www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Just war, pacifists, suicide bombers, and terrorists

To All,

When we talk of war and whether we should be fighting or not, it is always a good thing to look at the past.

To me the most 'burdened' man that has ever existed in this nation must have been Pres. Lincoln. He sacrificed the most men that have ever been sacrificed in the U.S. for what? To hold together the union. What was the moral justifycation in that?

I then wonder about the First World War. Why did we go to fight? And then it's amazing that we were able to go to war against Germany considering the large German population...not to mention the Irish that were certainly anti-British.

Maybe we shouldn't have been in that war. Think about it? Had we allowed those countries to self destruct at the loss of 20,000 men a day, Germany might have won the war. The Germans would have established themselves as the nobility throughout Europe in the same way the German tribes did throughout history, and Hitler never would have come on the scene.

Had Hitler never come on the scene because of Germany's depression, there would never have been a Second World War and Europe would not have been bombed into the stone age.

Now today we have another war scenario. We have a USA that must protect it's economy otherwise we will not be able to buy, buy, buy. If we can't buy then those who sell to us will either starve or attack their neighbors for survival. It happened before you know. Had Germany not fallen into a depression, Nazism would have never come about.

So now we're in a war in order to protect our interests. Then again even if we were self sufficient in oil, what about Japan? Would she call in her loans? Then what would we do? Would we have to fight Japan once more? And what about China with it's nuclear arms?

Now did Pres. Bush have an alternative to what he's doing? Islam is a religious/political system that wants to restore the caliphate. She does not believe in nation states. She also believes that whatever belonged to a Muslim state, must again become a Muslim state. Now that means Spain, Greece, Serbia, Roumania, Bulgaria, etc. etc.

If one takes a look, they will see that all the borders of Islam are bloody. Why? Because terrorism is her means of expansion. To Islam the individual means nothing, all must be sacrificed for the state (Islam). Sound familiar?

Frankly, I would like to know how those that are critical of Pres. Bush would have handled the situation? Probably in the same way our past President handled North Korea, where he paid millions for them to stop their nuclear expansion, and yet they continued and laughed at how they fooled our President.

You know they say those who do not know history are bound to repeat it. Wasn't it PM Neville Chamberlain that said after returning from a meeting with Hitler that we will have peace. Right after that Hitler attacked Poland. How often must one be lied to before they respond?

Our planes were being shot at each and everyday by Hussein. That was against the treaty he signed. But then again, everything he did was against the treaty. He alone managed to make the UN irrelavent.

We, or rather the liberals, conveniently forget that Pres. Clinton was searching for a war when he attacked the Kosovan Serbs. We also forget that we were looking for mass graves in Kosovo but never found them...not to mention CNN paying the Muslim Albanian Kosovans $5.00 each time they were seen exiting Kosovo on TV. It certainly was the war that Clinton's CNN started.

Today all the Monasteries and Churches have been destroyed and the Serbs, (that Clinton said would be protected), Have fled for their lives. Just another example of Islamic expansionism.

Then again, what if we had not gone to war and not tried to make some of these countries democracies? Would we have ended up with some greater calamity in the end? A calamity where millions of people die because of some great terrorist act?

If we did, then who would have been blamed for it. The current administration of course. Considering that, did our President have a choice?

Zenovia

Trying to find moral principle by wrestling with circumstances is fatal.
Begin with principle and then address the situation. It is the flaw of modern thinking to assert that a good end can justify any act [hence the moral insanity of affirming that Hiroshima was justified].
One problem is that when we talk of thousands of innocent dead, it becomes an unimaginable abstraction. Let's bring it more into focus:
If you could save your nation from destruction by torturing a single sweet two year old to death, would that be morally justifiable?
No? Then how can incinerating an entire city be morally defensible?
-Daniel

Daniel seems to forget that moral principles must be applied to real situations. The application of moral principles can not be simply reduced to a discussion about the ends justifying the means. One has to consider that the enemy who started the war is not abiding by the same moral principles that you are trying to uphold.

