There’s been a lot of debate in recent months over the legitimacy of fighting this war with Iraq. One of the repeated voices of dissent has been from Christian pacifists who object to the war based on the idea that it does not meet the standards of a just war, as prescribed by Aquinas and others. So I thought I’d take a look at the principles of a just war.

Since 1991 we’ve relied on non-violent options to disarm Iraq. The UN has tried inspections and diplomacy. The U.S. has introduced resolutions demanding that Iraq disarm without any success. I don’t know what other non-violent options exist. If and when war is waged, it will certainly be the last resort. This proves that you don’t negotiate with dictators.

The U.S. is a legitimate authority backed by a growing coalition of allies, including Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, and many other Eastern European and former Soviet nations who understand what it means to be oppressed by evil regimes. The UN has become irrelevant if it cannot enforce its own resolutions. Iraq does not recognize the UN, why should anyone else?

Saddam Hussein has a long legacy of abusing the civil rights of his people. He has killed and tortured them. He has collected weapons of mass destruction. He has threatened and waged war against his neighbors Iran and Kuwait. He is preparing to wage war against the U.S. and the rest of the world. It’s time to free the people of Iraq from this brutal regime and redress the wrongs they’ve suffered for decades.

See Afghanistan for proof that the U.S. can wage a war and win. Our success should not be questioned. Iraqi soldiers will surrender to the CNN camera crews again.

There is no peace in Iraq today. The people live under the threat of torture and death if they oppose the regime of Hussein. The U.S. seeks to establish Iraqi democracy. The same kind of peace that allows for girls to attend school in Afghanistan and women to serve in government in Israel. The kind of peace that allows Muslims and Jews and Christians to live and work together without fear of the government or each other.

The U.S. will not use chemical or biological weapons. It will not needlessly inflict suffering or pain on Iraqi combatants. The same cannot be said for Iraq in its past conflicts or in this one.

The U.S. has spent millions of dollars on smart bombs and targeted weaponry to avoid collateral damage. However, when Hussein uses human shields or hides weapons in the basements of schools and mosques, the U.S. cannot be held responsible if chooses to put civilians in harm’s way. Their blood will be on his hands, not ours.

Dan Rather sat down with Saddam Hussein this week. This oughtta be good.

Saddam Hussein denied his al-Samoud missiles were in violation of U.N. mandates and indicated he will resist demands that he destroy them. He also challenged President Bush to a live broadcast debate on the looming war.

The al-Samoud 2 is at the heart of this week’s dispute with the U.N. weapons inspectors. Chief inspector Hans Blix told Iraq it has until the end of the week to begin destroying the missiles. But the Iraqis have always said they don’t violate the range limits placed on Iraq by U.N. resolutions.

The only televised debate Hussein will be participating in will be the one held before a war crimes tribunal, hopefully in a place like Warsaw or Prague where people have long memories when it comes to dealing with dictators.

The mere fact that Saddam would stoop to this level demonstrates that he is desperate. He’s stalling as long as he can, resorting to these kind of parlor tricks to deflect attention away from the fact that he is defying the UN.

So first we have Hans Blix telling Iraq to destroy its Al-Samoud 2 missiles, which is what any good card player does when he knows that the other highrollers aren’t holding any high cards.

At the United Nations, diplomats said chief weapons inspector Hans Blix had issued a demand to Iraq that it begin to destroy its liquid-fuel Al-Samoud 2 missiles, engines and many component parts by March 1.

Then, we begin to see the anti-war sentiment matched by pro-war rallies held over the weekend. Sure, there were no socialists, communists, puppets, or stilt-walkers at these rallies, but I’m it was fun nonetheless.

Rallies were also held in Indianapolis and Washington state, where more than 2,000 people gathered for a pro-war rally in Bremerton, home to a naval station where the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Carl Vinson departed last month.

Anger against last weekend’s protests, which drew millions worldwide, was apparent. Echoing a slogan from the 1960s, one placard in Orlando read: “America - Love It or Leave It.”

And if I’d known about this, I would have been there too. It looks like several other groups are organizing around the pro-war theme at Harvard and elsewhere.

