http://www.cjd.org/paper/jp2war.html

Pope John Paul II calls War a Defeat for Humanity: Neoconservative Iraq Just War Theories Rejected

by Mark and Louise Zwick

The most consistent and frequent promoter of peace and human rights for the last two decades has been Pope John Paul II.

From Iraqi War I to Iraqi War II, he has echoed the voice of Paul VI, crying out before the United Nations in 1965: War No More, War Never Again!

John Paul II stated before the 2003 war that this war would be a defeat for humanity which could not be morally or legally justified.

In the weeks and months before the U.S. attacked Iraq, not only the Holy Father, but also one Cardinal and Archbishop after another at the Vatican spoke out against a "preemptive" or "preventive" strike. They declared that the just war theory could not justify such a war. Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran said that such a "war of aggression" is a crime against peace. Archbishop Renato Martino, who used the same words in calling the possible military intervention a "crime against peace that cries out vengeance before God," also criticized the pressure that the most powerful nations exerted on the less powerful ones on the U.N. Security Council to support the war. The Pope spoke out almost every day against war and in support of diplomatic efforts for peace.

John Paul II sent his personal representative, Cardinal Pio Laghi, a friend of the Bush family, to remonstrate with the U.S. President before the war began. Pio Laghi said such a war would be illegal and unjust. The message was clear: God is not on your side if you invade Iraq.

After the United States began its attacks against Iraq, FOX News actually reported the immediate comments of the Holy Father, made in an address at the Vatican to members of an Italian religious television channel, Telespace: "When war, as in these days in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is ever more urgent to proclaim, with a strong and decisive voice, that only peace is the road to follow to construct a more just and united society," John Paul said. "Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of man."

Americans were largely unaware of the depth and importance of the opposition of Church leaders to an attack on Iraq, since for the most part the mainstream media did not carry the stories. In the same way, many Americans were unaware that Pope John Paul II spoke against the first Gulf War 56 times. Media in the United States omitted this from the commentaries on the war. Many have also been unaware of the number of Iraqis killed in that war (not to mention the war which recently "ended"). In February 2003 Business Week published an interview with Beth Osborne Daponte, a professional demographer who worked for the Census Bureau. The first Bush administration tried to fire her because her published estimates of the number of Iraqi deaths conflicted with what Dick Cheney was saying at the time. She was defended by social science professionals and was able to keep her job. Her estimates: 13,000 civilians were killed directly by American and allied forces, and about 70,000 civilians died subsequently from war-related damage to medical facilities and supplies, the electric power grid, and the water system.

In the past few years, Catholic neoconservatives have been attempting to develop a new philosophy of just war which would include preemptive strikes against other nations, what might be called a "preventive war." George Weigel has published major articles defending this position since 1995. First Things magazine published his articles and editorially agreed with this point of view. The present Bush administration has used these writings to defend the strike against Iraq. Shortly before the war began, through the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, President Bush sent Michael Novak to go to Rome to try to justify the war to the Pope and Vatican officials. Catholic News Service reported that the two-hour symposium was attended by some 150 invited guests, including lower-level Vatican officials, professors from church universities in Rome and diplomats accredited to the Vatican. Since with one voice Rome had already rejected the argument for a preventive war, Novak took the approach that a war on Iraq would not be a preventive war, but a continuation of a "just war," Iraqi War I, and actually a moral obligation. He argued that a was also a matter of self-defense, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was an un-scrupulous character, and therefore it was only a matter of time before he took up with Al Qaida and gave them such weapons.

Novak did not succeed in convincing Church leaders-in fact, some commentators reflected that his efforts might have had the opposite effect. Novak's credibility in this argument was perhaps under-mined by his employment at the American Enterprise Institute, heavily funded by oil companies, some of whom began advertising in the Houston Chronicle for em-ployees to work in Iraq even before the war began. Administration officials denied for months that the goal of the war on Iraq was related to oil. On June 4, 2003, however, The Guardian reported the words of the U.S. deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz (one of the major architects of the war). Wolfowitz had earlier commented that the urgent reason given for the war, weapons of mass destruction, was only a "bureaucratic excuse" for war. Now, at an Asian security summit in Singapore he has declared openly that the real reason for the war was oil: "Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defense minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

John Paul II has sought to distance the Catholic Church from George Bush's idea of the manifest Christian destiny of the United States, and especially to avoid the appearance of a clash of Christian civilization against Islam. Zenit reported that in his Easter Sunday message this year John Paul II "implored for the world's deliverance from the peril of the tragic clash between cultures and religions." The Pope also sent his message to terrorists: "Let there be an end to the chain of hatred and terrorism which threatens the orderly development of the human family." As he had done in his invitation to religious leaders from many faiths to Assisi at the beginning of 2002, he reached out again to leaders of other religions: "May faith and love of God make the followers of every religion courageous builders of under-standing and forgiveness, patient weavers of a fruitful inter-religious dialogue, capable of inaugurating a new era of justice and peace."

Catholic World News quoted the Latin-rite Bishop of Baghdad, Bishop Jean-Benjamin Sleimaan as saying in the Italian daily La Repubblica that the Pope's high-profile opposition to a war on Iraq has helped to avoid a sort of Manichaeism that would set up an opposition between the West and the East, in which Christianity is linked to the West and Islam to the East.

While the Iraqi War II turned out to be "short," violations of "just war" principles abounded. Bombing included such targets as an open market and a hotel where the world's journalists were staying. While most television and newspaper reports in the United States minimized coverage of deaths and injuries to the Iraqi people, reports of many civilian casualties did come out. CBS news reported on April 7 stories of civilians pouring into hospitals in Baghdad, threatening to over-whelm medical staff, and the damage inflicted by bombs which targeted homes: "The old, the young, men and women alike, no one has been spared. One hospital reported receiving 175 wounded by midday. A crater is all that remains of four families and their homes-obliterated by a massive bomb that dropped from the sky without warning in the middle afternoon." The Canadian press carried a Red Cross report of "incredible" levels of civilian casualties from Nasiriyah, of a truckload of dismembered women and children arriving at the hospital in Hilla from that village, their deaths the result of "bombs, projectiles."

