A Just War? A Just Response?

Michael True, peace studies scholar and frequent Peacework contributor, is a member of Worcester (MA) Pleasant St. Friends Meeting.

Although President Bush has made no attempt to make a moral case for bombing Afghanistan, as a response to the terrorist attack, several ethicists have attempted to do so. Father J. Bryan Hehir, formerly of Harvard Divinity School, now head of Catholic Charities, for example, gave his qualified blessing to the administration's policy early on.

Over the centuries, most faith traditions have abandoned their peace testimonies in order to support state policy--as "Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions," (ed. Daniel L. Smith, Christopher, 1998) suggests. One might expect that religious leaders had learned some caution about blessings the bombs, after Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos, Panama, Baghdad. Apparently, however, Augustine's just war teaching still applies for most Christians, although Gordon Zahn, a major figure in Catholic social thought, stressed "the irrelevance of the just-war ethic to the grim actuality of modern war" over thirty years ago.

Copley Sq. Boston, Oct. 14 © Ellen Shub

Many columnists, similarly, have closed ranks with the Bush administration, some ridiculing pacifists as "naive" for rejecting the call to war. The most surprising outburst came from Mary McGrory, who called the peace movement "merely neurotic." One can imagine this usually judicious columnist disagreeing with pacifists, but resorting to name calling tells the reader more about her limitations as a commentator than it does about the people she attacked.

Inadequate as it may be in the effort to limit the resort to war and to regulate its conduct, the just war ethic offers, nonetheless, a means of weighing the heavy moral decisions involved in going to war. And Shaun A. Casey (Boston Globe, October 3) provided a useful reminder of the "tests" to be met before responding with violence, while challenging each of us to decide where we stand and why.

Briefly, the ethic specifies three major requirements for a just war: (1) right intention, that is, the restoration of peace, not revenge; (2) a declaration by legitimate authority against those responsible for injustice; and (3) proportionality, whereby any good achieved in prosecuting a war outweighs the evil incurred.

In the debate about how best to respond to "apocalyptic terrorism," Richard Falk, emeritus professor of international law, Princeton University, has been particularly diligent in offering precise and informed analyses and suggesting possible responses (The Nation, September 11 and October 29). In the first, describing the peculiar nature of this "war," he criticized the US response for leading many "to fear the response almost as much as the initial, traumatizing provocations." In the second, more detailed article, mentioning the United Nations standard that allows a nation under attack to defend itself, he argued that "military action is essential" to diminish the threat of further attacks, "to inflict punishment and to restore a sense of security at home and abroad." In passing, he dismissed nonviolent or diplomatic means as inadequate in the effort to "neutralize" the perpetrators.

On the basis of this general premise, Falk discussed the merits and limitations of an antiwar/pacifist approach, a legalist/UN approach, and a militarist approach, in favor of a fourth approach that he calls "limiting means and ends." That approach would set limits on the use of military force, while encouraging public discussion of the aims and possibilities for victory. Generally, Falk relies on "the mutually reinforcing traditions of the 'just war' doctrine, international law and the ideas of restraint in the great religions of the world."

While respecting his argument, particularly in light of his emphasis upon international law and UN involvement, I found Falk's second essay disturbing on personal as well as political grounds.

As a Quaker, I oppose killing for any reason. While not expecting others to agree with or to act from this premise, I am anxious to support efforts to bring terrorists to justice, but without more killing and further de-stabilization of a whole region.

As a nonviolent activist, with some experience among movements for social change, I am deeply aware of the consequences of policies adopted by Bush and his predecessors that were ineffective and disastrous for everyone concerned (2 million Vietnamese and 56,000 American dead; over 1 million Iraqis and over 100 American dead). Recent momentous failures and dishonesties include (a) undermining the 1972 ABM treaty; (b) ignoring the Kyoto agreement on the environment; (c) on-going crimes against the people of Iraq; (d) victimizing countless others by supplying or selling arms to anyone who wants them. Among major diplomatic failures, one must include Bush's insulting South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, on his visit to Washington soon after the inauguration, thereby undermining Kim's peace effort on the Korean peninsula.

Although Falk's "Ends and Means: Defining a Just War" is a significant contribution to the on-going conversation about "what must be done," it glosses over several issues, the major ones relating to US violating international law and ignoring the just war ethic. What indications are there that the US might abide by international law in any show of force or that Bush knows a just war ethic exists? None whatsoever. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the US is contemptuous of both, most recently in terrorizing Panama (1989) and Iraq and rejecting a judgment against mining the harbors of Nicaragua (1986).

Insisting on the links between these issues and the move toward war is not, as Falk implies, "retreating in the face of terrorism." It is, rather, challenging the fatalism of American foreign policy and acknowledging, as Stanley Hoffman said recently, that "nothing is purely domestic or purely international any more." It is also a move toward addressing grievances occasioned by the US ignoring the counsel of others, including our closest allies, whose anger--not to say hatred--is unprecedented in my lifetime.

Were we playing on a level field--in other words, one in which our government showed some inclination to abide by international law or a just war ethic--Falk might have a legitimate argument. If this were 1941, the American public might even "swallow" an American president's saying that he plans to act according to those conventions. But why would it do so in 2001?

Copley Sq. Boston, Oct. 14 © Ellen Shub

As it is, any validation of the US going to war is an invitation to imminent disaster. The alternative? A patient, insistent, and demanding effort to return this country to the community of nations, to seek the approval of the United Nations, to obey international law, and to build a global civil society. Such a radical change in US policy will be accomplished only through a nonviolent movement on the scale of the one that eventually ended the war in Southeast Asia.

There just has to be a better way of responding to September 11th than further bombing, more deaths in Afghanistan, and future dangers implicit in a war policy. At the same time, those of us opposed to such actions, are under pressure to offer "a just response."

For three centuries, Quakers and others have said "No!" to war and "Yes" to nonviolent strategies for social change. Tired of Christians killing one another with great enthusiasm and effectiveness (often in the name of Jesus), 17th century Quakers decided that they would not kill anybody anymore for any reason. Is this an effective and moral response to the present situation? I'm not sure. It's at least a positive alternative to warmaking, in the effort to devise a credible plan to secure the world from terrorist acts committed by and/or against the United States.

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