Rumors of war, con’d
[NOTE: In the original version of this post, I said that 20 Catholic bishops in Britain released a “peace” statement, when in fact the bishops in question were Anglican. The article I referred to was mainly about a Catholic priest, and the paragraph describing the statement is directly below a quotation from a Catholic cardinal, so you can see why I was confused. The British media do not always clearly label whose bishops are whose, but I should have checked first. Mea culpa. However, the misattribution didn’t substantially change my point.]
Besides ridding the world of a pre-eminent tyrant, a war against Iraq will thankfully end the idle speculation about its conduct. Every week or so, some group has a pre-fab anti-war statement signed by several worthies; they come from celebrities, religious leaders, political has-beens, etc. Sadly, our religious leaders’ statements are often indistinguishable from the others’, if you take out the occasional references to the Godhead. (Very occasional, in some of the statements.) The U.S. and U.K. are “rushing to war,” nevermind that we’ve been at war with Iraq for 12 years. We must ask permission of the International Community in the person of the United Nations, nevermind that we have done everything in Iraq — sanctions, no-fly zones, protection of Kurds and Shiites, driving them out of Kuwait — with the U.N.’s explicit sanction. And so on, and so on.
What I find mildly offensive isn’t that many clerics disagree with my views. On questions such as this, reasonable Christians can differ. My problem is that these statements rarely leave any room for such disagreement. Our own American Catholic bishops are an admirable exception to this, thankfully. Others are a mixed bag.
Twenty Anglican bishops of Great Britain have decided that a war on Iraq would be “illegal, unwise and immoral.” One signee, Archbishop David Hope of York, said that “The Christian tradition is unequivocally clear, namely that war as a method of settling international disputes is incompatible with the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ. So the Christian instinct in every age is always programmed against war.”
I’m trying to reconcile these words with the last 2,000 years of history, and failing miserably. Plainly, the Christian tradition does not preclude the use of force between states. The burden of proof falls on those who propose to use force, because there should be an automatic preference against it. To state flatly that war per se contradicts the Gospel is false. The good archbishop should take up this matter with the authors of the Catechism, which not only says war is permissible under some circumstances, but that states can compel its citizens to fight.
The statement-issuers rarely consider the character of the Iraqi regime, either. The whole question of war revolves around how many civilians we might kill, not the objectives of the war, or the likely outcome. (N.B.: no air force in the world has the capacity to carry out WWII-style carpet bombings these days, so massive civilian casualties are practically impossible.) The hundreds and thousands of people that the current government executes are not considered, nor are the thousands of political prisoners. Any possibility of Iraq handing off deadly weapons to Al Qaeda is treated dismissively.
With luck, in the next month or so we will swiftly begin the end of Saddam Hussein. May the evil men who kill and torture the innocent find their rewards, whatever they may be. May the unwilling conscripts who make up their army surrender quickly and peaceably. Most of all, let God’s justice be done, whatever form that may take.