Michael Yon on 'Operation Iraqi Children'

Operation Iraqi Children -- Michael Yon blogs about one of the latest grassroots efforts of the American people to aid the nation of Iraq:

I’ve seen the U.S. Army hold medical screenings, build schools and playgrounds, deliver sporting gear, and so on, but much of the help for Iraqi kids is coming from Joe Citizen, who has never been to Iraq, through a program started when one not-so-ordinary citizen traveled there and saw the immediate need.

While on a USO tour of Iraq in 2003, Gary Sinise recognized the potential as well as the plight of these children. Once back in the United States, he joined forces with a couple of smart and good-hearted people, Laura Hillenbrand and Mary Eisenhower, and took action to address the educational needs of Iraqi kids. In what he describes as “a few breathtaking and exhausting weeks,” these three dynamos organized Operation Iraqi Children (OIC). . . .

A must-read post and a project worth supporting by preparing and sending your own School Supply Kit.

I could make an historical argument, I think, to the effect that failure to fight wars in time or appropriately has caused as much chaos, degradation of the human spirit, and slaughter as wars that were in fact fought. Wars are a question of justice. When justice is an obvious and paramount question, it is not a virtue to avoid them. It is the mistake of always framing the issue in terms of peace and not in terms of justice. Logically, the former cannot be had without the latter. Peace without justice is the definition of extreme tyranny. And it is not just a question of justice, but of generosity and self-sacrifice. If there are no causes worth fighting and dying for, we might as well give up pretending that we are civilized.

Fr. James V. Schall, Fr. James V. Schall on Reason and Faith (Interview with Ken Masugi) Nov/Dec 2005.

Spero News: The Year in Military Heroism

The Year in Military Heroism, by Dan from Riehl World View. Jan. 2, 2006:

Between seeing this post of Sondrak's on Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith and all the brouhaha over various nonsensical year end lists, I decided to do a tribute post to America's War Heroes of 2005. In my view, they cannot get and certainly haven't gotten enough attention via the MSM [Main Stream Media] . . .

Michael Novak - background to the speech "'Asymmetrical Warfare' & Just War"

In a guest-post for First Things' On The Square, Michael Novak provides the background details on his speech “Asymmetrical Warfare” & Just War, delivered to a public audience in Vatican City on February 10, 2003, and later published in the National Review:

Nearly three years ago, Ambassador James Nicholson invited me to give a lecture on February 10, 2003, at the Vatican on the just war criteria regarding Iraq, after 15 or more resolutions by the UN concerning violations of the Truce of 1991. I was to speak for myself, not for the U.S. Government, in the same vein as I had spoken on previous occasions at the invitation of the Embassy to the Vatican. Not being privy to government briefings or intelligence findings, I had to rely solely on the public record. I paid special attention to statements by Mr. Hans Blix, the leader of the UN group of inspectors in Iraq, who said on two different occasions that in December and January that some 5,000 (or slightly more) liters of mustard gas and a similar amount of anthrax were missing and unaccounted for. The inspectors had catalogued these materials earlier, but could no longer find them. It had been the freely undertaken obligation of Saddam Hussein’s Government both to destroy those weapons and to prove that they had destroyed them. Since barely a teaspoon of anthrax had killed and hospitalized people in Washington, D.C., and closed a Senate Office Building for a month, those missing liters seemed to me worrisome. I had no idea what others might mean by “weapons of mass destruction,” but these missing liters were what the term meant to me. My authority was Mr. Blix. . . .

I believed at the time, and I believe still, that Pope John Paul II would want lay persons in my position to do as I then did, make my argument in keeping with Catholic traditions of reasoning in the public arena, in the important work of clarifying issues important to conscience. Some of these issues are prudential and contingent, and lie within the special responsibility of lay inquiry. I had, and was known to have, a personal friendship with the Pope, and felt keenly the responsibility of being open to every nuance in his own public statements, and of representing them fairly. He did not take a pacifist position, not at all, but a prudential position appropriate to the leader of the worldwide Catholic church, with acute responsibility to the Catholic people in the Middle East, and with a worldwide responsibility–even a world-historical responsibility, whose effects might linger for centuries. My own role was far humbler and far more limited. It was not one I had sought, but, when invited, agreed was too important not to take on. What the United States does is important to the Catholic people worldwide and to the Vatican. To be well-informed about how the Vatican’s American friends are thinking, and to learn the basis of their practical judgments, is highly useful, even necessary.

These remarks ended up being delivered to a huge overflow audience, with representatives of at least seventy media outlets present–but not until after I had delivered them to two smaller but significant Vatican audiences in private. I do not think many I spoke to at the Vatican agreed with me; many were in fact Europeans and had views closer to those of the elites of their nations of origin, as some said outright. But they were quite interested in the way I argued and were quite respectful of what I had to say. It felt to me as if they now knew that there was a new argument on the block, which they had not heretofore exactly calibrated.

Two days later, I gave another public lecture in Rome, with further clarification about what was to be expected in Iraq, as I then saw it. It was also published online (in article form), on February 18, 2003.

In view of the controversies swirling in the air today about who said what in the period just before the war, it seemed useful to revisit these texts now, with their errors and faults, as well as reasonably accurate expectations, plainly revealed.

Dispelling the Myths about Iraq: Juan Cole and James Phillips

David Jones recommends the article Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2005, by Juan Cole, University of Michigan history professor and soon-to-be president of the Middle East Studies Association, which he describes as -- contra FoxNews -- "fair and balanced."

We all have our ideologically-fueled predispositions. Just as David Jones tends to approach anything authored by NWN (Neuhaus, Novak, Weigel) with extreme prejudice given their "neocon" affiliations, I would personally do the same with Juan Cole, background information on whom can be obtained from the following:

• Old Juan Cole: A Very Sad Soul, by Steven Plaut FrontPageMagazine.com | March 23, 2005. Steven provides a roundup of Cole's views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
• Juan Cole and the Decline of the Middle Eastern Studies, by Alexander H. Joffe. MEforum.org | December 26, 2005.

Meanwhile, James Phillips, another researcher in Middle Eastern Studies, posts his own article Dispelling myths about Iraq at SperoNews, "refuting of some of the major myths that have distorted the pub lic's understanding of U.S. policy regarding Iraq."

Given as Phillips is part of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies (run by the notoriously (gasp!) conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation), his assessment of Iraq reads somewhat at odds than that of Dr. Cole. As I've linked to both articles in question, I trust our readers will make their own judgements as to their merit.

I think when it comes to learning about Iraq we need to take information from multiple perspectives (politically-aligned) and sift the wheat from the chaff. Anybody who has followed Arthur Chrenkoff's "Good News from Iraq / Afghanistan" round-ups during 2004-2005 realized that the usually-negative commentary of the Mainstream Media provided only a small glimpse of what was actually happening.

