Issues: Wartag:www.catholicdemocrats.org,2008:/issues/war//82008-07-27T00:29:15ZMovable Type 3.31Wartag:www.catholicdemocrats.org,2007:/positions/onwar//8.232007-01-11T02:26:21Z2008-07-27T00:29:15ZThe Catholic Democrat view on War "My command to you is: love your enemies, pray for your persecutors. This will prove that you are sons of your heavenly Father, for his sun rises on the bad and the good, he...
The Catholic Democrat view on War
"My command to you is: love your enemies, pray for your persecutors. This will prove that you are sons of your heavenly Father, for his sun rises on the bad and the good, he rains on the just and the unjust."
-Matthew 6:43-45
"Peace is always 'the work of justice and the effect of charity (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2304).' It demands the absolute and radical rejection of violence and terrorism and requires a constant and vigilant commitment on the part of all political leaders." -Doctrinal Note on some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Nov 2002.
"The Geneva Conventions have clear guidance about the responsibilities of occupying armies to the civilian population they control. The fact that more than half the deaths reportedly caused by the occupying forces were women and children is cause for concern. In particular, Convention IV, Article 27 states that protected persons "...shall be at all times humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against acts of violence..." It seems difficult to understand how a military force could monitor the extent to which civilians are protected against violence without systematically doing body counts or at least looking at the kinds of casualties they induce. This survey shows that with modest funds, 4 weeks, and seven Iraqi team members willing to risk their lives, a useful measure of civilian deaths could be obtained. There seems to be little excuse for occupying forces to not be able to provide more precise tallies."
-Roberts et al. "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq" showing as many as 194,000 deaths attributable to the US invasion of Iraq, published online in The Lancet, 10/29/04.The Bush Policy on War
1. In September 2002, the Administration announced a new National Security Strategy asserting that it would use all means necessary to establish and maintain a permanent state of global hegemony, including the development of new offensive nuclear weapons and possibly space-based weapons.
2. In November 2002, Mr. Bush authorized the extrajudicial homicides of six individuals in a car in Yemen, including an American citizen. The CIA was responsible for these killings, in a sovereign country which was not in a state of hostility with the U.S.
3. In March 2003, the Administration chose to attack the 25 million people of a sovereign nation (Iraq) with the resultant deaths to date of thousands of people, including now more than 4100 United States military personnel. Life means so little to the Bush Administration that they have refused to reveal their statistics on the number of children, women and men killed in Iraq during and after the invasion (Estimates range from 11,000 to more than 200,000, but we simply don't know). New data suggests that several hundred Sunni Arabs are being killed by Shiite-associated religious parties (including the Iraqi police there) each month in the relatively peaceful southern city of Basra. This observation alone suggests that the Iraq Body Count statistics, the most widely quoted civilian death count based on media reports, vastly underestimates the number of people who are dying in Iraq.
4. Mr. Bush is responsible for policies of widespread humiliation, torture, and murder (killings of detainees documented now in 40 cases) of prisoners in Iraq and in Guantanamo, but has refused to take any personal responsibility. Furthermore, this Administration continues to imprison an unacknowledged number of their opponents in "undisclosed locations" outside the United States, beyond the reach of the Red Cross or any other agency. The Administration's history of abuses at Abu Graib and Guantanamo assures that these unmonitored locations are even now the sites of treatment which is at least as brutal and un-Christian.
5. Mr. Bush is responsible for the destruction of Iraqi antiquities that are the heritage of all humanity, having authorized an invasion with no contingency plans for protecting Iraq's extraordinary archeologic heritage.
6. Mr. Bush authorized false allegations of threatening weapons in Iraq , including stocks of nuclear, biologic and chemical weapons that have proven to be absent. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration works itself to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons with vastly more destructive power than anything Iraq could have ever imagined.
7. Mr. Bush made false allegations of an "imminent" threat to both neighboring countries and to the United States, despite the absence of even a single U.S. casualty at the hands of the Iraqi military after 1991.
8. No serious moral theologian has argued that the Bush invasion of Iraq met any criteria for a "just war," particularly after testimony by Chief weapons inspector David Kay about the absence of WMD, and books by National Security Advisor Richard Clarke and US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill about the pre-9/11 Bush intent to invade Iraq. An addendum in late April 2005 indicated there was no evidence for the false allegations leveled by UN Ambassador John Bolton that Iraqi WMDs were transferred to Syria. Even without all this information, President Jimmy Carter wrote in a New York Times editorial piece on 3/16/03, "As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantially unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards."
Moral scorecard:
1. Elective war is the most fundamental violation of the Christian invocation to "love your enemies."
2. The notion that "collateral damage" is unavoidable in war begs the question of whether the death of even a single civilian is justified in an act of aggression that has received no sanction from recognized sources of international authority.
3. As President Jimmy Carter said in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture in December 2003, "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
4. Bush policy on war can be best characterized as 'hate thy neighbor': pursuing a policy of permanent global hegemony, development of new nuclear weapons, the weaponization of space, justification of torture, and the use of war for expanding US political influence unrestrained by international norms of civilization. As followers of Christ, we have a duty to reject all of these objectives.
In Other Headlines:Bush's culpability for the death of innocentsAn eye-for-an-eye in Iraq, as reports emerge about killing of 24 unarmed peopleMurtha on the military cover-upPresident Carter calls for end to Iraqi occupationBush wars kill thousands of innocents, while transferring taxpayer dollars to big Republican contributorsImmorality at the top: Bush invaded Iraq, knowing he had misled public on WMDJesus' advice to the warmakers: A Bishop's Eucharistic Call to Love our EnemiesBishop Bustros' remarks on Christians' obligation to reject war, to the International Conclave of bishops in Rome, September 2005An eye-for-an-eye brings nuclear weapons to Korea: Bush responds with threats, and shifts blame to Clinton for taking the more Christian approachCIA confirms a Gospel truth: National Intelligence Estimate shows Iraq War puts Americans at greater risk of attackForeign Policy Failure, or just what Bush wanted? North Korea tests missiles in response to US 'Star Wars' missiles, and Bush threatens to fire backIran goes nuclear to counter US threat from neighboring Iraq; Americans "shocked, shocked" to learn that threats elicit reciprocal responseCheney Authorized Torture Policy, says WilkersonCheney's Career Path of Brutality (James Carroll)The True Cost of the Iraq War (Cindy Sheehan)2000 American deaths in Iraq, and countingPres. Jimmy Carter (Los Angeles Times): This Isn't the Real America ]]>