War in Iraq: Where Do Responsibilities Lie Today?

David O’Brien, Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies in the history department at Holy Cross and a nationally-recognized authority on political thought, will address Sept. 11, the war in Iraq and that nation’s future in an on-campus talk.

Junior political science major David Lipke, senior political science major Christine O’Hara, and senior classics major Patrick Whitmore will respond to O’Brien’s talk. Whitmore, from Rocky River, Ohio, is a participant in the ROTC program at Holy Cross. Lipke is from Red Bank, N.J., “a town where you could see and smell the aftermath of 9/11,” he says. He participated in the Washington Semester Program, working for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and wrote his program thesis on the electoral system installed in Iraq.

The event, titled “The Responsibilities We All Bear: The Legacy of 9/11 and the War,” will be held on Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. in Rehm Library and is sponsored by Pax Christi. The student organization is holding the event to increase campus dialogue about the war in Iraq.

“In light of the ongoing conflict in Iraq as well as the response to terrorism as a whole, our nation is in need of answers and in need of dialogue,” says O’Hara, from Burnsville, Minn. “We have seen and heard what the media and government would like us to see and hear but it is time that college students, leaders, advocates, and the people of America as a whole start raising more questions, start talking, and start acting.”

Nearly four years after the start of the war in Iraq, this is a pivotal time in the nation’s history, according to O’Brien.

“We are at a turning point in the Iraq war and the war on terror, all carried out in the aftermath of 9/11. As we struggle to determine what the right thing to do is, we are driven back to hard questions about the ends, the goals, of American foreign and national security policy. The hard truth is that this war is our war, not President Bush’s war. Men and women die, and kill, for the American people, for us, not for the president or Congress. So we have to decide.”

Many students are trying to figure out the meaning of events in Iraq, says O’Brien, and this event will help them determine what their responsibilities might be.

O’Hara says this is an important event for all students to attend — to hear all points of view in the debate, and gain more confidence in the need for dialogue and peace across campus, the nation, and the world.

“I believe that Holy Cross students aspire to do great things and what could be greater than the need for peace in our world? No matter where you stand on the war on terror, I truly believe that we can agree that peace must be achieved; now it’s just a matter of talking with one another to try and find a common ground to seek out and bring about that peace.”