Eric Johnson: June 2006 Archives

Once again, the question of the "legality" of the Iraq War has reared itself on Catholic Light. I am so tired of debating this subject that it actually makes me a bit queasy to type this, but here goes.

As you probably know, there is a war going on in Iraq. But it isn't the same war as the 2003 war to remove Saddam Hussein and dismantle his regime. If you want to argue about U.N. resolutions and "BUSH LIED!!!!!!!" and all that stuff, go ahead. But that's history. That war is over. Saddam is on trial for his life, and nobody, not even the most committed Bush-hater, is arguing that his regime should be restored.

The war today is being played for a much different set of objectives.
It might be useful to think of this second war as a sports contest, so here is a list of the players, the objectives of the game, and the rules of play:

STARTING LINEUP

Side #1:
1. The democratically elected Iraqi government
2. The overwhelming majority of Kurds
3. The overwhelming majority of Shiites
4. Some Sunnis
5. The allied military coalition led by the U.S.

Side #2:
1. The majority of Sunnis (though this is shifting)
2. al Qaeda terrorists
3. Native Sunni terrorists

OBJECTIVES OF THE GAME

Side #1:
1. Deter or destroy international terrorist groups.
2. Deter or destroy illegal combatants (a.k.a. "insurgents").
3. Protect ordinary Iraqis from being murdered.
4. Support and sustain the Iraqi state so it can keep public order.

Side #2:
1. Create a Taliban-style theocratic state.
2. Kill as many Kurds and Shiites as possible, including women and children.
3. Humiliate the United States by forcing it to leave Iraq.

RULES FOR EACH SIDE

Side #1:
1. Follow the laws of war.
2. Avoid civilian casualties.
3. Spare mosques, schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure unless they are receiving fire from those buildings.
4. Prosecute anyone on side #1 who does not follow the laws of war.

Side #2:
1. Ignore the laws of war.
2. Use your opponent's observance of the laws of war against him.
3. Murder civilians, including (and, often, especially) women and children.
4. Bomb mosques, schools, and hospitals.
5. Store ammunition in mosques, schools, and hospitals.
6. Shoot from mosques, schools, and hospitals.
7. Use your allies in the U.S. Democratic Party and the Western media to assist you with objective #3.

If you want to argue that the present war in Iraq is "illegal," go ahead. But you will have an extremely difficult time doing so, since secular law isn't with you. There is a sovereign government in Iraq, which was democratically elected by the Iraqi people. This government is recognized by the United Nations, and by its member states, as the competent authority in that country.

As a sovereign nation, Iraq has the right to determine whether foreign armies may station troops within its borders. Its government not only permits allied troops to remain, it actively encourages those troops to carry out anti-terrorist campaigns, either alone or in coordination with Iraqi security forces.

Therefore, if you want to say that the present war is "illegal," you have to say that the Iraqi government is acting illegally by rooting out murderous thugs and letting its allies assist. Does anyone seriously want to argue that point -- that Iraq has no right to seek outside assistance when it cannot secure the peace within its borders? And that the U.S. and other nations are acting illegally in coming to the defense of this legitimate, sovereign government?

Because they don't want to look at the present moral questions of the present war, anti-war activists want to elide the difference between the two wars (or, if you like, the two distinct phases of the same war). They apparently think that since the war did not meet their standards at its commencement, the United States cannot do anything of any value in Iraq, ever. It wouldn't matter if the "insurgents" put nuclear warheads on ICBMs and prepared to incinerate the Eastern seaboard of the United States. All the moonbats would still screech "Where are the WMDs?" and demand an immediate pullout.

A challenge for you anti-war folks: come up with an international law that says the U.S. and other nations can't fight on the Iraqi government's behalf.

Bonus question: Find a church document that prohibits a nation from intervening militarily on the behalf of another nation, when the object is to restore justice and protect human lives.

In the mental Wonderland of the Left, refusing to serve your country is "patriotism." Their latest "patriot" hero is Lieutenant Ehren Watada, who received his commission after the Iraq War commenced, and is now refusing to deploy to Iraq with his unit.

Lieutenant Watada is not a hero, although he is not a coward (he will be punished under military law, unlike those who fled the country to avoid their sworn service to this country.) He abandoned the troops he was supposed to lead, and betrayed the country he pledged to defend.