When it comes to understanding "the situation in Iraq", I've benefited greatly from reading the blogs of U.S. military currently serving in Iraq, journalists like Michael Yon and Bill Roggio (thanks to Chris Burgwald for recommending the latter) "reporting from the field", as well as the frontline accounts of Iraqi bloggers who are exercising their freedom of speech post-liberation (or occupation, depending on your POV). One of my personal favorites is Iraq the Model; Hassan from Iraqi Blog Count provides a history of Iraqi blogs.

"The Jews of Europe are now the Kurds of Iraq"

The Jews of Europe are now the Kurds of Iraq, and the Shiites, and the Marsh Arabs. The point of war is not only to defend one’s own country from attack but also to free from the jaws of death millions of innocent human beings who lack the military means to secure their own freedom. This may not be a universally supported political or military view of war, but it is a religious view of war, and it is my view of this and other wars.

I do not know a single Kurd or a single Marsh Arab or a single Iraqi Shiite, but I do know that they have been slaughtered by the thousands, and because of this war they are now free. The Iraqi killing machine has been destroyed. I also know, and every person of even moderate intelligence also knows, that if our troops withdraw now, before victory has been fully achieved they will be slaughtered again. When I say never again in memory of the Holocaust, I don’t mean “never again Jews,” I mean “never again anyone.”

It matters not one wit to me that they are not Jewish nor even that they may not be grateful to America. All that matters to me is that they are made in God’s image and their lives are no longer held tight in the bloody maw of a genocidal dictator. The Jews of Europe and the Kurds of Iraq may both have been outside the strictly delimited aims of the war in Europe or the war in Iraq, but their cries must reach some listening ears and sensitive souls. It is deeply disappointing to me to know that people in my movement of Judaism with whom I share a belief that my daughter deserves the same spiritual horizons as my son cannot feel the need for freedom of those victims of genocide whose cries reach God even if they often do not reach the front pages of the morning papers.

Rabbi Marc Gellman, Historical Blindness Newsweek Dec. 16, 2005

The Iraqi Elections - A Roundup

• "We got our purple fingers updated!" - a roundup of election news and on-the-spot reports from Omar @ Iraq The Model Dec. 16, 2005.
• Elections - Now and Then, by Greyhak. Mudville Gazette: "If it bleeds it leads, they say. And today it did not. So it's what that story doesn't say that tells you everything you need to know about today. . . ."

• When the sense of history overwhelms, by Jeff Harrell (The Shape of Days):

  My roommate said to me last night, “I’m surprised you didn’t write more about the Iraqi election.” I tried to explain. My excuse is as simple as it is embarrassing: I’m overwhelmed.

  How many different ways are there to say “historic moment?” How many different ways can you say that a nation was born yesterday? If I were writing a speech, I’d have all the high-minded rhetoric and soaring oratory you could ask for. But to try to write about it casually, in my own voice . . .

• It’s Electric! "U.S. troops describe a festive atmosphere across Iraq," says W. Thomas Smith Jr. NRO National Review Online December 15, 2005:

  "On this side of the world, saying something and coming through and doing it means a great deal," U.S. Marine Maj. Neil F. Murphy Jr., spokesman for Multi-National Force West at Camp Fallujah, tells National Review Online. "Iraqis know that we mean what we say by staying and helping them get on their feet."

  Consequently, he adds, "The Iraqi people are looking at this [election day] like an actual holiday." Not in the sense that it need not be taken seriously, but in the sense of what one Iraqi army soldier said: "This is the first time in my whole life I got to choose the government of my country!"

  What? The elections held by Saddam Hussein with a nearly 100% vote of support didn't count?

• Highlights: Iraqi journalists & bloggers on the ground for Iraqi elections Compiled in Los Angeles from reporters and bloggers for Pajamas Media including: I.S. in Karbala; W.Z. in Erbil; A.S. in Najaf; N.R. in Mosul; A.D. in Basra; A.T. in Babil; W.A., Omar and Mohammed in Baghdad. Pajamasmedia.com Dec. 15, 2005.

• Congressman Jack Kingston relays a note from a U.S. military official with his observations and experience of the elections.

• Hassan Kharrufa has photos of his family, including one of this proud Iraqi:

  Even my 85 year old grandfather, who had much trouble walking, came with us to cast his vote. Although the walk was very hard on him, but he pulled himself together and managed to reach the poll centre. . . . He was treated like a king there. He sat in a chair, and they brought the pen and ballot paper to him. He chose his list, gave it to them, they folded it, and put it in the box. Then they brought him the ink pot.

• "The Truth on the Ground", by Major Ben Connable. U.S. Marine Corps. Washington Post Dec. 14, 2005:

  When I told people that I was getting ready to head back to Iraq for my third tour, the usual response was a frown, a somber head shake and even the occasional "I'm sorry." When I told them that I was glad to be going back, the response was awkward disbelief, a fake smile and a change of subject. The common wisdom seems to be that Iraq is an unwinnable war and a quagmire and that the only thing left to decide is how quickly we withdraw. Depending on which poll you believe, about 60 percent of Americans think it's time to pull out of Iraq.

  How is it, then, that 64 percent of U.S. military officers think we will succeed if we are allowed to continue our work? Why is there such a dramatic divergence between American public opinion and the upbeat assessment of the men and women doing the fighting?"

• “’The Wrong Shall Fail’” - text of President George W. Bush's address to the nation on Sunday, December 18, 2005, as released by the White House. Dec. 18, 2005.
• "Happy Days!" - Robert Kagan and William Kristol The Weekly Standard Dec. 26, 2005:

  Has this one election settled everything, or even anything? Is Iraq now safely on the path to a durable democracy? Of course not. One voter told a New York Times reporter, "Iraqis aren't used to democracy, we have to learn it." True enough. They will have to learn it, and this learning process will take time and be attended by many backward steps, many errors, and many crises. But now, at least, they have a chance.

  Iraqis would not have had that chance had the United States chosen to leave Saddam Hussein in power. They would not have had that chance if American troops had been withdrawn or reduced from the already inadequate levels established after the invasion in 2003. And they will lose that chance if the United States now begins a hasty reduction of forces. Burns reports that even Sunnis unhappy with the American presence favor only a "gradual drawdown," and only if Iraq has achieved a sufficient level of security and stability. "Let's have stability, and then the Americans can go home," one Iraqi store owner told Burns. Informed that President Bush was saying exactly the same thing, this man replied: "Then Bush has said it correctly".

• And in the words of one Iraqi Betty Dawisha:

  Anybody who doesn’t appreciate what America has done and President Bush, let them go to hell”

Maintaining my Status as a Warblogger: The Mother of All Roundups

Various critics (friend and foe alike) have referred to me as a "warblogger" -- a label I find rather curious, since my actual blogging on the war is rather minimal compared to my other interests, and when I do blog, my meager efforts in this regard pale in comparison to the likes of, say, Little Green Footballs or Winds of Change.

