Say Anything Blog

Pope Benedict the XVI is calling on the world to “end all wars.”

LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI called Sunday for an end to all wars, describing them as “useless slaughters” that bring hell to Earth.

Benedict, speaking from this small mountain town where he has been vacationing, recalled that 90 years ago his predecessor Pope Benedict XV urged a similar end to the first World War, then ravaging this part of northern Italy.

“While this inhuman conflict raged, the pope had the courage to affirm that it was a ‘useless slaughter,’” Benedict said. “These words — ‘useless slaughter’ — contained a fuller prophetic value that can be applied to so many other conflicts that have cut off countless human lives.”

Benedict did not cite any particular conflicts in his comments to several hundred faithful who gathered in Lorenzago di Cadore’s main piazza for his traditional Sunday blessing.

“From this place of peace, where one still senses how unacceptable the horrors of ‘useless slaughters’ are, I renew the appeal to pursue the path of rights, to strongly refuse the recourse to weapons and refuse to confront new situations with old systems,” he said.

Most anti-war types subscribe to this kind of naive, “if we stop fighting we’ll have peace” reasoning.  Nobody likes war, but ending it isn’t as simple as refusing to engage our enemies on the field of battle.  Ending war means defeating our enemies, pure and simple, because if we don’t defeat them they’re going to keep fighting us whether we respond to them or not.

Think about it.  If we stopped fighting in Iraq, do you think the terrorists would stop trying to turn that country back into a dictatorship?  Or into some sort of extremist religious state?  If the Israelis stopped fighting the Palestinians, do you think Hamas would really quit the suicide bombings?  Would they stop trying to wipe the Jewish state off the map?

Again, ending war means winning the war and defeating those who oppose you.  It also means being willing to condemn those who oppose you as evil or wrong, which is something we seem to have a serious problem with these days.  During WWII we didn’t have any problems identifying our enemies as evil even before the atrocities committed against the Jews were revealed to the war.  WWI before that was the same.  But it seems that since Vietnam forward there’s been a demographic in this country that seems incapable of admitting that we, America, are right and our enemies are wrong.

Which isn’t to suggest blind loyalty, but rather a departure from the idea that our enemies are always fighting us because of something we’ve done to them.

Wars aren’t fought simply because people like to fight.  Wars are fought for power and money, and they aren’t avoided or ended simply by refusing to fight.  Unless we’re willing to let those who fight against us gain power over us, we have to fight.