As talk escalated about a U. S. attack on Iraq, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, began stating unequivocally that "The concept of a 'preventive war' does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church." His comments had been published as early as September 2002 and were repeated several times as war seemed imminent.

Cardinal Ratzinger recommended that the three religions who share a heritage from Abraham return to the Ten Commandments to counteract the violence of terrorism and war: "The Decalogue is not the private property of Christians or Jews. It is a lofty expression of moral reason that, as such, is also found in the wisdom of other cultures. To refer again to the Decalogue might be essential precisely to restore reason."

Preparation of a new shorter, simpler version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church will soon begin and, according to reports and interviews with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, it will probably include revisions to clarify the section on just war, as the official version has done against capital punishment in a civilized society. Cardinal Ratzinger will head up the Commission to write the new catechism. In an interview with Zenit on May 2, 2003, the Cardinal restated the position of the Holy Father on the Iraq war (II) and on the question of the possibility of a just war in today's world.: "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."

In almost every one of his addresses to groups large or small and in each visit to other countries, such as his recent visit to Spain, John Paul II has cried out for peace.

At the Ash Wednesday Mass this year the Pope reemphasized the theme that peace comes with justice: "There will be no peace on earth while the oppression of peoples, injustices and economic imbalances, which still exist, endure." He insisted that changes in structures, economic and otherwise, must come from conversion of hearts: "But for the desired structural changes to take place, external initiatives and interventions are not enough; what is needed above all is a joint conversion of hearts to love."

In his Easter message the Holy Father drew attention not only to the Iraq War, but to "the forgotten wars and protracted hostilities that are causing deaths and injuries amid silence and neglect on the part of considerable sectors of public opinion." The official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano carried the Pope's Easter message of peace with a headline in very large letters, Pace (peace), taking up a quarter of a page. He has asked Catholics to pray and do penance and ask Christ for peace, a peace "founded on the solid pillars of love and justice, truth and freedom."


Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, July-August 2003.

http://www.americamagazine.org/articles/Christiansen.htm

Peacemaking and the Use of Force:
Behind the Pope's Stringent Just-War Teaching
By Drew Christiansen, S.J.
AMERICA for May 15, 1999.
Copyright © 1999 by America Press All rights reserved

Drew Christiansen, S.J., a former director of the United States Catholic Conference Office of International Justice and Peace, is a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, D.C.


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THE HOLY SEE'S repeated denunciations over many months of American and British air attacks on Iraqi military installations and its multi-faceted commentary on the bombing of Kosovo have begun to force some American Catholics to scrutinize contemporary Catholic teaching on the "just war" and to question Vatican policy. In a recent column in Crisis magazine, for example, Robert Royal of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., commenting on Vatican criticism of U.S. bombing of Iraq, wondered whether we are witnessing the emergence of an official "Catholic pacifism." In a column on Jan. 23, the New York Times religion columnist Peter Steinfels noted "a profound ambivalence" on the part of the Pope about the use of military force. "John Paul II," Steinfels commented, "swings between just-war teaching and something approaching pacifism, between declaring 'the aggressor must be disarmed' in regard to Bosnia and that war 'will never be an appropriate way to solve problems' in regard to the Middle East," that is, Iraq.

The same "swings" between advocacy of dialogue and diplomacy and the need for intervention to prevent ethnic cleansing have marked the Holy See's response to the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia. The Pope has both condemned Serbian ethnic cleansing and decried NATO bombing.

This is not the first time during this pontificate that questions have been raised about the Holy See's pronouncements on the use of force in international affairs. Many will recall that during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when asked by a journalist about his deep reservations over the resort to arms in that conflict, Pope John Paul II is reported to have responded, "I am not a pacifist." More recently, James Turner Johnson, a respected historian of the theory of the just war, has taken exception to "the presumption against the use of force" as it appears in contemporary Catholic social teaching.

The closest thing we have to an extended updating of just-war theory from Vatican circles, however, is a 1991 editorial in what used to be called "the semi-official," Jesuit journal, Civiltˆ Cattolica. That editorial, which proved quite controversial, asserted that the "theory of 'just war' is untenable and needs to be abandoned." Interestingly, the editors contended that the just war had never reached the level of official Catholic teaching.

In retrospect, the Civiltˆ editorial corresponds on many points to themes voiced by the Pope and other Vatican officials in the following years. For example, when the Pope commented last Dec. 20 on the U.S. and British bombing campaign against Iraq, which was intended to produce compliance with U.N. Security Council disarmament resolutions, he said, "War has never been and never will be an appropriate way to solve problems between nations!"

At the same time, the Catechism of the Catholic Church continues to expound the conditions for a just war, and Vatican officials have also referred to the catechism to justify the legitimate use of force in Kosovo "once every means of peaceful settlement has been exhausted." Angelo Cardinal Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State, moreover, twice in the last year invoked "the duty and the right of intervention in order to disarm one who intends to kill," contending that such intervention was "not to encourage war, but to prevent [it]."

What I would like to do here, with the admittedly fragmentary evidence available, is to sketch the Holy See's emerging position on the use of force. I sometimes call this a stringent just-war teaching, because in affirming the value of nonviolence and strictly interpreting some just-war canons, it makes for a far less permissive use of the just-war tradition.

Altered Politics, Changing Norms.
First, a cautionary note. Clarity and certainty are far less easy to attain today on the ethics of using force than at times when the international system was more stable. In the rapidly changing political, military, technological and moral context in which we live, moral ambiguity may be unavoidable. Let me note three factors contributing to this moral complexity: (1) The application of military force for limited political ends; (2) the increasing salience of moral norms in international affairs, and (3) the consequences of protracted conflict with limited means.

First, there is the question of using force for limited ends. Armies used to confront armies on the field of combat. The combatants fought for victory, and the victors determined the terms of peace, even if the specific goals of war were discrete. In the last decade, armies and militias have made war on civilians. Consequently outsiders have found themselves under an obligation to intervene. The goals of intervention are limited, and the results of intervention have fallen short of victory and hence are ambiguous. For example, in stopping short of occupying Iraq and in pressing its aims through economic sanctions, the international community has reduced a whole country to ghastly penury. There were good reasons for coalition forces not to press on to Baghdad in 1991, and the malfeasance of Saddam Hussein's Government is primarily responsible for the continued suffering of Iraq's people. The result, all the same, has been disastrous.

Again, as the United States and Britain attempt to protect Kurds and Marsh Arabs from repression by enforcing the no-fly zones, low-level intensity conflict in the air continues with no foreseeable end. A modest measure of good is attained. Yet peace is not in view; and a generation of Iraqis, not to mention Arabs and Muslims throughout the region, grow up resentful of American hegemony.

Second, the ambiguity of ethical judgments on the use of force are also affected by the changing place of morality in international affairs. The rise of human rights concerns and heightened awareness of the evils of genocide and related acts, like ethnic cleansing, have led to military interventions that rarely would have been considered in the days when Henry Kissinger's political realism reigned. Furthermore, following a dilatory response in Bosnia and the appalling inaction in Rwanda, governments now show increased readiness to respond to such horrors. After watching ethnic cleansing first in Eastern Slavonia and Croatia proper, then in Bosnia, both politicians and popular majorities in the major NATO nations now seem ready to discharge the "duty to intervene" in Kosovo. On the other hand, respect for human life affects not only the willingness to use force, but the style of warfare, with sometimes disagreeable results. The otherwise commendable aversion to civilian casualties in warfare, along with a greatly heightened wish to protect military personnel, has contributed to a restricted use of military power that tends to increase the length of armed conflict.

As the case of Iraq demonstrates, these restraints may lead to protracted suffering on the part of civilians, especially when conflict is prolonged with economic sanctions; or, as we have seen in Serbia, when military targets are exhausted or inaccessible to air power, then targeting is expanded first to "dual-use" facilities and then to civilian governmental sites. In short, limited means applied over an extended period will often produce disastrous consequences at the same time that they yield limited results and promise conflict with no foreseeable end. From the point of view of the just-war canons, such mixed results are problematic.

What Defines Success?
These trends create an extraordinarily difficult context in which to apply the canons of the just-war tradition, particularly regarding the expectation of success. A use of force that can be morally and politically defensible on the grounds of just cause may only questionably satisfy the canon of success--because of the elusiveness of the goals or the uncertain duration of the conflict. "Success" comes to be defined in fine shades of grey that are difficult for a keen conscience to accept over the long term. The upshot is that a wedge is driven between at least some moralists and religious leaders and the policymakers whom they hope to guide.

All this is not to say that moral clarity is not attainable on some points. Rather, when so many factors are changing simultaneously, one can understand why even experts will be of many minds. Tolerance of ambiguity may be a defensible counsel for the interim. Over the long term, however, it is a dubious and risky moral posture.

It is at this point that moral theology turns to examine the deeper themes underlying thinking on the use of force. When rational moral analysis of armed conflict is stalemated, one must look at deeply held, underlying beliefs to understand how the drift of thought has changed. In the case of Pope John Paul II, it means taking a second look at his writings on war, nonviolence and international affairs.

Faith, Suffering and Nonviolence.
The key international developments of Pope John Paul's pontificate came with the collapse of Communism in eastern Europe. It is therefore useful to reconsider his observations on nonviolence and the use of force in that context. Reflecting on those events in Centesimus Annus, the Pope proclaimed his belief that non-violence led to the fall of Communist governments in eastern Europe. "It seemed," he wrote in the 1991 encyclical, "that the European order resulting from the Second World War and sanctioned by the Yalta Agreement could only be overturned by another war." He continued, "Instead, it has been overcome by the nonviolent commitment of people who, while always refusing to yield to the force of power, succeeded time after time in finding effective ways of bearing witness to the truth."

In Evangelium Vitae (1995), the Pope claimed, "Among the signs of hope we should also count the spread, at many levels of public opinion, of a new sensitivity ever more opposed to war as an instrument for the resolution of conflicts between peoples, and increasingly oriented to finding effective but 'nonviolent' means to counter the armed aggressor" (emphasis in original). Beneath the Pope's expressed trust in nonviolence, one finds an esteem for those who show a willingness to suffer for the sake of justice rooted in the Christian faith. "It is by uniting his own sufferings for the sake of truth and freedom to the sufferings of Christ on the Cross," Pope John Paul wrote, "that man is able to accomplish the miracle of peace and is in a position to discern the often narrow path between the cowardice which gives in to evil and the violence, which under the illusion of fighting evil, only makes it worse."

This last point, namely, that there are forms of fighting evil that only worsen the evils suffered, is one that Pope John Paul II makes often. In his view, however, the avoidance of greater harm is more than a simple question of proportionality. Rather, the Pope affirms that those who are themselves willing to accept suffering acquire a heightened ability to discern properly how to fight against evil, whether with nonviolence or by the legitimate use of force. There is an implicit rejection of the notion that just-war thinking is simply an abstract "calculus" that can be applied independent of certain restrained, not to say pacific, moral dispositions. The Pope's antipathy to the use of force and his constant call for negotiation disclose a religious leader who is as much concerned about the means employed to overcome evil as he is committed to struggle against it.

Finally, Centesimus Annus, with echoes of earlier 20th-century popes, presents John Paul II's negative judgment about war as an instrument of policy:

No, never again war, which destroys lives of innocent people, teaches how to kill, throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing and leaves behind a trail of resentment and hatred, thus making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war.

This passage has become almost a leitmotiv in the Vatican's response to the use of force, repeated again and again in papal statements and other Vatican declarations.

