Pope puts pressure on US

Guardian ^ | 4/21/03 | Owen Bowcott

[kattracks]

The Pope sent a coded rebuke to Washington yesterday when he urged Iraqis to take charge of rebuilding their country while working closely with the international community.

In the Vatican's diplomatic lexicon, the phrase "international community" normally refers to the UN. Before the conflict started, Pope John Paul II vigorously opposed the US-led assault and advocated resolution of the crisis in the UN general assembly.

"With the support of the international community," the 82-year-old pontiff declared in his 25th Easter message, "may the Iraqi people become the protagonists of their collective rebuilding of their country." The speech appeared aimed at putting pressure on Washington and London to involve the UN more closely in political reconstruction in Iraq and to speed up the handover to civilian rule.

In the months before the fighting, the Pope conducted a series of high-profile diplomatic initiatives, sending envoys to George Bush and Saddam Hussein and holding talks with Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, and with Tony Blair.

More recently, the Vatican has offered to help coordinate humanitarian aid through its embassy and dioceses.

Easter Sunday sermons from other Christian leaders also examined the war in Iraq, with the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, calling on the international community to join forces to build the country's civil and democratic society.

He said: "Quite frankly, despite all the promises ... how things currently are in Kabul and Afghanistan post-war does not bode well as to how things might be in Baghdad and Iraq."

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said in his homily that the desire to cling on to comfortable ways of thinking had characterised the moral debate over the conflict in Iraq.

The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales, urged the faithful to pray for all victims of the conflict.

[chasio649]

senility?

[Rasputin_TheMadMonk]

And a liberal dose of fear.

[Cachelot]

senility?

Possession.

[NetValue]

Captive of the Vatican bureaucracy

[John Valentine]

Assininity, if that's a word. Irrelevancy, definitely.

[Irishgirl]

Just more evidence that, as a lifelong Catholic, my intincts may have been right in questioning the idea of papal infallibilty. I do fear that perhaps he is being controlled by outside sources (who?). It continues to sadden many Catholics how the institution of the church has become so tainted.

[nopardons]

Dementia and delusions of secular importance.

[Bonaparte]

When was the last time any Pope called the shots on affairs of state?

Right.

[PFKEY]

Just more evidence that, as a lifelong Catholic, my intincts may have been right in questioning the idea of papal infallibilty.

Not to worry, for there are many exception clauses to this infallibility notion.

[kattracks]

I'm curious to know if the pope has made any public statements of condemnation as to the atrocities, lately come to light, committed by the Saddam regime?

[askrenr]

Papal infallibility applies only to maters of the Church, not to politics.

[DB]

Well Pope, show just one single country the UN has successfully rebuilt. Just one...

Unbelievable.

[BullDog108]

When was the last time any Pope called the shots on affairs of state?

As Uncle Joe Stalin said: "The Pope? How many divisions does he have?"

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

how things currently are in Kabul and Afghanistan post-war does not bode well as to how things might be in Baghdad and Iraq."

It is only a year or so since the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan. It'd be nice if someone had a silver bullet to create a smoothly functioning democratic republic within a year--but I don't, and you don't. The framers of the US Constitution didn't.

So don't make perfection the enemy of the good.

[sd-joe]

>> "Papal infallibility applies only to maters of the Church, not to politics."

And he should restrict his public pronouncements to matters of the Church, and not to politics. Otherwise he degrades the image of the Pope, as his statements so obviously seem to be on the side of terror and tyranny.

[Bonaparte]

To my knowledge, the Pope has said nothing publicly about Saddam's atrocities.

[alloysteel]

Begin with the premise, that War Is Bad. Apparently, the concept of a Just War has not been considered. Of all wars in the history of mankind, the Gulf War II is probably the most humane (if such a term could be applied) war ever conducted. Bearded men with burning eyes, hurling themselves upon one of the most strongly armored and constrained military forces in history, were either killed quickly, or thrown to the ground and disarmed, then herded into transports and removed from the area. Other poor conscripts, prodded to the front with rifles pointed at their backs, were simply disarmed and sent home, or at least allowed to move away to a neutral area. Refugees were held at checkpoints until it could be determined that they were in fact really fleeing some nasty retaliation upon their families, then also permitted to remain in the neutral territory or proceed beyond to relative safety. On rare occasions, a suicide bomber would attempt to take out a checkpoint with a car bomb, detonated when approached by the soldiers on station. Attempts to simply crash the gate were met with withering fire, resulting in the demise of most of the vehicle occupants, with sometimes tragic results. Most unfortunate, but you do not make unexpected or threatening motions in the presence of keyed-up soldiers with loaded weapons at the ready.

If not all sites were equally protected, there is such a thing as setting priorities based on your available resources. Given a choice of providing cover fire for your own troops, or attempting to prevent looting of peripheral areas, protection of the troops clearly demands focused attention. Besides, the secondary objective here was to keep collateral damage at a minimum, a goal that was kept to a degree that is almost unbelievable in retrospect.

There are good and valid reasons not to engage in warfare. But the objections so far raised to the prosecution of the war in Iraq have been lacking in substance or factual statement of the wrongness of the objective. So every secret held by the Saddam Hussein regime has not been made known, and discoveries of stores of WMD have been disappointingly few so far. Searches for secret prisons have also been largely futile, but that does not mean that the hunt should be given up. There are enemy leaders, as yet not captured, and stores of documents, not yet examined, that will provide the necessary clues to unravelling these mysteries.

And when we do, things will look very bad for Syria, France, Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China. Of course there is a most finely tuned chorus of voices objecting to the further examination of the aftermath of war in Iraq. Lots of unclean hands.

[Caipirabob]

The Catholic Church has been poisened at the highest levels and the Pope is being controlled by those who would destroy the Church from within. There is very little credibility coming from Rome these days. They can't even keep their own house clean and per the old saying "Those who live in glass houses..."

This has been a very sad time for my Catholic friends.

[Dat]

I'm not catholic, and I support(ed) the war in Iraq, but I think the pope is being pragmatic. By expressing opposition to the war he is in part keeping the Muslim fundamentalists from turning this into a Christian versus Muslim thing, which in the end is no good for any of the parties involved (with perhaps the exception of the fundamentalists).