What Is a Just War?
Dennis
The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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http://lewrockwell.com/napolitano/napolitano39.1.html
What Is a Just War?
Recently by Andrew P. Napolitano: A Few Words About Abortion
When President Obama announced last April that he was sending the United
States military to bomb Libya, he not only violated the United States
Constitution, which he has taken an oath to uphold, but he also violated the
moral principles of the just war. The Constitution permits only Congress to
declare war and the president to initiate on his own only a truly defensive
war. When the president takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, he also
promises to uphold the treaties into which the U.S. has entered and the laws
that have been written pursuant to those treaties.
St. Thomas Aquinas is the modern articulator of the idea that governments
are required to follow the same moral principles as the rest of us. This is
particularly so in the case of a government that claims its source of power
is the consent of the governed. St. Thomas More once put it this way: "Some
men say the earth is round and some say it is flat. If it is round, can the
King's command flatten it; and if it is flat, can Parliament make it round?"
Of course, the answer to those questions is no; and the reason it is no is
that kings and parliaments - all governments - just like all living beings,
are subject to the laws of nature. One of those laws was articulated by
Aquinas and embraced by More and accepted by Thomas Jefferson and taught by
many Judeo-Christian scholars, and was eventually engrafted into treaties
and into American law. It is the concept of the just war. In American law
and culture, for war to be valid, it must not only be lawful, meaning either
declared by Congress or defensive; it must also be just.
What is a just war? For a war to be just, generally, a half-dozen principles
must be met.
First, since force destroys, and there is a presumption against its use, the
presumption must be overcome by first using all peaceful and viable means
and alternatives to war; and it must be clear that these alternatives are
fruitless before a war can be just.
Second, the cause must be just; that is, the purpose of the war must be to
correct a grave, profound, enduring public evil that directly impairs the
freedom or safety of those contemplating war.
Third, only a lawfully competent authority may commence the use of violence,
as was not the case when President Johnson bombed North Vietnam or President
Nixon bombed Cambodia or President Obama bombed Libya. Thus, the internal
laws of the nation using military violence must be crafted so that war is
the public policy of the nation, not just the temporary personal preference
of whoever is running the government.
Fourth, there must be a probability of success, so that men and women are
not sent to certain death for a lost cause.
Fifth, the use of force must be proportional to the harm it seeks to
eradicate; thus, no more persons may be harmed by the use of military force
than are absolutely necessary to achieve the just goals of the war.
Finally, the war must be fought fairly and ended quickly.
Have you ever heard of these rules before? Since they're universally
accepted in the West, wouldn't you expect that they'd be discussed and
debated openly? Did the Congress apply these rules to any war in your
lifetime?
Congress has not declared war since Dec. 8, 1941. But it has, from time to
time, debated these principles while it permitted the president to fight
unjust wars. It did so when LBJ tricked it into adopting the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution in 1964, authorizing him to bomb North Vietnam, a backward
country that posed no threats to America. It debated these values when it
enacted the War Powers Act in 1973 in order to restrain Nixon from bombing
Cambodia, another country that did not harm and could not have harmed the
U.S. It did not debate these principles when it authorized President George
W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
The problem with most wars is that they are more strategic and adventurist
than they are just. We now know that Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the
U.S. Regrettably, it took 5,000 American lives, more than a half-million
Iraqi lives, nearly a trillion borrowed dollars and two presidential
election campaigns for voters to realize that. What was the grave, profound,
enduring public evil from Iraq that directly threatened the freedom or
safety of Americans? There wasn't one.
The same may be said for Afghanistan, about which, shortly before he was
fired, Gen. James Jones, Obama's first national security adviser and a
former Marine commandant, stated that the U.S. had 100,000 troops wasting
their time chasing fewer than 100 al-Qaida there. Did we assure that no more
innocents - or even combatants - died than was necessary to end that war?
No.
And my guess is that you don't know anyone in America whose freedom and
safety were threatened by the Libyan government last April.
The concept of a just war can induce a debate without end, unless and until
we repose the Constitution for safekeeping into the hands of men and women
who accept the concept. If we do that, we will bring the troops home and
save many lives and much taxpayer money and be free and safe and prosperous.
If we don't, it seems whoever is the president gets to fight whatever wars
he wants. Is that what you want?
Reprinted with the author's permission.
February 3, 2012
Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court
of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel, and
the host of "FreedomWatch" on the Fox Business Network. His latest book is
It is Dangerous to be Right When the Government is Wrong: The Case for
Personal Freedom.
Copyright C 2012 Andrew P. Napolitano
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