U.S. Church Leaders at WCC Assembly Beg Forgiveness for ‘Raining Down Terror’ on World

96 thoughts on “U.S. Church Leaders at WCC Assembly Beg Forgiveness for ‘Raining Down Terror’ on World”

1. Glory be to God! Iam uplifted and convicted by the actions of the World Council of Churches. May He who Rose from the Dead, enable us on earth, to glorify Him with purity of heart.
   In Humility, Father David Ogan.

2. However, we must remember that this God protected country (The United States of America) has provided refuge for Orthodox Christians throughout the World, and indeed provides the freedom to worship God in Tradition. At every Liturgy we pray for the President, and for the Armed Forces. At every vigil we pray for the President and for the Armed Forces. I myself served in the Armed Forces. I strongly believe that The White House is open to the voice of the Orthodox Christian World, and to the voice of all Christians. To the voice of all Americans for that matter. Look at “The Burden of Proof” and how it depicts The President at prayer. The World itself is struggling for World Peace, just review this years Olympic Games.

3. In fact after reading the letter that Fr. Kishkovsky wrote, again, I can only agree with his prayer for mercy in these troubled times. Iam encouraged by the World Council of Churches in its effort to speak out against war. However it is another thing all together to forget that the USA is God fearing country. Hollywood, MTV, and front page stereotypes can not, must not, represent every father and mother and child who lives and works in the USA, not to mention those who are fighting in the Armed Forces. I can not dismiss the entire inertia of the Country that I live in, in an effort to speak out against war. In conclusion I can only continue to pray that the leaders of this world will find through God’s grace, a means, a WAY, of peace.

4. Mr. Ogan,

   First, are you an Orthodox Priest? (I ask this because I am Orthodox and would be obliged to address you as “Fr. David” if you are :). Second, just what part of this letter are you “uplifted and convicted” about? As another put it, this letter “apologizes” for actions Fr. Kishkovsky has no control over – it is a good example of “Cheap Grace” (something Mr. Clinton was known for, “I feel your pain”). Also, do you consider all “War” a sin? If so what is your basis in Traditional Christian theology (assuming you are a traditional Christian)? If you are Orthodox, do you subscribe to the “lesser evil” philosophy now in vogue about war?

   It seems to me that one has to subscribe to some sort of “lesser evil” philosophy to support Fr. Kishkovsky’s cheap grace/pacifistic document. Only then could one say of that our fighting men and women “rain down terror” on the enemy. Since I do not subscribe to pacifism, which I believe is one of the bloodiest philosophy known to man, I would correct Fr. Kishkovsky and say that our armed forces are “raining down Justice” on our enemies – and they/we owe no one or God an apology for perfoming such a virtue…

5. Michael,

   Hmm. Raining down justice? In Iraq, you mean?

   In a bloody surprise attack, the U.S. military launched precision weapons into a poor residential neighborhood of Fallujah on Saturday to destroy what officers described as a safe house used by fighters loyal to Abu Musab Zarqawi and perhaps, at times, by the fugitive terrorist leader himself. … Images from the site of the blast showed two collapsed houses, with people in white robes picking through the rubble looking for buried victims and lost property.

   Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt admits that they didn’t know whether Zarqawi was in the house, but justifies the attack because intelligence indicated that several of his operatives were there. The second house apparently got in the way of the precision weapons, but families of the innocent dead will be comforted by Kimmitt’s assurance that the attack’s “collateral damage estimate was within permissible limits.”

   That’s one attack, on one day, prior to the battle of Fallujah. As a former Marine, I have been witnessing our tactics in Iraq with a mixture of shock and horror. With too few troops to control the ground situation, the U.S. ground commanders have relied heavily on a combination of CAS (close air support) and HE (High Explosive) artillery rounds to rain down death in attempt to get the bad guys.

   The result? Dead civilians. Dead women. Dead kids. Dead babies. All written off as collateral damage.

   With double or triple the troop strength, the U.S. could engage in the kinds of tactics which bore fruit in Toll Afar. There, the mayor (a Turk) was gushing about the performance of the 3rd Armored. They did the hard work of going door-to-door to root out insurgents in order to gain, and retain control.

   That methodology is non-replicable on a national scale with our limited troop resources. But the fact is, that we don’t really have the troops necessary to carry out that mission in the first place. We’d hoped to use native troops for that, but as you can tell by the fact that there are no Iraqi battalions capable of independent action, that we have failed to achieve that goal.

   So, without enough power to control the country, we instead bomb the place. Even the NAZIs did not bomb Paris after they occupied it.

   I am perfectly happy for churchmen to criticize that aspect of the war, though apologizing for it is a bit too much. Inability to secure the country is leading to a path of potential civil war, and could make the 30,000 Iraqi civilian casualties acknowledged by the administration seem a mere pittance.

   This fiasco has been wrongly handled, and in truth was wrongly conceived. Again, I am happy to have churchmen (as the Pope did) point that out.

   They have to be careful in their wording, however, as I don’t believe that the grunts on the ground are evil or guilty. They are trying to survive in a bad situation that they never should have been placed in.

   The Afghan mission was handled expertly and well. The only problem was the lack of closure in capturing Osama. The war was justified, widely supported, and was impossible to avoid.

   The war in Iraq? We aren’t raining down justice in Iraq. The Al-Queda forces in Iraq will never rule the country. The Sunnis won’t even rule it. The Shia have more AK’s. After most of the Sunni are dead, we will see a new Iraq born out of the ashes that will be more militant, more Shia, and more like Iran than anything you have ever imagined.

   And even then, most Americans will still get mad every time somone brings up the fact that this wasn’t such a hot idea.

6. Glen,

   I appreciate your sober analysis, especially the tactical details your experience as a soldier prompts you to recognize. Your thought begins and ends with the acknowledgement that some wars (certainly not all or even most) are not evil-in-themselves, and that we have a duty to our neighbors (and God) to protect the innocent and that the current war on terror is part of that duty. All this is true and part of Christianity, all the while we recognize the tragic elements of this duty – the blood of the innocent children, women, men. I believe the current struggle in Iraq is still justified and justifiable, but I certainly recognize why you argue it is not – and I could be persuaded by future events that it no longer is. However, these crucial distinctions are lost on the WCC, Orthodox Pacifist Fellowship, and others (many seminary professionals for example) who argue from completely different (and un-Christian/Orthodox) premises – that all war is “evil”…

7. Christoher – I think it is a gross misinterpretation and mischaracterization to state that the position of Orthodox Peace (NOT Pacifist) Fellowship that ALL war should be opposed. A more accurate statement would be that the OPF believes was is so terrrble that it should be used only as a last resort.

   If you read the paper by Father Stanley Harakas, on the OPF web site (“No Just War in the fathers”) he states that in the Orthodox tradition war is considered evil, but sometimes necessary. War is evil because it is attended by acts of deliberate cruelty, injury and murder that are in direct opposition to the acts of kindness, compassion and healing that we should practicing as Christians.

   Sometimes war becomes unavoidable when all peaceful means of resolution hve been exhausted, and the alternative to war, peace, will bring about in terrible suffering from unopposed oppression that only war can avert.

   The OPF did not oppose the Iraq war because it thought ALL wars are evil, but because the conditions that define when war becomes unavoidable were not present and satisfied when we launched our unprovoked war of choice against Iraq in March 2003.

8. Dean,

   I believe you were present here at orthdoxtody.org when the OPF (I believe “pacifist” is the more accurate name:) issued it’s infamous statement explicitly equating the act’s of US soldiers and civil authorities with murder, and Fr. Jacobse’s response. I also believe that if one takes the time to read the material on OPF’s website, the underlying pacifistic presuppositions are evident. They are explicitly stated by some members and leaders, such as Mr. Jim Forest (though he incoherently often claims he is not a pacifist – then in the same paragraph does a good job of defining his pacifism) and his wife, who explicitly identifies herself as a pacifist. All it takes is a little intellectual honesty. So, it is quite accurate to label the OPF a pacifistic organization because that is in fact what it is. I believe that it is a sign of institutional failure/rot at SCOBA, where they list the OPF as one of their “endorsed organizations”. Such intellectual/theological rot is one reason why I believe SCOBA will not be part of the solution to the “jurisdictional” problem in the USA. Also, while I don’t agree with your analysis of the conditions around the Iraq war, I would die defending your right to say it 😉

   Christianly, the most important point around this issue is the “lesser evil” philosophy of Fr. Harakas and other (mostly seminary professionals and some priests). Is their reading of Theology/Holy Tradition true? Fr. Webster (author of “The Virtue of War”) certainly disagrees. I believe Fr. Webster overstates his case a bit, mostly by confusing it too much with current tactical/political issues around the war on terror, but the essence of is argument is correct. Particularly the point that God never calls us to do evil, and that is exactly what the lesser evil philosophy proposes: that we are called to do evil (before God) because it is “necessary”. This sets up a logical contradiction can only be resolved in two ways: either at the center of Christianity is a pacifistic only response to the fact of sin/cruelty that occurs in our corporate life, or God in fact occasionally calls us to do evil in response to this sin/cruelty.

