www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall If you are prolife how can you be prowar?

Interesting perspective from a Byzantine Catholic priest, Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, whose daughter was healed through the intercesion of St Edith Stein [contributing to her canonization]: military abortions [tcrnews2.com]
-Daniel

Sun Tzu could have easily spoken about war itself in this quote.

The best defense (Pro-Life) is a good offensive. That is why I support 100% President Bush on the war against terrorism. I believe certain wars like this fall under the "just war" theory.

During the first Gulf War I spoke out against it. On Ash Wednesday of that year I had the leader of the Muslim Community speak during the service. I did not know his position on the war but to my surprise he spoke in favor of it and hoped that Saddam Hussein's reign of terror would come to an end as a result.

I think modern warfare is in fact vastly more barbaric than ancient warfare not because ancient warfare didn't kill people but because modern warfare is so indiscriminate. One thing and one thing only keeps me supporting the President's position. Terrorists wish to kill people indiscrimanately. They are supported by a version of Islamic ideology. Since we Christians can't seem to convert them or stop them from killing people then the strong arm of a government should be unleashed upon them. If there is a chance of stopping or slowing terrorism by destroying Islamic tyranny and establishing another form of governance I support it. Will it work in the long run? I don't know.

CDL

It seems to me that this war is creating more, not less, terror, both the terror of war itself and the increased numbers of young Muslims convinced that the West is warring against Islam, and who are eager to give their lives for jihad...
-D

I doubt that claim, but still if you have some facts and figures then produce them.

CDL

Uh, read the papers, watch the news. Iraq is near civil war.

I think the best way to find out what's going on over there is to ask soldiers who are there, or who have returned. I think they'll give the most honest answer to what it really is like there.

I have mixed feelings about the war, but to give GWB credit, there hasn't been a terror attack since 9/11. Not many people give him credit for that fact. We've went to Afghanistan and Iraq, and yet there have been no attacks on US soil.

Take your choice. Choose a tyrant who murders hundreds of thousands, or develop a representative republic even if it has to go through a civil war. There are no easy answers.

CDL

You are assuming there will be a representative government on the far side of civil war, which is an act of faith on your part.
More likely an Iraqi-Iranian Shiite empire, or lingering chaos.
While Hussein certainly was brutal, it was possible to live a quiet, normal life in Iraq. Now the Iraqi people live with random violence and chaos...
And did you read Fr Emmanuel's article?
-Daniel

If it is a Shi'a empire it will still be better, won't it, that a British gerymandered country. But more than likely if any Muslim country in that region can become a republic it will be Iraq simply because of its more pluralistic constituency. I'm happy to see the terrorists preoccupied with Iraq. Let it be so and let them wear themselves out.

Yes, I read Father's article. Oh to be back at the University. No doubts. Only certitude and breathless at that.

CDL

Like Nazi Germany?

Well the fact is that when we entered the war, the reasons for doing so were not stated as being, "Helping build a democracy in Iraq just because Hussein is a brutal dictator." It was alleged that Hussein had WMDs (false), and the idea of close connection between bin Laden and Iraq (false) was planted in peoples' unsuspecting heads.

If Dubya and Cheney had come forward and said that the reason we were going to invade Iraq was because we wanted to build a democracy, get a foothold in the Middle East, and save thousands of Iraqis from persecution, Americans would have given that idea a big "hell no."

But this is Team America, World Police...and we've done this kind of thing before (Banana Republics). Nothing new under the sun.

Logos Teen

Yes, LT, you are absolutely right!

In my generation's lingo: This is the "A-Team," magnified a thousandfold!

Amado

There were well over a dozen reasons on the each of the respective lists used by the President and Congress to justify the liberation of Iraq. Freeing Iraq from a brutal dictator was indeed of the justifications given.

