Space Forum / Astronomy / October 2004

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. J. Francis Cardinal Stafford,
president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and former
archbishop of Denver and the highest ranking U. S. Bishop in
Rome, sharply criticized the U.S. government's push for military
strikes on Iraq, saying war would be morally unjustified and a
further alarming example of increased global use of violent force.

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.

The message: 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. Novak took with him Andrew
Sullivan and William Bennett. 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 unscrupulous
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 employees
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."

One eloquent, perceptive commentator recently described the
neocons' new theory as corruption, rather than development, of
dogma: "There is some considerable irony in the Pope's
biographer and trusted confidant, George Weigel, arguing
against the Pope that a war on Iraq would be just according to
new "developed and extended," just war principles, while the
rebellious ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X, using old,
undeveloped and unextended just war principles, argues that
a war against Iraq would not be just."

Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXIII

YOU are aiding and abetting al-Qaeda, fool!

Saul Levy