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Sunday, May 11, 2014

Chris Manion on Catholics, War, and Unintended Consequences

Great article! How many just wars have there been in history? Darn few is my guess!

Catholics, War, and Unintended Consequences
by Christopher Manion
fitzgerald griffin foundation

FRONT ROYAL, VA — The recent unpleasantness in eastern Ukraine recalls a nagging truth: Wars always bring unintended consequences, and Americans have seen plenty of them, firsthand.

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson won reelection on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out Of War!”

But Wilson wanted war, and, five months later, he got it.

In October 1940, late in the presidential campaign, Franklin Roosevelt promised “again and again and again” that “your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”

But Roosevelt wanted war, and fourteen months later, he got it.

Pope Saint John Paul II adamantly opposed the war, and sent Cardinal Pio Laghi, to meet with Bush personally. ...Laghi told Bush that his proposed war in Iraq would be a “disaster.”

The results were as grim as they were unintended. Over a hundred thousand Americans died in Wilson’s war, and another 600,000 died from the epidemic of influenza that the surviving troops brought back from Europe to every corner of America. World War II killed over 400,000 Americans (only the War Between the States had more).

Moreover, the onerous terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles opened the door to a Communist Russia and a National Socialist Germany. In like fashion, the deals reached by FDR and Truman during World War II at Yalta, Teheran, and Potsdam handed over 100 million Christians in Eastern Europe to Stalin for 45 years.

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