Other versions of the story in the NY Post and Sun-Times

I’m a Wheaton College graduate and still can’t believe that Wheaton has changed the rules. Basically, all students, staff, and faculty used to be required to sign a Statement of Responsibilities that prohibited (among other things) students from using alcohol or tobacco when enrolled in classes (usually defined as the length of a semester). It also prohibited students from engaging in pre-marital sex and prohibited most forms of social dancing. For faculty and staff, smoking and drinking were prohibited for the duration of their employment and pre- or extra-marital sex was prohibited. Faculty, staff, and married students, dancing was only allowed with spouses or other family members.

All this changed this week. The new Community Covenant allows students to dance off-campus with discretion and on-campus with college permission. It also allows faculty, staff, and grad students to smoke and drink but never in front of undergraduate students.

It’s about time. The faculty and staff change came largely because Illinois law prohibits an employer from restricting the legal behavior of employees when they are off the job. There is an exception for behavior that is determined to be essential to the practice of a religion, but there’s no way Wheaton would have made that case. It was also partly because Wheaton has seen too many prospective faculty turn them down because of the rules.

As far as the dancing thing goes, most students thought it was pretty stupid to begin with. It’s a rule that lost its relevance thirty years ago. It’s made Wheaton look silly and amatuerish for too long. Students will not go out and fornicate now just because they can dance. Thankfully, the trustees of the college have recognized that times change and cultures change. The new covenant keeps the main things the main things.

This can’t be good for Saddam Hussein:

Saddam Hussein was last night reported to have placed his defence minister and close relative under house arrest in an extraordinary move apparently designed to prevent a coup.

This is something that all the anti-war zealots don’t understand. The last thing Iraq’s military wants is a war with the U.S. They remember the Gulf War. They know Hussein is sending them to their death. Remember how the Iraqi soldiers were surrending to CNN’s news crews? They are totally outmanned, and they know it. Once the war begins, the smart Iraqi soldiers will be the ones turning their weapons on Saddam and driving his regime out of town and into the pages of history.

Contrary to popular opinion, Europe does NOT go as France and Germany go. At the grand European Council, French President Jacques Chirac is learning that the French position on Iraq is so Old Europe:

He also told it to the heads of government straight: that if Saddam Hussein continued with his defiance, then the security council would have no option but to face up to its responsibilities - confront the Baghdad regime with military force.

At Mr Annan’s hawkish stance, Mr Chirac stood up and, with Gallic passion, began a defence of the French position.

Flinging his arms up and down, he declared that war was a terrible thing and that thousands of innocent people would lose their lives in a second Gulf war. “It is a question of life and death,” he said.

It was suggested that, at this point, the most dramatic moment of the evening occurred. Silvio Berlusconi, the diminutive Italian premier, eyeballed Mr Chirac and insisted: “I’m just as concerned about life and death as you are.”

He asked the French president to consider what happened to innocent people in Bali and in New York’s twin towers.

Then, the normally mild-mannered Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, interjected and pointed out that the only person getting away with defying the will of the international community was Saddam.

He added that the weapons inspectors could not go on indefinitely.

By this time, Mr Chirac was positively steaming at the pro-American forces reigned against him. But there was more.

Jan Peter Balkenende, the new Dutch prime minister, underscored the hawkish line, saying the issue was Iraq’s full compliance and that it was now just a matter of weeks, not months, before the matter had to be resolved. “We have to reinforce the pressure on Iraq,” he said.

Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar also called for international cohesion, pointing out that the UN had only got so far with the Iraqi dictator by threatening force.

Then, Tony Blair said his piece, deriding the 12 years of deceit by Saddam and stressing he had to come into compliance “100%”.

Looking at his colleagues one by one, he told them bluntly: “There is no intelligence agency of any government around this table that does not know that the government of Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.”

In a passionate conclusion, the prime minister said: “If Saddam stays, the Iraqis will pay with their lives.”

This comes after Blair shows that, like John McCain, he’s got game:

But there are also consequences of “stop the war”.

If I took that advice, and did not insist on disarmament, yes, there would be no war. But there would still be Saddam. Many of the people marching will say they hate Saddam. But the consequences of taking their advice is that he stays in charge of Iraq, ruling the Iraqi people. A country that in 1978, the year before he seized power, was richer than Malaysia or Portugal. A country where today, 135 out of every 1000 Iraqi children die before the age of five - 70% of these deaths are from diarrhoea and respiratory infections that are easily preventable. Where almost a third of children born in the centre and south of Iraq have chronic malnutrition.

Where 60% of the people depend on Food Aid.