When I think of "war blogs," I think of the reporting of combat journalist Michal Yon or blogger Bill Roggio, currently touring Anbar Province, Iraq by invitation of the 2nd Marine Division, or the real 'milbloggers' posting from the trenches.

However, Wikipedia defines a "warblog" as

"A warblog is a weblog devoted mostly or wholly to covering news events concerning an ongoing war. Sometimes the use of the term "warblog" implies that the blog concerned has a pro-war slant."

So on that note perhaps I'd qualify.

It has been quite a while since I did any significant posting on this subject . . . so in the interest of bolstering my reputation, here's a roundup of recommended links on the subject culled from the past few months.

• From Bill Roggio's The Fourth Rail, An Interview with Colonel Davis Oct. 30, 2005, "Commander of Marine Regimental Combat Team - 2, who is responsible for fighting in western Anbar province, also known as AO Denver" -- who, among other things, summarizes his regiment's mission in Iraq:

  . . . I don't like to talk in terms of winning and losing when it comes to the issues in the Middle East. Americans have a very Western way of thinking: you identify the problem; you analyze the problem and then fix it and move onto the next problem. Out here you need to be vigilant and do a lot of continuous maintenance work, which pays off over time.

  Saddam never controlled this region of Iraq. It is very tribal and fiercely independent. He sent in the army to kill and intimidate the population. He established two tribes in the region: the Salmanis and the Karabilah tribes, to further his goals and counter balance existing dominating tribes. The Iraqis out west, particularly in Haditha are well educated and are able to provide for their own needs. They have operated this way for centuries and can do so again with the proper security environment. We have a simple equation we use out here:

  Presence = Security = Stability = the environment for self governance.

  Our goal is to enfranchise the Iraqi security forces and allow them to provide for the security in the region and improve the lives of the Iraqi people. We will continue to conduct civil/military affairs operations to improve the lives of the Iraqi people. In Haditha, we are rebuilding the hospital the jihadis attacked with a car bomb and then used as a base of operation. We are working to enhance schools and other services vital to the people. We will continue to maintain a presence until the Iraqi Army is capable of standing on its own.

  Thanks to Chris Burgwald, who introduced me to the blog. See also this piece on Iran's sponsorship of international terrorism including Al Qaeda.

  Update: The Fourth Rail is now closed, as Bill Roggio is currently blogging from Iraq (Anbar Province) by special invitation from senior Marine officers with the Regimental Combat Team - 2, 2nd Marine Division. You can now read him at ThreatsWatch.org.

• Purple-Ink & Other Underreported Successes, by W. Thomas Smith, Jr. National Review Oct. 31, 2005:

  Lance Corporal Tara Pryor has been in Iraq for only three weeks. Already, she has learned that what readers glean from newspapers and television broadcasts back home are not as things really are.

  “I am surprised,” says the 21-year-old Strongsville, Ohio, native who currently serves with the Marine’s 6th Civil Affairs Group in Fallujah. “The majority of the [Iraqi] people appreciate what we are trying to do.”

  Pryor’s revelation is no surprise to those who have been there. Back home, military servicemen and women contend the daily fare from the various media ranges from disturbing to false to downright manipulative. . . .

• A War to be Proud Of, by Christopher Hitchens. The Weekly Standard 09/05/2005, Volume 010, Issue 47. The former Nation journalist turned neocon poses some difficult questions that beg for answers:

  The balance sheet of the Iraq war, if it is to be seriously drawn up, must also involve a confrontation with at least this much of recent history. Was the Bush administration right to leave--actually to confirm--Saddam Hussein in power after his eviction from Kuwait in 1991? Was James Baker correct to say, in his delightfully folksy manner, that the United States did not "have a dog in the fight" that involved ethnic cleansing for the mad dream of a Greater Serbia? Was the Clinton administration prudent in its retreat from Somalia, or wise in its opposition to the U.N. resolution that called for a preemptive strengthening of the U.N. forces in Rwanda?

• Our Troops Must Stay: "America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists", by Senator Joe Lieberman. Wall Street Journal Nov. 29, 2005. In case you missed it, a gutsy article from the Democratic senator from Connecticut, who returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months, and has good things to report.

• Over at Mudville Gazette, Greyhawk questions John P Murtha's citation that "Over 15,500 have been seriously injured" in Iraq:

  There have indeed been over 15,500 wounded. But of those, 8375 returned to duty within 72 hours - so although those wounds weren't funny perhaps those wounds weren't quite serious either. Still, 7347 troops have been wounded severely enough to require over 72 hours recuperation. Furthermore, 2,791 Soldiers were wounded seriously enough to require evacuation to Stateside Army Medical facilities. And 280 amputees have been treated in Army facilities as a result of the war. A lot of unscrupulous types who just want to pretend to "support the troops" ignore these facts in favor of the less correct (and more impressive) claim that 15,500 troops have been seriously wounded, or maimed, or mutilated. The real numbers are big enough - I just can't understand why some feel the need to pad them

• Here's yet another reason to love Hollywood action-hero Bruce Willis (besides Die Hard):

  Unlike many Hollywood stars Willis supports the war and recently offered a $1m (about £583,000) bounty for the capture of any of Al-Qaeda’s most wanted leaders such as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, its commander in Iraq. Willis visited the war zone with his rock and blues band, the Accelerators, in 2003.

  “I am baffled to understand why the things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported,” he told MSNBC, the American news channel.

  Source: Sunday Times Nov. 27, 2005. Willis is planning on making a film on Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, "which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul."

  The film will be based on the reporting of blogger Michael Yon, "a former special forces green beret who was embedded with Deuce Four and sent regular dispatches about their heroics." (P.S. Due recognition to Charlie Daniels as well, who raised thousands of dollars in donated musical instruments for troops in Iraq.)

• Rerum-Novarum: Miscellaneous Threads Worth Reviewing Nov. 19, 2005. In case you haven't had enough, another roundup with commentary from I. Shawn McElhinney, with notes on Able Danger, the question of missing WMD's and . . . Kurt Vonnegut.

History Lesson(s)

• A Brief History of a Long War (1990-2003), by Greyhawk (Mudville Gazette), providing a necessary corrective to those who quickly forget the history of this conflict:

  . . . One of the most blatant - and most effective - examples [of revisionism] has been the highly successful propagation of the idea that the war in Iraq began as a misguided result of the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11th 2001. To achieve this feat of near-universal denial requires the dismissing of over a decade of real history - years in which a handful of Americans drew a line in the sand on distant shores - a line crossed repeatedly and re-drawn too frequently by too many hands to be forgotten so swiftly.

  And it's nearly forgotten they are, those warriors of just a few short years ago. But not just yet, at least not completely. This work in progress is dedicated to my fellow members of the US military, those who stand the "line in the sand" now and those have done so for so many years past.