It is not false that Hussein had WMDs. He did have them and used them on the Kurds. If you doubt it, there was a �60 minutes� piece on it a few years back that showed lots of people born with deformities because of these chemical weapons. Lots of people seem to be accusing the President of falsifying this information yet they don�t seem to explain how he planted false intelligence with the British, French, Germans, Russians, Chinese, Israeli, Spanish and a whole host of other countries who confirmed the existence of WMDs. And, of course, people seem to forget that most of the intelligence on WMDs was gathered during the Clinton administration, and that President Clinton spoke numerous times on the need to get Hussein to give up WMDs. [Oh, wait! Clinton was part of the Bush plot to become dictator of the world!]

What happened to these WMDs? I don�t know. There are Iraqis who claim it was moved out of Iraq to Syria. Others claim it was moved elsewhere. They could be buried in the sand somewhere. Some even claim that they were attempting to create them but didn�t have the technical resources to do so but told Hussein he had them. There are a lot of documents from Iraq that shed light onto this issue. I have no idea why the Pentagon is so slow to actually release them. It is hard to believe that almost every single intelligence agency in the world who had data on Iraq�s WMDs had data that was false.

Regarding a connection with Bin Laden, the documentation does prove that there was a working relationship. It appears that Hussein did provide money to Bin Laden. In the late 1990s Bin Laden requested that Iraq's state-run television network broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda (which Hussein did). In 2004 the NY Times reported that Bin Laden�s personal representative to Hussein was a guy named Abu Hajer. The writer Stephen Hayes has documented much of this and seems to be working a �Freedom of Information� effort to get all the documents released. It�s really kind of amazing that people who see that Bin Laden had representatives in Florida (proven fact) but that there was no way possible that he cold have had them in Iraq (when there is documentation to show it). But given that the media simply doesn�t report on any of this it�s probably to be expected.

I disagree with Teen that this is the same as what happened with the �Banana Republics�. Both Afghanistan and Iraq have had a series of elections where the percentage of voters was HIGHER than that in America for national elections. That never happed in Central America. Also, those countries never managed to vote for a Constitution. Much of the larger effort at play was part of the Cold War.

--

On the topic that started this thread I praise the Lord for the miracle through St Edith Stein that healed Father McCarthy�s daughter. His perspective, however, seems very much like our own Daniel�s. They routinely paint America as the most evil force in the world and are silent about people like Hussein and the true evil he has done. They believe that President Bush is evil because he liberated Iraq and innocents were killed. Hussein is praised because, while he �was certainly brutal, [he] certainly was brutal, it was possible to live a quiet, normal life in Iraq.�

I�ve been waiting for almost 2 years for Daniel to provide his list of suggestions on how what peaceful means could have been tried after 12 years of diplomacy that could have stopped Hussein from feeding children into meat grinders before their parents and other horrible things. I guess he really believes that such things are nothing for us to worry about, that we may pass by the stranger on the road like the priest and the Levite, and reject the example of the good Samaritan.

If you are pro-life, how can you sit back and allow people like Hussein and others to commit their atrocities?

You know, nothing against you personally, LT, okay? But I keep hearing people say this - that the only reason we were given for going into this war was because of the WMDs.

But you know what? It was only a few years ago, and I remember quite well listening to the speeches and reading the newspapers at the time, and we most certainly WERE told about the brutality of Hussein's regime and the importance of getting him out of power for humanitarian reasons.

That was definitely the impression I came away with at the time. The failure to find the WMDs once we accomplished that goal was certainly disappointing, but IMHO did not nullify what, to me, seemed the primary reason for going in - to get rid of the brutal Hussein.

Also wanted to add - for those who continue to say that Bush lied about the WMDs in order to justify the war: if you were the President, and you were going to go to all that trouble to start a war, wouldn't you go the extra mile and plant a few phony WMDs in the search area, just to make it look good? The fact that no WMDs were found at all makes me MORE inclined to believe Bush was mistaken, rather than less.

