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Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom Udall of Santa Fe has responded to Monday's testimony of Gen. David Petraeus to a joint House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. Udall said it's clear now that "neither (Petraeus) nor the White House see any end to the U.S. military presence in Iraq," citing "hollow claims of progress . . . not backed up by the brutal facts . . . from the battlefield."

Earlier in the month, six peace activists were found guilty in federal court of disrupting government business, when they tried to present a peace petition to Republican U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici of Albuquerque last year in his Santa Fe office. They ended up locked in an elevator for six hours, surrounded by a SWAT team, the FBI and federal security officers.

"What is the message from the federal court in New Mexico?" asked the Rev. John Dear, a Jesuit priest, who was one of the six activists.

"It is a federal crime to attempt to speak to an elected Republican about the U.S. war in Iraq. Don't visit your senator. Don't get involved. Don't speak out. Don't take a stand for peace - or you, too, may end up in jail," Dear wrote in a column for Common Dreams.

Udall, in his statement on the Petraeus testimony, said that "the time has come for the White House to finally realize the war in Iraq needs a political solution, not a military one. Once again, I renew my call to responsibly redeploy our troops for Iraq, so we can begin to address the dire readiness state of our military and refocus on fighting terrorism around the world."

From that perspective, the war in Iraq is useless on a pragmatic level and unconscionable on a moral level. It leaves us increasingly friendless and increasingly vulnerable.

When people of faith object to war on principle, they are behaving in a way that is consistent with the deepest and most life-affirming aspects of Western culture. To make them into criminals is an insult to all people of good conscience.

"Since we know what a terrible evil war is," said Albert Schweitzer, a beloved and revered humanitarian, in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture of 1953, "we must spare no effort to prevent its recurrence."

He continued, "To this reason must also be added an ethical one. In the course of the last two wars, we have been guilty of acts of inhumanity which make one shudder, and in any future war we would certainly be guilty of even worse. This must not happen!"

If you are forced to fight a war, it should at least serve some defensive purpose, if it's to justify the atrocities and inhumanity it will cause.

Udall and many others, myself included, are convinced the Iraq war serves no decent purpose at all.