analyze United States action against Iraq basing on “just war theory”
INTRODUCTION
Just war theory deals with the justification of how and why wars are fought. The justification can be either theoretical or historical. The theoretical aspect is concerned with ethically justifying war and the forms that warfare may or may not take. The historical aspect, or the “just war tradition,” deals with the historical body of rules or agreements that have applied in various wars across the ages. For instance, international agreements such as the Geneva and Hague conventions are historical rules aimed at limiting certain kinds of warfare which lawyers may refer to in prosecuting transgressors, but it is the role of ethics to examine these institutional agreements for their philosophical coherence as well as to inquire into whether aspects of the conventions ought to be changed. The just war tradition may also consider the thoughts of various philosophers and lawyers through the ages and examine both their philosophical visions of war’s ethical limits (or absence of) and whether their thoughts have contributed to the body of conventions that have evolved to guide war and warfare.
St. Thomas Aquinas gives the core principles of just war as follows;
1) Just cause
2) Competent authority
3) Right intention
The United States, in collaboration with other nations, have not only a moral right but an obligation to defend against mass terrorism and the threat Iraq poses to people. But the difficult moral issue is not mostly about ends but about how to defend the common good against such threats.
What is disturbing is that the Bush administration had taken the concept of preemption as an option in exceptional cases and turned it into a new doctrine about the legitimacy of the unilateral use of preventive war to deal not just with imminent threats, but with merely potential or gathering dangers. Justifying preventive war in this way would represent a sharp departure from just war norms.
In addition to raising strong concerns about dramatically expanding just cause to justify war against Iraq, the Catholic bishops questioned the wisdom of acting unilaterally.
The burden of proof is on those who would justify war to make a convincing case that it would not result in the unintended and untoward consequences that so often accompany modern war and that could well be the result of war against Iraq.
Based on available information, there is no new evidence so far, no new precipitating event, no new threatening actions by the Iraqi government, no new reason to go to war that did not exist one, two, four, or even six years ago.
The global expansion of terrorism in the approach to 9/11 and since have made all previous assessments obsolete. The wrong weapons in the wrong hands can threaten people from Moscow to New York, from Capitol Hill offices to Tunisia and Bali. And we have to ask ourselves where in the contemporary world the most worrisome weapons of mass destruction were likely to come from. Baghdad being one such sources.
I take as axiomatic that the classic conditions of jus in bello can be reasonably achieved by American military planners. And the traditional jus ad bellum principles—just cause, right intention, right authority, reasonable hope of success, and proportionality of good achieved over harm—can be met as well.
One might turn the usual questions the other way around: "If not Iraq, who?" and "If not now, when?" The international community can replace the use of force with the rule of law only if it is itself willing to use force when called for.
A threat that is not clear, that is not direct, and that is not imminent cannot justify going to war. Measured by just war standards, the war proposed against Iraq failed completely of a sufficient cause. Preemptive strikes must meet a high standard of justification. Otherwise, they are acts of aggression that violate international law.
Just war tradition stipulates a reasonable chance of success, but the most probable outcome of an invasion of Iraq has been a long drawn-out bloody war.
An invasion would also wreak havoc on a civilian population already tortured by war and sanctions, clearly violati Jus in bello. A war against Iraq could exemplify two countervailing developments in modern warfare. On the one hand, the wars waged by the United States in recent years are, with some exceptions, the most discriminate in recent history in terms of the intent and capacity to avoid the direct targeting of civilians. This is a significant moral achievement. On the other hand, war in Iraq could continue the trend of the past fifty years in which civilians have increasingly been the principal victims of war. The United States is threatening the use of nuclear weapons in response to any Iraqi use of WMD and is likely to use anti-personnel landmines and cluster bombs, neither of which can distinguish between civilians and soldiers. Its rules of engagement in recent wars have effectively reversed the duty of care owed civilians in the name of zero-(U.S.) casualty wars, and its pursuit of regime change could well involve street fighting in Baghdad that would endanger large numbers of civilians. Just as prominent voices called for taking off the "kid gloves" with respect to "collateral damage" in Afghanistan given the nature of the al Qaeda threat, one surely will hear the same calls given the nature of an Iraq armed with WMD.
