close-up Realism The Pope’s Road Since the beginning, the Holy See’s position has been clear: no to the war, which would feed hatred and terrorism. And this has come about. How to get out of the Iraqi quagmire? by Lucio Brunelli* “Is it in your best interests to make enemies of a billion Muslims? Hasn’t the experience of Vietnam taught you anything?” It was February 2003, and the Commander-in-Chief, George Bush, had already ordered his troops to prepare the Iraq invasion, when the Vatican Prime Minister, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, posed these questions in a face-to-face conversation with an important overseas figure. This position was not only a moral dissension of principle against every war, but also a very rational evaluation of the wisdom of the decisions the President of the United States was making. But the far-seeing advice of the Vatican Secretary of State was ignored, as the White House foresaw an easy military success. During those days, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, launched comments against “old Europe,” guilty of not following young America in this military adventure. And the National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, shaking her head, repeated, “No, I just can’t understand the Vatican position.” “ What risk of another Vietnam? What exacerbation of anti-Western hatred (and thus of terrorism) in the Arab world?” asked the many Europeans enthusiastic about neo-conservative American thought, all suddenly proud defenders of the Christian identity of the West–irked, though, by the Pope’s refusal to bless the banners of the great crusade to “export” democracy to the barbaric Islamic civilization… Facilitating the UN entry It is necessary to start from here, to remember how things were a year ago, in order to explain the Holy See’s current position on the Iraq crisis, a position of those who, having opposed the war with conviction, now work with a great sense of responsibility to contain the damage it wreaks. Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, tells us, “The Holy See, the Pope, and his entire entourage think it would be madness to leave Iraq before June 30th, the date for the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis. The UN must be allowed time to enter into action, otherwise it will be chaos, worse than before.” The new Vatican Foreign Minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, indicates with extreme clarity the political first step that must be taken in order to leave the Iraqi quagmire: “It is indispensable to have at the head of the country as soon as possible an Iraqi leader who is capable, recognized as such by the population, and who speaks to the people in their language and according to their sensibility.” The scandal of the torture in the coalition prisons has made the passage of power more complicated and urgent. In the course of a protest in front of the Abu Ghraib prison, an Iraqi child held up a sign saying, “You gave a bad impression about America and Christians.” I asked Archbishop Lajolo to comment on this sentence for a Channel 2 cover story. “How can we not condemn such brutal episodes?” he responded. “And the scandal is so much bigger if these acts were committed by Christians. Christianity is not being judged here, but its opposite. Violence against man offends God Himself, who made man in His own image.” The moral damage is compounded by the political effect. “The credibility of the coalition has been compromised,” Archbishop Filoni, the Pontifical Nuncio in Baghdad, comments bitterly, “and I doubt that it can be entirely restored.” If only he had listened… This writer followed, day by day, the work of peace of pontifical diplomacy. I remember as if it were yesterday a conversation with Cardinal Pio Laghi, on his return from the United States, where the Pope had sent him in a last attempt to dissuade Bush, with no other power than that of prayer (it was Ash Wednesday!) and a reasoning sustained by Christ’s own compassion for man. “I also spoke to the President about the possible consequences of the war, the risk of an internal conflict among the various ethnic groups and religious communities that would destabilize a key area of the Middle East…” Reading those lines again reminds us that at least 9,000 innocent lives and so much chaos in the world could have been spared. Don’t anyone dare call up the reasons for the fight against terrorism, because Now we all know (but the Vatican already had its doubts then) that the dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a sham, and that the terrible, inhuman threat of terrorism today weighs on the world more than it did before the war. Vatican diplomats don’t benefit from the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit in their choices, but they do continue to think that, to counter terrorism, there certainly is a need for international policing operations, but even more, a need to remove from the lunatics “who love death” the possible topics for proselytism among the Arab masses. “The unresolved Israeli-Palestinian crisis,” Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran repeats, “is the mother of all the crises.” We know of a letter the Pope sent to Bush in October 2002, and never published. John Paul II, worried about rumors of war in Iraq, invited President Bush to concentrate his efforts instead on the solution of the Palestinian question. Ah, if only the young president had listened to the advice of the old Pope. *Vatican Correspondent for Rai2 News