Propaganda: Just War Theory

One case recently was the Iraq War to depose Saddam Hussein. Was it a "Just War", or was it a war of religious intolerance, greed, or irrational fear?

There are ways to fight a war justly, and reasons for a just war. In this blog entry I'm ignoring how to fight a just war, and examining only the reasons for starting a just war.

Here are four commonly agreed principles of a just war based on logic and reason.


1 Legitimate Authority: Requiring that only legitimate officials may decide to resort to force is one way to protect against arbitrariness.

2 Just Cause: The three standard acceptable causes are self-defense, recovery of stolen assets, and punishment for wrongdoing.

3 Peaceful Intention: The intention is to use force to achieve peace, using force to restrain and minimize force.

4 Last Resort: Before turning to war, all reasonable approaches to a peaceful resolution need to be employed.

5 Reasonable Hope of Success: In going to war, there must exist the reasonable expectation of successfully obtaining peace and reconciliation between the warring parties.


Notice that nowhere does it say that having God on your side is a just cause for war. And there is also a similar absence of the words good and evil, as those are circular arguments that anybody can use to justify their case. The wording is intentionally stated to try to prevent needless wars, not to encourage them. War are often, if not always, based on irrational fears of one side against the other. Above all else, a just war theory must justify the war without resorting to irrational fear and hatred.

I want to go over each point in relation to the Iraq war.

1. Legitimate Authority: The problem here was the US President's claim that he alone had the right to decide. Although the rhetoric ducked and weaved quite a bit, I think it still came down to the fundamental belief that the US president could arbitrarily decide when and where to declare war. And it didn't help at all referring to God as higher authority in making the decision.

2. Just Cause: There were no stolen goods (maybe other than money), so this comes down mostly to self defence or punishment. To be just, you have to know Iraq had the means of hurting the USA and the intention to do it. Or that Iraq was doing something that required punishment, where I guess the gassing of it's own people, the torture and rape comes in. It turns out, after the war, that Iraq did not have weapons to harm the USA, so that was a major blunder in the Just war theory, and was admitted by president Bush. And to make things worse for the Just war theory, the USA engaged in torture too, also admitted, but with the explanation that it was not official policy.

A just war theory does not allow for one side to invent a non-existent threat, or to ascribe evil motives to the other side. In fact the whole idea of a just war theory is to take irrational fear and lying out of the equation for war.

And about the punishment, well the Just War theory does assume (or should assume) if you are punishing somebody, that you should not be engaged in the same practice yourself.


3. Peaceful Intention. I'm going to give this one to George Bush. I am pretty sure his intention was peaceful, in other words he would like to have seen a nice peaceful capitulation by Iraq, and almost did, in fact. He came pretty close at the time "Mission Accomplished" was declared. But then came a series of mistakes (I call them mistakes to give the benefit of the doubt), such as firing the Iraqi army that had stepped aside as requested by the US to allow Saddam to be deposed. Then the firing of all Baath party officials (including all teachers, lawyers, bureaucrats etc.) Then not being able or willing to stop the looting and crime spree. I'm giving this one to Bush based on what I hope was his intention.


4. Last Resort. Before going to war, all peaceful means have been exhausted. This one is a tossup as far as I'm concerned. Of course, as president Bush has said, you could go on forever with this game of trying to find weapons of mass destruction. At some point you need to say enough, let's start the war. On the other hand, discussions were going on in the UN, and the inspectors were hard at work looking for weapons. I'm split on this one.

5. I almost forgot: Reasonable Hope of Success. Yes, actually there was. In fact at first it was more successful than even hoped for, as the Iraqi army virtually disappeared, as requested by US leaflets that were dropped on them. Which gave the US mostly a clear and quick victory. My feeling is that if the motivation of the US were pure and honest, the victory might have stood. The Iraqi army would have been reconstituted, the police would have been back on the streets within weeks and Saddam Hussein would have been replaced along with his two sons. That would have been the best case scenario, and not a bad one either.

So I would say two and a half stars out of five for a just war. That is a half-just war. Which I guess is better than a total war of aggression, but not really a just war either.

And on the other side, the peaceniks have a lot of evidence that the real motive for war was for oil. And that a lot of the justification for war was intentionally fabricated.

So in my opinion, this would go down half and half as a war of aggression by the USA. Half motivated by greed for oil, half motivated by desire for peace and justice. Not good enough in my book to justify all the killing and torturing that went on.