If the experience in the Gulf War, Kosovo, and Afghanistan are any indication, the greatest risk to civilians, according to Human Rights Watch, will be from the Iraqi army, which is likely to lash out at Shiite and Kurdish minorities, and from these political opponents of Saddam seeking retribution against his Sunni supporters.27 U.S. military planning should include serious efforts to protect these minorities against retribution during and after any military intervention in Iraq.
As a postmodern, one can still use classical just war theory for several good reasons. It has the force of history and the virtue of clarity. It says "halt" to a Pax Americana and says you may not justify a first-strike attack. But this is not the time of Aquinas or Augustine; there is no orderly universe just waiting to be upheld again.
Ours is a symbolically convoluted world. Simplistic divisions of good and evil, religion and secularism, violence and non-violence, and us and them no longer hold. Snipers, anthrax, the economy, the prospect of war, terrorists, and tactical nukes are all good causes for anxiety. But what is causing us to feel like we have suddenly been told the floor of the room is actually built over a bottomless well is our deep suspicion that the old narratives no longer explain these irrational events.
Our anxiety is that deep. The world is changing before our eyes and we cannot fundamentally explain the change away. In such a pluralistic and multi-dimensional world, just war theory may be helpful, but it is not, by any means, all the help we need
Three moral challenges are highlighted to have influenced the Iraq war as below,
The first moral challenge was posed by repressive and aggressive rogue regimes, such as Iraq and North Korea. According to the Bush administration's "National Security Strategy," these regimes were particularly problematic because of being ruled by brutal and megalomaniac – or at least less than rational dictators who were not easily influenced, deterred or contained.
A second moral challenge was posed by a global terrorist network that was motivated by a contemporary form of holy war without limits. Christians had the Crusades; Muslims had Osama bin Laden, who had celebrated the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as part of a "jihad against the infidels" in the West. September 11th is dramatic evidence of this form of terrorism's capacity for unleashing unimaginable evil.
It was also symptomatic of how difficult it was to defend against such evil. Such loose-knit, global networks of terrorists prosecuting what they considered to be a holy war were much more difficult to contain and deter than rogue regimes.
The third moral challenge was the proliferation of Weapons Mass Destruction as these were to be connected to the first two rogue regimes supporting global terrorism and the combination would be extremely dangerous. The threat posed by this deadly combination of threats was so great even if the chance of the threat being carried out was relatively low that it could push traditional strategies and moral analysis to their limits. Hence principles of just war were overshadowed by mere moral sentiments making the whole invasion of Iraq unjustifiable.
Conclusion
The United States decision to go to war seems to be prompted not by the fear of Iraq but by the uncertainty it poses, especially when viewed in the context of events of September 11, 2001. This feeling is best exemplified by the words of William Langewiesch in an article in the Atlanta Monthly of September 2002: “The dread that Americans felt during the weeks following the September 11attacks stemmed less from the fear of death than from a collective loss of control –a sense of being dragged headlong into an apocalyptic future for which society seemed unprepared.” In American perceptions President Saddam Hussein represents an uncontrollable entity feared as capable of wreaking an apocalyptic threat against US national security interests.
References
National Security Strategy of the United States, 2002, pp. 9-10. The Administration uses the term "preemptive" force but, as I argue in section II, "preventive" force is a more apt description of what is contemplated.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "Statement on Iraq," November 13, 2002.
Ibid.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, "A Just War?" Boston Globe, October 6, 2002, p. H4.
James Turner Johnson, "Using Military Force Against the Saddam Hussein Regime: The Moral Issues," Essay based on remarks to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, December 4, 2002.
Michael Walzer, "No Strikes," The New Republic Online, September 30, 2002, p. 3.
Michael Dobbs, "North Korea Tests Bush's Policy of Preemption," Washington Post, January 6, 2003, pp. A1, A9.
Cardinal Ratzinger Says Unilateral Attack on Iraq Not Justified," ZENIT News Agency, September 22, 2002.
Maryann Cusimano Love, "Real Prevention: Alternatives to Force," America, forthcoming.