  Look, here is what happened. Listen, here's what they said when it did. . . .

• The New York Times and Iraq: 1993-2005. The blogger at American Future embarks on an ambitious project to "employ the New York Times’ editorials to trace and analyze the evolution of the newspaper’s stance on Iraq":

  A war can be lost because public opinion turns against its continued prosecution. The New York Times – the self-described “newspaper of record” – is among the world’s most influential opinion leaders. As shown by the cited quotations, the newspaper’s stance on Iraq underwent a complete transformation during the decade separating 1993 and 2003. While its editors never lost their fear of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), their prescription for countering the threat posed by the weapons was altered beyond recognition. In 1993, by arguing that cease-fire violations nullified U.N. protection, the Times affirmed the right of a victorious party to resume hostilities at its sole discretion if the party it defeated did not abide by the terms of the agreement to which it affixed its signature. Ten years later, the Times reversed its stance, asserting that the United States should not go to war without the approval of the United Nations. In so doing, the Times implicitly argued that going to war with the approval of a multilateral institution took precedence over the use of military force to expeditiously eliminate the threat posed by Iraq’s WMD.

  The New York Times and Iraq (1993-2005): Part I covers the eight years of the Clinton administration, is the first of three that employ the Times’ editorials to trace and analyze the evolution of the newspaper’s position on Iraq. Part II covers the Bush administration until the invasion of Iraq. Part III covers the Invasion of Iraq to Abu Ghraib (March 2003 - April 2004).

• Where the WMDs Went, by Jamie Glazov. FrontPageMagazine.com | November 16, 2005. Interview with Bill Tierney, a former military intelligence officer and Arabic speaker "who worked at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and as a counter-infiltration operator in Baghdad in 2004. He was also an inspector (1996-1998) for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) for overseeing the elimination of WMD's and ballistic missiles in Iraq. He worked on the most intrusive inspections during this period and either participated in or planned inspections that led to four of the seventeen resolutions against Iraq."

Torture

• Junkyard blogger B. Preston "would love it if Mark Shea simply defined torture -- What it is and what it isn’t. He's right, in that this post is a typically brilliant snark-fest but never actually addresses what the McCain Amendment will and will not do. . . . It’s seriously snarky and seriously angry, but doesn’t approach the issue with any genuine seriousness. In the end, it’s lazy." Much as I enjoy Mark's blog, I do think his snarkiness sometimes gets the better of him, together with his practice of labeling the opposition. Then again, perhaps that's part of his appeal. On his behalf, he did author the rather more serious appraisal of the issue in: Toying with Evil: May a Catholic Advocate Torture? Crisis March 9, 2005.

• Military historian Victor Davis Hanson, meanwhile, joins others in backing the McCain amendment: On torture, U.S. must take the high road Chicago Tribune Dec. 2, 2005:

  So we might as well admit that by foreswearing the use of torture, we will probably be at a disadvantage in obtaining key information and perhaps endanger American lives here at home. (And, ironically, those who now allege that we are too rough will no doubt decry "faulty intelligence" and "incompetence" should there be another terrorist attack on an American city.) Our restraint will not ensure any better treatment for our own captured soldiers. Nor will our allies or the UN appreciate American forbearance. The terrorists themselves will probably treat our magnanimity with disdain, as if we were weak rather than good.

  But all that is precisely the risk we must take in supporting the McCain amendment--because it is a public reaffirmation of our country's ideals. The United States can win this global war without employing torture. That we will not resort to what comes so naturally to Islamic terrorists also defines the nobility of our cause, reminding us that we need not and will not become anything like our enemies.

Iraq & Al Qaeda

• Night of the Living "Known Fact", by Leon H @ RedState.Org July 10, 2005:

  One of the most persistent Known Facts in the lexicon of Known Fact users is the Known Fact that Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaeda. None whatsoever. This, of course, was the justification the New York Times (one of the great all-time users of Known Facts) used for their shrieking denunciation of Bush's June 28th speech. How could he even mention Iraq and 9/11 in the same speech? Doesn't he know that it's a Known Fact that there was no relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda?

  Much of the evidence behind this Known Fact lies behind the findings of the 9/11 commission, which stated that it could find "no evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States." This, to the liberal mindset, was the same as saying, "We have proved conclusively that no such evidence exists, nor ever will exist, so let this henceforth be known as a Known Fact." The reality is that the commission said something very different, and the emergence of actual facts in the year since then has repeatedly put this Known Fact to death, only to see it rise up from the grave, more horrible and foul-smelling than ever before.

• Case Not Dismissed: Ahmed Hikmat Shakir & the 9/11 Commission, by Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online. July 1, 2005.

• Body of Evidence, by Stephen F. Hayes. Weekly Standard June 30, 2005:

  "THERE IS NO EVIDENCE that Saddam Hussein was connected in any way to al Qaeda."

  So declared CNN Anchor Carol Costello in an interview yesterday with Representative Robin Hayes (no relation) from North Carolina.

  Hayes politely challenged her claim. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. There's evidence everywhere. We get access to it. Unfortunately, others don't."

  CNN played the exchange throughout the day. At one point, anchor Daryn Kagan even seemed to correct Rep. Hayes after replaying the clip. "And according to the record, the 9/11 Commission in its final report found no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein."

  The CNN claims are wrong. Not a matter of nuance. Not a matter of interpretation. Just plain incorrect. They are so mistaken, in fact, that viewers should demand an on-air correction.

  If you want to investigate the alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, there's no better place to start than Stephen Hayes' The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, which provides a good compilation of his investigation into this issue as it appeared in The Weekly Standard.

• It's ALL about Al Qaeda, by Andrew McCarthy. National Review Online. June 29, 2005.

• That was then, this is now, by John @ Powerline July 15, 2005:

  This ABC News video from five years ago, courtesy of Media Research Center, is a classic. Before Democrats had a partisan motive to claim, contrary to all the evidence, that there was no relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and bin Laden's al Qaeda, their close and dangerous relationship was common knowledge. That common knowledge is reflected in this ABC news report, as it was in the Clinton administration's indictment of bin Laden in 1998 for, among other things, collaborating with Saddam on weapons of mass destruction.

  It really is a fascinating question: in this era of digital media, can the news media and the Democrats get away with trying to flush what they said as recently as 1998 and 2000 down the memory hole?

Supporting Our Troops" - Images of the Opposition

• From the Rhode Island blog Anchor Rising ("The Right Side of Hope in Rhode Island") comes a substantial roundup of informative commentary on Cindy Sheehan, mother of fallen soldier turned icon of the pacifist opposition to the "Iraqi occupation."

• The Peace Movement's Moderate Face, by Amy Widenour (National Center, Nov. 27, 2005):

  As Cindy Sheehan is once again protesting in Crawford, Texas, I thought it a good time to share some pictures that show -- as the mainstream media often does not -- the message of the anti-war protesters. These photos, of another anti-war rally in which Cindy Sheehan participated, were taken by Joe Roche. . . ."