He also needs to brush up on the law: being ordered to Iraq with his unit is lawful order by a legitimate authority, and he disobeyed it. If he was ordered to deliberately kill noncombatants, that's an illegal order, and he would have a moral duty to disobey it. His self-righteous moonbat nonsense about "the deception used to wage this war, and the lawlessness that has pervaded every aspect of our civilian leadership" is beside the point. Going to war is a decision for elected officials, and an officer who receives his commission from the President of the United States does not have the authority to override it.

I love eating animals of any kind -- there's no such thing as an "unclean" animal that Christians can't consume (c.f. the book of Acts). And whether it's jellyfish in China or lamb brains in Kuwait, when I'm in an ethnic restaurant or foreign country, I love to try new animals, or parts of animals I've never eaten.

That being said, I have some sympathy for Whole Foods' decision to end the sale of live lobsters and crabs. Maybe you will tell me they did this because their management is a bunch of secular left-wing pinko commies, and they are trying to appeal to the pale, squeamish upper-middle-class yuppies who patronize their stores. I'll take your word for it.

Have you ever stuck a metal skewer through the length of a lobster's body? In one of the restaurants where I was employed, that was part of my job. I did it a few times, and the things reacted...pretty much as you would expect: they tried to curl up and defend themselves, but their claws were banded and there was little they could do. So I had to pry their tails down, ram the skewer as straight as I could up their bodies, and out through their heads, with bits of their innards oozing out through their faces. Then I threw them into a steamer where they cooked for a while and died at some point. We served their tails cold and with three kinds of sauce on the side.

Unhappy with this cooking method, I thought I would euthanize the lobsters before skewering them. I did some research, and found out that if you stick a knife between two of the plates near the head, it would sever something important (I forget what) and the things would die instantly. I tried this a couple of times, but botched it and ended up with pissed-off crustaceans.

After that, I refused to use the skewer. Patiently, the sous chef explained that a straighter tail made for a better presentation. I politely told him that I didn't care if people ate lobsters, but I saw no reason to make another living creature suffer just to make its lower half look better on a bed of ice. He shrugged and said he'd get somebody else to do it, and that was the end of it.

I am not the least bit squeamish about the use of lethal force against human beings. If someone broke into my house tonight, I wouldn't think twice about shooting him (it would fill me with disgust, but not remorse.) But there is something uniquely repulsive about causing unnecessary suffering to an animal when the end is the carnal pleasure of consuming its flesh. Lobsters and crabs are luxury foods; practically nobody relies on them for sustenance. Even if these creatures were a significant part of the food supply, they could be killed and their flesh preserved through refrigeration or freezing, just like other animals.

Crab meat doesn't take that well to freezing, and lobsters even less so -- true gourmands would shudder at the thought of eating a frozen lobster tail (though the Safeway near my house sells them). The only reason to sell them in tanks is to keep them completely fresh. If catching, processing, transporting, and displaying live animals causes pain, then it isn't necessary to preserve human lives, and the practice should be abandoned.

That's where the case against Whole Foods' prior practice breaks down. Kids tapping on the lobster tank glass is not torture (except perhaps in Mark Shea's world.) The CEO's comment about "the importance of humane treatment and quality of life for all animals" is risible. What does "quality of life" mean to a lobster or crab? Maybe they prefer being in a big glass tank with no predators.

But even though the management of Whole Foods is probably made up of morally silly people, avoiding pain in animals isn't morally silly per se.

As the parents of a very precocious six-year-old, my wife and I are naturally worried that eventually she will become precocious in other ways. So far, she hasn't shown any signs of a premature interest in romantic matters. Like all the other kids, she watches harmless PBS shows and G-rated movies, and has no trouble putting boys in their place, thanks to the presence of her two brothers. She's is full of spunky, good-natured, innocent exuberance, and we would like to keep it that way.

It's tough to do that when many older girls dress like trollops at Mass. We can shield our kids from "inappropriate" entertainment, and gently guide them toward good behavior, but we do have to go to church every Sunday. Now that the weather is warm, clothing standards completely fall apart.

