A reader writes

This piece on Lepanto is well-written and interesting, but at the very end the author makes connections to Catholics serving today in Iraq and Afghanistan. On one hand, I’m quite glad that throughout history Christian armies have checked the Islamic advance, preserving Western culture and Christian faith from what I regard as barbarism and infidelity. (Think of all the areas once Christian where Islam was never beaten back: Asia Minor/Turkey, the near East, Egypt, north Africa…) On the other hand, I’ve been very uncomfortable with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. My narrow question is, how should I feel about Lepanto? My broader question is, how do those of us who are sceptical about the modern “War on Terror” square that with our relief over historical victories over Islam? Can I cheer Charles Martel and Don Juan after the fact but exclaim “bring our troops home now” at the present moment?

I can’t really tell you how you should feel about Lepanto (or anything else, for that matter since feelings are non-rational). But I can suggest that trying to draw very close parallels between our present endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan and Lepanto are pretty far fetched. First and most important, we are a post-Christian culture whose chief cultural exports are abortion, faith in the healing and redeeming power of Democratic Capitalism, and a zeal to impose the dictatorship of post-Christian neo-pagan relativism on Christian and Muslim alike. Indeed, the suggestion that the West is engaged in something like an attempt to retake Islamic lands for Christendom would be greeted with horror and revulsion by the leaders of every nation to have taken part in our recent wars. So the notion that our purpose in Iraq or Afghanistan bears some resemblance to the limited aims of Lepanto (“beat back an Islamic invader and make sure he stays beaten back so that we can go on being Christian”) is a non-starter.

Indeed, our aims are basically unlimited, which is but one of the problems with our wars today. We are essentially in a war without end, because we define winning as defeating a tactic (Terror) instead of an enemy. Charles Martel and Don Juan never declared war on Islamic naval tactics, nor did we declare war on aviation after Pearl Harbor. But our country seriously believes that a War on Terror makes sense.

For my part, I thought the Afghanistan war met Just War criteria at the outset and that the Iraq War never did. Eight years on, I’m not so sure Afghanistan does any more. The bizarre claims by Dubya that bin Laden is no longer important and the switch to our completely unnecessary war in Iraq baffle me. If bin Laden and the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 are unimportant, then I see no point in continuing the war there. What has protected us from more 9/11s has been good police work, it seems to me. But that of course will be disputed.

What I don’t think can be disputed is that our current adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are not parallel with a Renaissance repulsion of an Islamic attack on Christendom. Christendom does not exist anymore. Europe is filling up with Muslims and the US is too. Our watery secularism is trying to figure out a way to persuade them to be godless relativist postmodern consumers. It is not trying to figure out a way to win them and their lands for Christ.