Challenges Just War Theory

...Certainly political organizations represent the interests of a group of people no less than do the spokesmen for established nations...

...The use of destructive and deadly force against other nations reveals an implicit belief that "The Evil and Irrational Enemy" and all inhabitants of his land are beyond the reach of reason...

...Children always fall into the latter category...

...In this case it seems at least questionable whether the destruction of targets of these types is permitted under the condition of double effect...

...What is peculiar about the influence of just war theory in later centuries is the extent to which its tenets have been retained while the metaphysics have been abandoned...

...In reality, the nations for which people kill and die are temporal and transitory...

...If moral persons are defined as beings in possession of sentience, intelligence, and consciousness, then nations, lacking all of these properties, are not moral persons and therefore, do not possess rights...

...The leaders of first world nations hypocritically decry terrorist acts by minority factions, while simultaneously providing them with a role model counterproductive to the abolition of terrorism in the modern world...

...That you happen to have believed your leader's lies seems to be irrelevant to the question of whether you have been wronged...

...By emphasizing the importance of objectives achieved, just war theorists underscore the requirement of proportionality, as Robert Phillips explains in War and Justice: "the permission of collateral evil must be justified by considerations of proportionate moral weight...

...Are you any less the victim of an unjust attack than are the people unlucky enough to have been on board an airplane hijacked by fanatics...

...In fact, it is plausibly none other than the nearly continuous use of military force by powerful nations that prevents any strides from being made toward the establishment of an effective international legal system...

...The rationale for refusing to negotiate with terrorists is that even if they have been wronged, it is no less wrong to deploy violent means against innocent victims...

...The Just War Tradition War has long been supported by human societies, through the funding of military institutions and the production of deadly weapons...

...The fundamental presupposition of democracy is that people are capable and desirous of ascertaining the truth...

...When two leaders adept at the use of moral rhetoric come into conflict, we can be sure that at least one of them is mistaken, since the claims that they make are mutually inconsistent...

...So we are willing to err to the side of caution, insisting that all people are innocent until proven guilty, even though some offenders may be acquitted and roam at large...

...Even if you are among the soldiers who committed crimes against other people, what is being done to you right now, as you lie in your pajamas, months after having followed the orders of your leader, does not seem to be right...

...The gravity of the situation must warrant the extreme measure of war, and there must be a reasonable chance for success...

...For leaders presume that it would be preferable to kill rather than convince soldiers and civilian inhabitants of the enemy nation that their leader is mistaken in the claims he has made...

...Are you responsible, in any sense, for the crimes committed by your leader, whom you never supported in any way whatsoever...

...Wars are no longer fought by chivalric men on horseback armed with spears and protected by shields...

...Most notably, Catholic theologians have interpreted noncombatant immunity using "the doctrine of double effect...

...Augustine maintained that what really matters, in the grand scheme of things, is purity of conscience, and this God alone can assess...

...In other words, moral responsibility is construed in a strange way when it comes to na84 . DISSENT / Winter 2001 ARGUMENTS tions...

...The most nocent terrorists are those who act under the aegis of an institution such as the Third Reich...

...Your candidate did not win the most recent election...

...Of course some inhabitants of nations led by criminals support their government...

...They insist that war is not merely permissible but obligatory, whenever the cause is just and proportional and all pacific proposals have proven infeasible...

...But with the separation of church and state in the modern world, leaders cannot, with any shred of plausibility, claim to derive their policy decisions directly from God...

...Noncombatant Immunity Given the inevitability of civilian casualties in modern war, one might think that, according to the requirements of just war theory, all wars are unjust...

...If you are guilty of a crime, then you should be tried...

...Moreover, although many people assume that democratically determined leaders are obviously "legitimate," leaders are never elected unanimously in democratic nations...

...Nations are formed by the association of consenting persons into groups...

...Military authorities apply the "doctrine of double effect" to cases such as the scenario described above, explaining that you have not been wronged by your killers, since the requirements of jus ad bellum and jus in Bello have been satisfied...

