Stardate 20021003.1339

(On Screen): A representative for the Vatican has announced its opposition to war in Iraq, which is hardly surprising.

Vatican renewed its opposition to war in Iraq on Wednesday, saying military action would only make matters worse and that a pre-emptive strike raised serious ethical and legal problems.

"It's unilateralism, pure and simple," the Vatican's U.N. observer, Archbishop Renato Martino, said in comments published in the Italian newsweekly Famiglia Christiana.

The principle of a "first strike" as well as its possible use in Iraq "provoke profound reservations be it from the ethical or legal point of view," he said.

He recalled the Vatican's opposition to the 1991 Gulf War, saying: "Everyone knows the way it turned out. War doesn't resolve problems. Besides being bloody, it's useless," he said.

The Vatican's foreign minister has said the United Nations must authorize any military action in Iraq and a papal adviser has warned against the "unacceptable human costs and grave destabilizing effects" of a preventive strike.

There are a number of levels on which this deserves comment. One is to say that the Pope is not an elective position within the US government, and the Pope's opinion about American foreign policy is worth just as much as that of Chirac or Schröder. (Ahem)

Another is that the characterization of it as "unilateralism, pure and simple" is interesting, since it's clear from context that Archbishop Martino thinks that this actually some sort of unambiguous condemnation. Yes, it probably will end up being unilateralism, once the UN fails and demonstrates that its members are looking out for their own narrow self interest rather than trying to live up to the lofty goals which were originally set for the organization. What, exactly, is wrong with unilateralism?

As per usual, there is emphasis on the consequences of an attack, and that's at least a more reasonable objection. There's no doubt that an attack against Iraq will cause at least some civilian casualties and there's at least a small possibility that the cost may be extremely large. But as usual what's missing is any consideration of what the consequences and human costs would be of not attacking. How many Iraq civilians will die if Saddam's regime is left to continue as it has? How many American civilians will die in future attacks against us?

But none of those things are what really inspired me to write. It was this: "War doesn't resolve problems. Besides being bloody, it's useless."

Where in the hell did this piece of conventional wisdom come from, anyway? In one form or another I've been hearing it my entire life, and it always pops up during times of international crisis. "Violence never settled anything." "War doesn't actually resolve problems." How can anyone who has even a cursory knowledge of history make a claim like this?

The reality is that there are few ways more effective at "settling anything" and "resolving problems" (at least, certain kinds of problems) than war. It's an extremely effective tool, actually. The reason we don't resort to it more often is because it is appallingly expensive in blood and treasure, and horribly risky (you can lose). But the reason that war is the last resort in international relations when diplomacy fails is because war can settle things even when diplomacy does not.

Not every war is conclusive. Some are costly stalemates, which yield no tangible gain to compensate for the terrible price. The Iran-Iraq war is a recent example highlighting that, where over the course of many years hundreds of thousands of men were sacrificed in battle. Once both nations had fought themselves into prostration, they ended up exactly where they had begun. That war was a complete waste.

But many wars in history have been extremely conclusive. The American Civil War certainly settled the issue of slavery in the US, for instance. And it's arguable that the American Revolutionary War was among the most influential and important events in world history. Certainly the flow of history would have been vastly different if England had won.

It's also rather hard to argue with the idea that Japan has changed quite radically as the result of World War II.

There are a lot of words one can use, rightly or wrongly, to describe war. But "useless" isn't defensible. War is brutal. War is terrible. War is costly. But to say that it is useless is to say that it isn't possible for it to yield any result at all which we consider valuable, and that is provably false from a straightforward examination of any reasonable history book.