Such a peace should be restorative for all affected by the war. President Obama observed that around the world today \u201cold adversaries are at peace,\u201d and I suspect he had in mind US friendships with Germany, Italy, and Japan. He said our combat mission is ending, but \u201cour commitment to Iraq\u2019s future is not,\u201d and he emphasized at the same that we are now also trying to build for our nation \u201ca future of lasting peace.\u201d That involves refocusing attention on the US economy, and it will include providing health care, education, and employment for returning US military personnel. All of this is congruent with a just war meaning of \u201cthe end.\u201d Much of it, however, should have been in our sights from the very outset of the war.<\/p>\n
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The president referred to \u201clessons learned.\u201d One lesson those who subscribe to the just war criteria should have learned is that just war categories need to be longitudinally extended to include postwar justice. Even if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were just, more needs to be done to guide us to put in motion the ingredients for a just and lasting peace. On the flip side, if a war is unjust because the criteria for going to war and for conduct during war were not satisfied, then the duty to establish postwar justice is all the more imperative, even though that won\u2019t retroactively make it a just war.<\/p>\n
One postwar criterion would be the principle of restoration, including restoration of public services such as the police: before embarking on war, make sure appropriate plans, equipment, and personnel are ready and in place to restore law and order on the streets and in the communities of the defeated nation. In his speech President Obama mentioned that US troops \u201cshifted tactics to protect the Iraqi people [and] trained Iraqi Security Forces.\u201d Such a shift would not have been necessary had the Bush White House not denied in June 2003 the Department of Justice\u2019s recommendations for an International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program, which called for the deployment of over 6,600 international police advisers, consisting of trainers for police academies, plus armed international constabulary units with 2,500 more personnel to help coalition military forces restore stability in Iraq (see \u201cThe Police in War: Fighting Insurgency, Terrorism, and Violent Crime\u201d [Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010] by David H. Bayley and Robert M. Perito). Meanwhile, there were looters raiding homes, businesses, and museums; Iraqis were killing Iraqis; government buildings were ransacked and burned. Many scholars in other fields\u2014including security policy experts such as Graham Day and Rama Mani\u2014highlight the crucial role police (as well as courts and prisons) play in the transition from war to a just peace. Oftentimes the police of the defeated country disband during the war or are corrupt or implicated in the evils that led to war, so a transitional police force, accompanied by trainers, is necessary until a new force consisting of vetted, well-trained, and human-rights-respecting police is in place. <\/p>\n
I am hopeful that progress in this connection is now underway in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the meantime too many persons suffered\u2014Iraqis, Afghans, and also US military personnel\u2014from a lack of the kind of efforts that postwar justice would require for any war to be considered just.<\/p>\n
Tobias Winright is associate professor of theological ethics at Saint Louis University, a former law enforcement officer, and coauthor with Mark Allman of \u201cAfter the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice\u201d (Orbis Books, 2010).<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “If a war is unjust then the duty to establish postwar justice is all the more imperative, even though that won\u2019t retroactively make it a just war.” More