Second Part: Ok to Kill?

When is it Ok to Kill?

Before we dive into just war theory we have to see the concept of killing throughout the Church's moral tradition and natural law reasoning to form our initial baseline from which we can formulate a good argument on Catholic Just War Doctrine. In this "Second Part" article I want to use the text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (referred to as CCC, or simply "the Catechism") to explore Catholic teaching on killing, murder and self-defense. A later post can deal with the specific principles of just war in the Catechism, for now we will leave ourselves to understanding the important distinctions, backed up by Saint Thomas Aquinas and Scripture, on killing.

We start here because the Catechism presents her teaching on just war within the context of the Fifth Commandment: "You shall not kill" (Ex. 20:13; Deut 5:17). In Exodus 23:7 God further specifies whom we are not allowed to kill: "The innocent and the just you shall not put to death." It must be understood within the Catholic view that intentional killing is always wrong. It is an intrinsically evil moral object that can never be chosen as an end in itself or as a means to an end. "The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. The law forbidding it is universally valid: it obliges each and everyone, always and everywhere" (CCC 2261).

However, natural law reasoning presents the fact that while all murder is killing, not all killing is murder. Murder is a subcategory, if you will, of killing. But not all killing is murder, and the Church labors to lay out the careful distinctions between a justified, or licit, killing, and homicide, or "intentional killing." This is where the understanding of the principle of the double effect legitimizes the defensive engagement in war and self-defense. On this issue CCC 2263 states, "The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing" but rather, it is from the unintended effect that the aggressor is killed. The intended effect is not to kill, but to preserve one's own life or the lives of those in one's care. Note that this is not saying that in such a circumstance intentional killing is now okay. Murder is never allowed. The Church is saying this is not murder.

Distinguishing Types of Killing

Under the subsection on "Intentional Homicide" (CCC 2268-2269) the Church lays out her basic principles that ought to shape our later reflections on just war. In two paragraphs it lays down three basic forms of killing: direct and intentional killing, indirect and intentional killing, and unintentional killing. In the first form of killing, the Church states clearly that the "fifth commandment forbids direct and intentional killing as gravely sinful." If your intention is to directly kill someone, and not to have that killing be an unintended side-effect of another worthy intention, then it is always wrong. Even if it is a means to a really good end, it remains sinful, illicit and grave evil.

The Catechism continues on to the second form of killing, indirect homicide, saying that that same commandment "forbids doing anything with the intention of indirectly bringing about a person's death. The moral law prohibits exposing someone to mortal danger without grave reason, as well as refusing assistance to a person in danger." This is an important point: not only are direct killings gravely sinful, but so are intentional indirect killings, where the intended death results using indirect means. To illustrate this point, the Catechism uses "murderous famines" as the example of such killing and says they are "a scandalous injustice and a grave offense" that "lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family" and those who cause them "indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them." (Applying this principles, I think severe economic sanctions imposed upon a nation by another nation, or community of nations (i.e. the US or the UN), causing the death of the poor of that nation would clearly follow under this description of intentional indirect homicide.)

The final form of killing is unintentional killing, which is examined within the paragraph on indirect killing, but the Church declares that it "is not morally imputable." A death resulting from a chance happening is not sinful because it is not voluntary. "Hence chance happenings, strictly speaking, are neither intended nor voluntary," states Saint Thomas, and "since every sin is voluntary... it follows that chance happenings, as such, are not sins." But that is not all that matters here. The Catechism clarifies this point: "one is not exonerated from grave offense if, without proportionate reasons, he has acted in a way that brings about someone's death, even without the intention to do so." St. Thomas says on the topic of unintentional ("involuntary") homicide that a person is guilty in two circumstances, if he is engaged in an unlawful activity or in a lawful activity carelessly. "If he be occupied with something unlawful, or even with something lawful, but without due care, he does not escape being guilty of murder, if his action results in someone's death."

