Why Iraq Matters

If you are like the rest of mainstream America, you have probably asked the very valid question of why we are still involved in Iraq. Many influential people with much greater intelligence than me believe we should never have gotten involved in the first place. After all, what was the real threat? A penny ante dictator with a mythical cache of WMD who loved to sword-rattle and got a kick out of high stakes brinksmanship? Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni was one of many well-placed individuals who knew that Iraq did in fact have WMD--at least prior to our 2003 invasion--and possessed the capability to quickly convert its conventional weapons to WMD wielding capability. However, by the time of the invasion, it is the going thinking that Saddam had successfully removed his WMDs out of the country and no longer appeared a threat. I will not challenge this assertion, though it is clear that he did in fact possess some weapons of mass destruction at the time of our invasion.

If I am not mistaken, the whole point of WMD possession is that one does not need to have a lot of it to be a threat. So, why no one was excited over the fact we found any is still a mystery to me. Well, not really. The fact is that the media did not want to highlight anything that would make their agenda look bad. O.K., so Hussein did not appear to have as much as, say, China or North Korea, but should we not be concerned that Hussein had any at all, especially since he had already demonstrated he would use them, say, against the Iranians (1980) and the Kurds (1990)?

What, I will challenge, however, is that although Saddam Hussein did not appear to be a massive threat on the world stage, he had already proven that he could upset the stability in the middle east (invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia 1990). It is clear, as well, that he was not afraid to launch weapons against Israel (1990). Still, all that seems to have been forgotten by all. Same country. Same dictator. Same madman. Different year. Now it longer matters?

Did we emasculate Hussein's ability to continue the WMD threat prior to 2003? Could we have taken a more limited approach to dealing with Saddam Hussein, say, conduct an air campaign and leave it at that (as we did in Dec 1998)? Would this not have saved lives, kept stability in the terroristic world of Iraq, and maintained our goal of regional stability in the middle east? Can it be argued that by occupying Iraq, all we did was create an insurgency that is now focused more than it would have been prior to our invasion of Iraq? While I won't say the answer is a blanket, "no", I do believe the answer remains a qualified "no". Those who buy these arguments fail to consider the misery of the lives of the many in Iraq and in many other areas of the world (like China, North Vietnam, North Korea) who do not even experience the freedom to speak out against their oppression. (No, Virgina, contrary to Dan Brown's bizarre beliefs, the Catholic Church does not hold its adherents hostage and show up in the middle of the night to torture us on the rack if we hold heretical beliefs...even though that's the way I would do it. It's just a darned good thing that I am not Pope. All that was 500 years ago, and it was mostly laws created by corrupt Catholic politicians with the approval of bad bishops...kind of like what anti-life, John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi are to our Congress and what Archbishop Weakland was to Milwaukee and Bishop Hubbard is to the diocese of Albany today. Time to get over it. So, what's Islam's problem?)

It seems to have been forgotten that in Dec 1998, President Clinton, by a change of administration policy, officially sought to remove Saddam Hussein from office. The only difference between Clinton and President Bush on this point is that President Bush got the job done. Clinton tried to do it hurling laser guided missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and other pinpoint weapons against Hussein, but failed to remove him. Obviously, a bombing campaign was not going to work. Oops, CNN forgot to remind us of that, didn't they.

As Americans, what we hear from CNN are pat, party-line soundbites by people whom CNN finds to say what they want them to say or cannot say otherwise for fear that, for example, a Hussein Terror Squad would show up at their door in the middle of the night, steal them away to some sweat box in the desert, and slowly torture them to death. (Has the reader ever seen the video clips of the terror squads forcing their victims to blow themselves up with hand grenades?) Why hasn't the media shown us these clips? Because the media, in its agenda against all things Bush, doesn't want us to see the ugly side of life in these countries. Oh, don't get me wrong, life is grand in these places so long as one disavows a Catholic or other Christian faith. Truth doesn't matter so long as one stays distracted with material things and entertainment and all the things that don't lead us to focus on the eternal nature of things we will all one day face when we pass from this life. Things that God desires for us, that is, the Truth about how we ought to live our lives and the true peace it would bring us if we truly lived it in Christ Jesus.

So, then, why does Iraq matter? It matters because the people of Iraq matter. It matters because freedom matters---at least the freedom to explore another reality than what Islam has to offer. It matters because Christ taught us that God wants all of us to know true freedom and live in true peace, not in a forced religious context, but because we have chosen it for ourselves in freedom. If we become Catholic, it is because the faith has resonated with the depths of our souls in a profound relationship with Jesus Christ, not because it has been forced upon us. God calls us to live freely to be able to discern the fullness of truth, but that truth cannot be found in fear and oppression.