...But what rational person would act for what he or she takes to be bad reasons...

...Vigilante killings of allegedly just retribution prevent the accused from defending him- or herself and invert the burden of proof...

...In civil society, we place the burden of proof upon the prosecution because we recognize that the false conviction and punishment of an innocent person would constitute a travesty of justice...

...You voted for the opposition...

...Democracy "Collateral damage" apologies suggest a lamentable lesson: the civilian noncombatants of enemy nations, including children, have less of a right to be spared violence and destruction than do the civilians of the attacking nations...

...Children are shrieking in the next room...

...There is no question that the falsely executed will be recompensed, and undetected sinners, including murderers, will be punished...

...The marketplace of ideas requires an input of ideas, and this source derives from individual thinkers, who must be provided with the opportunity to voice opinions so that their merits and deficiencies can be assessed by all...

...The true spirit of democracy will prevail only when the inhabitants of other nations are treated as fellow citizens of the world community, as rational beings capable and desirous of learning the truth...

...The bombs continue to fall...

...Vigilante justice" is undemocratic because it involves a refusal to articulate the grievances at issue and to permit one's peers to assess the available evidence...

...Despite these facts, have you not still been wronged...

...Let us make the case a bit more detailed...

...For justice always prevails in a worldview such as Augustine's...

...A Closer Look at History and Grounds The most influential just war theorists throughout history have been Christians such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Francisco Suarez...

...The use of deadly force against any human being is decidedly undemocratic, for it annihilates the possibility of speech...

...Political leaders invariably invoke "just war" rhetoric in defending such decisions to wage war...

...Countless Christians have found ways to reconcile the apparent teachings of Christ with their own acts of violence in religious war after war...

...Despotism is no less despicable in the name of a nation than for a leader...

...Whether "collateral damage" victims have been wronged is supposed to be a function of the intentions of the people who dropped the bombs and the relative weight of devastation vis-a-vis the military objective achieved...

...We may find some views offensive, but in order to ascertain what is wrong with those opinions, we must permit them to be aired...

...Does being brutally attacked by your leader's enemies have any more tangible effect than to strengthen your belief in the lies of your leader...

...Least of all can despotic military destruction be coherently defended in the name of democracy...

...If your leader has committed no crimes against humanity, then you have been unjustly attacked, unjustly terrorized, and unjustly harmed...

...Certainly you have an interpretation, true or false, plausible or implausible, of your leader's actions, at least of the ones that DISSENT / Winter 2001 n 79 ARGUMENTS you know about...

...Augustine, arguably the father of just war theory, distinguishes the "City of Man" from the "City of God," maintaining that, practically speaking, we should adhere to the conventions of our societies while inwardly attempting to align our souls with God...

...So let us consider this possibility too: You voted for and continue to support the government in power...

...Political leaders and war supporters excuse men in uniDISSENT / Winter 2001 n 83 ARGUMENTS form for mistakes that result in the deaths of civilians, claiming that the soldiers did not intend to kill noncombatants...

...Leaders were believed by Augustine to be in some sense doing God's will, since everything on earth is in its place through the grace of God...

...Accordingly, many people continue to condone the use of military means, pointing to the lack of any international analog to the court systems found within democratic societies...

...In nations under attack, civilians wait huddled in fear, knowing full well that they may be the next to die...

...In fact, military attacks upon nations are far worse than vigilante violence, because the victims are, in many cases, not even candidates for guilt...

...We could make the case more controversial and complex...

...One of the legacies of the Protestant Reformation was a thorough unmasking of pretentious religious and political leaders who claimed to have special connections to the Almighty...

...You don't know how much longer you have to live or if you'll ever see your family again...

...The laws are proposed by delegates and approved by the people...

...Through appeals to "justice," leaders miraculously galvanize their troops to kill people who have nothing whatsoever to do with the criminal actions supposedly justifying recourse to war...