• "Supporting Our Troops" @ AmericanFuture.Net: "Chad Drake, a resident of Garland, Texas, was somehow identified as the 1,000th victim of the Iraq war. The Drake family attended a vigil at the Dallas City Hall, having been assured by a member of the Dallas Peace Center that the event would be non-political. . . ."

• Sox or Soldiers? Which photos are White Sox World Series celebrations, and which ones are solemn memorials for 2000 dead soldiers and certainly not parties? (Pop quiz at Everlasting Phelps).

• Academic freedom has its limits. When John Daly, adjunct English professor at Warren County Community College advocated the murder of American military officers, the public outcry (largely instigated by the Young America Foundation and the patriotic blogging community) forced him to resign. I say good riddance.

• Anti-war protestors recently expressed their "support for the troops" by throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, attempting to set fire to buildings, "fighting capitalism" and equating Hurricane Katrina with "genocide." Michelle Malkin has the roundup.

  (Note: Don't get me wrong. I understand one can make a principled case against the war. But if this is the public face of the anti-war movement, as it seems to be, it's high time y'all hired a new public relations department).

George Weigel's Tranquillitas Ordinis

When I was first exploring the topic of the Catholic Church's just war tradition, I asked my father -- bright college-educated Catholic doctor of philosophy that he is -- if he had anything to recommend, especially as he had recently delivered an address on the subject War and the Eclipse of Moral Reasoning Tenth Annual Aquinas/Luther Conference. Lenoir-Rhyne College. October 24-26, 2002).

His response to me was Weigel's Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace (Oxford University Press, 1987).

Following is a review that I stumbled across today in the process of research on the web. It should give readers some sense as to what the book is about and Weigel's thesis:

This is a remarkable book not only for the breadth of its coverage on a complicated politico-moral question, but because it is literary. George Weigel not only knows what his subject matter is, but he writes in declarative sentences which are readily understood. He also eschews the nuances used by many modern scholars to insinuate points of view without arguing them openly. Although pundits will do their best to label this book to prejudice potential readers from following it with an open mind, it is too packed with facts and principles to be categorized easily. Although more empirical, Tranquillitas Ordinis deserves to be on the same shelf as John Courtney Murray's We Hold These Truths.

We tend to forget in this age of slogans and shibboleths that the Catholic Church has had long and continuous experience with questions of war and peace and with a variety of political environments. Force, aggression, deterrence, hostages, burnt-out cities are old stuff to Catholic divines. Who better than St. Augustine knew the capacity of ancient armies to bury so great a city as Carthage and its 300,000 inhabitants. St. Ambrose, the optimist of his day, was confident that Roman Emperors with their new Christian piety could guarantee world peace. Then came the sack of Italy by Alaric the Hun and Ambrose's optimism faded. It was his convert Augustine who faced up to the reality of world politics, comprised of kingdoms organized to pursue their own selfish ends. There can never be a perfect Christian state, Augustine argued, so he advised against moralizing simplistically about the use of force on earth, only about its unreasonable and excessive use. Thus, the "just war theory" came into existence; defining the limits of justifiable defense. The Founding Father of the United States set similar limits in the preamble of our Constitution.

In thirteen chapters George Weigel does more than trace Catholic thought from Augustine through Aquinas, John Courtney Murray, Vatican II and its aftermath. He digs deep into the practical implications of the principle that a rightly-ordered political community, using moderate force, is necessary to maintain Tranquillitas Ordinis. Father Murray is Weigel's hero for unfolding the Catholic principles which underlay "the American experiment"-"a nation under God," ruled by consent of the governed, who have rights antecedent to the state, who are expected to exercise those rights individually and collectively within a framework of civic virtue. In adjudicating issues of war and peace, Murray called for "discriminating moral judgment," not simple appeals to biblical texts. Because military decisions are a species of political decisions, the Jesuit ground-breaker called for political. choices to be made within a moral framework of one kind or another. Murray spent the last years of his life developing such a framework and the moral reasoning which underpinned it. Although he never came to grips with the significance of pacifism or the United Nations' potential, his legacy is clear enough.

The remaining chapters take up the abandonment of this Augustinian heritage by modern Catholic elites. As George Weigel sees it, "they have become softly neo-isolationist, anti-anti-communist, and highly skeptical of the moral worthiness of the American Experiment." They see conflict as primarily psychological, whose alleviation is to be found in understanding and better communication. If enough people have the right intentions and are willing to act on them peace can be achieved, the new Pelagians aver. Contrariwise, Weigel argues that conflicts between states are political in origin and must be dealt with through an orderly political process which accentuates reason, not by imperatives or wishful thinking. At present America is caught up in a dilemma: Do we preserve peace by limiting our concern for our own independence and the freedom of friends beyond our shores? Or do we defend freedom and human rights even at the price of armament races, even of war?

Tranquillitas Ordinis takes the reader through the U.S. bishops' effort to resolve the dilemma with their 1983 pastoral "The Challenge of Peace." He calls it a brave effort, although he faults the staff for its presumptive "nuclear pacifism," for its other idological assumptions, and for its control of the framework under which the bishops functioned. The last seventy pages are devoted to developing a proper response to the realities of international politics within the framework of the Catholic tradition. He places his confidence in politics and is quite good in answering his own questions about the use of force and the role of America.

-- Review by Charles J. Leonard. Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly Newsletter Vol. 10, No. 4. Sept. 1987.

NoEndButVictory.com. "First Peace, Then Withdrawal."

Iraqi Special Tribunal

We are indeed in the internet age. Here is the link to the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) which will try former genocidal dictator Saddam Hussein, hopefully, in the very near future. The link includes a photo gallery of mass graves. So the inevitable question comes to critics of the Iraq War: was the war worth it?

Thanks to Catholic Analysis.

Whose Al Qaeda Problem?

"British journalists Robert Fisk, John Pilger, and Tariq Ali, along with British MP George Galloway, and, on the other side of the Atlantic, commentators such as Naomi Klein have all essentially blamed Britain and the United States for bringing the attacks upon themselves. While being careful to denounce the bombers and their agenda, these advocates uttered variations on the same theme: get out of Iraq, bring home the troops from all points east, curtail support for Israel, develop a more sensible, non-oil-based energy policy, and our troubles would dissipate in the wind. . . .

. . . theirs is also a truncated analysis. They assume that groups like al-Qaida are almost entirely reactive, responding to western policies and actions, rather than being pro-active creatures with a virulent homegrown agenda, one not just of defence but of conquest, destruction of rivals, and, ultimately and at its most megalomaniacal, absolute subjugation.

