Faith and Precedent: Leaving Iraq with honor?

A recent correspondence brings a measure of hope. With little fanfare, parts of our military have already been redeployed to build up rather than tear down.

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - Just over a year ago, Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., then-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, raised a key moral question facing our nation: How can the U.S. bring about a responsible transition in Iraq?

To any Catholic like me who initially trusted President George Bush's explanation in support of the war, the bishop's question is especially pressing. The inability to find weapons of mass destruction or a connection to Sept. 11 heightens the anxiety. The claimed humanitarian basis for the U.S. intervention --- saving a population from a genocidal Saddam Hussein --- also seems overshadowed by our strategic or energy self-interest.

So if we had little basis for intervening, less basis for dictating a new form of government and even less basis for occupying and arguably precipitating a level of insurgent attacks that have been costly in both American and Iraqi lives, how honorable can our exit ever be?

Perhaps an answer can be found in former Secretary of State Colin Powell's admonition that, having intervened, we would have an obligation to fix what we broke.
In theory at least, for a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars the president has requested for the continuation of the military occupation, it would be possible to build economic and social infrastructure in the most honorable, humanitarian sense --- namely, courts, clinics, schools, businesses and homes in abundance.

It is largely theoretical because we seem to have great difficulty finding contractors who aren't on the take. But a recent correspondence brings a measure of hope. With little fanfare, parts of our military have already been redeployed to build up rather than tear down.

Take for example Major Mike. Major Mike is a graduate of Pepperdine Law School. A few years ago, he sat dutifully in my class with the usual T-shirt and backpack, putting up with his professor's long-winded Socratic dialogues. Today he is deployed in Fallujah. His responsibility is to steer the Fallujah judiciary toward the rule of law.

Here's what he wrote me:
"We met with the chief judge and two of his investigative judges to try and figure out why more criminals are not successfully convicted. The judges advise us to 'think like an Iraqi.'"

Suddenly, like the prophet Micah, he is enjoined to "walk humbly" in another's shoes to achieve justice. Frankly, it's difficult. Thinking like an Iraqi means relying upon what we taught him to see as unreliable and subjective evidence.

Writing in the fairest (but nevertheless distinctly U.S.) terms, Major Mike says the "Iraqi system favors testimonial and demonstrative evidence over real evidence."

Translated from the legalese: Americans insist on fingerprints, gunshot residue, photos of the crime scene; in Iraq, the judges want mini-stage plays or re-enactments which not only would not be considered evidence in the United States, but would often be ruled prejudicial.
Nevertheless, crime in Iraq is as frighteningly real --- and as tragic --- as it is in any American venue.

Major Mike recounts the case of insurgents "who kidnapped a 14-year-old boy, beheaded him, then sent the video of the killing to his father. His father was the former head of one of the local police agencies. Because coalition forces gave the boy some gifts (probably soccer balls), the insurgents thought he was working with us."

Of course he wasn't, and Major Mike senses deeply how, rules of evidence aside, the human heart cries for justice. So it is no surprise when the "judges inform [him] that they want Iraqi legal techniques ... Iraqi laws in Iraq. Not American laws."

In the vernacular of his still-youthful e-mail, Major Mike wrote, "Hmm, what a great idea." He has learned something greater than we could teach him in the classroom. He now knows there is more than one way to reach a reasoned conclusion. His country is gradually learning this too, and that is to be honored.

Douglas W. Kmiec is chair and professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, Malibu, and the former Dean and St. Thomas More professor of law, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops