Christian Just War Doctrine, Is it Feasible Against Islam?
by Tom Snodgrass | View comments |
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As was the case in the World War II Pacific Theater, the Islamic enemy’s disregard for any human or Judeo-Christian standard of morality makes the application of normally acceptable jus in bello criteria absolutely impossible and therefore inapplicable.
The jus ad bellum criteria are (1) just cause in terms of self-defense and protection of innocents; (2) right intention to bring justice and peace; (3) proper authority and public declaration meaning that the declaration of war is executed only by heads of state within a legal framework; (4) last resort after other options have been seriously considered, although not necessarily tried; (5) probability of success to block violence which is going to be futile; and (6) macro proportionality which weighs expected universal good to accrue from its prosecuting the war against the expected universal evils that will result. The jus in bello criteria are (1) micro proportionality that weighs the use of a particular weapon or tactic to determine that it is proportional to the threat; and (2) discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.
– Christian Just War: jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria
“The way of the warrior is acceptance of death.”
– Bushido: Japanese (Tokugawa) Way of the Warriors
“Do not live in shame as a prisoner. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you.”
– The Japanese Military Field Service Code issued by General Tojo in 1941
The world civilization historians Will and Ariel Durant in their 1968 book, The Lessons of History, wrote: “In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.” Looking at the 39 years since 1968, it is safe to say that the 268 number still stands. Since only 8% of recorded human history has been war-free by the Durant count, it is not surprising that mankind has attempted with very limited success to regulate the frequency of war and its conduct. What is surprising however are the huge numbers of people in Western Civilization who continually attempt to deny the reality of war. Whether or not war is an integral component to human existence (see my essays On War, Part I and Part II), war’s frequency attests to its unavoidability in human history when politico-religious entities reach irreconcilable impasse.
Since war is an undeniable reality in human life, and war in the guise of Islamic Jihad is currently erupting in every corner of the globe, I propose to analyze whether a viable moral approach to the war against Islam and it’s Jihad exists from a military man’s point of view. In order to do so, I would like to look at the morality of war-making in historical context, and then use that historical framework to examine the conflict between the US and the those who carry out Jihad to install Shari’a in Dar al-Harb (the “Land of War” or the territory where the Shari’a is not the dominant politico-legal system – or put simply, “the West”).
What are the three foremost positions concerning morality in warfare?
One of mankind’s first recorded discussions concerning morality in warfare is found in Thucydides’ passage in his master work the Peloponnesian Wars (431-404 BCE), wherein Athenian commanders, who possessed overwhelming force, approached their adversary before commencing the battle with a surrender ultimatum stating that they would hear no protestations about justice, rather the weaker adversary must consider the incontestable facts of the situation and surrender. In other words, the strong do as they will, and the weak do as they must. Obviously these ancients dismissed the concept of restraint in war as irrelevant. To their way of thinking, after the war has been won, humans can then return to a moral political order that is structured on restraint and civility in daily affairs. In other words, these men understood quite intuitively that war against one’s enemy required a different order of existence than existed within a given political order made up of fellow citizens. Within this context, war simply cannot fit into a moral framework of restraint. Such thinking might be termed the “Reality School.”
Directly opposed to the Reality School is what we might designate the “Pacifism School.” This understanding declares the taking of human life to be wrong under any circumstances. Pacifism’s codification goes back to the same general time in human history during which the Greeks were developing the Reality School, but it occurred in a different part of the ancient world. By about 500 BCE, Jainism had taken root in India espousing the doctrine that all killing of life, human and nonhuman, was simply unacceptable. Obviously pacifism never acquired a dominant stature, even in India, for the reasons one might suppose.
