What Is a Just War?
What Is a Just War?
by
Andrew P. Napolitano
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When President
Obama announced last April that he was sending the United States
military to bomb Libya, he not only violated the United States Constitution,
which he has taken an oath to uphold, but he also violated the moral
principles of the just war. The Constitution permits only Congress
to declare war and the president to initiate on his own only a truly
defensive war. When the president takes an oath to uphold the Constitution,
he also promises to uphold the treaties into which the U.S. has
entered and the laws that have been written pursuant to those treaties.
St. Thomas
Aquinas is the modern articulator of the idea that governments are
required to follow the same moral principles as the rest of us.
This is particularly so in the case of a government that claims
its source of power is the consent of the governed. St. Thomas More
once put it this way: “Some men say the earth is round and some
say it is flat. If it is round, can the King’s command flatten it;
and if it is flat, can Parliament make it round?”
Of course,
the answer to those questions is no; and the reason it is no is
that kings and parliaments – all governments – just like all living
beings, are subject to the laws of nature. One of those laws was
articulated by Aquinas and embraced by More and accepted by Thomas
Jefferson and taught by many Judeo-Christian scholars, and was eventually
engrafted into treaties and into American law. It is the concept
of the just war. In American law and culture, for war to be valid,
it must not only be lawful, meaning either declared by Congress
or defensive; it must also be just.
What is a just
war? For a war to be just, generally, a half-dozen principles must
be met.
First, since
force destroys, and there is a presumption against its use, the
presumption must be overcome by first using all peaceful and viable
means and alternatives to war; and it must be clear that these alternatives
are fruitless before a war can be just.
Second, the
cause must be just; that is, the purpose of the war must be to correct
a grave, profound, enduring public evil that directly impairs the
freedom or safety of those contemplating war.
Third, only
a lawfully competent authority may commence the use of violence,
as was not the case when President Johnson bombed North Vietnam
or President Nixon bombed Cambodia or President Obama bombed Libya.
Thus, the internal laws of the nation using military violence must
be crafted so that war is the public policy of the nation, not just
the temporary personal preference of whoever is running the government.
Fourth, there
must be a probability of success, so that men and women are not
sent to certain death for a lost cause.
Fifth, the
use of force must be proportional to the harm it seeks to eradicate;
thus, no more persons may be harmed by the use of military force
than are absolutely necessary to achieve the just goals of the war.
Finally, the
war must be fought fairly and ended quickly.
Have you ever
heard of these rules before? Since they’re universally accepted
in the West, wouldn’t you expect that they’d be discussed and debated
openly? Did the Congress apply these rules to any war in your lifetime?
Congress has
not declared war since Dec. 8, 1941. But it has, from time to time,
debated these principles while it permitted the president to fight
unjust wars. It did so when LBJ tricked it into adopting the Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, authorizing him to bomb North Vietnam,
a backward country that posed no threats to America. It debated
these values when it enacted the War Powers Act in 1973 in order
to restrain Nixon from bombing Cambodia, another country that did
not harm and could not have harmed the U.S. It did not debate
these principles when it authorized President George W. Bush to
invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
The problem
with most wars is that they are more strategic and adventurist than
they are just. We now know that Saddam Hussein posed no threat to
the U.S. Regrettably, it took 5,000 American lives, more than a
half-million Iraqi lives, nearly a trillion borrowed dollars and
two presidential election campaigns for voters to realize that.
What was the grave, profound, enduring public evil from Iraq that
directly threatened the freedom or safety of Americans? There wasn’t
one.
The same may
be said for Afghanistan, about which, shortly before he was fired,
Gen. James Jones, Obama’s first national security adviser and a
former Marine commandant, stated that the U.S. had 100,000 troops
wasting their time chasing fewer than 100 al-Qaida there. Did we
assure that no more innocents – or even combatants – died than was
necessary to end that war? No.
And my guess
is that you don’t know anyone in America whose freedom and safety
were threatened by the Libyan government last April.
The concept
of a just war can induce a debate without end, unless and until
we repose the Constitution for safekeeping into the hands of men
and women who accept the concept. If we do that, we will bring the
troops home and save many lives and much taxpayer money and be free
and safe and prosperous. If we don’t, it seems whoever is the president
gets to fight whatever wars he wants. Is that what you want?
Reprinted
with the author’s permission.
February 3, 2012
Andrew P. Napolitano
[send him mail],
a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior
judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel, and the host of “FreedomWatchâ€
on the Fox Business Network. His latest book is It
is Dangerous to be Right When the Government is Wrong: The Case for
Personal Freedom.
Copyright
© 2012 Andrew P. Napolitano