As a rule of thumb, I would suggest that here as elsewhere the Pope should be taken at his word. While the form is rhetorical, the substance is serious. The point is that the consequences of war are beyond calculation. We should consider soberly whether the use of force does, in fact, do what the Pope says. Above all, does it take the life of innocent people? Does it leave behind a trail of resentment and hatred? Does it make finding a just solution more difficult? These objections do not rule out resorting to force, especially in case of humanitarian intervention. They do imply that every effort must be taken to avoid the vastly unpredictable consequences of taking up arms.

The Culture of Death.
I have already cited Evangelium Vitae's endorsement of alternatives to war. That encyclical also paints war as part of "the structure of sin" evident in the emergence of "a culture of death." In this culture, because of the dissolution of solidarity and an excessive concern for efficiency, persons "who [compromise] the well-being or the lifestyle of those who are more favored [tend] to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated." Such is the case with innocent non-combatants in time of war. This conspiracy against life, as the Pope calls it, "involves not only individuals in their personal, family or group relationships, but goes far beyond, to the point of damaging and distorting, at the international level, relations between peoples and states."

In John Paul's thinking, the traditional Thomist view of the political order as a created good, which has guided Catholic political thought in the 20th century, is supplanted by a quasi-Augustinian sense of disordered relations. In this view, international relations and the world order are so distorted that they too are an expression of the culture of death. On this reading, war is prone to become an especially grievous manifestation of the culture of death. No doubt, Evangelium Vitae (No. 55), which cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church, affirms the legitimate right to self-defense along with the duty of political authorities to defend the common good against attack. But, in the context of an analysis of the culture of death and its impact on international relations, the right of self-defense and the duty to defend the common good must be understood as limited. In light of the dynamic of sin, moreover, their assertion in practice must be subject to question.

Diplomatic Reasons.
Finally, very briefly, there are diplomatic reasons for thinking that papal policy toward Iraq and Kosovo represents a shift in the Holy See's traditional approach to the use of force.

For one, the style of Vatican diplomacy under John Paul II has changed. It is far more open than in the past and more conscious of taking the initiative as "a moral power" and "a voice of conscience" in international affairs. This public diplomacy, according to the Catholic News Service's Vatican reporter, John Thavis, "is in keeping with the highly visible profile of the modern papacy." Pope John Paul II has used every opportunity to speak out, seeking first to avoid and then resolve the conflict over Kosovo.

Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican foreign minister, in a recent address at The Catholic University of America reviewing the role of Pope John Paul II in the Persian Gulf war, listed the elements that have also characterized Vatican action in subsequent crises over Iraq and Kosovo:

to invite the protagonists to engage in dialogue,
to follow the path of negotiation,
to weigh the proportions between the remedies aimed at eliminating a wrong and the negative humanitarian consequences.
In urging negotiation and regarding the use of force as a failure for humanity, Pope John Paul sees himself in the tradition of his 20th-century predecessors, notably Benedict XIV.

Where do these developments lead us? What Pope John Paul II has given us is a doctrine of peacemaking that involves both nonviolence and, by way of a rare exception, the justified use of force. Let me attempt to summarize that teaching and then offer some suggestions on how to resolve the moral perplexity that seems to surround the use of force for Catholics today.

Current State of the Question.
Diminishing role. The tradition of just-war thinking is playing a decreased role in official Catholic teaching. There is a growing presumption against the use of force and an increased appeal to strategies of nonviolence and negotiation. At the same time, the just war has not been abandoned, and a promised Vatican working paper on nonviolence has never been published.

Theological suppositions. Part of the theological background of this shift may be found in Pope John Paul's insight that the person willing to suffer nonviolently is better able to discern the means with which to defend justice, along with the suspicion that war represents an egregious manifestation of the culture of death.

Just-war canons. Just-war norms continue to be cited, though in cautionary or critical, rather than permissive, fashion. Particularly important are the constraints of civilian immunity, proportionality and reasonable hope of success.

Just cause. The canon of just cause seems to have been greatly narrowed. It appears to admit only defense against aggression, and in some readings only aggression already in progress, and humanitarian intervention when whole populations are at risk.

Proportionality and success. In the kind of high-tech, low-risk warfare employed in humanitarian interventions and contemporary police actions, judgments of proportionality and success are increasingly difficult to make. Constraints on goals and methods make it difficult to "succeed" without protracted conflict, which may lead to potentially disproportionate harm.

Voice of conscience. This apparently narrowed just-war framework comports with the professed role of the Holy See as "a moral power" and "a voice of conscience" in international affairs. Such a role inevitably will put the Holy See from time to time in a "Christ against culture" posture, distancing the church from the classic posture of Constantinian accommodation with the state.

Recommendations.
If this sketch of the current state of Vatican thinking on the use of force is a fair one, then we have moved quite far toward attenuating the old teaching on the use of force--in the direction of a stringent application of just-war principles and a more integrated approach to peacemaking. At the same time, clear guidance is lacking for political and military leaders, especially in cases of complex humanitarian disasters. Moral assessments of Iraq or Kosovo depend on complex and detailed analyses of proportionality and success. In such cases, only very careful arguments will be persuasive. It does not help when Dr. Joaquin Navarro Vals of the Vatican press office characterizes the bombings of Iraqi military installations as "aggression." As Peter Steinfels observed, "The episode adds to the impression that the extent of contemporary Catholics' adherence to papal positions [on the use of force] will never be separated from the strength of the arguments backing them."

The late Protestant ethicist Paul Ramsey used to recommend the Catholic practice of espousing broad, moral principles in contrast to the Protestant habit of assigning moral weight to specific policy directives. Recent Catholic practice has stopped just short of such policy directives. But moral guidance on the use of force is made more difficult when the judgments depend on unexplained and disputable estimates of consequences.