I am not saying that Catholic Church knows or possesses all truth, but rather that it has the assurance from Jesus Christ that of all the ontological truth that God has revealed to us, it is best known through what he has revealed to the Church. Nor am I saying that sciences and other disciplines have nothing to offer, for rather the opposite is true. It is a matter of Catholic teaching and belief that the Holy Spirit is constantly revealing new things to mankind (cf. the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes). To explain this further is a long and complicated discussion which goes outside the scope of this article, so I will not discuss it further here. The main point is that regardless of how secular critics judge the overthrow of the Hussein government, and America's intervention thereof, it was morally the right thing to do. Separate is the issue of whether our present course of action to restore peace and stability in Iraq is the right means to that end. That issue is highly debatable, and I leave it to greater minds than mine to settle that question. On this point, I do believe there are many legitimate criticisms of the Bush administration, including whether President Bush well-scrutinized the post-invasion course of action using all the right people or not, or whether there even was a well-thought out plan for restoring the balance of power. What should remain uncontested, however, is the moral rightness of removing despots from power---Kim Il Sung take note.

The problem of allowing Iraq to continue to repress its people from the exploration or discovery of other faiths remains. At issue is that its constitution takes as its principles the laws of the Koran. One can argue that U.S. law takes its principles from the ten commandments. However, while the Old Testament of the Bible advocates the slaying of those who offend God, Jesus Christ supplants the law of "eye for an eye" with "turn the other cheek". (In fact, in Catholic interpretive principles of the bible, the Old testament is always read and interpreted in light of the Gospels and the New Testament.) On the other hand, while more moderate adherents of Islam profess toleration of other religions, the Koran does not. The Koran has no New Testament written by Mohammed that in any way corrects his edict that the infidel that does not submit to Islam must die. In fact, he orders death for those who will not "submit" to the faith. Osama Bin Laden and all the other Jihadists are merely taking their religion to its logical conclusion. Thus, it is not possible for those who profess Islam in a government that uses the Koran for the basis of its law, at least in a rigid interpretation, to explore the freedom of the Catholic faith or any other form of Christianity. This remains the problem with the more fundamental sects of Islam who remain in power in Iraq. It would be one thing if Islamic leaders would allow a true toleration for the proliferation of other faiths, but Islamists precisely fear this expansion of belief as a threat to their way of life. Even in more moderate countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, Catholics are politically and socially marginalized, and at least mildly persecuted.

I am saddened to say, however, that these Islamic leaders have a legitimate concern, because while the nature of the Catholic faith, when practiced at its essence (i.e., "let man have dominion over the earth" where dominion is interpreted as "stewardship", cf. Gen 1:26) would lend itself to the simplicity of life and culture so rightly desired by Muslims, the Protestant Christian traditional interpretation sees in this passage a license to exploit the resources of the world for one's personal benefit (i.e., dominion interpreted as exploitation). This is not to say that the Catholic Church has always understood dominion as stewardship, for obviously it has not. Yet, as Christ stated in John 14:26 that the Holy Spirit would guide the Church to all truth (via the apostles), so has this idea of stewardship vs. exploitation been an ever greater emerging concept in the Church since the time of Francis of Assisi (1192-1222 A.D.). (Thus, it is ironic here that it was St. Francis of Assisi himself who brokered the peace deal between the Sultan and the Catholic Crusaders in July 1219 which ended the fifth crusade. The Sultan was so impressed by Francis's humility that he saw the truth lived genuinely in Francis. It was because of that peace deal, that it is the Franciscans and only the Franciscans whom, to this day, the Muslims allow to have the charge of the Catholic quarter of the crucifixion site of Jesus Christ in the Holy Land. Maybe, we ought to let the Franciscans broker the peace in Iraq.) Thus, the versions of Christianity that are understood by Muslims today are either the outdated Crusading Catholics of 300 years ago, or the exploitative resource for personal gain version understood by a waning mainstream Protestant community in contemporary America. Far from either of these is the reality is that the United States exists in a post-Christian condition where our values are drawn from a secular media culture that pervades every aspect of our lives. Parents who often are too permissive or who obviously see no moral problem with the culture let the problematic elements of the culture raise their children. Our culture is then exported via internet and satellite television to the rest of the world, which, in the case of those cultures and peoples that still have some semblance of a moral compass in terms of family rebel against it, and thus movements like the Taliban are generated and embraced.

So, does this mean we are supposed to give up and go home from Iraq because we cannot get it right? No, because even though our culture has many problematic elements, and is in many ways, truly a lost culture, the one thing we have is the freedom to be what we are--something that Iraq still does not have. A careful reading of the nature of God, as revealed in the books of both the Old and New testaments, will reveal the one law that God himself will not violate is the freedom he gave to mankind.