I’m back in my computer chair still thinking about this issue of war and peace and the Church. I was just thinking (and shuddering) at how so many on the right were so disgusted with “all this talk” and how “pansy” it was; that we should deal with iraq in a way that “shows them who’s boss”. And the “last resort” option of war seems quite the empty phrase; seems to me that this “last resort” is all too often something that we JUMP to all too eagerly.

I am swamped by these thoughts on this National Observance of our country’s birth, and can think of nothing else than how perilous is this path that our “leaders” take us with all this. Terrorism is an ugly scar on humanity, to be sure. It needs stopping. But they don’t fight their fight in the battlefield becuase thy know they would not prevail, so they do it in secret. And so a battlefield response is not the winning strategy. I fear it wil only increase the bitter hatred, and promote further and more horrible acts of terrorism. The WMD’s , if they are in fact being hidden, are a grave danger if hidden. I’ve reiterated this several times: If they do in fact exist as Bush and Cheney insist, then our not knowing where they are makes our occupation and “strategic pre-emptions” all the more perilous, since they may inspire similar acts of horror.

People ask me, so how would YOU fight it? My top concern is “stop the bombing” and other “overstating” or “over-flexing” of our strength, since this always leads to the “collateral damage”. And the attacks have not decreased, they have increased. I’ve heard people use the Jack Nicholson line from A Few Good Men against the opponents of the war (“You can’t handle the truth”; the “truth” in this case being that people dying now will save lives later). But that is “military theorizing”; guesses; projections of what COULD be. Even then, even if these theories were accurate, is it our choice as to whose lives are most important? Do the “ends” justify the means?