[Desdemona]

It's his job to try to avert the killing of thousands of people. No matter how justified the cause, and ANY cause is going to be questioned as to whether or not it's justified, war involves the killing of thousands of people.

To question and be sure that war is the ONLY course available is the job of moral leaders. At this point, in this case, it looks like Hussein isn't going to be stopped by any means but force. Sooner or later the Vatican will realize that.

Constantine and Charlemagne had a different set of problems. They weren't dealing with people who see this as the next salvo in a 1300 year holy war.

[piasa]

Not fighting back got three planeloads of people incinerated, along with the people in the buildings they ended up plunging into. We can't blame the victims for not fighting back because the do-gooders had trained people not to resist hijackers for years, in the interest of "saving lives." All they succeeded in doing was creating more hijackers. Fighting back on 911 prevented one Islamic cruise missile from finding its target, and so, it saved lives. Not going to war, but just piddling around, just cost us 3,000 people. Not going to war cost us the USS Cole's sailors. Not finishing the job in Iraq the first time has already cost us and will cost more. Backing down in Somalia encouraged bin Laden to conduct 911- so he says. Retreating after being suckerpunched is never the way to gain respect; it just makes things worse. Not going to war when war is the only valid solution is deadly for the next generation, who will have to sweep up the mess- after it has grown huge. Not going to war cost millions of people's lives throughout history. For the most part they just died slowly, through starvation, death camps, torture, slavery. And those murders were not stopped by pacifism, they were stopped by peaceMAKERS, in other words, by warriors. War fixed Hitler, war fixed Japan, because pacifists didn't stand up to Hitler or to the Emperor. In Hitler's case the antiwar crowd only succeeded in getting more people murdered by buying time. It takes time to ship all of those folks in cattle cars, it takes time to manufacture those ovens and get all that lime for the pits. It takes time to work a person into their grave or consolidate control on conquered territory.

It takes time to fill those warheads, it takes time to produce that anthrax and VX, it takes time to hunt down opposition leaders, it takes time to smuggle materials and parts in and WMD out. Hey, give enough time and we can just settle for being blackmailed by yet another terrorist sponsor for the next 50 years as happened with North Korea.

The church didn't stop 9/11 and cannot stop terrorism because terrorists don't give a rat's behind what the church thinks, unless they can get the church to buy time for them, in which case they will engage in any talks they can. They will keep on killing and people like Hussein will keep on funding terrorism, no matter how much some pacifists get in our way. Note that pacifists never get in the way of the sort of people who start wars- they only get in the way of the people who have to finish them. Why? Because pacifists are always LATE. They're like cockroaches, and only come out after someone's punched out your lights!

The Vatican seems to be confused into thinking the war hasn't begun yet. Heck, a lot of people seem to be confused about that.

But you see, we ALREADY are at war. The time for the Pope's intervention was more than a decade ago. Intervening in it now just gives more time to the individuals who started the war, so that the may kill more of their own dissidents (take note of the Kurdish leaders who were recently killed) , and plan more defenses and move more and more weapons into his cities where civilians and schools and hospitals will act as shields, and have time to put more and more agents in place overseas, perhaps even here.

Anything short of force now will only leave the Baathists in power and the Iraqi people will be right back where they started and frankly, so will we- in a one-sided war where we take whatever terrorists and their supporters care to dish out, or have to adjust to having to leave terrorists be because they have nukes. Terrorists will find a total safehaven there, forever untouchable because it would be impossible to motivate anyone to remove them if we do not do it now. The terrorists would have all the encouragement they need from their political success and their duping of well-meaning, but foolish pacifists, and that will only lead to increased use of nameless, blameless terrorism by states who wish to manipulate public opinion as Iraq has so successfully done.