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The Spectacle Blog
As Jim argues, preventive wars don't fit neatly into the traditional understanding of just wars. The complication, though, that right-wing preventative war supporters would bring up is that the traditional understanding of wars doesn't necessarily apply to today's conflicts.
Specifically, in the times when just war theory was developed, wars were generally fought by nations that declared war on each other and sent conventional armies into the field against declared combatants. Today the combatants are "terrorists" and "insurgents" who aren't necessarily associated with a nation and don't have a unified command. Also, they don't have a centralized location and could launch a devastating stealth attack anywhere -- so we "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here."
Clearly the concept of a just war has to be updated to accommodate the reality of terrorism. For instance, it seems to be settled that the invasion of Afghanistan was justified under a modern just war theory, even though the nation of Afghanistan itself posed almost no threat to the U.S., because that's where the terrorists were.
But stretching just war theory to fit today's warfare is not easy. The evidence that it's been stretched too far, as Jim mentions, is that, in hindsight at least, our ability to speculate about the threats posed by terrorists and their sponsors is limited. And, when an updated just war theory is invoked to justify tactics that were deplorable under the old just war definitions, it should be cause for concern.
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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/09/02/more-on-just-war-and-preventiv
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Ken (Old Texican)| 9.2.10 @ 6:14PM
Joseph,
If nuclear missiles are in the air.....do we sit and quibble?
I'll swear I do not know.
One thing I do know: We had better not quibble very long.
You are going to hate my newest best-seller. I have nightmares every night writing it.
"The Nays of Texas" (fiction, OBL Publishing)
Ryan| 9.3.10 @ 8:56AM
I think this touches on something that was left out of the conversation - that it's difficult to apply Just War theory when you're not dealing with direct conflict with nation-states.
S.L. Toddard| 9.3.10 @ 9:14AM
The flaw in Mr. Lawler's argument is that Iraq is a nation-state, and that we did not conquer Iraq for any reasons that would render Just War theory inapplicable.
Nick| 9.3.10 @ 3:00PM
Mr. Lawler,
"[T]errorists" and "insurgents" were dealt with when they were labeled "unlawful enemy combatants" under different nation's laws of war, over the centuries. When caught, they were promptly tried and executed for unlawfully waging war.
As I commented on Mr. Antel's post yesterday, Operation Iraqi Freedom was not a preventive war, it was a continuation of Operation Desert Storm. The obligations of a just war were met.
Saddam was the aggressor in both 1990 and 2003. He agreed to the U.N. resolutions and then broke them for twelve years. He was given multiple deadlines to comply with the resolutions. He was given ample warning of what would happen if he did not comply. He had no right to fire on coalition forces that were coming to make him comply.
It was Saddam's choice to go to war, not ours.
If you will look at the link to your February article, you will see that I asked you many questions regarding Mr. Thiessen, that you never answered.
Here's one more: Is it "torture" to put people into uncomfortable positions, i.e. stress positions, 65 degree room in shorts, 95 degree room with overalls? Even the extreme discomfort of waterboarding?
During the hundreds of hours of guard duty I performed in my 4 years in the Army, I spent many of them freezing my backside off or roasting in the Saudi desert during Desert Sheild/Storm. (In January and February it would regularly dip down into the low 30's at night.)
In other words, I was often "uncomfortable" while pulling guard duty. Was I tortured? Why should detainees be more comfortable than soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines?
(The same could be said of convicts in prisons across the country. They should be living in tent-cities, a la Sheriff Arpaio of Maricopa County.)
Nick| 9.7.10 @ 3:46PM
Hello?
Mr. Lawler?