[Announce] NCR and the Iraq War

[Robert Waldrop]

www.justpeace.org/onpilgrimage.htm 

I guess its bad form to criticize someone just after they've devoted two full pages to a really nice story about one of our projects, the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, but "speaking truth" is one of the foundational axioms of our little Catholic Worker house. And we do that especially to those we love and care for. 
Which is why I had to read it twice, to make sure I understood what was being said in the "Petraeus offers dose of reality", September 21, 2007 editorial from the National Catholic Reporter. . . "It is with great reluctance that we would argue against a precipitous withdrawal." But that's what they go on to do. "If a politically motivated Democratic call for immediate withdrawal were heeded, it would bring an end to our military presence in Iraq as misguided as its beginning." They don't address the moral issues but instead focus on the "real-politik" - and their editors speak from the viewpoint and class solidarity of the imperialists. The poor have no say in the matter.

I should not be so astonished. 

The idea that moral law applies to the Iraq War is as marginal as it gets these days. It is held only by a few religious, the Catholic Worker movement, Pax Christi, the peace churches, the sectarian left, the libertarians, and Bishops Botean and Gumbleton. The Catholic media and commentariat, and the U.S Bishop's Conference, have all abandoned the truth of the Gospel of life as it applies to war in favor of allegiance to the imperialist cause..

It bears repeating again and again: the Iraq War is not a morally neutral affair. It has an objective moral reality. It is not a "both-and" situation, it is "either-or". It cannot be just and unjust at the same time. By the standards of the Catholic Church, the Iraq War was and is today an unjust war. Willing participation in that war is the moral equivalent of willing participation in an abortion. When we praise, cooperate with, and otherwise support such evil, when we refrain from speaking out against it, we gain some measure of responsibility for it. The evil of which we speak is the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom have been civilians, and the complete destruction of two nations.. 

Imperialism is a national delusion of superiority. It is the confidence that others cannot manage their affairs without our assistance. It cloaks tawdry grabs for resources in the language of "freedom". The victims don't matter - they are poor, non-white and therefore by definition, not-quite-human, so it is morally licit for us to kill them to prove our point and secure enough gasoline to keep our SUVs on the road. No one would admit this publicly, but in this situation, our actions speak louder than our words.

Our presence in Iraq daily marginalizes the responsibilities of the Iraqi people for their own situation. I want them to be free and safe, but the only way that that will happen is when they do it for themselves. Have we so quickly forgotten history? The United States gave Saddam chemical warfare technology, money and guns. We encouraged and gave material support for the Iraq-Iran war. We maintained a vicious embargo against the Iraqi civilian economy which killed a million people, half of them children! We invaded their country twice, and caused or contributed to a death toll that now numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Millions are now refugees. If we continue to help the Iraqi people in this way, in just a few years there won't be any more Iraqi people left alive.

Mary promised that the proud, the arrogant, and the rich would be thrown down, scattered, and humbled, and there is no one in the modern world who meets those qualifications better than the United States of America. Empire always ends in death and destruction for the imperials, and that will happen to us too. We are in denial if we think we can escape the consequences of our actions. "Sow not in furrows of injustice, lest you reap a seven-fold harvest."



Bob Waldrop

Romero Catholic Worker


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