In summary, all intentional killing- whether directly or indirectly intended- is evil, unlawful and always a grave offense. Furthermore, unintended killing that comes about from doing something unlawful or from simply not exercising due care is also gravely evil. This is as bad a condemnation as the Church gets. In fact, direct and intended killing is described in the bible and quoted in the Catechism as one of the four sins that cries out to heaven for vengeance! This is serious stuff here and not to be taken lightly. Killing is not to be glorified, though it may be one's duty to engage in it.

From Nuance to Foundation: Love of Self

Now we need to discuss why unintended killing is lawful in specific circumstances. We can see how these nuances above narrow down when it ok to kill. But the Church goes even further according to her Natural Law reasoning: legit self-defense can become illegitimate when one lacks prudence. But I am rushing into the argument here. First things first! Why is it ok to kill an unjust aggressor coming after me or those in whose care I am in charge?

CCC 2264 lays the proper foundation: "Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow."

For the Church and her Bible, all creation is inherently good ("God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good" - Gen 1:31). Everything is good. Insofar as a thing exists, that thing is good, because God is Existence itself ("I Am Who Am" - Exodus 3:13-15) and all things that exist participate in God's existence; thus, they are good. Now all living things having a basic natural inclination to preserve its life. Thomas continues more precisely than I could hope:

"Because in man there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the nature which he has in common with all substances: inasmuch as every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according to its nature: and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a means of preserving human life, and of warding off its obstacles, belongs to the natural law."

I want to live. My act of existing is defined by my human nature and one of the most basic inclination of human nature is to keep on existing. I do not want to die! I want to live. I love my life because it is the only one God gave me! The Church tells us to insist on our own personal right to life, to safeguard this right. We are never permitted to just lay down and die, to give up on life. Life is a good in and of itself, the first grace given to us by God. Love for one's own life is the basis for the Golden Rule.

However, even this self-preservation has limits. St. Thomas Aquinas furthers this understanding in the Summa Theologica that the good intention of preserving one's own life against an unjust aggressor can be rendered immoral if one uses lethal force where nonlethal means would have been sufficient to deter the attacker. Knowing how to walk this line involves prudence. "Wherefore if a man, in self-defense, uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repel force with moderation his defense will be lawful," for "one is bound to take more care of one's own life than of another's" (STh II-II, 64,7, corp. art.).

Therefore, the imprudent use of force may render an act of defense illegitimate in the eyes of God. Prudence guides the individual in the proportionate about of violence that ought to be used in order to repel the aggressor. The justice of the issue may be settled- that is, the aggressor attacks unjustly and the victim is operating purely out of defense- but the prudential dimension can render this otherwise just act unjust by excessive violence.

In all such circumstances, however, the logic of the Church is that killing must be justified by careful criteria, by both the commands of justice and the precepts of prudence. If these criteria are not met, then killing is illicit, and the individual or the authorities are guilty of grave evil. However, one should see in this tradition of moral reasoning that the Catholic Church, unlike the Quakers, are not absolute pacifists, but do find some sort of limited lawfulness to engage in the act of killing, whether in war or self-defense. "Legitimate defenses can be not only a right" says CCC 2265, "but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others... For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility."

The large scale violence that war always brings is always a tragedy, even if the cause is just. The Church teaches that there are real cases where just wars and lethal self-defense can happen. In her natural law reasoning, especially in the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine before him, the Church sees the love of self, the inclination to self-preservation, and the duty to defend oneself and those in one's care as legitimate reasons to use violence, even lethal violence, to stop the attack and repel the aggressor. To repel an unjust aggressor, the prudential use of force, and not just the fact that force is now allowed to be used, is required to remain a legit defender against evil and not a perpetrator of it. Just because I can use force in a given situation, it does not mean that it is a free-for-all, no-holds-barred throw down.

Hatred begets violence. It is no accident that Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his great Summa, treated the topic of war under the "Vices" of Charity. If peace, which we will treat next time, is the effect of charity and the work of justice, then war is a failure of both.

God love you.

gomer

AMDG

First Part: Just War Theory

I believe fully in the Catholic and Christian faith given to the world by Christ and his Apostles and passed down through sacred tradition and sacred scripture (sacra doctrina) and as protected by the Magisterium of his one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, headed by the Pope, the Bishop of Rome.