   If I thought that Fr. Harakas and other says on this subject was anything close to the Truth of Holy Tradition, I would be with the Roman Catholics in a red hot second…

9. Stepping in between the evil and its victim to protect the innocent is a noble self-sacrificing act not a “lesser evil”

   Any police officer who uses force to stop the destruction of innocent life interposes himself between the evildoer and that innocent life. The very act of stepping forward to stop the evildoer DRAWS the attack of the evildoer away from the defenseless innocent victim towards the police officer. The police officer’s intervention is an act of bravery and self-sacrifice of the highest order.

   It is a measure of the intensity of the evil of the wrongdoer that it requires force to deter the evildoer from his intention of harming the innocent. The moral opprobrium of the force needed to stop the evildoer rests appropriately on the evildoer.

   Classifying a self-sacrificing and self-endangering act to be a “lesser evil” is the product of erroneous moral reasoning. The act of the police officer is moral from the onset and is not tainted by any immorality.

   I have worked as a City Attorney and as such I have worked with city police officers and I am familiar with the policies for the use of force in metropolitan police work.

   Similarly, the act of a solider to step forward and to interpose himself between the innocent victim and the evil doer is a self-sacrificing act. In no way, is it a lesser evil.

10. OPM and the Iraw War

    The OPM arrogates to itself the right to instruct others from a moral highground. I contest the idea that they occupy the moral high ground and are qualified to instruct others. I question the judgment of Church leadership if they delegate moral instruction to a sub-group of lay believers. Moral leadership should, in my opinion, come from the clergy. Moral leadership is the proper domain of the clergy.

    As an ordinary group of people, OPM is entitled to its collective opinion. However, I do not grant them any special knowledge or insight into the problems of todays’ world.

11. Can a Pacifist Morally Argue that Someone Else Must Give Up Their Right to Self-defense?

    I can understand a position where an individual might decide to voluntarily give up his right to self-defense. However, I assert that no one has the right to require someone else to give up his right to self-defense. Consequently, I don’t believe that a pacifist has the moral right to condemn someone else who has declined to give up his right to self-defense.

    If a pacifist has succeeded in disarming the morally upright sector of society (or the world) in the face of violence by evildoers, must they not be held accountable for the violence done by evildoers to the innocent.

    I have found that when general “pacifists” are querried about their positions, their real stance is that the United States is the source of all conflict in the world. They generally believe that conflict and destruction would cease if the United States unilaterally changed its policies.

    I would welcome a statement from the OPM about Iran’s open threat to wipe Isreal off the map. If the OPM addressed China, Sudan, Nigeria jihadis, Iran, Chechnya, and other sources of violence against innocents I might give them greater moral credibility.

12. I believe Missourian’s example of the a police officer is very important. The war on terror, or any Just war, is really only an extension of the example of the police officer. There are important material differences (e.g. an army can not be held to the same standards of unintended and tragic consequences as a police officer.), but the basic moral reasoning is the same. If the OPF, WCC, and seminary professionals were consistent (I know, that’s asking a lot ;), they would also be arguing that the police officer who has to use deadly force against a deranged child of God to protect another innocent child of God, is a “murder”, a “terrorist”, etc. In fact, if they had the courage of their convictions, they would never call 911 if they were faced with a break in or a threatening person – because if a police officer arrives it would be his duty to use deadly force (if needed which it unfortunately often is) to protect them…

13. I certainly do recognize and acknowlege the good intentions of those who supported the war to oust Saddam Hussein. He subjected his own people to terrible cruelty and mistreatment. He never would have stopped trying to slip out of the “box” we were trying to keep him in with sanctions and military containment.

    Under the right conditions, efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power would have been morally justified and a cause for celebration.

    But we did not invade under the “right conditions”.

    We invaded Iraq under conditions of our own making that were so poorly contrived and badly mismanaged they virtually guaranteed a bad outcome for both the Iraqi people and ourselves.

    I’m reading “The Assasins Gate: America in Iraq” by George Packer.
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0374299633/102-6049363-9402501

    It’s astonishing to read about the sheer amount of information challenging claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and the many urgent warnings about the need to plan for the post war period, that the Bush administration deliberately and casually ignored as it too the nation to war. Our leaders put themselves in a bubble of delusion, insulated themselves from contradictory information and accused anyone who disagreed with them of being a traitor, or to use president Bush’s own word “defeatist”.

    General Anthony Zinni, who preceded Tommy Franks wrote a paper stating that 500,000 troops would be needed to secure Iraq. general Eric Shinsecki said that at least 300,000 troops would be required. The State Department, the Army War College, the Heritage Foundation and the Rand Corporation all drafted detailed plans for the securing and reconstruction of post-war Iraq that the Bush adminstration tossed aside and never consulted.

    Here was the situation in Iraq on Monday as reported by the Washington Post:

    “BAGHDAD, Feb. 27 — Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week’s bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad’s main morgue.
    … Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday — blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound — and many of them had wound up at the morgue after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/27/AR2006022701128.html

    As Secretary of State, Colin Powell advanced what has been called the Pottery Barn rule.

    ” ‘You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,’ he told the president. ‘You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.’ Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.”

    “Plan of Attack”, by Bob Woodward. Page 150

    We “own” the responsibility for the chaos and violence in Iraq resulting of our own poor planning, cultural ignorance and mismanagement and there are moral implications to that.

14. Any battle against the criminals that “the insurgency” has shown itself to be is a noble one.

    Iraqis describe Iraq under Saddam as a large prison. Thousands of murders of innocent citizens by the state went on every day, every month, every year. Mass graves dot the Iraqi landscape and no one can count the dead. Bodies of men, women and even children shot through ther head before being thrown in a ditch.

    The Kurds have established an economically and politically strong area. The Kurdish economy is booming and the area is mainly secure. The Kurds have a website thanking the United States for the military intervention.

    The Iraqi marshlands, drained by Saddam, have been restored. Iraqis native to those marshlands have returned to their unique way of life on the water.

    11 million Iraqis embraced the new Iraqi government and they did it at their own peril, braving the bullets of the criminal animals of Al Quaeda and the
    “insurgency.”

    .

15. WMD and Iraq: Old Facts and New Information

    Burden of Proof. Dean consistently fails to acknowledge that under the U. N. resolution and the terms of the 1991 truce between Saddam and the U.S., Saddam had the burden of declaring his WMD and publicly destroying his WMD. He declared WMD but never publicly destroyed the full quantities of WMD he himself had declared. This simple that, the fact that Saddam DECLARED his own WMD stockpiles after the 1991 war has been forgotten and washed away by politically motivated propaganda.

    The case is not closed. The United States has not declassified and translated many documents seized from the old Iraqi government. Stephen Hayes has lead an admirable campaign to get this information out to the public. There are sources of NEW INFORMATION that confirm that Saddam was very actively resisting the “inspections” regime. He treated it with contempt and he continued his weapons development. We have much documentary confirmation of that. The weapons inspectors were a weak sop with no real chance of confirming the presence or absence of WMD. That was obvious to anyone watching that charade.

    There exists credible evidence that during the time that Bush was trying to get the U.N. to find its backbone and enforce its own resolutions, Saddam moved his largest stockpiles to Syria with Russia’s help.

    I really think the obsessive re-arguing of the case for war in 2003 is a hindrance to the necessity of formulating effective policy today.

    As to “owning Iraq” America has meet its obligation and it has produced excellent results in many areas, the marshlands being one example. By the way, the hysteria over the museum thefts turned out to be just that, hysteria. The vast majority of the lost items were recovered and there is evidence that the remaining thefts were “inside jobs.” So much for America’s failure to send archaelogical curators to a museum in the midst of a raging battle for a city. Imagine that, we will have to train our foot soldiers in archaeological curatorship in the future.

