One Utah

Ed Firmage’s piece below raised the concept of Just War.  The term “just war” is often used in a very casual way, but there is in fact a historic and widely known set of principles that determine just war.  I suspect Ed Firmage knows these principles, but many people may not - they are grounded in Catholic theology and not often studied outside of Divinity programs in Protestant circles.

With regard to Iraq, with the exception of some Southern Baptist theologians and Bush Administration apologists, no one outside of the Bush Administration believed or seriously argued from theological grounds that Iraq is a just war.

There are seven principles in determining if war is just (edited from the original):

1. A just war is a war of last resort - all non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force is justified.
2. A war is just if and only if it is waged by a legitimate authority.  However, and this is key, just causes cannot be served by individuals and or groups who are not sanctioned by the society in question and which outsiders would deem legitimate. 
3. A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong - self defense against armed attack is just cause but intention is important as well - to redress the wrong suffered is the only permissible objective of a just war.  Relevant, I believe, is the implied concept that just war must be against the actual aggressor, not his/her allies, friends, confidants, and neighbors. 
4. A war can only be just if it is fought with reasonable chance of success.  A hopeless war is nor morally justifiable and the deaths and injuries in a hopeless war are are not morally acceptable.
5. The ultimate goal of a just war must be the re-establishment of peace.  More specifically, the peace established after the war must actually be preferable to that which existed before the war. 
6. The violence of the war must be proportional to the injury suffered.  (There’s a great episode of West Wing in which the President is infuriated about a proportional response and wants to know what an unproportional response would be; he says it’s time to show that we will not take it anymore, we will crush the wrong-doers once and for all; he gets a scenario and is horrified by the consequences.)
7. When waging just war, distinctions must be made valid military targets and civilians.  Civilians and non-combatants are never valid targets.  The morality of just war accepts taht civilians may killed as an unavoidable results against a valid military target.

The Iraq war fails to meet all seven principles of Just War.  The disaster of Iraq was completely predictable.  At no time, was there any realistic hope for success beyond the most pro forma idea of success - militarily, we could always have defeated Iraq’s army.  Success after that was always the problem.

I fully expect to hear that “Saddam was evil” mantra.  Here’s the deal: Iraq under Saddam was better off than Iraq now.  That’s sick and horrible and a condemnation in and of itself, but the US invasion made things worse for average Iraqis.  The stable repression of a Hussein regime was preferable to the civil war taking place now.

This entry was posted Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Iraq, This Blog, War. Both comments and pings are currently closed.