Where half the population of rural areas have no safe water.

Where every year and now, as we speak, tens of thousands of political prisoners languish in appalling conditions in Saddam’s jails and are routinely executed.

Where in the past 15 years over 150,000 Shia Moslems in Southern Iraq and Moslem Kurds in Northern Iraq have been butchered; with up to four million Iraqis in exile round the world, including 350,000 now in Britain.

This isn’t a regime with Weapons of Mass Destruction that is otherwise benign. This is a regime that contravenes every single principle or value anyone of our politics believes in.

There will be no march for the victims of Saddam, no protests about the thousands of children that die needlessly every year under his rule, no righteous anger over the torture chambers which if he is left in power, will be left in being.

I rejoice that we live in a country where peaceful protest is a natural part of our democratic process.

But I ask the marchers to understand this.

I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership. And the cost of conviction.

But as you watch your TV pictures of the march, ponder this:

If there are 500,000 on that march, that is still less than the number of people whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for.

If there are one million, that is still less than the number of people who died in the wars he started.

Hans Blix told his story to the UN Security Council today. More of the same stuff we’ve been hearing from the impotent inspectors for weeks now, but a lot of this stuff CANNOT be overlooked.

Another matter, and one of great significance, is that many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for.

To take an example, a document which Iraq provided suggested to us that some 1,000 tons of chemical agent were unaccounted for. I must not jump to the conclusion that they exist; however, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented.

We are fully aware that many governmental intelligence organizations are convinced and assert that proscribed weapons, items and programs continue to exist. The U.S. secretary of state presented material in support of this conclusion.

The idea of a “smoking gun” emerging from these inspections is absurd. It’s become obvious that Hussein is NOT going to turn over evidence that indicts himself. Rather, he’ll play this game with the inspectors, delaying the U.S. attack. Any thought that Hussein might one day wake up and turn himself in to the International Criminal Court or some such entity is laughable.

ALSO … Sen. John McCain continues to be the kind of guy I want in my gang if I’m going to a fight. He writes on why further delay in Iraq could be dangerous.

I’ve never been a big fan of John McCain. While I don’t agree with his politics, the man has principles, and that’s an important trait to have in days like these. McCain went to Munich last week and took it to the Axis of Weasels. I guess in the Bush administration strategy of good cop / bad cop, Powell is the good cop and McCain is the bad cop:

The French and German objection, for reasons of calculated self-interest — a very flawed calculation, I fear - to a routine American request to the North Atlantic Council to upgrade Turkey’s defenses against the military threat from Iraq was a terrible injury to an Alliance that has served their broader interests well. For nearly three weeks, the United States, with fourteen of our eighteen European allies in the North Atlantic Council, has supported this necessary action, but has confronted a new unilateralism conceived in Paris and Berlin, a unilateralism that exposed the sneering in those capitals about the impulsive cowboy in the White House for the vacuous posturing and obvious misdirection it is. Whatever NATO decides, Franco-German unilateralism will have a lasting impact on trans-Atlantic security calculations. If this minority French-German obstruction is not overcome by NATO’s deadline of Monday, France and Germany will have to answer to those who argue that Iraq could be to NATO what Abyssinia was to the League of Nations.

Don’t you love when a United States Senator drops some history on bunch of Europeans? Abyssinia is better known today as Ethiopia. In 1935 Mussolini invaded it. Both were members of the League of Nations. Haile Selassie, the ruler of Abyssinia, appealed to the League for help. The League condemned the Italians and they decided to impose economic sanctions upon the Italians. This fell short of sending an army to force the Italians to withdraw. Furthermore the sanctions did not include oil. This was essential to Italy’s invasion plans. Oil was not included in the sanctions because the French and British felt that their trade with Italy would be taken over by Germany and the U.S. — countries that had not joined the League.

Also the British did not close the Suez canal - this was vital to any Italian invasion as goods and supplies to Italian troops had to be transported along this waterway. The worst was yet to come. In secret the British and the French had negotiated a secret treaty with the Italians called the Hoare-Laval Pact. It was a treaty which would give the Italians two-thirds of the country.