Ironic, isn't it, that Bush has backed off claims that Iraq had WMD and ties to Al Queda, who hated the secularist Baathists, but the Admin still clings to such claims?
As to what to do about Hussein- and all the other evil rulers in the world, many of them out allies- encouragement and support for forces in the oppressed countries is one thing, aggressive war is another.
As I have stated before, we have a fundamental disagreement not only on the State itself, but America's role in the world.
If we are going to fight all the "Evildoers" as Mr Bush calls them we will be fighting forever.
And of course, while the Administrator is wrong in thinking I believe the US is uniquely evil, any worldview that sees Evil as "out there", the province of the Other, is fatally flawed.
We shall see how this misadventure turns out...
-Daniel

Of course our leaders could not ever convince the public to support attacking a nation with a lovey-dovey teddy bear guy as a dictator, or even just a fairly mean one. We had to malign Hussein's character as much as possible (which wasn't hard, since he really was a nasty guy, and since we'd warred with him before), highlighting his atrocities, so as to more easily persuade the public to support the War.

As far as the WMDs go...

Of course we know that Hussein USED to have them. No one debates that!

But it has *not* been proven that he had them when we attacked him this last time around. In fact, I'm being far too generous with words; it has been disproven numerous times since then.

Now I never, as Theist Gal seems to allege, have said that Bush made up these WMDs to win support for the War. I don't actually believe that, given that, as you said, most other nations thought he had them, too. Just goes to show you how faulty government intelligence in developed nations can be.

There are absolutely no WMDs in Iraq, and there never was since the last time we cleaned out the country ISTM. If we ever find any, I swear to you I will gladly eat my words.

Logos Teen

Daniel, don't you know, "there's an enemy that lurks"?



Did anyone see that interview and thought the President's wording seemed straight out of a Nancy Drew murdery mystery novel?

Logos Teen

We will have to fight evil until the Second Coming, both as nations and within our own selves.

Do you think Mr Bush is reflective enough for this struggle? All I hear from him is "they hate us because we are good. They hate us because we are free."
Do you think he ever tries to understand the roots of anti-American feeling in the world, which is far from irrational, and for which the USA bears some responsibility?
-D, just wondering

Yes, I do believe that President Bush is reflective enough for this struggle. I also believe that many of our leading politicians in both parties are capable of engaging in this struggle, except that the current crop of Democrats (Liberman is the most notable exception) is so interested in returning to power that they are blocking out the danger the enemy poses to the West.

�They hate us because we are good� and �They hate us because we are free� are very true statements. They also hate us simply because we are the biggest and most powerful nation. There is a history of smaller countries disliking the bigger countries simply because they are bigger. There are many factors at play here (including our actions in previous generations). But one must certainly include simple envy among them. And one must discern between the ordinary people (the vast majority who might be merely envious of us) and the Islamists (the small minority who truly hate us and wish to kill us).

This morning�s Wall Street Journal has an editorial entitled Saddam�s Documents � Why they could save American lives today [opinionjournal.com] . It�s worth reading and reflecting on. One of the main questions that I think needs to be answered is about WMDs. Almost all the intelligence gathered by the various intelligence agencies (ours, the British, the Germans, the Chinese, the Russians, the Israelis, and etc.) was uniform in indicating that Hussein had WMDs. I think that they need to keep looking until they either find the WMDs or find a reasonable explanation why every single intelligence agency got it wrong. The idea that President Bush managed to plant false information throughout the 1990s that even President Clinton fell for is not believable.

Excerpts from the editorial:

Mr. Hayes reports that, from 1999 through 2002, "elite Iraqi military units" trained roughly 8,000 terrorists at three different camps--in Samarra and Ramadi in the Sunni Triangle, as well as at Salman Pak, where American forces in 2003 found the fuselage of an aircraft that might have been used for training. Many of the trainees were drawn from North African terror groups with close ties to al Qaeda, including Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Mr. Hayes writes that he had no fewer than 11 corroborating sources, and yesterday he told us he'd added several more since publication.

and

The 9/11 Commission has confirmed extensive communication between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda over the years, including sanctuary for the current insurgent leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. We have also learned that in the years leading up to his ouster Saddam had implemented a "faith campaign" to use fundamentalist Islam as a tool of internal control.