As such, I believe that it is the moral duty of all Catholics to try and understand their faith and heritage of Christianity, especially in the saints and theologians of years past. To uncover the lives of the saints is discover the gospel writ large in the world with flesh and blood. Their witness transforms the possibilities of this world. Heroic virtue, miraculous self-donation, humility, repentance- all of it mixes and mingles with the reality of the fallen human nature that has been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

Christian morality has always interested me and as such it has caused me to radically alter my political views from time to time. As a conservative Catholic, I had to come to terms with the Church's teaching on the death penalty as expressed through Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae. As the years have unrolled, I fear I have entered into my most distressing portion of my Catholic evolution. I have become a libertarian.

I became a libertarian (or maybe we can stretch the term 'Old Right' or paleo-conservative) because of my views on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To be more accurate, I became more convinced that Christ wanted peace and not war, that war was a grave undertaking that is wholly defensive, and that American foreign policy had rejected the basic tenants of the Just War doctrine of the Church's patrimony. This rejection of Just War Theory was made known to me not by Catholic theologians- they seemed all too silent, or all too leftist- but by an honest politician, Ron Paul, Republican Representative for the state of Texas and former Republican primary presidential nominee.

I previously thought peace among the nations was a naive ideal, until I read the rigorous and principled thought of libertarians and paleoconservatives (true conservatives, if you ask me) on wars of aggression and I saw how much they lined up with Augustine and Aquinas on the just war doctrine. I discovered that many of the Founding Fathers had a strong non-interventionist view of foreign relations, which consisted in mainly encouraging free trade among the nations. Let the nations engage in their own self-determination.

Then I compared that with our current government interventions and saw war increase abroad and freedom curtailed at home. Many crafters of our Constitution believed that treaties and alliances would entangle the young nation in European problems, so they cautioned against all treaties or alliances. These alliances were rejected because of their ability to drag us into wars and bloodshed that in no way concern the United States.

Furthermore, the Framers of the Constitution broke apart the War Powers, giving the power to declare war and fund it wholly to the Congress, while allowing the executive branch to run the war once engaged. This was a solution that would hold true as long as the legislative branch was not in league with the executive. However, today's party politics seems to override the separation of powers. As James Madison observed:

In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy.

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

Another classic James Madison quote on war furthers my hatred of it:

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could reserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

The reason why I said this is the most distressing part for my ongoing conversion is because it is very alienating, especially from my friends who are conservatives on the neoconservative side. It pains me to talk about this, but if I didn't, I would be a liar, inauthentic.

So, here it all goes, my opus to defend my Catholic convictions that led me to my libertarian political views in order to reshape American politics back to pro-life, pro-peace and non-interventionist principles...

gomer

AMDG

A Man for All Seasons excerpt!

Lady Alice More: Arrest him!

St. Thomas More: For what?

Lady Alice More: He's dangerous!

William Roper: For all we know he's a spy!

Margaret More: Father, that man's bad!

St. Thomas More: There's no law against that.

William Roper: There is—God's law!

St. Thomas More: Then let God arrest him.

Lady Alice More: While you talk he's gone!

St. Thomas More: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law.

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down—and you're just the man to do it!—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Personalism as the Foundation for Peace

The present age is a time of great controversy about the human being, controversy about the very meaning of human existence, and thus about the nature and significance of the human being. We know that such situations in history have frequently led to a deeper reflection on Christian truth as a whole, as well as on particular aspects of it. That is also the case today. The truth about the human being, in turn, has a distinctly privileged place in this whole process. After nearly twenty years of ideological debate in Poland, it has become clear that at the center of this debate is not cosmology or philosophy of nature but philosophical anthropology and ethics: the great and fundamental controversy about the human being. (Karol Wojtyla, The Person: Subject and Community)

The case for peace, a real and lasting peace, can only be made on the grounds of an authentic personalism and on the moral and political edifices that are constructed from its foundation. Personalism, without the defects of individualism or the excesses of collectivism, alone takes full accounting of the nature of man, of his history and anthropology, and of the highest moral aspirations that lead to true human flourishing. Without recognition of the worth of every individual, or by denying man's integral need for community, war-making, coercion and domination will never cease to be overwhelming temptations for the powers that be.