Interestingly there seems to have been no philosophical concept of pacifism in Ancient Greece, except as limiting violence between individuals. But pacifism took off in the Mediterranean world with the advent of Christianity in the first century CE. The pre-Constantine Church quite literally practiced Christ’s admonitions to “love your enemies” and to “turn the other cheek.” The church fathers Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE) wrote in opposition to such unqualified pacifism, attempting to develop Christian interpretations which would condone violence to counter injustice in specified circumstances. Nevertheless, pacifism continued to flourish in Christian sects like the Quakers, Mennonites, and Amish.
While the doctrine of a specific pacifist group may vary according to its leadership and accepted dogma, almost all varieties of pacifism are founded on the idea that war and violence are unjustifiable and all international disputes should be settled by peaceful means.
After the carnage of World War I, pacifism gained many adherents during the 1930’s as the clouds of war gathered again over Europe, but the horror of Hitler’s Nazism appeared to fully discredit pacifism as a rational policy and way of life, at least in the minds of most reasonable people. While pacifism maintained some immaterial political influence following World War II, the unpopularity of the Vietnam War reinvigorated the ideology of pacificism to such a degree that it remains a dominant theme in American politics today. American pacifism is carried forward by the anti-war movements extant and quite influential in the Democrat Party and to a lesser extent in the Republican Party.
Since the adherents of the Pacifism School have only a tenuous relationship with reality, pacifism as dogma remains an anathema to the majority of rational Americans. In today’s world, the pacifists are so obsessed with a fanatical, irrational, and perverse “righteousness,” they fail to grasp that pacifism survives only when the pacifist lives in a nation that is peculiarly not pacifist and is therefore prepared to use the violence of war to fend off its (and the pacifist’s) enemies.
The third position regarding the morality of war is labeled the “Just War School,” which stands in opposition to both the Reality School and the Pacifism School because it recognizes the necessity of protecting the pacifists from the realists. Just War as an organized body of thought predated the Christian era when the Roman statesman Cicero (106-43 BCE) first formulated a just war theory, but it was far less sophisticated than later Christian doctrine. Cicero identified two bases for a justified war: (1) Defend yourself or your community from danger, and (2) defend/avenge yours or your community’s honor.
Obviously those two premises were inadequate from a Christian standpoint, so in the post-Constantine Roman Empire as Christians began to occupy responsible authority positions in the Roman government, Augustine set about to construct a Christian Just War theory from the proposition that nowhere in the gospels did Christ forbid his followers from defending one’s loved ones from life threatening attack. Augustine’s work was later expanded by the Church theologian Thomas Aquinas, the Protestant jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645 CE), and two Catholic jurists, Franciscus de Victoria (1480-1546 CE) and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617 CE), to name just some of the more notable. These men were the ground-breaking pioneers who contributed the main corpus of Western thought on Just War. Just War doctrine has been hotly debated since it was first introduced for the same reasons it is under intense debate today – is it adequate and/or applicable in our circumstances?
What is Christian Just War?
The generally accepted factors used to judge whether or not war is justifiable in the Christian tradition are divided into criteria for justified war (jus ad bellum) and criteria for determining whether the war is fought justly (jus in bello). The jus ad bellum criteria are (1) just cause in terms of self-defense and protection of innocents; (2) right intention to bring justice and peace; (3) proper authority and public declaration meaning that the declaration of war is executed only by heads of state within a legal framework; (4) last resort after other options have been seriously considered, although not necessarily tried; (5) probability of success to block violence which is going to be futile; and (6) macro proportionality that weighs expected universal good to accrue from its prosecuting the war against the expected universal evils that will result. The jus in bello criteria are (1) micro proportionality that weighs the use of a particular weapon or tactic to determine that it is proportional to the threat; and (2) discrimination between combatants and non-combatants.
According to Christian Just War theory, failure to meet the standard in any of the individual jus ad bellum criteria means the entire jus ad bellum justification is invalid. However, a second stipulation is that jus ad bellum and jus in bello are separate and distinct sets of criteria. Consequently, failure to meet the standard in either of the jus in bello criteria (i.e., how the war is fought) does not nullify the jus ad bellum justification for the war itself.
Is Christian Just War adequate and/or applicable?
