Just WarA Service and Sermon by Harvey Harrison
Henry V, Act IV, Scene III – Shakespeare “He which hath no stomach to this fight let him depart. His passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse, we would not die in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to die with us, this day is called the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day and comes safe home will stand a tiptoe when this day is named and arouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day and see old age will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors and say, “tomorrow is Saint Crispian.” Then will he stripe his sleeve and show the scars, and say these wounds I had on “Crispian’s Day”. Old men forget, yet all shall be forgot, but he’ll remember with advantages what feats he did that day. Then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household lords, Harry the King, Bedford and Exetor, Warwick and Talbot, Salsbury and Gloucester, be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. This story shall the good man teach his son, and Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered - we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother, be he ne-er so vile this day shall gentle his condition and gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day.”
“The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected. The art of war is governed by five constants, all of which need to be taken into account. They are: The Moral Law; Heaven; Earth; the Commander; method and discipline.” SUN TZU MEDITATION – “WHEN IS WAR JUSTIFIED” Excerpts from he U.S. Bishops' Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, (1983)
The moral theory of the "just-war" or "limited-war" doctrine begins with the presumption that binds all Christians: We should do no harm to our neighbors. Only if war cannot be rationally avoided does the teaching then seek to restrict and reduce its horrors. It does this by establishing a set of rigorous conditions that must be met if the decision to go to war is to be morally permissible. Such a decision, especially today, requires extraordinarily strong reasons for overriding the presumption in favor of peace and against war. The conditions for a just war are as follows:
There must be Just cause, Competent authority must declare war, Comparative justice must be on the side of the declarant, War must declared only with right intention, The declaration of war must be a last resort, There must be a probability of success, means of war must be proportional, The execution of the war must be discriminate. SERMON
On September 11th, as a part of an ongoing terrorist campaign against the secular west, Islamic terrorists hijacked four civilian airlines and used them as weapons of destruction. In response President Bush declared war on terrorism, posted a $25 million dollar reward for the capture of Osama Bin Laden, dead or alive, ordered a military attack against Afghanistan and polarized the world by stating that:
“Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader. Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocence, they have become outlaws and murderers, themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.”
All of these actions were taken with the support of more than 85% of the people in this country and in concert with over 40 other nations in the world. On September 18th, Bush made his declaration of war and his promise to obtain revenge. By September 25th he had identified his demons: Osama Bin Laden, his Al-Qaeda network and the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan and made a promise to eradicate them in a war that could take a long time. And on October 7, 2001, Bush announced the actual beginning of military operations by stating that:
“On my orders the United States military has begun strikes against Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. These carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.
My anguish, which had begun on the morning of September 11th as I watched the towers fall and listened to the growing death toll grew into moral outrage as I listened to Bush gear up our war machine. Along with Barbara Kingsolver, the novelist:
“I cannot find the glory in this day…. We’ve answered one terrorist act with another raining death on the most war scarred, terrified populous that ever crept to a doorway and looked out…..We’ve killed whoever was too poor or crippled to flee, plus four humanitarian aid workers who coordinated the removal of land mines from the beleaguered Afghan soil. That office is now ruble and so is my heart.”
In the days and weeks that followed September 11th I wanted very much to stand up in this church and with a call to arms as eloquent as that of Henry V on the fields of Agincort, mobilize this liberal religious community, my religious home, to action against the war. I didn’t have that opportunity immediately after the events of September 11th, which has given me time to reflect on my anger and my anguish and to come to perhaps a deeper understanding of both my reactions and my opinion about the war that we have waged on the country and people of Afghanistan.
My dilemma is that I believe that we must bring to justice the people who perpetrated the violence of September. On the other hand I was and am opposed to this war against Afghanistan. It was this dilemma, a desire for justice and opposition to the course that our political leadership took that has become the basis of this talk. I sought guidance in the precepts of Unitarian Universalism on how to decide whether this war was moral or not. I found none. I asked the Unitarian Universalist Association for copies of sermons that UU ministers were giving on this topic - and received none. Finally, I found the Just War doctrine. A doctrine that has been developed within the Catholic Church for about 1700 years. It has given me a new way to think about my reactions to these acts of terrorism and and my countries response to them. These then are my reflections.
The doctrine began in the fourth century, when Augustine stated in his work, “The City of God” that:
“A war is justified only by the injustice of an aggressor and that injustice ought to be a source of grief to any good man because it is human injustice.”
This thought became the basis for the development of the Just War Doctrine within the Catholic Church. By the thirteenth century, Aquinas, in his work “The Suma Theologica”, had refined the theory to provide three conditions for a Just War.