Moral counsel to public authorities would seem to require either greater explicitness about cases, along with the modesty that the church has traditionally recommended for judgments about specific cases, or consolidation and clarification of the teaching on the place of nonviolence and the just war in defense of the common good. One is tempted to suggest that the Vatican might release the apparently rejected study on nonviolence, or better yet, incorporate it in an extended document on nonviolence and the use of force. But perhaps thinking has not sufficiently matured over a wide enough segment of the church to make such a document helpful at this time.

A first step toward dispelling the present confusion would require acknowledgement by church leaders, moral theologians, legal, political and military officials that we live in a time when the expectations of international law and the instruments for enforcing it are poorly matched.

A second step would involve a conversation defining the just-war canons, particularly those regarding proportionality and success, in ways that can avoid the double-binds in which the world community currently finds itself in responding to large scale humanitarian emergencies and the enforcement of Security Council resolutions. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has held such conversations on topics like international debt relief and human rights. It could conceivably be the sponsor for a series of conversations on nonviolence and the use of force in international affairs.

A third step would be to rework international law to create mechanisms for dealing with problems like Kosovo. For one, we might provide a limit on the Security Council veto in cases of large scale humanitarian emergencies, but require perhaps a two-thirds majority of the council to take action. This might be a way to make the council an effective enforcer of international peace rather than an institution that is incapable of opposing crimes against humanity.

In conjunction with this international legal reform, moreover, new institutions for conflict resolution need to be funded, developed and utilized. It is no wonder the United States, at least, resorts to force when faced with hard problems, when the military is so well funded and diplomacy is chronically underfunded, with many State Department positions staffed by men and women recruited from the intelligence agencies.

Pope John Paul II has been the pre-eminent moral leader of the last third of the 20th century. The events of the last year have revealed him to be a reformer in ways most people did not expect. Luigi Accattoli of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has said that until recently the Pope's teaching on forgiveness was the great unnoted theme of his papacy. Perhaps before long we will be able to add his teaching on peacemaking and the use of force as yet another innovation.

http://www.nationalreview.com/novak/novak021003.asp
February 10, 2003, 9:00 a.m.
“Asymmetrical Warfare” & Just War
A moral obligation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: NRO contributing editor Michael Novak was invited by United States Ambassador to the Holy See Jim Nicholson to deliver remarks to a public audience in the Vatican City on just-war doctrine and Iraq on the evening of February 10, 2003. While in Rome, Professor Novak speaks as a private citizen, a guest of the U.S. State Department as part of its U.S. Speaker and Specialist program, and not as an official representative of the government or as an official representative of American Catholics. While in Rome, Novak is also meeting with Vatican officials. The text of Novak’s lecture is printed below.



he reason why the United States is going to war against Saddam Hussein, unless he fulfills his solemn obligations to international order or leaves power, has nothing to do with any new theory of "preventive war." On the contrary, such a war comes under traditional just-war doctrine, for this war is a lawful conclusion to the just war fought and swiftly won in February, 1991. At that time, the war was summarily interrupted, in order to negotiate the terms of surrender with the unjust aggressor, Saddam Hussein. At the peace table, the United Nations insisted that, as a condition of his continuation in the presidency of Iraq, Saddam Hussein must [a] disarm and [b] provide proof to the U.N. that he had disarmed, accounting with transparency for all his known weapons systems and arsenals. In particular, Saddam Hussein was ordered to destroy his stocks of mustard gas, sarin, botulin, anthrax, and other chemical and biological agents. He was also to provide proof that he had destroyed all his prior work toward the development of nuclear weapons.




During the next twelve years, despite constant warnings, Saddam Hussein brazenly flouted all these obligations. In late 2002, the Security Council again solemnly put Saddam Hussein under edict to prove that he had carried out these obligations, on which his very right under international law to remain in power depended. Again, he provided no such proof. Indeed, he continues to insult the Security Council by his performance.

Meanwhile, in a sudden and violent fashion, another war was launched against the United States — and, indeed, against international civilized order — on September 11, 2001. This unsought and sudden war emerged from a new strategic concept, "asymmetrical warfare," and it threw the behavior of Saddam Hussein into an entirely new light, and enhanced the danger Saddam Hussein poses to the civilized world a hundredfold.

Before elaborating on that, let me recall that authentic Catholic doctrine on the just war, as formulated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas, lays out a clear path of reasoning for public authorities acting in their official capacities in approaching the decision to go to war, or not. Moreover, in evaluating these contingencies, the new Catholic Catechism assigns primary responsibility, not to distant commentators, but to such public authorities themselves. This assignment of responsibility is made for two reasons. First, they are the ones who bear the primary vocational role and constitutional duty to protect the lives and the rights of their people. Second, they are by the principle of subsidiarity the authorities closest to the facts of the case and — given the nature of war by clandestine terror networks today — privy to highly restricted intelligence. Others have a right and duty to voice their own judgments of conscience. But the final judgment belongs to public authorities: "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good" (Catechism, #2309).

What is new in the world of just-war theory in the 20th century, to resume, is the concept of "asymmetrical warfare." This concept has been developed by international terrorist groups that, although dependent on clandestine assistance from states willing to help them secretly, are not responsible to any public authority. In order to demonstrate the inability of elected governments to defend the lives of their own people, these terrorist cells execute dramatic attacks upon innocent civilians. The more dramatic and murderous these attacks, the more likely they are to shake legitimate governments to their foundations.

This new strategic concept, and the new technological, educational, and logistical conditions that make it practicable, have brought about the widespread moral condemnation of such international terrorist groups, as the enemies of civilized order. The Vatican itself voiced this condemnation following the massacres of September 11, 2001.

When it became clear that the main training ground and command center of the perpetrators of the massacres of September 11 were under the protection of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, moral authorities further agreed that a limited and carefully conducted war to bring about a change of regime in Afghanistan was morally obligatory.

During the next months, intelligence services learned that the terrorists had plans for further attacks upon famous targets in European capitals, including Paris, London, and the Vatican. Months later, attacks upon the Moscow Opera House, Christian churches in Pakistan, and a crowded disco in Indonesia indicated the worldwide reach of the threat.