The foundations of the modern liberal order rest upon the philosophical concept of the "individual". Much ink has been spilled over this, both pro and con, and competing systems arise to challenge its claim to rationality, such as collectivism and communitarianism. Christian thinkers find in individualism the seeds of the destruction of the family, of communities, and of the whole social order due to the fact that man is broken away from his relations and is reduced to a rootless cosmopolitan. MacIntyre regards the conception of the individual to be a modern fiction, a functional idea that does not describe reality, but rather rationalizes new social systems, such as democracy, the sciences and capitalism.

The champions of individualism, however, disregard such a dramatic reading into the idea of the individual. The real danger, says the individualist, is to disregard individuals! Once we disregard the individual, we are forced into the realm of the collective, of the aggregate, of reducing the individual to a disposable part of the all-too-important whole. Professor F.A. Hayek would contrast true and false individualism, saying:

True individualism is primarily a theory of society, an attempt to understand the forces which determine the social life of man, and only in the second instance a set of political maxims derived from this view of society. This fact should by itself be sufficient to refute the silliest of the common misunderstandings: the belief that individualism postulates (or bases its arguments on the assumption of) the existence of isolated or self-contained individuals, instead of starting from men whose whole nature and character is determined by their existence in society. If that were true, it would indeed have nothing to contribute to our understanding of society.

Catholicism and collectivism, in my estimation, are irreconcilable. Collectivist ideology is what leads states to mass genocide, communities to segregation, and families to feuds, because the dignity of the human person is not factored in the moral calculus of those with power. Collectivism predicates to the whole class, group or some other aggregate the properties of despised individuals. Such societies feel justified in destroying an individual, no matter how innocent, because doing so may be most profitable to others. It is the individualist who has no room for racism or nationalism or other such bigotry, because epistemologically he cannot and does not regard human beings as just a part of a whole, as a unit in a collective, for each individual is the whole.

Chesterton believed that the modern world is simply living off the inheritance of the intellectual fruits of the Church. It is in this light that I want to touch on the basis of a Catholic individualism that has existed for years and is wholly orthodox. This theological concept is personalism. As Pope John Paul II said in his remarks to the United Nations in 1995:

Modern totalitarianism has been, first and foremost, an assault on the dignity of the person, an assault which has gone even to the point of denying the inalienable value of the individual's life.

If individualism is the sterilized and secularized fruit of the Church's thought, then it would be the theological and philosophical understanding of the dignity of the human person that forms its richer whole. The idea of personhood transcends mere political or legal parameters, reaching an anthropological dimension that individualism or collectivism fails to reach. Personalism, in the words of Dietrich von Hildebrand when speaking about Truth, "lies not between two errors, but above them."

The human person finds himself neither a herd animal (Marx), nor a lone predator (Nietzsche), but rather each human person is created, formed, matured and perfected only through interaction with another. As Hans Urs von Balthasar would assert: "Now man exists only in dialogue with his neighbor. The infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother." The babe first discovers the other, the "You" before he ever discovers the subject, the self, the "I". Therefore, it is truly interaction that opens up the realm of human flourishing to each individual.

What is a person? Aristotle would define a man metaphysically as a rational animal, his genus and specific difference. It was Boethius, a classical Christian philosopher, who would define a person as "an individual substance of a rational nature." Thus, a human person's rational nature is concretized in his belonging to the genus animal. Commenting on this, Karol Wojtyla would say,

The person is a concrete man, the individua substantia, of the classical Boethian definition. The concrete is in a way tantamount to the unique, or at any rate, to the individualized. The concept of the person is broader and more comprehensive than the concept of the "individual," just as the person is more than individualized nature. the person would be an individual whose nature is rational- according to Boethius' full definition.

