraq before the war," stated John Shaw, the former deputy undersecretary for international technology security.
According to Shaw, Russian units hid Saddam's arsenal inside Syria and in Lebanon's Bekka valley.
"While in Iraq I uncovered detailed information that Spetsnatz units shredded records and moved all WMD and specified advanced munitions out of Iraq to Syria and Lebanon," stated Shaw during an exclusive interview.
"I received information from several sources naming the exact Russian units, what they took and where they took both WMD materials and conventional explosives. Moscow made a 2001 agreement with Saddam Hussein to clear up all Russian involvement in WMD systems in Iraq," stated Shaw.
Shaw's assertions match the information provided by U.S. military forces that satellite surveillance showed extensive large-vehicle traffic crossing the Syrian border prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
. . . Iraq did most of its WMD killing using Russian-made MiG and Sukhoi aircraft equipped with chemical sprayers. In addition, Saddam used French-made artillery and helicopters to dump gas on Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurds.
. . . The arming of Iraq with such weapons has a direct impact on events today in the Middle East. The presence of former Iraqi WMD systems in Lebanon raises serious questions surrounding the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Many blame Syria for Hariri's murder.
However, the possibility that Hariri discovered the location of the Iraqi WMD systems inside his country lends some credible backing to a Syrian assassination effort to silence him.
. . . CIA Failed
There is no question that the Russian effort to remove Iraqi WMD systems was the most successful intelligence operation of the 21st century. The Russians were able to move hundreds of tons of chemical, biological and nuclear materials without being discovered by CIA satellites or NSA radio listening posts.
"There is a clear sense on how effective they were," noted Shaw.
"The fact that the CIA did not know shows just how successful the Russian operation was," he concluded.
(cont.)
And yet another:
Insight on the News - World
Release date: April 25, 2004
Issue date: 5/11/04
Iraqi Weapons in Syria
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
http://www.kentimmerman.com/
2004..._04_25syria.htm
On Dec. 24, 2002, nearly three months before fighting in Iraq began, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Saddam Hussein's regime of transferring key materials for his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs to Syria in convoys of 18-wheel trucks to hide them from U.N. weapons inspectors. "There is information we are verifying, but we are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria," Sharon told Channel Two television in Israel.
Before talking about this on Israeli television, Sharon gave detailed information to the Bush White House on what Israel knew and what it suspected. Insight has learned, however, that once the information was handed over to the U.S. intelligence community, officials at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) swept it aside as lacking credibility.
In May 2003, just as major combat operations in Iraq were winding down, new reports surfaced in Israel, this time alleging that convoys of Iraqi water tankers carrying WMD components crossed the border into Syria repeatedly between Jan. 10 and March 10. The tankers reportedly were met by Syrian special forces and escorted to the heroin poppy fields of a Syrian-controlled area in Lebanon's Bekáa Valley, where their contents were dumped into specially prepared pits and buried. Again, INR discounted the reports, U.S. officials tell Insight.
Reports of Iraqi WMD winding up in Syria were not just coming from the Israelis. In October 2003, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, revealed that vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to Saddam's forbidden WMD programs had been shipped to Syria before the war. It was no surprise that the United States and its allies had not found stockpiles of forbidden weapons in Iraq, Clapper told a breakfast briefing given to reporters in Washington. "Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," he said.
"We have had six or seven credible reports of Iraqi weapons being moved into Syria before the war," a senior administration official tells Insight. "In every case, the U.S. intelligence community sought to discount or discredit those reports."
This January, after he returned to Washington from Iraq, where for six months he had served as the CIA's top gun with the Iraq Survey Group hunting for Saddam's banned weapons, David Kay said he had uncovered evidence that weapons material had been moved to Syria shortly before the war. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he told the Sunday Telegraph in London. "But we kno
(cont.)
. . . know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."
Another piece of this puzzle was provided by a Syrian intelligence officer in letters smuggled to an antiregime activist living in Paris named Nizar Nayouf. In one letter the source identified three locations in Syria where WMD materials had been buried under an agreement between the Syrian and Iraqi leadership. Two of the sites were specially dug underground bunkers and tunnels. The third site was a factory operated by the Syrian air force in the village of Tal Sinan, located between the cities of Hama and Salimiyyah. In a follow-up letter dated Jan. 7, Nayouf's source provided more details on these locations, along with a map, and alleged that some of the weapons had been moved out of Iraq in ambulances.