16. Why would 11 million Iraqis vote for American Terror?

    If the Iraqi people thought that American’s brough terror why would they turn out and vote in the face of death threats.

    The inversion of common sense when it comes to Iraq is almost beyond belief.

17. Inversion of Moral Judgment

    America promotes elections and self-government and it is called the terrorist. America rebuilds the decrepit electrical system neglected by Saddam and it is called the oppressor. America rebuilds the marshlands destroyed by Saddam as a sadistic punishment of a group of his citizens whose livlihood depended on those marshland and America is the wrongdoer? America rebuilds schools and hospitals. American provide new medical equipment to hospitals Saddam allowed to languish and America is the terrorist?

    Israel allows Arabs to vote and hold office in Israel, the Jewish homeland. The Palestianian Authority has ejected all Jews and any Jew traveling inside the PA risks murder. Israel is called an apartheid state. Hamas hosts a website in which they declare that they “will drink the blood of jews.” Hamas received international aid from the EU and from the United States with the blessing that old hypocrite Jimmy Carter.

    Israel builds a wall around its territory to keep out people willing to kill random groups of innocent people and it is criticized for defending itself. Isreal fights off five concerted military attacks by Arab nations bent on wiping it off the map and Israel is the oppressor. Iran openly calls for Israels destruction.

    Sudan kills animists, Christians and non-jihadi Muslims, the killing goes on in plain sight for years. Sudanese Christians now say that “God has is tired of them.” They have lost all hope for help or respite from the slaughter.

    Islamists kills Christians who refuse to obey their sharia law in Nigeria, but, America is the terrorist

    Islamist threaten violence against any non-Muslim in Europe or the entire world if they non-Muslim does not play dhimmi and observe the primacy of Islamic law, but, America is the terrorist

18. Accounting for our Actions?

    How will we account for ourselves if we support and condone a government composed of those who claim openly that they will “drink the blood of Jews.”

    I fear the final accounting will be dreadful beyond description.

19. Okay, let’s extend that police analogy.

    You have a murderer hold up with his entire family. He is extremely dangerous, and can not be allowed to escape. The residence is an apartment inside a building that is crowded with civilians. The murderer has threatened the lives of others in the past. You are unsure how many of the people inside under his control he will kill, or even if he will kill any of them. The place is surrounded by SWAT.

    Do you breach? How long do you wait before you breach? And if you are going to breach, what tactics should be used?

    What do you think would happen if the Situation Commander called for an artillery strike to wipe out the building to eliminate the chance that the murderer would escape? Or if he hosed the building down with machine gun fire in order to reduce the chances that, upon breaching the building, any of his SWAT team members would be injured?

    Would the American civilians killed be considered ‘collateral damage?’ Would we be having a conversation over whether or not the outcome was ‘moral’ or ‘Christian?’

    Of course not. If the civilians killed in the attack were Americans, the SWAT sit commander would be up on charges and so would any of the officers who obeyed the order. If not, there would be a riot.

    But, when an American battalion/company/platoon commander takes small arms or RPG fire from a residential building and then calls in CAS or artillery fire, knowing full well that civilians are probably in the structure, we excuse that as ‘collateral damage.’

    News flash. Iraq is either occupied territory or an ‘allied government.’ Take your pick. But the ROE in most of the country is that HE weapons can be used just as if you were engaging conventional forces.

    You could never conduct Ops like that in a country which was populated by people the American public actually considered humans. If they were more like us, then we would insist that in the above scenario that buildings be cleared room by room, floor by floor, even if it significantly raised the potential for military casualties.

    But we don’t consider the Iraqis to be human. They are Muslim. They are Arabs. They have nasty problem of living around people who are fighting our troops. Therefore, we say that their deaths are just so much ‘collateral damage.’

    That is unjustified, and unchristian. I understand why the Ops commanders on scene do this. It is hard to sacrifice you men. Especially since a face-to-face shooting of a civilian in a confused firefight (if it’s videotaped) will get your man a courtmartial.

    Call down CAS and kill dozens of civilians? No one gets court martialed for that. Moral of the story? Better to kill with stand-off weapons and make dozens of mistakes than risk your life closing with a potential target only to get burned for any mistakes made anyway.

    Now, the same analogy writ large can be applied to our invasion. Saddam was no threat to anyone. He couldn’t take down Iran when he tried. Turkey could destroy him. His country was dirt poor, economy shot by sanctions, and his military couldn’t even exert control over the entire country. The Kurds had de facto independence, and Saddam could do zippo about it.

    He had no ‘super weapons’ of any sort. He didn’t have the resources to even work on them. His biggest fear was that the Iranians would come calling. Based on the evidence, I think that up to the end, he thought he could cut a deal with us.

    Who was he a threat to? His own people, just like all authoritarian regimes are. But why did he rule by terror? Because he was trying to hold together an ethnically and religiously mixed pate of peoples who don’t really want to live together. His rule of terror was the glue that held Iraq as it was together.

    The Pope and other believers in ‘Just War Theory’ refused to sanction this war because Saddam’s only threat was to his own citizens. And not even to all of them. If you stayed out of politics, then Saddam usually stayed out of your life. For the Sunnis, life was a good deal. For the Christians it was tolerable. The Kurds were independent already, and the Shia could do okay.

    Now to stop the ‘madman’ from killing some of his citizens to maintain control over the parts of the country that he hadn’t already lost, we launched an invasion that killed tens of thousands (by Bushite estimates) and may end up killing tens of thousands more.

    And this is the argument for invasion that is put forward by the ‘pro-life’ side? We killed a bunch of people, ran the risk of civil war, and birthed an Islamist state on the hope that the future might be ‘worth it?’

    If I offered you the chance to kill 10 babies by shooting them in the head on the sure knowledge that it would save 10,000 lives, would you do it? Would that be okay, because on balance you are saving more lives than you are taking.

    Of course you wouldn’t. You couldn’t do it.

    But almost no one on this blog has a problem killing tens of thousands of strangers who are Arab and Muslim, even though their government did not present an imminent threat to us, all predicated on the hope that doing so would build a better, democratic future for the country as a ‘whole.’

    Pope John Paul II understood that such a naive view of the situation would likely only lead to disaster. The law of unintended consequences was sure to take over, and the people of Iraq, once free to choose, were quite likely to choose not to live together in peace.

    Some wars are necessary, but that fact does not make all wars necessary. Some wars are just, but are pursued by unjust methods which must be condemned.

    On balance, I consider the War in Iraq to be a bad idea in conception, execution, and continuance.

20. Glen,

    I was following perfectly until your third paragraph where you say “…commander called for an artillery strike”. The police to analogy is not perfect, which is why I said earlier there are important material differences between the conduct of a war and the conduct of a police action. Clearly, a police action in one’s own country can not be conducted in the same way as an army in an enemy country. This is part of the tragedy of war, where significant greater force is proper and right, and where tragicallyinnocent blood of children, women, and men is spilt. The analogy is useful in understanding the moral reasoning of a Just war.

    Also, I disagree with your view that the only moral way to conduct the war in Iraq is a man-for-man, house to house infantry battle. I also think it is a rather silly assertion to say that American’s in general don’t consider the Iraqis/Arab/Muslim’s to be “human”. War is always tragic, much like the use of deadly force in a police action is. This tragedy however is not be the sole basis (or even the primary one) to judge this action. If it is, then the only way out of the moral dilemma is pacifism…

21. Christopher said,

    “Clearly, a police action in one’s own country can not be conducted in the same way as an army in an enemy country.”

    Iraq has no army in the field. As I said before, either Iraq is an allied country or it is a country occupied by American forces. There is no conventional army fighting us. The insurgents are an unconventional military force hiding among civilians. The U.S. military must take the responsibility for protecting civilian life. Otherwise, the U.S. military is no better than the various Third World militaries who bombed entire cities in order to get at a few insurgents. In case you didn’t notice, when they do it we condemn it.

    The only way out is ‘pacifism?’ That is an interesting choice. The only choice is between deployment of heavy weapons or pacifism? That is known as a false dichotomy. It used to be the stock-in-trade of the socialists. Now ‘conservatives’ love to deploy that.