...But they have to worry...

...In a democratic nation, people elect their leaders and legislators...

...Once the evidence has been weighed, a judgment is then made...

...While accidental killings are still considered criminal acts within the borders of one's own nation, "collateral damage" killings of the civilians of other nations are briefly mentioned in a tone of regret and then forgotten...

...Although Augustine (along with some other Christians) is skeptical about the power of human beings to render judgment upon others (given the inaccessibility of others' intentions), he is not at all skeptical about the existence of God, the ultimate arbiter in matters of justice...

...What do your leader's actions have to do with what is being done to you...

...Accordingly, there is no principled distinction between nations and smaller subgroups, which can be viewed as "proto-nations" comprising people bound by certain interests and concerns...

...Most contemporary just war theorists maintain that agents who are doing what they would have been doing anyway, were there no war, are immune from attack...

...Given his skepticism about human moral judgment, Augustine concluded that it is best to abide by the laws of the society in which we live, to follow the orders of our leaders, and to know that, ultimately, justice will be done regardless of the injustices suffered during our ephemeral time as terrestrial beings...

...If it is always wrong to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty, then those killed through "collateral damage" are no less victims of immoral actions than are those arbitrarily killed by smaller, less stable terrorist factions...

...In democratic societies, political authorities no longer can seriously claim to have more direct access to God than has the person on the street...

...In contrast, modern leaders do not seriously risk damage to their own persons when they wage conventional wars against other nations...

...In the modern world, political leaders are given the legal power to wage wars despite the fact that political leaders are people on the street, appointed as leaders by themselves or their citizenry...

...The actual deaths effected can always be construed as foreseen but unintended...

...Thus, military intervention can quite plausibly be analogized to vigilante violence...

...People find themselves in nations, which they assume to be stable, persistent things, but it is clear from even a cursory consideration of history that they are not...

...Were such a system implemented by representatives of mutually self-interested nations, then measures that decrease rather than increase the domestic political power of criminal leaders could be taken...

...It is allegedly permissible for established nations to use deadly force in achieving their aims, hut not smaller groups, though they can sometimes with great plausibility be construed as inchoate nations...

...Yet, according to just war theorists, whether or not you have been wronged is supposed to be a function of the past actions of another person altogether, your leader...

...Today civilians and low-ranking soldiers bear the brunt of leaders' decisions to engage their nations in war...

...You have been wronged...

...In order to adjudicate the claims made by the disputants, they must be permitted not only to speak their views, but also to hear what others claim to be true...

...Here the conservatism of just war theory manifests itself...

...No nation is a political island, for all depend upon imports and exports...

...It is obviously possible for international tribunals to render judgments upon the activities of egregious political criminals...

...Yet the possibility of a "just war" in the modern world presumes that it is perfectly acceptable to hold civilians accountable for their leader's crimes...

...TRADITION HAS it that a just war must be waged with right/moral intention and must have an objective, not merely subjective or selfish, aim...

...This picture was of course capitalized upon by leaders throughout the Middle Ages...

...But the "immunity" of noncombatants has been understood historically to permit war...

...Combatants are through capture rendered noncombatants, and noncombatants are immune from belligerent attack...

...In this way, formerly popular views, for example, regarding the moral permissibility of slavery and the legal possession of wives by their husbands, have been rejected after due consideration of much trenchant criticism...

...In international conflicts, no less than in courts of law, both sides claim to be right...

...Upon closer analysis, this apparent conundrum is easily resolved...

...Certainly you have been harmed, but your leader, who acted in ways that provoked military action on the part of his enemies, is ultimately responsible...

...So just as it seems safe to say that some of the people walking the street are bad, evil, immoral, and/or ignorant, we can be sure that some leaders are no less...

...they can't calculate, for the values at stake are not commensurate— at least they can't be expressed or compared mathematically, as the idea of proportion suggests...

...John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty, defends the free marketplace of ideas as necessary to the discovery of policies just and fair to all...

