An infamous victory

...The just-war tradition, for good or ill, began as a response to a sequence of dramatic social changes that created a situation in which the Roman Empire no longer sought the eradication of Christianity (and the extermination of Christians) but, instead, had become its protector and promoter...

...But what came of it at last...

...That, I suspect, no one will ever know in full detail...

...Quoth little Peterkin...

...Not that the general was concerned about this moral principle of limitation, however...

...In their 1983 pastoral the bishops speak of having "only begun the journey toward a theology of peace" and called upon theologians to make specific contributions to "this desperately needed dimension of our faith...

...Primary responsibility for the horrors Iraq and Kuwait have suffered lies with Saddam Hussein as instigator, but this cannot absolve those who planned, ordered, and executed one of history's ugliest wars of their guilt for the excesses committed in response...

...Already the yellow-ribboned, flag-waving frenzy of victory is giving way to more sober second thoughts and increasingly uncomplimentary comparisons with grossly unequal contests...

...new techniques for setting the air itself afire--these instruments defy both discrimination and limitation...

...At face value the resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council could be considered "legitimate authority...

...If we have reached the point where one can witness these things, perhaps even do these things, and still, though troubled, accept them, we confront the ultimate question any truly Christian theology must ask and answer: Was it for this he hung upon the cross...

...One welcome change was that people did "raise the question" during the war in the Gulf...

...never again war, spiral of struggle and violence...

...Here, too, technology presents a problem...

...This is where theology fails...

...The majority concentrated on other matters and, if they had misgivings about the morality of the war, held their tongue...

...Those who object that my application of the traditional conditions is too rigid and does not prove the war unjust miss the crucial point...

...Putting aside learned discourses and summae of the past, theologians might--like Augustine--"start from scratch...

...Consider the advice offered Christians of the Third Reich by a popular Catholic theologian during World War II: It was not the time to raise the question because a scientific judgment of its origins could not be made until the documents of both sides were available...

...Added to the one hundred thousand dead according to General Schwarzkopf's estimate of Iraqi military deaths in that blessedly brief conflict, the combination provides new and terrible evidence of the inhumanity of modern war and the utter irrelevance of the traditional "justwar" teachings...

...But neither intent nor performance could overcome the fact that the very technology of war--the weapons and the uses for which they are designed--is indiscriminate by nature...

...It mocks logic to claim that tens of thousands of bombing sorties over Baghdad and a full-scale crossing of the Saudi/Iraqi border was "defensive...

...1 June 1991:367 There remains that all-important final condition: proportionality, the requirement that the good to be achieved must outweigh the evil or harm to be done...

...Now the individual has but one course open to him--to do his best with faith in the cause o f his nation...

...The restoration of Mideast "stability" and the promises of a "new world order" were added as attractive packaging for the determination to assure "friendly" control of the area's oil reserves...

...His successors, especially John XXIII, narrowed that still further until we have John Paul II declaring (in 1982), "Today the scale and the horror of modern warfare--whether nuclear or not--makes it totally unacceptable as a means of settling differences between nations...

...When a distinguished American theologian is quoted as saying bishops should have left it "up to the people in the military and political realm professionally to make the best judgments they can and sincerely try to apply these principles," he echoes his German counterparts of World War II...

...Not even questions in his mind...

...It is the failure--actually the refusal !----of President Bush and his advisors to give priority to seeking other solutions short of war that should be enough to clinch the case against the Gulf War...

...theology must provide the answers...

...cluster bombs maiming and napalm incinerating forces cornered in dugouts and bunkers...

...In that sociological context, the Augustinian concessions represented an "entirely new attitude" and provided a welcomed accommodation to a reality in which many, perhaps most, Christians had already found it convenient to reconcile the demands of their faith with obedience to Caesar's...

...One U.S...

...This will become clearer as the actual costs are tallied-- when to the widespread physical damage in Iraq (and Kuwait) and the as-yet-uncounted totals of dead and wounded on both sides in the actual hostilities are added untold thousands of victims of the futile uprisings incited by President Bush and the CIA along with thousands more doomed to death as refugees...

...Discrimination is not the sole determinant of the justice of the means, however...

...The demand for removal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait was always there, expressed in terms of moralistic indignation that, once victory had been achieved, seemed to vanish...

...What at times degenerated to a crudely personalized contest between President Bush and Saddam Hussein gained respectability in a finely woven cloak of international unity covering a war planned by, proposed by, directed by, and fought by the United States...