    One does not have to be a pacifist to have opposed the Iraq War as bad policy. One does not have to be a pacifist to know that you don’t employ HE rounds inside a city that you occupy, and whose residents are supposed to be looking to you for safety. If we were engaged in an active battle for a city with a conventional force with its own artillery, tanks, and aircraft – then I would agree with the employment of all means necessary for combat. After you have taken the city, it is immoral to continue destroying it through employment of heavy weapons.

    Under ‘Just War’ Theory, just means must be employed. The use of heavy weapons against an uncoventional insurgency intentionally hiding in civilian areas is unjust. Unjust means can render even a just war into an unjust affair.

    In Christianity, the ends don’t justify the means. If they did, then what difference is there between a Christian and a socialist with their collectivist ideaology of sacrificing individuals for the good of the whole?

    The reason, Christopher, that Pope John Paul II and Poper Benedict XVI, and other Christian leaders, opposed the Iraq War is that judged objectively, the case of it under Just War was simply too weak. You don’t see that because your Christianity is primarily subordinated to your American nationalism. You are American first, Christian second. As are most of your countrymen. Pope John Paul II was a Christian first, and therefore, found the case for this war unpersuasive. He also found the conduct of the war to be an abomination.

    The final thing I would ask is ‘how are we to judge this action’? Let’s try to break this down into some maxims we can live by:

    “It is permissable to kill tens of thousands of people, if their deaths contribute to the greater good.”

    “The needs of the few should be sacrificed to further goals of society.”

    “You can’t make an omlet without breaking a few eggs.”

    Do you recognize such slogans? If you use them in domestic politics you are rightly judged to a be collectivist of some kind, either a fascist or a communist. These kinds of slogans are the negation of all morality, reducing everything to a case-by-case basis and to the primary question, “What is good for the party/state?” Whatever furthers the goals of the party/state is moral.

    If you use these slogans in foreign policy, then you are a Republican or a Democrat, since both parties use the same model in foreign policy.

    Ever wonder why socialism ineluctably advances in the U.S.? It is because the Republicans also are socialists, at least in the foreign policy arena. But separating foreign policy from domestic is difficult, so what is good in Iraq ends up being good here also.

    So how do you judge the war in Iraq? How many tens of thousands of lives are excused because we had some elections? How many dead babies are excused because we refilled a swamp? How many dead women are excused because we opened some schools and some hospitals?

    How do you weight the value of human life against such things? What scale can you use to balance such things to know that your actions are ‘worth it?’

    I’m sure you’ll find a way, comrade, but it won’t be Christian reasoning that gets you there.

22. Glen writes: But, when an American battalion/company/platoon commander takes small arms or RPG fire from a residential building and then calls in CAS or artillery fire, knowing full well that civilians are probably in the structure, we excuse that as ‘collateral damage.’

    But at least to some extent, isn’t that what the military does? I mean, isn’t that what they are trained for? I remember the famous quote from the military officer (whose name I forget) who said that “what the army does is kill people and destroy things. And if you don’t want that to happen, don’t call the army.”

    I remember a supposedly true story that happened during the L.A. riots. A police officer was patrolling with some National Guard troops. At one point he wanted to cross an open area, but was afraid of taking fire from a nearby building. He says to the soldiers “cover me!” and proceeds to cross the area. The soldiers then start to hose down the building with small arms and machine gun fire. Well, this is what “covering fire” is in the military.

    If you have insufficient military forces in an area to exercise control over that area, then it seems to me that excessive force is the only option. If I had a son serving in combat in Iraq, I’d be pretty upset if my son got killed because his commander decided to minimize civilian casualties through some ground maneuver rather than destroying the building.

    My understanding of the Powell doctrine of “overwhelming force” is that the doctrine was really all about saving lives. First, it saves enemy lives because the enemy has a great disincentive to engage you in the first place. Second, it saves civilian lives because you have sufficient troops to exercise proper control over an area. Third, it saves American lives because if things go bad you have the force that you need to contain the situation. (To use your analogy, when there’s an armed bank robber on the loose the police don’t send five officers, they send fifty. But you have to have the fifty available to send.)

    So it seems to me that a lot of what is happening in Iraq is a consequence of not having sufficient forces in the first place. We couldn’t control the initial looting of the cities. We couldn’t secure the borders. And we couldn’t even secure the ammo dumps. We couldn’t clamp down on the insurgency before it had a chance to take off. Rewind the tape and put 500,000 soldiers in there instead of 150,000, and the situation might have been different.

23. Jim wrote,

    But at least to some extent, isn’t that what the military does? I mean, isn’t that what they are trained for? I remember the famous quote from the military officer (whose name I forget) who said that “what the army does is kill people and destroy things. And if you don’t want that to happen, don’t call the army.”

    Jim – yes and no. The military, by definition, destroys things and kills people. It is exceptionally good at that. This comes in handy when fighting conventional wars, which is the reason to have a military in the first place.

    I would take nothing off the table for an operational commander when engaged with a conventional enemy. During the invasion of Iraq, when our forces faced conventional opponents in the field, I would never have criticized ROE that permitted CAS and artillery support being deployed. I would disagree if civilians were intentionally targeted, but I would have said nothing about using them to target areas in which conventional forces had taken refuge which might also contain civilians. That is an unfortunate by-product of war.

    Which is one reason why I oppose ‘humanitarian wars.’ By their very nature, wars kill a lot of human beings. Which is better – a brutal dictatorship or a brutal war? Americans somehow think that combat can be conducted in an antiseptic fashion, and that is not the nature of the beast. Civilians will die, even in a ‘good war.’ If you conducting the war to save a population from its own government, then how do you justify it? You assume that the number of civilians killed is less than the number that the government would have killed if left in power. That equation might balance if you are talking Hitler or the Khmer Rouge, but most dictatorships torture and kill their opponents, while leaving the vast majority of people alone. By entering into a war, you will kill an unknown quantity of people on the hope that their sacrifice will build a ‘better tomorrow.’

    “Can’t make an omlet without breaking a few eggs.”

    Now, the situation changes after the conventional forces have been subdued. After that comes an occupation, and the rules are supposed to be different when conducting an occupation as opposed to an invasion. The civilian leadership did not commit sufficient forces to actually occupy the country. The lack of boots on the ground resulted in a power vacuum that was filled by an insurgency.

    Lacking sufficient forces to gain and retain control, we have substituted the use of heavy weapons for the troops we don’t have in-country. This is immoral. I don’t want Marines and soldiers killed either, but I also don’t want to torch babies using 2,000 lbs bombs to respond to an attack on a patrol. The civilian leadership is at fault for putting them in this position.

    In addition to lack of troops and an expansive ROE that does not match the actual conditions, we also face the fact that Marines and soldiers are not policemen. Unfortunately, in an occupation in which all other authority has been overthrown, that is exactly what they are called on to be. They have to simultaneously conduct a counter insurgency operation, provide security for the civilian population, and stay alive.

    These missions are impossible to reconcile given our current troop strength and their current training. Again, it is the fault of the civilian leadership for putting our troops into a situation that is so messed up.

    As for the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, that applies to a conventional war. Again, either we occupy Iraq or we are assisting an allied nation with an internal rebellion. Either way, blowing things up is not the preferred method of ‘winning hearts and minds.’

    By the way, you should all probably take a look at the entire list of questions that comprise, the Powell Doctrine:

    Is a vital national security interest threatened?
    Do we have a clear attainable objective?
    Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
    Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
    Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
    Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
    Is the action supported by the American people?
    Do we have genuine broad international support?

    If this criteria had been used, do you think that we would be in this mess today?

24. I’d be interested to know whether the WCC and the NCC criticize the US disproportionately. I suspect they do, but I don’t know this. Anyone have any data?

25. Glen,

    Rereading my post I see I was not very clear. The moral dilemma I was referring to is that if one (one’s philosophy/religion) is not willing to accept the natural tragedy of a Just war, then there is in fact no such thing as a Just war – all war is evil. If this is the case, then the only morally good thing to do is a pacifistic response to corporate evil. Certain Orthodox have tried to slip out of this dilemma with the “lesser evil” argument, but this is an incoherent position to take when examined closely. This is really all I am personally interested in discussing – while I appreciate your analysis of the particulars of Iraq, I really only meant to mention it because you alleged that all (or perhaps it was only most 🙂 Americans view Iraqi’s/Muslims/Arabs as something other than human. I understand that you judge the Iraq war to not fulfill the practical/moral requirements of a Just war. I wish other Orthodox (e.g. OPF, “lesser evil” adherents, etc.) did also, but they don’t. They deny the possibility of a Just war, which as you understand is something else entirely…

26. Christopher,

    I am part of the OCA, which is under the Patriarchate of Moscow. That is, as you know, the only Orthodox nation which is also a great military power, and hence has a different view than a small nation such as Greece.

    The MP has explicitly accepted Just War doctrine as laid down in the Western tradition.

    Who am I to argue? If it’s is good enough for the Synod, then it is good enough for me.

27. Americans view Iraqi’s/Muslims/Arabs as something other than human? Evidence?

    Christopher, do you have some support for this outrageous claim? There is ample evidence of many, many private charitable efforts made by the American people to help the Iraqi people. Americans have voted to spend huge amounts of money to help Iraq after the war. The Kurds have put a website up just to thank America. Kuridistan is doing very, very well. The America military took the lead in rebuillding hospitals and restoring the marshes.

    It was the much heralded humanitarian U.N. which cynically vacuumed up the Oil for Food money and lined its pockets with funds intended to feed the Iraqi people. It was Germany and France that sold Saddam military supplies during the sanctions period, because it was profitable. How would you saw the U.N. and Germany and France “saw” the Iraqi people?

    I am distressed that you would engage in what I have to consider to be a broad defamatory comment about the America people.

28. This thread brings to mind some questions I’ve had for some time. To what extent, and under what circumstances, are the statements of the clergy binding on the consciences of the Orthodox faithful? To what extent is it considered appropriate for Orthodox Christians to disagree publicly with statements made by priests and bishops in matters of politics and public policy? To what extent is it appropriate even (and especially) in matters such as the justice of a particular war? Does the rank of a priest or bishop, or the level of public affection for that person, influence the appropriateness of criticism of what he might say?

    I suppose that any disagreement would be expected to be anchored in good manners and Christian charity. But I suppose also that the same might be expected toward any person. So that answer, by itself, would still leave me wondering.

29. Missourian,

    We seem to have a propensity to talk past each other. It was Glen who made the claim, and it was I who attempted to call attention to it’s simple silliness. I apologize for the misunderstanding 😉

    Augie,

    As far at the WCC/NCC criticisms, they certainly do criticize the US disproportionately, and more importantly for our purposes from non Christian premises. As far as “data”, All you have to do is read the various statements they occasionally issue forth. I am not sure one could quantify such statements easily (as in say “54% of all criticisms are directed to US) but it is quite easy to see their prejudice.

    As for the question as to the appropriateness of lay persons to publicly disagree with Bishops/priests, I do not think we have a clear “theological” or “ecclesiastical” basis to say that what a priest or bishop says on a matter of public policy that they have a special authority over and above the layperson. If someone has an argument for a special privilege, I would like to hear it. Even if they do, I think it is incumbent upon the laity to publicly correct a wayward bishop or priest. Unfortunately, I think the Orthodox hierarchy by their very membership in WCC/NCC have put the laity in a compromised position – we have to correct the unadulterated silliness that comes out mouths of men like Fr. Kishkovsky, because simple Christian honesty demands it. Personally, I am generally unimpressed with today’s ‘churchmen’, the average priest and bishop. They as a whole are an unimpressive group of men, who seem to stumble more than they “lead”. I would be loath to turn over a “public voice” to them…

30. Good questions. I faced it when I decided to write a critique of OPF’s “A Plea for Peace” that was signed by many clergy and other leaders of the American Orthodox Church. My reasoning was that if these leaders signed a statement that employed moral reasoning that was applied to a particular situation, critiquing it was fair game.

    Of course I am in the category your are talking about. Still, if something is sloppy, it’s sloppy no matter who said it. I don’t see where being a priest exempts you from being criticized or from offering criticism in return in matters of politics and culture particularly when moral invective is used in place of clear ideas — a technique I consider irresponsible and one I think “A Plea for Peace” employed. If you want to stand in the kitchen, you’ve got to take some heat.

    The problem with a lot of clerical statements is the sloppy thinking of the kind we saw in the OPF piece. You see this on the left most often, but the right has its share too. A lot has been dumbed down in the culture and clergy are not exempt from the malady. The NCC proves it over and over again, IMO.

31. Note 29. Christopher, I wrote and article a while back on the disproportionate criticism coming from the religious left wing. Mainline Protestants Fail in Defense of Human Rights

32. Father Hans and Christopher, thanks for the responses to my questions. I’d appreciate comments from any one else who would care to supply them.

33. Christopher

    Your are correct, apologies. I should sleep more and write less. 😉

34. Augie, the Orthodox Church has a long history of lay involvement in critiquing priests and bishops publically. Such critique has been on theolgical teaching, as well as matters of political and cultural ideas. It is one of the basic foundations of Orthodox ecclesology that the laity are essential to authenticating the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church. IMO, it is an important aspect of our love for our bishops and priests. Without an active, spritually strong lay involvement, the priests and bishops will have a much more difficult time fullfilling their calling than they do all ready.

    Can such lay activity be abused and cross the line into disrespect, of course. Can priests and bishops get huffy and appeal to their authority instead of looking for the truth, of course. We’re all sinful people. As Glen notes, lay people have a responsibility to listen attentively to what our hierarchs say, but there is no direct obedience placed on lay people. That being said, the Church is not a democracy and should not be our hierachs have the final say on theological and ecclesial matters.

    The Orthodox statement of faith is the original Nicean Creed. As long as we adhere to the Creed and follow the general practice of the Church in matters of faith and morals, we have a lot of freedom. Of course when possible, we should follow the Scriptural formula for settling disagreements by going to the priest or bishop personally first. The few times I have had disagreement with my parish priest, I have done so. With good results.

    Humility is the key.

35. Christopher, since our leaders are not born either bishops or priests, but come from the led, perhaps we need to look to the quality of our own spiritual lives as lay people and the health of our parishes if we want better leaders?

36. What a bunch of crap! The role of the church, according to Pope John Paul II, is to improve man’s relationship with God. Advocating a political platform, among competing political ideas has caused the WCC and USCC to reach their rightful places among world and national institutions, and that is the dustbin.

    Why don’t you geniuses try to straighten out the mess you worked so hard for in Southern Africa? Is there a better testament to your stupidity?

    A Price

37. Michael,

    Tough question Michael, for if I disagree (particularly here at the beginning of the Great and Holy Fast) I sound spiritually arrogant and hard hearted. If I agree, I sound appropriately humble and pietistic. Oh well, I am going to go out on a limb and say “Nah…” ;

    Someone put it this way on another blog site “The bishops are going to be the last to wake up (about the NCC/WCC)”. What she said is true. Why is that? IMO, they live somewhat insular lives. They have an old and failed model of how to communicate to our culture, and they spend far too much of their time listening to the seminary professionals who have whole careers (and thus much personal validation) tied up in obscure committees of the NCC/WCC.

    While I do understand we are all one in the Body of Christ, and where there is disease in one part of the body it affects the rest. Still, I have a REAL HARD TIME accepting that because of my spiritual failings, the bishops insist on such wacko nonsense as the Kyoto protocol. No, that one is on them…;)

38. Don’t forget the effect of the new media on old ways. When news was spotty and spread slow, the ecumenical nonsense remained hidden from sight. Now criticism flies just hours after the nonsense is revealed. I think that NCC and WCC loyalists have no idea how to deal with this except to move even further to the left, thereby proving their detractors even more correct. They are challenged on the same ground on which they profess expertise, yet they cannot come up with suitable answers to the challenges. They cannot distinguish the Gospel from ideology, a lot like the confusion in OPF between moral equivalency and the scriptural exhortation to be peacemakers.

39. JBL and Missourian,

    You would like me to provide proof that the lives of Iraqis are worth little to a great deal of Americans. Here you are.

    Joseph Farah, conservative publisher of World Net Daily (one of my favorite sites, actually)

    The temptation of Americans is to be too cautious. That approach can only result in more American blood being spilled. The U.S. should give the leaders of Fallujah a chance to turn over all those who participated in the bloodletting, all those who cheered them on, all those who kicked the mutilated and charred bodies of the Americans who were there on a mission of mercy – bringing food to the forsaken city. I have no expectations that Fallujah’s elders will make the right call, do the right thing. And when they fail to do so – say, in the next few days – the U.S. should pound Fallujah like it has never been pounded before.