I think that the effort to liberate Iraq needs to be looked at much like the different �theatres of operation� in WWII (like Germany, Japan, North Africa, and etc.).

You obviously have a different assessment of Mr Bush than I...
I am under the impression that the Islamists hate America because of its imperialistic moral decadence, not because of our freedom. And how you can say this country is moral with a straight face is beyond me. Muslims see gay marriage, abortion, immodest dress, pornography, and so on as being the defining realities of western culture. They also see a culture that claims to be Christian, and thus identify Christianity with moral decadence.
As for supposed links between Al Queda and Iraq, that would surprise me. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Osama bin Laden contacted Saudi Arabia and volunteered to bring his mujahideen warriors to attack Iraq. Saudi Arabia instead threw its support to the USA, earning bin Laden's scorn. The Wahhabists had only hatred for the Baath Socialists and other secular Muslims. Indeed, their fatwas declared such people to be infidels instead of Muslims, and thus targets for death.
You seem to be clinging to claims that the Administration has admitted were results of false intelligence. And the world thought Hussein had WMD because he wanted the world to believe that. He was bluffing and it backfired.
-Daniel

Daniel,
Please don't indict our entire nation as immoral. There are so many good and moral people here (witness this forum ) but we are in a constant struggle to protect our kids from the immorality and decadence of our popular culture. Unfortunately it is this popular culture that gets exported and it originates from that sewerpipe called Hollywood. Throw in our music industry and you have a two-headed monster that seems to get bigger and uglier by the day.
Anyone who has never been to the US must think we're all a bunch of violent thugs and sex-obsessed perverts.
That being said, the Islamofascists have a lot of nerve calling us decadent while they promise their "martyrs" ulimited child-sex in the afterlife. What kind of disgusting, perverted religion promises that?
The bottom line is they want us dead because we are not them. All this talk of US imperialism being the reason just doesn't hold water in places like India or the Philippines. Why is it that wherever these Islamofascists go they just can't seem to get along with their neighbors?

Dear Daniel you said:

"�Ironic, isn't it, that Bush has backed off claims that Iraq had WMD and ties to Al Queda, who hated the secularist Baathists, but the Admin still clings to such claims?"

I say:

Actually, I never believed that Iraq had WMD, and was quite shocked to find out that Pres. Bush might have believed that. It seemed absurd to me at the time, simply because I didn't think they had the means after the First Gulf War.

What I did believe though, was that it was smart to try to change a culture before ending up in a war where tens of millions might be killed. Certainly after WW II, we should have learned that lesson.

You said:

"You obviously have a different assessment of Mr Bush than I..."

I say:

Well I certainly do. I see a President with integrity, something we haven't had for some time.

You said:
� �
"I am under the impression that the Islamists hate America because of its imperialistic moral decadence, not because of our freedom. And how you can say this country is moral with a straight face is beyond me. Muslims see gay marriage, abortion, immodest dress, pornography, and so on as being the defining realities of western culture. They also see a culture that claims to be Christian, and thus identify Christianity with moral decadence."

I say:

You can't see the forest because of the tree's. Yes we are immoral, and the Muslims point this out,and/or they might even believe it, but this is not why they hate us. They hate us because we are not under them and this to them is a humiliation.

They don't want to be like us, they want us to be like them. And that means their values, customs, religion, etc.

Now I personally don't think you would like that because you certainly would not be able to express your opinions so freely.

