Back in the early fall, Mr. Thomas Friedman, who writes a
regular opinion column for the New York Times and who has won
three Pulitzer Prizes for his journalistic work, delivered the
Lester Crown Lecture in Ethics at Duke University. Speaking on
"The Global Economy and U.S. Foreign Policy," Mr. Friedman
offered four possible reasons to justify the U.S.-coalitional
military effort in Iraq: the moral reason, the stated reason,
the right reason, and the real reason. News, which is published
by Duke’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, nicely
describes these reasons: "The moral reason...was to remove a
genocidal regime. The stated reason was to remove the threat
posed by weapons of mass destruction. The right reason was to
remove the regime and replace it with a democratic government
‘in the very heart of the Arab world.’ The real reason was to
make clear that the United States will not tolerate threats to
its open society -- a lesson [that] was heard loud and clear by
its enemies." (September/October 2003)
From
December 2003 St. Peter’s Post