This is true for both sexes, and all ages, since the ultra-casual Baby Boomers have begun their less-than-graceful slide into senility. In the future, I anticipate arguments with my sons that involve the line, "But plenty of people wear shorts and no socks to Mass!" Deliberately dressing badly is an affront to God, but dressing badly in a lascivious way is especially bad.

The most recent painful incident of this kind was a few weeks ago, when our parish had its spring carnival. At the Mass right before it started, there were plenty of people dressed down for the event. A couple of teenage girls were sitting two rows in front of me and my older three kids. One of the girls had on very short shorts, and at one point during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, I glanced up and saw that they didn't entirely cover her rear end.

Now, I know this girl and her family: she lives around the corner and babysits our kids. Her sister also babysits sometimes, her brother comes over occasionally and plays with my boys, and her mom is a family friend. But I didn't really need to see her butt crack (or anyone else's).

The bizarre thing is that she's a nice kid. During the Mass, she and her friend were completely reverent and prayerful. We were all sitting in the balcony, which has no kneelers, and they knelt the whole time on the hard floor. There weren't any adults making them behave, either -- they genuinely wanted to act correctly.

You may say that I have a weird Catholic aversion to anything sexual, but I don't think that's true. I am not a prude, at least not by the classic definition. It does not bother me to see the female form dressed in a way that flatters it, nor do I have any aversion to healthy sexuality. I simply do not wish to see young girls dressed in a way that invites men to look at them as flowers to be plucked, because I have daughters who will inevitably start to take their cues from what older girls are wearing and doing.

Once again, this shows the fallacy of our age's individualistic ethos, which is the idea that "I can do what I want, and it won't affect you." The way we dress and act has a profound affect on other people, especially impressionable young ones. What we do with our bodies speaks much louder than any words we say, and I wish more parents were mindful of that.

Here's is a political question with a natural law twist. I (and probably you) frequently read sentiments like this: "...of all rich countries the US has lost the most civil liberties recently. But I'm not too worried yet. I'm hoping once the present administration is out, the natural openness of American culture will reassert itself."

You can see the quotation in context here, but it doesn't matter that much. What interests me are two things:

1. The blatant exaggeration. In this case, the author doesn't bother to enumerate which civil liberties we have "lost" -- and people who write such things rarely do. They talk about wiretapping powers as if the Feds are listening to every phone call we make. But even if these measures are contrary to our rights, at best these are marginal encroachments: no one, to my knowledge, has abolished the right to free association.

2. The connection with natural law. Americans like to conflate natural rights (which are given by God) and civil rights (which are granted, or at least recognized, by temporal powers.) These are overlapping categories, certainly. The right to bear arms is connected with the natural right to self-defense. The right to property is explicit in both natural law and revealed scripture.

What about other civil rights? I do not consider voting to be a natural right, as it is possible to have a just government without elections or democracy. Free speech, at least as we constitute it today, does not seem to be a natural right, either. Those civil rights are good for our system of government, because they allow citizens to remove bad politicians and substitute good (or less bad) ones, and to speak out against their government's policies or actions and urge correction. But that does not make them part of natural law, as their objects -- the goods they serve -- are ordered toward right government and not man per se.

I am not arguing that any civil right should be curtailed or abolished, but it would help to distingush between them and the ones that are truly inalienable.

I love Scott Ott:

(2006-06-09) — As Blackberry devices and cell phones on Capitol Hill hummed with news of the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi yesterday, Congressional Democrats vowed that despite the loss they would fight on in “the war on the war on terror.”

“Zarqawi will be missed because he put a human face on the futility of the illegal U.S. occupation of Iraq,” said one unnamed lawmaker, who assured a reporter that “Democrats are still optimistic. We’re still looking for the silver lining.”

Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, a former Marine and vocal critic of the military occupation of Iraq, immediately denounced “the Zarqawi massacre” and suggested that the F-16 pilot who dropped the bombs had snapped under pressure and murdered the al Qaeda leader “in cold blood.”

Ott also raises a cogent question: were Zarqawi's human rights violated? That is, did the F-16 pilots read him a Miranda warning before dumping a half-ton of explosives on his safe house? Did they have a warrant? Did they get their information about Zarqawi's whereabouts through an illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional wiretap by the NSA? Did the lying filthy neocon Jews engineer all of these violations of this poor guy's rights?

