There were precedents as well for a preemptive attack; as Sir Thomas More put it, “if any foreign prince takes up arms and prepares to invade their land, they immediately attack him in full force outside their own borders.” The subsequent discovery of our intelligence failures would have thrown this judgment into question. At best, it was a close call.

But the just war criteria do not apply to the current situation. For better or for worse, we made the commitment. We made promises and representations to the Iraqi people; we announced policies to the entire Middle East area; and now the question isn’t whether it is right to go to war, it is whether it is morally acceptable to leave.

To do so, in my judgment, would break the promises we have made to the Iraqi people, would lead to massive chaos and bloodshed, and would be an act of moral dishonor, no different in kind to what the Allies indeed did after World War II, giving vast territory in Eastern Europe to the Soviets, in the process returning as many as a million Russian refugees who had fled Stalin back into the grip of that dictator. Stalin proceeded to massacre most of them. That was one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the West—an abandonment of our most fundamental moral convictions.

As we consider the Christian perspective on our present dilemma, we are compelled to weigh heavily the fate of Israel. Christians have a great respect for the people of the old covenant, and are constantly reminded of God’s words to the Jews in His covenant with Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.” (Genesis 12:3).

No decision can be made about Iraq without considering what would happen to Israel; and this question does not appear to be in much doubt. President Ahmadinejad of Iran, a Holocaust denier, has announced an apocalyptic scenario and said that Israel must be wiped off the map. Iran is very close to a nuclear capability. If America withdrew now from the Middle East, I think it’s only a matter of time before Israel was destroyed. Iran, being Shiite, would doubtless take over the predominantly Shiite country of Iraq and would become the major power in the Middle East, despite all of the vain protests by the United Nations.

American policy-makers must also consider the serious consequences for American security. Al Qaeda, which now controls a portion of Iraq, which is active in Somalia, which is still located in Afghanistan, would be greatly emboldened by our withdrawal. There is no just war debate here, it seems to me, since Al Qaeda declared war on the United States—officially in the 1990s—and was responsible for the death of 3,000 American innocents. As we weigh our moral responsibilities and actions in accordance with the just war tradition, we need to remember that St. Thomas Aquinas put the just war doctrine under the heading of “Love” in his great Summa Theologicae. He did that because being willing to defend innocent civilians is an act of Christian charity.

So would our withdrawal make innocent civilians better off; or would it lead to the deaths of many innocent people? I do not believe, by the just war formulation, that America could in conscience withdraw from a war, rightly or wrongly started, until there is some political stability.