It misses the central point: that, unlike traditional “third-world” liberation movements looking for a bit of peace and quiet in which to nurture embryonic states, al-Qaida is classically imperialist, looking to subvert established social orders and to replace the cultural and institutional infrastructure of its enemies with a (divinely inspired) hierarchical autocracy of its own, looking to craft the next chapter of human history in its own image.

Simply blaming the never quite defined, yet implicitly all-powerful “west” for the ills of the world doesn’t explain why al-Qaida slaughtered thousands of Americans eighteen months before Saddam was overthrown. Nor does it explain the psychopathic joy this death cult takes in mass killings and in ritualistic, snuff-movie-style beheadings. The term “collateral damage” may be inept, but it at least suggests that the killing of civilians in pursuit of a state’s war aims is unintentional, regrettable; there is nothing unintentional, there is no regret, in the targeting of civilians by al-Qaida’s bombers. . . .

"Whose al-Qaida problem?", by Sasha Abrahmsky. OpemDemocracy.org. October 4, 2005.

"War of Aggression"?

This post is meant to address some aspects of criticism of U.S. foreign policy as alluded to in Stephen Hand's "claim to victory" posted Sept. 10, 2005 to his blog, TCRMusings: We Are Satisfied That We Have Made a Decisive Case Against Neoconservative Politics, Foreign Policy and War:

...thus we think we can rest our case, having done the work, engaged the great crisis of our time to the best of our ability. The reason we at TCR have spent so much time doing our part, is that a war is on, the horrors of which human beings on all sides are daily reaping with no end in sight, dying to this day, and we are convinced this war of aggression has reinforced much of the Islamic world against us, threatening to proliferate retaliatory war against the US and the UK and its bribed "coalition" for a very long time to come. Many experts fear these hostilities could eventually lead to a third World War, which God forbid.

Catholics have a moral obligation to seek to avoid war, and, short of succeeding at that, when hostilities have already unwisely begun, to work for peace, seeking peaceful solutions to end them. Having lauched a war of aggression / invasion against a sovereign country despite the testimony of the IAEA that WMD's were not found, or even expected to be found, it is time for change, metanoia. It is time to withdraw American troops not only from Iraq asap, but also Saudi Arabia and to seek justice for both Israel and the Palestinian people, even as we seek alterantive [sic] sources of energy, making this nation less dependent on foreign oil. Human lives into the future, and the stability of the world, has been our most grave concern. We think we have made our case. We will, of course, continue to report on what others are doing as developments unfold. ---10/9/05

Who is the Aggressor?

I disagree with the characterization of our present conflict as a "war of aggression" -- either against the "sovereign nation" of Iraq, or militant Islamic terrorist organizations in general.

In the case of Iraq, one has only to mention Saddam Hussein's acts of aggression against his own people, as well as his provision of financial and material support to terrorists who have already declared jihad against the West.

As presented by Deroy Murdock ("Saddam Hussein's Philanthropy of Terror September 22, 2004 Hoover Institution), Iraq's support ranged from the provision of "bonuses" to the families of Palestinian suicide-bombers (from a personal fund of Hussein himself) to the provision of training, funding, diplomatic help, safe haven and medical care to well-known international terrorists.

Saddam Hussein paid bonuses up to $25,000 to Palestinian suicide bombers. On March 11, 2002, Iraq former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz -- the same Aziz who on Feb. 14, 2003 met with and personally assurred Pope John Paul II of "the wish of the Iraqi government to co-operate with the international community, notably on disarmament" -- announced Saddam's "decision to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000." [1].

According to Mr. Murdock: "Hussein's patronage of Palestinian terror proved fatally fruitful. Between the March 11, 2002, increase in cash incentives to $25,000 and the March 20, 2003, launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured 1,209 people and killed 223 more, including 12 Americans." [2]

According to Patterns of Global Terrorism [U.S. State Dept., May 21, 2002], the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), the Arab Liberation Front, Hamas, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization, and the Palestine Liberation Front all operated offices or bases in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's hospitality toward these organizations occurred in direct violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, prohibiting the safe harbor and state-sponsorship of terrorism.

Among those granted safe haven by Saddam Hussein and living in Baghdad until the time of the U.S. "war of aggression":

• Abu Abbas / Muhammad Zaidan - founder of the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLO splinter group); notorious in the West for the hijacking of Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in October 1985. After segregating the Jewish passengers, an elderly Jewish-American named Leon Klinghoffer was shot dead and thrown overboard. According to Murdock,

  The hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities in exchange for safe passage to Tunisia. Abu Abbas then joined them on a flight to freedom aboard an Egypt Air jet. However, four U.S. fighter planes forced the airliner to land at a NATO base in Sicily. Italian officials took the hijackers into custody. But Abbas possessed the ultimate get-out-of-jail card: An Iraqi diplomatic passport

  Abbas fled to Baghdad, where he lived under the protection of Saddam and the Baathist regime. In the Autumn of 2001 he appeared on Iraqi state television to praise Saddam for inciting Arab opposition to Israel's policy against the Palestinians. [3] According to Fox News / Associated Press: "The PLF faction under Abbas was a conduit for Saddam's payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service reported earlier this year that Israel captured several Palestinians who trained at a PLF camp in Iraq and were told by Abbas to attack an Israeli airport and other targets." [4]

• Abu Nidal, born Sabri al-Banna, was a close aid of Yasser Arafat. He fell out with Arafat in the 70's (accusing him of being "soft") and went on to establish Fatah - the Revolutionary Council, also known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO). Nidal's attacks in 20 countries killed at least 275 people and wounded some 625 more. Among the atrocities commited by the ANO: the Rome and Vienna Airport Attacks on December 27, 1985; the Sept. 1986 gun attack in the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul during Sabbath services and hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73, and according to the confession of a former colleague, the bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 [5]. Nidal's terrorist activities subsided in the 90's due to internal dissension when, in a fit of paranoid self-destruction, he "turned his terror campaign inward." 6] He took shelter in Iraq from at least 1999 (stories conflict as to whether he entered into Iraq secretly or "with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities" [7], as the ANO Beirut office claims. In any case, by 2001 he was living openly, in defiance of the Jordanian government (who sentenced him in absentia in 2001 to death for his role in the 1994 assassination of a Jordanian diplomat). He died of multiple gunshot wounds in late August 2002, presumably at the hands of Iraqi Intelligence].

