Iraq War: Was it a just war?

The ideas used to justify the Bush Doctrine "build not on foundations for constraining unavoidable human violence, but stretch toward a vision of an ideal of liberty that justifies the selective killing of some to achieve a greater good of liberty for many others. This emerging ethic installs the United States as the guardian of a universal, even transcendent, cause of freedom and the ultimate arbiter in that cause."

This is the conclusion of one of the best pieces I've seen discussing the Iraq War in light of traditional Just War doctrine, a concept from Christian ethics that has been largely adopted in a secular form and incorporated into international law, the Just War doctine being itself one of the sources of our modern laws of war.  The article by Franklin Eric Wester argues that " the use of military force by the Bush Administration against the regime of Saddam Hussein does not meet the ethical criteria for 'preemptive war' set forth in the classical Just War tradition." It appears in the latest edition of the Army War College's quarterly journal Parameters:  Preemption and Just War: Considering the Case of Iraq by Franklin Eric Wester Parameters Winter 2004-05.

Wester provides a useful review of the basic requirements for a just war in the traditional theory (my wording):

1. The war must be waged by a legitimate authority.

2. There must be a public declaration of intention by the belligerents.

3. There must be a just intent behind the conduct of the war.

4. The cost of the war must be proportional to the benefits to be gained (this is known as the principle of proportionality and is by no means limited to a financial calculation of costs and benefits).

5. War must be taken only as a last resort.

6. There must be a reasonable prospect of success.

Wester walks through each critierium in succession and applies it to the Iraq War.

He finds the first criteria, the question of legitimate authority, to be especially problematic from an ethical viewpoint.  That does not mean that he is questioning the legitimacy of the American government as such.  But if the authority for going to war was based on enforcing UN resolutions against Iraq was the justification for the war, the UN itself would be the legitimating authority, however scornful today's Republican Party may be toward such a notion.  Even if humanitarian concerns had been used to justify the war - actually they were only used as window-dressing to the WMD threat in the leadup to war - the "coalition of the willing" hardly consitutes legitimate authority for such a step.  As Wester says:

To act on the authority of a “coalition of the willing” relies on vague ethical criteria. US leaders indicated they possessed persuasive information that an attack against the United States or US interests using weapons of mass destruction was possible, and that Iraq was advancing terrorism. Both the assertion of possible attack with WMD or conventional means and the involvement of Iraq with terrorism (specifically al Qaeda) have since come under considerable dispute, to say the least.

He finds that the Bush administration was onl sounder grounds on the criteria of a public declaration.  But on all the other four critieria, he finds problems in meeting the traditional ethical standard.  The goal of regime change is one that he finds particularly problematic from the traditional viewpoint of the Just War doctrine, which held that the goal should be as far as possible to restore the status quo that existed before the war.

He could have also added the Congressional war resolution, which authorized war against Iraq only if two conditions were fulfilled, neither of which the Bush administration met.

He is less specific on the issue of resorting to war only as a last resort, because he argues that since there are theoretically always other alternatives and therefore the decision to go to war always involves some judgment calls.  Part of the reason for his vagueness on this one appears in other parts of the article as well, which is that he makes it a point to look at the question strictly from the point of view of the prewar situation.  I understand why that is necessary.  But it's also hard to overlook that the glaring absence of the "weapons of mass destruction," or even ofany active programs to create them, also calls into question the credibility ofthe prewar claims and thedecisions allegedly based on them.  How can we say that there were no alternatives to war to get rid of Iraq's WMDs when we know now that they didn't have WMDs, and that UN inspections were underway which would have provided that information if the US had allowed them to continue?

This is an article that I highly recommend.  Aside from the review of the six traditional criteria of the Just War, it also has a lot of additional discussion that is very worthwhile.  For instance, he notes:

Some ethicists and religious leaders endorsed military action. Some saw it as a continuation of the 1991 conflict, while others saw the action in 2003 as moral. For example, one theologian, the Reverend Richard Land, president of the ethics and religious-liberty commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, endorsed military action on grounds of self-defense: “I believe we are defending ourselves against several acts of war by a man who did not keep treaties and who has already used weapons of mass destruction.”

There will always be clerics who are willing to endorse Our Side (whichever that may be) in a war.  But Land's position raises an interesting question for me.  I've seen it claimed that conservative Protestant Christians that do not have reference to a concept of "natural law" generally have not worried much about the Just War doctrine.  I've never fully understood that argument, though it certainly makes sense that conservative Protestants might have a much clearer focus on individual morality (no sex, no dancing, no drinking, no smoking) rather than on social demands of the Gospel.