The bombing Hiroshima was not immoral. It is the flaw of modern pacifists that if you ignore the attacking enemy he will go away and leave you alone. They seem to forget that Hiroshima was not a peaceful city far away from the war but was a military city, in which was located the Second General Headquarters of the Imperial Army. One may argue that bombing Hiroshima was neither necessary nor helpful. One may argue that the general bombing of German factories was neither necessary nor helpful because some of the bombs went off target and killed civilians. One may also argue that there where better paths to the same end (and such a person must name them). But one really cannot argue that Hiroshima was not a legitiamte military target or that ending the war with the use of atom bombs was immoral unless one also argues that self defense is always immoral. The entire Japanese people were trained and brain-washed to believe that the evil American forces were going to kill every single one of them (after raping their women and children). They were very much prepared to be citizen-soldiers ready to die for their empire. Had we attempted to end the war by physically taking and occupying Japan with our soldiers we very possibly would have had to kill ten times the number of people we killed by dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. I guess Daniel would feel that it was morally preferable to storm the island and kill ten times the people killed by the atom bombs then it was to drop the bombs and end the wars. Most people would see this as choice between two things that you don�t want to do, but that you must choose one of them (or something similar). They would not label it as simply a good that justifies any act.

Again, Daniel seems to be thinking that we are purposefully attacking innocents. If anything, modern warfare has allowed us to target buildings containing the enemy while the innocents in the building next door to remain unharmed. Earlier he complained that we are in a war against all of Islam. He seems not to acknowledge that we have not targeted a single mosque for destruction and have even allowed our own soldiers to die rather than to risk destroying a mosque. He seems to forget that the enemy that attacked us is not all of Islam but that small percentage of radical Islam bent on overthrowing our way of life and establishing a military style caliphate in which the harshest interpretations of Islamic law are normative.

No, the question is not about whether you can save your nation from destruction by torturing a single sweet two year old to death. Such a question is totally wrong and the comparison ridiculous. The question is: �How do we defeat an enemy that is out to destroy us while minimizing the harm of the innocents?� I can guarantee that Hussein wasn�t even thinking about moral principles when he was committing genocide against the Kurds. But Daniel seems to be so taken up with his hatred for the president that he won�t even address the culpability of Hussein (in the Iraq war) and the Islamic terrorists in the current wars (Iraq and Afghanistan). The president is not the one who caused Hussein not to keep the peace agreements he signed. The president is not the one who caused Islamic terrorism throughout the 80s and 90s, culminating in the attacks against our country on 9/11. He is the one we elected to deal with them and he is doing so.

Daniel also seems to only address American involvement in the war against terror. He silence about the need of the attacking enemy to refrain from violence and peaceably resolve disputes speaks volumes about his lack of a balanced perspective.

Admin

I can�t wait for Daniel to respond to these points. Based upon what he has written I am sure that he will find a way to blame the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam on President Bush.

Let�s apply Daniel�s perspective to these wars.

Lincoln lied. He started the war to preserve the union but in the middle bolstered that rationale with the need to free the slaves. Lincoln is a liar and should be condemned and not remembered for preserving the union. The most charitable thing Daniel�s argument can say about Lincoln is that if he was inculpable it was only because he was incompetent. Or possibly he was an unwitting stooge for a darker power.

President Wilson was wrong to get us involved in WWI. It was of no concern to us if Germany conquered all of Europe and our involvement must be considered preemptive because they were not an immediate threat to our homeland. The most charitable thing Daniel�s argument can say about Wilson is that if he was inculpable it was only because he was incompetent. Or possibly he was an unwitting stooge for a darker power.

FDR was evil because it was the whole lend-lease fiasco that brought us into the WWII. If we had stayed out of it and followed Chamberlain�s example to sue for continued peace with Germany and Japan then we would not have been attacked on December 7th. Remember that Chamberlain�s peace treaty would have been honored by Hitler if it were not for that evil man Winston Churchill. It�s all our fault. The most charitable thing Daniel�s argument can say about Churchill and FDR is that if they were inculpable it was only because they were both incompetent. Or possibly they were unwitting stooges for a darker power.

I really don�t want to be so sarcastic in this post but Daniel seems intent on avoiding the necessity of taking the moral principles and actually applying them to a given situation. It seems pretty clear that his hatred of President Bush is clouding his ability to reason.

Admin

Dear Administrator,

Are you saying Daniel is one for "beating around the Bush?"

O.K., back to my akathist translation . . .

Alex

Ahem Alex

did you say
This is the Akathist to Our Lady of Lourdes isn't it ?

I mean , I'm away back to Lourdes on September 3 and it would be so nice to be able to take it with me to Fr Peter and I've been waiting for the promised translation for soooooooo long

Anhelyna

PLEASE finish the translation for Anhelyna, as she will need to pray it constantly, in order to avert the escalating mishaps that have dogged her pilgrimages in recent years!

