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Reply to Catholic “Just War” doctrine
Here is my reply to José Cansio’s “Four Moral Criteria In War On Terrorism” (posted here), in which he enunciates the positions of the Catholic Catechism on the issue of just war. Let the reader be warned that I have never studied, and have barely read about, the issue of just war prior to this. I am simply evaluating the enumerated principles with what I hope is a modicum of reason, common sense, and knowledge of the world. 1. “In the first place the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.” Because of the very nature of the unprecedented type of threat we face from Islamic terrorists and rogue states, the “certainty” standard can’t be taken literally without becoming a standard for national suicide. Take the case of police confronting a deranged man who begins waving a gun at them and ignores their order that he drop it. In such circumstances police shoot to kill, as they must. There is no absolute certainty that the man is going to shoot them (since such certainty can only be had after the shooting has occurred); there is, however, an intolerable concrete likelihood that he will shoot them. In the same way, there is an intolerable concrete likelihood that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Hussein will be used in some form against us. I do not believe that anyone who has at heart the interests of the U.S. or the lives of its citizens would insist that there be mathematical certainty that devastating harm is coming to us before we act in self-defense, especially in this new world of terrorism and WMDs aimed at America. If Vatican authorities say that such certainty is required by the teaching of the Church, then I say, with all due respect, that they have no authority over us. They are not responsible for protecting the lives and safety of the American people. The American people and their constituted leaders are. At the same time, even if a direct attack on us is not certain, what is certain is that if Hussein acquires nuclear weapons, the power of this mass murderer to intimidate and blackmail the world will be increased infinitely. His true tyrannical nature, which he demonstrated when he attempted to take over the Persian Gulf, when he killed thousands of his own people with gas attacks, when he launched missiles at civilian targets in a non-combatant nation, and when he set Kuwait on fire, will come to the fore, and we will be helpless to do anything against him. In my view this alone is sufficent reason to invade his country and remove him from power. For the same reason that it was right and necessary in 1991 to drive him out of Kuwait and destroy his aggressive military capacities, it is right and necessary now to destroy his regime itself. Another point is that the requirements from the Catechism as quoted by Cancio only seem to speak of current danger and do not take account the kind of specific history that America has had with Saddam Hussein. The U.S. had the right years ago to have invaded Iraq because of its violations of the ceasefire agreement following the 1991 war in which Iraq agreed to divest itself of WMDs. We kept muddling through that situation, trying to avoid a war. But in the aftermath of 9/11 that is no longer reasonable. If the vital need to prevent the acquisition of WMDs by a rogue tyrant gave us the right to control the airspace of half his country and sanction him economically, then, given the failure of those sanctions, it now gives us the right to overthrow his regime. 2. “In the second place, absence of all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.” This is the “last resort” standard which Ramesh Ponnuru deals with in his article at National Review Online. As Ponnuru argues, the last resort standard cannot be taken as some mathematical rule to be mechanically applied, for the reason that diplomatic measures that might be effective when dealing with relatively rational regimes will not be effective when dealing with a Hussein. Once you grasp the essential nature of a dangerous mass murdering tyrant and the fatal weapons he has at his disposal, it would be insane to insist that an endless series of meaningless diplomatic measures be tried before military action is taken. The danger must be stopped. The longer you wait, the stronger and more threatening the enemy gets, as we see now with this interminable and demoralizing fraud at the UN. Moreover, by the strict logic of the last resort, there could never be a war to dislodge a dangerous foe, because there would always be some other new measure to attempt—another conference, another offer, another ultimatum, another UN resolution. As long as it is earthly possible to go through the motions of more negotiations and resolutions, the Anti-War Party will keep insisting on doing so. Look at how Hans Blix has played games with the idea that Iraq has “showed compliance.” The Iraqis engage in some some transparent pretence procedural compliance or destroy some old missiles, and Blix announces, “We’re making progress,” when in fact Iraq is still failing its central obligations under Resolution 1441. According to the last resort analysis, if Hussein is destroying some old missiles, that proves that “something” is happening in the “right” direction, and therefore we haven’t yet reached the point where the last resort is called for. It is a formula for an eternity of UN resolutions, and no conflict would ever get actually settled, only “managed” by the global bureaucrats, all of which would only