...Each bombing campaign is a graphic display of how force can be used to achieve one's own aims...

...Yet, as far as you can tell, you have personally committed no crime...

...Even in heavily militarized nations, only a small percentage of the population participates in the armed forces...

...A leader truly spurned by the international community (some members of which have armed criminals with their deadly weapons) could not remain in power for long...

...Although we may think that the actions of some of our fellow human beings are wrong or evil, we cannot know the motives behind their actions, nor whether they had any but the best of intentions...

...I presume that you need no further information to answer this question...

...Speech is the sine qua non of belief revision...

...In all conflicts, both sides claim to be right and that their adversaries are wrong...

...A profoundly important point emerges: given Augustine's metaphysical beliefs, anything that transpires on this planet is of relatively little consequence...

...The victim is presumed guilty until proven innocent...

...Although leaders often say that they are waging war in the name of democratic values, in fact, their resort to deadly force belies such claims...

...Some terrorist groups foment against oppressive and inegalitarian regimes denying rights to the minority inhabitants of the land...

...Leaders of all nations appeal to some version of just war theory in motivating their populace to conduct war when "duty calls...

...For example, in his speech on January 16, 1991, then-president George Bush in effect proclaimed that, in order to avoid attack, the Iraqi people would have to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait: "It is my hope that somehow the Iraqi people can, even now, convince their dictator that he must lay down his arms, leave Kuwait, and let Iraq itself rejoin the family of peaceloving nations...

...Mill and those of his ilk insist that people are themselves capable of sifting the wheat from the chaff in the thresher of ideas...

...Even if you were a convicted felon, guilty of a heinous crime, the above treatment would constitute "cruel and unusual punishment," prohibited by law...

...When a leader wins by majority vote, the minority selected someone else altogether...

...LAURIE CALHOUN is the author of Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic's Critique...

...You are trapped under fallen beams and rubble, injured, frightened, traumatized, and uncertain whether you will escape alive...

...In fact, what survives as "just war theory" is a powerful rhetorical weapon, involving fallacious appeals to authority and tradition and playing upon human frailty, especially the need to believe that we are good and our adversaries evil...

...In the modern Western world, the ongoing development of weapons of mass destruction progressively exacerbates the danger to civilians of decisions to wage war...

...A victim of terrorism is arbitrarily targeted, not for having committed any crime, but because he or she is unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...

...But we accept what we consider to be the lesser of two evils...

...When nations undertake bombing campaigns, noncombatant civilians are subjected to the sound of bombs raining overhead and unnerving alarms in the vicinity...

...Many different interests compete and, ultimately, out of the disagreement emerges a winner, the 82 n DISSENT / Winter 2001 ARGUMENTS majority opinion...

...The distinction between violent intervention undertaken by smaller groups and those undertaken by military institutions cannot be made out in any morally significant way...

...But the victims of a military bombing campaign are no less the victims of a terrorist act than are the persons unfortunate enough to have been on board an airplane hijacked by political fanatics...

...DISSENT / Winter 2001 n 85...

...War must be publicly declared by a legitimate authority, and recourse to force must be a "last resort...

...Vigilante justice" is illegal because in punishing another person without trial, even if he be guilty of a crime, one undermines the democratic basis of the legal system...

...Of course, if one can in good conscience hold a child responsible for its parents' crimes, then one will also be able to hold innocent citizens responsible for their leaders' abominations...

...Even when these civilians believe that they are not being singled out, they know that bombs do not always land on their intended targets...

...Scenarios such as that sketched at the opening of this essay are neither ineluctable nor acceptable...

...Force and Judgments Throughout history, soldiers have been honored and praised for carrying out missions that terminate the lives of their fellow human beings...

...Human beings are fallible, and the mechanism by which democracy deals with this fundamental fact is the court of law, where both sides are given the right to be heard...

...THE ERRONEOUS ascription of moral responsibility to civilians is seldom mentioned in discourse about war...

