Before launching an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, we must pause to reflect on whether such military action is morally justifiable. As heirs of the West, we Americans have the privilege of drawing upon a tradition of moral reflection on war that is at least 2000 years old. The greatest philosophers and theologians of our history have contributed to the “just war” theory, including Cicero, Ambrose, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Vitoria, and Suarez, and this tradition has been embraced by a broad consensus of theologians and moral theorists from many religious and secular backgrounds. Just war theory embodies two principal ideas: the sacredness of human life, and the impermissibility of “doing evil that good may come” (as St. Paul put it in Romans chapter 3).
For the sake of argument, I will assume in this essay the worst possible case: namely, that the Iranian government is intent on pursuing the creation of nuclear weapons, and that there is a significant likelihood that Iran would either use these weapons directly against the United States or Israel, or give them to hostile terrorist groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah. Since a good end, no matter how important, cannot justify evil means, we must look to the just war theory for guidance in discerning what means for self-defense are permissible.
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Just War
Much of "classical international law" theory, developed by the Catholic Scholastics, notably the 16th-century Spanish Scholastics such as Vitoria and Suarez, and then the Dutch Protestant Scholastic Grotius and by 18th- and 19th-century jurists, was an explanation of the criteria for a just war. For war, as a grave act of killing, needs to be justified.
My own view of war can be put simply: a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already existing coercive rule over them.
During my lifetime, my ideological and political activism has focused on opposition to America's wars, first because I have believed our waging them to be unjust, and, second, because war, in the penetrating phrase of the libertarian Randolph Bourne in World War I, has always been "the health of the State," an instrument for the aggrandizement of State power over the health, the lives, and the prosperity, of their subject citizens and social institutions. Even a just war cannot be entered into lightly; an unjust one must therefore be anathema.
There have been only two wars in American history that were, in my view, assuredly and unquestionably proper and just; not only that, the opposing side waged a war that was clearly and notably unjust. Why? Because we did not have to question whether a threat against our liberty and property was clear or present; in both of these wars, Americans were trying to rid themselves of an unwanted domination by another people. And in both cases, the other side ferociously tried to maintain their coercive rule over Americans. In each case, one side — "our side" if you will — was notably just, the other side — "their side" — unjust.
To be specific, the two just wars in American history were the American Revolution and the War for Southern Independence.
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