When this plan was uncovered there was a public outcry. It was dropped and the League took no further action against the Italians. France and Germany wished to keep the Italians friendly to stop a pact between fascist Italy and Germany developing. By May 1936 the conquest was complete and the League voted to end the sanctions against the Italians. The next year Italy left the League and signed the Axis Powers pact with Germany. The inaction of the League was all for naught. The words of Haile Selassie:

The issue before the assembly is a much wider one than the removal of sanctions. It is not merely a settlement of Italian aggression. It is a question of collective security, of the very existence of the League. It is a question of trust in international treaties and of the value of promises to small states that their independence be respected. In a word, international morality is at stake. I ask the Great Powers who have promised the guarantee of collective security to small states — what measures do they intend to take?

Nearly 70 years later, the words of Sen. McCain:

Just as some Arab governments fuel anti-American sentiment among their people to divert them from problems at home, so a distinct minority of Western European leaders appears to engage in America- bashing to rally their people and other European elites to the call of European unity. Some European politicians speak of pressure from their “street” for peaceful solutions to international conflict and for resisting American power regardless of its purpose. But statements emanating from Europe that seem to endorse pacifism in the face of evil, and anti-Semitic recidivism in some quarters, provoke an equal and opposite reaction in America.

There is an American “street,” too, and it strongly supports disarming Iraq, accepts the necessity of an expansive American role in the world to ensure we never wake up to another September 11th, is perplexed that nations with whom we have long enjoyed common cause do not share our urgency and sense of threat in time of war, and that considers reflexive hostility toward Israel as the root of all problems in the Middle East as irrational as it is morally offensive.

While I’ve found the public face (ANSWER and their ilk) on the anti-war movement to be pretty disgusting, some of the voices rising above the clamor have been refreshingly reasonable.

Brian McClaren is a senior pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in suburban Washington, DC. He gave a sermon on January 12 that was directed at President Bush. He makes some important points. However, it’s always easier to make these points from the pulpit than to apply them in the Oval Office. I truly think that Bush has done a superb job NOT going to war. Let us not forget that our last president had no problem using military action as a distraction from his personal problems. This president has gone to great lengths to avoid war, offering Iraq many chances to disarm. If we go to war with Iraq, it will truly be a last resort, and something that Bush will not enjoy having to do.

Here’s an idea whose time has come: remove France as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, replacing it with India. Why?

Because India is the world’s biggest democracy, the world’s largest Hindu nation and the world’s second-largest Muslim nation, and, quite frankly, India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it’s become silly. India has grown out of that game. India may be ambivalent about war in Iraq, but it comes to its ambivalence honestly. Also, France can’t see how the world has changed since the end of the cold war. India can.

France continues to demonstrate how irrelevant it is in this century, so why not include a country that actually represents a significant interest that would otherwise go under-represented? The tribe has spoken!

This is why any French and German demands for more time for inspections is foolish. The notion that more inspections will equal more results has been exploded by Baghdad:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 9 — The top U.N. arms experts said tonight that they were unable to reach agreement with Saddam Hussein’s government on several key issues they had traveled here to resolve in a bid to build support for continuing weapons inspections.

The two chief U.N. inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, failed to achieve three top goals during two days of meetings with senior Iraqi officials: the disclosure of significant new evidence about Iraq’s past weapons programs; safety guarantees from Iraq for reconnaissance aircraft to aid in inspections; and a high-level declaration criminalizing the production of nuclear, chemical or biological arms.

Meanwhile, rational, democracy-loving people are getting fed up with all the anti-war zeal that is “sweeping” the planet. The South Koreans are rallying against the communist North Koreans, and American college campuses are starting to show signs of life.

A pretty convincing op/ed from Barham A. Salih, co-prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Goverment in Iraq:

Most of my Iraqi compatriots — Shiite and Sunni Arab, Turkmen and Assyrian, Muslim, Christian and Yazidi — have been united by what they have endured under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. They want the overthrow of a regime that used chemical weapons against the Kurds and wasted a nation’s natural resources on wars rather than schools. They want democracy in Iraq. These are goals worthy of the world’s support.

Salih makes the case that all the so-called anti-war protestors don’t understand: there has been a worse against the people of Iraq by a brutal dictatorship for years. Imagine if we had failed to enter WWII? I mean, we wouldn’t have wanted to impose our imperial will on Europe or Asia, now would we? Never mind that we freed France and much of Europe from Nazi aggression, paving the way for the democracies that are now coming of age. Never mind the millions of Jews being killed in gas chambers or that we re-built Japan into an economic super-power. The anti-war movement continues to mystify me.