Us Troops In Mortal Sin? Supporting Troops Also Sinful?

[1337 k4th0l1x0r]

It seems that there are two issues with this war that require separate answers.

1) Should we have gone into Iraq and was it a just war?
and
2) Should we stay in Iraq and what are the consequences for staying or leaving?

Saying that if we left then millions would die does not address how and why we entered the conflict. One can in good conscience say that we should never have gone into Iraq but we need to get out now. There are many anti-war people who have opposed this war from the start and believe getting out is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, there are many anti-war people who started out on the side of war and only changed for political reasons. They want to see us fail because it furthers their own cause. Every single troop death is a number on their scoreboard.

As for leaving, there are arguments either way. Who knows how long it will take to establish peace there. Tribal factions are a huge part of the culture and political landscape over there. Someone I know who has been over there likened the tribes to mafia or gangs. Expecting the tribes to work together to govern Iraq would be like getting the Crips, Bloods, and MS13 together to clean up Detroit. Will there be lots of killing if we left? Probably. But we're over there and there is still a lot of killing. The fact is that we're dealing with a part of the world that we don't really understand and acts in a very irrational manner. The Middle East is on or near the bottom of my list for places in the world I would want to live.

I hope that the Iraqi security forces get whipped into shape soon. They need to start taking care of themselves. I don't think people in that region value liberty terribly much and any democratic government will collapse quickly unless we stick around for a real long time.

As for supporting the troops, it's the best thing to do. The last thing we need this war to become is another Vietnam. I wasn't alive then, but I understand how bad the war was for veterans returning home. We should cheer when a soldier returns home because they fought in our Army and are at home alive.

[MichaelFilo]

While praying for people is always good, this second letter kinda showed how aware of the facts the responder was.
[quote]Mr. Williams does not mention that most of the civilians killed in the war have been killed by terrorists and insurgents of Iraq, not the U.S. military. These terrorists will continue to kill innocent civilians in Iraq with or without the coalition forces present [b]just as they did before the war[/b]. One wonders how many Americans they would kill if it weren’t for our military there trying to stop them?[/quote]

Really? Which insurgents in Iraq were going around killing people before the war? The same foreign insurgents in there now? That statement was pretty laughable.

[CatherineM]

My Grandfather served in WWI, My father in WWII, and I had one brother in the Army, Navy, and Air Force in Vietnam. My oldest foster son is a petty officer in the US Navy right now. I remember trying to get my father to tell me about what he did during the war. I knew he had be awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross, but I didn't know what for. He finally told me that he had sunk a Uboat that was trying to sink a troop carrier. He said that they had forced the sub to surface, and hoped they would surrender, and instead they manned their deck guns and began firing on the convoy and the covering air support. He said when they dropped the charges to destroy the sub, he was close enough to see the faces of the men standing on the deck. He told me that he doesn't regret anything he had to do in the war, he just regretted that it was necessary.

There's a lot of things in life that we end up regretting having to do. I firmly believe that the best way to support the troops is to bring them home.

[Anomaly]

I was a teen during Vietnam and had friends dads, and family fight there, die there, and some were POW. My father served in WW-II and was at the Normandy invasion and in Pacific serving the Navy. My wife's mom was in England, had her house bombed and her dad was a POW of the Germans for 8 years. I also have a co-worker I've known for 15 years who's a VietNam "boat person" who didn't get out until 3 years after the Communists took over. My family also sponsered a VN boat family that didn't get out until almost 5 years after the US withdrawl. My sister's in-laws have family in Iraq, with the latest one to escape Iraq getting out in May of 2000. My Dad's grandparents were immigrants and had siblings and family members die attempting to escape Poland and get to the US in the early 1900's.

Considering my background and the people I know, I can't concieve of it being moral to say Iraqi's are irrational, as a whole do not know or want freedom, and that US efforts in staying aren't worth it. People are people. The average person only wants to have a family, live life, feed and clothe their familys, and see thier children grow up and have families themselves. This is true in Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Poland, China, Malasia, Haiti, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Zimbabwe, South Africa, France, Greenland, New Zealand, and the US.

