Terrorism & Just War

I believe that the War on Terror the United States is leading, with its central battlefields being Afghanistan and Iraq, and which our Commander in Chief, President George W. Bush, is so effectively pursuing, meets the requirements for Just War according to the Catechism:

“2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

- there must be serious prospects of success;

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

“These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

“The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.”

And, in addition to it being a just war, it is also congruent with the broader and deeper concept of helping our neighbor, which today, is the world, as noted in a recent talk by Cardinal Rumi: discussing the meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan from the book by Pope Benedict XVI, "Jesus of Nazareth", we see the extension of that to concern for Africa, and, I would add, Iraq and Afghanistan, where horrible tyrannies were deposed.

“With the parable of the good Samaritan, however, Jesus shows us that there is no question of establishing who is or is not my neighbor: the question concerns me, I must become neighbor, so that the other - anyone else, universally - matters as much to me as I do. The relevance of the parable is obvious. If we apply it to the dimensions of globalized society, the robbed and plundered populations of Africa – and not only of Africa – concern us intimately, and demand our attention from a twofold point of view: because through the events of our history, through our lifestyle, we have contributed and still contribute to despoiling them, and because, instead of giving them God, the God who is close to us in Jesus Christ, we have brought the cynicism of a world without God.

“Nietzsche's criticism of the "morality of Christianity," by which he means precisely the manner of life indicated by the Sermon on the Mount and by the Beatitudes, and which he accuses of being "a capital crime against life," as if it were a morality hostile toward joy, a religion of envy and resentment, has had a profound effect on modern consciousness, and to a great extent determines the way in which life is viewed today. But the experiences of totalitarian regimes, and also the abuse of economic power, which lower man to the level of a commodity, begin to give us a better understanding of the meaning of the Beatitudes: these are certainly opposed to our spontaneous gusto for life, they demand conversion, the reversal of the spontaneous tendencies.”