So are Saddam's WMD stockpiles in Syria? When Insight asked the CIA if it was investigating these and other reports, a spokesman acknowledged there was "some evidence that way" and that the United States was "looking at all types of possibilities," but vigorously discouraged further inquiries. Administration officials tell Insight that the refusal to report on Syria's complicity with Saddam's regime stems from a "pro-Syria bias in the State Department and some elements of the intelligence community, whose threshold for evidence on Syria is suspiciously high."
Shoshana Bryen regularly escorts groups of retired U.S. military flag officers (admirals and generals) to Israel for meetings with senior Israeli political and military leaders, as well as intelligence officials. "We went to Israel just before the war and just after," she tells Insight. "Both times, Israeli intelligence officials told us, yes, WMD were definitely in Iraq, and that they had been sent to Syria." The Bush administration was trying to downplay these reports, she believes, "because if Iraqi weapons are in Syria, we're going to have to do something about it, and they don't want another war."
Here is a superb article about a Syrian defector who tells exactly where the Iraqi weapons and WMD materials are stored. It even has a link for satellite photos, a map of the locations, and links to other articles:
A senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq WMD located in three Syrian sites
06 January, 2004
(Lebanese Association)
http://www.2la.org/syria/iraq-wmd.php
Nizar Nayuf (Nayyouf-Nayyuf), a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “De Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are kept. The storage places are:
-1- Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels.
-2- The village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, where there is a big Syrian air force camp. Vital parts of Iraq's WMD are stored there.
-3-. The city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of Homs city.
Nayouf writes that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein's Special Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assif Shoakat , Bashar Assad's cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family.
In February 2003, a month before America's invasion in Iraq, very few are aware about the efforts to bring the Weapons of Mass Destruction from Iraq to Syria, and the personal involvement of Bashar Assad and his family in the operation.
Nayouf, who has won prizes for journalistic integrity, says he wrote his letter because he has terminal cancer.
And more:
Western spies: Syria storing WMD in Sudan
Washington Times, 9 April 2004
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-b...91306-
5456r.htm
LONDON, April 9 (UPI) -- Western spy agencies say Damascus is smuggling missile and weapons of mass destruction components to Sudan so they won't be detected anywhere in Syria.
Since January 2004, Syrian President Bashar Assad has ordered shipments of Scud C and Scud D extended-range missiles as well as weapons components to be flown to warehouses in Khartoum, Middle East News Line reported Friday.
Intelligence sources said the Syrian shipments were placed on civilian airliners but authorized and directed by the Defense Ministry.
"There is widespread concern in the Syrian regime that Damascus will be the next to face heavy U.S. and international pressure to open its WMD facilities in the wake of the Libyan example," a senior intelligence source said.
"The Syrians have decided that they want to take some of their assets out of the country."
The government of Sudan President Omar Bashir was not informed of the Syrian shipments, which went to Khartoum as part of increased trade relations between the two countries, MENL said.
And more:
Winnipeg Sun
Sun, January 25, 2004
WMD in Syria: Kay
Ex-inspector says Iraq sent 'lot of material'
By AP
LONDON -- David Kay, who recently resigned as leader of a U.S. weapons search team in Iraq, said part of captive president Saddam Hussein's weapons program was hidden in Syria, a report in Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper said today. Kay was reported to have said he had uncovered evidence unspecified materials were moved to Syria shortly before last year's U.S. invasion of Iraq.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Wi.../25/
324358.html
Dave,
Why do you bother? I Have been following the dialog here, and Mr Hand never responds to your facts. Mr Hand simply vomits up the same canards as this masters at Antiwar.com.
Matt
John P. Hubert Jr. MD FACS
Catholic Ethicist
©CCWVA
6/01/05
Dr. Hubert writes again on the TCR page that my friend Stephen hand referenced for us:
"Ultimately in light of subsequent post-war developments (no WMD of any consequence existed in Iraq prior to invasion in 2003), it is clear that his decision to support the invasion despite reservations has proven unwise and regrettable."
(in The Iraq War: A Tragic Misapplication of Just-War Theory Or a Failure of “Intelligence”?)
http://www.tcrnews2.com/Hubert1.html
Obviously, then, Dr. Hubert makes this consideration a prime one in determining whether the invasion was justified. He sounds as if he would agree that it was, if the weapons were indeed there. Well, I have shown from several high-up intelligence sources that they were there, as everyone thought before the invasion (since we had weapons inspectors, there, etc.).
