c. 2007 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ All eyes were on Capitol Hill this week as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker made their much-anticipated report to Congress on the success of President Bush’s military “surge” strategy.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, many theologians said the war failed to meet “Just War” criteria, a centuries-old moral framework meant to guide how nations wage war.

But what are the moral considerations for exiting a war? Religion News Service teamed up with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly to ask five ethicists to gauge America’s moral obligations to Iraq in light of the Petraeus report and Just War theory.

Q: What is our moral obligation to Iraq?

A: The millions of Iraqis who believed us, who trusted us that we would stand with them to defend their freedom _ we cannot abandon them to the fate that befell our Vietnamese allies when we abandoned them.

If and when we feel that we must withdraw, if the mission has failed, we must take those people with us. We must allow them to come to the United States. The only honorable and moral thing to do is to give visas and passports.

_ Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Q: If you were preaching at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday, what would you say about Iraq?

A: I would say that initiating the war was a serious mistake but we have to show that we repent the harm that we have done and the attitude that brought us to make that decision. We have to look to the rest of the world to try to collaborate with us in working out solutions that are not designed solely to try to protect American pride or prestige. In a way, we’re like a surgeon that’s discovered that he’s made a big mistake and the welfare of patient requires that we swallow our pride and get other people involved.

_ The Rev. John Langan, Cardinal Bernardin chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University.

Q: What do we owe to the Iraqi people?

A: Our obligations continue until the point at which we have a decent security environment, ability of people to go about their daily lives without terrible fear and we are playing a role in rebuilding the infrastructure of the culture. We owe the Iraqi people that much.

_ Jean Bethke Elshtain, professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Q: What if leaders of the United States were to say publicly, “We made a mistake and we’re sorry about it.” What would the reaction be? Would we be looked on as fools?

A: Not at all. It would reflect the greatness, the strength, the moral authority of the United States. It is not a sign of weakness to say that “I am sorry.” These are just gestures of friendship. We are talking a friend to friend. We need to reinforce the relationship of humans talking to humans, friends talking to friends.

_ Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at the American University and author of “Journey into Islam.”

Q: There are 2 million refugees in Jordan, in Syria, in other places. What’s our responsibility to them?

A: To do our best to ensure that they don’t become a permanent body of alienated and bitter exiles. We’ve seen what’s happened in other places in the Middle East when that has occurred. That would be a disaster, not only for us and for Iraq, but also for the countries that have been good enough to admit them.

_ William Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington

(Bob Abernethy of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly contributed to this report)

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