J. Bryan Hehir, "The Moral Measurement of War: A Tradition of Change and Continuity," Paper for the Conference "The Sacred and the Sovereign," University of Chicago Divinity School, October 20, 2000.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "Living with Faith and Hope after September
Just war theory deals with the justification of how and why wars are fought. The justification can be either theoretical or historical. The theoretical aspect is concerned with ethically justifying war and the forms that warfare may or may not take. The historical aspect, or the “just war tradition,” deals with the historical body of rules or agreements that have applied in various wars across the ages. For instance, international agreements such as the Geneva and Hague conventions are historical rules aimed at limiting certain kinds of warfare which lawyers may refer to in prosecuting transgressors, but it is the role of ethics to examine these institutional agreements for their philosophical coherence as well as to inquire into whether aspects of the conventions ought to be changed. The just war tradition may also consider the thoughts of various philosophers and lawyers through the ages and examine both their philosophical visions of war’s ethical limits (or absence of) and whether their thoughts have contributed to the body of conventions that have evolved to guide war and warfare.
St. Thomas Aquinas gives the core principles of just war as follows;
1) Just cause
2) Competent authority
3) Right intention
The United States, in collaboration with other nations, have not only a moral right but an obligation to defend against mass terrorism and the threat Iraq poses to people. But the difficult moral issue is not mostly about ends but about how to defend the common good against such threats.
What is disturbing is that the Bush administration had taken the concept of preemption as an option in exceptional cases and turned it into a new doctrine about the legitimacy of the unilateral use of preventive war to deal not just with imminent threats, but with merely potential or gathering dangers. Justifying preventive war in this way would represent a sharp departure from just war norms.
In addition to raising strong concerns about dramatically expanding just cause to justify war against Iraq, the Catholic bishops questioned the wisdom of acting unilaterally.
The burden of proof is on those who would justify war to make a convincing case that it would not result in the unintended and untoward consequences that so often accompany modern war and that could well be the result of war against Iraq.
Based on available information, there is no new evidence so far, no new precipitating event, no new threatening actions by the Iraqi government, no new reason to go to war that did not exist one, two, four, or even six years ago.
The global expansion of terrorism in the approach to 9/11 and since have made all previous assessments obsolete. The wrong weapons in the wrong hands can threaten people from Moscow to New York, from Capitol Hill offices to Tunisia and Bali. And we have to ask ourselves where in the contemporary world the most worrisome weapons of mass destruction were likely to come from. Baghdad being one such sources.
I take as axiomatic that the classic conditions of jus in bello can be reasonably achieved by American military planners. And the traditional jus ad bellum principles—just cause, right intention, right authority, reasonable hope of success, and proportionality of good achieved over harm—can be met as well.
One might turn the usual questions the other way around: "If not Iraq, who?" and "If not now, when?" The international community can replace the use of force with the rule of law only if it is itself willing to use force when called for.
A threat that is not clear, that is not direct, and that is not imminent cannot justify going to war. Measured by just war standards, the war proposed against Iraq failed completely of a sufficient cause. Preemptive strikes must meet a high standard of justification. Otherwise, they are acts of aggression that violate international law.
Just war tradition stipulates a reasonable chance of success, but the most probable outcome of an invasion of Iraq has been a long drawn-out bloody war.
An invasion would also wreak havoc on a civilian population already tortured by war and sanctions, clearly violati Jus in bello. A war against Iraq could exemplify two countervailing developments in modern warfare. On the one hand, the wars waged by the United States in recent years are, with some exceptions, the most discriminate in recent history in terms of the intent and capacity to avoid the direct targeting of civilians. This is a significant moral achievement. On the other hand, war in Iraq could continue the trend of the past fifty years in which civilians have increasingly been the principal victims of war. The United States is threatening the use of nuclear weapons in response to any Iraqi use of WMD and is likely to use anti-personnel landmines and cluster bombs, neither of which can distinguish between civilians and soldiers. Its rules of engagement in recent wars have effectively reversed the duty of care owed civilians in the name of zero-(U.S.) casualty wars, and its pursuit of regime change could well involve street fighting in Baghdad that would endanger large numbers of civilians. Just as prominent voices called for taking off the "kid gloves" with respect to "collateral damage" in Afghanistan given the nature of the al Qaeda threat, one surely will hear the same calls given the nature of an Iraq armed with WMD.
