Funny, I interpreted the statement as lay off Lebanon and go after the real bad guys; Syria and Iran. But then I'm a former Episcopalian and a optimist.

I was more than keenly disappointed at Cardinal Sodano's statement. I'm convinced that that kind of thinking has been an indispensable factor in getting and keeping the Middle East in the kind of mess it's in.

Mrs P. you are beyond "optimist." Saint, maybe.

Frank, you are right, of course. Israel has been the canary in the mine for the last 50 years or so. And everytime the canary passes out, the world says, "Good. Just what he deserves!"

Umm, are we really to believe that Sodano would say anything not in line with Pope Benedict's views on the matter? And if not, then are Pope Benedict's views "rubbishing Euro 'moral equivalence'"?

It's quite plausible that Sodano would do such a thing. This article gives some background:

http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=46410&eng=y

I don't know the Pope's views on this, but I've read a lot that he has written, and he does not have the flavor of a Cardinal Sodano. (And I should actually probably be less judgmental about Sodano, who may be considering the many Christians who live within Moslem countries, and whose situation is often precarious.) But the various bureaucracies of the Vatican and the Church are not immune to the tendency in churches to lose their Christian flavor and start looking like NGO's. The Pope has written about this problem (more tactfully than I).

And a lot of the problem here is that it has not penetrated into people's minds that war has changed. "War" for most people still means countries mobilizing their armies and fighting other countries. Divisions and corps clashing with similar formations, etc. In fact, that kind of war is extinct.

The sort of wars we have now take place within failed states, and usually might be better described as terrorism or genocide or banditry or warlordism. And when developed nations become involved, it is basically a rescue mission, and is much more about protecting the ordinary people of the "enemy" country than about defeating a nation. (This is becoming something of a specialty of the Anglosphere.)

A lot of people haven't noticed the change. And others don't want to see it, because it doesn't fit their ideology. If you are a leftist or a pacifist, you dare not see it. In fact you must engage in preposterous mental contortions, and ludicrous concatenations of lies, to somehow believe that the US (or Israel or Britain or Australia) are dark and hideous nightmares of fascism, precisely balanced in their equivalence with places that slaughter people by the hundreds of thousands, or torture children in front of their parents, or have humans eaten alive by dogs.

Or you have to believe that war is still a matter of hapless conscripts marching into pointless deaths at the whim of potentates. Or that it is just "bombing," of the sort that used to flatten entire cities. Anything to avoid recognizing that there are now good guys and bad guys, and that we all have a DUTY to support the good.

A-f'in-men...preach on, Brother Weidner...

As long as the church is stuck in the Just War view of conflict - which made perfect sense in wars between nation-states (well, no, it didn't there either...but it was at least defensible) - it will not have the theological structure necessary to react wisely to today's conflicts.

I feel so beyond pompous, calling the Church "unwise" - but here I stand, I can do no other...

A very interesting and illuminating article, Frank. Thanks. I stand corrected.

But what really provoked my post was the tired charge of "moral equivalence," which always make me suspect that the speaker doesn't want to engage with the moral complexities of the situation under discussion. Another way to put this is that such a person is saying, in effect, "I have a neat narrative frame that explains everything about this situation, and I don't want to deal with anything that doesn't fit into that frame." Well, the world isn't monochrome--get over it.

Call what you want, the fact is that both sides in this conflict are engaged in terrorism: violence against civilians in order to bring about a desired political effect. I think Michael Lerner has it exactly right:

"It's ludicrous to try to establish "blame" in the sense of who did what first. Incidents of violence on the part of Palestinians and their allies cannot be separated from the constant violence of the Occupation, the continual kidnapping by the IDF of Palestinian civilians who are held in prison camps without charges or trial for as long as six months, often enduring torture as documented by the Israeli Human Rights Organization B'Tselem.

"Nor can the violence of the Occupation be separated from the misguided policies of many Palestinians who have never been willing to unequivocally acknowledge the legitimacy and right of the Jewish people to the same kind of national self-determination in the land of Palestine that Palestinians rightly demand for themselves; nor from the equally misguided fantasy that peace and prosperity will come from violence rather than from the non-violent strategies used by Gandhi, MLK Jr., and Mandela in his later years."

And as for so-called "just war" theory: that's just plain theologically bankrupt, and has been since it was invented in the 4th Century by a theologian desperate to shore up a failing Empire. At best, JW is a sort of Geneva Convention, which may mitigate some of the inevitable barbarities of war. But the fact is that all war is under God's ban, for it is an expression of the Powers' usurpation of his justice. For Christians, at least, the only licit way of struggle is the cross, and no amount of clever reasoning can ever change that.

And so, Dave, what would you do today, right now if you were Israel? If your soldiers were attacked from across the border, kidnapped, and held hostage? And rockets were raining down on your cities? I understand war is atrocious, and the history leading to today is long and tragic - but what ought Israel to do today, and with what consequences?

For instance, if they ought to stop fighting and exchange prisoners, and if that leads to Hezballah taking more prisoners now that it's seen how effective a tactic that is - is that an acceptable consequence?

If an international force comes in, and is attacked from civilian areas, and that force uses air assaults to make a ground invasion practical, is that an acceptable consequence?

If Israel chooses to practice complete non-violence, disband their armed forces, and that leads to their slaughter, is that an acceptable consequence?

I'm fascinated by your point of view, but I'm always left wanting a little more...not a prescription for what someone ought to have done generations ago, or years ago, or months ago - not a Bible lecture - but a prescription for what the policy should be today, next month, next year; following those policies through to logical conclusions; and evaluating if those conclusions are acceptable or not.