Nonetheless, in the case of Iraq today, Civilta Cattolica argued recently that war would be unjust, and posited the theory that American motives, in particular, were driven by Iraqi oil: "The fundamental motive seems to be the geopolitical position that Iraq holds in the Middle East [as one of] the three major oil and natural gas producing states (Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia)." (The journal said nothing comparable about French, Russian, Chinese or others' motives.) But America has just reasons for war far more important than Iraqi oil.*

What is uppermost in American national interests is that, at a time we did not choose and in a way we did not will, war was declared upon us in word and deed on 09/11/01. That aggressor had no standing army, whose movements in advance gave notice of an imminent attack. On the contrary, the attack came all unexpected, striking its innocent victims on a soft, warm, blue-skied September day. The weapons employed were not conventional military armaments, but rather American civilian aircraft heavy with fuel for the long trip to California. The targets chosen — tall skyscrapers — left their unsuspecting victims particularly helpless.

Normal criteria watched for by just-war theorists were not literally present: neither conventional military movements, nor visible signs of imminent attack, nor the authority of a hostile nation state. The horror of the damage was immense, just the same.

International war had clearly been launched. Its perpetrators called it an international jihad, aimed not only against the U.S. but the entire West, indeed, against the whole non-Islamic world. (The world had already mourned the destruction of ancient and priceless Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan.)

No major moral authority had any difficulty in recognizing that a war to prevent this new type of terrorism is not only just but morally obligatory.

How does Iraq fit into that picture? From the point of view of public authorities who must calculate the risks of action or inaction vis-à-vis the regime of Saddam Hussein, two points are salient. Saddam Hussein has the means to wreak devastating destruction upon Paris, London, or Chicago, or any cities of his choosing, if only he can find clandestine undetectable "foot soldiers" to deliver small amounts of the sarin gas, botulins, anthrax, and other lethal elements to predetermined targets. Secondly, independent terrorist assault cells have already been highly trained for precisely such tasks, and have trumpeted far and wide their intentions to carry out such destruction willingly, with joy. All that is lacking between these two incendiary elements is a spark of contact.

Given Saddam's proven record in the use of such weapons, and given his recognized contempt for international law, only an imprudent or even foolhardy statesman could trust that these two forces will stay apart forever. At any time they could combine, in secret, to murder tens of thousands of innocent and unsuspecting citizens.

Please note: Were such an attack to come, it would come without imminent threat, without having been signaled by movements of conventional arms, without advance warning of any kind.

Somewhere between 0 and 10, in other words, there already is a probability of Saddam's deadly weapons falling into al Qaeda's willing hands. (There are also other branches of the international terror network). Reasonable observers can disagree about whether that risk is at 2 or 4 or 8. But this much is clear: Those who judge that the risk is low, and therefore allow Saddam to remain in power, will bear a horrific responsibility if they guessed wrong, and acts of destruction do occur.

It is one thing for other observers to calculate these risks; it is another for duly constituted authorities, responsible for protecting their people from unprovoked attack.

Of course, those who today choose the path of war will bear responsibility for all the bitter fruits of war to come. The moral question here, as in so many areas in which prudence must be invoked, requires the responsible weighing of risks. To settle this moral question also requires knowledge of information from intelligence services, which monitor terrorist networks and their activities.

In brief, some persons argue today (as I do) that, under the original Catholic doctrine of justum bellum, a limited and carefully conducted war to bring about a change of regime in Iraq is, as a last resort, morally obligatory. For public authorities to fail to conduct such a war would be to put their trust imprudently in the sanity and good will of Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein is a leader of proven "megalomania " (a term applied to him by President Mubarak of Egypt), an unusually cruel leader, who has made long and regular use of weapons of mass destruction even against his own citizens.

Should Saddam violate their trust by a violent biological attack in some Western city, public authorities who made themselves hostage to his moral reliability would have inexcusably ignored his record.

A word should be said here about the original Catholic doctrine of justum bellum, but especially of those ad bellum questions that arise in making the decisions that lead up to war. These questions quite naturally come before the in bello questions, those that query the conduct to be followed in waging war. Just-war doctrine has at its root the Catholic understanding of original sin, articulated in this context by St. Augustine in Book XIX of The City of God. In this world, Christians will always have to cope with the evil in the human breast that sows division, destruction, and devastation. Augustine had seen many such evils in his lifetime, including the horrors of the Sack of Rome in 410 A.D. Nonetheless, he held that Christians acting as public authorities are bound by laws of charity and justice even in waging war.

Augustine defined peace as the "tranquility of order" represented by a dynamic, changing international order, created by just political communities, and mediated through law. When public authorities move to defend this order against unjust aggressors, theirs is a just political end. Just-war doctrine in its ad bellum considerations sets forth the rules under which public authorities are obliged to move to defend their own peoples, and to restore the minimum conditions of international order, by means of warfare. Warfare under this teaching is a morally appropriate political end, and may be morally obligatory upon public authorities, when circumstances dictate that evil must be stopped.

The aim of a just war is the blocking of great evil, the restoration of peace, and the defense of minimum conditions of justice and world order. For both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, thinking about war falls under the principles of charity and justice. In their view, just war does not "begin with a presumption against violence," but rather with a presumption that addresses first the duties of public authorities to charity and justice and, second, that takes seriously a sinful world in which injustice and violence against the innocent will continue for all time. These have certainly continued in the 21st century as in the 20th.

No one today denies that international terrorism is a deliberate assault on the very possibility of international order. That public authorities have a duty to confront this terrorism, and to defeat it, is universally recognized.

This is the context in which the ad bellum question concerning a limited and careful war upon Iraq is properly raised today. The primary duty of public authorities in well-ordered democracies is to protect the lives and rights of their people.

Moreover, in assessing the many circumstances that must be weighed in moving toward a decision ad bellum, those public authorities who bear the immediate responsibility and who are closest to the facts of the case, have moral priority of place. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states this with no ambiguity, as we have seen above (#2309).