We need Senate hearings, right now.

I did not include Pat-Buchanan-style paleoconservatives on the list of people who are sad about Zarqawi's death. My apologies to the nutters on the far right, especially the ones who believe that Iran is a better country than the United States. If you are taking up a collection to emigrate, please send me your PayPal account information and I will gladly donate to your cause.

Please note that I am not talking about people who merely disagree with the decision to go to war. But if you think Iran is a harmless, traditional country with great family values, and you write columns called "Is Bush a Sith Lord?", you are a nut. If you give this blathering nonsense a platform by publishing it, you are irresponsible.

It is a sad day for mainstream journalists and liberals everywhere: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is facing the judgment of God for his crimes.

Zarqawi scurried away from Afghanistan when the U.S., the U.K., and Afghan militias destroyed his protectors' government. Despite the Left's fanatical insistence that Saddam Hussein had "nothing to do with al Qaeda," Zarqawi set up shop in Baghdad two years before the war, as an honored guest of the regime. He was in bad company -- Iraq had sheltered several other major international terrorists. Saddam also had extensive contacts (not to say alliances) with terrorists, directly funded Ansar al-Islam and used terror groups as proxies in his vicious struggles with the Kurds and Iranians.

Two years ago, Zarqawi announced that his band of merry thugs and murderers would be the Iraqi franchise of al Qaeda. They have killed hundreds of Americans and thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqis. They are the avowed enemies of democracy and have promised to institute a Taliban-style theocracy in Iraq if they triumph.

Zarqawi and other terrorist leaders have depended upon the Left's footsoldiers to broadcast news of their murders and bombings, with little context or explanation, and the Left has been happy to comply in order to harm the standing of President Bush and the war in Iraq. With yet another major terrorist undergoing the anger of Allah, it will be difficult to spin this as anything other than a victory, but I'm sure journalists will do their best. Within 24 hours, you will see stories that say, "Despite the Zarqawi's death, the violence continued in Iraq...."

May the remaining terrorists repent of their crimes and turn themselves in to the civil authorities for temporal punishment. For those who do not, may God visit his wrath upon them for the innocent blood they have shed, and the discord they have sown.

On Thursday, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it was responsible for the flooding of New Orleans, because of bad design decisions in the city's levees and floodwalls. As you will recall, the mainstream media had blamed the Bush Administration, but CNN and the BBC could not be reached, and so it is not known if they will issue formal apologies to the president.

I haven't read the 6,000-page report issued by the Corps, but it sounds like they're being a little hard on themselves. New Orleans has been slowly sinking into the earth for a long time, and it will continue to do so. Hurricanes will keep forming in the Gulf of Mexico, barring some drastic change in the Earth's climate. Those two facts militate against any "solution" to the city's long-term survival.

But it isn't "nice" to ask whether it's prudent to spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on rebuilding a doomed city. In the past, the Corps has occasionally asked whether a proposed project made economic sense. It shall repent from this violation of the Gospel of Nice:

Thursday's report urged the Corps to shift its formulaic cost-benefit approach on how it decides what projects are worthwhile. The agency was urged to look at potential environmental, societal and cultural losses, "without reducing everything to one measure such as dollars."

There are certainly cultural landmarks that are worth spending an "irrational" amount of money to save. If the Washington Monument were about to topple over, it would be worth spending millions to fix it, but surely that shouldn't be the normative way to decide if a public-works project is worthwhile.

According to the Gospel of Nice, we are supposed to ignore such scruples. Once you start measuring flood losses by "societal and cultural losses," get out the Federal checkbook and don't put it away. Nevermind that by the time New Orleans is rebuilt and the flood defenses are strengthened, the Feds could have bought a new house on high ground for each of the displaced families. No, President Bush has already pledged "whatever it takes" to rebuild, and Congress is always happy to spend obscene amounts of money.

This Gospel abets so many evils in the world -- and this is a comparatively minor evil of misusing public money. Members of the Church are certainly not immune to it. Niceness dictated that bishops should not punish priests for heterodoxy or homosexual molestations. It continues to damage the Body of Christ by encouraging Christians not to live lives of heroic virtue, but rather embrace a fuzzy, non-judgmental credo of never giving offense to anyone.