When there's turmoil and war, it's the few who are in power that manipulate the average citizen who simply wants to live in peace, and they wage the wars. Abandoning the bulk of the Iraqi people to the many madmen who have guns and bullets is the epitome of callous immorallity. Believeing that the Arabic world are a bunch of backwards barbarians incapable of living in peace is unexcusably ignorant and dismissive of human dignity.

Although there is plenty of room to debate whether the US should have gone into Iraq, the fact is, we did, and the US has helped create the power vacumm that is allowing evil persons from within Iraq and outside of Iraq to wage war against each other, with the populace of Iraq as pawns and cannon fodder. I've sat and talked to people from VietNam that escaped brutal oppression where they watched parents, siblings, and friends raped to death, starved to death, imprisoned, tortured to death, ripped from their arms. I've talked to my grandmother and her kids and heard the stories of suffering and sacrifice and death that was endured to escape real horror to live here. I've sat with grown men who cried as they told their stories of escaping in crowded boats, being attacked by pirates, robbed, and left to drown with holes shot in their boats. I've talked with people who lived for years trapped in UN refugee camps while their parents, siblings and children died from disease, murder, starvation, and raids from fighters while the "peace keepers' stood around.

I know it's just my personal opinion, but I am saddened but not surprised that so many people want to abandon the Iraqi's, just as the people in Africa have been abandoned to death as political pawns because the people are just too backwards, uncivilized, and worthless to risk the lives of "civilized" people from the US or Europe. I think it's the devil's own lie to believe it's much more of a heinous crime to involve oneself in another's matters even if that other party is powerless in facing overwelming evil. I don't really think the Good Samaritan has to be pure in heart, and I think the US should try because we are stong enough to and may not be completely evil. Samaritans were not the moral religious pillars of society in Jesus' day. What about the 'good' people who walked by the wounded before hte Samaritan came along?

Instead of spending our efforts abandoning Iraqi's to evil people with guns, maybe we should spend our efforts keeping US efforts as moral as possible, keeping in mind, we are battling people who's tactics are exploding themselves on buses with women and children. I think the US is letting the thoughts of WHO we are battling to cause us to think about who we are fighting for. Here we may call them Joe "6-pack" and family. Is it really so different if it's Abul "Robewearer" and family? If we don't do it, who can or who will?

Edited August 29, 2007 by Anomaly

[CatherineM]

I agree that the reasons we went into Iraq are immaterial at this point in dealing with the mess that's there. I also believe that whether we are there 10 months or 10 weeks, when we leave there will be all out civil war. At that point the UN will be forced to help. They aren't now because the US went in without getting their approval, and figure we are getting what we deserve.

I think my biggest problem with what we did in Iraq is that we robbed the Iraqi people of their George Washington and Nathan Hale's. Had they as a people joined together and risen up to overthrow Saddam, they might have found the togetherness that they now lack. We stole from them the feeling of risking everything for freedom that our founding fathers experienced.

[knightec]

Support our troops.
Support our country.


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[Faith 1st]

These pictures show my brothers....Rene is in the first picture the first left one on the top...who served his 4 yrs on and was about to finish his 4 yrs off. In May 2003 he got married and was called to Iraq in Dec. of the same year. He left his wife who was 1 month pregnant with Robert...(he missed the entire pregnancy)
Rene was the first one in our entire family to enlist in the Marines when he was 19. At the age of 27 when he was in Iraq...he said that he was the oldest in his unit and that all the guys that they put him with were Alex's age (Picture #2).

The time that he spent there was horrible for our family. We did not know what was happening to him and we were scared! We learned the difference betwwen loosing a soldier and loosing a Marine...

I can tell you that my prayer life improved and I was talking to God on a daily basis and reconnecting with my faith. The church was the only place that I found confort. On those hard days when he was hurting for the pain that they were going through I reassured him that talking to God and praying would help him through....He NEVER went on the feild without his rosary and Prayed before and after his missions.

I don't know what he went through, he will not tell us or his wife....and I hope with all my heart that he has found peace with God.

Alex in the youngest in our family and followed in his brothers footstep. He enlisted and did not tell anyone until two weeks before leaving....he gave up his sign on bonus...because he wants to serve his country. He leaves in March for Iraq.

