February 10, 2003
Iraq situation requires new perspective
on 'just war' theory, ambassador says
___By Peggy Polk
___Religion News Service
___ROME (RNS)--The threat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein poses to America and the world requires a new interpretation of the church's concept of a "just war," U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican James Nicholson suggested Feb. 5.
___Nicholson was interviewed at his residence on a hilltop overlooking Rome shortly before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council. He differed from the view expressed by high Vatican officials that a U.S.-led preventive strike against Iraq would not be morally acceptable.
___"The question is whether the threat is so great that it morally justifies taking pre-emptive action to interrupt it before you become a victim of it," the ambassador said.
___Nicholson made clear he believes the answer is yes unless Hussein complies with United Nations resolutions. He described the Iraqi leader as a "murderous tyrant" armed with weapons of mass destruction.
___A West Point graduate who served as an Army Ranger in Vietnam, the ambassador said he believes President Bush, whom he described as "a man of faith," is no more eager for war than the Vatican is.
___But he said of Hussein: "This man with these weapons and his history of using them in this era of terrorism poses a major threat to the people of the United States and the world, and this must be dealt with.
___"He is expansionist, a tyrant, merciless," Nicholson said, accusing Saddam of summarily shooting members of his own Ba'ath party who disagree with him, torturing children, gassing Iraqi Kurds and Iranian soldiers and blowing up Kuwait's oil fields when forced to withdraw from Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War.
___Nicholson said the destructive power and speed with which an aggressor can act today requires "changes in interpretation" of the church criteria for a just war, leaving room for preventive strikes.
___"Can you sit and wait to take the first hit before you can respond when that first hit can inflict millions of casualties?" he asked.
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