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.
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1. “Acome up with an international law that says the U.S. and other nations can’t fight on the Iraqi government’s behalf.”
We fought this war to overthrow a government that we had heretofore accepted as and treated as legitimate.
2. “Find a church document that prohibits a nation from intervening militarily on the behalf of another nation.”
We did not start this war to intervene on behalf of another country, but to overthrow that country’s government.
Bill, did you even read what I wrote? This isn’t 2003, it’s 2006, and you have to address present questions in the present, such as the legal status of ongoing combat operations in Iraq. We’re not fighting to “overthrow” anyone right now.
You didn’t answer my challenge, but I’ll respond to your statements anyway.
1. We did not consider the previous Iraqi regime to be legitimate. That’s why a Republican congress passed a law authorizing the overthrow of the regime back in 1998, and a Democratic president signed it.
2. One of the stated aims of the October 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the Iraq War was to protect the Iraqi people from the regime, so it’s incorrect to say that we didn’t intervene on behalf of another country. A “country” is, first and foremost, its citizens, not its government.
1. We did not consider the previous Iraqi regime to be legitimate.
And we are….? If we do not consider the Chinese government to be legitimate, what right under international law do we have to attack it?
The question is not whether we recognized it or passed some resolution about it, but did the international community consider it legitimate. From a real politik perspective, yes, we can pretty much do whatever we want b/c we are one of the big boys on the block (arguably, Europe as a unit, Russia and China are big enough to thumb their noses at us, just as we can do to them, but none of us could handle a direct confrontation with each other). But as far as international law goes (aside from the ulitmate int’l law – might makes right), the fact WE don’t recognize a particular gv’t as legitimate means very little.
If the assertion weren’t positively entertaining that there is some kind of different war being faced today in Iraq as opposed to the one that used to exist at the time of the onset of the aggression, it would be certifiable. To what lengths will some go to rationalize what for any American Catholic ought to be, beside the abuse scandal, the most egregious embarrassment of the age? Clearly, the Insurgency doesn’t trouble itself with such self-deception.
One hardly needs official documentation when Pope Benedict XVI has made as clear as he has that the aggression in Iraq can in no way be excused as just. I mean are you really looking for an ex cathedra statement? What follows a moral outrage of this kind can only be an exacerbation of it, not some kind of paradigm shift so as to cast a favorable gloss on the original misstep. Only Fr. Neuhaus might be cafeteria Catholic enough to buy such bull-hockey.
John Lowell
I was brought up as a black and whiter. Eric, you’re right –
John, I’m picking through your precious prose, and I cannot find either an argument against my position, or an original argument of your own. There’s just pompous bluster. “Egregious embarrassment,” indeed.
Matt, surely you’re not arguing that states can’t forfeit their legitimate claim to power by committing heinous acts. It’s a well-establish Catholic principle that, in extremis, citizens have the duty to resist regimes that are committing grave evils.
If we do not consider the Chinese government to be legitimate, what right under international law do we have to attack it?
In addition to what Eric said, I’d like to pre-empt something. I’d have no difficulty, in principle, to saying that the Red Chinese government is illegitimate for a number of heinous acts against its populace, of which Tiananmen Square was only the most public. (The case would be far better for North Korea … but I digress)
Nevertheless, that would give us, at most, a right to go to war. It wouldn’t make such a war advisable, feasible or smart. It wouldn’t be … land war in Asia ranking right up there with going against a Sicilian when death is on the line. And then *given* that we’re not going to war with the Chi-Coms, absent a very foolish act of their over Taiwan, it doesn’t make very much sense to deny their legitimacy. Calling a de facto regime illegitimate as much is the diplomatic equivalent of inviting someone at a bar to step outside. Sure, if you want to fight, there’s every reason to say it; but not if you don’t. Like calling the Marines a buncha pansy-ass wimps.
Hello Eric,
If the point hadn’t been made entirely clear earlier, perhaps I can be more helpful. You create the strawman of a Church document you wish produced that forbids a nation assisting another in need. All of this presupposes, of course, that the war in Iraq either now or earlier actually had such a character, which it neither does or did. The war in Iraq cannot be reinterpreted after the fact to provide a kind of deus ex machina for its apologists. Your premise is simply
flawed. There can be no such Church document as you defy us to produce because the conditions for it are imaginary. Iraq started as an aggression, and remains an aggression today. In any real sense, we’ve simply moved from being an invader to an occupier. The present Iraqi government is a contrivance of the United States, it has all the independence of the German Democratic Republic
cerca 1950. That notwithstanding, positively, and as a matter of morality – which for Catholics ought to trump any purely political considerations – we have the personal leadership of the Pope and his clear statements concerning the justice of this war. Yes, happily, it’s the Pope that we have, not revisionist fantasies cobbled together to provide the necessary precondition for a claim to righteousness. I mean, really, you insult us with such constructs.
