“Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate” was printed on the punch cards that fed data into IBM computers in the 1950s, when those primitive calculating machines could occupy the entire floor of a building.
That admonition came to mind when, as has happened with depressing frequency over the past four decades, the just war tradition of moral analysis was folded, spindled, and mutilated—not to mention distorted, inverted, and rendered unrecognizable—in a lot of the secular and religious commentary on the military action undertaken by Israel and the United States in Iran in June.
Let me try to repair some of the damage with a few reminders of what the just war method of moral analysis isn’t and is.
Fallacy #1. The just war way of thinking begins with a “presumption against war.”
No, it doesn’t. Augustine’s just war theory did not “begin” there, Thomas Aquinas’s just war theory didn’t begin there, and no serious contemporary just war theory begins there.
Rather, the just war way of thinking begins with a legitimate public authority’s moral obligation to provide for the security of those for whose lives it is responsible. That obligation can be met in several ways. One of them is the proportionate and discriminate use of armed force.
The “presumption against war” starting point distorts the inner logic, the structure of moral reasoning, within the just war tradition. It turns just war reasoning into a series of hoops ethicists demand that public authorities jump through, or boxes that decision-makers must serially tick off.
Rather, the just war way of thinking is a template for collaborative reflection by ethicists, the public, and government officials responsible for the common good on when and how proportionate and discriminate armed force may serve the ends of peace, justice, and freedom. It helps, of course, if all three parties to this reflection have some knowledge of, and respect for, that template. Churchmen who declare that “wars are always unjust” do not foster that knowledge.
Fallacy #2: The just war theory precludes preemptive military action or striking the first blow.
No, it does not.
As those who’ve seen the 2019 film Midway know, Admiral William Halsey and the USS Enterprise battle group were returning to Hawaii on December 7, 1941, after delivering Marine fighter planes to Wake Island. The Kido Butai, the mobile striking force of the Japanese First Air Fleet under Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, eluded the Americans. But suppose Halsey had found the Japanese fleet? It could be reasonably assumed that Nagumo wasn’t barreling toward Hawaiian waters to explore real estate options on Waikiki Beach; Japan’s aggressive efforts to enlarge its empire had been clear since its brutal invasions of China in 1937 and its invasion and occupation of French Indochina in 1940. Had the SBD Dauntlesses of Enterprise’s Scouting Six found the Japanese fleet, Halsey would have been entirely justified, from a just-war standpoint, in launching a preemptive attack to prevent an assault on Pearl Harbor. Japanese aggression was already underway, even though the torpedo planes and bombers marked with the Rising Sun had not yet been launched.
Iran has been making war on the United States (‘the Great Satan”), Israel (“the little Satan”), and, more broadly, the West, for decades. At least 1,000 Americans have been killed as a result. A totalitarian regime run by apocalyptic fanatics wasn’t seeking nuclear weapons—and persistently lying about its progress toward that goal—for purposes of deterrence or chest-thumping. Depriving the Iranian regime of the vast, destructive capability of nuclear weapons was imperative, morally and strategically. In this case, when diplomacy had clearly failed, various forms of aggression were underway, and the regime’s intentions were quite clear, preemption was morally justifiable, even if the medium and long-term outcome of that justifiable action cannot be known with certainty now.
Fallacy #3: “Last resort” is the first principle in the just war tradition.
No, it isn’t.
The just war principle of “last resort” cannot logically mean that every conceivable means of conflict-resolution must be exhausted before proportionate and discriminate use of armed force is morally justifiable.
Why? Because it’s impossible to know with certainty when the “last” option has been reached. One more negotiating initiative, one more “red line,” one more sanction can always be imagined—as commentators on the isolationist right and the functionally pacifist left recently demonstrated.
So the just war criterion of “last resort” cannot be conceived as the terminus of a sequence whose beginning and end are known. Rather, in response to an aggression that must be addressed, to decide that all non-military options have failed is a matter of informed, prudential judgment, not arithmetic.
These principles should be better known, the world being what it is.
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A JFK documentary popped up on the phone yesterday and the first section mentioned the sticky wicket that was “Berlin,” and its effect on the administration’s decision making espc regarding first strikes.
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And to come to consensus on “informed prudential judgment “ ?
Thank you, Mr. Weigel, for another thoughtful and informative article!
I am currently reading a book by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (from my home state of Illinois, and our family used to watch him on our black and white TV even though we weren’t Catholic at the time!).
The book is titled, “A Declaration of Dependence–Trusting God Amidst Totalitarianism, Paganism, and War”. This book discusses “just wars” and yes, the Archbishop discusses avoiding war if at all possible–but not when the war is “just!”
It’s a beautifully-written book by a beloved man of God who was alive for both of the World Wars, as well as the Korean War and the Vietnam War. He definitely believed that sometimes, regrettably, war is justified.
Total random historical trivia, but did you know there actually was a Declaration of Dependence, Mrs. Sharon? It was signed by over 500 people who opposed the revolution. The NYC History Society has a copy(s):
“New York, NY, June 24, 2024—For the first time in more than 20 years, the New-York Historical Society displays the “Declaration of Dependence,” a petition signed in 1776 by New Yorkers loyal to the British crown. The petition will be on view for a limited time, alongside a rare original printing of the Declaration of Independence, also from New-York Historical’s collection. In an installation entitled Our History of Discord, together these documents reveal the contentious history behind our nation’s founding. “
God save the Queen and/or King!