• Abdul Rahman Yasin, wanted by the FBI for his role in making the bombs for the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center attack, killing six and injuring 1,042 people in New York. Questioned and the mistakenly released by the FBI, Yasin fled to Baghdad, Iraq, where he was spotted in 1994 and reported to be operating freely ("A neighbor told the reporter that Yasin was working for the Iraqi government. Documents recovered from postwar Iraq indicate that Yasin received not only safe haven in Iraq, but also funding from the former Iraqi regime"). [8]

• Abu Musab al Zarqawi - Zarqawi is a Jordanian and veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war. In the late 1990's he founded the organization Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad [Monotheism and Holy War], originally with the intent of overthrowing the Jordanian government. Zarqawi operated a training camp near Herat, Afghanistan, fleeing to -- where else? -- Baghdad after the U.S. led overthrow of the Taliban, where he received treatment for an injured leg. He developed ties to Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish Islamist militant group. He presently heads the insurgency against the new Iraqi government, self-dubbed "Al Qaeda in Iraq" -- responsible for the kidnapping/beheading of American businessman Nicholas Berg, South Korean Kim Sun-il, Bulgerian truck-drivers Georgi Lazov and Ivaylo Kepov; Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong and Briton Kenneth Bigley and Japanese citizen Shosei Koda. Zarqawi's network is also responsible for countless suicide and car bombings and the indiscriminate slaughter of Iraqi citizens and U.S./Coalition soldiers.

For information on Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda, see Daniel Darling's post on the imminent threat Iraq posed in light of its collaborations with Ansar al-Islam; as well as Stephen Haye's investigative articles in the Weekly Standard and his book: The Connection (Harper Collins, June 2004).

In light of Iraq's past history as a "safe haven" for terrorists -- against other nations as well as the oppression of its own citizens, it seems that the perpetrators of aggression at this moment in time are chiefly those involved in acts of terrorism against the newly-established government in Iraq, Iraqi citizens, and Coalition forces.

Iraq -- "Sovereign Nation"?

Regarding the defense of Iraq as a "sovereign nation" in protest of the unjustifiable "aggression" of the United States, I am sympathetic to George Weigel's observation [Idealism Without Illusions: U.S. Foreign Policy in the 1990's Eerdmans, 1994]:

State sovereignty, and the consequent immunity of states from interference in their "internal affairs" is not an exceptionless norm. By agreeing to certain international human rights agreements, for example, states have voluntarily limited their sovereign claims to non-interference in their internal practices. The nature of international public life today has also "internationalized" questions that would, in an earlier era, have been regarded as a state's domestic affairs. When innocent citizens of European and North American states are put at risk in European airports because of disputes over "self-determination" in the Middle East, those disputes (and the involvement of other states and terrorist organizations in them) cannot be considered the "internal affiars" of the states (and the organizations) involved.

Moral reasoning, too, leads us to conclude that the principle of state sovereignty must not be considered exceptionless. Suppose that Nazi Germany had forsworn aggression after recovering the Rhineland and the Sudentenland, and had proceeded to implement the "Final Solution" to the Judenfrage within its own internationally recognized borders. Would the principle of state sovereignty have meant that other states were forbidden to interfere in this German "internal affair"? [. . .]

Put that way, the question seems to answer itself: whatever else it might mean, the principle of state sovereignty cannot mean that states are free to engage in the indiscriminate slaughter of religious, racial, or ethnic minorities within their borders. When that is taking place, othes have a right -- perhaps even a duty -- to intervene to stop the killing.

Although written in 1994, Weigel's observation could be brought to bear on the status of Iraq and other "rogue nations" with histories of fostering terrorism.

James Turner Johnson drew attention to the question of sovereignty, humanitarian intervention and the necessity of regime change in "Using Military Force Against the Saddam Hussein Regime: the Moral Issues" December 4, 2002. Noting that the U.S. Bishops in 1993 issued a statement The Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace (USCCB Nov. 17, 1993) "declaring humanitarian intervention a duty in cases of gross human rights violations, observing that claims of sovereignty by those engaged in such violations have no absolute status in Catholic teaching, and accepting the use of force as a form of intervention," Johnson wondered "Where are these voices now? Are the rights of Iraqis less important than those of Bosnians, Kosovars, and Rwandans?" He went on to compare two distinct and conflicting notions of national sovereignty:

The Catholic bishops' position on the rights of sovereignty is rich in its implications. Catholic teaching on this reflects the idea of sovereignty found in Western political philosophy as late as the American and French revolutions, but replaced more recently by the idea of sovereignty in the Westphalian system. Under the older idea, sovereignty is an essentially moral construct; persons in sovereign authority are responsible for the good of their political community, for the "common weal." This implied establishing an order that served justice and achieved peace, along with an obligation to other political communities to support order, justice, and peace in and among them. Failure to discharge these obligations removes the rights of sovereignty. This line of reasoning is found, in different ways, in both the Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.

In contrast to this moral conception of sovereignty is that regularly associated with the Peace of Westphalia, by which sovereignty is defined by a particular territory and by recognized governmental control over it and its inhabitants. This conception may be read to grant any government immunity from interference in the way it handles its internal affairs and treats its people. Thus Slobodan Milosevic, on his first appearance before the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, denied the Court's authority to indict and try him, claiming sovereign immunity. Similarly, Saddam Hussein has insisted that weapons inspectors-and UN resolutions of any kind-not infringe on Iraq's sovereignty. On the older, moral understanding of sovereignty, though, he has forfeited the right to sovereign immunity by his tyrannical exercise of government. We already see the resurgence of this idea in the indictments handed down by the international tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Indeed, though the idea of war crimes tribunals for deposed tyrants and their regimes is relatively new, that of removing and replacing an evil regime is not at all new: consider Tanzania's deposition of Idi Amin in Uganda, Vietnam's deposition of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the United States' removal of Manuel Noriega in Panama. Regime change is not an innovation cooked up in the mind of Paul Wolfowitz; it is a feature of the international order. Not only is there no duty not to seek to effect regime change, there may in fact be a duty to seek to do so, both on behalf of the immediate victims of their cruelty and on behalf of the international order itself.

WMD's and Lack Thereof

Finally, there is something to be said on the inordinate emphasis and basis for the removal of Saddam on the possession of WMD's alone. Unfortunately enough, this emphasis has been the focus not only by various members of the Bush Administration leading up to the war, but also by anti-war protestors in their case against the war -- the reasoning being that the failure to discover WMD's in post-war Iraq points to the collective failure of U.S. intelligence, thereby "retroactively" rendering U.S. intervention in Iraq "unjust" on grounds that WMD's never existed.

This was the argument of Senator Barbara Boxer during the confirmation hearings of Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice:

Rice: It wasn't just weapons of mass destruction. He was also a place -- his territory was a place where terrorists were welcomed, where he paid suicide bombers to bomb Israel, where he had used Scuds against Israel in the past.

And so we knew what his intentions were in the region; where he had attacked his neighbors before and, in fact, tried to annex Kuwait; where we had gone to war against him twice in the past. It was the total picture, Senator, not just weapons of mass destruction, that caused us to decide that, post-September 11th, it was finally time to deal with Saddam Hussein.

Boxer: Well, you should read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period. That was the reason and the causation for that, you know, particular vote.