strengthen the forces of disorder in the world. This leads to the interesting question of who is to determine whether these conditions of last resort have been met. The UN? As we well know by now, that’s absurd. Nor has any nation to my knowledge waited on the approval of the Vatican before launching a war. Therefore, if these conditions are to be considered as having some moral authority over states, the only entity who properly has the ultimate right to determine if they have been met is the acting party itself, in this case, the United States. No other party can be trusted to have the wellbeing of that state and its people at heart. In other words, the just war idea, properly approached, is like morality itself. Each of us is responsible to behave according to rules of morality, but we, not the UN or any other outside force, determine our own behavior. Of course, we are subject to the judgment of others and of society, their appropration or censure. But just as the individual human being is sovereign as regards his own free acts and takes responsibility for them, so is a sovereign state. 3. “In the third place, there must be serious prospects of success.” That condition is met. We will conquer Iraq, occupy the country, rid it of its WMDs and its evil government, and the world will have become a better place. 4. “In the fourth place, the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.” At the cost of conquering Iraq and destroying a lot of military infrastructure and killing a certain number of people, we will prevent or greatly reduce the likelihood of another 9/11 or something vastly worse, and certainly the likelihood of such an attack coming from Iraq. However, I question this criterion on its own terms. Let’s say that country “B,” in order to beat back an invasion by a genocidal neighbor, country “A,” which has a bigger population, country “B” had to do more damage on “A” than “A” could have done to “B,” simply because “A” has a bigger population. If that’s the only way “B” can defend itself, I don’t see how that’s immoral. Basing morality on numbers is wrong. It leads to the moral relativism where you don’t evaluate the inherent morality of the parties’ acts, but the number of bodies on each side. Thus, since the Palestinians have lost more people in the Intifada, the Israel haters say that that shows Israel is in the wrong. This kind of thinking is non-moral and inherently lends itself to abuse; it refuses to consider the real circumstances in which the violence is taking place. Which is another reason to reject or qualify the fourth criterion.
Since the criteria that I have been discussing here constitute the official teaching of the Catholic Church, and since the Pope himself and other Vatican authorities say America must not wage war on Iraq, let me make a general comment here about how I see the Church fitting into all this. I am a believing Christian. It has been my view for some years now that organized Christianity as it now exists, Catholic and Protestant, including the Anglican communion to which I belong, is in crucial respects the enemy of our nation and of white Western civilization as a whole. This has been expressed most obviously through the position and active lobbying of the Catholic and Protestant churches on immigration, but it is also apparent in the suicidal criteria that the Catholic Church or at least the present Pope would have us accept with regard to national self-defense, especially when it comes to weapons of mass destruction wielded by terrorist groups or rogue regimes. I do not know when the statements from the Catechism that I have discussed here were written, or whether there is any disagreement within the Church about their correctness and moral authority. It is certainly not my impression that the Church in previous generations took the virtually pacifist stand that the current Pope takes. I hope and pray that Catholic and Protestant leaders will repent of the antinomian leftism they have embraced since the 1960s and which no civilization can survive. While God and Christ continue to speak to us in the sacraments, in the liturgy, and in our personal turning toward God, the Church, as an organization playing a role in political society (rather than attending to its proper business which is Christ and the Gospel and the sacraments), in effect has become a part of the dominant leftist culture and does not represent any true authority. Therefore, when it comes to matters of a political, military, national, cultural, or civilizational nature, we should not accede to the Church’s intrusive teachings, but, insofar as they are wrong, resist them. Comments
FYI: The Catechism of the Catholic Church: The elements of a just war notwithstanding, it is my understanding that Iraq was not directly involved in 9/11. Thus, just war as retaliation does not apply (very well) to this case. In my opinion, either it’s a culture war between Islam and Christianity, or it’s a strategic geopolitical power play. In either case the reasons for the war need to be explained more honestly to the American people in order for it to be considered a just war. Would you ask men to die for a cause that they do not understand? It seems we are about to do that. Posted by: Ron Liebermann on March 16, 2003 7:41 AMAgain, I do not know when the current Catechism was written, but passages like this (which I found at the address posted by Chris) give a flavor of how specific and political the Catechism gets on these points: “2315. The accumulation of arms strikes many as a paradoxically suitable