The first reason, then, why public authorities in the United States have urged the United Nations to become serious about Iraq is the war preemptively declared upon the United States on 09/11/01. It was obvious from the beginning that 19 graduate students from middle-class families (mostly in Saudi Arabia) did not perform that deed unaided. They had the support of states (Afghanistan in the first place, but also Yemen, Iran, Sudan, and others) willing to act clandestinely but not openly, as international outlaws.

Meanwhile, for 12 long years Saddam has flagrantly violated the conditions laid down by the United Nations for the continuation of his presidency. In the world become far more dangerous after September 11, 2001, either the world community now upholds international order, or it backs down from its own solemn agreements. In the latter case, individual sovereign nations will refuse to be complicit in the policy of appeasement. To do otherwise would join Saddam's conspiracy against international order, and to accrue responsibility for anything he might do.

Many other nations besides Iraq have been obliged to disarm, and to show proof of it, for instance, South Africa, Kazakhstan, and other nations of the former Soviet Union. All have complied fully and openly. Iraq has not. It has not accounted for immense supplies of chemical and biological weapons which on earlier occasions it either admitted that it possessed, or was shown by international inspectors to have possessed.

It is not the burden of the international community to prove Iraq's noncompliance. That fact was publicly and internationally well established years ago. It is Hussein's obligation, as a condition for continuing in his presidency, to present evidence that he has disarmed. This he has so far disdained to do. Hussein has judged that the international community lacks the will to enforce its decrees.

For some years, it seemed reasonable (if shameful) not to force Saddam Hussein to comply, but just to wait him out. However, the maturation of al Qaeda and other highly trained international terrorist groups adds to Hussein's violation of U.N. decrees a new peril. On the record, Saddam is capable of ordering a tremendous loss of life, through a secretive, sudden attack upon major western cities with small amounts of biological or chemical agents.

With less than a teaspoon of anthrax distributed in letters, for instance, thousands of government workers in Washington were obliged to be screened and preventively treated for anthrax poisoning, one Senate office building was closed for many weeks for decontamination, two post-office workers died, and many others fell ill for some time.

Saddam Hussein has failed to account for more than 5,000 liters — five million teaspoons — of anthrax which he is known to have possessed just a few years ago.

This does not include the thousands of liters of botulin and other forms of biological weapons, including nerve gas and sarin gas, reported by U.N. inspectors to have been present in his arsenals. Nor does it include the stockpiles of mustard gas the U.N. reported in his possession. "Mustard gas is not like marmalade," Hans Blix famously announced in January. "Governments must know exactly where it is, and what is done with every container of it." It is a deadly gas.

In recent weeks, newspapers have carried reports from European intelligence agencies of serious efforts by highly trained Chechen and other Islamic jihadists preparing for terrorist attacks in European cities, in case there is war in Iraq. Whether or not there is war in Iraq, these hidden cells are active now, and will be active years from now. Probabilities are high that one or more of these cells will get their hands on biological or chemical agents. Nowhere will it be easier for them than in Iraq.

That those chemical and biological agents lie waiting for them must be taken as a fact, until Hussein offers proof that he has destroyed them. For 12 years he has refused to do so, even under the pain of economic sanctions. To believe that he will now present such proof goes beyond common sense. Nonetheless, he has again been given a window of opportunity to prove that he has destroyed them, and that they pose no danger.

Let us hope that Saddam Hussein as a last resort decides to obey his solemn obligations under the negotiated peace of 1991, and thus at last meets the minimum requirement of international order. In that case, there will be no war. In that case, the policy of the United States will have succeeded without the need for war.


ENDNOTE: *At present, oil companies from France, Russia, and China have contracts to help develop Iraqi oil fields. Europe depends far more upon oil from Iraq than America (only a tiny fraction of U.S. oil comes from Iraq, about six percent). Oil from Iraq, indeed oil from the entire Middle East, ranks higher among European national interests than American. For some years, the United States has been moving to draw the preponderance of its oil from our own hemisphere, mostly from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela, and to cut back steadily on its use of Middle Eastern oil, to the level now of 26 percent of its annual. Europe is far more dependent on Iraqi oil, and far more involved with the Iraqi oil industry. I believe the U.S. should form a consortium of nations currently under contract to develop Iraq's oil fields, prominently including Italy, France, Russia, and China.

Within 15 years the United States hopes to be running a significant proportion of its automobiles and its heating appliances on hydrogen power. Experimental models are already in fairly wide use, and President Bush announced a major research program to support this effort. The goal of the United States is energy independence and, in the shorter term, continuing reductions in reliance on Middle Eastern oil.


— Michael Novak, winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1994, was an expert witness for the defense in Glassroth v. Moore. His latest book is On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding.

http://www.cathnews.com/news/302/33.php

Cardinal predicts Novak’s effort to sell Vatican on Iraq war will fail


Cardinal Walter Kasper has predicted that Michael Novak, an American Catholic intellectual asked by the US government to try to persuade Rome of the morality of a possible “preventive war” in Iraq, will fail.

"I do not see how the requirements for a just war can be met at this time," Cardinal Kasper told the National Catholic Reporter.

Asked if he thought Novak’s mission to persuade the Vatican could succeed, Kasper responded: "I don’t think so."

"I am of the opinion of the pope himself, and of the Secretariat of State, of the Roman curia," Kasper said. "I do not think all the methods of peaceful negotiations, of diplomatic relations, have been exhausted."

"A war would touch the poorest of the poor, not Saddam Hussein," Kasper told the paper. "Women and children and sick people would have to suffer, and we should consider the destiny of such people."

US Ambassador to the Holy See James Nicholson announced in mid-January that he would bring Novak to Rome, after a series of critical comments by the pope and a host of Vatican officials on the idea of war with Iraq.

SOURCE
National Catholic Reporter

LINKS
Pope’s answer to Rumsfeld pulls no punches in opposing war
Vatican Officials Not Persuaded by US Case against Iraq (Catholic World News)
Opinions clash on just war (National Catholic Reporter)
God and American diplomacy (The Economist)
Experts: Religion affects foreign policy (Washington Times)
Morality ... and a war against Iraq (Bruce Duncan CSsR, Catholic Weekly)
Moluccas: church leaders appeal against war on Iraq (Independent Catholic News)
Swiss Bishops Alarmed at Lack of Ethical Debate on Iraq War (Zenit)
Prayer for peace campaign (Catholic Leader)

7 Feb 2003

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/war-vatican.html

Next US War Target: the Vatican?
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.


The capture of Saddam was one of those moments in US political history when only one emotion is permitted, and anyone who dares break from the official line is The Enemy. The theme is always the same: we are to celebrate whatever the state does, and condemn its enemies as nothing short of incarnate evil. Only the details change. Everyone knows that dissent is not allowed, not even in private conversation.

Of course everyone also knows that silent dissent exists. It is lurking out there somewhere. The enforcers are on the lookout for anyone dumb enough to voice a hint of disagreement, and are ready to pounce. The first one to break the taboo is shouted down and jeered, so as to make an example of anyone else who would dare do so in the future – the American equivalent of Stalin's sending the first person to stop clapping after one of his speeches to the Gulag. At some point, however, the clapping will have to stop. And at some point, someone will have to dispute the self-evidently ridiculous pap coming from the government. And for finally losing it, be made an example for others.

The capture of Saddam was one of those moments. Everyone freezes and mouths the usual clichés, and then it takes weeks before there is any rational discussion. The first to break the silence this time, and early, was Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. "I felt pity to see this man destroyed," he said, with the military "looking at his teeth as if he were a cow.... Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him."

Compassion for Saddam? Imagine that, an actual human emotion applied to US foreign policy, which is supposed to be about the cold, hard reality that the US state is good and anyone who opposes it evil. It seems that Martino has a different view. Oh how the bloggers loved this one. Instapundit blasted away, National Review attributes such crazy thoughts to the disease of anti-Americanism, and the Dynamist said she could never "respect the authority of such idiots." Clearly, we are required to believe that because the US says so, Saddam deserves nothing but derision and death, the sooner the better. If you might think that Martino has a point, you will be treated to the same level of derision, pending some more extreme solution.

The pundit class during a war is never more insufferable. Lacking guns and uniforms and a foreign foe to kill, they target the people they really hate – civilian war dissidents – as a means of advancing their pet political agenda. It is unseemly to see intellectuals using their talents toward such anti-intellectual ends as national chauvinism. But we've seen that many times in history, as the career of Heidegger shows. Never believe that intellectuals are above it all; when the right circumstances present themselves, they are ready not only to goosestep with the best of them, but also to write the manuals and administer the prison camps for those who refuse.

Just for the sake of review, let us just state the obvious points that one is somehow not allowed to mention. Iraq under Saddam was known as the most liberal Arab state. There was relative religious freedom. Women had rights. You could get a drink. You could own private guns. There were symphonies and arts. Fundamentalists had no power. The place was prosperous and enjoying immigration.

He was a despot, yes, but that hardly distinguishes him in the region. He owned some nasty weapons, yes, mostly sold or given to him by the US government, on whose behalf he waged war on Iran. He also made war on the attempted secessions of the Kurds and the Shiites. Unfortunately, he believed in the Union. But outside of war, when hyenas rule, his dictatorship was authoritarian not totalitarian (using the Jeanne Kirkpatrick taxonomy). It consisted not so much in controlling the people as keeping political competition at bay. Everyone in the region knows this, if most Americans do not.

For reasons that are still not entirely clear, the US decided it did not like Saddam. Iraq went from ally to enemy so fast that it even took the Iraqi regime by surprise. Bush Sr. waged war, then imposed sanctions, while Clinton continued sanctions and almost daily bombing, and threatened full-scale war, and finally Bush Jr. threw away more than $100 billion of other people’s money to wage unilateral war and get rid of Saddam on grounds that he was involved in the 9-11 attacks and owned WMDs – neither of which turn out to be true in any respect.

The Iraqi regime tried every means to prevent war – its 12,000-page weapons declaration to the UN was accurate, for example – but Bush had to have war, and so war there was. Iraq spun in chaos, tens of thousands are dead, and Islamic radicals are poised to take power.

Oh the joy of liberation! And don't you dare disagree with the claims of the imperial wizard in the slightest respect. Never mind that the US denies pro-Saddam protesters the right to assemble and speak, and shoots them. Never mind that violence and bombers have become more common after his capture. Never mind that the main group cheering the capture in Iraq was pleased that an impediment to an Islamic state had been removed. No, the US says this is all great news and you had better believe it.

Under what authority does the US decide that the foreign head of state should be overthrown and decapitated? The authority of power and no other. The US has the guns, period. And isn't it preposterous that anyone in the world should take issue with that? And while we are mentioning absurd questions raised about the moral doctrine of Might Makes Right, who can believe that there are still people in Iraq not entirely happy with the rule of a foreign military conqueror who speaks a foreign language and worships a foreign god?

The military occupier, failing to kill Saddam and still dealing with irrational "resistance" to its rule, hunted and hunted him. Once it caught him and, passive and compliant, he said what he has said all along: there are no WMDs. Can you believe this guy? So on came the cameras, on went the surgical gloves, on went the flashlight, and his mouth was examined in close detail, with the pictures broadcast around the world.

There was once a document known as the Geneva Convention. It said such things as: "Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated"; "prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity"; "prisoners of war are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honour." Such sentiments followed the massacres of World War II, when humanity lost millions upon millions due to governments that cared nothing for human rights.

The punditry class might ridicule such sentiment today in favor of the great god DC. All the bloodshed backed by power and arbitrary political judgment has somehow dulled their humanitarian sense, and turned bloggers and editorialists into uncritical cheerleaders of anything and everything the US state wants to do.

If you disagree, you had better find a spider hole somewhere.

December 18, 2003

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com.

Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com