John Lowell
All right, John — what are we in Iraq for, if it isn’t to defend Iraqis, build up their government, etc.? You say the war was and is “aggressive” — toward whom and what? Are you saying that our enemy in Iraq hasn’t changed from Saddam’s regime to a rabble of thugs and terrorists?
And your alternative is…what? Withdraw our troops with polite apologies for our “aggression”? How many innocent Iraqis will die in that scenario?
If we do that, there will be a new Iraq, free of the American influence you hold in contempt, ruled by a new band of thugs and murderers. And once that rude beast is created, sitting atop trillions of dollars in oil, in the most volatile and violent areas of the world, do you think it will contribute to world peace?
Hello again Eric,
Well, there are actually two kinds of reasons that we’re in Iraq. One, the reasons – ever transmogrifying – that have been reported to us by the Bush Regime, and, two, ones that have greater or lesser plausibility, but in every case wholly unrelated to those reported to us by the Bush Regime. Here are some of the real ones:
The war in Iraq, minimally, was a concoction of political opportunism from the very outset. The events in New York gave a then floundering presidency a real opportunity to capitalize on them and no occasion was lost in so doing. So, first, we’re in Iraq to secure a second term for George Bush. I believe the columnist Novak, the one associated with the Valerie Plame episode, offered a reasonablely decent analysis of this cynicism at the time. The article undoubtedly has been archived and can be uncovered, of course.
Second, we’re in Iraq, because of the semi-secret manipulations of a group of well placed neo-conservatives, convinced of the sanity of a Middle Eastern policy which joins the United States at the hip with Israel – and utterly dedicated to it. So Iraq, because these folks have prevailed in the inner councils, can be seen as a war to make the world safe for Israel, which it has been, is, and continues to be.
All of this in contrast to the alleged self-giving which you report. If we were really interested in the welfare of the Iraqi people, never would we have applied sanctions during the final period of the Hussein dictatorship – John Paul II was severely critical of such measures – since love just doesn’t act that way. If we were really interested in the Iraqi people we would have restrained our enthusiasms for military intervention and have acted more like a responsible member of the world community, securing the unquestioned support of the United Nations before launching, willy-nilly, a concocted war based on Joseph Goebbels style lies and propaganda. If we were really interested in the Iraqi people our President, with his Mussolini-like, head-bobbing bellicosity, never would have set the tone for the kind of horror reported at Abu Graib and give synchophantic generals like Myers comfort in knowing that the brass would assuredly escape eventual trial for the torture and mistreat of those captives in our charge. If we were really interested in the Iraqi people never would we have planned a Chicago Merchandise Mart-sized embassy when they go without electricity and clean water. I could go on and on.
The war in Iraq has given George Bush and his string-pullers the opportunity to establish what amounts to a uniquely American type of National Socialism, replete with a Reichstag fire, a feuhrerprinzip, “German Church” theologians on the order of John Richard Neuhaus, Julius Streicher lookalikes Hannity and Limbaugh, and with dispensationist, “Christian Zionist” support, the political wherewithall for what amounts to a Middle Eastern version of ethnic cleansing. I was born in 1940, in a different kind of America, one that went to war with fascism.
John Lowell
I call Godwin’s Law on this guy – not without a tinge of irony, since he doesn’t seem to like Jews too much either.
Now there’s a calmuny for you, Father, a rather knee-jerk accusation of anti-semitism I’d say. Sounds as though you’d do better with a confessor than posting here. Is it even vaguely possible that you might manage the personal honesty to see the distinction between one’s lack of comfort with an unbalanced policy toward Israel and one’s attitudes toward Jews per se. This kind of hate-smear has long ago run out of gas. Who’s your bishop anyway, he needs to know about you.
John Lowell
Thanks, Fr. JP – I learned something today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Matt, surely you’re not arguing that states can’t forfeit their legitimate claim to power by committing heinous acts. It’s a well-establish Catholic principle that, in extremis, citizens have the duty to resist regimes that are committing grave evils.