way of deterring potential adversaries from war. They see it as the most effective means of ensuring peace among nations. This method of deterrence gives rise to strong moral reservations. The arms race does not ensure peace. Far from elimination the causes of war, it risks aggravating them. Spending enormous sums to produce every new type of weapon impedes efforts to aid needy populations;(111) it thwarts the development of peoples. Over-armament multiplies reasons for conflict and increases the danger of escalation.” This statement condemning the “arms race” would seem to come right out of the leftist politics of the Cold War era rather than from some long-standing Catholic tradition. Furthermore, the Cold War itself proved how incorrect the Catechism is. The United States by engaging in an arms race with the Soviet Union did not cause war but helped contain that expansive totalitarian power, and, ultimately, when President Reagan adopted the “Star Wars” program and the Soviets were unable to keep up the arms race financially, it helped lead to the demise of the Soviet empire and then of the Soviet Union itself. The fact that the Church, AFTER the success of the West over the Soviet Union, still keeps in the Catechism that provision condemning arms races, suggests to me (without knowing any of the background of the document) how leftist and political the Church authorities have become. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 16, 2003 10:57 AMIf Mr. Liebermann thinks that America’s reasons for this war have not been fully and exhaustively explained over the last year (indeed repeated ad nauseam), then apparently for the last year he has not read a newspaper or a web site on current events, not watched or read any of the president’s speeches, and not had a conversation with any informed person on the issue of the war. Ignorance is not a sin, but what Mr. Liebermann has done is to parade his total ignorance of this issue as superior knowledge. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 16, 2003 11:11 AMMr. Auster: It was published in 1994. Here is an article from the Catholic Encyclopedia summarizing Catholic thought on just war before World War I. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15546c.htm Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 17, 2003 12:50 AMJust War for Dummies, by Ilana Mercer. Hey I hope I don’t get in too much trouble with you http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31480 Posted by: Ron Liebermann on March 17, 2003 9:31 AMMr. Auster, I worry that you have created a straw man by interpreting the certainty required by Just war certainty as mathematical, Cartesian-type certainty. The certainty required by Just War theory “is not necessarily exclusive of all misgiving whatsoever (such as the thought of the bare possibility that we may be mistaken, for we are not infallible), but of all solid, reasonable misgivings.”(source: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03539b.htm ) For instance, in your analogy of the crazed gun-wielding man, there is the reasonable objection that Saddam Hussein is hardly crazed, and could have been deterred from arming anti-US terrorists—had United States policy taken another course—just as we deterred the Soviet Union. I think you also overstate the threat of a nuclear-armed Hussein. He already faces a counterbalanced in a nuclear-armed Israel. You also write that “given the failure of those sanctions, it now gives us the right to overthrow his regime.” What are the reasonable prospects of sucess for an American-backed Iraqi regime? This is a aim of this war, after all, and it must be considered. Hussein was our attack-dog against Iran and the Communists. What’s to make us think that by installing an attack-dog against terrorism, this new dog will be any more reliable than Hussein? You do know that many of our “allies” in Iraq want a Sharia state that would make Saudi Arabia proud? (see http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-marshall030703.asp ) I think your criticisms of point #4 are also somewhat misleading. I do not think standard just war theorists see the killing of genocidal armies as an evil. Rather, evils include the harm done to non-combatants and, I would think, the impact of a war on other nations. I’m especially worried about the vulnerability of Pakistan to a fundamentalist coup inspired by reaction to our “crusade.” And an Americanized Iraq provides only further recruitment material for Islamist hardliners. Finally, you write “I do not know when the statements from the Catechism that I have discussed here were written, or whether there is any disagreement within the Church about their correctness and moral authority.” Others have pointed out the date of the Catechism’s publication, but they have not mentioned that these norms were first codified in Christian thought by St. Augustine, and date back at least to Cicero. I am glad you call yourself a defender of Western civilization, and I’m sure I agree with many of your aims. But I hope you realize how terrible it looks when a self-proclaimed defender of Western Civilization shows such ignorance of his own intellectual tradition. I thank you for running this weblog, and for permitting comments such as my own. -Kevin Jones Posted by: Kevin Jones on March 17, 2003 7:45 PMTo Mr. Jones, If a person must be knowledgeable in every aspect of Western history and culture—including every aspect of traditional Catholic thought—before he can attempt to defend Western culture, then we might as well give up the