There is nothing wrong with being partisan. Usually I am, when I write a column. But not this time. I am not being coy. I have a question to ask both the Catholics on the right and on the left who oppose the war in Iraq: What follows if we accept their advice?
I know: the labels "right" and "left" do not apply neatly in this regard. But I don't think anyone will object to my using them as a shorthand of sorts. What I propose to consider is an issue – related to but distinct from the war – that is taking shape because of the give-and-take between these Catholic critics and supporters of the Bush administration's handling of the war. It is an issue that will have to be dealt with someday soon, like it or not.
By "right-wing" critics of the war I mean people such as Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran. Their opposition is not rooted in the conviction that the application of American military force in the world is evil in and of itself, or a consequence of capitalism's internal contradictions. They are not pacifists. Nor fans of Michael Moore. They do not charge that Bush and Cheney are sending young Americans to their deaths to further the interests of Halliburton or some shadowy agents of the military-industrial complex. They oppose the war because they do not think it is in America's national interests and because it seems to them a clear case of the kind of preventive war the Vatican has condemned in recent years.
The "left-wing" Catholic critics take a different tack. Some do see the United States as the villain in the piece. They share key assumptions with the liberation theologians of the 1970s and 1980s. They view the war as an American attempt to shape the world for corporate interests and "Texas oil money." Unlike the "right-wing" critics, they would not be willing to back the war if it could be demonstrated that it serves American national interests. They do not see America as a force for good in the world. Rather, they hold the country to be fundamentally flawed by its capitalist, racist and xenophobic roots.
Other Catholics on the left oppose the war mainly because of pacifistic premises. For them, all war is evil and diplomacy always to be preferred to the use of military force. They are confident that countries and leaders who are currently viewed as our enemies can be brought around to a more reasonable and conciliatory stance if the United States no longer threatens them with its military might. These critics would prefer to live with the threat of Iraq, Iran and North Korea armed with nuclear weapons than to give their support to the death and destruction that would follow upon a war waged to stop them from going nuclear. It would not matter to them if Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction. The dead Iraqis and bombed out infrastructure count for more with them than that prospect.
Not that these pacifistic Catholics think the proliferation of nuclear weapons a good thing. Groups such as the Catholic Worker Movement and Pax Christi are on record as favoring nuclear disarmament. They call for the United Nations to take the lead in achieving this goal, and see the United Nations as mankind's best hope for promoting a world where all nations will cooperate in a quest for peace and human development. They bristle at the claim that the United States has a responsibility as the "world's only superpower" to retain its nuclear weaponry and use its muscle to decide which countries have the right to join the nuclear club.
This brings us to the bottom line: I submit that Catholics who oppose the war need to say more, especially those I have labeled "left-wing." The "right-wing" critics do not oppose the application of force when it can be demonstrated that America's national interests are at stake or when we face an imminent threat. The left-wing critics do. They want to rely on diplomacy and the United Nations to deal with situations such as those that we face in dealing with Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
O.K. Then what do they propose we do if those countries, and perhaps someday Syria, Egypt and Turkey, tell the United Nations diplomats to take a walk on the issue of nuclear proliferation? That is not a far-fetched scenario. What if virtually every country in Asia and South America goes nuclear? What if Iran begins to build a missile system that targets Israel and the capitals of Western Europe? What if North Korea builds a system that directs its missiles at Japan?
One possible answer is the strategy we used against the Soviet Union and Communist China: nuclear deterrence, MAD, mutually assured destruction. We could let all these countries build their missile systems and then threaten to wipe them off the map if they ever used them, hoping that such a balance of terror would keep the peace. The problem with that is the Catholic left is already on the record in opposition to MAD, to the immorality of wiping out millions of civilians in a counter-attack against a nuclear strike. This was the central debating point of Catholic theologians on the left all during the Cold War. It was why the Berrigans and the nuns who followed them went around looking for nuclear facilities to trash. It was what Catholic peace protestors meant when they carried the placards saying "Better Red than Dead."
And Rome is with them on this one. The Church opposes the notion of killing millions of civilians in a nuclear strike, even if launched in response to a nuclear attack against us. I have heard Pat Buchanan make the case that we could have contained Saddam in the "same way we did Red China and the Soviet Union." That is a tough row to hoe. How would the argument go? That we should be with Rome in opposition to preventive war, but ignore the Church on the morality of mutually assured destruction?
Some scenarios to consider: What if Iran were to wipe out much of Israel in a nuclear attack? Morally, what would be the appropriate response, for Israel and the United States? Diplomacy? To what end? To convince them not to do the same thing to anyone else? What if Kim Jong Il or his successor begins selling nuclear weapons to terrorist groups around the world, and if one of those groups uses its nuclear weapon to blow up Chicago or New York? Is diplomacy to be our only answer? To convince them not to do the same to Philadelphia or San Francisco?
It must be stressed that one cannot respond to these questions by saying none of these things will ever happen. The world has seen a Genghis Khan, a Hitler and a Stalin. There are men capable of thinking the thought of using nuclear weapons to achieve their national or ideological goals. Those who are opposed to using conventional American military power in a preventive strike to keep those weapons out of the hands of people such as Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – and who also would oppose the application of the policy of mutually assured destruction to contain them if they do develop nuclear weaponry – have an obligation to come forward with a way to deal with this dilemma.
I am not setting up a straw man. If both preventive war to stop nuclear proliferation and nuclear deterrence are off the table, what do we do if diplomacy and good will do not work with the Iranian mullahs and Kim Jong Il?
Do we have no choice but to put ourselves at the mercy of men such as these – and then trust in God and prayer and hope for the best? There may be something noble about an individual who takes such a position; someone who proclaims he is too proud to fight and takes moral comfort in the proposition that he would rather die than give his assent to either preventive wars or the threat of mutually assured destruction carried out in his name.
Maybe. But it is not the same for national leaders. They are not put into office to respond to those who threaten us with a sigh and a sorrowful shrug of the shoulders, not when the world is still populated by men such as those who bombed the World Trade Center. If militant Islamists raise the ante and threaten the world with nuclear attack, should our response be, "Do with us what thou wilt"?