You are conflating two categories – you asked what legal principle, not moral one, would prohibit our interaction in Iraq. You posited that, because the US no longer recognized Iraq’s government as legitimate, the US had the right to act. If we are going to base our right to act on international law, it seems that the legitimacy of a target government must be governed by int’l law as well. We cannot ignore int’l law by unilaterally declaring a government “illegal” and then claim we are acting “legally”.
…one’s lack of comfort with an unbalanced policy toward Israel and one’s attitudes toward Jews per se. This kind of hate-smear has long ago run out of gas.
Is that “gas” as in “chamber”?
Who’s your bishop anyway, he needs to know about you.
He’s my bishop, too, and John Schultz’s. Father JP is also my younger son’s godfather. You can yell at me all you want, but do not insult Father on this blog. You’re only angry because he’s right and it was funny.
I was born in 1940, in a different kind of America, one that went to war with fascism.
I was born in 1972, in an America that wore bell bottoms and men had too much facial hair.
Merriam-Webster defines fascism as “a political philosophy, movement, or regime…that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”
That description fits Saddam Hussein’s regime perfectly. It also describes the geopolitical aspirations of al Qaeda. Your beliefs are not anti-fascist, not at all. You are anti-anti-fascist: you make excuses for contemporary fascists, and calumniate those who fight them.
By the way, I happen to agree with you that sanctions against Iraq were imprudent and wrong. But they were sanctions imposed by the United Nations that you seem to like so much, not the United States.
Matt, I’m asserting that the natural law trumps positive international law. The idea of “legitimacy” is debated among legal theorists, and so is the degree to which states are compelled to obey “international law,” which is a nebulous term (not meaningless, but not nearly as clear as, say “New Hampshire law.”)
Once again, let’s bring this back to the point I had hoped to discuss: what international law is the United States breaking by stationing troops in Iraq, as long as they have the permission of the elected Iraqi government? And why is it “immoral” or “unjust” to defend innocent Iraqis, strengthen the Iraqi state in its quest for public order, and fight lawless terrorists?
Again, we can discuss 2003 some other time. This is 2006. LE
Eric,
I’ll forgive you the personal smears because I really don’t think you’re weighty enough to be taken seriously, Eric. But Father JP is a wholly different matter, he should know better, much, much better….
[Deleted most of this comment because commenters are not allowed to personally insult good priests on Catholic Light. –Eric]
And Eric, don’t bother deleting either this post or the thread. There’s a copy.
John Lowell
Dear Mr. Lowell,
You do not decide whether or not I am suitable for the priesthood. God and His Church make that decision. I admit that I have many faults, but cowardice is not one of them. It is the policy of our diocese that I cannot use my name in public commentary without the bishop’s permission, but semi-anonymous usage is allowed – therefore I do not think your challenge is going to profit you much. I value my duties of state more than I fear your schoolyard insults. If it pleases you to denounce me to all your friends, go right ahead. Otherwise you might not be acting with as much rancor and spite as you otherwise could.
No one is claiming that you are an anti-Semite. If you look up the definition of Godwin’s Law, you might see what I was getting at.
May I suggest that you try to be a little more civil in your tone? Up to this point, all you have done is reinforce Eric’s statements about the nature of barking moonbats quite admirably.
Fr. JP,
How convenient to hurl calumnies behind the screen of a requirement of semi-anonymity, Father.
[Deleted most of this comment because commenters are not allowed to personally insult good priests on Catholic Light. –Eric]
John Lowell
I’ll forgive you the personal smears because I really don’t think you’re weighty enough to be taken seriously, Eric.
When did I “smear” you, John? When I said what you wrote was “pompous bluster” that wasn’t germane to the topic? That’s a description. You might not like it, you might disagree, but it isn’t a “smear.”
As for whether I’m “weighty,” I don’t pretend to be a theologian or an intellectual of any sort. I am a catechized convert to the True Faith and I speak only for myself. My words have no authority outside the confines of my home. I write for Catholic Light because we get a decent number of visitors, and I enjoy explaining my views about certain subjects in light of my faith and my personal opinions. People are free to take me as seriously or unseriously as they like; I would prefer that they simply read what I have to say and judge for themselves if it is true or false. I’m not under the illusion that I can sway the fate of the world by writing for this blog, and if I could, that would be frightening.
Well, chief, sad for you and for…
[Remainder deleted, for insulting a good priest, impersonating Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada, and the commission of grave typographical errors. –Eric]
John Lowell