A Just War Case Against the Iraq War, p. 1

No, gentle readers (all 3 of you), I haven’t abandoned my commitment to gospel nonviolence. Not at all. Like John Howard Yoder, I consider interacting with JWT a necessary ecumenical discipline of conversation with fellow Christians. Brent, over at Colossians 3:16, has started a thread on this topic.  I commented on it, but just as I don’t like hugely long comments in my blog posts (sometimes longer than the original post), I try to abide by that on other folks’ blogs. So, I am making the positive case against the Iraq War on JWT grounds here and linking back to the discussion there.  So, for the purposes of this post, I am bracketing all my exegetical and theological objections to Just War Theory as a Christian doctrine. Brent asked for wide-open comment, but respectful, of course.

Now, one reason that two people, equally committed to JWT, can look at the same war and draw different conclusions is because JWT comes in at least 2 forms which I have boringly labeled “loose” and “strict” forms for lack of more creativity in labeling.  The “loose” form, arguably the older form of the tradition, sees war as just one evil among many, but not particularly bad. It expects wars as a matter of course and, seeing Christian ethics as being done for the ruler (emperor, prince, president as “decider,” etc.), expects most wars–at least most wars desired by the nation or leaders the ethicist supports–to pass JWT muster.  The “strict” form sees war, especially modern war, as an incredible evil and sees the purpose of JWT to make it difficult (if not quite impossible) for nations to wage war legally.

As JWT has informed the development of international law, that body of law has tended to go with the stricter form. Especially since WWII, the majority of JWT thinkers have tended to enunciate a strict form of JWT, even if nations have not acted accordingly.  For instance, the Nuremberg Principles arising out of the trials of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg call any initiation of war except under threat of imminent attack, a Crime Against Peace. Many Nazi generals who had no part in atrocities (and so were not guilty of war crimes) or in the Holocaust (and so were not guilty of crimes against humanity) were nevertheless found guilty of crimes against peace for leading troops in the invasions of Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc. instead of refusing orders to do so even at cost of their lives. (For one application of the Nuremberg Principles to Iraq, click here.

Just War Theory developed slowly over time, beginning with St. Augustine’s adaptation of Stoic philosophy to the Christian norm of agape love (in a Constantinian arrangement that assumed that the Sermon on the Mount couldn’t be practiced except in private life).  I won’t go into all that here. For those interested in seeing that development, I recommend the following: 

Cahill, Lisa Sowle. Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory (Fortress Press, 1994). Also excellent for tracing the development of Christian pacifism from the 1st C. to the 20th C., too.

Johnson, James Turner. Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 1200-1740. (Princeton University Press, 1975).

_____. The Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War. (Princeton University Press, 1981).

_____. The Quest for Peace:  Three Moral Traditions in Western Cultural History. (Princeton University Press, 1987).

Russell, Frederick H. The Just War in the Middle Ages. (Cambridge University Press, 1975).

Walters, LeRoy Brandt. Five Classic Just War Theories: A Study in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas,Vitoria, Suarez,  Gentili, and Grotius. (Yale University Press, 1973).

For the modern tradition of Just War Theory, see:

Brough, Michael, et al., eds., Rethinking the Just War Tradition (SUNY Press, 2007).

Elshtain, Jean Bethke, ed. , Just War Theory: Readings in Social and Political Theory.  (New York University Press, 1992).

Friedman, Leon, ed., The Law of War:  A Documentary History. (Random House, 1972).

Johnston, James Turner. Can Modern War Be Just? (Yale University Press, 1985).

Miller, Richard B., ed., War in the Twentieth Century:  Sources in Theological Ethics (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992).

Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. 4th ed. (Basic Books, 2006).

To compare the development of JWT to various Islamic concepts of jihad, see;

Johnson, James Turner and John H. Kelsey, Just War and Jihad:  Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions. (Greenwood Press, 1991).

I have previously spelled out the principles of just war theory here. Tomorrow, I will revisit that post with more pointed application to the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq.