OT: Catholic take on a just war and Iraq

[beachmom]

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1748&recalcul=oui

This is very similar to Kerry's Pepperdine speech, just more scholarly and fleshed out. Good quote here:

Of course, by this point the United States had over two hundred thousand troops in theater, poised to invade. In the administration’s mind, bringing those troops home without overthrowing Saddam was simply not an option. So in March, against the will of much of the world community, the United States invaded Iraq. Shortly after the invasion, Michael Walzer, perhaps the most respected expert on just-war theory, wrote this concerning the criterion of last resort:

America’s war is unjust. Though disarming Iraq is a legitimate goal, morally and politically, it is a goal that we could almost certainly have achieved with measures short of full-scale war....At this time, the threat Iraq posed could have been met with something less than the war we are now fighting. And a war fought before its time is not a just war.

With what we now know about the decision making that led to the invasion, it is hard to see how Iraq passes the just-war test ...