In general, it is not the intention of this journal to comment on
current events. First, it would be impossible for this homegrown quarterly
to keep abreast of the news. And second, such controversy is often more a
distraction from the real issues than anything else. The controversies we
are interested in are the eternal ones which get to the heart of things,
rather than the endless parade of opinions and commentary blared at us by
the mainstream media.
That said, we cannot let something as grave as the Gulf War pass in
silence. A just war? Or just a war? The reaction of the Catholic Church
in America has been dismaying. The American government offered the
Catholic bishops a backhanded compliment by insisting, probably more than
any government in recent memory, on its intention of waging a "just war"
with minimal civilian casualties (while dropping the equivalent of several
Hiroshimas a week on Iraq). The flattered American bishops, with a few
notable exceptions, fell all over themselves to avoid offending the
government, with not a few offering outright endorsements of the war. To
some of us, though, the state's adaptation of the Church's moral
terminology and Mr. Bush's appeals to God seem more like attempts to humor
us and our moral qualms than anything else, as if the Church were some
dotty and scrupulous old aunt. Whether we are cynical or prophetic in this
reaction time will tell, but the American Church as a whole has taken the
bait. The January 31 issue of my local diocesan newspaper headlined on the
front page: "BUSH: U.S. FIGHTING 'JUST WAR' IN GULF." Buried on page 17 of
the same issue was a much smaller headline: "Cardinal Ratzinger doubts that
Gulf War is 'just'." The placement of these stories speaks volumes.
Even if one were to conclude that this war was just, the reaction
of the American people has been profoundly troubling. The national mood
seems a sort of belligerent euphoria. Pundits speak as if the whole affair
was really a piece of national psycho-drama, a bloody catharsis to rid the
country of the spectral "Vietnam syndrome." Simpler folk express
themselves via the bumper sticker-"Don't Mess with the U.S." seems to be
the most popular in these parts. Clergymen, who should have known better,
thanked God for "peace" immediately after the ground war. But unless one
defines "peace" as "absence of American casualties" there is no peace in
Iraq. For that matter, we still don't know what happened during the
fiercest bombing campaign in history. During the air war the military
released its daily Nintendo footage and described a nice, clean high-tech
war with minimal "collateral damage" (read "dead people"). Yet even as the
military painted this picture for us Colin Powell described our targets
inside Iraq as the "urban-industrial infrastructure." As Juli Loesch Wiley
said, "'urban-industrial infrastructure' means 'civilians' the way
'intra-uterine contents' means 'babies'." The most intense aerial
bombardment may have been accompanied by the most intense disinformation
campaign in history. The sketchy reports of the refugees who made their
way out of Iraq during the air war indicated that, in fact, the new god of
the high-tech weapon is a wrathful one and the number of dead innocents was
great. We may hope this fear is proven unfounded, but given the magnitude
of the "deplorable bombings" (the phrase is John Paul II's) that will be
amazing. But we may never know. The alarming thing is that Americans for
the most part give no indication of wanting to know. There seems to be a
total indifference to any suffering in the Middle East that is not caused
by Saddam Hussein (or can be blamed on him). Indeed the callousness of the
American people toward the human suffering of the Iraqis has been shocking,
even to many who considered themselves cynical about this nation. To even
raise the question of the legacy of suffering in Iraq is to be treated, not
as someone with grave doubts in a matter of conscience, but as a party
pooper, a social embarrassment.
Though the secular media apparently declared an embargo on his
statements, and though even the Catholic media provided extremely sketchy
accounts of his guidance, Pope John Paul II spoke courageously and wisely
through the days of crisis and war. The use of force would not be
justified, the Pope said. Use of violence will only lead to new violence,
he said. Any solution must deal with the whole situation surrounding the
crisis: the Palestinians, Lebanon, the economic imbalance between the
"first" and "third" worlds which give rise to conflict (the dreaded
"linkage" Mr. Bush so resolutely resisted). The Pope publicly mourned for
the victims of war, for the dark-eyed children crying in terror as
destruction rained from the skies. He denounced (in a prayer, yet) the
"hurried deadlines of war" and the "'logic' of revenge and retaliation."
Granted, papal infallibility does not necessarily extend to
statements of papal diplomacy. Nevertheless, the way that many Catholics
have flippantly dismissed the Pope's pronouncements has been appalling. At
the very least, he is a more reliable moral guide than the U.S. government,
and the Pope's moral judgements, uncolored by American nationalistic bias,
must be taken seriously by Catholics.