We can begin to see how an individual is only a half-truth. The fuller explanation of our moral foundation for peace is personalism, not just individualism. Why? Because it acknowledges both the unique dignity of the one and the desire for solidarity with the many. A person is a being-in-relation. A person shares in the unique form of existence whereby the person is a subject, a someone, and not merely an object, not merely a something. This point was made by Karol Wojtyla in the opening chapter of his book, Love and Responsibility, and also by Pope Benedict XVI, when he said in his message on peace:

As one created in the image of God, each individual human being has the dignity of a person; he or she is not just something, but someone, capable of self-knowledge, self-possession, free self-giving and entering into communion with others. At the same time, each person is called, by grace, to a covenant with the Creator, called to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his place. (# 2, Message for the celebration World Day of Peace)

Person as Christian Concept

Personhood is a Christian concept, developed far beyond the Greek philosophers who were only concerned with understanding nature. The Church Fathers, especially of the early Ecumenical Councils, needed a concept that was full enough to explain the two most important doctrines of the Christian Faith: the Trinity and the Incarnation. How can God be Father, Son and Spirit without being three gods? How can Jesus Christ be fully God and fully Man, without being two Jesusesessss? The Church Fathers solved this dilema through furthering the notion of "nature," and through the concept of "personhood".

The theological basis of the dignity of the human person is the revelation that man, male and female, is made in the image and likeness of God (Cf. Genesis 1:26-27). Pope John Paul II structures this essential characteristic of human nature, that our personhood is relational, in delivering his landmark opus, the Theology of the Body. He demonstrates that both the glory of God and our call to loving union (communion) is expressed in the language of the body, in the physical and spiritual dimensions of our humanity. He labors at great length to demonstrate how, written in the human body, is the call to communion with another. This means the nature of humanity is the finite, even fragmented, image of the divine.

Pope Benedict, building upon this cornerstone stone of the imago Dei, applies it to the desire for peace:

A fundamental element of building peace is the recognition of the essential equality of human persons springing from their common transcendental dignity. Equality on this level is a good belonging to all, inscribed in that natural “grammar” which is deducible from the divine plan of creation; it is a good that cannot be ignored or scorned without causing serious repercussions which put peace at risk. The extremely grave deprivation afflicting many peoples, especially in Africa, lies at the root of violent reactions and thus inflicts a terrible wound on peace.

If human education and fulfillment can only come to be through interaction with other persons, and if we are truly made in God's image and likeness, then certain amazing conclusions follow about our nature and the nature of the Trinity. The focus falls upon the tension between the One and the Many, between the individual and the community, resolved ultimately in God's inner life. Summing up von Balthasar's theological project, Joel Garver reaches these conclusions about God and the nature of the human person:

First, since we exist only in interpersonal dialogue, God Himself must exist as interpersonal dialogue. Speech—the Word—is of His essence. Second, since God is truly God and in no need of the creature, He must be the true, the good, and the beautiful in Himself. So the analogous manifestation of these realities in the creature is only partial and finite. For example, for us as humans our unity as humans could either be that each of us is part of one humanity or that each of us is an individual. Only in the Trinity is such partial unity resolved since God’s unity is precisely in the individuality of the Persons.

Immanuel Kant formulated what is known as the negative phrasing of the personalistic norm. His formulation of the basic moral principle is "Persons should always be treated as their own ends and should never be merely used as an instrumental means." We should never reduce the person to a mere object for our using. Karol Wojtyla, in Love and Responsibility, would state it positively, "In its positive form the personalist norm says that the person is a good toward which the only proper and adequate attitude is love." Professor John Crosby explains the personalistic norm by saying "If we are really going to respect persons, then we must step back from them, take our heavy hands off them, and let them be, that is, live as self-determining beings... we treat persons as their own end."

This point cannot be stated more loudly! It is not permissible to coerce an individual person because God Himself has given to each and every human person the power of self-determination, of self-creation, of self-donations. We are called to not only life with others, but to live for others, but making such a gift of our selves to others is our choice to make. Love cannot be forced. It must always be free and always be true to the dignity of the human persons involved. Karol Wojtyla goes further: not even God can treat another person as a mere means to an end, for

on the part of God, indeed, it is totally out of the question, since, by giving man an intelligent and free nature, He has thereby ordained that each man alone will decide for himself the ends of his activity, and the not be a blind tool of someone else's ends. Therefore, if God intends to direct man toward certain goals, He allows him, to begin with, to know those goals, so that he may make them his own and strive toward them independently.

