A just war Jimmy Carter got it wrong
Elshtain, Jean Bethke
Jean Bethke Elshtain A JUST WAR Force was justified & restrained Hven as the debate raged about whether or not the war against the Iraqi regime met the criteria of a "just cause"-I believe it...
...Such weapons make it more rather than less likely that the principle of discrimination can be met...
...Carter failed to make the most critical distinction: that between intended and unintended targets of harm...
...The second overriding concern is proportionality...
...Saddam Hussein has declared that his only mistake in attacking Kuwait was to do it before he possessed a nuclear capability...
...One worry about the Iraqi regime's caches of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is that these are by definition weapons that violate all the known norms of jus in hello (so, of course, do U.S...
...Forms of antiwar protest that turn on wild hyperbole, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and ferocious denunciations cannot be taken seriously...
...There are some wars that could never come close to meeting the terms of either proportionality or discrimination...
...Discrimination means that noncombatants must never be the intended targets in war...
...Not only does proportionality have nothing to do with "doing to them what they did to you," but such a distortion opens the door to something unfortunate and largely forbidden within just-war teaching, namely, reprisals...
...It is clear that this is the course the American and British military have followed in Iraq...
...In the days and weeks ahead, as Iraq is stabilized, as civilian affairs teams move in to help get the infrastructure up and running, just-war concerns will be a vital restraining influence...
...A shorthand way to put this requirement is to say, simply, that the minimal level of force necessary to achieve the good expected from a resort to force, and that level only, should be deployed...
...Former President Jimmy Carter, in a New York Times op-ed during the run-up to the war (March 9), misstated what discrimination requires...
...Another overriding worry was Iraq's nuclear program...
...Within the just-war tradition, there are two overriding jus-in-bello principles: discrimination and proportionality...
...These are weapons of extraordinary accuracy and thus reduced lethality...
...If he could have threatened nuclear retaliation against Israel, for example, it would have been nearly impossible to stay his hand...
...Only a few headquarters of the brutal Saddam regime remain intact, and consequently most of the air activity is in support of ground troops...
...Those of us watching war coverage on television cannot help but be impressed by the worries voiced by field commanders and ordinary soldiers about sparing noncombatants...
...Largely because of the durability and strength of the just-war tradition, and its absorption within international conventions and agreements, the U.S...
...Distortions of just-war thinking, suggestions that sinister forces are at work behind the scenes, and a gullibility that would take the word of a sadistic dictator over that of accountable officials in the field in a war being observed by over 600 "embedded" members of a free press, suggest that many people oppose the war for narrowly partisan and ideological reasons...
...It is, therefore, heartening that over 90 percent of the aerial weapons deployed by the United States in Iraq were precision guided...
...Catholic bishops' 1983 The Challenge of Peace, the bishops, following Pope John Paul II as well as other pontiffs, declared that anything like indiscriminate carpet bombing of World War II or a nuclear war were incompatible with both discrimination and proportionality...
...Proportionality does not mean tit for tat...
...A terrible mistake...
...Everyone knows that civilians will sooner or later, and regrettably, come in harm's way during a conflict...
...military not only puts its men and women through systematic training in the ethics of war, it deploys human-rights lawyers and others in theater to handle queries about the Tightness or wrongness of taking or not taking certain actions...
...Prayerful consideration of alternatives to the use of force, based in a clear-headed recognition of the brutal nature of the Iraq regime-is one thing...
...This holds for supporters of the war and opponents as well...
...But everything possible must be done to minimize the damage...
...WMD...
...It is important to underscore that the principle of discrimination does not set up the impossible demand that there be no "collateral damage," but, rather, that everything must be done to minimize such damage...
...Was this the result of intended harm...
...That seems right...
...Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago...
...Even as we distinguish between an accidental death and a homicide when we assess levels of culpability, so we evaluate civilian casualties in war...
...This is something for which we can be grateful, whether we supported the coercive disarmament of the Iraq regime or not...
...Our men and women in uniform and the citizens of Iraq deserve better...
...Jean Bethke Elshtain A JUST WAR Force was justified & restrained Hven as the debate raged about whether or not the war against the Iraqi regime met the criteria of a "just cause"-I believe it did-our attention turned to the question of just means, or jus in hello...
...This principle applies throughout the duration of a conflict...
...Their lives and their futures are on the line...
...If the only way to achieve success is by constantly upping the ante for devastation as the war progresses, proportionality is likely being violated...
...Martin Luther always reminded people to be "sober of speech...
...Proportionality helps to guard against any such possibility...
...Even minute amounts of certain nerve agents, as we learned from the Tokyo subway terror incident, can do enormous damage...
...indeed, there are now fewer excuses than ever before in warfare for massive "collateral damage" to occur...
...For example: In the U.S...
...He argued that because collateral damage is bound to occur, jus in hello is automatically violated...
...That is a story of de-escalation, not escalation...
...And so on...
...The endgame of Gulf War II seems at hand as I write, and it is clear that the bombing has been radically reduced...
Vol. 130 • April 2003 • No. 8