    We should not try to gain an international consensus for this action. We should not apologize for it. We should not restrain our Air Force and our artillery batteries from wreaking devastation. We should not expose our ground troops to unnecessary risks.

    In other words, we may need to flatten Fallujah. We may need to destroy it. We may need to grind it, pulverize it and salt the soil, as the Romans did with troublesome enemies.

    Hmmm. A few American mercs get killed, and in retaliation, Joseph Farah demonstrates his Christian love by calling for the wholesale destruction of an entire city. He wants it ‘pulverized.’

    He wasn’t alone, of course.

    Jack Wheeler, conservative commentator, wrote this little gem around the same time.

    Today, we need senators and congressmen to conclude every speech they give with the exhortation: Fallujah delenda est. Fallujah must be destroyed.

    I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean for the entire population of the city, every man, woman and child, given 24 hours to leave and be dispersed in resettlement camps, moved in with relatives in another village, wherever, and the town turned into a ghost town.

    Then the entire city carpet-bombed by B-52s into rubble, the rubble ground into powdered rubble by Abrams tanks, and the powdered rubble sown with salt as the Romans did with Carthage. Fallujah must be physically obliterated from the face of this earth.

    It is very easy and justifiable for every American to take the barbaric horror that occurred in Fallujah on March 30 personally. It is even easier for me in particular because the private contractor who provided the convoy guards murdered and butchered by the Fallujahites is a personal friend.

    Yet this is a crime that requires far more punishment than simple revenge. Let me state it clearly: The people who committed this crime are subhuman. They have relinquished their claim to be considered members of the human race.

    The people of Iraq as a whole are not barbarians. Yet there is a barbarism in their culture capable of perpetrating subhuman atrocities. Thus the critical conclusion:

    If Fallujah is not destroyed now, the genie of barbarism is out of the Iraqi bottle, with Iraq disintegrating into a civil war of annihilation.

    Turning Fallujah into rubble, smashing its atrocity with a hammer, is the only way to get this genie back in the bottle. Iraq is not a real country, only a collection of tribes that hate each other.

    If the Sunnis of Fallujah can burn and mutilate Americans, Shias will be only too eager to do the same with Sunnis, Kurds to Turkmen, on and on, once American soldiers are no longer there to prevent them from doing so.

    Iraq has been liberated from a monstrous tyranny and handed its freedom on a platinum platter. The question now is: Are the Iraqis capable of keeping the freedom that has been given to them? The atrocity of Fallujah is evidence they are not. The destruction of Fallujah will contain the virus of barbarism and give all Iraq a chance to be inoculated against it.

    The power of the Internet enables all of us to be a modern Cato the Elder.

    From now on, every pro-American writer and blogger should conclude whatever he writes no matter what the subject, every pro-American private citizen and everyone reading this essay should conclude any e-mail they send no matter what the topic with:

    Fallujah Delenda Est.

    Notice what these guys are saying. We should have given the Iraqis some time to leave, and then we should have completely destroyed Fallujah, even with women and children still in it. This is not what is known in Just War Theory as ‘proportionality.’ These two, and more others than I care to mention, advocated mass killing as a way of sending a message. They deliberately called for the targeting of civilian areas that were guaranteed to result in civilian casualties.

    The Iraqis, you see, need to be taught a lesson.

    Do you really, really think that if we were assisting allied forces in France or Britain against a domestic insurgency that U.S. ‘Christian’ writers would be writing that ‘Liverpool must be destroyed!’

    Of course not. The only reason that writers get so caught up in blood lust is that they are writing about Muslims which makes it okay to go overboard. It happens all the time, these are just the most egregious examples and this rhetoric has continued up until the present day. If you aren’t seeing it, then you aren’t reading right-wing sites.

    The U.S. is redeploying AC130 gunships to Iraq. They will be used to rake neighborhoods from which U.S. forces receive fire. Has anyone besides me seen what an AC 130 actually can do? Any guesses as to how much ‘collateral damage’ one can expect from that?

    And, do any of you care? My guess is, not much. How worked up are any of you going to get over Iraqi children? You’ll just excuse it, or pretend that I am making it up or that I’m simply missing the big picture.

    I hate Islam. Muhammad was a mad man and his religion is gutter trash. But mass destruction is a poor way of evangelism, and it is Christ the Muslims need not AC 130 gunships.

    Yes, we have built hospitals. Yes, we have re-opened schools, and other civic projects. In Kurdistan, where we are not actively fighting, they love us. Mostly because we are distant and write them checks.

    But how many hospitals do you have to build to make up for, say, a thousand dead Iraqi women? How do you really justify our war on the basis of all the ‘good’ we are doing when we have killed at least 30,000 civilians by Bush’s own account.

    How does one account for human life when balanced against ‘doing good?’

40. By the way, here are some of the specifics on the AC 130:

    The left-side ports of the AC-130s, 98-foot-long planes that can slowly circle over a target for long periods, bristle with a potent arsenal — 40 mm cannon that can fire 120 rounds per minute, and big 105 mm cannon, normally a field artillery weapon. The plane’s latest version, the AC-130U, known as “Spooky,” also carries Gatling gun-type 20 mm cannon.

    The gunships were designed primarily for battlefield use to place saturated fire on massed troops. In Vietnam, for example, they were deployed against North Vietnamese supply convoys along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where the Air Force claimed to have destroyed 10,000 trucks over several years.

    The use of AC-130s in places like Fallujah, urban settings where insurgents may be among crowded populations of noncombatants, has been criticized by human rights groups.

    We are re-deploying them to Iraq at this time. Why? What is in the offing that such massive firepower is needed? And, when it is deployed in an urban environment, care to hazard a guess what happens on the group when 40 mm ammo impacts residential structures?

    Now – are we raining down justice or terror? These are battlefield weapons, but they are being used to fight an urban insurgency. This isn’t just immoral, its stupid policy if you are actually hoping to be liked by the Iraqis someday.

    If another nation were doing this, we would denounce. But its us doing this, so I am positive most of you will defend this action.

41. Glen

    You should do better research and had gone to the AF Fact Sheet. If you had you’d know:

    Mission
    The AC-130 gunship’s primary missions are close air support, air interdiction and force protection. Missions in close air support are troops in contact, convoy escort and urban operations. Air interdiction missions are conducted against preplanned targets or targets of opportunity. Force protection missions include air base defense and facilities defense.

    As for the rest of your post, can you be anymore of an anti-military scaremonger? And you wonder why people think you’re aligned with lefties. You also forgot to mention this quote from one of many articles on the story.

    The Air Force’s senior tactical commander in Iraq said the AC-130 can be both a high-intensity and low-intensity weapon.

    more
    And what’s your solution instead of gunships? A-10s? F-15Es? FA-16s? Or just leave the troops without air support? My choice would be gunships. If you’ve ever seen the damage an A-10 does with the 30 mm gatling gun its the logical choice. 

     

42. Glen

    First, Joseph Farrah and Jack Wheeler speak for themselves.

    Second, if you want to engage in the mathematics of human life you must look at both sides of the balance sheet. Every month that Saddam is not running his Gulag about 3,000 were NOT killed, this must be balanced off against those who have been killed.

    No one wants to engage in this type of mathematics but armed conflicts require such thinking. Truman balanced the deaths at Horoshima against the deaths arising from an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Harsh, but necessary in this far from perfect world. By the way, Americans tolerate 50,000 deaths per year, every year from traffic accidents which could be reduced by a factor of three, but, we don’t do that because the safety policies would be too inconvenient. Given that we sacrifice 50,000 people a year for convenience, we can sacrifice a little to end a miserable dictatorship.Saddams full activities are just coming to light. We shall see what history eventually tells us. What Roman sage said “only the dead have seen the end of war.”

    There are worse things than war. No one wants to say that, no one wants to be seen as callous or a warmonger. I am neither, I just consider myself a realist about human nature and international relations. People in America convinced themselves that WWII settled everything and that Viet Nam was a mistake that wouldn’t be repeated. Well, hmm, war has made a comeback, as it always does.

    Third, if the insurgents chose to be vile animals we are not reponsible. The insurgents could decide to fight like men and attack only soliders but they attack women and children. They possess the ability to make choices and there are what is called in law ” an intervening cause.”

