© Signs of the Times
The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq marks nine years of a war that never should have happened. It was a pre-emptive, morally unjust war.
No national clergy called it just. U.S. Catholic bishops expressed "grave doubt." Both Pope John Paul II and our current Pope Benedict XV said, "This war did not meet a just war criteria."
Yet America pressed on. The day Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta declared the war ended, 4,487 American troops had died, and 32,226 more were wounded in action. The death toll of Iraqi civilians was in the hundreds of thousands (our government never counted).
Few of us have been able to speak the simple truth: This war was wrong.
We all can prayerfully respond, mea culpa, the Latin phrase from the penitential rite of the Mass -- "through my fault." We did not do enough to stop this war. If we do not confront our history honestly, we are doomed to repeat it.
The New York Times account of the formal end-of-war declaration Dec. 15 in Baghdad was telling.
"The tenor of the 45-minute farewell ceremony, officially called, 'Casing the Colors,' was likely to sound an uncertain trumpet for a war that was started to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction it did not have," the Times said.
This final, low key, passing of the torch to the Iraqis was in a Baghdad area fortified courtyard, in what has been our major airbase in their country.
"The tenuous security atmosphere in Iraq was underscored by helicopters that hovered over the ceremony, scanning the ground for rocket attacks," the Times said.
What we've left behind is a country without a dictator, but without a democracy. The war left Iraq with 4 million internal and external refugees. It left many of its talented workers and professionals fled or dead.
The leadership has been transferred from Sunni to Shiite, more bad blood shed between them in this war than ever before. The Iraqi Shiites are closer allies to Iran, the most powerful Shia country in the region, than they are to the United States. Iran is our next probable target in the interminable wars on terror.
How do we, the most militarily mighty of the worlds' nations, stop this marching to war after war? The first step is to confess the sin -- to admit we were wrong -- from the top leadership down to each and every one of us. I place myself among those who did not do enough to stop this war.
Seeing the grave importance of avoiding this unjust invasion, a group of us circulated the Iraq Peace Pledge at our local churches. In one October 2002 weekend in Port Huron, nearly 400 signed petitions against the war, and 41 of us pledged to engage in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience at U. S. federal facilities, if the United States attacks Iraq.
The war came with "shock and awe," but none of us, to my knowledge, responded to our pledge. There were no civil disobedience arrests in the Blue Water Area.
There is so much more we who were too much on the sidelines must do with God's grace to truly repent for this unjust war and heal its wounds worldwide. God help us to make present Jesus the Prince of Peace, in our hearts and in our nation.
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Michael McCarthy of Port Huron is a leader of Blue Water Pax Christi, a Catholic peace organization.
It was not premature for bush to declare, "mission accomplished"
The mission had been accomplished...the "mission" was destruction.