[I typed a response to something Mark Shea posted, and I realized it was long enough to make it blog-worthy.]
…The Pope asks, “When will these conflicts cease? When will people finally see a reconciled world? We will not facilitate the peace process by allowing, with guilty indifference, injustice and to prosper in our planet.”
The alternative to going to war with Iraq was to let Saddam’s regime in place, free to murder political opponents, imprison the innocent, and instill a generalized terror into the population. Leaving aside whether it was ultimately prudent to go to war against Iraq — the answer to that question will become clearer with the passage of time — it was a net advance for the causes of human freedom and worldly justice.
I say this with sadness, because my deep regard for this pope was one of the factors in my conversion to Catholicism, but if the U.S. and U.K. had followed his advice (and that of the majority of the world’s bishops), the mass killings, unjust imprisonments, and general terror would still be in place in Iraq. Qusay would have succeeded Saddam, and this wretchedness would proceed for another generation.
I agree that the world, and particularly the West, is in the grip of a Culture of Death. I agree that we suffer from amnesia about our human nature and relationship to God. I agree that the key to renewing the world is to dedicate ourselves to Jesus Christ and live as he would have us live. In short, I agree with the Holy Father’s critique of the West.
However, in this matter, I believe that the war was justified on humanitarian grounds alone. The weak are not preyed upon by the strong, and the guiltless prisoners are out of their jails. A massively corrupt government no longer threatens its neighbors. Isn’t that enough?
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When has knocking over a bad government ever been a justification for war under the just war theory?
And is Iraq really the worst government out there? What about Iran? What about North Korea? Are we going invade them too?
I think Slashdot has the right idea: anyone posting anonymously is called “Anonymous Coward.”
That being said: there are a whole range of approaches to dealing with evil regimes. The range of actions run from private denunciations to destroying the regimes themselves. Each one has to be taken case by case. I’m not proposing a one-size-fits-all solution for getting rid of bad governments.
Redressing an evil already performed is a legitimate aim of war, according to classical just war doctrine. Genocide is a great evil, and our removal of the government is a proportionate response to that, because it punishes those responsible for the crime and precludes future crimes against humanity.
Redressing an evil already performed is a legitimate aim of war, according to classical just war doctrine. Genocide is a great evil, and our removal of the government is a proportionate response to that, because it punishes those responsible for the crime and precludes future crimes against humanity.
If the U.S. were militarily weak, would it be legitimate under just war doctrine for another country to invade the this country over it’s government’s support, legal enshrinement, and funding of the gross injustice of abortion? Millions have died from that too.
There is a crucial difference between permitting and committing evil. Both are wrong, but the federal government does not compel abortion, so your question isn’t quite relevant. Nor does it fund abortions, at least not too many of them — they aren’t covered by Medicaid unless they’re to save the life of the mother, or for rape or incest.
If the U.S. were carrying out a genocidal program against its citizens, then yes, in my view it would be legitimate for another nation to intervene.
How about China, with whom we trade freely? They have a program of forced abortion and infanticide AND once upon a time the Communist party in China did sponsor mass slaughters of already born Chinese. Would it be just to invade them?
I’ll do you a few better, Anonymous:
1. China’s genocidal occupation of Tibet;
2. Their bellicose threats against Taiwan;
3. Repression of unapproved religious groups;
4. Stockpiling nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, to threaten their neighbors and the U.S.;
5. Imprisoning political opponents;
6. Executing citizens without fair trials;
…and on and on.
All those facts show that China is a bad regime. We could not invade them with a reasonable chance of success, and that is one of the criteria for a just war. We could beat them militarily, but occupying a country with four times our population, one with a several-thousand-year-old nationalist memory, would be disastrous.
That is why we engage China in the way that we do: through displays of military might in the region, negotiations over disputes, condemnations of human rights abuses, and encouragement of political liberalization.
Could the response be stronger? Yes, it could, and should. But it is roughly commensurate with what is possible under the present circumstances.
You’re trying to show that because the U.S. doesn’t have a policy of destroying ALL unjust regimes, that means the U.S. can NEVER legitimately claim to destroy an oppressive regime. Iraq was in violation of the Gulf War cease-fire, posed a potential threat to the West through its WMD programs, and it was possible to remove the regime without grave foreseeable risks. So we acted as we did. Other countries will demand different approaches because the circumstances will be different. That’s not hypocritical, it’s a recognition of the limits of political and military power.
There is a crucial difference between permitting and committing evil? I agree there is a difference, but how crucial is that difference? If the US government stood idly by, nay, positively allowed the KKK to exterminate undesirables by legally recognizing and protecting their actions as a legitimate expression of their freedom of association, how crucially different would that be from carrying out the extermination of undesirables themselves?
For what I have done, and what I have failed to do – mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.