To the editors.

Poor analysis

Regarding Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's "The War So Far" (April 11): When I read Commonweal, I expect to see perceptive, incisive, and original writing, but such qualifiers could scarcely be applied to Steinfels's piece. Instead, one finds paraphrases of every liberal commentary made since the inception of this military effort. Does the author still contend that the emancipation of so many innocent Iraqis was the outcome of an "unnecessary war"? Were I a better typist, I would catalogue the trite observations that Steinfels repeated, which seem to have been gleaned from any number of obvious sources. The "fog of war," the "growing coalition of the outraged," "lacks a just cause," "the need for a change in regime"... The inanities abounded.

JOAN MARTIN

Yonkers, N.Y.

Unnecessary war?

I'm having trouble reconciling the images and metaphors in "The War So Far" (subtitled "Does the President Know What He's Doing?") with the images and reports I see on TV. For example, Steinfels tells me about the "ominous and dreadful sense" that has settled on the battlefield. She claims "the coalition of the outraged can only grow." On the other hand, just a few days after Steinfels penned her prescient article, U.S. forces seized Baghdad, and as I write this letter, Mosul and Tikrit are falling. So what's the answer to her question, "Does the president know what he's doing?" More important, tell me how I can reconcile the prediction of the growing "coalition of the outraged" with the images of jubilant Iraqi citizens welcoming our soldiers, grateful for their liberation from decades of murder and torture (images we're also seeing). "Outraged"?! And what about the "contrast in decency" Steinfels points out between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush? Can Bush's lack of decency and "peevishness" explain the spontaneous expressions of gratitude, directed to him personally, which we see in Baghdad? Maybe members of the "coalition of the outraged" don't reside there.

I'm also having trouble with the logic of the article: the war in Iraq has "too many purposes" and "even so lacks a just cause." I don't understand: because we have too many good reasons for this war, we have none?

I tell you what: I'm a member of a coalition of the outraged of my own. Should I wait for Steinfels's "Boy Was I Wrong," or should I cancel my subscription now?

JOHN PEPLINSKI

Libertyville, Ill.

Patriotic critics

Thank you for Margaret O'Brien Steinfels's excellent "The War So Far." It clarifies the argument against the preemptive strike on Iraq. It is unfortunate that those who criticize this administration's policies are accused of lack of patriotism and failure to support our troops.

Frank Schaeffer's "Stripped of Spiritual Comfort" (Washington Post, April 6) expresses the concern of a father who, though his son has gone to war, feels he cannot receive "spiritual comfort" because his church, the Greek Orthodox Church, has condemned the war as immoral.

Schaeffer's further concern for the Christians who support the war in defiance of their churches also applies to those who believe that our country is involved in an enterprise that may well have a disastrous outcome for the United States and for the world, yet simultaneously support the heroic commitment of the troops engaged there.

NEVA HERRINGTON

Alexandria, Va.

The author replies:

When I finished writing "The War So Far," on March 31, the prospects for a quick resolution to the U.S. military invasion of Iraq looked bleak. When Commonweal's correspondents wrote, Iraqi resistance had weakened, and U.S. Marines occupied central points of Baghdad. The regime of Saddam Hussein was fading away.

And now I write again. What has happened? Intermittent shows of welcome by Iraqis were submerged in protests at U.S. occupation by various Islamist factions. A form of low-intensity warfare continues, even in Baghdad. Arabs and Kurds struggle for control of the oil-rich north. Unsettled conditions have made relief efforts precarious. Libraries, museums, and hospitals have been looted. Weapons experts have yet to find weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi people are rid of a brutal regime. Are they yet liberated? The fog of victory has followed the fog of war.

The just-cause criteria for war are high; I don't think the Bush administration met them. On the other hand, the U.S. military seemed to use proportionate means, and to avoid bombing civilian areas or dual-use infrastructure like bridges and power-generating plants. We can support U.S. troops and welcome their restraint and their sacrifice, even while finding policymakers in Washington politically foolish and morally obtuse. Does President George W. Bush know what he's doing, or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld? The coalition of the outraged is still outraged. Diplomatic relations remain fragmented.

Is this conflict over? Will the fall of the Baath regime bring peace and prosperity to the Iraqi people? Stability to the Middle East? Peace between the Israelis and Palestinians? The answers are not easy to discern--and yet, as citizens and moral agents, we must do our best to discern them. I would suggest that we look to historical, cultural, economic, and political factors that run deeper than the latest spin from Washington.

MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS

Riveting views

Reading Terrence W. Tilley's "More Than a Kodak Moment" (April 11) gave me the sense of standing on a bridge, itself an architectural witness to the beauty of form and function fully wedded. From Tilley's bridge, I could look in several directions across time and space, and the views were riveting. As I read on, I thought I glimpsed a bit of glory--or was it a camera flash? No matter. The writing moved my spirit. A lovely Easter gift.

DOLORES R. LECKEY

Washington, D.C.

Weeping statues

Terrence W. Tilley is correct in saying that "the fact that we don't need God to explain events does not mean that they are not or cannot be God's acts." He gives an example: a statue of the Madonna in a film appears to blink. That blinking may result from a defect in the camera--but no matter. It is possible that God is using that defect in order to speak to us.

This position entails serious consequences. If fact, the literal truth, simply does not matter, then anything goes. If anything goes, nothing goes. A good many weeping statues have been shown to be fraudulent: Can we argue that weeping statues nevertheless foster piety and so may be signs of God acting in the world? (Similarly, it used to be argued that God planted the fossil record in the rocks in order to test our faith.) Are we really willing to accept these modes of argument?

As Tilley says, we can speak of God only through analogy. But if one half of the analogy--the nature of created world--is made ontologically empty, if questions of literal truth or falsity just do not matter, then the spiritual side of the analogy also collapses.

This radical skepticism is a wholly unintended consequence of Tilley's argument. Nonetheless it is a consequence.

ERNEST GALLO

Hadley, Mass.

The author replies:

Before Mr. Gallo pushes me down the slippery slope to the hell of indifferentism, he should reconsider the fifth meditation from the end of my piece: "Sometimes, if we know the mechanism, we can distinguish bogus from authentic meanings." The Blinking Madonna and the Resurrection of Jesus are not frauds. They may, however, be illusions. There's a huge difference. A fraud is a manipulative deception. Illusion--seeing more than what is there--is a risk endemic to the Catholic analogical imagination, whether that of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Andrew Greeley, David Tracy, the fishers of North Boston, or my own. I fight manipulation. I seek truth hard-headedly. But I sometimes risk illusion. Without such risk, there is no way to see and understand God's gracious acts for us.

TERRENCE W. TILLEY

A class of their own

I was saddened to discover (William Bole's "The 'Boston 58,'" March 28) that both George Weigel and Richard John Neuhaus have stooped to smear tactics concerning priests in the Boston Archdiocese who signed a letter asking Cardinal Bernard Law to resign. Although I have had disagreements with these men, I used to respect their attempt to bring a Catholic perspective into contemporary politics.

That pedophilia among priests results from generalized moral and theological laxity is questionable. Even people--including hard-line atheists--who see nothing wrong with homosexual activities involving consenting adults condemn sex with children. Weigel and Neuhaus's heresy hunting is hypocritical in any case, since they and other neoconservative theologians have serious reservations about many church teachings, most conspicuously those on war and peace. Their polemics against the "New Class" neglect the fact that any account of that class would count them among its members.

Mudslinging is a routine part of politics, but there is something particularly sickening about viciousness drenched in professions of piety and orthodoxy.

PHILIP E. DEVINE

Providence, R.I.