Zenovia

I didn't say it was rooted in American imperialism only [though how the Philipines disproves this is beyond me] but Western imperialism, especially British. The British brought the House of Saud to power and we have consistently supported them, thus contributing to the Wahhabist movement.
Indeed, how anyone can say we are in Iraq to promote democracy with a straight face mystifies me.
If you look at our policies, we clearly favor demoncracy when it suits our interests and authoritarian rule [Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc] when it suits our interests .In 1990 Islamists won the democratic elections in Algeria and were immediately suppressed and their leaders arrested, with the support of the US . What happened to our support for democracy then?
Since the Cold War our presence in the oil-producing Islamic world has grown to the point of dominance, and our weight is behind any government, democratic or not, that supports our hegemony.
Paul- If our nation is so good and moral, how does the "sewer" of Hollywood make so much money marketing their garbage? Truth is, Americans like trash.
I mean, it's a free market; if people weren't so depraved the pornography industry, for example, would go broke.
And Zenovia- Al Queda is the enemy, not "Islam" or "the Muslims", remember? Mr Bush would actually agree with this.

Garrett- are you trying to overwhelm us with that huge avatar? I mean, I like the pope and all but...
-Daniel

No, Daniel, I have been trying to contact the Admin to downsize it but his PM mailbox is full!

Logos Teen

I think Michael Thomas has fixed my avatar. Thanks so much, Michael!

Logos Teen

Yes, that is better...
-D

Dear Daniel you said:

" The British brought the House of Saud to power and we have consistently supported them, thus contributing to the Wahhabist movement."

I say:

Even if one had a crystal ball, they would still have to contend with the problems of that time and place. In other words, we contended with the problems we had at that era.

You said:

"Indeed, how anyone can say we are in Iraq to promote democracy with a straight face mystifies me."

I say:

If we were to accomplish democracy in Iraq even in twenty years, it would be a miracle when one considers history. Take a good look at world history. Most nations started their stride towards democracy in the 19th century, and weren't able to accomplish it until the end of WW II. Thanks of course to us and our financial help...as well as the pressure we exerted on them. If we could do it then, why not now in Iraq...or at least we should try.

You said:

"If you look at our policies, we clearly favor demoncracy when it suits our interests and authoritarian rule [Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc] when it suits our interests."

I say:

We must all survive. Certainly if you were in a situation where you must unite with someone that you have nothing in common with, or disapprove of, in order to protect yourself and family, wouldn't you do so?

You said:

"In 1990 Islamists won the democratic elections in Algeria and were immediately suppressed and their leaders arrested, with the support of the US. What happened to our support for democracy then?"

I say:

What if Adolph Hitler won the elections in Germany, wouldn't it have been smart to have kept him from power?

You said:

"Since the Cold War our presence in the oil-producing Islamic world has grown to the point of dominance, and our weight is behind any government, democratic or not, that supports our hegemony."

I say:

Would you want it differently? I don't! Look I'm not suicidal.

You said:

"Paul- If our nation is so good and moral, how does the "sewer" of Hollywood make so much money marketing their garbage? Truth is, Americans like trash."

I say:

We do market trash thanks to our liberal judges and courts, but we are a generous people. I think that means something.

You said:

"I mean, it's a free market; if people weren't so depraved the pornography industry, for example, would go broke."

I say:

Actually, if our judges were a little more conservative, our laws might have conformed to our society rather than allowing the depraved to change our society.

You said:

And Zenovia- Al Queda is the enemy, not "Islam" or "the Muslims", remember? Mr Bush would actually agree with this.

I say:

I agree with this. The Muslims are not the enemy, but rather the greatest victims of Islam itself. When the terrorists attack, all those of other religions can immigrate to another land, but the Muslims can't. If they dared to do so, they would be considered traitors and it's a pity.

The truth is that they are the closest to Christianity of any faith, and yet they are the most to be feared. Their very'niceness' at times, works to our detriment and the detriment of Christianity as a whole.

This very decency, compassion and humility that so many Muslims have as individuals can be very disarming, because it evolves from a background and beliefs that are very disimilar from our Christian ones.

Zenovia