First, war must be declared by the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. Second the war must be a response to some crime on the part of the enemy. And third the war must be solely for the advancement of good or the avoidance of evil.
By 1983, the Catholic Bishop’s Pastoral letter, containing the modern recitation of the doctrine, mandated six criteria before a nation is morally justified in going to war and two additional criteria that define the limitations on the employment of force. Those criteria were what you heard in advance of the meditation today. I want to explore some of these criteria in the light of our war against Afghanistan and use them as a mirror to focus on my own reactions.
The Just War doctrine mandates that War is just only to confront "a real and certain danger," i.e., to protect innocent life, to preserve conditions necessary for decent human existence and to secure basic human rights. In the aftermath of September 11, the need for enhanced security and the need to bring the perpetrators of this violence to justice seems obvious.
The doctrine requires Comparative justice. In essence: Which side is sufficiently "right" in a dispute, and are the values at stake critical enough to override the presumption against war? Do the rights and values involved justify killing? Since we can easily delude themselves into believing that God, or right, is clearly on our side, the test of comparative justice may be extremely difficult to apply. Let me read a small portion of an interview held with Osama Bin Laden that was published in an Islamic magazine in November, 1996, after a terrorist attack on United States facilities in Saudi Arabia to show how easy it is to fall into the trap of claiming moral correctness.
There were important effects to the two
explosions….Most important amongst these is
the awareness of the people to the significance
of the American occupation of the country of the
two sacred mosques and that the original decrees
of the regime are a reflection of the wishes of
the American occupiers. So the people
became aware that their main problems were
caused by the American occupiers and their
puppets in the Saudi regime
As for their accusations of terrorizing the innocent, the children and the women, these are in the category accusing others with their own affliction in order to fool the masses. The evidence overwhelmingly shows America and Israel killing the weaker men, women, and children in the Muslim world and elsewhere. A few examples of this are seen in the recent Qana massacre in Lebanon, and the death of more that 600,000 Iraqi children because of the shortage of food and medicine which resulted from the boycotts and sanctions against the Muslim-Iraqi people, also their withholding of arms from the Muslims of Bosnian Herzgovenia leaving them prey to the Christian Serbians who massacred and raped in a manner not seen in contemporary history.”...
A claim for moral virtue may depend upon your point of view.
The next requirement is right intention. Thomas Aquinas states this as: “True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged – not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil doers and of uplifting the good”. The September 18th Des Moines Register headlines and I suspect all other papers in our nation, emblazoned George Bush’s that we are justly seeking revenge. This cry for blood, while comprehensible as a human reaction to the horror of September 11 violates the precepts of the just war doctrine. It is the antithesis of Henry’s call to battle on the fields of Agincort. And while it stirs in us the passions of the glories of battle and of victories won and to be won, it ignores the consequences of foolhardy battle and victories impossible to win.
For resort to war to be morally justified, all peaceful alternatives must have been exhausted. There must be no other way to protect our people. Recall that the primary point of our attack on Afghanistan was to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice, either dead or alive, and to disrupt and destroy the ability of his terrorist network to continue their wanton destruction. Until I started working on this talk, I wasn’t aware that the United States government, during the Clinton administration, was negotiating with the Taliban leadership to obtain the arrest and extradition of Osama Bin Laden from Afghanistan. This included the offer of a $3,000,000 million dollar reward for his capture and delivery into our custody.
The negotiations with Afghanistan fell apart only when the United States bombed terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, as retaliation against the terrorist attacks on United States installations in Saudi Arabia. It was in that instance the act of war that destroyed the possibility of a peaceful resolution. It was a graphic example of a success for terrorism. We gave up a patient diplomatic process that might have led to the extradition of bin Laden for military intervention. We know that the attack wasn’t successful. We neither got bin Laden extradited from Afghanistan nor did we prevent the attack on September 11.
We have no way of knowing at this moment in history what, if any, efforts our leadership made to find peaceful alternatives before resorting to violence. But the public statements and the short time between the attacks of September 11 and our military response, leave little doubt that no patient diplomatic process was tried.
The doctrine next requires a Probability of success. The purpose being to prevent irrational resort to force or hopeless resistance when the outcome of either will be disproportionate or futile. It requires a prudential calculation of the likelihood that the means used will bring the justified ends sought.
