Vatican UN Envoy Calls WWII a Man-Made Disaster

From Catholic World News:

May. 10 (CWNews.com) - Speaking at UN headquarters in New York, the Vatican's permanent representative characterized World War II as "the worst of several unnecessary, man-made global catastrophes that made the 20th century one of the most bitter that humanity has ever known."

Archbishop Celestino Migliore spoke during a UN commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the close of World War II. The anniversary, he said, should help international leaders to recall the primary reason for the founding of the UN: the desire to devise means of avoiding future wars.

The roots of World War II, the Vatican envoy said, could be found in "exaltation of state and of race, and the proud self-sufficiency of humanity based upon the manipulation of science, technology, and force." All responsible leaders should be on guard against the development of the same ideological impulses today, he said.

The archbishop acknowledged that under some circumstances warfare may be justified or even required -- as he put it "a limited and strictly conditioned use of force could be inevitable." However, he insisted, "the tragic and devastating nature of war" should prod all leaders to exhaust every peaceful means of resolving conflicts. Archbishop Migliore suggested steps to extend the UN's peacekeeping abilities, by strengthening existing international legal agreements and expanding the role of the UN to include "an inter-governmental peace-building commission."

My Comments:
And just who, according to Archbishop Migliore, deserves the credit (or, rather, blame) for the "unnecessary, man-made ... catastrophe" known as World War II? Does he place the blame squarely where it belongs - on Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and last, but not least, Stalin (lest we forget the non-aggression pact and his simultaneous invasion of Eastern Europe as Hitler invaded Poland)? When he speaks of "exhaust[ing] every peaceful means of resolving conflicts", does the Archbishop include sacrificing Austria and the Sudetenland to the likes of a madman like Hitler? Does he mean ignoring the Rape of Nanking? And what substantive suggestions - not platitudes - does the Vatican's envoy to the UN offer for how the Allies were to have avoided going to war?

I sincerely hope that Archbishop Migliore is not suggesting that the "failure" that produced World War II was on the part of the world community as a whole rather than on the part of those who were the aggressors. If anything, the world community can be faulted for not acting sooner to stop the Axis triple threat of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, rather than trying to placate these madmen by rolling over for, and even giving assent to, their audacious land grabs.

The kind of peace the Vatican seems to be seeking is the sort of "peace in our time" that the world community got from selling out Czechoslovakia. The Vatican's willingness to sell out Kuwait to Saddam in order to avoid military action in the first Persian Gulf War is proof positive of this brand of knee-jerk pacifism.

And history has shown us that this sort of "peace" is no peace at all.