A just war
Over at HMS Blog, a discussion has begun on the justice of a probable war with Iraq. Some of my comments can be found over there, in the form of a note to Greg. I would suggest you head there first, and read up on the conversation, and then come back here for my take. Most of what is below is from an email to Greg that he may wind up posting (so sorry if it's redundant).
For an excellent primer on the development of the Just War Theory, go here. It's written by a Marine Corps Lt. Col. who is also a theologian. He has been recalled to active duty, by the way, so please keep him in your prayers.
Okay, here goes. Forget al Qaida. That's a red herring. (Actually, it's not, but the case for war does not hinge on it.)
1) Iraq attacks Americans weekly, at least 150 times this calendar year alone. It fires missiles at American pilots patrolling the no-fly zones. Those zones were imposed by the *United Nations* at the end of Iraq's most recent external aggression (one of a number of cases since Hussein took power). They are there to protect Iraq's citizenry from its government, and to keep Iraq's military away from its international borders, which it will surely cross again as it has at least 3 times since 1984.
2) Strict controls on Iraq's exports and imports were imposed by the *United Nations* at the cessation of hostilities (not, mind you, in a peace treaty, but under an armistice). One of the conditions for the removal of those sanctions was Iraq allowing complete and unfettered access to UN Weapons Inspectors, so that they could certify Iraq had dismantled its WMD program.
3) Explicit in the Resolutions authorizing the weapons inspections was the promise that force would be used by the coalition if Iraq hindered the inspections process. Iraq threw out the inspectors in 1998.
Now, just because Bill Clinton was more worried about reclaiming Congress in the mid-term elections than about the WMD program in Iraq, does not mean we suddenly have no moral or legal authority to blast the crap out of Saddam's armed forces.
The fact is, if you are looking for a case where there is not a just war, it is in the present state of low-level conflict. We are not using proportionate force at the moment. ("Proportionate" by the way does not in this case mean "proportionate to what they did to us." It means "appropriate to achieving the military objective in the least destructive manner possible," or "Don't blow up any more than you have to, but don't blow up less either." Many sensible people understand that sudden, overwhelming force is often in fact much less destructive than prolonged, incremental conflict. Think of Kosovo versus Rolling Thunder and you'll understand what I mean. This notion that al Qaida killed 2,800 people on 9/11, but if we kill 2,801 then we are no longer fighting a just war is deliberate obfuscation on the part of its proponents. Absolute figures have no bearing on whether or not a war is "proportionate.")
The reason we continue at the "bomb a SAM battery here, bomb a battery there" approach is partly because of all the arm-chair theologians who run around arguing about "just war theories" from their seats in Congress and their internet pulpits. I mean no personal disrespect to Greg or anyone else, but there is a very strong case to be made in international law as well as moral law that *failing* to act against Iraq is the immoral course.
The Catholic Bishops are using a version of the just-war theory that conflates general principles with narrow rules imposed by the treating of Westphalia, in part because countries were using legalistic narrowing of the general principles to call unjust wars just. Now, they may be good rules, but they are rules written in response to the Thirty Years War, designed in part to prevent a reccurrence of that War. As such, they are subject to revision in time and place in a way that the general princples are not. The general principles (what I would call the "universal truths" of the just war theory) are "legitimate authority"--acting as a sovereign state, not a private army; "just cause"--which classically was understood not only to involve self-defense but punishment of evil; and "right intention"--the decision to punish the evil appropriately, and to wind up in a better situation after the war than before.
The US government--acting, I might add, under the legal authority of numerous United Nations Security Council Resolutions which have been in palce for more than a decade--is a "legitimate authority." "Just cause" in this case consists of any number of things, from violation of SC Resolutions (a just cause deriving from a "legitimate authority") as well as international aggression (in the form of the Gulf War as well as support of al Qaida) and punishment of the evil of using chemical and possibly biological weapons on its own citizens. The litany of evil here is so long it has perhaps numbed people into thinking that his obvious evil is not cause enough, but Aquinas would have no beef with it. And "right intention" in this case would be the intention to kill Saddam and erase his regime from the face of the earth. Until we went and got all humanistic in our thinking, we used to understand that, as a matter of man's law--the kind states are Divinely ordained to enforce--Saddam *deserves* to die, and in the Christian tradition a legitimate authority is justified by Divine sanction in depriving him of his life in retribution for his crimes.
The Bishops' document has to be understood in the context of possible global nuclear war. When it was written, non-state actors like al Qaida were marginal threats to international security. A nuclear exchange between the US and USSR over, say, missiles in Cuba, was the context for the document. Until the Bishops are prepared to reexamine their thinking in the context of non-state actors subverting entire nations for their own ends (there is no argument among serious people that Afghnistan had been since the Cole bombing a wholly-owned subsidiary of al Qaida, until we liberated it) and are prepared to examine that the primary threats to nation-states at the moment resemble those more of the 13th century than the 20th, I believe following their rules on "just war" is equivalent to following their 19th century teachings on slavery.
Thus I can only work from the general principles worked out by Augustine and Aquinas, before the peculiar circumstances of 1648 made rulers acknowledge that man needs little laws when he won't follow the big ones. We haven't exactly been following the big ones in this case, but it's not too late.
Let me just climb into my asbestos suit here...okay...let the flames begin.