Has not history clearly shown us that terrorism will not end in the face of military attacks. The ongoing conflicts in Northern Ireland and the brutal conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians provide only the most immediate and graphic examples of this fact. And you’ll note that our leaders in this instance have not really defined success for us. George Bush initially defined success in this adventure as the death or capture of Osama Bin Laden. Is he really so foolish as to believe that the death of one man or the destruction of training camps built and financed by that man (to some extent financed by CIA funds during the Afghani’s war with Russia) will end the conflict between radical Islamic fundamentalists and the secular west.
In any fanatical philosophy, death leads only to martyrdom, attack leads only to recruitment of additional oppressed and desperate people looking for a message of hope and salvation.
If war is declared, the just war doctrine requires Proportionality in the response. This means that the damage to be inflicted and the costs incurred by war must be proportionate to the good expected by taking up arms. I’ve spent a good deal of time looking for statistics on the cost of this war in money, property and lives. I haven’t found any.
There is however anecdotal evidence of the desruction we have caused.
We attacked the city of Kandahar, a city of 500,000, for seventeen straight days and causing more than 250,00 residents of that city to flee. The city became a ghost town after its electrical system was destroyed. It’s water system was destroyed.
The New York Times has reported that we dropped a 1,000 pound bomb on a center for the elderly – two 500 pound bombs on a residential area near Kabul and cluster bombs on the city of Heart which spread bomblets over an area of twenty football fields.
On October 25th, 2001, an Israeli centrist, writing in an Israeli newspaper wrote an open letter to George Bush:
It’s unpleasant for me to remind you, but for almost three weeks you have been killing hundreds of Afghan civilians. The truth is, your actions bewilder us, but we chose to remain silent, even though we knew that one does not mow down an entire nation for one Bin Laden. Your overkill, to my great dismay, is targeting innocent people. In short, George, leave Afghanistan immediately and don’t go back there.
Apparently our own allies believe that the “collateral damage” we have caused (a viscous euphemism for the killing of innocent civilians is killing innocent people. Which brings us to the final requirement of the just war doctrine.
A just response must also be discriminate; it must be directed against unjust aggressors, not against innocent people caught up in a war not of their making. The Catholic Bishops Council issued its memorable declaration: "Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation." Remember, it was not the people or the government of Afghanistan, a sovereign nation, that launched the attack on September 11, but a group of fanatical terrorists.
When we attached Afghanistan we did much more than was required to defend ourselves and struck back with force far in excess of that needed to accomplish the goal of destroying the camps and infrastructure of a terrorist network. We toppled a foreign government by military force without any formal declaration of war or even any overt hostile action by that government against our own. The fact that our action against Afghanistan is widely popular and that the Afghani government of the Taliban was unjust and harsh to its own citizens is no justification for our actions. Following the logic of our attack on Afghanistan do we then attack any government that doesn’t comply with our demands, do we then expect attacks on our soil when we refuse to remove our military presence from Saudi Arabia and refuse to stop supporting a repressive Saudi regime or other oppressive regimes.
Do we fail to understand that bin Laden’s actions violate fundamental precepts of Islam and that he, as an uncivilized criminal can be held accountable through civilized institutions. That the world court and most of the Muslim world stand ready to judge bin Laden and other terrorists and to bring them to justice.
CONCLUSION
Since war seems to be a part of the human condition and will continue to be so into the foreseeable future the just war doctrine has provided me with a way to better understand my own reactions I thank the Catholic theologians and scholars who have studied this issue for over 1700 years. It has provided me with something more than my anger.
I believe that this military adventure that the George Bush administration has started is immoral and must be stopped. It is a means to perpetuate terrorism not end it. It represents a victory for the terrorists, not a defeat. This man in the white house, my president, apparently believes that he has the moral right to draw a wanted dead or alive poster on another human being and to destroy another country. This must stop! This war violates fundamental moral precepts and draws us further away from our own sixth principle: The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. It was a response based on the assumption that we must do something immediate in response to an act of terrorists. And so we did. We dropped bombs on a ravaged country. Bombs of such power that it is possible to explode one above the mouth of a cave and kill everyone in the cave by drawing out all the oxygen in the cave. This must stop! The attack of September 11 has been used as a pretext to engage our military in the Philippines and there is serious discussion going on in high political circles about which country we should target next. This must stop! It is being used as a pretext for a massive increase in military spending. This must stop!
We all know the truth of John Isom’s statement, posted on our bulletin board in the hall, that peace isn’t really possible until we live in a truly just world - and maybe not even then. I join with James Turner Johnson, who in closing his book “Morality and Contemporary Warfare” states that:
“A new consensus is needed in which resort to military force is held to the demands of good statecraft, the service of a just and peaceful international order, and its use is strictly limited by the requirements of a consensually observed international humanitarian law.
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