    As you once said about the Cartoon Controversy, can I get off this train now?

    I do value your insights into various issues because you have a entire scope of experience that is different from mine. Your comments are always valued.

43. My real point Christopher is that we have to demand better leadership from our Bishops. Since faith, culture and politics intersect in many and varied ways, our Bishops will be making statements that involve politics. It would help if they actually read what they approve and had a better understanding of the effects of the proposal. We have the responsibility to bring such matters to their attention in a firm, respectful, humble way.

    In general, if the spiritual level of the Church were higher, we’d have better leaders. I subscribe to the theory that a community (religious or political) always gets the type of leader it wants, occasionally it gets a leader it needs. The needed leaders are not often readily accepted.

    Even in authoritarian and tyrannical situations, the leadership reflects the desire of the populace. That fact alone makes what Glen calls humanitarian wars, really hard to win if they involve a sustantial and material change in the type of polity as the tendency will be to revert to the old way of doing things. That makes sense, that is comfortable and in many ways is in accord with the way people want to be governed.

44. Missourian –

    Do you really think that Farah and Wheeler are writing in a vacuum? Do you really think that when Savage or Rusty Humphries does off on a similiar rant that they don’t reflect widely held beliefs?

    Each of them speaks for themselves, but unless we take a poll to that effect, then we are left to judge based on what the ‘right-wingers’ actually put out. No one denounced them for this, by the way.

    You asked for evidence, I provided it, and then you discount it.

    That is interesting. Did you see the new study on brain activity in those who are highly partisan (Democrat or Republican?).

    The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.

    Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.

    The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

    “None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged,” Westen said. “Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.”

    Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning.

    The tests involved pairs of statements by the candidates, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, that clearly contradicted each other. The test subjects were asked to consider and rate the discrepancy. Then they were presented with another statement that might explain away the contradiction. The scenario was repeated several times for each candidate.

    The brain imaging revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.

    “The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data,” Westen said.

    The write up on the study is at this link.

    It certainly puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? It now makes sense to me why someone like myself, who is conservative but not a die-hard Republican, can accept or even posit criticism of the President, while JBL (for example) can’t seem to process facts.

    Same thing applies to Dean and Clinton, apparently.

    Anyway, just an interesting observation.

    As I said, making the case that overthrowing Saddam because it will kill tens of thousands of people less than leaving him in power is a dicey proposition. You can easily turn out to be wrong, and where did you get that 3,000 people a month figure? That would be 36,000 dead Iraqis per year. I’ve never seen that number before.

    But, does that mean that if the total number of dead Iraqis climbs higher than that average, the invasion was a mistake?

    You go to war because you have to for the defense of your own nation. Otherwise, we will always end up arguing over this. The only reason that we are arguing at all is because this was a war of choice. Do you see anyone on this board arguing over Afghanistan?

    There’s a reason for that. By moving in a direction that was not required, Bush fractured the country and has laid himself open to criticism. That will haunt him, as the 60% of the country that is either partisan Democrat (and thus sees his blunders clearly, while ignoring their own) or independent minded are continuing to desert him.

    Meanwhile, since WMD and operational links to Al Queda have been discounted, the best that supporters of the war can come up with is that the dead bodies are less without Saddam than with him.

    This line of argument has been explicitly rejected by the Roman Church, and by any Orthodox Theologians that have seen fit to comment on it.

    Interesting that you mentioned Hiroshima and Truman (one of our more notorious socialist presidents). The following excerpts are from an interview conducted in 1985 with Fr. George Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Army Air Force, stationed on Tinian Island in the South Pacific. Fr. Zabelka was assigned to serve the Catholics of the 509th Composite Group, the Atomic Bomb Group. He served as a priest for those who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    As a Catholic priest my task was to keep my people close to the heart and in mind of Christ. When I look back I am not sure I did this very well. As a chaplain I often had to enter the world of the boys who were losing their minds because of something they did in war. I knew civilians were being destroyed, yet I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to men who were doing it.

    I was brainwashed. The whole structure of the secular, religious and military society told me clearly that it was all right to “let the Japs have it.” God was on the side of my country. I was certain that this mass destruction was right. I was brainwashed not by force or torture but by my Church’s silence and wholehearted cooperation with the country’s war machine.

    To fail to speak to the utter moral corruption of the mass destruction of civilians was to fail as a Christian and a priest as I see it. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened in and to a world and a Christian church that had asked for it – that had prepared the moral consciousness of humanity to do and to justify the unthinkable. I say all this not to pass judgment on others, for I do not know their souls then or now. I say all this as one who was part of the so-called Christian leadership of the time. Modern war and oppression are carried out by a long string of individuals, each doing his or her job meticulously while simultaneously refusing to look at the end results of his or her work. I was the last possible official spokesman for the Church before the fire of hell was let loose on Hiroshima on the Feast of the Transfiguration 1945 – and I said nothing.

    You will never hold together public opinion on such a basis when so many religious leaders reject these arguments of ‘lesser casualties.’ We can keep fighting over it, but it won’t change the fact that the big guns (Pope, bishops, Theologians of all stripes) are on the other side. What you have on your side are a collection of parish priests in the RC and Orthodox communions who are willing to entertain an argument of ‘lesser casualty count’ that their bettors have rejected.

    This will always be controversial, and you will never ‘win’ this argument. I will never ‘win’ this argument. You can argue from a utilitarian perspective, and I will be arguing based on traditional understanding of Christian philosophy.

    Answer this – if it is moral to sacrifice some solely to save the lives of others and to reduce over all suffering – why is it wrong to clone embryos to cure disease? Why is it wrong to conceive children to harvest their organs? Why is it wrong to abort malformed children who will cost society a lot of money to care for?

    If you are utilitarian in foreign policy, then why not be so in domestic?

45. JBL –

    I have trained in live fire exercises with F/A 18s, AC130s, A10s, and AH-64’s in addition to the ubiquitous UH-60 Blackhawk. I am very familiar with them and their capabilities when providing CAS or in stand-alone operations.

    Yes, the Air Force makes the claim that the AC130 can be deployed in an urban environment. The problem comes in the way the Air Force and other air arms define themselves operationally. The following is a case-in-point:

    Here is the Times account of what happened in the small town of Baiji, 150 miles north of Baghdad, on January 3, based on interviews with various unidentified “American officials”:

    “A pilotless reconnaissance aircraft detected three men planting a roadside bomb about 9 p.m. The men ‘dug a hole following the common pattern of roadside bomb emplacement,’ the military said in a statement. ‘The individuals were assessed as posing a threat to Iraqi civilians and coalition forces, and the location of the three men was relayed to close air support pilots.’

    “The men were tracked from the road site to a building nearby, which was then bombed with ‘precision guided munitions,’ the military said. The statement did not say whether a roadside bomb was later found at the site. An additional military statement said Navy F-14’s had ‘strafed the target with 100 cannon rounds’ and dropped one bomb.”

    Crucial to this report is the phrase “precision guided munitions,” an affirmation that U.S. forces used technology less likely than older munitions to accidentally hit the wrong target. It is this precision that allows us to glimpse the callous brutality of American military strategy in Iraq.

    The target was a “building nearby,” identified by a drone aircraft as an enemy hiding place. According to eyewitness reports given to the Washington Post, the attack effectively demolished the building, and damaged six surrounding buildings. While in a perfect world, the surrounding buildings would have been unharmed, the reported amount of human damage in them (two people injured) suggests that, in this case at least, the claims of “precision” were at least fairly accurate.

    The problem arises with what happened inside the targeted building, a house inhabited by a large Iraqi family. Piecing together the testimony of local residents, the Times reporter concluded that fourteen members of the family were in the house at the time of the attack and nine were killed. The Washington Post, which reported twelve killed, offered a chilling description of the scene:

    “The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping. A Washington Post special correspondent watched as the corpses of three women and three boys who appeared to be younger than 10 were removed Tuesday from the house.”

    Because in this case — unlike in so many others in which American air power utilizes “precisely guided munitions” — there was on-the-spot reporting for an American newspaper, the U.S. military command was required to explain these casualties. Without conceding that the deaths actually occurred, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, director of the Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad, commented: “We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves.”