Beyond that, the Holy Father has not just been offering prudential
judgements in these pronouncements. He has been functioning in his role as
moral teacher and his statements suggest that a rethinking of the just war
principles is in order: "...the tragic situation of recent days makes it
even more evident that problems are not resolved with arms, but that new
and greater tensions among peoples are thus created." War is "an adventure
without return...a spiral of death and violence." John Paul II even
referred, in a speech in England, to the "always unjust phenomenon of war."
These and other strong statements reflect a trend among
twentieth-century Church leaders to express a growing skepticism of the
legitimacy of war in the modern era. Not only popes but bishops and moral
theologians have repeatedly speculated that just war is no longer possible.
To our pacifist readers, this will no doubt sound like absurd
casuistry. After all, historically the just war principles have been used
primarily to justify one's own nationalistic goals. The spectacle of
Catholic bishops on two sides of a conflict blessing the troops as they
march off to kill one another is one of the great scandals of history.
The pacifist reaction is understandable, and the impulse of compassion
which motivates the pacifist is an admirable corrective in this violent
world. But, as Maritain said, we must have not only tender hearts but
tough minds as well. My mind may be tougher than my heart is tender, but
the logic of pacifism-defined here as the belief that all use of force is
immoral-seems to lead inevitably to anarchism, for all law carries the
threat of force behind it. A few years back, while working at a Catholic
Worker shelter, I teased the staff somewhat mercilessly for their recourse
to the police when a guest behaved in a threatening manner. Is the threat
of force justified when the revolver is wielded by a representative of the
state? Isn't that inconsistent? We welcome comment by pacifists,
particularly those who wish to deal with this question of anarchism from a
Christian point of view, i.e., one which takes seriously the doctrine of
original sin and the obligation to defend the innocent from injustice.
In the meantime, let us attempt to think with the Church which (in
Rome, anyway) appears willing to apply the just war principles as strictly
as she applies the principles of sexual morality, with similarly
prohibitive (and in truth, liberating) conclusions.
To review, the traditional criteria for a just war are as follows:
1. The war must be fought for a just cause.
2. It must be authorized by a competent authority, possessing the
right intention.
3. There must be a probability of success.
4. War may be waged only as a last resort.
5. The war must meet the requirements of proportionality: the
human and other costs of war must be commensurate with the values at stake
and the evil one is fighting to overcome (thus the war must be able to be
limited).
6. Civilians are never to be targeted.
The Gulf War, in this writer's judgement, violates several of these
criteria and may in fact meet none of them. Briefly:
1. The war must be fought for a just cause, not a merely
putatively just cause. Every nation cloaks its ambitions in noble terms.
If the cause truly were to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, which had been
illegally and brutally invaded and occupied, that would be a just cause
(though not necessarily a prudent one). In fact, the president had an
ongoing difficulty articulating his purpose. First it was to defend Saudi
Arabia, then to expel Iraq from Kuwait, then to destroy Saddam Hussein, and
so on. Noble rhetoric aside, any examination of past American behavior in
the region both before and since the war raises doubts about commitment to
national sovereignty, international law, U.N. resolutions or even relieving
the suffering of the innocent in the face of aggression. The strongest
case, and the one most indicated by American foreign policy in the past, is
that the real cause probably was economic self-interest, which hardly
justifies the mass destruction this war has caused.
2. "Competent authority" I will grant. "Right intention" is a
matter of grave doubt, as stated above.
3. If "success" is defined as shortsighted military victory this
criterion is met. If it has implications concerning subsequent peace and a
more just social order, it clearly is not met.
4. The United States seemed to show not a reluctance but an
eagerness to go to war. Serious attempts at diplomacy seemed non-existent
and were replaced by deadlines and insults. When after weeks of air war
Iraq accepted a peace plan that included an unconditional withdrawal from
Kuwait (the most just of our variously stated causes) it was refused,
apparently because the military knew there would be little resistance to
the planned ground war.
5. It is the principle of proportionality that is most problematic
in analyzing the Gulf War. Even those, and they are many, who will differ
with the analysis offered here of the other criteria would be hard-pressed
to show that the hundreds of thousands of casualties and the millions of
refugees caused by this war are outweighed by the very limited good which
was accomplished. Rather, the destructive seeds which we and others helped
plant will poison the region and the whole world for many years.
