On a Sunday morning talk show in early February, Garrick Utley interviewed Bryan Heir about the morality of war. At the end of a thoughtful discussion, Utley asked the somewhat cynical question: Isn=t all talk about morality airy theorizing which no one observes in practice? The question revealed a remarkable obtuseness about everything that has been going on since last August. The question of morality was the central issue posited every day from both sides. George Bush advanced the war as a moral crusade; he and the generals took pains to show that the U.S. was scrupulously observing every moral rule. For his part, Saddam Hussein set out to win morally, knowing that he could not win militarily. This was the first war in which the losing side kept the enemy=s t.v. cameras running. The bombing of a bunker with several hundred women and children in it was proclaimed a moral victory for Iraq.

All wars are overlaid with religious mythology that helps to establish the moral stance. Given the religious absolutes, neither side can recognize the morality of the other side. Hussein=s religious bombast was easy to recognize but difficult to penetrate. Bush=s rhetoric was an almost perfect match in personalizing the conflict and demonizing the enemy. At the Congressional Prayer Breakfast, Mr. Bush said of the war: AIt has everything to do with what religion embodies - good versus evil, right versus wrong, human dignity and freedom versus tyranny and oppression.@ Unfortunately, he was right. Each side takes on the mantle of absolute goodness bestowed by its god.

It is often said that Christian tradition has had two well defined attitudes to war summed up in the words Apacifism@ and Ajust war theory.@ There is obviously some truth to that claim but such an immediate division into two camps weakens the effectiveness of the tradition. Neither side is persuasive to the other so how can either side expect to influence the war makers? At the time of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Letter on Peace it seemed that the two parts of the tradition were converging. The question of nuclear armaments allowed an armistice if not an agreement between advocates of pacifism and just war theory. But the non-nuclear wars continue, and the breakup of the Soviet Union may lead to more rather than fewer of these wars.

The party of peace ought to embrace the whole Christian tradition. The peace party consists in attitude, actions (often nonverbal and symbolic) and some well chosen words (especially Ano@). But one ought not to do that with the expectation that war will go away; otherwise, one will quickly grow despondent. The desire for peace must survive even in the midst of war. One takes a peaceful stand in the name of peace to show that peace is possible, to influence other people, to restrain continuing violence and to sustain hope for a wider peace.

The other strand of Christian tradition is a necessary complement not a contradiction to peace seeking. This fact is hidden by the stupid name Ajust war theory.@ There is a valuable discussion that has existed at least since the time of Augustine. We need to continue that discussion in our day to restrain the immorality of war. The label Ajust war theory@ invites the image of a lot of rationalistic men sitting around a comfortable table and ticking off Aquinas=s six conditions for a just war. George Bush was at pains to show that he stood within this tradition, though interestingly, he did not know how to pronounce AAquinas.@

In the discussion of war, the point is usually made but needs to be said with passion and conviction that the presumption is always against war. Of war, Cardinal Hume said Ait is at best a tragic necessity.@ The Archbishop of Glasgow=s statement on the Gulf war opens with the sentence: AWar, however much some people may deem it necessary, is always evil.@ The tradition accepted the fact that not fighting a war might sometimes be more evil than fighting it. The issue here is to show that war is the lesser of two evils, not that the war is just.

Thus, this part of the tradition is important not for justifying war but for restraining violence. Within war, however evil, morality cannot be abandoned. Whatever one=s personal attempt at peace, the world remains violent. Violence is never cured by violence, but what is violent in some respects may be a temporary restraint on greater violence. Modern medicine, for example, attempts to avoid violence to the body, but even with less invasive technology surgery is sometimes necessary. Violence in any form can be intoxicating. So while we allow surgeons, soldiers and police to exercise controlled violence, the intoxicant must be restrained by everyone. It will always be tempting to believe that the answer to violence is greater violence.

Augustine=s starting point was that the Christian should be nonviolent; but he thought that precisely for this reason a Christian must defend the weak against the violence of bullies. In considering that principle, I am at a loss to find any persuasive alternative to coercion, including at least the threat of violence. Of course, there is a long distance between defending a girl against rape and massing a modern nation state for war. There is a continuity of principle but not much more. On a smaller scale, rebellion within a state against an oppressive government was not much discussed by medievalists but that may be our main issue at the end of the twentieth century.

Most of the questions that Augustine and Aquinas asked were difficult to answer in their time and are practically impossible to answer in our time. Who started the war? The answer may be entangled in years, decades or centuries of causes leading up to the war. Will the results be proportionate to the effort? In the current case, all the experts do not have a glimmer of what will be the war=s effect six months or six years from now. Was this war the last resort? In conflicts between nations no resort is last.

An important but little known work within the Christian tradition is an essay by Erasmus entitled APeace Protests.@ Erasmus was a great humanist whose every instinct was toward peace and reconciliation. However, he did not simply declare that war is evil or that he was opposed to violence. He recognized that if peace was ever to prevail there have to be developed international structures to mediate conflicts. He was about 450 years ahead of his time in seeing the need for UN Peacekeepers or an International Tribunal for War Crimes. He offered an alternative to Apacifism@ and Ajust war@ by finding positive elements within each strand of the tradition. He was on the side of peace but realized people have to desire peace and work toward peace.

The road to war is a long process with decisive turning points that reveal either the absence or the presence of a desire for reconciliation. In the Gulf war, the two most immoral moments occurred in early November and in mid-February. On November 6, immediately after the elections, Mr. Bush changed from defense to offense. In retrospect, it is clear that the war began then without discussion, debate or consultation. On February 15, Iraq used the magic word Awithdrawal@ and indicated that it wished to end the war. What was obvious to the U.S. government then, and subsequently obvious to the rest of the world, was that the Iraqi force was devastated. Mr. Bush rejected the first and subsequent pleas for a deal as a hoax, as nothing new, and as insufficient humiliation. As was revealed later, the U.S. had already set the date for a land attack so that the flurry of diplomatic activity after February was the real hoax. The U.S. could have pressed for a better deal but it refused to negotiate at all. To keep killing when the other side is trying to give up is unconscionable. The U.S. got its victory and its humiliation of the other side with one hundred hours of awesome might. It may take ten years to discover the price of this military victory.

One of the stupidest phrases invented in the twentieth century is Aunconditional surrender.@ Human life, including all surrenders is conditioned. One cannot do anything without conditions of time, place, size, environment, history, culture. The U.S. is always demanding Aunconditional surrender@ and interprets the discussing of conditions as weakness. But conditions are the stuff of human discourse. Peace is the result of accepting human limits and working with the conditions of other people and with our common environment. Until we learn that, we will continue to be at war with ourselves.