Conversation on War

I have a good friend with whom I have been having an email conversation regarding the morality of the war in Iraq. He explicitly asks for a Christian justification, so if that type of argument is not your cup of tea, stop reading. Below is simply one part of his email (in the form of a question) and my answer.

A: I feel that this war in Iraq is immoral, perhaps it is even a sin. We have, as a matter of choice, engaged in the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and torture of who knows how many others because somebody thinks that someday, somehow, this might save the lives of Americans. I know that the threat of terrorism is real, but did not Jesus teach us to turn the other cheek? I am serious about that. We have set about chasing after those who attacked us on September 11. That had nothing to do with Iraq. How can we say that this war is just? What does the Pope say on this? As an American, how can I avoid the sense that I am participating in murder?

Chris: Let’s see what we agree on. First, we are all God’s children. If I am hungry and want to cut off the head of a chicken and eat it, I’ll just do it. There is no great moral issue. If I feel threatened by some avian flu, and believe I’ll be safer by killing 10,000 chickens with a bomb, I’ll just do it. Again no great moral issue. But people are not chickens. I don’t get to use and dispose of them based on my own needs. They themselves have a dignity given by God. In fact, I’m commanded to love them. Any justification of what we are doing is going to have to deal with this commandment. St. Thomas Aquinas understood this. He put his just war theory in The Summa Theologica in his section on charity (or love) not in his section on justice.

The pope has a great line: “The opposite of love is not hate. It is use.” So are we using Iraqis like the chickens I’m afraid of getting the flu from? I don’t think so. I think the situation is analogous to the following:

Suppose one group is enslaving, murdering, raping, or otherwise victimizing another group, and we believe the first group also poses a threat to a third group, our fellow citizens and children. What are our moral obligations given we are commanded to love all three groups?

Suppose we can cleanly wipe out the first group? Is this justified? Not if there is any other way of stopping the enslavement, murders, rapes, or whatever. But what if there is no other way? Then our commandment to love the second and third group to me allows, and may require us to kill the first group.

Suppose we can wipe out the first group, but only with some risk to members of the second group? Some fraction will die in the process. Here my morality is that I can’t use the second group as a means to my ends. I have to take this risk into account from their perspective. If I were them, would I want the risk taken? If I can honestly answer yes, then this seems to me consistent with loving the second group. This example is the one that I think of as being analogous to the Iraq war and civilian casualties.

Suppose we can wipe out the first group, but only with great risk to the second group. Most of them will die in the process. So many that I can’t honestly answer that it would be worth the risk. This is the case when the first group is, say, Saddam and his inner circle, the second group is his conscript soldiers, and the third group is everyone else. Even here, it seems to me that love for the third group (which now includes American and Iraqi civilians) may allow this.

So does this mean anything goes? Not to me. I agree with you that torture and humiliation is just wrong. It denies the humanity of the victim. (I’m not sure exactly what is torture. Is making someone believe you will kill him if he doesn’t talk torture?) There is also always a tendency for it to happen. And it needs to be punished when it does.

I think we probably agree on much of this and disagree about the facts. This has a lot to do with your questions “How can we say that this war is just? What does the Pope say on this?” The Pope believes he and the Church have the authority to definitively state what the conditions are for when a war is or is not just. But he does not believe he or the Church have the authority to state when those conditions have or have not been met. That is what they call a “prudential judgement.” “If condition A is met then action B is justified” is a universal statement. “Condition A is met” is a statement about a particular time and circumstance. The pope and the Church claim no special ability to make statements which depend on particular circumstances, but still believe they have the right to offer an opinion. So on the Iraq war, the pope's people (not so much the pope) let it be know that in their opinion, the conditions for a just war had not been met, but the pope himself let it be known that these were opinions for which the church had no special insight.

So the pope and Bush disagreed on what the facts were, but not the principals involved, as I suspect, do we. We can discuss particular facts later.