As a friend pointed out, Boxer's feeble attempt at historical revision is easily dispatched by a check of the Congressional record itself. The AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 includes, in addition to the "development of weapons of mass destruction" in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, charges of "brutal repression of [Iraq's own] civilian population"; refusal to "release, repatriate or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained"; "continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States" -- including the attempted assassination of President Bush, Sr. and attacks on U.S. and Coalition forces enforcing the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council; the aid and harbor of international terrorist organizations, including members of Al Qaeda . . . et al. (Weapons of Mass Distraction MysteryAchievement, January 19, 2005).

In any case, repeated violations of the U.N. Security Council resolutions are not to be taken lightly. As I. Shawn McElhinnney (rightly) insists: ("Why Those Who Hold Out For Peaceful Solutions With Iraq Are Wrong" Rerum-Novarum Feb. 9, 2003):

My arguments are that [Iraq] is in material breach, has been for over twelve years (of UN resolutions: if we count international accords then we could go back to at least 1979 if not earlier), and we cannot continue to make a mockery of the notion of "keeping the peace" if all we issue to this guy is papers saying 'this is your last warning'."

George Weigel expressed similar frustration in The Just War Case for the War (America March 31, 2003):

In the case of Iraq, the debate . . . came down to one question: how many more "final" Security Council resolutions were required to satisfy the war-decision criterion of competent authority? When Resolution 1441 was meticulously negotiated last November, everyone understood that the "serious consequences" to follow Iraqís material breach of the demand for its disarmament and its active cooperation in that disarmament meant intervention through armed force to enforce disarmament. Is it obtuse to suggest that the unanimous acceptance of 1441, by a Security Council which obviously understood what "serious consequences" meant, satisfies the criterion of "competent authority" - and precisely on the grounds advocated by those who argue for the superior competence of the U.N.? No. Absent another "final" Security Council resolution, would the use of armed force to compel Iraqi disarmament mean that brute force had displaced the rule of law in world affairs? No. It would mean that a coalition of states had decided, on just war grounds, that they had a moral obligation to take measures that the U.N., as presently configured, found it impossible to take - even though those measures advance the U.N.'s goals.

* * *

A common failure by some activists to recognize and address Iraq's long history of support for terrorism and the multiple reasons behind U.S. intervention have, regretablly, led some critics to indulge in questionable allegations at a marked variance with reality, as in the proclamation that:

"[The Iraq War] was about "vital interests" ---- to wit: oil and making Iraq free for US / UK army bases to watch over those fields, for globalist business ventures galore: Haliburton, McDonalds, Penthouse & beer (discreetly under wraps), and Islamic Disney parks, and so on" (TCRMusings, circa. Sept. 2005)

and morally-outrageous conclusions as:

The Irony of the Iraq War . . . is that according to the old Just War criteria, which, with Benedict XVI, we consider obsolete in a nuclear world, the insugency [sic] in Iraq (consistings [sic] of all factions) has strict justice on its side (though we do not approve of war in any case) since they are defending their homeland against a foreign aggressor and a puppet government. (TCRMusings, Sept. 22, 2005)

The Just War scholar James Turner Johnson has written a book examining these issues in The War To Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2005. Being one of the foremost American scholars of the just war tradition, Johnson's book will address such questions as:

"What should be the standard for pre-emptive uses of military force?
What of the other arguments the Bush Administration offered for the need to remove Saddam Hussein and restructure Iraq?
What is to be said for the future about the possibilities of fruitful relations between the cultures of the West and of Islam?"

If this post fails in its intent, perhaps Johnson's contributions in this area will bring some clarity to this discussion.

---

1. Reuters, "Hussein vows cash for martyrs." March 12, 2002. Published in The Australian, March 13, 2002, page 9.
2. Facts of Israel.com, "Chronology of Palestinian Homicide Bombings."
3. The Road to Hell Is Paved with Acts of Terror, by Deroy Murdock. National Review March 10, 2004.
4. Palestinian Terrorist Abu Abbas Arrested April 16, 2003.
5. Aide says Nidal confessed to Lockerbie bombing Nicholas Pyke. The Guardian Friday August 23, 2002.
6. Dead Terrorist in Baghdad by Michael Ledeen. National Review Online August 20, 2002.
7. Sameer N. Yacoub, "Iraq claims terrorist leader committed suicide". August 21, 2002 Associated Press dispatch published in Portsmouth Herald, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, August 22, 2002.
8. Yasin, Abdul Rahman [Profile] MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base.

• One Code to Rule Them All: "Congress owes it to America, our allies, and our soldiers to set clear standards for the treatment of detainees," by Tom Donnelly & Vance Serchuk. Weekly Standard October 4, 2005.

• Detainee Abuse Redux, by Dan Darling. Winds of Change. October 6, 2005 08:40 AM.

• "Thou Shalt Not . . .", by the Mudville Gazzette: "Much will be written about the Senate's passage of a measure codifying standards for the treatment of detainees by the US military. (For a news report on the topic, see the Washington Post story here. For blog coverage see Instapundit here)

  Before this story becomes inevitably convoluted (or "FUBAR", as we say in the military) I thought I'd present a few facts, sans opinion on the issue. As I've noted before on other topics, public discourse should start with an informed public. . . ."

• From earlier this year . . . Against Rendition: "Why the CIA shouldn't outsource interrogations to countries that torture", by Reuel Marc Gerecht. Weekly Standard May 16, 2005.

James Turner Johnson: the War to Oust Saddam Hussein

The War To Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2005. [Currently only available from the publisher's website]

From the publishers: As a leading authority on the development and application of moral traditions related to war, Johnson's analysis relates the conflict in Iraq to the broader context of the ongoing war between the West and radical Islam, the United States' "war on terrorism," and the emerging principles of preemptive military actions. After setting the context by comparing the principles of Just War to those of Jihad, Johnson provides a thorough and accessible moral analysis of the debate leading up to the war in Iraq, the implementation of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the lessons to be learned from the conflict.

The War To Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict addresses the key questions most people are asking today: What should be the standard for pre-emptive uses of military force? What of the other arguments the Bush Administration offered for the need to remove Saddam Hussein and restructure Iraq? What is to be said for the future about the possibilities of fruitful relations between the cultures of the West and of Islam?

About The Author

James Turner Johnson is a professor in the Department of Religion at Rutgers University. He has a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim Fellowships, he lives in Frenchtown, New Jersey, in Hunterdon County, near Philadelphia.

Contents

• Setting the Context: Are We Involved in a Clash of Civilizations?
  • Jihad and Just War: Ethical Perspectives on the New Face of Conflict
  • Disciplining Just War Thinking: Uses and Misuses of the Just War Idea in Recent American Debate
• The War To Oust Saddam Hussein: Before
  • The Debate Over Using Force Against the Saddam Hussein Regime: Was the Use of Force Justified?
• The War To Oust Saddam Hussein: During
  • Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Moralist's Notebook
• The War To Oust Saddam Hussein: After
  • Looking Back as a Way of Looking Ahead