Posted by
James Biga on Monday, September 18, 2006 2:47:33 PM
Below is an oped I wrote in March using the Just war theory for Iraq. I read a blog over at
josue and was reminded of this. I hope you like it.
Jus ad Bellum
Is the Iraq war justified? Many opponents to the war use the terms “Illegal” and “Unjust” when describing our actions in Iraq. I have taken issue with these accusations because they are founded on nothing. They are empty terms meant to manipulate the masses to gain a political advantage. Before I go further, I was a proponent of the war and this advocacy did not rely on the find of weapons of mass destruction. I considered Saddam Hussein an evil man who needed to be taken from power. The continuous violations of humanity were enough for me. This being said you can deduce that I would have no problem with using war to end the oppression in Africa as well as any other nation that finds the need to oppress and murder people in order to maintain their power. I will attempt to justify our actions in Iraq using Saint Thomas Aquinas’ “Just War Doctrine.”
The Just War doctrine (Justum Bellum) contains two main components: Justification in going to war (Jus ad Bellum) and Justification in War (Jus in Bello). To justify going to war the following conditions must be met: Just cause, declared by legitimate authority, and right intention. In order to put us all at the same starting point I will refer to the word just as defined by Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary:
1 a : having a basis in or conforming to fact or reason b archaic : faithful to an original c : conforming to a standard of correctness :
2 a (1) : acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good : (2) : being what is merited : b : legally correct
Is the action a just cause? The President stated in his addresses leading up to the war that he did not want to wait until Iraq became an imminent threat. Many people have transposed this to say that the president actually called Iraq an imminent threat. This is not true. In order to move on from here we must belief the truth and not the distortions.
How was Iraq to become an imminent threat? Based on the history of Saddam Hussein this isn’t a hard one to figure out. He had attempted to attain nuclear capabilities in the 80’s before the Israeli’s took out their plant in Osirik. He had also attained biological and chemical agents since then. This was proven by attacks that the Iraqi military had made on the Kurds. In the years since the first Gulf War he refused to come clean on his abilities in this arena. Years of diplomacy and violated UN resolutions did nothing to force Hussein into admission. Prior to the war, every intelligence agency in the world believed that Hussein had these abilities. The nay-sayers that are coming out of the woodworks now are actually few. Even the countries that were opposed to the war such as France, Germany, and Russia believed that Hussein had these abilities. This was an assumed fact prior to the war.
What else would make the war justifiable? What was the day to day life an Iraqi like before the war? How many people had been taken from their homes in the middle of the night never to return? How many orphans and widows were caused by this oppressive regime? How much torture and rape must occur before the power of good responds? How many millions or billions of dollars was stolen from the Iraqi people in order to feed the insatiable appetite of the Hussein regime? If your neighbor’s wife is being raped do you try to talk the rapist into stopping or do you forcefully intervene? Or worse yet, do you ignore it?
If we had chosen to ignore Hussein and left sanctions in place what would have happened? The answer to this question will never be known. I believe however, that the situation would not have gotten better and it would only have been a mater of time before he had the ability to conduct nuclear blackmail on the region and the rest of the world.
Was the decision to go to war made by legitimate authority? This question is very easily answered. The President of the United States and the Congress gave approval for this action. Therefore, those that are elected by the people to represent us, made the decision based on the information they had and acted on the authority we have granted them.
Was the intention right? Notice it is right and not good. There is a difference. The intention of the war was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and to free a people from an oppressive regime. Is the intention lessened because we have not found WMD? I don’t believe so. As I stated earlier I was more concerned for the people than I was of the WMD? This aside, because Hussein had cried wolf so many times he caused his own demise. Had he been forthright in admissions the situation could have been avoided. The only options left were to live in fear of a potentially nuclear armed Iraq or to rid the world of this potential. There is no question that if he could have attained these weapons he would have. Even now there are rumors milling about of external assistance of hiding the WMD that was believed to be from Iraq. As more and more Iraqi governmental papers are released to the public we will find that we made the right move.
I believe that the components of Justum Bellum have been met. I also believe that the US and our allies acted with courage to conduct this war with so many countries opposed to it. With the exception of some isolated incidences the US and our allies have acted justly in war (Jus in Bello). In fact we often times settle on the side of caution a little too much. But we are a country that believes in justice and we do give the benefit of the doubt more often than not.