Examining the Ethics of War
by Ann Rodgers-Melnick
As a possible attack on Iraq looms, there are few hawks among professional Christian ethicists.
That much emerged from a lively exchange among 400 U.S. and Canadian university and seminary professors at the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics in Pittsburgh on January 10.
Participants' theology ranged from evangelical to liberationist, but the chief fault line was between a large contingent of just warriors who did not believe a pre-emptive strike against Iraq was justified, and a minority of pacifists who didn't believe any military action could ever be justified.
No one called for war, though a few maintained that the Bush administration had made morally viable arguments.
The forum opened with an analysis by James F. Childress, a prominent bioethicist from the University of Virginia who has also written extensively on just war tradition. He criticized President Bush's moral language about the potential enemy. "The language of evil tends to transform even a just war into a holy war crusade because it demonizes the enemy," he said.
Just war theory says violence can be morally justified only if it meets certain criteria. It must be for the defense of innocent people, not for conquest; it must be formally declared by a legitimate government; it must be the last resort when all reasonable alternatives have failed; it must have a reasonable chance of success; and it must inflict less harm than whatever it was intended to oppose. Soldiers in a just war must avoid harming civilians.
Childress illustrated his presentation with editorial cartoons -- none of which flattered President Bush. In one cartoon Bush declared that the war in Afghanistan was "a just war," and then that "the next phase of our policy will be "just war." According to Childress, editorial cartoonists are bringing just war theory to the public at a time when the administration has been virtually silent on it.
The first President Bush went before the National Religious Broadcasters to argue that the Gulf War met just war standards. But George W. Bush has made no such case for a proposed invasion of Iraq, Childress said. It may be because the current Bush tends to rely on gut instinct for moral decision-making, or perhaps because the metaphor of a war on terrorism has given him all the public support he needs, said Childress.
The strongest argument for an attack is the analogy with British and French appeasement of Nazi Germany prior to World War II, Childress says. He cited the case made by Kenneth Pollack, a former Iraq analyst for the CIA and National Security Council, in his book "The Gathering Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq." But Childress concluded that Pollack undermined his own case, in part by saying that combating terrorism must come first when no clear connection has been demonstrated between Saddam Hussein and international terrorism.
The idea of a "pre-emptive first strike" would be a novelty in just war theory, Childress said. He questioned what international precedent it would set. "What can we say with a straight face to India and Pakistan when each feels threatened by the other?" he asked.
But Philip Wogaman, a professor at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and pastor to President Clinton during his administration, called for serious consideration of the principle of a pre-emptive first strike, even if one wasn't warranted against Iraq. He urged ethicists to reflect on Kosovo and Rwanda, where a pre-emptive strike against impending genocide might have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