If the experience in the Gulf War, Kosovo, and Afghanistan are any indication, the greatest risk to civilians, according to Human Rights Watch, will be from the Iraqi army, which is likely to lash out at Shiite and Kurdish minorities, and from these political opponents of Saddam seeking retribution against his Sunni supporters.27 U.S. military planning should include serious efforts to protect these minorities against retribution during and after any military intervention in Iraq.
As a postmodern, one can still use classical just war theory for several good reasons. It has the force of history and the virtue of clarity. It says "halt" to a Pax Americana and says you may not justify a first-strike attack. But this is not the time of Aquinas or Augustine; there is no orderly universe just waiting to be upheld again.
Ours is a symbolically convoluted world. Simplistic divisions of good and evil, religion and secularism, violence and non-violence, and us and them no longer hold. Snipers, anthrax, the economy, the prospect of war, terrorists, and tactical nukes are all good causes for anxiety. But what is causing us to feel like we have suddenly been told the floor of the room is actually built over a bottomless well is our deep suspicion that the old narratives no longer explain these irrational events.
Our anxiety is that deep. The world is changing before our eyes and we cannot fundamentally explain the change away. In such a pluralistic and multi-dimensional world, just war theory may be helpful, but it is not, by any means, all the help we need
Three moral challenges are highlighted to have influenced the Iraq war as below,
The first moral challenge was posed by repressive and aggressive rogue regimes, such as Iraq and North Korea. According to the Bush administration's "National Security Strategy," these regimes were particularly problematic because of being ruled by brutal and megalomaniac – or at least less than rational dictators who were not easily influenced, deterred or contained.
A second moral challenge was posed by a global terrorist network that was motivated by a contemporary form of holy war without limits. Christians had the Crusades; Muslims had Osama bin Laden, who had celebrated the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as part of a "jihad against the infidels" in the West. September 11th is dramatic evidence of this form of terrorism's capacity for unleashing unimaginable evil.
It was also symptomatic of how difficult it was to defend against such evil. Such loose-knit, global networks of terrorists prosecuting what they considered to be a holy war were much more difficult to contain and deter than rogue regimes.
The third moral challenge was the proliferation of Weapons Mass Destruction as these were to be connected to the first two rogue regimes supporting global terrorism and the combination would be extremely dangerous. The threat posed by this deadly combination of threats was so great even if the chance of the threat being carried out was relatively low that it could push traditional strategies and moral analysis to their limits. Hence principles of just war were overshadowed by mere moral sentiments making the whole invasion of Iraq unjustifiable.
Conclusion
The United States decision to go to war seems to be prompted not by the fear of Iraq but by the uncertainty it poses, especially when viewed in the context of events of September 11, 2001. This feeling is best exemplified by the words of William Langewiesch in an article in the Atlanta Monthly of September 2002: “The dread that Americans felt during the weeks following the September 11attacks stemmed less from the fear of death than from a collective loss of control –a sense of being dragged headlong into an apocalyptic future for which society seemed unprepared.” In American perceptions President Saddam Hussein represents an uncontrollable entity feared as capable of wreaking an apocalyptic threat against US national security interests.
References
National Security Strategy of the United States, 2002, pp. 9-10. The Administration uses the term "preemptive" force but, as I argue in section II, "preventive" force is a more apt description of what is contemplated.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "Statement on Iraq," November 13, 2002.
Ibid.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, "A Just War?" Boston Globe, October 6, 2002, p. H4.
James Turner Johnson, "Using Military Force Against the Saddam Hussein Regime: The Moral Issues," Essay based on remarks to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, December 4, 2002.
Michael Walzer, "No Strikes," The New Republic Online, September 30, 2002, p. 3.
Michael Dobbs, "North Korea Tests Bush's Policy of Preemption," Washington Post, January 6, 2003, pp. A1, A9.
Cardinal Ratzinger Says Unilateral Attack on Iraq Not Justified," ZENIT News Agency, September 22, 2002.
Maryann Cusimano Love, "Real Prevention: Alternatives to Force," America, forthcoming.
J. Bryan Hehir, "The Moral Measurement of War: A Tradition of Change and Continuity," Paper for the Conference "The Sacred and the Sovereign," University of Chicago Divinity School, October 20, 2000.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "Living with Faith and Hope after September
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