Gaudior, still thinking we should get some bubble wrap blessed and wrap Anhelyna in it...

Dear Anhelyna,

Actually, this is an akathist I'm translating into English from the Slavonic - a general one for all our Namesake saints . . .

I'm going to learn to type in Cyrillic next week and then I'll begin that translation you have been waiting for so painstakingly!

And I appreciate greatly your longsuffering patience with me, never saying an unkind or uncharitable word about it to me . . .

And, Gaudior, can I apply the "Scotch tape?"

Alex

Alex
And the best of luck I have the ability to type in Cyrillic fonts on my laptop - but for me it's a slow and very painstaking process as you can well imagine [ well since I can only recognise a few words I have to look for each letter ] . Curiously though at the end of last week that dratted keyboard kept turning into the Cyrillic one and I was typing in Ukie which of course was total and utter garbage.

Gaudior -- you said Hehe - well all I can say is that She certainly wants me to go back there - after the last couple of years something still draws me there
As for Bubblewrap - not this time - I'm going and coming back in one piece if it kills me .
Anhelyna

I don't have time for a lengthy response to the Admin's posts, but will only note my dismay that he dissents from Catholic social teaching, which unhesitatingly condemns all acts of total war, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians. And I suppose he calls himself prolife....
And I think if I am not mistaken that the example of the two year old is from Dosteovsky.
-Daniel, who by the way is not a pacifist

I hope that Daniel will find time to give a real response. Each time he makes accusations that people are dissenting from Catholic Teaching he forgets to offer evidence of his position beyond that of name-calling. When he does this he succeeds only in getting his argument dismissed without consideration.

In the meantime he accuses the administration of �indiscriminate killing of civilians�. There are many different flavors of the term �indiscriminate�. Does he mean that the president is not making care distinctions between civilians and enemy combatants (those not in uniform)? Does he mean haphazard, in which the president doesn�t care about civilians? Or does he mean that the president is engaging in unrestrained killing of civilians? But it really doesn�t matter because in the end there is absolutely no evidence to support any such accusations. It would be helpful if Daniel admitted the truth � that the President did not want war and did his best to avoid it. That the President has gone to great lengths to prevent civilian causalities but that that is impossible because the enemy is non-uniformed and hides in the midst of civilians.

I would really like to see Daniel try to argue the point he made, that Catholic social teaching unhesitatingly condemns acts of total war � even a self-defensive war like we are in now. I would like to see him compare this war next to the Civil War, WWI, WWII and the others. Something tells me he won�t because he knows he is misapplying Catholic social teaching.

And he has the gall to say that he �suppose(s) that I call myself prolife�? Wow! I suppose I could ask him if he considers himself to be prolife while standing by while Hussein murdered a hundred thousand Kurds. Oh, yes! He has condemned the use of force and lived up to his personal interpretation of Catholic social teaching so he can sleep peacefully as Hussein surely would have continued to murder thousands of innocents and the terrorists continue their killing.

And those nasty people in Sudan. Surely Daniel thinks that the genocide there is more acceptable then our possible consideration of using the American military to stop it.

Daniel has not yet spoken to the responsibility of Hussein and the Islamic terrorists in these wars. Perhaps he would be happier if they took over America? Surely that would be better then evil, mean President Bush.

Give me a break!

Admin

Again I don't have much time; it is a busy week for me, but to clarify, when I refered to indiscriminate killing of civilians I was referencing your defense of Hiroshima, not Bush's war in Iraq. I would second Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict, who have said that modern warfare makes it difficult to avoid massive civilian deaths.
Are you seriously saying that Catholic teaching doesn't condemn total warfare or the indiscriminate killing of civilians? I will find the references when I get a little time, but Vatican II and every subsequent Pope has said this, and the roots of the teaching lie deep in our history.
And it is pretty well documented that Bush had his eye on Iraq long before 9/11, which no one seriously says had Iraqi ties these days, just as no one in the Administration says Iraq had weapons of mass distruction. The Bush Administration did have weapons of mass distortion, however.
You speak of Hussein's treatment of the Kurds. I grant that he was a ruthless dictator, but the atrocities of which you speak first occured when he was our ally, around the time Rumsfeld was shaking his hand. The second assault on the Kurds happened after the first Gulf War, when the Kurds thought America would aid their uprising.
I fear your love of Bush has blinded you to the obvious...
-Daniel

Do you think God is saying, "Anhelyna, stay away from France?"

