The Moral Debate: A Just Conflict, or Just a Conflict?

By Richard N. Ostling.

"We know that this is a just war, and we know that, God willing, this is a war we will win."

George Bush prefers action to abstraction, but last week he delivered a fervent argument to bolster support for the war with Iraq. In a speech before a Washington audience of radio and TV Protestant evangelists, he invoked a long-standing Christian doctrine in the battle against Saddam Hussein, that of the "just war."

Bush's words were a direct response to the unusually widespread criticism of the war in American religious circles. The Roman Catholic hierarchy has questioned whether the U.S.-led military action meets the traditional just-war criteria. The war has been branded "morally indefensible" by officials of Eastern Orthodox and mainline Protestant groups affiliated with the National Council of Churches, including Edmond Browning, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Bush's denomination.

Christianity, with its emphasis on universal love, has always had a struggle with the idea of war. Most early believers refused to bear arms. After the rulers of the Roman Empire embraced Christianity in the 4th century, St. Augustine first elaborated the limited argument in favor of military action. Wrote the North African bishop and theologian: "War should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace."

The just-war doctrine was refined in another era when Christians waged war against Muslims, the time of the Crusades. In the 13th century, 70 years after the First Crusade was launched to recapture the Holy Land, St. Thomas Aquinas listed three elements of a just war: combat must be waged by competent government authority, the cause must be just, and there must be a "right intention" to promote good. Later Catholic thinkers added the notions that war should be a "last resort," that it should have a probability of success, that anticipated good results must outweigh the suffering that it would cause and that war should be "discriminate" to protect noncombatants.

Protestant and Jewish thinkers developed similar theories. To Martin Luther, the power of temporal rulers was to be "turned only against the wicked, to hold them in check and keep them at peace, and to protect and save the righteous." In practice, however, most clergy in wartime preached the righteousness of their own nations' cause. Only after the fact did scholars contemplate the moral wisdom of various wars, as occurred in America following the Spanish-American War and World War I. Even World War II, despite the evils of Nazism, was deemed "just" only after the U.S. became involved.

America's concept of itself as a moral warrior suffered its most decisive setback in Vietnam. Though many clergy initially supported the American intervention, debate over the "justness" of U.S. involvement developed alongside secular opposition to the war. By 1971 the Catholic hierarchy declared, "Whatever good we hope to achieve through continued involvement in this war is now outweighed by the destruction of human life and of moral values which it inflicts."

Bush's clerical critics find little to dispute in many of the just-war criteria. Questions about whether "competent authority" endorsed the gulf campaign died out once Congress had voted its support. The moral opposition revolves around two classical yardsticks. "We believe that ((the use of)) offensive force in this situation would likely violate the principles of last resort and proportionality," stated the President of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, Cincinnati's Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, as the Jan. 15 deadline for Iraq's withdrawal passed.

The question of "last resort" focuses on alternatives to force, notably economic sanctions. The newly retired Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, hoped that economic sanctions would be tried for months more, even up to a year, before any resort to force. An even more difficult criterion to assess is "proportionality," the weighing of the good and evil results. The antiwar protest from leaders of the National Council of Churches included forecasts of hundreds of thousands of casualties and damage lasting "for generations to come."

The proportionality issue has also sparked concern at the Vatican. La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit fortnightly in Rome that usually reflects Vatican thinking, has declared that the extent of damage wrought by both conventional and nuclear weaponry all but ends the prospect that any war could be deemed just. The Vatican's doctrinal overseer, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, took the same viewpoint in a radio interview after the bombing of Iraq began, but Pope John Paul II has not gone that far.

Not all religious thinkers are skeptical. Boston's Bernard Cardinal Law, for one, sees a "regrettable" choice: "either to let ((Saddam)) continue to wreak his havoc unchecked or to defend the cause of justice with arms." Protestant evangelist Billy Graham agrees: "Sometimes it becomes necessary to fight the strong in order to protect the weak." Jewish groups cite the manifest threat that Iraq poses to Israel as well as to Arab lands.

President Bush took up almost all those issues in his speech last week. On "last resort," the President contended that "extraordinary diplomatic efforts" had preceded hostilities. On discrimination and proportionality, Bush insisted that "we are doing everything possible, believe me, to avoid hurting the innocent," an assertion buttressed in numerous military briefings. Addressing the "probability" test, Bush has said repeatedly that the troops have the means to win.

In conducting his point-by-point argument, Bush may not have satisfied many of his religious critics. But for the moment at least he gave them something to ponder, and on their own terms.

With reporting by Robert Ajemian/Boston and Cathy Booth/Miami