    Lt. Col. Johnson (while not admitting that civilians had actually died) did assert U.S. policy: If suspected guerrillas use any building as a refuge, a full-scale attack on that structure is justified, even if the insurgents attempt to use civilians to “shield themselves.” These are, in other words, essential U.S. rules of engagement. The attack should be “precise” only in the sense that planes and/or helicopter gunships should seek as best they can to avoid demolishing surrounding structures. Put another way, it is more important to stop the insurgents than protect the innocent.

    There is no way to use heavy weapons in an urban environment that is not going to cause civilian casualties. What do I propose as a solution to this?

    I propose the same Rules of Engagement that would be followed if the U.S. Army and Marine Corps were suppressing an urban uprising in the United States. How about that? What kinds of ‘collateral damage’ would we be willing to accept if the insurgents were operating in downtown Manhattan?

    I did not blame the operational commanders for this. In their shoes, I’d do the same exact thing. That is a critical difference between me and a leftist. The military are doing their best with what they have and trying to stay alive. The problem is that they are in a tough situation, and that the ROE is actually working at cross-purposes to our mission which is to make the Iraqis like us and stop trying to kill us. When you kill women and children, that does not further the mission of winning ‘hearts and minds.’

    It will be tougher and kill more Americans to do ‘sweep and clear’ ops without gunships, but there will be a reduction in civilian casualties. If we wouldn’t risk our women and children if the situation were occurring in the U.S., why are we risking theirs?

    The reason is simple – too high American casualties will erode U.S. civilian support for a war that is not inextricably linked to our national interest. Americans know that they have to option to quit and go home, despite what the Bush Administration actually says. To that end, we kill civilians to avoid risking our own.

    That is neither moral nor Christian.

46. Glen your article is the most misleading piece of tripe I’ve seen.

    Like I pointed out the capability of a propeller driven AC-130 is completely different than that of a jet turbine F-14. To post an article about a F-14 strike failure (by the way an aircraft being mothballed as I write this) to suggest that the AC-130 does the same thing in essence is a lie to paint US airmen as some kind of vicious butchers. Eventually linking it to the whole US policy as being part of some kind of international thuggery. But no  condemnation by you of the terrorists and insurgents who place these women and children in harms way to garner international public sympathy.

    You complain about being linked to leftists, but it’s hard not to see you linked to them when you write like a moralizing liberal who would rather see Americans die and be proven right. In your eyes the only evil is America and every terrorist’s motives are pure and noble.  It’s also hard to take you seriously when you post misleading, desceptive material to bolster your ideology. Then you have the hubris to question moral and Christian ideas about America. But, is it moral or Christian to intentionally deceive?

47. Proof vs. evidence

    In informal parlance many people use the word “proof” as a synonym for the word “evidence.” In fact that is an imprecise usage. Since I have made my living for several decades as a litigator I can tell you that “evidence” is analogous to bricks used to build a sturdy wall. If you have enough bricks and if you bricks are of sufficient quality you can build a sturdy wall. If you succeed in building a sturdy wall with your bricks you have “proved” your case.

    Therefore the quotes your supplied are properly classified as “evidence.” Evidence is subject to judgment as to its quality. Therefore any debater is ethically free to challenge evidence advanced for any proof.

48. Glen, Truce

    I have noted here before that I respect your knowledge and insight into world problems. I think many of your points are very well taken. I agree that Bush’s policies have many flaws and are subject to criticism.

    My viewpoint is founded on three conclusions: a) it is later than we think and b) everything is at stake c) several Middle Eastern countries have been waging war against the United States through proxy terror armies for several decades now and we don’t need any further justification to defense ourselves against them.

    Later than we think:
    I consider the United States to be in extreme peril as I sit and type this words. Tommorrow we could wake to discover that Chicago and New York are smoking ruins. If that occurs our economy will collapse and it will be very hard to maintain civil order.

    Everything is at stake:
    This fight is bigger than the United States, it is bigger than Europe or the Middle East. It is truly a glogal world war. This fight is as significant as WWII and more. If we lose, and we can lose, the light of freedom will be snuffed out for centuries.

    Proxy War
    The terror war is a proxy war waged by Middle Eastern countries, either the entire government (like Iran) or parts of the government (like Pakistan and Egypt). We have every moral right to respond even though their armies have not breached our borders.

49. Japanese Government had wavied the civilian/military distinction

    It is a premise of military law that civilian or non-combatant populations were exempt from attack, as long as the country involved respected the civilian/military distinction.

    A country may not conceal military installations in civilian population centers and then claim that those military installations are exempt from attack. Japan doted its cities with arms factories and depots. Japan did not restrict its military operations or installations to areas outside its large population centers.

    Japan also expressly commissioned all of its population to take up arms in the event of a land invasion. The slaughter of a land invasion would have been unprecedented. There is no doubt that the average civilian Japanese would have taken up arms against our soldiers. The invasion would have been indescribably bloody.

    The extent of Japan’s willingness to accept loses is proven by the fact that they did not surrender after the first bomb. The government was still in a state of resistance when the second bomb detonated.

    Japan let lose the dogs of war on all of Asia and eventually on Australia, New Guinea and the United States, such things cannot occur in this world without a monumental reaction. War has its own logic and its own force. Once that wire is tripped it is nearly impossible to contain or control war. America has done a better job of controlling and containing its fighting forces than most countries in history.

    The United States proved its moral fiber by the manner in which it treated Japan after the war. Our prisoner of war camps, unlike those of the Japanese, were humane. I have no moral qualms with the bomb decision.

    Yes, I would not have agreed with Truman’s domestic policies.

50. While I do not agree with Glen’s solution to the problem of the tragedy of the Iraq war in it’s particulars, or his analysis of whether it’s a “moral” or “Christian” war in general, I do think it is a debatable point. One thing I find is a common thread among those who argue against “modern” war is the belief that war has become something different in quality as well as quantity. This idea points to the destructive power of modern weapons and the sometimes wide scale destruction brought on by modern mass formations, and as the Roman priest says in note 44:

    “Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened in and to a world and a Christian church that had asked for it – that had prepared the moral consciousness of humanity to do and to justify the unthinkable.”

    In other words, a weapon like the atomic bomb has the quality of never being justifiable – it’s very existence is an evil. In fact, according to the Roman priest my “moral consciousness” has to be “prepared” (i.e. corrupted) for me to ever think that an atomic weapon is justified. This line of reasoning seems to be rightly impressed by the raw destructions of such weapons. Does it draw the right conclusion however? In support of this conclusion an ideal past is often pointed to where our ancestors fought on battlefields and civilian casualties were rare (I think Glen said something similar earlier in this thread). Yet, in the Roman and middle ages seize warfare on walled cities was quite common. The civilian populations would slowly starve or die from exposure/disease. Coming back to atomic weapons, my grandfather would have been part of the invasion force that was to attack mainland Japan. The casualties would have been staggering – possibly over a million American soldiers wounded or killed. The atomic weapons quite clearly prevented the US from having to carryout this invasion. To my moral reasoning, the atomic weapons dropped on Japan were justified. The civilian losses by Japan (or Germany) were part of the tragedy of war (i.e. part of the evil of that conflict), but that does not in-of-itself call into question whether the war itself or the decisions of the military/civilian leadership was justifiable. I suppose one could argue that the invasion of Japan would not have been needed without the use the atomic weapons, but I do not agree with that either.

    This idea of the “unthinkable” nature of modern weapons and tactics seems to often be an unexamined part of those Orthodox who subscribe to the “lesser evil” philosophy. I wonder if this line of reasoning does not adequately account for the culpability of “the innocent civilian”. To what extant was the average citizen of Japan morally separate from the culture that lead to the militant regime? Or, assuming no culpability, does the lesser evil theorist (or Just war theorist for that matter) presume an ideal of minimal civilian casualties that simply can not be actualized in actual warfare? We are to turn our cheek, even hand over our cloak to our enemies – but are we to sacrifice unknown numbers of soldiers to our enemy? Does loving our enemy really entail sacrificing our fighting men and women in house to house combat when our enemy intentionally – purposefully – hides himself among the innocent and we have means (in modern weapons) to NOT fall on his sword? Is dying with our enemy the only true way to “justify” our defense of our family and neighbors?

    I ask the above questions in general so that we have clear principles in which to judge any particular conflict like Japan or Iraq. I just see too many unexamined presuppositions and think it would be useful to back up a bit…

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