War ceases to identity the enemy as a human person, worthy of respect and even love, but instead reduces them to an object, a hurdle, to my or my country's prosperity. Disregard of the individual for the sake of vague rhetoric about "the greater good" has become the ideological buttress of utilitarian violence. How many people are unjustly arrested, detained and tortured during the Bush and Obama regimes for the sake of accuring potentially critical information? How many innocent non-combatants were deliberately killed, regarded as collateral damage, for the sake of this or that high valued target? Too many.

Utilitarianism, which is the systematic using of other people as instruments for my conception of what is the greater good, is always a moral failure. Utilitarianism "defines morality not in terms of what is good but of what is advantageous," says Pope John Paul II at the U.N., and it "often have devastating political consequences, because it inspires an aggressive nationalism on the basis of which the subjugation, for example, of a smaller or weaker nation is claimed to be a good thing solely because it corresponds to the national interest."

In developing the points of argument for his address on the World Day of Peace in 2007, Pope Benedict drew his audience's attention to two main obstacles to true and lasting peace: ideologies with both anthropological conceptions "that contain the seeds of hostility and violence" and theological conceptions of God "that would encourage intolerance and recourse to violence against others. This is a point which must be clearly reaffirmed: war in God's name is never acceptable!" This is when theology breaks down into ideology, when a particular conception of God "is at the origin of criminal acts."

The second obstacle to peace in the address of the Pope, is the "indifference as to what constitutes man's true nature. Many of our contemporaries actually deny the existence of a specific human nature and thus open the door to the most extravagant interpretations of what essentially constitutes a human being." If human nature is the basis of human rights, then one can see how a weak conception of man fails to support human rights and fails to protect the powerless from those with might. Such a weak conception of man "hinders authentic dialogue and opens the way to authoritarian impositions," that is, violent coercion and totalitarianism. Human rights cannot be grounded on a weak notion of the person, on a relativistic basis, for rights make absolute claims on our actions. "Only if they are grounded in the objective requirements of the nature bestowed on man by the Creator, can the rights attributed to him be affirmed without fear of contradiction."

It is thus the moral duty of every Christian to treat all people in accord with their imago Dei, leading to greater solidarity between the nations, regions, peoples, families and individuals. "Peace is thus also a task demanding of everyone a personal response consistent with God's plan." If you want peace, love and respect the individual human person.

Obama's Rhetoric and Whistle-blowers, Updated

(Look at his boy's baby face!)

And now we have come to discover that WikiLeaks.org has released a document of criminal charges being brought against Pfc. Bradley Manning for leaking classified information.

Here's the link to the boingboing.net article.

Manning is being held in Kuwait and the Army has 120 days after restraint of the individual in question to press charges. That timeline is shortening, so it comes as no surprise that charges were filed.

According to the article, there are eight counts being brought against him for a total of 52 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act.

Obama's Rhetoric and Whistle-blowers

When one party dramatically expands the powers of the Executive, Legislative or Judicial branches because those branches are run by "our guys", then when "their guys" get into these offices, they inherit more power, bigger government, and expand it even further themselves.

This is just one example of the pure double-speak of politics. First, we have Obama's campaign promise, available on their Gov't website, Change.gov under "Ethics":

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

Now Obama is chasing after the biggest whistleblower since the Pentagon Papers and will prosecute Specialist Bradley Manning for leaking to WikiLeaks.org the infamous "Collateral Murder" video and supposedly an immense amount of State Department cables (estimated at 260,000).

Check out this Anti-war Radio interview with Daniel Ellsberg- the US Military Analyst who was prosecuted for espionage leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which arguably help lead to the Vietnam War's closure- and his comments regarding Obama's attack on whistleblowers as the largest in US presidential history.