But that's not how it is.  Because fundamentalist Protestants like Richard Land do take positions on a wide range of political and social issues, from abortion laws to judiciary appointments to foreign policy.  But a big reason I've always taken the position of Catholic anti-abortion advocates more seriously than those of their Protestant counterparts is that the Catholic Church, which does use a natural law approach, also takes issues like the Just War and capital punishment and aiding the needy seriously as part of an ethic of preserving life.  On the other hand, it seems to me that the Christian Right (which is basically Protestant fundamentalists) is willing to cheer for any war backed by the Republican Party.

Wester's article also has good sections describing the distinctions between preemptive strikes, preemptive war and preventive war.  And he discusses some of the practical problems with the Bush Doctrine, made official in the 2002 National Security Strategy, as they involve ethical issues: (1) the compressed time involved in action uder the current US military doctrine of Rapid Decisive Operations; (2) the risk of a wrong decision in using the standard of preventive war instead of preemptive war; and, (3) the problem of incomplete information on the claimed justifications for war.

And its good to see some clear statements about the serious problems of the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, as in this delineation of the difference between preemptive and preventive war:

[A] preventive war is started well before the imminent threat or humanitarian crisis, when the balance of forces is the primary consideration. [In contrast], a preemptive war is launched at a time close to a documented or presumed threat, when the forces initiating war retain tactical, operational, or strategic advantage. Preventive war, on the other hand, is built on a sheer calculation of advantage—nation X can gain an advantage by acting now to attack nation Y, regardless of the threat.

And even though he tries to be generous on the prewar intelligence assumptions that were claimed as the basis of the decision to go to war, Wester is sticking to the facts about what the claimed war aims were:

The principal reason for war stated by the Bush Administration to the nation and the world was the possible use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Disarming Iraq was the desired end, and regime change in Iraq was the only possible way to achieve that end. Preemptive military action was required, and thus justified, to prevent possible use of WMD. ...

Another facet of the just intent for war with Iraq was the idea of protecting innocent people from humanitarian abuses. ... But humanitarian intervention was never seriously advanced by either the Clinton or Bush administrations, until it was included as part of the justification for ousting the regime of Saddam Hussein.  In this instance, protecting victims from humanitarian abuse is probably most accurately described as an ex post facto reason for war. [my emphasis]

Even here, Wester is being a tad generous.  The brutal nature of Saddam's regime was window-dressing on the cause for war.  The WMDs were the justification, with the claimed connection to Al Qaeda being used as a heavy supplement to that.  The Congressional of October 2002 was explicit that the WMDs and connection to terrorist attacks including the 9/11 attack were the necessary conditions of war.  Ousting Saddam's regime in itself was not something that Bush claimed as the jusitification for war or that Congress accepted as legal grounds for war.  Wester notes:

In the case of the war on Iraq, regime change was a way, not an end, and the end of a disarmed Iraq was determined by the Bush Administration to be achievable only by regime change. Regime change as a “morally desirable side-effect” of disarming an aggressor is consistent with the Just War ethic. Regime change as the end or intent falls outside the recognized standards of Just War logic. Regime change was incorporated explicitly in the justification for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Regime change is not a status quo ante bellum and commits the nation far beyond military application to postwar responsibility, building a new, politically functioning nation. This is a commitment shouldered determinedly, so far, by the United States, while most other nations and the UN still search for a morally and politically acceptable role.

Wester gives a good description of the ethical dimension of the Bush Doctrine as incorporated into official US foreign policy by the 2002 National Security Strategy:

The argument for this just cause, or just intent, points toward the central dimension of an emerging paradigm shift in the ethics of war. Preemptive war to prevent a potential threat through regime change using military force exemplifies the change proposed in the 2002 National Security Strategy. Disarming and restructuring a nation using preemptiveor preventive war is driven by an ideal future vision, not defense of or return to the status quo. This model or framework for action employs military force to improve the lot of citizens in a foreign land while eliminating a real or potential threat to the territory of the United States, allies, and US political or other interests. This ethic asserts an idealist, universal, God-given liberty as the bedrock for decisionmaking. This freedom is to be advanced by the United States with or without coalition partners, not as a model nation or political persuader. [my emphasis] ...

[W]e are left with the revolutionary idea of redefining imminent threat and just cause according to the Bush doctrine. The Bush doctrine contends that preemption is right, just, and different from aggression, transcends imperialism, and is based on a vision of the future achievable through preemptive or preventive war. The Bush doctrine builds on a vision of extending liberty and an open-market economy, and authorizes invading a sovereign nation to topple a regime through preemptive war [based on criteria that go far beyond the traditional doctrine of the Just War].