6. Finally, were civilians targeted? The military has certainly
insisted that they weren't, but a more precise question would be "is the
American government opposed in principle to targeting civilians?" We know
that they are not. The ghosts of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and
Nagasaki stand in accusation of crimes for which we as a nation have never
repented, and our missiles are still targeted at the cities of the Soviet
Union. Before the ground war several American politicians speculated about
the use of nuclear weapons if the fighting went badly. The respected
Senator Dole spoke of the possible necessity of targeting "other than
military" targets. There was no outcry at this. But even if it didn't
come to this, even if civilians weren't directly targeted, isn't it likely
that their suffering was part of the strategy? General Powell's
"urban-industrial infrastructure" has already been mentioned, and even the
tightly controlled media releases didn't hide the fact that such
non-military targets as sewage plants and water facilities were targeted.
And is it realistic to expect that modern warfare with even the best
intentions can fail to have disastrous effects on any civilian population
caught in its dark crossfire?
Beyond this, a strict application of these principles probably
renders any imaginable modern war immoral. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
recently made this same point in an interview on Italian radio, zeroing in
specifically on the principle of proportionality. "No one questions the
fact that serious injustices are caused by a tyrant," he said, "but it is
also true that serious problems, as well as injustices, are created by war.
In a world in which the (military) means develop to the point where the
injustices they create are more serious than the injustice one seeks to
eliminate, this position (of a just war) is no longer valid....We are in a
situation in which one must at least reflect on whether proportionality is
still possible."
The just war principles were, after all, first articulated in an
age of primitive technology, of local rather than global struggle, and one
in which governments at least professed adherence to Christian moral truth
(not, significantly, before the Christianization of Europe). These
criteria are not absolute moral principles, they are secondary and merely
derived from absolute principles, and are specifically an attempt to deal
with situations when moral principles are in apparent conflict. Thou shalt
not kill, yes, but there is also an obligation to resist oppression and
injustice. The criteria derived in the Middle Ages from these situations
of moral dilemma can, if unthinkingly applied to the modern situation of
sophisticated weaponry, global struggle, and the secular state, appear
horrifically quaint. To take only one example, there is a sort of footnote
to the principle that civilians are not to be attacked, called the
principle of "double effect." That is: though civilians are not to be
targeted, one is not morally responsible for unintended civilian
casualties. Now what this meant to a medieval thinker is clear:
occasionally a peasant may be hit by a stray arrow, say, or his field of
barley trampled by charging knights. Who can doubt that the medieval
scholar would be appalled that this principle would be called upon to
justify the unthinkable destruction of civilian populations that modern
warfare has brought us?
If the just war principles are in need of rethinking, it is a
reflection of the changed situation in which the Church finds herself. In
spite of the appeals to God and the high moral ground proclaimed by both
sides in this conflict, and in spite of the American state's appropriation
of the just war lingo, these are different times. In such an age we must
distance ourselves from mindless nationalism, inwardly detaching ourselves
from the goals and values of what St. Paul calls "the world." It is a time
to recognize more than ever that the Church is called to be prophetic,
counter-cultural, even adversarial. We need to question the comfortable
relationship the Church has developed with the military machine. The
Catholic writer Michael Garvey recently pointed out that, according to a
survey by a friend of his who teaches at a Catholic university, Catholic
ROTC cadets can name the parts of an M-16 but cannot list the criteria for
a just war or define "conscientious objector." While there is conflicting
testimony about the early Church's attitude toward military service, there
is no evidence that platoons were invited into the cathedral for training.
Catholic institutions ought not to be centers of militarism. The
chaplaincy program, too, is a scandal of assimilation. Chaplains are
members of the military, dress in military uniforms and strive for
rank-hardly a situation conducive to moral witness. The justification for
this approach is "to win the trust of one's parishioners", but the Church
does not buy such reasoning in the case of nuns who want to exchange their
habits for lay dress, or college chaplains who opt for blue jeans and
sneakers. In a sacramental Church, the visible sign is important and the
identification of the chaplain with the military weakens his ability to
speak the difficult truth to the souls in his charge.
In this violent age we are called, perhaps more than ever, to the
role of peacemaker, a blessed role which if accepted wholeheartedly will
lead to the other promised blessing of persecution and revilement. But can
we do less? Let us join our voices to the prayer of our Holy Father: "no
more war.... Give our era days of peace. War no more. Amen."
-DN