...Once war has been waged, the following additional precepts apply: The means deployed may not exceed what is warranted by the cause...

...From the perspective of the victims of terrorism, whether their killers be members of extremist groups or the professional soldiers of well-established nations matters not...

...Obviously, to one who believes that justice will be done in the afterlife, the harsh reality of "collateral damage" killings of the innocent is not a particularly grave DISSENT / Winter 2001 n 81 ARGUMENTS problem...

...How could the answer to that question be a function of your personal beliefs...

...One of the two parties must be mistaken...

...Although its military utility cannot be denied, "the doctrine of double effect" ultimately exonerates everyone who kills for what he takes to be good reasons...

...The only thing worse than to deprive an innocent person of freedom would be to deprive him or her of life...

...Though now dead, "collateral damage" victims have not been wronged by their killers, for the war is a just one, the victims were not targeted, and an important objective was achieved through bombing in the vicinity...

...Wars do occur, and the pressing question, according to many thinkers, is how to distinguish the just from the unjust...

...On the contrary, to terrorize, assault, and even execute without trial the inhabitants of a land governed by a criminal is to indulge in an inexcusable act of myopic tyranny...

...Moral Responsibility Military campaigns against nations led by criminals convey an odd lesson regarding moral responsibility and criminal justice, a lesson that contradicts the burden of proof requirement governing our legal proceedings within society...

...But what does your interpretation have to do with the actual wrongness of your leader's policies...

...What, after all, is terrorism, if not the threat of the use of force against another party with the intention of achieving one's aims...

...By deploying deadly force against the people of other countries, national leaders display their belief that recourse to force is morally permissible...

...But an analogous argument would seem to apply no less to the parentchild relation...

...But no stable international tribunal exists for assessment of the alleged crimes against humanity ordered by national leaders...

...In The Ethics of War and Peace, Paul Christopher observes that, in the Gulf War, "in addition to identifying command and control centers as targets, American planners also planned to destroy much of the support infrastructure of Baghdad: namely, sewage treatment plants, water purification facilities, and electrical power generators...

...Have you been wronged...

...The most important question that Walzer raises (apparently unintentionally) is this: costs to whom...

...j usT WAR theory evolved out of controversial metaphysical assumptions of Christianity, most notably that there is an afterlife...

...The law is commonly thought to reflect, albeit imperfectly, morality, but in cases where an innocent person is falsely convicted and executed, the putative institution of justice itself perpetrates gross injustice...

...However, the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals were analogous to the legal system within civil society...

...Centuries ago, when just war theory originated, political leaders were simultaneously military leaders whose willingness to fight courageously alongside their soldiers evinced their own sincerity regarding their 8o . DISSENT / Winter 2001 ARGUMENTS causes...

...Many people therefore assume that war is sometimes just and permissible, or even obligatory...

...In stark contrast, leaders who initiate bombing campaigns against enemy nations consider it permissible to punish (through terrorism) or even terminate innocent lives for the crimes of their leader...

...But what does your guilt have to do with the children shrieking next door, even if they are your children, and even if you committed (unwittingly, since no soldier follows orders "to murder") crimes...

...Terrorism In addition to rejecting "vigilante justice," representatives of stable nations also regularly condemn terrorist actions by extremist factions...

...In the end, all parties who offer reasons for their acts of violence offer moral reasons...

...A "right" is a moral concept and as such applies only to moral persons...

...rOR jusT WAR theorists, declaration by "legitimate authority" is the criterion distinguishing individual acts of murder or renegade acts of terrorism from justifiable instances of military violence...

...The marketplace of ideas presumably allows people eventually to arrive at the truth, since criticism of currently prevalent views is always possible...

...Those accused of harming a fellow citizen or breaking the law in some other way are brought before a jury of peers and judged...

...But your personal attitude toward your own government does not seem to be particularly relevant in determining culpability for the unfortunate circumstances in which you currently find yourself...

