To Mr. Shaw and CE:
Mr. Shaw, I am truly interested knowing why you wrote anything at all in regards to the content of this article on the Catholic Exchange web site.
POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK
Your article was so incredibly short in relationship to the weight of the subject in your headline that it had no chance of making any sort of “valid” point – and it did not.
More specifically, and as you well know, your premise began interestingly enough with the use of Jessica Lynch and as such I expected there to be some truth or even logical connection between Lynch and your claim that her “story” was initially “hype.” You go on to say, “to her great credit” describing her actions as normal.
The point is this – you have USED her to create “interest” in YOUR editorial. In other words, you failed to make your point and make it stick and at the cost of Jessica Lynch's incredible toughness. Either you know this war was a “sham” and can prove it or you're no better than the “hypothetical” war mongers you have invented in your own mind. Is your opinion, particularly without evidential support, so highly valued that readers should be moved or even influenced by your unfinished thoughts? Nobody is that good. You need to work harder instead of counting your royalties.
YOU'VE GOT YOUR DEMOGRAPHICS ALL WRONG
This is aimed more at CE, but you should know that the average Catholic is a conservative Republican or Democrat who understands what it means to stand together as one nation in times of war. If for any reason CE believes that your views on the war are moral and just, then disappointment should set in on visitors to this site. You may need to be reminded that you are able to absorb the comforts of a society that is NOT the result of free speech, but rather mostly of selfless acts of bravery and a common belief in protection of many things including free speech. If you must choose NOW to lob tomatoes into the air, I suggest you use your right to free speech with more research support.
Contrary to some, the average reader, and moreover the average Catholic reader, possesses the intellectual capacity to understand how the reporting of events relates to reality and reality is this – over 100,000 of our brothers and sisters doing what has been asked of them and with a clear conscience – while we read articles like this. If you need the evidence in your hands, then I suggest diving into deep research mode on this subject and find out what reality truly is regarding Iraq, its history in the world, the middle east and our intelligence on all of the above. If you know more about this than anyone else with CNN, FOX or any DC paper about the validity of this war, then lay it out there.
To CE, Christ went to war to gain peace and died in the process. As a Catholic, I urge you to consider adding “content quality” to the performance reviews of your editorial staff. This article may seem harmless, but it wreaks of “hype” on behalf of Shaw and causes me to reconsider the validity of the CE mission.
If world peace is part of your mission, then consider who allotted your freedom to pursue that mission – people willing to die for peace – sounds a bit like Christ's mission. Don't be fooled within your own exegesis. A famous apostle doubted Christ's mission to the point of sticking his finger in his wound to be sure. It wouldn't hurt if Mr. Shaw, insistent on blanketing the Bush administration's “war justifications” in doubt, do more research and offer that research to the discriminant readers of CE, as opposed to creating “hype” of his own. At a minimum, Shaw wasted space on your site today.
Respectfully,
J. Day
Dear Mr. Day:
Thank you for your comments. Any cursory review of our pages would reveal to you that CE has supported this war from the beginning, placing us in the uneasy position of opposing the prudential judgments of our Holy Father and most U.S. bishops on this subject. However, since Mr. Shaw is a respected and highly valued regular contributor to our site, and since his viewpoint on this subject represents that of a great number of our fellow Catholics, we published this article without regret.
Your final sentence may be correct; the rest, I believe, is a bit overheated.
In JMJ,
Tom Allen
Editor & President
Catholic Exchange
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Dear Mr. Shaw:
In response to your article, to put it simply, Nation A isn’t entitled to attack Nation B on the basis of what A thinks B might possibly do somewhere further down the line. At the very least, a just war requires a clear, demonstrable, proximate threat. There was none in Iraq.
September 11, the rise of enemies to civilization that are not “states” in the classic sense and WMD have changed the just war calculus forever.
For most of man’s history, a “proximate threat” was easily discerned and time was available to weigh options, prepare for whatever action was deemed justified and make provisions for setbacks. Those days are gone, forever.
Today, when an entity, be it a state or an organization, proclaims it’s hatred of you and your kind, seeks the means to destroy you and your kind, it must be immediately assumed that they are serious, will destroy you if able and must be dealt with immediately and completely.
The sacking of a castle, the siege of a town, the seizure of land in the battles of the past in the wars between civilizations or states is no comparison for an atomic bomb in Paris or New York, or the release of a biological/chemical attack in Washington or Bonn by a terrorist organization. Millions will die in this new age of instant death from WMD. Saddam was believed to have WMD by all of the rest of the world, including the UN, France, Germany and the Russians. He had them and used them before and vowed to use them again. He brought about his own destruction and if we value civilization, we must be prepared to respond in kind to all who take his path.
The rules have changed; to wait for an imminent, proximate threat is to ensure our destruction.
We ask nothing of other countries other than to live in peace. Other than Afghanistan and Iraq, our armies are guests of the host countries and as we have proven over the last 5 decades, we will leave the Philippines of the world when asked. And we will leave Afghanistan and Iraq when they are free, safer and in the hand’s of their own people.
But if the world will not live in peace, leave us in peace and not harbor, fund, encourage and arm enemies of civilization, then we must take the war to them, not wait for death to come unannounced to our shore.
Sincerely,
Robert Bruckner
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Dear Catholic Exchange:
I appreciated James Fitzpatrick's article entitled Pro-Aborts are Cornered. While I share some of Mr. Fitzpatrick's “apprehension”, the news from “the front” is a bit more optimistic. I am the Respect Life Coordinator for a small parish in a Dayton, OH suburb. A few short years ago, there were three abortion mills in Dayton. Thanks to the efforts of many Pro-Life individuals and groups in the area, we now have but one remaining and it is hanging by a thread.
This last holdout is owned and operated by Martin Haskell, a pioneer of partial-birth abortion. I believe that it is imperative for those of us working to promote a culture of life to remain fervently optimistic in our mission. On this day of President Bush signing a ban on partial birth abortion, we have much to be thankful for.
Blessings,
Chris Stier
Springboro, OH
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Dear Mr. Fitzpatrick:
Thanks for another wonderful article on Catholic Exchange. Your conclusion is so true; the pro-aborts *are* up to the challenge of defending infanticide. A few years ago I made a couple of trips to the Univ. of Colorado's “Womens' Weeks” to speak and expose the anti-woman, racist backround of the abortion rights movement. In one presentation I showed a video and then opened a discussion in which I tried to follow the abortion rights argument to its logical conclusion.
3 young women in the front row took the bait, and after a short while they were admitting that if we allowed people the “right” to make their own moral decisions about the value of other's lives than we had to admit that we must allow Hitler the right to make his own decisions about who should live and who should die. Their words, not mine.
The key to this dilemma you state is with the women who have had abortions. Allow them to face what they've done through mercy and compassion and you eventually have a pro-lifer. When they refuse to come face to face with it there is no wall they won't keep up, including infanticide, forced abortions, etc. No, it really isn't about the right to choose after all. What it's really about now is justifying all those children's deaths.
God bless,
Gwen Wise
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