Daniel,

Can you provide some evidence of your accusation of indiscriminate killing of civilians in Hiroshima? It was, after all, the second largest military city in Japan. How was it different then bombing military targets in Germany, except in size? Father Richard John Neuhaus, the Catholic theologian who did live commentary on EWTN for the funeral of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI, has stated in his �First Things� magazine (November 2001) that �one can make a good case for Hiroshima as a humanitarian solution to the Second World War.� It�s not hard to find other Catholics who hold the same position.

Again, please provide evidence of indiscriminate killing. It seems to me that President Bush has directed our armed forces to take all kinds of measures to avoid civilian deaths. (Or do you think he is really lying and has issued a secret order to kill as many innocents as possible?)

Methinks that you are taking what the Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI very much out of context, since their words apply equally to those on both sides of a conflict.

You say that President Bush had his eyes on Iraq long before 9/11? I should hope so! Hussein continued his killing his own people and shooting at Americans for flying over Iraq in attempts to get him to follow the peace agreement he signed. The world did nothing to stop him for 12 years; the UN, France, Germany and Russia were too busy making billions of dollars off the �Oil for Palaces� scandal to force Hussein to finally abide by his agreement.

Hussein was our ally during the past 12 years? Since when? Yes, we supported him before that. But if you condemn America for that you must also condemn America for supporting Stalin in our united effort to defeat and even greater evil: Hitler.

Admin

Dear Daniel,

This might come as a shock, but if you think back, one of the first things the American troops found in Iraq were storehouses filled with medical supplies. These supplies were not in the hospitals.

Now why weren't they in the hospitals? Could it be for propaganda and how the children of Iraq were suffering because of a lack of supplies?

You said:

"Again I don't have much time; it is a busy week for me, but to clarify, when I refered to indiscriminate killing of civilians I was referencing your defense of Hiroshima, not Bush's war in Iraq. I would second Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict, who have said that modern warfare makes it difficult to avoid massive civilian deaths."

I say:

The civilian deaths are not massive because of our bombings. They are massive because of the terrorists... their Muslim brothers.

As for Hiroshima, we had calculated that we would have lost 60,000 men had we invaded Japan. Now we don't know how many Japanese would have lost their lives...it could have been in the millions.

When a member of my family visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki last year, they noticed a very tiny museum nearby. It showed the attrocities that the Japanese were doing to the Chinese, Phillipinese, etc. He said they were horrific.

These things are conveniently kept hidden from the Japanese people. Rather they are now being told that they were trying to liberate the people in that part of the world from the Westerners.

One of the amazing things though was Nagasaki. The bomber that dropped the bomb had lost his sites, and dropped it haphazardly. It fell on the Christian, predominantly Catholic area.

I know that the Emporor, (who was worshipped as a god), gave an order that every religious house of worship had to have, (I believe) either him or a buddha inside to worship. I can't help but wonder if havening idols to worship inside the Churches is why the bomb strayed and killed so many Christians.

There is the story of the Polish saint that gave up his life for another in a German concentration camp, (his name alludes me right now). He had a calling to start a monastery outside of Nagasaki.

He did, but placed it twenty miles outside of the city. It was something that people couldn't quite figure out. They say though, that everyone near the city was burnt, yet the monks that were within the area that was bombed, suffered absolutely nothing. Oh the power of faith.

Now we keep hearing about what we had done to Japan, yet nothing about our destruction of Germany. Does everyone realize that we, and that especially includes the English, firebombed Dresden, (people and children) and all the cities of Germany into the stone age. The people, or rather women and children were starving for two years.

There were no men left. Even boys the age of thirteen were given guns and told to fight. Hitler demanded that there be no retreat.

As for more civilians, in our invasion of Normandy, 30,000 French civilians were killed...If we ever wondered why they hate us.

It seems the further back one goes in history the cheaper life becomes. When the first planes appeared during the First World War, the officers refused to give the pilots parachutes for fear they would escape from the planes too readily. After all the plane was worth more than any human. I could go on about how all those Generals should have been shot for war crimes but that was long, long ago.

Today we do everything to minimize casualties. We take pains so that everything will be precise. I can't help but wonder if we suffered some great catasrophy and the day came when we ceased being the worlds super power, would the next 'power' or amibitious nation be as humane as us?

I doubt it!

Zenovia