...However, from your own perspective, you are in effect being punished for another person's crimes...

...Were the early expositors of just war theory alive today, some might very well declare that its requirements cannot be satisfied, given the nature of modern warfare...

...It seems ludicrous to suppose that because a child benefits from being a part of a family (for example, by provision of food and shelter), the child should be held responsible for the crimes of its parents...

...The nations of today are not the same as those in existence only fifty years ago, much less five hundred years ago...

...If your leader is a criminal, then you are "collateral damage," regrettable but unavoidable...

...your head begins to throb...

...Human beings may mistakenly harm, punish, even execute other people, but in the grand scheme of things, justice will be done...

...If you are a soldier, you were legally obliged to follow the orders of your superior officer...

...And so the question arises again: how can it be morally acceptable to punish, terrorize, or even kill people for their leader's crimes if they never selected the leader, or even tried to prevent him from becoming their leader...

...The destruction of these facilities affected the civilian population and its health, safety, and living standards as much, and perhaps even more, than it affected the military...

...In general, we hold persons accountable only for actions that they voluntarily intend and execute...

...Your leader carefully explained to you and your compatriots that national self-interest and honor mandated the invasion of territories that had been unjustly appropriated by "The Evil Enemy" You never heard any other version of the story...

...Blood pours down your face from the gash on your head...

...To some this comes as a surprise, given the apparent pacifism of Jesus Christ, who famously exhorted his followers to "turn the other cheek" in the face of violent assault...

...But the burden of proof lies with the prosecution...

...Unfortunately, some leaders are dictators...

...Basic tenets of "just war theory" were articulated by a cluster of medieval thinkers, who maintained that war would be morally justified if and only if certain conditions were met...

...But the "proportionality" requirement is problematic, as Michael Walzer openly admits in Just and Unjust Wars: "Certainly we want political and military leaders to worry about costs and benefits...

...How do we measure the value of a country's independence against the value of the lives that might be lost in defending it...

...It is perhaps often thought that when a people freely selects its leaders, the citizens themselves bear at least some responsibility for their government's mistakes...

...Regardless of your political affiliations, regardless of where you happen to live, regardless of who you are, you have been wronged...

...Democratic leaders may preach that "all men are created equal," but their practice, the use of military force against enemy nations, which always results in the deaths of innocent people (including children), betrays the fact that they do not believe what they say...

...Unfortunately, some of the most outspoken critics of factional terrorism seem utterly incognizant that their own destructive military policies are not so different from the crimes they decry...

...The options are simple: Either you support or once supported the regime in power or you do not and never did...

...You were wrong...

...The winner went on to abuse power and commit crimes...

...One might retort that since citizens share the benefits of their society, they should share its burdens, some of the worst of which are incurred during wartime...

...This principle specifies that bad consequences such as civilian deaths (euphemistically referred to by modern military personnel as "collateral damage") are permissible during wartime, even if foreseen, so long as they are unintended (neither as ends in themselves nor indirectly as means...

...Today a secularized version of just war theory is built into military protocol...

...You voted for your leader, whom you believed at the time to be a person of integrity and moral vision...

...Your leader victimized innocent people and abused his power to achieve personal ends...

...The fundamental value of democracy is freedom, freedom of thought, action and speech...

...Tragically, the history of warfare is a long concatenation of deadly conflicts between groups led by commanders who have claimed to be fighting for justice and peace...

...Wars are no longer fought at sites far removed from civilian life...

...Consider, for example, the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the NATO campaign against the regime of Slobodan Milosevic...

...But terrorist factions are often morally driven and claim to have been denied any legal avenue through which to express their grievances...

...Although there have been some disagreements over the precise articulation of the theory, the just war tradition has since the seventeenth century distinguished two broad sets of conditions, jus ad bellum, for the just initiation of a war, and jus in hello, for the just conduct of a war...

...Somewhat suspiciously, the answer given by military authorities always seems to be "no...