Comparing wars: Baghdad 2006 = Tet 1968?

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

During the year I spent at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, I enjoyed getting to know Peter Braestrup, who had been Saigon bureau chief of the Washington Post and was the living embodiment of that pulp fiction staple, the crusty reporter with a heart of gold.

While Peter made the Wilson Quarterly an important journal of ideas, his greatest contribution to American life was Big Story, a two-volume study of the 1968 Tet offensive, the political turning-point of the Vietnam War. Alas, only two-thirds of the lessons Braestrup drew from that debacle have been learned.

Conclusions from Tet offensive

Big Story demonstrated three things: 1) that the Tet offensive was a major defeat for North Vietnam and the Viet Cong; 2) that the world press badly missed the Tet story; 3) that the American people and their political leaders thought of Tet as a defeat for the U.S. and South Vietnam.

Braestrup, who died in 1997, lived to see his first and third conclusions accepted. His second conclusion - the media botch - has not been widely grasped, yet it's the crucial link between Conclusion One (Tet was a serious military defeat for the communists) and Conclusion Three (Tet was nevertheless a huge political victory for the military losers).

A fine review of Big Story, summarizing the book's key points, is available online at http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1978/nov-dec/bishop.html

In remembering my old friend Braestrup, however, the point is to look ahead, not back. For unless the American media and the American people take the second conclusion of Peter's masterpiece seriously, we may find ourselves in the morally dubious position of turning victory into defeat time and again in the war against jihadist terrorism.

The 'Madrid effect'

Iraq is the obvious and immediate case in point. Jihadists around the world talk about the mantaq al-Madrid, the "Madrid effect," referring to the terrorist bombings of Madrid train stations that cowed Spanish voters into deposing a government that had been a U.S. ally in Iraq.

An American equivalent of the "Madrid effect" is the goal of the Saddamists and jihadists who continue to fight in Iraq, even though they know they can't possibly win - they fight in order to degrade the political will of the American people, who are fed a steady and (rightly) disturbing diet of Iraqi chaos and mayhem by a press corps which is repeating the same mistakes in its war-reporting that Braestrup (an old-fashioned liberal) identified in his painstaking study of coverage of the Tet offensive.

As Amir Taheri has pointed out, the allied coalition that invaded Iraq had multiple goals: to depose a murderous regime, thereby ridding the world of a serious threat to international security; to empower the people of Iraq through a democratic political process; and to create a new political model for the Arab-Islamic world.

Status of goals for invasion of Iraq

The first goal was achieved, rather easily; the second goal has been largely achieved, with a constitution written, free elections held, and a legitimate government formed; and there are signs that all of this has had a leavening effect on Middle Eastern politics.

The jihadists and Saddamists who are causing mayhem (and fostering sectarian violence) in Iraq know this; their purpose is to dismantle the success that the allied coalition and the Iraqi people have, in fact, achieved.

Avoid Tet-like victory

Reasonable people could, and did, differ about the prudence of the March 2003 invasion. My considered judgment remains that the allied action satisfied the criteria of a just war.

But whatever one's position on decisions made in early 2003, surely people committed to the just war way of thinking can agree that the moral obligation to secure the peace after major combat ends - the ius ad pacem or ius post bellum - will not be met if the "Madrid effect" kicks in and the U.S. and its allies abandon Iraq.

That emphatically does not mean continuing failed policies. It does mean keeping focused on the legitimate, indeed noble, goal of supporting the development of a decent, self-governing society in an Iraq that could augur a better future for the Middle East.

A Tet-like victory for the jihadists will not lead to a just peace, in Iraq or anywhere else.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Christ can redeem us: Even our sexuality

		A Culture  of Life  Christopher West

When Mary came to Jesus at the wedding feast of Cana to tell him that the wedding feast was out of wine, Jesus said, "O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come" (Jn 2:4). Jesus said this in referring to the hour of his passion.

The water changed to wine at Cana prefigures the blood and water that flow from Christ's side at Calvary (see Jn 19:34). As figures of baptism and the Eucharist, the blood and water symbolize the very life of God coming from the side of the New Adam at the birth of the New Eve. And like the first Adam, the New Adam calls her by name - "woman" (see Gn 2:23 and Jn 19:26).

Creation is, as theologians would say, recapitulated - that is, repeated, summed up - in the work of Christ. Man and woman have been born again. Their perennial love for one another has been re-created.

"The woman" at the foot of the cross represents us all, men and women. We are all called to be the Bride of Christ. In offering us his body, Christ offers us a "marriage proposal."

All we need do is say yes by offering our bodies - our whole selves - back to him. This is what the sacramental life of the Church is all about.

'Mystical marriage'

In fact, the Catechism describes baptism as a "nuptial bath." Here, as we unite ourselves with Christ's sacrifice, we're cleansed of our sin by the washing with water through the word (see Eph 5:26).

Furthermore, having already been united (or married) to him in baptism, when we receive Christ's body in the Eucharist, we consummate a mystical marriage, and, as stated earlier, we even conceive new life in us - life in the Holy Spirit.

As much as lust blinds man and woman to their own truth and distorts their sexual desires, so much does this new life in the Holy Spirit empower men and women to love one another as they were called to in the beginning. Through the sacraments we can know and experience the transforming power of Christ's love.

Redemptive truth

This is good news. This is great news. But God doesn't say, "You idiot. I told you so." No! In his infinite mercy he offers us an engine overhaul and all the free unleaded gas we could ever need. He doesn't leave us to wallow in our sin but offers us redemption. All we need do, like a bride, is receive this great gift. As we do, gradually, day-to-day, it transforms us.

It makes sense that, since it was man and woman's turning away from God that distorted their relationship in the first place, restoring the truth and meaning of human sexuality requires a radical re-turn to God. Satan convinced us in the beginning that God doesn't love us, that he's withholding himself from us. In order to dispel all doubt, God became one of us and made an ever-lasting gift of himself to us on the cross.

Ask yourself: Do I really believe that Christ came to save me from sin? Do I really believe that, with the help of God's grace, it's possible to overcome my weaknesses, selfishness, and lust in order to love others as Christ has loved me? In other words, do I really believe that Christ can redeem me - even my sexuality?

Christopher West is a research fellow and faculty member of the Theology of the Body Institute in West Chester, Pa. His column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and reprinted from his book Good News About Sex and Marriage: Honest Questions and Answers About Catholic Teaching (St. Anthony Messenger Press).