battle right now. By the way, I don’t know Latin and Greek either. So by Mr. Jones’s standards (as by Christian Kopff’s) I might as well just go kill myself. I am not a Catholic and I stated up front that Catholic just war theory was an area I know little about. I said I was critiquing the logic of the arguments as they had been presented in another discussion. And I don’t think Mr. Jones has refuted anything I said. I just want to respond to two points Mr. Jones made. If some Catholic authorities have said that the requisite certainty “is not necessarily exclusive of all misgiving whatsoever (such as the thought of the bare possibility that we may be mistaken, for we are not infallible), but of all solid, reasonable misgivings,” that is tantamount to the criminal guilt standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. That is an impossibly high standard for political leaders facing possible invasion or sudden terrorist attack. Further, the fact that the just war theory has been interpreted by present Vatican authorities in such a way as to make it impossible to remove this extremely dangerous regime suggests once again how impossibly high the standard is. Second, Mr. Jones writes: “What are the reasonable prospects of success for an American-backed Iraqi regime? This is an aim of this war, after all, and it must be considered.” This is a total misstatement of the case, as I’m sure Mr. Jones realizes. The aim of this war is to remove Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which requires removing his regime. What we do afterward in Iraq is a secondary question. Since we will have occupied the country and dismantled its existing government, we obviously will have responsibility to do something with it, and there are a lot of different ideas about what we should do, from immediately turning over the country to the Iraqi National Congress to instituting a MacArthur-style pro-consulship. But for Mr. Jones to present the uncertainty of a post-Saddam regime as undercutting the success of the primary purpose of the war which is to eliminate the WMDs, and on that basis to say that it’s not a just war, is completely off-base. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 17, 2003 9:16 PMI’ve normally heard Acquinas’ criteria expressed as “last resort”; but again it can’t be thought of as a mathematical last resort. Last resort just means that other possibilities that have a reasonable chance of success (as evaluated honestly by the legitimate authority) have been exhausted. Twelve years of no fly zones and inspections seem to easily clear that bar, to me, and in any case there is no small amount of dispute among Catholics as to whether current circumstances satisfy just war criteria. The Pope can have an opinion; but according to Acquinas’ Just War theory (as I understand it) the opinion that authoritatively matters is not that of the Pope, but that of George W. Bush. Matt writes: “The Pope can have an opinion; but according to Aquinas’s Just War theory (as I understand it) the opinion that authoritatively matters is not that of the Pope, but that of George W. Bush.” Sorry for tooting my own horn here, but although, as I said, I didn’t know anything about Just War theory when I wrote this article (for which Mr. Jones took me to task), I nevertheless arrived at the same thought as Aquinas, through common sense and the application of sound principles. I wrote: “This leads to the interesting question of who is to determine whether these conditions of last resort have been met. The UN? As we well know by now, that’s absurd. Nor has any nation to my knowledge waited on the approval of the Vatican before launching a war. Therefore, if these conditions are to be considered as having some moral authority over states, the only entity who properly has the ultimate right to determine if they have been met is the acting party itself, in this case, the United States.” Posted by: Lawrence Auster on March 17, 2003 10:11 PMI am no expert on just war theory, nor on authority in the Catholic Church. I do know that the Pope isn’t an absolute dictator over all Catholics, though, and that the special charism of infallibility only applies (with extreme rarity) to matters of faith and morals spoken ex cathedra (which, among other things, requires consistency always and everywhere with authoritative past Tradition). A Pope has no special charism that makes his judgement on the Nexus of Evil any better than anyone else’s. The impression you will get from those who are sometimes called neo-Catholics (somewhat analogous to secular neo-conservatives) is deceiving. Neo-Catholics tend to be recent converts from Protestantism. They are so frightened of “private judgement” that they exalt whatever the current heirarchy says over and above everything else, including consistency with Scripture and Tradition; while the true structure of Catholic authority requires consistency with Scripture and Tradition. To a neo-Catholic the authority of Scripture and Tradition is whatever the current heirarchy says it is, even when that is inconsistent and spoken with no special charism. This is all just my personal understanding as a lay Catholic, though. The Church does have an ordinary (epistemically fallible but authoritative) teaching authority w.r.t. faith and morals, but She can’t dictate the facts of the matter (to which Just War would apply) to President Bush, who alone is responsible for making that judgement as the competent proper authority. All as I see it, of course. Posted by: Matt on March 18, 2003 1:06 AM |