One of my favorite liberal writers, Glenn Greenwald, posted a sweet article extending his look into the aggressive DOJ shutdown of whistleblowers under the Obama regime. He opens his article with this:

The Obama administration's war on whistleblowers -- whose disclosures are one of the very few remaining avenues for learning what our government actually does -- continues to intensify. Last month, the DOJ announced it had obtained an indictment against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who exposed serious waste, abuse and possible illegality. Then, the DOJ re-issued a Bush era subpoena to Jim Risen of The New York Times, demanding the identity of his source who revealed an extremely inept and damaging CIA effort to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program.

Obama's campaign and early presidential rhetoric states clearly, "Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government." And yet, when Thomas Drake seeks to "expose serious waste, abuse and possible illegality", the Obama DOJ attacks to silence him.

Greenwald goes on to quote from a Politico article, Justice Department cracks down on leaks, by Josh Gerstein, which talks of the prosecution of FBI linguist Shamai Leibowitz, who was just awarded the "longest ever" prison sentence for leaking national security secrets to the media (a blogger) being the third such whistleblower to be sentenced in US history!

I think it is amazing that the judge in the Shamai Leibowitz case who issued the sentence, Justice Williams, had no clue what the documents leaked actually said. The top of page three of the article on Politco says:

“It was a very, very serious offense,” Williams said. However, in an unusual admission, Williams went on to say that while he assumed that the disclosures had a serious impact on national security, he really didn’t know because he wasn’t privy to what information was disclosed and what impact it had.

“The court is in the dark,” the judge said. “I’m not a part and parcel of the intricacies of that. ... I don’t know what was divulged, other than some documents.”

Conclusion

Just to recap, the judge who issued the longest sentence in US history for whistleblowing, did so absolutely blind, during the reign of the "Transparency President" who promised to strengthen federal whistleblower laws to protect the very people he is indicting.

Obama is change, but without the hope.

All of the vile, anti-civil liberty actions of the Bush administration, all of the threats and shouts against the whistleblowers during the reign of W, all of it together never amounted to a single indictment against any of them. Yet, in the first half of the Obama regime, we have 3 such subpenas: Drake, Liebowitz and Risen, with the arrest of Manning as well.

Let me allow Glenn Greenwald to conclude this post with an extended quote.

It's true that leaking classified information is a crime. That's what makes whistleblowers like Drake so courageous. That's why Daniel Ellsberg -- who literally risked his liberty in an effort to help end the Vietnam War -- is one of the 20th Century's genuine American heroes. And if political-related crimes were punished equally, one could accept whistle-blower prosecutions even while questioning the motives behind them and the priorities they reflect. But that's not the situation that prevails.

Instead, here you have the Obama DOJ in all its glory: no prosecutions (but rather full-scale immunity extended) for war crimes, torture, and illegal spying. For those crimes, we must Look Forward, Not Backward. But for those poor individuals who courageously blow the whistle on oozing corruption, waste and illegal surveillance by the omnipotent public-private Surveillance State: the full weight of the "justice system" comes crashing down upon them with threats of many years in prison.

Brief and Borrowed Response

Many people who are for the expansion of war powers from Congress to the Executive, or are just rear-guard defenders of the Bush Doctrine or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they will respond to the Constitutional argument against the legality of these wars by siting some of our Founding Fathers and the wars they engaged in as Commander-in-Chief of the US.

Apparently this is a fairly common argument because Mr. Thomas E. Woods, libertarian, economist and historian, has written specifically to address this argument.

Here is the link to his whole article.

I would like to cite this work, Presidential War Powers, published on LewRockwell.com on this issue, at length. Forgive my lack of summary, but I'm in an airport with slow WiFi and need to board the next plane soon, but feel morally compelled to push out at least an initial response. And I certainly do not have the scholarship of Woods behind me, so I will simply quote from the best and link to the rest!

Here Woods is responding to the drastic limits that the Constitution directly placed on the Executive, giving all war powers to Congress.