In totality, Just War has historically provided a set of mutually agreed upon rules of combat, generally between similar enemies acting within a Judeo-Christian tradition and a European heritage. It has been argued by war theorists that Just War theory should be universal, but the utter impracticality of imposing artificial moral standards in a “kill or be killed” scenario became strikingly evident in the Pacific Theater during World War II, where the Japanese refused to be bound by international protocols because their battlefield behavior was dictated by the Japanese Shinto religion and its Bushido warrior code.
Such Just War considerations as right intention, last resort, probability of success, macro proportionality, micro proportionality, and discrimination were totally irrelevant to the Japanese in their conduct of the war. For example, the probability of success criteria was in direct conflict with the suicide instructions in the Bushido code — “The way of the warrior is acceptance of death” – and with General Tojo’s instructions to die rather than surrender – “Do not live in shame as a prisoner. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you.” Similarly, the Just War criteria which demands discrimination between combatants and non-combatants was absent as a matter of fact and dogma in the “rape of Nanking,” when Japanese troops were encouraged by their officers to invent new and hideous ways to slaughter Chinese civilians and prisoners of war.
Ironically, the utter disregard for even basic humanity in the conduct of war by the strategically inferior Japanese caused the strategically superior US military “to do as they must” and adopt a “take no prisoners” mentality. In other words, when our superior military forces confronted inferior and overwhelmed Japanese forces, we could not war as we might against another Christian nation and take prisoners as is common for the stronger force. The Japanese quite effectively precluded such jus in bello war tactics by employing suicide grenade attacks and hidden pistol deceptions. As a consequence, American forces had no choice but to do as they must and burn out trapped Japanese with flamethrowers or to destroy them with satchel charges in their caves and bunkers.
On a larger institutional scale, Japanese Bushidoism left the US Air Force with no option but the utter destruction of the Japanese suicide resistance “capability” (recall the war formula: War = Motivation + Capability) by firebomb and nuclear attacks, thus killing hundreds of thousands who would not have had to die except for the fact that the Bushido warriors simply approached war in a very un-Christian way. While the US Government made no formal announcement renouncing Just War tactics, there is no doubt that Just War — jus in bello — was abandoned in our war against the Japanese because it was absolutely necessary given the enemy we confronted. The American people and Western Civilization in general quietly accepted the reality of the situation with no protest.
Does this mean that our war against the Bushido Japanese was not just? Hardly. For the US to have adopted any other measures would have prolonged the war and increased the American death toll quite unjustly since it was the Japanese who created the circumstances of war. But even the strictest pacifists who refuse to accept this irrefutable logic must nonetheless admit that America’s tactics suspending our strict adherence to the jus in bello criteria does not affect whatsoever the justness of the war in the first instance, since, as noted above, jus ad bellum and jus in bello are separate and distinct sets of criteria.
So what is our alternative today?
In the terms of reference I’ve framed for this essay, there is no doubt that the Japanese adhered de rigueur to the Reality School of warfare. While it is manifestly the case that our war against the Japanese was just in the Christian context of adhering to the jus ad bellum criteria, I have demonstrated that even our “no prisoners” and “fire/nuclear bombing” tactics (jus in bello) were quite justified in the face of an enemy who accepted no limits on his destructive power, even in cases of quite obvious defeat and surrender.
With this background, we turn to the War Against the West waged by Islam, or their term, Jihad. Clearly an intellectually honest reading of Suras 8:12, 9:5, 9:29, and 9:111, leaves no doubt we are once again in a worldwide war with an enemy of the Reality School; that is, an enemy without humanity or grounding in Judeo-Christian morality. This is especially true as understood in the context of the legal interpretations of these mandates by all of the historical, traditional, and authoritative legal schools of Islam, together with the actual conduct of the Muslim world, both its violent warriors and its masses which remain overwhelmingly indifferent to this violence. That being the case, talk of slavishly satisfying all Christian Just War criteria is worse than irrelevant for this enemy; it is morally reprehensible. As was the case with the Japanese threat, only the suicidal or the moronic would advocate strictly adhering to jus in bello criteria or employing the methods of the Pacifism School in response to Jihad.
