To Kill and Torture for Freedom

Apologists for the Bush Administration are suddenly SHOCKED to learn in the opening sentences of the newly reported National

Security Estimate that "the Iraq war has made the
overall terrorism problem worse," according to one official quoted by the
New York Times.

Jesus knew and cherished the meaning of the word “Freedom.”
Yet in the last moments of freedom before his torturers dragged him to his
trial and execution, he uttered his prophetic words in Matthew’s account,
“All who take the sword will perish by the sword.” 

Apologists for the Bush Administration are suddenly
shocked, shocked (!) to learn in the opening sentences of the newly reported National
Intelligence Estimate that "the Iraq war has made the
overall terrorism problem worse," according to one official quoted by the
New York Times.  Senator Edward Kennedy responded on the Senate
floor, “Despite the conclusion of the
intelligence community that the war has been a recruitment tool for a new
generation of extremists, on numerous occasions since the document was prepared
(five months ago), President Bush has claimed that the war has made America
safer.”  This compilation of the views of 16
intelligence agencies, entitled “Trends in Global
Terrorism: Implications for the United States," apparently undercuts
the repeated assurances by the Bush Administration that the Iraq War was making
America safer, arguing in detail that exactly the opposite was true.  Although these findings were approved in April by his Director of
National Intelligence, John Negroponte, Mr Bush has knowingly contradicted the
report’s central assertions in numerous speeches ever since.

But political leaders beating the
drums of “freedom” didn’t need the CIA to tell them what
Christ foresaw in the closing moments of his own freedom, namely that killing people
only fuels a greater will toward retribution and more killing.  When it
comes to war, the only law that is never broken is the law of unintended
consequences.  To his great credit, Pope Benedict plainly stated in September 2002, before his election, that the “concept of a
‘preventive war’ does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic
Church.”  He went on to say in 2003, shortly after the invasion, “There
was not sufficient reason to unleash a war in Iraq…today we should be asking
ourselves if it is still reasonable even to admit the existence of such a thing
as a ‘just war.’”  Conservative Catholics like Fr. Richard
Neuhaus and Michael Novak jovially overlook pronouncements like these, indefatigably
citing traditional (but non-Biblical) Catholic ‘Just War’ accomodations
that more conveniently support Republican political aims.

As the number of killings in Iraq has surged past 100,000, the Administration’s
social engineers are busily mounting plans for a “military strike on Iranian
nuclear facilities” that could result in vastly greater numbers of dead
across Iran.  As Catholics, we must immediately and unequivocally condemn any
justification offered for the use of mass killing by this Administration to “advance
the cause of freedom” in the name of the American people — particularly
when, as the new intelligence report asserts, Mr. Bush so grossly miscalculated
the consequences of his similarly “preventive” war in Iraq. 

Christianity calls us to creative
solutions, not violent ones, whenever a mob assembles to stone a seeming
outcast like Iran.  Jesus led by his example, which tells us pure and simple that we
must no longer kill or torture in the name of freedom — as we watch the
headlines increasingly chronicle how we are being led toward becoming the evil
we once aimed to overcome.