Reverend John Langan is a professor of Catholic social thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.
Father, welcome. I wonder if we can mark up a kind of report card on the ethics of the war so far. Has it been just?
FATHER
JOHN LANGAN: Well, the two things that analysts look
to in determining the justice of a war while it's being
fought are [first,] the issue of civilian casualties, and
there I think we've been doing reasonably well. Obviously
not perfectly. Civilians have been killed. Mistakes have
been made on targets. But there's been a serious effort
to respect that norm. The second is the question of whether
we're making real progress toward morally important goals.ABERNETHY: And how do you come out on that?
FATHER LANGAN: I think that's still taking shape.
ABERNETHY: The goals are moral, though, for you?
FATHER LANGAN: Yeah, I think the whole task of trying to stop this kind of terrorism -- of restoring a sense of order and confidence in our society and the world at large -- that's morally quite important.
ABERNETHY: And it is important that the good likely to be done outweighs the harm that is being done, and how do you rate us on that?
FATHER
LANGAN: Yes, that's what's commonly called the principle
of proportionality. And I think we're doing reasonably well.
But that's -- you can't really judge those things until
you're near the end.ABERNETHY: What about the humanitarian consequences of the military action? Five big relief agencies urged this week that the aid effort be separated from the military effort and that everyone create conditions so aid can get through to the people who need it. Is that practical?
FATHER LANGAN: I'm not sure. I don't really know enough. I think it's very desirable. I think we have a large number of lives at risk in Afghanistan with the possibility of famine and we should be doing all we can to protect these people. How you combine that with military operations? That's very tricky.
