Pro-Life, Anti-War

Today Eric Sammons, editor of Crisis Magazine, writes as a dedicated pro-life Christian who is wrestling with the dawning realization that the Anglo-Zionist empire is the primary party responsible for the horrors of war, mass displacement and migration of refugees, etc. around the world. Well, that’s my way of putting it, but he does use the term “Neocon” to identify the war mongers. Worse, Sammons acknowledges that he has come to recognize that this has been the case for a long time. Up until this election he has prioritized the fight against the evils of abortion and related anti-human issues, but is now facing a dilemma.

War Must Become a Primary Issue for Catholics in Presidential Elections

Here are the core paragraphs in Sammons article. I’ll indicate my reservations about what Sammons has to say, but I believe this article represents a positive step in recognizing the enormity of the war issue for conscientious Christians. Christians in woke America are increasingly closet dwellers, but they do vote, so this could make a difference.

For a long time I was essentially a single-issue voter, and that issue was abortion. …

Now, in 2024, my voting calculus has changed (it has been slowly evolving for years, but this is the first year I’m concrete about it).

During my lifetime the United States has been involved in countless overseas conflicts, from outright wars to small-scale military operations. Vietnam War, two Iraq Wars, the occupation of Afghanistan, conflicts in Libya, Bosnia, Somalia, Syria, Yemen: the list goes on and on. In not a single one could America’s involvement be justified under Catholic Just War Theory.

We’ve also been heavily involved in provoking many more conflicts and engaging in proxy wars, most notably the current Russia-Ukraine war. Our neocon foreign policy has been a disaster for decades and has led to untold suffering and death, along with increased ill will and outright hatred for America around the world (thus creating the foundation for future conflicts).

I don’t think most American pro-lifers truly grasp the scale of the horrors our foreign policy has unleashed on the world. We often talk about the invisibility of the unborn, and how the fact that we can’t see the victim is a major reason abortion is accepted by so many.

The same is true for these foreign conflicts. Even though millions have been killed in conflicts involving the United States, and millions more have been horribly injured or had their lives otherwise devastated, we don’t see them. The dead Ukrainian or dead Yemeni or dead Palestinian are mostly invisible to the average American.

This is why neocon propaganda works so well. Politicians can engage in scaremongering about invented future dangers (“Russia will invade Poland!” “Iraq will nuke New York City!”) to frighten the public into supporting their latest war; meanwhile, no one sees or considers the eventual victims of their propaganda, the countless war dead in a far-away land.

So in terms of death and evil, the consequences of our foreign policy are nearly as destructive as the abortion holocaust. But voting calculus can’t be determined by numbers alone (abortion is solidly the greatest killer today), but by what can be done to stop it.

In the post-Roe world, the debate over the legality of abortion has moved mostly to the states. It’s true that the federal government still plays a role in abortion-related policies, but whether or not abortion is legal or illegal now falls on the individual states.

Foreign policy, however, is 100% in the domain of the federal government, and has increasingly become in the modern age mostly based on the whims of the president. (When was the last time the president asked Congress for a declaration of war? 1942, for those wondering.) The reality is that the president has far, far more impact on American foreign policy than he does on American abortion policy.

This is why I would argue that a presidential candidate’s positions on foreign policy (specifically foreign policy related to war and military conflicts) is as important, if not more important, than his or her positions on abortion. While a president can do little in our current environment to stop abortion, he or she can be extremely influential in minimizing or even stopping bloodshed around the world.

Note that I’m only referring to the presidential election. When voting for a state representative or governor, then abortion policy becomes paramount again, as these men and women can actually have an impact on making abortion illegal where you live (and they have no direct impact on foreign policy). When it comes to federal candidates like congressmen or senators, both foreign policy and abortion policy matter in that they may be voting for funding of both foreign wars and abortions.

My main reservation—but one that has huge implications for Christians—is Sammons’ rather naive view that Anglo-Zionist foreign policy is directed “mostly based on the whims of the president.” The reality, however, is that the Imperial City on the Potomac is Donor Occupied Territory, as Doug Macgregor likes to say. If there was one lesson we learned from the four Trump years it’s that presidential control over foreign policy—despite the president’s constitutional status as commander in chief—is very limited indeed. It is, instead, controlled by The Israel Lobby. A lobby which ranges, perhaps not coincidentally, from indifferent to intensely hostile to the pro-life movement. It’s not exactly a paradox that the love of certain “Christians” for Zionism is largely unrequited—albeit the Lobby is grateful for the political and financial support. Voting without regard to these fundamental dynamics in Ameircan politics is probably an exercise in futility. The complicating factor, of course, is the need to opt for the lesser evil—but that also suggests the imperative need to work for a true choice in the future.

Another reservation is that Sammons makes no mention at all of the SCOTUS in this article. I have argued regularly that, for all its unsuitedness as an institution for actual governance and policy direction, the SCOTUS remains the constitutional institution that functions with a sense of purpose that takes the constitutional order into account. This has been the most positive aspect of Trump’s legacy, but it’s important to bear in mind that securing a constitutionally serious SCOTUS is not a one and done affair. It requires regular attention, and that means attention to the people who nominate and and confirm justices for the Court.

I understand that’s not terribly helpful in all respects. In fact, drawing the SCOTUS into electoral deliberations rather complicates matters than otherwise. It remains that, in our system, this can’t be helped and remains a true imperative for serious citizens. Sammons reminds us:

When was the last time the president asked Congress for a declaration of war? 1942, for those wondering.

Sammons sees this as evidence that foreign policy is governed by presidential whim. I see it differently. I see the current extra-constitutional war making arrangements as a device by which elected officials of both the executive and legislative branches shield themselves from the consequences of a true public debate on war as well as assignment of clear responsibility. The current arrangement blurs the issue—intentionally. The day may yet come, perhaps fueled by looming defeats in our proxy wars and the economic consequences of our sanctions wars, when the SCOTUS exerts itself to restore constitutional norms. But that will only happen if the citizenry remember that a responsible SCOTUS requires regular care and feeding.