I am not Buying all The Arguments I see in the Catholic Blogshpere on Iraq

THe Strata-Sphere blog is a site I go too often. He has a post on how those that are going agaisnt Bush on Iraq cannot connect the dots.

The issue of Iraq is often discussed in the Catholic blogsphere. However for many it is always March 19 2003. That is the day before we went into Iraq. The discussion always hinges it seems if the entry of our armed forces into Iraq was proper. As I keep saying no matter what your stand we are way past that point.

I hate to say it but many people seem to think that any problems such as wide spread genocide, chaos, and political instability that would happen by immediate withdrawal can just be absolved by saying "well it was Bush's fault". Well, I take the viewpoint that we cannot be like Pontius Pilate and wash our hands and dress that up as some great Catholic morality.

The fact is that the Catholic as well as political blogsphere has got to take note of the whole situation and all the facts on the ground. Many months ago we were starting to see true progress in Iraq. That is in Al Anbar provience. Something unthinkable a year ago. What has happened there is quite breathtaking. We are now seeing similar results in in the areas where the surge is taking place. However this is rarely noted.

Were there mistakes made? Heavens yes!!! But I generally have more of an interest in correcting mistakes than making sure heads role and SOMEONE PAYS. Sadly, like in the aftermath of Katrina we see the same political situation here.

The turning point in my view was that George Bush finally found his General. This is similar to Lincoln finally finding Genral Grant to lead the Union armies.. In Bush's case his "Grant" was General Petraeus. However, when the history of this war is written I expect we shall find that it was not even Genral Petraeus that made real significant contribution. That man is not even a American. He is a retired Australian colonel by the name of. David Kilcullen. He is THE man in many ways. He is advising those in the military and at the height of political power. He is seen as such a asset because he does not have any political bone in this fight. His fingerprints are all over the latest success we see.

At some point , the success and the trends of what have been seeing in Iraq the past few months must be factored into the whole moral decsion making. I was not very hopeful a year ago. Now my attitude has changed. We are starting to see coalitions that were formed to fight AQ in Iraq become lasting ones. In fact the barbarity of the terrorist have caused coalitions and agreements between shia and sunni that I would have thought impossible a year ago.

Michael Yon I think is a must read for anyone that is trying make heads or tails of what we are doing in Iraq and on the WOT as a whole. HE does not sugar coat things and lord knows he has been critical of this adminsitration. But a post he made in early July was instructive.

The big news on the streets today is that the people of Baqubah are generally ecstatic, although many hold in reserve a serious concern that we will abandon them again. For many Iraqis, we have morphed from being invaders to occupiers to members of a tribe. I call it the “al Ameriki tribe,” or “tribe America.”
I’ve seen this kind of progression in Mosul, out in Anbar and other places, and when I ask our military leaders if they have sensed any shift, many have said, yes, they too sense that Iraqis view us differently. In the context of sectarian and tribal strife, we are the tribe that people can—more or less and with giant caveats—rely on.
Most Iraqis I talk with acknowledge that if it was ever about the oil, it’s not now. Not mostly anyway. It clearly would have been cheaper just to buy the oil or invade somewhere easier that has more. Similarly, most Iraqis seem now to realize that we really don’t want to stay here, and that many of us can’t wait to get back home. They realize that we are not resolved to stay, but are impatient to drive down to Kuwait and sail away. And when they consider the Americans who actually deal with Iraqis every day, the Iraqis can no longer deny that we really do want them to succeed. But we want them to succeed without us. We want to see their streets are clean and safe, their grass is green, and their birds are singing. We want to see that on television. Not in person. We don’t want to be here. We tell them that every day. It finally has settled in that we are telling the truth.
Now that all those realizations and more have settled in, the dynamics here are changing in palpable ways.

The dynamaics are changing and it needs to be recognized. There are of course a million challenges ahead. The biggest being that the oil revenue sharing agreement must be passed in the Iraq Parliament and that Iranian interference must stop NOW.

Let me point out one other newsworthy event that didn't make the news here.

An American withdrawal from Iraq would cause bloodshed and leave the country dominated by radical militias, Iraqi politicians from across the parliamentary spectrum have warned.
Even Sunni Arab leaders - who in the past have advocated an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of foreign troops - are among those now supporting the US troop presence and a gradual pullout over time. Many Sunni leaders say the withdrawal should be conditional on the progress of the Iraqi security forces.
Only members of parliament allied with radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are now pushing for an immediate pull-out. Analysts say Sadr’s rivals for power fear such radical militias will be able to seize control if Washington does not stay longer and train up the government’s forces.

So both Sunnis and Shia are against immediate and unconditional withdrawal while the forces that are aligned with the crimes against humanity we see are all for it. Where in heavens name does this fit into our Catholic moral choices as to what to do. Well it needs to fit somewhere.

People who hold my position are often criticized non-stop in some elements of the Catholic blogsphere as selling out our Catholic faith. I will continue to let them challenge me and I shall continue to listen to them. However, they should note that at times their condemations sound quite hollow to us. They presume as one poster in the comment section at Vox Nova said that we "worship at the altar" of war.

I think the Anchoress said it nicely at the astart of the year:
The day before the president’s speech, I got email from some people asking me why I’m such an idiot, how I can reconcile Christianity with war, how I could reconcile the present engagement with the “Just War” musings of Aquinas, etc.
The day after the speech, I had a friend urge me to perform an exercise of “reassessment” regarding my views.
I found myself writing essentially the same response to several of those folk - the ones worth answering (here’s a hint, if you want me to respond to an email of yours, don’t call me names or wish my kids dead.)
The response is this: When did Jesus say there should be no war? Jesus recognised that some things simply were what they were. He was, in some ways, the ultimate pragmatist; “render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21) and “”A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master.” (Matthew 10:24) Scripture says “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven/A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant./A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build.” (Eccl 3;1-3)
No sane person likes war. But war sometimes comes. And the “Just War” theology is very clear that war may be Just when it is waged to ultimately spare more lives than it takes, to stop an inexorable advancement of evil.
There is some indication, given the behavior of the Islamofascists since the 1970’s that their advancement is inexorable. And to my way of thinking, when that advancement is indiscriminate about who it kills or maims, when it oppresses women, hangs gays and talks about exterminating Jews - or any sort of genocide - well…I’ll call it evil and answer to God as to whether I got that call right.
Here’s the thing. Do you folks urging me to “reassess” things really think I haven’t thought about it and prayed hard about it and wondered if my thoughts and feelings (and for that matter, my stubborn loyalty to the vision I see within it) were not two parts knee-jerk reaction to the naysayers and one part la-laland? Good lord. Of course I’ve rethought my take on the war - many times. I can see where the damn mistakes have been made, particularly in the past year. I don’t think this president has been faultless - in some ways he’s been stunningly inept, and (as I’ve written somewhere on my blog) my feeling is that both Cheney and Rumsfeld should have asked to resign right after the ‘04 elections. And I think the WH in general has been a communications nightmare.
I also think this is a WH under seige in an unprecedented way. Imagine a corporation or a network trying to improve or contain a situation while its members are leaking everything to the press, and then consider how much more difficult it would be for them to take constructive action in the face of that. I do think this WH has allowed itself to be distracted in its management of the war by a lot of pissant ankle biters who are not serious about anything at all beyond politicizing things and acquiring power.
Whenever I think about how I feel about the war and where it’s going - and remember, I have a kid who may be welcomed into these troop numbers before this is all over, so I have some skin in this game - I come down to the realization that this is not a war like any other because this is not an enemy like any other. This is an enemy that does not wear a uniform, it hides in the crowd, it fights with no code and concurs with no convention. It doesn’t mind hiding behind women and children or storing arms in churches. If this enemy takes a prisoner it slaughters him on camera, and with great glee.
Their battlefield is literally EVERYWHERE. What do they want? They don’t want land - even giving them Israel would not appease them, because all of this is not about Israel. This is an enemy that says, “you love Pepsi, we love death. And we are happy to die as long as we are killing you, too.” It is an unconventional enemy, and unconventional war, and we have absolutely nothing to offer within a diplomatic solution. This is an enemy that will take your diplomatic solution and use it against you, because it is not fighting out of loyalty to a king who may be appeased…they’re fighting and using terrorism as a means of movement, to advance an idea the bottom line of which is “Die. Or, you know, convert. But mostly die.”
Europe won’t fight this enemy - can’t fight it and doesn’t wish to. She is already defeated demographically and I remember the quote from the Dutch fellow who said, “I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”
When Islamofascism rolls in to occupy Paris (it is very nearly there) it will not do so with tanks. It will do so with burquas for the women, swords for the gays and calls for prayer for everyone. What do you think France will do? What is it doing, already?
Who will fight, then? Just us…and the UK for a little while longer, and the Aussies. We have one last great hope to defeat this advancing ideology and that hope is to give the non-fascists a taste of liberty and democratic process, and an oppotunity to enter into the marketplace of goods and ideas. Yes, ugly materialism and ugly capitalism go bad eventually, but we can worry about that later. Right now…if we can whip a little industry onto folks who are not currently allowed to dream or design or discuss…maybe they will stop raising kids who feel like the only way they can be important and successful is by the measure of the mullah and the martyr.
What is the alternative? No one ever tells me what the alternative is. It can’t be more ducking heads in the sand and hoping things level off to some sort of “managable chaos.” That was the ninties. It’s a new century and it demands a willingness to do more than invite terrorists into the WH to “talk” only to find them walking away when they’re offered 95% of what they “said” they wanted, utterly belying any stated willingness to seek “diplomatic solutions.”
What is the solution? If Bush fails in going “all in” and we pull out, okay…we’ve brought our sons and daughters home and basically rendered meaningless our 3000 honorable military deaths. Iraq will immediately fall and the 21century killing fields will commence.
And what, then, is the solution for dealing with worldwide terror? Until someone can tell me what is the workable alternative to war, can tell me how to keep our children from having to live in a world where free speech is lost to intimidation, cathedral crosses are replaced with minarets, women are stoned to death for the crime of being raped, gays are hung for being gay and jews are simply left for slaughter, I simply can’t find the answer.
So, there you go. I assess and reassess and in the end, I see an enemy that cannot be fought conventionally, and I see a vision that maybe is foolish, maybe is impossible. But maybe, just maybe, if it works, if Iraq - in the center of the Middle East - can sustain its incipient democracy and flourish…then the whole world changes, for the better. We have to dare to dream it. We have to dare to believe it.Supporting the war is not about “giving Bush a win” and decrying it is not about “giving Bush a loss.” It’s about all of us.
With only two alternatives on the table — fight or flight — the debate really comes down to questions of context. One is geopolitical: Just how important is this war beyond Iraq? Another is political in the domestic sense: Is this just George W. Bush’s war, or is it a war in which the whole nation has a stake?
If we go down, we all go down together, the president will not “fail” in a vacuum.
We we have to figure out what happens if we surrender, and what happens if we win. Because all of this does not “go away” in two years when Bush leaves office. Islamofascist terrorism was already business-as-usual before Bush came into office. It will be there when he leaves, and for a very, very long time after, unless we hold fast now, and see this thing through.

It should be noted this was written before we had any early indication of the success of our new tactics. Those tactics go way beyond the battlefield by the way.

So to those Catholics that disagree I welcome the discourse. Just do not assume that we are all Right wing Nationalist idiots sacrificing our Catholicism on the Altar of the God of War.