Tuesday, November 6, 2007

More Success In Iraq Alert-Time To Update Our Catholic and Christian Thinking?

AJ at The Strata-sphere has done a good job reporting on the news we are not hearing out of Iraq.

Posts from the last few days

A Full Work Week Without Coalition Combat Deaths In Iraq

How Many Success Stories In Iraq Will It Take For The Left To Succumb?

AP Strains To Find Dark Cloud In Surge Successes

More Metrics On Success In Iraq
All are filled with good links.

Now it is not over in Iraq by a long shot. But goodness when is this going to be incorporated into peoples thinking? When is this going to be incorporated into the thinking process of Christians and Catholics that yell this is an unjust war.

I wrote before:
"Despite the heated objects of some vocal Catholic bloggers, I support the surge in Iraq 110 percent. I find the current analysis of what we should be doing in Iraq by some Catholic bloggers to be really limited. It rarely it seems to get past if the initial entry into the conflict was morally correct . BIG NEWS WE ARE FAR PAST THAT.
Take for a example the American Civil War. There are some that try to say the North invaded the South on unjust grounds. I disagree with that in theory but it is claimed. For instance I hear: "You know it really wasn't about Slavery!!!" Well, while it is true that there were various motives perhaps the war as it prolonged became very much about Slavery. I am pretty sure that a man fighting for 2 years from Maine was not risking his life for the concept of UNION alone.

The purpose of the war became elevated and more clear. Stick in the "it is just about oil argument here".Mistakes have been made in Iraq no doubt. However if Christian and Catholic bloggers wish to delude themselves that washing our hands of the situation like Pontius Pilate is moral I shall have to combat that. Basically, that seems to be the rhetoric on withdrawal that I here from them."

Later I wrote:
"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".


Well here we are!!! At some point people must look at the news in a non biased way.
Professor Parsi, an instructor in international politics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan , stated after a horrific terrorist attack by AQ in Iraq this past August said:
"Such a spectacular strike against a small minority held to be heretical by many proponents of fundamentalist and radical Sunni Islam (but who are not necessarily accessories to terrorism) has, above all, the precise meaning of restating the nature of the struggle in which the followers of al-Qaeda are engaged in Iraq. This struggle is a jihad, a holy war. It is not a war of national liberation, nor a war against American imperialism. With the massacre of August 14, the members of al-Qaeda wanted to reassert the extent of their war in Iraq, of their presence in that country. And the dimension of the violence functioned to emphasize, in communicative terms, al-Qaeda's capacity to impose its war over that of all others: the pro-Iranian Shiites and the followers of the "Mahdi army," Ba'thist insurgents and Sunni guerrillas financed by the Saudis."

That was written in a front page editorial in the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, "Avvenire." I suggest that the fact it appeared in that publication has some significance.
People of good faith can disagree with this issue. However I think it is time for a honest reevaluation of where we are at.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the post; very insightful. By the way, you might be interested in the Wounded Warriors Project. It's a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness for U.S. troops severely wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. It really puts a face on the cost of this conflict. Here's a link:

http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/aarwebshow

Thanks,
Jeff