...368: Commonweal...

...When a blessedly brief and regionally limited war takes so horrible a toll in human life and devastation, there can be no excuse for further delay...

...And do so assured they were fulfilling God's will ! We face a situation created by changes in the nature of war, by a technology of such inhumanity that it must no longer be accommodated with adherence to Christian principles and belief...

...Other nations provided token forces and funds, but in essence it was strictly an American enterprise...

...Credit must be given to the officially declared intent to achieve precision in the bombings and discriminate between military and civilian targets...

...Yet if ever there was a war suited to putting the traditional teaching to the test, it was Mr...

...The administration's vulnerability on this score is reflected in the unwillingness to provide an official estimate of enemy casualties, civilian or military, and its annoyance with General Schwarzkopf's "indiscretion" in making his estimate public...

...Some even advised service-eligible young people to consider becoming conscientious objectors and reminded the faithful of their moral duty to respect and support those who chose to do so...

...In their exaggerated assessment of Hussein's strength planners must have realized that these costs would far exceed the risks entailed in allowing a reasonable time for the sanctions to have full effect...

...A good case can be made that most, if not all, of the "just war" conditions were ignored or violated...

...The stated purposes kept shifting and expanding without ever being given a clear and consistent definition...

...No, little Peterkin, future historians will not record the Gulf War as "a famous victory...

...A high Air Force officer was disciplined for publicly describing what the air war could (and did) achieve...

...theology of war...

...The shocking story of the "highway of death" where panic-stricken troops in full retreat were trapped in a "killing box" and slaughtered from the air in what was jokingly compared to "a turkey shoot" and "shooting fish in a barrel" provided irrefutable evidence that not only the technology but also the execution were designed for massacre, not the "just war" of traditional theology...

...They might consider, too, the plight of that young man cited above with his haunting memories and his even more troubling conclusion: "I don't have any questions in my mind that we should have done what we did, but I will carry this forever...

...forces, Secretary of State James Baker pro366: Commonweal ceeded to construct a faqade of international participation by intensive diplomatic bargaining and sometimes dubious concessions...

...forces as the general public was led to believe, it would testify to either inexcusably inadequate intelligence operations or rampant Pentagon paranoia...

...But it is a game...

...Read in that context his last-minute appeal for peace ("...Never again war, adventure without return...

...Aggression, even in reprisal, does not automatically make for a just cause...

...Other bishops, of course, echoed the assurances of "legitimate authority" that the villainous enemy left no option but to go to war and agreed with President George Bush that the cause was "just, moral, and right...

...Similarly when "military targets" include the full-scale assault upon a society's infrastructure (usually located or at least headquartered in urban centers), the risk of excessive "collateral" civilian destruction and deaths becomes a certainty too great to justify bombings of the scale and intensity of the campaign unleashed against Iraqi cities and their inhabitants...

...The obligation to control and limit their effects to insure that no more damage or injury than necessary is done even to combatants must also be considered...

...Surely those who planned the campaign and chose the weapons and strategies must have anticipated the extent of the injury and destruction Iraq and its population would undergo...

...Real wars, alas, are never put to that test...

...Why that I cannot tell," said he: "But 'twas a famous victory...

...a war to establish beyond reasonable doubt that it does meet these tests...

...Not so with the scatter of uncounted and uncountable body fragments shoveled into unmarked desert graves...

...The unwillingness to allow a reasonable time for international sanctions already in place and having effect to succeed, coupled with the adamant refusal to even consider negotiations or support the efforts of coalition partners seeking a diplomatic solution, constitutes an explicit violation of the requirement that war be a last resort, that all other means must have been tried and have failed...

...never this war in the Persian Gulf...

...The advice cited earlier recommended obedience in blind nationalistic faith...

...Already under Pius XII the favored interpretation held that only defensive war can meet that test...

...Theologians may stretch concepts and strain logic to the limit, but any attempt to fit this fact into traditional patterns of moral discourse must inevitably fail...

...soldier interviewed by Boston's Globe confessed to being haunted daily by the memory of battlefields strewn with Iraqi soldiers' "arms and legs and pieces of their faces...

...It was this demonstration of presidential intransigence and impatience that caused some of our leading bishops to break with tradition and publicly challenge the justice of an ongoing war...

...Were the conditions of the "just war" ever honestly applied to an actual war, they would lead to behavioral conclusions identical to those required by the pacifism to which I personally subscribe...

