A Few Thoughts on Just War

A few thoughts on 'just war', since that was an important theme of the Speech.

The Just War Tradition is a venerable and ancient way of thinking about war in Christian history.  It goes back to Bishop Augustine of Hippo, the greatest Christian theologian in the first 1,000 years of Christianity.

But it's not the earliest tradition in the Christian church.  For over 300 years, the early Christians were mostly pacifists.  How could you not be if you take the Sermon on the Mount seriously and if the state saw you as a threat to their existence?  But that changed radically with the recognition of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire during the 4th century AD.  Once church and state were united, the church had to support the state in its wars.  It's really as simple as that. 

So very quickly, Christian theologians had to begin to justify the state's war and Christian involvement in them, hence the 'just war theory'.  Augustine first put it forward around the end of the 5th century AD, and it was further refined by Thomas Aquinas centuries later.  Others have tweeked it further over the last 800 years or so.

Just War Theory basically says that you've got to have the right reasons for going to war and you have to conduct the war properly and according to agreed upon moral standards.  For example, war is supposed to be a last resort.  The 'gains' are supposed to be larger than the 'losses' from going to war.  There's supposed to be a 'just' reason for the war.  Civilians are supposed to be protected from violence.  And so on.  All that is good in theory, and an advance from 'barbarian' war. 

Unfortunately, there's a big problem.  It turns out that, first, the state really doesn't pay any attention to the Just War Theory in its calculations for going to war.  And second, rather than the church judging the wars of the state, the state always expects the church to fully support its war without questioning it or criticizing it.  And that is exactly what has happened over the centuries.

The church of any particular nation almost never judges its own national wars unjust.  Every war that its government wages is just, while that of its enemy is unjust.  Hence, the just war theory doesn't really work to control the waging of war.  Never has, never will.

Where clergy or laity do occasional criticize a war, they are shunned, ostracized, defrocked,  ignored, imprisoned, unemployed, or murdered.

For me, I've gotten to the point where I'm just against war from the start, any war, any where.  Strangely, I don't think of myself as a pacifist. I would defend myself, my family, my community from attack.  But national and international wars these days don't seem to involve that.  The Vietnam War wasn't that.  The first Iraq War wasn't that, in my opinion.  The second Iraq war wasn't that.  And I don't believe our current Afghanistan war is justifiable.

That's why I don't take talk of Just War very seriously anymore, including from President Obama