I felt pity to see this man destroyed, [the military] looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures ... Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him.And, I can hardly bring myself to accept that the Pope could honestly believe this after seeing those mass graves unearthed in Iraq.
Peace and international law are closely linked to each other: law favours peace.To my mind, what has been clearly exposed over the past 15 months is that international law favors the status quo — even when that status quo includes putting people into meat grinders, etc.
Yes, war is terrible. And, yes, perhaps the it could be argued that the US should not have gone to war. But, an Iraqi uprising with US support would have been equally illegal, no? And, doesn't the fact that most of the Iraqi army chose not to fight constitute an uprising of sorts? What about a people who rise, die in their hundreds of thousands and no one comes to their aid (Iraq '91/92)? Is that moral? No, but I'm sure it was legal. International law — give me a break.
This is more like it. I hope it's true that some of his superiors consider Cardinal Martino an embarrassment. He is.