If Dr. Hubert disagrees, he is welcome to come here and dispute those sources and evidences and to give his reasons for doing so.
Later in this article, he writes:
"The main argument which was apparently persuasive for many people who ultimately supported the war was that Iraq possessed arsenals of biological, chemical and possibly even nuclear weapons which would be sold to Al Queda terrorists who would then unleash them on the United States.[9] Many advocates of the Iraq War argued that this threat was grave and imminent enough to satisfy the first element of the Just-War Doctrine although the debate was never really framed with the specific “4” elements of the JWD in the fore-front.[10] Unfortunately, there were only a few members of the executive and legislative branches of the government who were allowed to see and evaluate the complete classified intelligence material which purportedly established a growing, grave, and imminent threat. In hindsight public lack of access to classified intelligence documents was perhaps the key deficiency which allowed the first element of the Just War Doctrine to be “finessed” such that many people (who otherwise would have been strongly against the war) reluctantly and perhaps against their better judgment accepted it. The author was one such person."
I shall offer further reply in my next post.
Hi Matt,
Stephen has been answering. You may not like his answers (I don't), but he has been responding, and the conversation remains civil and amiable (and I think, constructive). I am now challenging Dr. Hubert, whom Stephen cited as a resident expert at TCR. We shall see if he can disprove my counter-arguments about the WMD's moved to Syria, etc.
Whether my friendly dialogical opponents "answer" or not is ultimately of little concern of mine (though I naturally hope that they will try). My aim, as always, is to get both sides out on the table, argued by proponents of each, so that readers can see the strength of each case and make up their own minds.
That's happening here, so I am delighted. Stephen has offered a vigours argument, and I am responding. I hope it will continue, and that others will join in. So please don't make this personal at all. Just let the arguments stand on their own. If they're good (wherever they are), then they'll stand up to scrutiny.
This is old diehard speculation and it is little wonder that the governments involved would not declare it as fact.
See: Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/me.../sprj.nirq.kay/
The speculative thesis also deflected from the fact that the USA is the largest respository of WMD's on the planet and thus has no moral authority (other than example) to preach to others on the subject. We are also the only ones also to have actually used an atomic weapon---and on cities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...5042501554.html (2005)
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/
...ence_111503.htm
http://www.zmag.org/content/show...=22&
ItemID=7802
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORL...nirq.syria.wmd/
I think we have both represented our positions well enough here to be more fully understood . And I thank you, Dave, for the invitation. It is good to stick to the issues.
Stephen Hand
Dr. Hubert again writes, in the same article:
"In a similar fashion, element two was also “finessed” by those who wished to establish that what could be done “practically” to eliminate the perceived Iraqi “threat” had in fact already been done. It is clear in retrospect and with 20/20 hindsight that such was clearly not the case. U.N. weapons inspectors found no weapons of mass destruction and had clearly asked for additional time in which to more completely search the country of Iraq prior to war breaking out. Instead the United States and her allies (the “coalition of the willing”) began hostilities after being unable to obtain an additional U. N. resolution specifically calling for the commencement of war.[11] All “evidence” which purportedly established a “lasting, grave and certain risk” was “classified” and unavailable to the general public for review and debate. It remains in this author’s view a tremendous mistake in retrospect.
"After the war, no WMD’s of significance have ever been found either, indicating that our “intelligence” was woefully inaccurate![12] Some pro-war proponents still maintain that significant quantities of WMD have been moved either to Syria or the Baca valley of Lebanon. As best the author can determine there is no publicly documented evidence that either of these exist."
Okay; well, I have offered tons of "publicly documented evidence" in the above articles, from sources who would be in a position to know:
1) Israeli's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom: General Moshe Ya’alon (NY Times-Sun: 12-15-05)
see also: Former IDF chief: Saddam’s WMDs in Syria, Canadian Jewish News, 12-22-05
http://www.cjnews.com/internatio...al/
briefs04.asp
"Saddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria before the U.S.-led war on Iraq began, a former Israeli military chief said. “He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria,” Moshe Ya’alon, who was Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, told the New York Sun last week."
2) David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (The Daily Telegraph, 1-25-04)
3) John Shaw, the former deputy undersecretary for international technology security (NewsMax.com, March 3, 2005)
4) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
(Insight on the News - World April 25, 2004)
5) Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (same source article)
6) Nizar Nayuf (Nayyouf-Nayyuf), a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, in a letter of January 5 [2004], to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
Much more to come on this, because it is such a huge and fallacious plank of the anti-war movement.
Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 26, 2005; Page A01
U.S. investigators hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have found no evidence that such material was moved to Syria for safekeeping before the war, according to a final report of the investigation released yesterday.
Although Syria helped Iraq evade U.N.-imposed sanctions by shipping military and other products across its borders, the investigators "found no senior policy, program, or intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of such movement of WMD." Because of the insular nature of Saddam Hussein's government, however, the investigators were "unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials."
The Iraq Survey Group's main findings -- that Hussein's Iraq did not possess chemical and biological weapons and had only aspirations for a nuclear program -- were made public in October in an interim report covering nearly 1,000 pages. Yesterday's final report, published on the Government Printing Office's Web site ( http://www.gpo.gov/ ), incorporated those pages with minor editing and included 92 pages of addenda that tied up loose ends on Syria and other topics.
U.S. officials have held out the possibility that Syria worked in tandem with Hussein's government to hide weapons before the U.S.-led invasion. The survey group said it followed up on reports that a Syrian security officer had discussed collaboration with Iraq on weapons, but it was unable to complete that investigation. But Iraqi officials whom the group was able to interview "uniformly denied any knowledge of residual WMD that could have been secreted to Syria," the report said.
The report, which refuted many of the administration's principal arguments for going to war in Iraq, marked the official end of a two-year weapons hunt led most recently by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer. The team found that the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. sanctions had destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capabilities and that, for the most part, Hussein had not tried to rebuild them. Iraq's ability to produce nuclear arms, which the administration asserted was a grave and gathering threat that required an immediate military response, had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Investigators found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."
Administration officials have emphasized that, while the survey group uncovered no banned arms, it concluded that Hussein had not given up the goal of someday acquiring them.
Hussein "retained the intent and capability and he intended to resume full-scale WMD efforts once the U.N. sanctions were lifted," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said yesterday. "Duelfer provides plenty of rationale for why this country went to war in Iraq."
In one of the addenda released yesterday, investigators addressed the risk that Iraqi
Pt2. Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms
In one of the addenda released yesterday, investigators addressed the risk that Iraqi scientists will share their knowledge or material with other countries, particularly Syria and Iran, given previous contacts, financial inducements and professional opportunities. The report concluded that the risk exists but said "there is only very limited reporting suggesting that this is actually taking place and no reports that indicate scientists were recruited to work in a WMD program."
As for the possibility that insurgents in Iraq will draw on the expertise of Iraqi scientists to develop unconventional weapons for use against the United States and its coalition forces, the report describes these efforts so far as being "limited and contained by coalition action." The survey group was aware of only one scientist assisting terrorists or insurgents. He helped them fashion chemical mortar munitions.
The report found that missing equipment, however, "could contribute to insurgent or terrorist production of chemical or biological agents."
In most cases the equipment appeared to have been randomly looted, but in selected cases it appeared "to be taken away carefully," Duelfer said in an interview yesterday. Overall, though, "it's like going to a demolition derby for car parts," said Duelfer. The right equipment "is hard to get."
Four military personnel assigned to the survey group's mission perished in the violence that engulfed Iraq, and five others were seriously wounded, in a mission that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
No further work is planned, although teams are on hand to be dispatched when credible reports of weapons material are received in Iraq. The report says, however, that continued reports of banned arms in Iraq "are usually scams or misidentification of materials or activities." It predicts that such reports will continue.
Although new information may be forthcoming, Duelfer said in an accompanying letter that he has "confidence in the picture of events and programs covered by this report."
"If there were to be a surprise in the future," he added, "it most likely would be in the biological weapons area" because the size of those facilities can be so small.
Duelfer also recommended that the United States release some of the scientists and technocrats who are still being held captive in Iraq strictly because of their work on Iraq's weapons programs dating back to the Gulf War. "Many have been very cooperative and provided great assistance in understanding the WMD programs" and Iraq's intentions, and have exhausted their knowledge of these subjects, he wrote. "In my view, certain detainees are overdue for release."
Of 300 individuals on a "blacklist" developed by U.S. military and intelligence officials before the war, 105 have been detained. But the list, said the report, was flawed. "Some very despicable individuals who s
Pt3. Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms
"Some very despicable individuals who should have been listed were not, while many technocrats and even opponents of the Saddam regime made the list and hence found themselves either in jail or on the run."
