To the editors - Correspondence

Commonweal, Oct 11, 2002

Thanks to Lopez

Thank you for printing George Lopez's thought-provoking essay "Iraq & Just-War Thinking" (September 27). Please let me respond to a couple of points.

First, I'd like to caution against a conclusion that readers may draw from the essay, to wit, that the presumption against force stands opposed to the checklist of criteria in the just-war tradition. The just-war criteria, if taken seriously, in fact operationalize the presumption against force. Only in exceptional circumstances would a resort to force pass all seven or eight tests required for a war to be just. Without criteria for determining that a resort to force would be justified, the presumption against war turns into pacifism.

The problem, which I believe is Lopez's point, is that policymakers and foreign-policy elites do not take the criteria seriously. Rather, they conjure up tortured or duplicitous rationalizations that create the illusion of passing the just-war tests. That they do so indicates a deficiency not in the content of just-war theory but in the character and political system that applies it.

Second, Lopez provides a compelling analysis of how precision-guided munitions led to increased post-war suffering of civilians in Iraq and Yugoslavia. This illustrates the moral risk posed by addressing one of the just-war criteria-discrimination or noncombatant immunity--in isolation from the rest of the tradition. For Lopez's indictment seems precisely that the discriminate bombing led to disproportionate harm.

Third, it's not clear to me that the coming war in Iraq will present the same problem of delayed killing through destruction of infrastructure. The problem in both the Persian Gulf War and the Kosovo intervention was that force was used coercively rather than to defeat the enemy. When the fighting was over, therefore, there was no effort to provide relief for civilians in the short term and aid for reconstruction in the longer term. I presume, or hope, that Washington will not make the same mistake.

Fourth, I'd like to applaud Lopez for directly stating that "the major moral dilemmas facing the country right now lie in the damage levels that could be inflicted on Iraq." If Iraqi forces do not collapse or revolt and the war results in urban combat in Baghdad, or if Iraq hits Israel with weapons of mass destruction and Israel retaliates with nuclear weapons against Iraqi cities, the massacre of human life could be horrendous. One hopes that Catholics ensure that this issue gets all due attention.

Finally, Lopez writes that the "unprecedented" "unbalanced military situation ... has not led to any reassessment by Catholic leaders of what might constitute a `just war.'" I don't see why it should. Why should a just war also be a fair fight, other than whatever implications it might have for satisfying the just-war criteria?

PATRICK CALLAHAN
Aurora, Ill.

Not proportionate

In your September 13 editorial, "Where Are We Now?" you wrote concerning the war on terrorism: "We believe this attack, and the means to defeat the Taliban and their terrorist associates, proportionate." As a nation, we need to think harder about the second part of your assertion. Was the U.S. response really proportionate? The only criterion for proportionality seems to be our desire to limit American casualties. Did we not kill as many civilians in Afghanistan as were lost in the United States? Did we not "look the other way" as our allies in the Northern Alliance committed war crimes by suffocating hundreds of combatants in metal containers on the backs of trucks and then surreptitiously bury them in mass graves? Did we not kill scores of civilians celebrating a wedding? Is anyone questioning the major reliance on air power alone to defeat our enemies in war? Has not air power become the primary means of fighting wars since the Gulf War? Is anyone really thinking about a more proportionate response to unjust attacks? During the war in Kosovo, at a Pentagon briefing aired on CSPAN, a reporter asked the Pentagon spokesman about the accidental bombing of more than one hundred civilians in a transportation line. The spokesman answered, "We regret the collateral damage, but we will continue to service the robust target sets."

Before we escalate the present war against Iraq, perhaps the editors of Commonweal could devote an issue to debate this subject of proportionality, instead of just following the trend of fusing the questions of just cause for going to war with the question concerning the just means of fighting one.

Or should these questions be left to the Pentagon office of Just War and the Proportionate Means to Fight One?

PAUL FERRIS
Upper Marlboro, Md.

The editors reply:

Proportionality is not an easy criterion to apply, certainly not in the midst of war, as George Lopez points out ("Iraq & Just-War Thinking," September 27). Perhaps it needs revisiting, for nothing Paul Ferris questions is now a violation of proportionality, as it has been construed by just-war theorists. To his factual queries: we have seen no evidence that more civilians were killed in Afghanistan than in the September 11 attacks, that the United States targeted civilians, or that we cooperated in the mistreatment of prisoners. A case can be made that air power in Afghanistan actually resulted in a more "just war" than World War II. Something to think about.