Amen, knowall
😊
Admiral Halsey, aboard his flagship USS Enterprise, steamed bac into Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941. Surveying the burning wreckage around him, he began to shake and said to the men on the bridge: “When we finish with them, the only place Japanese is spoken, will be in Hell.” Halsey, like Patton and Puller was a fire breather. Our current admirals and generals do not have that fire.
William, with due respect, I don’t think we are in a position to make a Judgment on them and what they would do .
Good point. We really don’t know what anyone might do under those kinds of circumstances. People can have hidden strengths & weaknesses that come out under fire.
uhhh….we had punchcard bills, mainframe computers loaded by punchcards, into at least the 1980s, my first computer science class circa 78-79 had me punching out a tray of cards for a simple math calculation to load in my major state college mainframe.
We had unspiked punch at our recent class reunion but yeah I remember those punch cards were in billing statements, we’d include the card with the check.
We read: “Iran has been making war on the United States (‘the Great Satan’), Israel (‘the little Satan’), and, more broadly, the West, for decades.” Viewed on such a MACRO-calendar, HISTORY is a really volatile concoction…
Some EXAMPLES: The Native American and Catholic-convert Squanto gives corn to the Pilgrims in the 17th century, and pretty soon all the buffalo are nearly extinct and the iron horse links New England to China. Or, take the commodification of “indulgences” in the earlier 16th century, and before we know it, in the 21st century the maternal womb is commodified for surrogate motherhood, and many more children yet unborn are likewise commodified by the abortion industry—federally subsidized.
OR, take ISLAM and the 7th-century Battle of Uhud. If Muhammad had not survived a near fatal head injury, then Islam would have been buried in the dunes like so many unwanted female births of the day in Arabia. Muhammad would be only one of the tens of thousands of unknown prophets who sprang up out of the desert and then disappeared from world history. And, today, no 1.8 billion followers, and the ayatollah would not be lubricating techy centrifuges with oil money on the path to nuclear weapons. The archaic warrior cult wedded to nuclear blackmail, deterred for the time being….
So, about the crucial DIFFERENCE between Islam’s expansive jihad and Christianity’s defensive just war theory (yes, routinely violated!)—what if instead of tribesman Muhammad, the Second Person of the Triune One, himself, also entered into human history at one concrete time and place—so as to cut the entire Gordian Knot of a fallen world? And, what if part of such an alarming event and Tradition (big “T”) fostered authentic “moral theology”—as apart from Qur’anic “dictation” (spoken only in Arabic!)—so as to deal even with history’s most popular tradition (small “t”) of military conquest?
Meanwhile, C.S. LEWIS’ escape from atheism and to the incarnate Jesus Christ grew from a MICRO-scale and yet volatile dialogue (!):
“Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. ‘Rum thing,’ he went on. ‘All that stuff…about the Dying God, Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once[]’ [….] If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not—as I would still have put it—’safe’, where could I turn? Was there no escape?” (C.S. Lewis, “Surprised by Joy,” Harvest/HBJ Book, 1955, pp. 223-4).
Can we get any comments from Mr. Weigel on the attack on Holy Family Church?
Why assume it was an attack rather than collateral damage?
The book of Ecclesiastes (in the Holy Bible) has a passage that begins, “For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” This statement is followed by a list of various activities, and at the very end of the list, it says, “a time for war and a time for peace.”
When we’re sitting in our own little homes (or mansions!), it’s easy to be opposed to war, but for those who are being oppressed, tortured, raped, and killed in their homes in their own countries, what else can they do? Allow themselves and their loved ones, their beloved homes, towns, and farmlands, their churches, schools, and workplaces, to be bombed/destroyed by hostile people who are not seeking “peace”, but seeking raw power, money, and prisoners to torture and kill, as well as children who they can brainwash into their own evil philosophies?
The attack on Pearl Harbor was rightly referred to by President Roosevelt as “a date which shall live in infamy.” The decision to declare war on Japan was justified. It is very sad that the atomic bombs were dropped, but…my mother used to talk about her three brothers who were serving in the Japanese theater of the war (Navy and Army)–she told us that hundreds of soldiers were being maimed and killed every day and more were scheduled to be deployed to Japan–and she said that it was the atomic bomb that ended the war in the Asian theater. Since then, Japan has been our ally, not our enemy. Although many people died, including many innocent people, many more people were saved, along with the country of Japan, which today, is one of the richest and most prosperous countries in the world, and also a very popular vacation spot!
Years ago (in the 1990s), I picked my daughters up from their school (back during a time when parents were actually allowed to go into the school building!), and saw a big boy bullying a smaller, younger boy by kicking his backpack down the hall. Several teachers just stood there and observed while the little boy was sobbing and begging the bully to leave him alone. Finally, I took action–I grabbed the bully by his shirt and told him, in a very firm voice, “Pick up that backpack and give it back to its owner. And apologize to him!” He did just what I said, and the little boy gazed at me like I was an angel. Amazingly, the older boy looked at me like I was Superwoman! The teachers just stood there. We took our daughters OUT of that school at the end of the school year.
Sometimes, physical action is necessary for the good of all. Bullies need to be stopped, whether they are schoolyard miscreants or hostile countries.
Mrs. Sharon, I agree that sometimes physical intervention may be necessary . These days though putting hands on another parent’s child in that way could land you in court. The teachers were likely aware of that. But they definitely should have intervened in some other way.