The typical neoconservative response to this argument is to claim that the president has sent troops into battle hundreds of times without congressional authorization. A well-known neoconservative whose name I shall mercifully keep to myself made just this argument in his review of my Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.

Let’s see how well the claim stands up.

Supporters of a broad executive war power have sometimes appealed to the Quasi War with France, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, as an example of unilateral warmaking on the part of the president. Francis Wormuth, an authority on war powers and the Constitution, describes that contention as "altogether false." John Adams "took absolutely no independent action. Congress passed a series of acts that amounted, so the Supreme Court said, to a declaration of imperfect war; and Adams complied with these statutes." (Wormuth’s reference to the Supreme Court recalls a decision rendered in the wake of the Quasi War, in which the Court ruled that Congress could either declare war or approve hostilities by means of statutes that authorized an undeclared war. The Quasi War was an example of the latter case.)

Consider an interesting and revealing incident that occurred during the Quasi War. Congress authorized the president to seize vessels sailing to French ports. But President Adams, acting on his own authority and without the sanction of Congress, instructed American ships to capture vessels sailing either to or from French ports. Captain George Little, acting under the authority of Adams’ order, seized a Danish ship sailing from a French port. When Little was sued for damages, the case made its way to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Captain Little could indeed be sued for damages in the case. "In short," writes Louis Fisher in summary, "congressional policy announced in a statute necessarily prevails over inconsistent presidential orders and military actions. Presidential orders, even those issued as Commander in Chief, are subject to restrictions imposed by Congress."

Another incident frequently cited on behalf of a general presidential power to deploy American forces and commence hostilities involves Jefferson’s policy toward the Barbary states, which demanded protection money from governments whose ships sailed the Mediterranean. Immediately prior to Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, Congress passed naval legislation that, among other things, provided for six frigates that "shall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct." It was to this instruction and authority that Jefferson appealed when he ordered American ships to the Mediterranean. In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to "protect our commerce & chastise their insolence – by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them."

In late 1801, the pasha of Tripoli did declare war on the U.S. Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was "unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense"; Congress alone could authorize "measures of offense also." Thus Jefferson told Congress: "I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight."

Jefferson consistently deferred to Congress in his dealings with the Barbary pirates. "Recent studies by the Justice Department and statements made during congressional debate," Fisher writes, "imply that Jefferson took military measures against the Barbary powers without seeking the approval or authority of Congress. In fact, in at least ten statutes, Congress explicitly authorized military action by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Congress passed legislation in 1802 to authorize the President to equip armed vessels to protect commerce and seamen in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and adjoining seas. The statute authorized American ships to seize vessels belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed to those who brought the vessels into port. Additional legislation in 1804 gave explicit support for ‘warlike operations against the regency of Tripoli, or any other of the Barbary powers.’"

Consider also Jefferson’s statement to Congress in late 1805 regarding a boundary dispute with Spain over Louisiana and Florida. According to Jefferson, Spain appeared to have an "intention to advance on our possessions until they shall be repressed by an opposing force. Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force…. But the course to be pursued will require the command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or to deny. To them I communicate every fact material for their information and the documents necessary to enable them to judge for themselves. To their wisdom, then, I look for the course I am to pursue, and will pursue with sincere zeal that which they shall approve."

The nineteenth century, on closer inspection, turns out not to provide the precedents for presidential warmaking that its proponents would prefer to see. We don’t see anything approaching the open-ended and truly staggering authority that neoconservatives would grant the president until the closing years of that century, and even then only in miniature.

Cornell University’s Walter LaFeber pinpoints the origins of modern presidential war powers in an obscure incident from 1900. In 1898 a group of anti-foreign Chinese fighters known to the West as the Boxers rose up in protest against foreign exploitation and extraterritorial privileges in their country. They targeted Christian missionaries and Chinese converts, as well as French and Belgian engineers. After the German minister was killed in 1900, several nations sent troops to restore order amid the growing terror. McKinley contributed 5,000 American troops. This apparently minor action, however, was pregnant with consequences...

I'll do a follow up to contrast this with the resolutions that Bush/Obama have drawn on to begin and continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

gomer

AMDG