Posted on 01/10/2005 7:29:30 AM PST by areafiftyone
VATICAN CITY - The Italian cardinal sent by Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II last year to try to dissuade President Bush (news - web sites) from invading Iraq (news - web sites) said Monday the president promised that the U.S. operation would be "quick."
Cardinal Pio Laghi visited Bush at the White House on March 5, 2003, to relay the pope's position that dialogue, not arms, should be used to resolve the crisis over Iraq, which the United States accused of harboring weapons of mass destruction.
"When I went to Washington as the pope's envoy just before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, he (Bush) told me: `Don't worry, your eminence. We'll be quick and do well in Iraq,'" Laghi told Italian Catholic TV station Telepace, which was broadcasting the pontiff's annual address to diplomats.
When the United States went to war in Iraq, Laghi called the attack on Baghdad "tragic and unacceptable."
"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward that things took a different course — not rapid and not favorable," the prelate told Telepace. "Bush was wrong."
Laghi was the Vatican (news - web sites)'s first envoy to Washington in the 1980s and established a friendship with Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush.
Funny how they defend Saddam and Sons to the point of absurity, all while habitually slurring the US the President, and our military. It is some sort of pathology.
Even funnier is what they would be saying if Saddam and Sons controlled over 1/2 of the world's oil supply, with all the nukes and gases at their disposal.
Proof that constrarians are easy and boring.
Gee, who would ever think that conditions in war would ever change? Shouldn't we just be able to lay out a plan and make sure the enemy sticks to it? :::sarcasm off:::
Sure, as long as you were a 'Christian' like Baghdad Bob.
So your model of success is conquest and permanent occupation. Thank you for your candor, but isn't it a bit premature to let the word get out?
Um, we haven't been at war in Iraq for 15 years.
It is not the role of the U.S. to ensure a "stable and just society" in other sovereign nations when we ourselves are no more "just" than they are in many respects. If Osama bin Laden had declared that he was seeking to topple the U.S. because we have killed 40 million of our unborn since 1973, would his cause be "just?"
Would you consider our invasion of Germany just? Furthermore, what about Iraq is substantially different than Germany's aggression?
1. What "just war" principle or principles served as the basis for U.S. involvement in World War II?
2. You cannot make the case that the U.S. has been an otherwise disinterested third party in the Iraq, in light of our role in the Middle East throughout the 1980s.
Of course not. It is normal for countries to impose economic sanctions against other sovereign nations when we are not "at war" with them, and to maintain "no-fly zones" in the airspace over them.
/sarcasm off/
The United States is in a better position to render 'justice' to another sovereign nation than the RC is to lecture others about morality.
That's a remarkably obtuse reading of my post. YOUR question in #73 implied that "success" meant "the complete cessation of a U.S. military presence". YOUR standard, would imply that our victory in WWII was a "failure".
I don't think most people will see it your way. And I doubt Germany and Japan consider themselves "permanently occupied".
Um, that was the UN.
Can either of you give me an example of a war which you consider to be a "just war"?
Do you really believe that? Do you really believe in a moral equivalence between the U.S. and Iraq, or the U.S. and the Taliban, or the U.S. and bin Laden? You'd be just as happy living in Iraq under Hussein, or Afghanistan under the Taliban?
How many F-15s and F-16s did the United Nations use to enforce those no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq? Was it just a remarkable coincidence that Kofi Annan ordered Bill Clinton to launch missile strikes against Iraq in December 1998 just as the U.S. House of Representatives was convening to vote on those articles of impeachment?
/sarcasm off again/
Did Saddam Hussein agree to the ceasefire terms? Yes or no?
The objective of the war was to remove Saddam from power. We did that...very quickly. You think once we removed Hitler from Germany we were just going to turn around and go home? It was eight years after the end of WWII until West Germany was a even sovereign nation, and we occupied West Berlin for over 40 years. The lack of historical perspective on the part of people like the Cardinal astounds me.
I have no problem with U.S. Vatican recognition.
I have a problem with ANY foreign representative chiding MY President on policies beneficial to MY Country.
Sic deinde quiscumque alius transiliet moenia mea.
I recognized this whole thing as a farce back in 1990 when I first encountered so-called "conservatives" who claimed that "enforcing United Nations resolutions" constituted legitimate grounds for U.S. military action.
The war of 1812 was a just war of self-defense.
The Mexican-American war was mostly a war of conquest, as was the Spanish-American war.
The decision of the US to enter the Great War was probably just, even if it was dishonestly sold to the people.
The decision of the US to enter WWII was just. There was never any doubt that we had a serious grievance that could not be resolved by peaceful means, plus a reasonable expectation of success. Our policy of terror-bombing civilian targets was not just of course, so it failed the test of proportionality.
It really depends on your perspective, doesn't it? If you could speak to a mangled fetus in the dumpster behind an abortion clinic in Chicago, I'd bet he/she would be much happier living in Iraq or Afghanistan.
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