WAR AND PEACE cont...

Today I was really contemplating what it means to have a "Just War". I exchanged a couple of emails and ideas with Mark Griffith, a Professor of Politics at the University of Alabama today and he made me think about the theories that define what is or is not a Just War. This is what I found on Wikipedia:

JUST WAR THEORY

Just Cause:
Force may be used only to correct a grave public evil (e.g. a massive violation of the basic rights of whole populations) or in defense;

St Augustine categorised just cause into three elements which justified warfare

1. defending against an external attack
2. recapturing things taken
3. punishing people who have done wrong

A contemporary view of just cause was expressed in 1993 when the US Catholic Conference said: "Force may be used only to correct a grave, public evil, i.e. aggression or massive violation of the basic human rights of whole populations"

Comparative Justice: While there may be rights and wrongs on all sides of a conflict, to override the presumption against the use of force, the injustice suffered by one party must significantly outweigh that suffered by the other;
Legitimate Authority: Only duly constituted public authorities may use deadly force or wage war;
Right Intention: Force may be used only in a truly just cause and solely for that purpose- correcting a suffered wrong is considered a right intention, while material gain or maintaining economies is not.
Probability of Success: Arms may not be used in a futile cause or in a case where disproportionate measures are required to achieve success;
Proportionality: The overall destruction expected from the use of force must be outweighed by the good to be achieved.[3]
Last Resort: Force may be used only after all peaceful and viable alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted.

I can find instances where the war in Iraq can be interpreted as falling into some of these categories. Punishing people who have done wrong might be one. Saddam Hussein did kill his own people... but I thought we had already taught him a lesson about that back in Desert Storm I. Liberation wasn't our justification to begin with. If Bush had come out in one of his pro-war speeches before the invasion and said that the most important thing in this mission was to liberate the Iraqi people and build a democracy in the Middle-East, everyone in America would have thought he was nuts!

Nobody should ever forget the real reason our military was sent to war - which was the potential of a "mushroom cloud over one of our cities" as Dick Cheney once so elegantly put it. There were no WMD's and there were no connections to Al Qaeda; anyone who pays attention to the news (other than faux news) knows that.

Whether Iraq and Saddam Hussein did something that constituted a "Just Cause" for our invasion of their country is really a matter of individual interpretation. I personally believe very strongly that it was unnecessary, but that's neither here nor there. Were in there... now what do we do?

CONDUCTING A WAR

----Just War conduct should be governed by the principle of discrimination. The acts of war should be directed towards the inflictors of the wrong, and not towards civilians caught in circumstances they did not create. The prohibited acts include bombing civilian residential areas that include no military target and committing acts of terrorism or reprisal against ordinary civilians. Some believe that this rule forbids weapons of mass destruction of any kind, for any reason (such as the use of an atomic bomb).

Haditha Massacre: On November 19th, 2005 in the city of Haditha, Iraq, up to 24 innocent Iraqi civilians including 11 unarmed women and children were murdered from point blank range.

This is what wikipedia says about the incident:
On 19 November 2005, US Marine Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas and a number of Iraqis were killed in Haditha after an alleged roadside bomb attack on soldiers from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. The unreleased report of the US military investigation into the event is said to have found that 24 unarmed Iraqis, including 11 women and children, were killed by 12 members of the US Marines, apparently in retaliation for the death of Terrazas.

---Just War conduct should be governed by the principle of proportionality. The force used must be proportional to the wrong endured, and to the possible good that may come. The more disproportional the number of collateral civilian deaths, the more suspect will be the sincerity of a belligerent nation's claim to justness of a war it initiated.

---Just War conduct should be governed by the principle of minimum force. A certain amount of force must not be used if a lesser amount of force would accomplish the same goals. This principle is meant to limit excessive and unnecessary death and destruction. It is different from proportionality because the amount of force proportionate to the goal of the mission might exceed the amount of force necessary to accomplish that mission.

---Torture, of combatants or non-combatants, is forbidden.

---Prisoners of war must be treated respectfully.

"It is debasing human dignity to force men to give up their life, or to inflict death against their will, or without conviction as to the justice of their action." -- Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi in the Manifesto Against Conscription and the Military System

I'd say those are some pretty good guidelines for what makes a war just. What about Iraq? Make your own decision.