The Pentagon's Whitman said that he was unaware of any scientists who had been released recently because of Duelfer's appeal and that the Defense Department routinely reviews detainees' status to see "whether or not they are a threat to the coalition and Iraqi security forces and whether or not they continue to have intelligence value."
Here is a tremendous article:
COMMENTARY
December 2005
Who Is Lying About Iraq?
by Norman Podhoretz
http://
www.commentarymagazine.co...205advance.html
Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.
What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.
Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.
The main “lie” that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary “lie” that Iraq under Saddam’s regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even “imminent”) possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us and/or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.
(cont.)
Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, spoke for a host of other opponents of the war in insisting that
"[t]his case is bigger than the leak of classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the President."
Yet even stipulating—which I do only for the sake of argument—that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.
How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was “a slam dunk.” This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Tenet had the backing of all fifteen agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with “high confidence” was that
"Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions."
The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, and—yes—France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix—who headed the UN team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past—lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:
"The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for."
Blix now claims that he was only being “cautious” here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration “misled itself” in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.
(cont.)
Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. “In the late spring of 2002,” Pollack has written,
"I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes)."
No wonder, then, that another conclusion the NIE of 2002 reached with “high confidence” was that
"Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material."
. . . But the consensus on which Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program."
Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:
"Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
Finally, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained “absolutely convinced” of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.
(cont.)
Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. A few months after Clinton and his people made the statements I have just quoted, a group of Democratic Senators, including such liberals as Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urged the President
"to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs."
Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Bush succeeded Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House. In a letter to the new President, a number of Senators led by Bob Graham declared:
"There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical, and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
Senator Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Bush’s benefit what he had told Clinton some years earlier:
"Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed, speaking in October 2002:
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members."
Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed as well:
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
Even more striking were the sentiments of Bush’s opponents in his two campaigns for the presidency. Thus Al Gore in September 2002:
"We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
And here is Gore again, in that same year:
"Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destructio
(cont.)
. . . destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Now to John Kerry, also speaking in 2002:
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force—if necessary—to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
Perhaps most startling of all, given the rhetoric that they would later employ against Bush after the invasion of Iraq, are statements made by Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, also in 2002:
Kennedy: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
Byrd: "The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons."
Liberal politicians like these were seconded by the mainstream media, in whose columns a very different tune would later be sung. For example, throughout the last two years of the Clinton administration, editorials in the New York Times repeatedly insisted that
"without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year [and] future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again."
The Times was also skeptical of negotiations, pointing out that it was
"hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as his country’s salvation."
So, too, the Washington Post, which greeted the inauguration of George W. Bush in January 2001 with the admonition that
"[o]f all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous—or more urgent—than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade’s efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf [where] intelligence photos . . . show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons."
(cont.)
All this should surely suffice to prove far beyond any even unreasonable doubt that Bush was telling what he believed to be the truth about Saddam’s stockpile of WMD. It also disposes of the fallback charge that Bush lied by exaggerating or hyping the intelligence presented to him. Why on earth would he have done so when the intelligence itself was so compelling that it convinced everyone who had direct access to it, and when hardly anyone in the world believed that Saddam had, as he claimed, complied with the sixteen resolutions of the Security Council demanding that he get rid of his weapons of mass destruction?
Another fallback charge is that Bush, operating mainly through Cheney, somehow forced the CIA into telling him what he wanted to hear. Yet in its report of 2004, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, while criticizing the CIA for relying on what in hindsight looked like weak or faulty intelligence, stated that it
"did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities."
The March 2005 report of the equally bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission, which investigated intelligence failures on Iraq, reached the same conclusion, finding
"no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence community’s pre-war assessments of Iraq’s weapons programs. . . . [A]nalysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."
Still, even many who believed that Saddam did possess WMD, and was ruthless enough to use them, accused Bush of telling a different sort of lie by characterizing the risk as “imminent.” But this, too, is false: Bush consistently rejected imminence as a justification for war. Thus, in the State of the Union address he delivered only three months after 9/11, Bush declared that he would “not wait on events while dangers gather” and that he would “not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer.” Then, in a speech at West Point six months later, he reiterated the same point: “If we wait for threats to materialize, we will have waited too long.” And as if that were not clear enough, he went out of his way in his State of the Union address in 2003 (that is, three months before the invasion), to bring up the word “imminent” itself precisely in order to repudiate it:
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option."
What of the related charge that it was still another “lie” to suggest, as Bush and his people did, that a connec
(cont.)
. . . connection could be traced between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on 9/11? This charge was also rejected by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Contrary to how its findings were summarized in the mainstream media, the committee’s report explicitly concluded that al Qaeda did in fact have a cooperative, if informal, relationship with Iraqi agents working under Saddam. The report of the bipartisan 9/11 commission came to the same conclusion, as did a comparably independent British investigation conducted by Lord Butler, which pointed to “meetings . . . between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al-Qaeda operatives.”
. . . And so long as we are hunting for liars in this area, let me suggest that we begin with the Democrats now proclaiming that they were duped, and that we then broaden out to all those who in their desperation to delegitimize the larger policy being tested in Iraq—the policy of making the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy—have consistently used distortion, misrepresentation, and selective perception to vilify as immoral a bold and noble enterprise and to brand as an ignominious defeat what is proving itself more and more every day to be a victory of American arms and a vindication of American ideals.
Footnote 5: In early November, the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who last year gave their unanimous assent to its report, were suddenly mounting a last-ditch effort to take it back on this issue (and others). But to judge from the material they had already begun leaking by November 7, when this article was going to press, the newest “Bush lied” case is as empty and dishonest as the one they themselves previously rejected.
2006
Iraq had no WMD program to give to Syria, says Kay
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/d.../sw/
d...ils.cfm? ID=8211
Former US weapons hunter David Kay tells the Senate Armed Services Committee that "we were almost all wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and the possible "Syrian connection" hinted at in some media reports appears increasingly tenuous.
But Dr. Hubert, ostensibly either unfamiliar with facts like these above, or undaunted by them, continues on in the same article:
"Over-extrapolation of Bad Data
It is also critical to recognize that our “intelligence” for the foreseeable future is likely to be incomplete or false with respect to ascertaining the true situation inside tightly-knit and closed societies in which we at present have few if any actual physical assets. This is particularly true of terrorist entities. For the most part poor “intelligence” is largely responsible for the widespread belief that Iraq under Saddam Hussein posed a lasting, grave, and certain threat because of presumed WMD’s. Without that belief, it is extremely unlikely that a serious case for war would have been made in the wake of 9/11. The fact that a serious case was made even with that operating assumption demonstrates how poorly understood and applied the Just War Doctrine is today since there was never any persuasive evidence that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks or that he was about to engage in either furnishing Al Queda with WMD or attack the U.S directly. In retrospect the entire matter was an example of over-extrapolation of bad data in which there was an a-priori bias in favor of Iraq possessing WMD and in favor of Iraqi regime change as formal U.S policy."
I, for one, would like to see his responses to the facts reconted in the Commentary article, and the evidences for the WMDs being moved to Syria.
Please start commenting on a 2nd forum I will start. There are so many comments here that it is taking my computer forever to show new ones to me!
i don't get it: hussein was an "insane" mass murderer who had huge stockpiles of WMDs (that russian intelligence spirited away to syria who then spirited some of those away to sudan--funny how these are all countries on our "to-do-something-about" list..yes, even putin's russia is too autonomous for us) but he *never, ever* used them in the slow, month-by-month build-up that was operation iraqi "freedom"? what gives? it appears as though:
1. hussein wasn't so "insane" afterall (i.e., he was logical enough to realize a WMD game with the US isn't one he would win)
2. or, he simply DIDN'T HAVE said stockpile to begin with because, omg, scott ritter--a gulf war veteran who, according to so many neocons, had a pro-saddam agenda--and hans blix did their jobs rather well, even if some currupt UN officials got wealthy off of it.
besides, why would ANY country accept iraq's WMDs seeing as the US was so hell-bent on "securing" them? it would be suicide... 'sure, saddam! you got some weapons you want to stash somewhere for a while? i understand!" yep--i just don't get it, i guess.
all if that notwithstanding, i have a question for the pro-iraq crowd: why have we heard over and over and over from credible sources like dick clarke and paul o'niel that on 9-12 the admin was determined to go to war with iraq *regardless* of whether or not hussein had a hand in 9-11 or *regardless* of his WMD count or *regardless* of whether or not he had ties to al-queda---that they were going to war with iraq REGARDLESS? i mean, how can one say bush (and the congressmen who did NOT have all of the intelligence he had but voted for the war) was as 'misled' as everyone else on the WMDs and whatnot whenever, after 9-11, it didn't matter to W or cheney or rummy or wolfie or 'turdblossom' WHAT he had?
Please, everyone, comment now on the new forum I started above. Thanks.
Commenting by HaloScan