Supporting our troops should not be a question just or unjust....They are someones husbands, wives, son, daughters, brothers, sisters....leaving their families so that you can speak your mind and for the freedom of your children and grandchildren.

[Justin86]

Anyone who thinks that US troops are in mortal sin for what they are doing in Iraq needs to do some research on just war. Then again something tells me this guy really doesn't care about what the Church teaches but only wants to use the Church for his political gain. We can't pray for our troops? What? Last time I checked Catholics were called to pray for sinners not to snub them because we condem what they are doing.

[ironmonk]

The Vatican (I believe it was the Pope, but can't remember - read it a few years ago on Zenit) stated that soldiers do not have to worry and they are not sinning.

nuff said


God Bless,
ironmonk

[cathoholic_anonymous]

Both those letters are problematic, the second just as much as the first.

The chaplain bases his defence of the troops' presence in Iraq on two points:

1.) Saddam Hussein was a murderous butcher who killed up to 500,00 of his own people.
2.) The majority of killings in Iraq these days are committed by terrorists and insurgents, and these killings would still be going on even if the coalition forces weren't present.

The second point is frankly untrue. Iraq was a dictatorship prior to the war, but it wasn't unstable. People from other countries weren't streaming in illegally over the borders to fight other people. Sectarianism existed, but it was nowhere near so bloody or so violent. The invasion destabilised the country. To say otherwise is not honest.

As for the first point...Saddam Hussein was not the only ruthless tyrant in the world. Where was the rush to invade Zimbabe when Robert Mugabe began his reign of terror? Why did no one invade Uganda during the time of Idi Amin? What about the genocide in Rwanda at the hands of the Hutu government just over ten years ago? You need more than an evil government to justify the presence of troops.

My brother has served in Iraq twice. I prayed for him when he was out there, and I continue to pray for all the troops who are serving there now. But my prayer is worth nothing if it's dishonest. I cannot glorify the situation by making grandiose statements such as, "We should support our boys - they're out there protecting Great Britain!" The truth is that Britain was never under any particular threat from Hussein's regime, as we now know, and as a result of the war in Iraq there is a real shortage of British troops in Afghanistan - a place where they went out of actual necessity.

I pray for these men and women, but I'm under no rosy illusions about the situation. The second letter is just as abhorrent as the first, because it effectively denies the suffering of Iraqi civilians by making it sound as though they would be suffering even more if the invasion hadn't happened. Not true. Before the war you got squashed if you were a Kurd or a Shi'a marsh-Arab. Thanks to sectarian infighting everyone now has an equal chance of being squashed, and that's not the kind of equality that was originally planned. The invasion was handled in a botched-up and messy way. It's unfair to the troops and unfair to the Iraqi citizens to pretend otherwise.

Good prayer takes hold of everything, warts and all, and holds it before the Lord. Churches that have photos of soldiers looking tough and macho in the streets of Basra on their noticeboards but pray only half-heartedly (or not at all) for the faceless Ay-rabs in Iraq are not entering fully into prayer. It's as simple as that.

For these reasons, both of those letters made me extremely uncomfortable.

Edited September 4, 2007 by Cathoholic Anonymous

[ironmonk]

Came across this when looking for something else....


[b]Q: A person said to me, "Because John Paul II said the war in Iraq is immoral, all who die fighting in it are damned to hell." Is this true?[/b]

A: Despite a widespread misperception to the contrary, John Paul never actually said that the Iraq War was unjust. He did issue strong exhortations to find peaceful solutions and also cautioned against going to war apart from the conditions that render a war just. Whether those conditions were fulfilled or not in this case he did not say.

The Catechism indicates that whether a situation measures up to the conditions for a just war ultimately falls to the temporal leaders who have competence and responsibility in such matters. "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good" (CCC 2309).

Catholics can be in favor of the war or against it without being condemned to hell for their stance on it.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) noted in a 2004 memorandum:

If a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty (Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion 3).

It is categorically false to say that soldiers commit mortal sin by fighting in Iraq or that they are going to hell.

[url="http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0507qq.asp"]http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0507qq.asp[/url]


God Bless,
ironmonk