So today we find ourselves facing an Islam-initiated war of such violence that it appears to make the bloodcurdling savagery of the Japanese Bushido appear almost tame. Only those blinded by the most dangerous ideologies (both on the anti-War Left and Right) would argue that the war against Islam does not meet the jus ad bellum criteria used to prosecute our war against the Japanese in 1941.
But the Pacifists among us who might concede that we have just cause to go to war against the Taliban and al Qaeda, insist we apply the jus in bello criteria of micro proportionality that weighs the use of a particular weapon or tactic to determine that it is proportional to the threat, and discrimination between combatants and non-combatants. Thus, the howls by the anti-war crowd from both ends of the political spectrum against the rendition programs, interrogation methods designed to extract valuable life saving information through physical force or the threat of physical force, collateral “non-combatant” casualties, GITMO, and the rest of the long list of “war crimes” we are alleged to have committed.
Obviously the suicidal nature of Islamic Jihadists poses many of the same problems of micro proportionality for the American military we confronted in WWII. Similarly, no nonsense rules of engagement on the battlefield to protect the lives of our American soldiers subduing Jihadists should parallel those used on Iwo Jima by the US Marines. Of a Japanese Iwo Jima garrison of 22,000, only 212 survived the battle as prisoners-of-war. There is no practical difference between the suicidal commitments of the Japanese Bushido warrior and the Islamic Jihadist, so the Christian Just War question of micro proportionality must be applied only after due priority is given to safeguarding the lives of American service personnel.
Discrimination between combatants and non-combatants in the War Against Islam and its Jihadists requires the same kind of analysis as the criteria of proportionality. In other words, Just War doctrine cannot be applied in some Judeo-Christian vacuum when we confront an enemy operating wholly outside of that context. The standards regarding who is and who is not a combatant – the criteria of Christian Just War doctrine later embodied in the Geneva Convention – is only appropriate for a Napoleonic-era rural battlefield where orderly lines of soldiers in brightly colored uniforms (required by the Christian world’s accepted law of war) marched toward each other with single-shot muskets with no civilian anywhere near the battlefield. In fact, distinctive uniforms were the result of international agreement in order to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. Certainly this is the preferred scenario for sparing civilians in warfare; however, these conditions no longer obtain in the world of 21st century Jihad where any Muslim faithful to Shari’a is a potential suicide bomber, regardless of age or gender. So as Sura 111 makes clear, any man, woman, or child believer takes on the mantel of combatant by virtue of his or her Islamic faith.
One way for the layman to understand this entire analysis would be to ask the following. What would happen if some alien force which knew no rules of engagement, no civility, no just war tactics, attacked mankind mercilessly in an effort to conquer the planet for its natural resources? Could a rational or moral man countenance the pleas of the Pacifists or even of the “conservatives” to refrain from “unjust” war tactics?
Conclusion
My analysis of the factors bearing on the adequacy and applicability of Christian Just War to the present conflict presented in this essay leads me to conclude that there is no question that jus ad bellum criteria are fully satisfied from the US standpoint. And just as was the case in the World War II Pacific Theater, the Islamic enemy’s disregard for any human or Judeo-Christian standard of morality makes the application of normally acceptable jus in bello criteria absolutely impossible and therefore inapplicable. Furthermore, as World War II-era Americans accepted this reality and went on with the war approving whatever was necessary because “no prisoners” and “fire/nuclear bombing” were essential to quickly end an unjust Japanese-initiated war, so too Americans must now accept that all weapons and targets are justly within the “engagement” for US war fighters in this existential war against Islamic Jihad. In this war, the stakes are even higher than they were in 1941.
dyerushalmi@saneworks.us
http://www.saneworks.us/
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