[Peace-discuss] Just war

[C. G. Estabrook]

There was a particularly shameful (if largely intellectually vacuous)
presentation on WILL's "Focus 580" this morning.  The generally excellent
radio interview program had as a guest a journalistic hack and academic
ideologue who has written a book attempting to justify the
administration's imperialism on the basis of "just-war theory."

This misleadingly named body of thought is the attempt by Christians to
make practical applications of the elementary Christian principle that
violence against people is wrong.  It recognizes that there are rare cases
in which the protection of the innocent against violence might justify
limited counter-violence -- even by the state.  It is of course a
dangerous if obvious concession, because there are always apologists for
power.

In this tradition of thought, the burden of proof in every case rests on
anyone who suggests that violence -- particularly state violence -- is
justified.  The just-war discussion has elaborated a set of circumstances
that must be satisfied for Christians to participate in state violence in
good conscience.  It's an ongoing discussion, and the principles are
variously stated -- e.g., last resort, legitimate authority, right
intention, rectification of injury, reasonable chance of success,
proportionality, protection of civilians.

It's important to see that (at least) all the principles must be satisfied
for a war to be just.  If a given use of violence fails on one point,
there can be no claim that it is just.  The US attack on Iraq is not even
an interesting problem -- it fails on many if not all counts.  It was
obviously not a last resort, the legitimate authority of international law
was flouted by the USG, the criminal imperial intention of the war was
publicly stated by the war party for a decade, the force used was
obviously disproportionate to redress the injury suffered (what was that,
again -- WMDs? oppression of the Iraqis?), and although the military tried
to avoid the bad press that comes when they kill civilians, they still
managed to do so quite often, etc.

It's a Big Lie of the sort that we associate with totalitarian governments
that the "war on terrorism" or the assault on Iraq can be considered just
wars according to this tradition.  It is nevertheless a good sign that the
administration's toadies should be trying to make such a hypocritical
justification of these crimes.  Hypocrisy as has been said is the tribute
that vice pays to virtue, and we can therefore point out the viciousness
of the administration's actions against a standard of virtue.  (E.g.,
during the US war against Vietnam, the just war tradition was not
discussed.)

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  Carl Estabrook
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana IL 61801 USA
  office: 217.244.4105 mobile: 217.369.5471 home: 217.359.9466   
  <www.carlforcongress.org>
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