...It is the theological language Catholics are expected to speak...

...Bodies piled high at Austerlitz and Waterloo were buried, and the grass ultimately covered all...

...Especially since those "risks" were, at best, hypothetical----on the one hand, the danger that delay might weaken the commitment and participation of coalition partners...

...deserved more of a hearing, not only in Washington, but in our major chancery offices as well...

...The injustice of Hussein's aggression is beyond challenge, hut that does not in itself constitute a just cause for a massive military response...

...Vatican II's urgent call for "an entirely new attitude toward war" remains unanswered...

...All they really need for the task is the New Testament and some pictorial and testimonial histories of recent wars...

...on the other, fear that the continued expense of maintaining large military forces on extended desert duty, coupled with morale problems that might develop, would lessen support on the home front...

...Though I do not accept the validity of the "just-war" tradition as a source of Christian moral guidance, I feel obliged to play the rhetorical game...

...indeed, it is difficult to see how success could have been anything short of a foregone conclusion...

...he conduct of the war violated the "just means" condition in several ways...

...So what should one do...

...It is for those who initiate (and support...

...Perhaps the most explicit statement of presidential intent was "kicking Hussein's ass" and this, deserved though it might have been, is not enough to meet the test of right intention...

...This too, though, was flawed by the deceit and manipulation which reduced the adoption of the resolutions to a thinly veiled and carefully orchestratedfait accompli in the Bush administration's determined drive toward war...

...Human beings created in the image of God have become appendages to (or victims of) competing killing machines...

...After persuading a none-too-eager Saudi Arabia to "invite" the U.S...

...this interpretation would go beyond that to grant the privilege of making the moral judgment to Hitler and his generals...

...Poets can pose the questions...

...A few, more imaginative, introduced new qualifications ("just but unwise") or categories ("an imperfect just war...

...The final touch was the reluctantly sought and no less reluctantly given congressional vote endorsing the use of force...

...Southey, The Battle o f Blenheim he thousands of Kurds and Shiites already killed and the thousands yet to die as victims of hunger and disease are "collateral" victims of the Gulf War...

...Bush's war in the Gulf...

...The reasonable expectation of success was certainly present...

...The results of "precise" massive bombings become impossible to calculate in advance and probably no less difficult to assess after the fact...

...Members of the professional theological fraternity followed suit and, except for a few dissenters, were able to find (if necessary, create) flexibility in interpreting the conditions so as to avoid burdening Catholics with too troubling a crisis of conscience...

...With Wilfred Owen it is fair to ask: "Was it for this the clay grew tall...

...What is more urgently needed is a new (perhaps a resurrected...

...The rush to war, then, represented the choice of certain evil over potential inconveniences that might arise...

...It is a recurring lesson of human history that injustice can give rise to still greater injustice and, when nations are involved, usually will...

...One assumes, too, allowance had been made for a far greater number of U. S. casualties in ground combat than actually occurred...

...Now it faced the threat of invasion by barbarian hordes...

...By even the most generous of interpretations, this does not meet the test of true proportionality...

...His obvious dismay that the cease-fire deprived him of the opportunity to complete the "battle of annihilation" already in his grasp illustrates how little weight was assigned to theological niceties in military planning or execution...

...If those charged with the responsibility for preparing and planning for this war were really as concerned about the military threat posed by Iraq to the U.S...

...and this was matched to a commendable extent by performance...

...As more of the grim facts emerge, it may even become a cause for national shame...

...Even more remarkable, they included Catholic bishops who publicly voiced the judgment it was not GORDON C. ZAHN is the national director of The Center on Conscience and War in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and the author of German Catholics and Hitler's Wars (University of Notre Dame Press...

...The technology of modem war has brought us back to the choices faced by Christians in their pre-Constantinian commitment to pacifism and nonviolence...

...a just war...

...They may have succeeded to some extent, but their accommodations introduced the flexibilities and modifications that have permitted Christians ever since to kill on either or both sides of virtually every war that comes along...

...One may grant that Augustine and others who later added their elaborations and embellishments intended to preserve the essence of earlier teachings by restricting the practices of violence and war...

...Day-long carpet bomb raids shaking the earth...

...If, as reported, 40 percent of the "smart" bombs miss their target, sometimes by as much as five miles, the performance record of "dumb" bombs (several times the tonnage of the former) will be worse...

...The promised restoration of the Kuwaiti emirate, though something of an embarrassment, was also a constant...