[1] During the Civil War, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman
marched through Georgia. In his wake he left ruined fields,
pillaged plantations, looted businesses, and casualties in the
thousands. "War is hell," he shrugged. With these words he situated
war outside the realm of moral experience. The judgment justified
the carnage.
[2] "War is hell." The statement may be true to the experience
of war, but it is dangerous for our moral deliberation about war.
Sherman's judgment implies that war is beyond the pale of morality
entirely. Accordingly, war is not immoral, which suggests that
moral categories of right and wrong apply-and apply negatively.
Rather, war becomes a-moral: categories of morality do not apply at
all. That means that anything goes. If war is hell, we can act like
devils.
[3] I fear many people talking about war in today's context
agree with General Sherman. On one hand, warmongers and
"superhawks," as David Brooks calls them, speak as if the
possibility of weapons of mass destruction in possession of an
enemy regime justifies pre-emptive strike, regime change, and "use
of overwhelming force." In these days the United States Congress is
being asked to pass a resolution that would authorize the White
House to do "whatever is necessary" to accomplish these ends.
Anything goes, because "war is hell." On the other hand, pacifists
proclaim the folly of war in a nuclear age and present non-violence
and peace-making as the only viable alternatives. They refuse to
think the "unthinkable," because "war is hell."
[4] Both sides talk past each other, and debate stalls. But each
side agrees to a common premise: "war is hell." War is outside the
realm of moral deliberation. I want to argue that we need to think
the unthinkable, bring talk of war back into the realm of moral
deliberation. To put it starkly, war is not hell. It is something
that we bring on ourselves, for which we, our children, and our
children's children will suffer the consequences. For these reasons
we had better think very carefully, together-both superhawks and
pacifists-about what we are doing. How can we think about the
unthinkable?
[5] As I've talked to people on all sides of this issue, I find
that most of them hardly know where to begin to think. The talk of
war splashed across the newspapers has had the effect of some weird
drug. Inside the Beltway the drug acts like a stimulant, as folks
talk fast and frantically about WMD, biological terror, and enemy
regimes. But outside the Beltway the drug acts like a depressant,
and people paralyzed by this barrage of information and
pseudo-information seem unable to put their thoughts in order. One
of my swimming buddies shook her head in the locker room: "I
thought we were supposed to be at war with Osama bin Laden . . .
whatever happened to him?" I sense, however, that we are finally
shaking ourselves awake, because now we want to think about
this.
[6] Fortunately, we are not thinking in a vacuum. There is a
body of thought, developed over centuries and refined by thinkers,
both Christians and others, called "just war" thinking. It begins
at the point of regarding war as such a grave matter that it
requires the justification of the most stringent sort. Just war
theory gives us a place to start thinking-some thinking points,
instead of talking points, if you will-as we attempt to think the
unthinkable.
[7] The core assumption of just war thinking is the conviction
that war is not hell. It is a serious, sometimes necessary
undertaking, but it most emphatically does not exist outside the
realm of moral deliberation. War is regulated by certain principles
that have developed over time. These may not be exhaustive, but
they may be helpful. I will focus here on jus ad bellum,
the first part of just war thinking which deals with those
stringent justifications for going to war in the first place. The
existence of such criteria suggests that there are good reasons,
bad reasons, and no kind of reason at all for going to war. The
question for us, of course, is the reasons cited in our national
debate are sufficiently serious for going to war with Iraq. Let me
roll through some of the key criteria here:
[8] 1. just cause: This criteria demands that war not be waged
for revenge or domination, property or personal vendetta, but for
protection of innocent life, basic human rights, the safeguarding
of future generations. Have we met this criteria? The allegation is
that Iraqi has an imminent threat of WMD, but supporting evidence
is thin and full document would not be available until U.N. weapons
inspectors get in there to look. Dossiers from Great Britain have
not produced new and overwhelming evidence. And the president's
comment last week that "this is the guy who tried to kill my dad,"
suggests that personal vendetta may play a role in national policy.
Should it?
[9] It could be argued that the U.S. suffered a pre-emptive
attack a year ago, and the nation retaliated against Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan. But the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda has not been
established. Indeed, Al Qaeda organized itself to fight precisely
the kind of secularist Muslim regime that presently exists in Iraq.
Ironically, that terrorist organization might support our quest for
regime change in Iraq, in hopes that a more religious Muslim regime
which would operate by the rule of Islamic law, the Shariah. So
much for just cause. . . .
[10] 2. proper authorization: A second thinking point is proper
authorization. The war must be authorized by proper authorities.
There is a fair amount of internal debate on this question: whether
the president, also commander-in-chief, was granted power to engage
Iraq by decade-old legislation passed during the Gulf War? Or does
Congress alone retain the power to declare war? But is the United
States itself a proper authority-or is the U.N. the only
appropriate body to adjudicate the situation. Should regime change,
if that is what we want, really be the goal of one country against
another?
[11] 3. intent: This leads to thinking point: intent. What is
our motivation? In its official statements, the U.S. has been
unclear about this. Certainly the president gave a powerful speech
at the U.N. on September 12, 2002, and his words spurred that body
to action. But hours afterwards pundits were pondering our real
intent. What was it: forcing weapons inspection or lobbying for
regime change? We hinted at both. Even today the intent is not
clear. Add to that the president's daddy, and we do not have
appropriate motivation. Just war thinking suggests that the only
proper motivation would be self-defense, but until we have clearer
evidence that the U.S. is a direct target of Iraq, and that Hussein
has both weapons and a means of directing them at us, we are not in
any clear danger.
[12] 4. last resort: War is a last resort: it should happen only
if all other means-in this case, diplomatic and economic-have been
exhausted. A pre-emptive, unilateralist move against Iraq will
alienate countries we need as our allies. Muslim countries in the
area, Arabs, Turkish, and Russian, are all unhappy with Hussein. We
should be working with them to isolate Hussein, rather than working
in isolation to be unhappy with Hussein all by ourselves. An attack
on a Muslim state will only win us more enemies in the Muslim
world, possibly raise up more terrorists. Centuries ago the North
African Christian Tertullian warned the Roman rulers: "The blood of
Christians is the seed of the church." In this situation, the blood
of Muslims may be the seed of future terrorism.
[13] 5. proportionality: The criterion of proportionality
imposes as a moral obligation assessing consequences of possible
engagement before initiating it. This means
worrying about the stability of the region during and after the
war. There must be reasonable hope of success to justify the
suffering war will cause. And we need to be quite broad in defining
what counts as "success." This means worrying about what happens to
the majority, but marginalized Shiite population in the south of
Iraq and the disenfranchised Kurds in the north? This means a solid
and in-dollars commitment to nation-building in Iraq after we
leave. During the election campaign, this administration said
nation-building was very low on its priority list, pledging itself
to domestic problems instead. Let's hope our nation-building
efforts in Iraq will be better than those we have initiated in
Afghanistan, where we have reneged on both money and manpower.
[14] I worry that we will find this a very hard war indeed-and
ratchet up our offensive strategies to "win at all costs." The
costs will be very great, both to us and to the Iraqi. But to us as
a nation, I fear the costs will be soul-destroying. In a recent
review article Abraham Verghese comments: "In times of war, all
countries wind up destroying their own culture. . .
."1
[15] These are some of the points we must consider as we think
the unthinkable. And we need answers before anyone takes up arms,
before troops are transferred, before resolutions have been signed,
sealed, and placed on the White House door. Is this an exhaustive
list? I would certainly add to these thinking points the existence
of an informed public that can freely debate, without being charged
with lack of patriotism or politicizing the debate. In dark times
ignorance and unfreedom are moral offenses. Given the points
enumeration, the question remains: have we had the debate we
need?
[16] I fear not. I feel like the mood of the nation at this
point is: "Damn the debate; full speed ahead." But we have not
deliberated one of the most serious moral issues of our time. War
is not hell; it lies within the sphere of moral judgment, and we
need to think and think carefully, lest we be judged with the same
ferocity we are so ready to show other countries. We need to apply
these criteria to our own engagement-not just the discussions of
others. Pacifists need these thinking points, if they are to argue
persuasively and in the public realm that this war is not
justified. Superhawks need these thinking points, if they are to
argue persuasively and in the public realm that this war is grave,
but justified.
© October
2002
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 2, Issue 10
1 Abraham Verghese, "Wars are Made, not Born." Review of
Chris Hedges&=javascript:goNote(39 War Is a Force That Gives Us
Meaning (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), in The New York Times
Book Review (September 19, 2002), p. 21.