A READER ASKED to what extent the Vatican’s anti-war stance has influenced my thinking. It’s a tough question really. There are three aspects of my response: 1) I do believe war, to be justified, must fulfill the Catholic just-war criteria. I’ve blogged previously about the just-war problems with Mutually Assured Destruction a.k.a. nuclear deterrence; I’m pretty confused as to what to do with those problems, though. In other respects I think war on Iraq might well fulfill all criteria, although, in keeping with my annoying hover-dither act, I can’t say I’m completely sure of that.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been swaying much more toward a worried-pro-war stance. The basis for that change is the same basis I outlined in my last big anti-war post; what’s changed is that I have become a lot more skeptical of the claim that Saddam Hussein can be deterred, which was one of the things I leaned on most heavily in that post. My shift is due to reading more about the Gulf War and thinking about the ways in which Iraq today does not parallel the USSR during the Cold War. (Thomas Nephew lays out the latter point quickly in this worthwhile post.) Once the deterrable-Saddam hypothesis starts looking really, really sketchy, the risk assessments about what will happen to other countries in the region, how much war will help Al Qaeda, etc., change dramatically, simply because the “no war” scenario becomes much worse. In other words, whatever the US does or does not do in the coming months, things are very dicey for us and will get more so. …There’s a lot more to say about this, but I am sure people who have investigated the issues have come to their own conclusions at this point, so I’m not going to go into more detail.

Right now my two biggest concerns are a) plans for a postwar Iraq–I very much agree with both Matthew Yglesias and Oxblog that the outcome is up in the air and conservative and/or pro-war voices need to apply as strong pressure as possible to ensure that we don’t end up with just more Ba[now make a sound like you are choking]’athist hideousness at war’s end.

and b) whether we have legitimately exhausted other remedies. I’m pretty skeptical of the UN inspections, though.

Anyway, that wasn’t where this post was going initially, but I figured it was worth saying.

2) I am personally influenced by the Pope’s opposition to war, although I don’t share his view, because of his experience in the Cold War. He has already seen how liberating “regime change” can be accomplished without war. I expect that experience is one of the things leading him to oppose war now.

3) I don’t think I need to agree with the Vatican’s prudential judgment about the application of just-war criteria to this particular case in order to be a loyal Catholic. I don’t think I’m less orthodox or faithful or (pick your term) now that my hovering-dithering-annoying-everyone position has shivered into the pro-war camp rather than the anti-war one. It’s possible–obviously!–for popes to make bad judgment calls about foreign policy. I’m not sure if that’s happened here, but I suspect that it has.