REGARDING THE United States and the Iraq war, the Vatican's position is both sensible and prudent if somewhat edgy. Because the U.S. is the only temporal superpower and the Vatican is a spiritual superpower, it is well-advised that the latter address the former vigorously and effectively. No political leadership, whether national, treaty-obliged or consultative as is the United Nations, exceeds the Catholic hierarchy in offering universal and benevolent counsel to all countries.
THERE ARE other reasons compelling the United States to weigh carefully Vatican diplomatic press releases. The Vatican represents the interests of the worlds 1.3 billion Catholics of which the U.S. includes a mere 65 million. Thus the Church has a legitimate interest in promoting the effectiveness of the United Nations: Among the world's religions, only the Catholic Church sponsors a permanent delegation to the United Nations in concert with ambassadors in the majority of countries. Only the Vatican names ambassadors to represent its Christian interests.
PRESUMABLY THE Vatican realizes more than many nations the value of the United Nations as a forum. If the U.N. collapses, the effectiveness of the Vatican's powerful international voice is impaired. Any corrective the Vatican offers to the US is for our nations good and not for political gain; the Church typically urges all its members and fraternal sovereign states to attain to higher human ideals because complacency and non-reflective thinking provokes instability and disorder in the world community. Clearly the Vatican prizes dialogue, that is, a efficacious conversation between nations that materially benefits all.
CONFRONTING THE DILEMMA
FOLLOWING THE Iraqi aggression against Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel in 1991, the United States and Britain together squandered hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to confine Saddam Hussein and his murderous thugs to central Iraq and Baghdad by instituting no-fly zones, sponsoring weapons inspections and maintaining a strong defense perimeter with the help of reasonably cooperative Middle Eastern nations. For over twelve frustrating years U.S. efforts proved futile, and the United Nations mired itself in seemingly endless debate punctuated by seventeen resolutions. During this same period of time, the most petulant carping came from socialist countries which historically have been least supportive and helpful on the international level in maintaining peace and order among nations and redressing the evils of belligerent states.
THE STALEMATE of perpetual war--illustrated by the dozen years of American and British constraint of the Hussein regime--has aggravated the waste of essential military resources, the erosion of national resolve and the task of winning serious credibility in the Muslim community of nations. Confronted with the dilemma of capitulating to Hussein's psychopathic aspirations to regional terrorism or the no fly perpetuation of his despotic rule ad infinitum, the United States and Great Britain reasonably acted to extract themselves from the predicament by attacking its root: Hussein's tyrannical regime. In my opinion the "Desert Storm" military intervention merely adjourned and was never concluded. (In restrospect our government's fixation on the vocabulary of weapons of mass destruction co-opted all other considerations--philosophical, humanitarian and political.)
UNIQUE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
THE TORTUOUS and bloody 20th century witnessed the welcome development of humanitarian law which has as its raison d'etre the accountability of all governmental leaders for the welfare of their people--a sovereign answerability of governments to their own citizens concurrent with a multi-lateral responsibility shared by the governments of other nations. Regardless of other objectives pursued by the United States with respect to the Hussein abscess, it seems our president acted as well with respect to this unique development of human civilization and encouraged its elaboration in the 21st century. He desired to check the accelerating menace of Third World rogue states seeking weapons of mass destruction. He took strong measures to protect the national security interests of the United States in the post September 11, 2001 world.
UNFORTUNATELY, NOT a few socialist nations have indicated their willingness to defend to the death passivity and the sniveling which accompanies it, and their distaste for virtue and principled action. Regrettably and not surprisingly Russia, China, Germany and France preferred to act as though their lamentable histories in the Twentieth Century were imaginary and the attack on New York City September 11, 2001 as a simulation. They acted as though America was culpable for the aggregate of the modern world's history of aggression. However the United States justly maintained--albeit at times erratically and with instances of striking failure of conscience in notable areas (e.g. the "Culture of Death", Cold War hysteria, legacy of slavery, unbridled pursuit of consumer wealth, massive arms peddling etc.)--that principled conduct and its defense endure as concrete realities. From these emerges a universal vocabulary in which to conduct the affairs of nations.
NOW IS NOT SLAVE OF PAST OR FUTURE
THE IRAQI experience of Saddam Hussein's pitiless savagery bellowed an object warning to western European nations and pointedly to the heirs of Hitlerism and Stalinism, sundry tyrants in the Third World and truculent theocracies: Talk, propaganda and lies coupled with inhumane governmental policies and practices invite the decisive intervention of the world's just and humanitarian nations. Whether tyranny wears the masks of sovereignty, atheistic communism or theocracy, or masters the tools of diplomacy and negotiation is quite irrelevant--wanton brutality and violence is never credible or legitimate and is never to be tolerated by civilized nations espousing humanitarian ideals, still less by a United Nations whose very mission is instituted by the Charter of Human Rights.
BOTH THE U.S. and Great Britain served notice that principled conduct among nations takes precedence over and above politics and propaganda. Nations that renounce principled conduct also disavow the order and stability that undergirds the world community. They cannot expect to shelter their lawlessness behind pleas for diplomacy and negotiation. Now can never be the slave of past or future. Unless it wishes to remain a relic of the twentieth century, the United Nations must act to rehabilitate its credibility and relevance in the now of contemporary history. If it remains unable and or unwilling to decisively act now on behalf of world order and stability, then its mission has evaporated and the U.N. should dissolve now sans years of endless argument and a dumpster crammed with meaningless resolutions.
PARALYSIS LEGITIMIZES TYRANNY
IF THE United States and Great Britain were unwilling and or unable to bring the twelve years of Iraqi sanctions and military circumvention to a conclusive end, such paralysis of will would have effectively legitimized the tyranny of rogue states and their ruthless governments. That world leaders habitually shrug their shoulders and welcome ruthless states as political and commercial partners is inexcusable. To pervert the norms of international conduct such that homicidal regimes are granted equality with nations that affirm and protect humanitarian rights--the UN assigns them to chair its human rights committees!--assures the evisceration of those rights. Moreover just such a de facto capitulation would detonate the emergent volatile forms of anarchy and barbarity while simultaneously glorifying the stasis of passive nation states.
BASED ON our government's information and media analysis made available, a convincing majority of American citizens supported the President and his advisors, our elected representatives and certainly our troops. That said, the exigencies of Vatican diplomacy, politics and international relations serve to warn the United States to avoid self-congratulatory jingoistic enthusiasm. The citizens of the United States and its elected leaders have no interest in colonizing Iraq or any other nation. One merely need ask the socialist nations--Germany, Italy, France or Japan or whomever--to recount their 20th century wartime histories as regards this truth.
STRENGTHENED BY THIS CHARISM
AMERICANS TEND to downplay the consequences of military interventions. Nevertheless we do not relish war and the deaths of anyone whether our own young men and women in military service or citizens of any other nation. Flawed as the United States may be, we are unmatched in the world's history of great nations (including that which remains doubtful in the history of papal wars and the Holy Roman Empire) for declared and proven selflessness on behalf of the order and stability of the world's nations and their peoples. We pray that our nation may be strengthened always by this charism. As to the present: If the Vatican City were attacked, who but the United States and Britain could be expected to act immediately to defend the Holy See and Italy and bring to justice the perpetrators and their sponsor states for the sake of the world's humanity?