Over at HMS Blog, a discussion has begun on the justice of a probable war with Iraq. Some of my comments can be found over there, in the form of a note to Greg. I would suggest you head there first, and read up on the conversation, and then come back here for my take. Most of what is below is from an email to Greg that he may wind up posting (so sorry if it's redundant).
For an excellent primer on the development of the Just War Theory, go here. It's written by a Marine Corps Lt. Col. who is also a theologian. He has been recalled to active duty, by the way, so please keep him in your prayers.
Okay, here goes. Forget al Qaida. That's a red herring. (Actually, it's not, but the case for war does not hinge on it.)
1) Iraq attacks Americans weekly, at least 150 times this calendar year alone. It fires missiles at American pilots patrolling the no-fly zones. Those zones were imposed by the *United Nations* at the end of Iraq's most recent external aggression (one of a number of cases since Hussein took power). They are there to protect Iraq's citizenry from its government, and to keep Iraq's military away from its international borders, which it will surely cross again as it has at least 3 times since 1984.
2) Strict controls on Iraq's exports and imports were imposed by the *United Nations* at the cessation of hostilities (not, mind you, in a peace treaty, but under an armistice). One of the conditions for the removal of those sanctions was Iraq allowing complete and unfettered access to UN Weapons Inspectors, so that they could certify Iraq had dismantled its WMD program.
3) Explicit in the Resolutions authorizing the weapons inspections was the promise that force would be used by the coalition if Iraq hindered the inspections process. Iraq threw out the inspectors in 1998.
Now, just because Bill Clinton was more worried about reclaiming Congress in the mid-term elections than about the WMD program in Iraq, does not mean we suddenly have no moral or legal authority to blast the crap out of Saddam's armed forces.
The fact is, if you are looking for a case where there is not a just war, it is in the present state of low-level conflict. We are not using proportionate force at the moment. ("Proportionate" by the way does not in this case mean "proportionate to what they did to us." It means "appropriate to achieving the military objective in the least destructive manner possible," or "Don't blow up any more than you have to, but don't blow up less either." Many sensible people understand that sudden, overwhelming force is often in fact much less destructive than prolonged, incremental conflict. Think of Kosovo versus Rolling Thunder and you'll understand what I mean. This notion that al Qaida killed 2,800 people on 9/11, but if we kill 2,801 then we are no longer fighting a just war is deliberate obfuscation on the part of its proponents. Absolute figures have no bearing on whether or not a war is "proportionate.")
The reason we continue at the "bomb a SAM battery here, bomb a battery there" approach is partly because of all the arm-chair theologians who run around arguing about "just war theories" from their seats in Congress and their internet pulpits. I mean no personal disrespect to Greg or anyone else, but there is a very strong case to be made in international law as well as moral law that *failing* to act against Iraq is the immoral course.
The Catholic Bishops are using a version of the just-war theory that conflates general principles with narrow rules imposed by the treating of Westphalia, in part because countries were using legalistic narrowing of the general principles to call unjust wars just. Now, they may be good rules, but they are rules written in response to the Thirty Years War, designed in part to prevent a reccurrence of that War. As such, they are subject to revision in time and place in a way that the general princples are not. The general principles (what I would call the "universal truths" of the just war theory) are "legitimate authority"--acting as a sovereign state, not a private army; "just cause"--which classically was understood not only to involve self-defense but punishment of evil; and "right intention"--the decision to punish the evil appropriately, and to wind up in a better situation after the war than before.
The US government--acting, I might add, under the legal authority of numerous United Nations Security Council Resolutions which have been in palce for more than a decade--is a "legitimate authority." "Just cause" in this case consists of any number of things, from violation of SC Resolutions (a just cause deriving from a "legitimate authority") as well as international aggression (in the form of the Gulf War as well as support of al Qaida) and punishment of the evil of using chemical and possibly biological weapons on its own citizens. The litany of evil here is so long it has perhaps numbed people into thinking that his obvious evil is not cause enough, but Aquinas would have no beef with it. And "right intention" in this case would be the intention to kill Saddam and erase his regime from the face of the earth. Until we went and got all humanistic in our thinking, we used to understand that, as a matter of man's law--the kind states are Divinely ordained to enforce--Saddam *deserves* to die, and in the Christian tradition a legitimate authority is justified by Divine sanction in depriving him of his life in retribution for his crimes.
The Bishops' document has to be understood in the context of possible global nuclear war. When it was written, non-state actors like al Qaida were marginal threats to international security. A nuclear exchange between the US and USSR over, say, missiles in Cuba, was the context for the document. Until the Bishops are prepared to reexamine their thinking in the context of non-state actors subverting entire nations for their own ends (there is no argument among serious people that Afghnistan had been since the Cole bombing a wholly-owned subsidiary of al Qaida, until we liberated it) and are prepared to examine that the primary threats to nation-states at the moment resemble those more of the 13th century than the 20th, I believe following their rules on "just war" is equivalent to following their 19th century teachings on slavery.
Thus I can only work from the general principles worked out by Augustine and Aquinas, before the peculiar circumstances of 1648 made rulers acknowledge that man needs little laws when he won't follow the big ones. We haven't exactly been following the big ones in this case, but it's not too late.
Let me just climb into my asbestos suit here...okay...let the flames begin.
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