Does US Airstrike in Iraq Violate Just War Doctrine?

[Aquinas11]

bin Laden actually was warned frequently by both Bush and Obama that the US intended to capture or kill him because he had been responsible for an attack on US soil, so they actually had given notice of their intention

See? This is why your posts make ZERO sense. Bin Laden wasn’t warned of the attack. Pakistan Government was not notified and their airspace violated. But it’s ok since a Dem POTUS acted.

We went into a foreign country and carried out an assassination. To the best of my knowledge, neither the target nor the host country was ever given notice of our intention to do this. I really don’t know how anybody has a moral defense for this.

You talking about Bin Laden? Or Soleimani? Don’t answer

 

[HarryStotle]

twoshoes:

Now we are condemned for protecting our people.

That excuse for war only holds if our people are in clear imminent danger, and then only to the extent necessary to avert that danger. So far all we see is the remote possibility of danger, the same as we see from a dozen other countries.

What we see and what the intelligence agencies of the American military see are two different things. That is why this discussion in a forum where all contributors have very little access to what Soleimani was actually up to and what military intelligence knew is so much empty verbiage.

The bigger problem is the lack of trust – and with good reason on both sides of the political divide – that the average US citizen has in the leaders of the country, including the security agencies. When citizens side with a known terrorist over their own leader, that definitively shows dysfunction – and it isn’t even half Trump’s fault. It is a sign of complete political failure. The truth rather than partisanship or uninformed bias had better become top priority very soon.

 

[Johann_du_Toit]

The US and Iran have technically been at war since 1979 (with the Iranian revolution and the occupation of the US Embassy, which was a breach of the Vienna convention). Iran has for decades sponsored terrorist attacks against not only the US, but other countries as well (the assassination of Iranian dissidents in Germany and the Herzbollah led bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994). Iranian backed militias attacked the US embassy just weeks ago, almost certainly with the help and sponsorship of Soleimani. The idea that the US should be expected to do absolutely nothing in retaliation for such aggression is absurd.

Soleimani, who led the Revolutionary Guard’s Al Quds Force, whose purpose was Foreign Operations (i.e supporting foreign proxies such as Hezbollah and Iraqi militias in carrying out attacks against the US and it’s allies) was in Iraq specifically to meet with Shia militias to coordinate more attacks such as the one against the US embassy. In fact his setting foot in Iraq so shortly after the Embassy attack was a provocation.

The question on whetherthis attack is justifiable in terms of Just War Theory is whether or not Soleimani’s death will unleash greater evils than his demise was intended to prevent. Time will tell, but it is not looking good right now.

 

[Psalms62]

What we see and what the intelligence agencies of the American military see are two different things

European diplomats scramble to cool tensions in Iran-U.S. conflict​

“The Trump administration stands alone, which explains why none of the E.U. governments were consulted about [Soleimani’s] killing,” one analyst said.”

In continental Europe, public opinion is clearly opposed to war, and no politician that seeks reelection would jeopardize their fortunes by beating the war drums against a country such as Iran,” Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, professor at the School for Oriental and African Studies in London, said. “So the Trump administration stands alone, which explains why none of the E.U. governments were consulted about [Soleimani’s] killing.

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French president Emmanuel Macron also discussed tensions in the Middle East with Iraq’s president and the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates on Saturday in an attempt to avoid a further escalation.

The Trump administration has insisted the killing was a “decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad”.

However, a number of Democratic 2020 election candidates have criticised Mr Trump’s decision to authorise the strike as reckless.

“President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel,” Joe Biden, the Democratic frontrunner, wrote in a statement.

Meanwhile, senator Bernie Sanders warned that Mr Trump was bringing the US “closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more.

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Meanwhile, Pope Francis also urged restraint amid growing tensions in the Persian Gulf. At the Sunday Angelus prayer at the Vatican, the pope spoke of a terrible air of tension that could now be felt in many parts of the world, without mentioning the current Iran-US conflict.

“I call on all sides to keep the flame of dialogue and self-restraint alight and ward off the shadow of hostility,” he said. “War only brings death and destruction,” Pope Francis added.

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(So) Communication between the different agencies are better? Now? Did someone forget about notifying the European agencies?

 

[Dave27360]

President Trump did an interview with Rush Limbaugh yesterday 1/6/2019 explaining why he decided to do a drone strike. I won’t post the source here as I think the site would violate Forum Rules.

Here is a quote.

"THE PRESIDENT: Well, this should have been done for the last 15 to 20 years, him in particular. He was their real military leader. He’s a terrorist. He was designated a terrorist by President Obama, and then Obama did nothing about it except give them $150 billion and — even more incredibly — $1.8 billion in cash. You hear me talking about that all the time, and you talk about it all the time. He gave them all this money. He never wanted to do anything about it. President Bush should have taken him out. He’s responsible for the IEDs.

Those are the roadside bombs and the bombs that blow up all over the place — and then the sister, which is the big one, the big version, that actually knocks out tanks and kills everybody within earshot. A really horrible weapon. He’s responsible for all those incredible young people over at Walter Reed — where they do such a great job, by the way — where they lose their arms and their legs and all. He gave so much of that technology. Much of that stuff was made in Iran. And he should have been taken out a long time ago. And we had a shot at it, and we took him out. And we’re a lot safer now because of it. We’ll see what happens. We’ll see what the response is, if any. But you’ve seen what I said our response will be.

RUSH: Well, yeah.

THE PRESIDENT: Our country is a lot safer, Rush."

 

[PetraG]

Bin Laden wasn’t warned of the attack.

I heard they were after him. I’m pretty sure he knew it, too.

(If you ask whether there was an imminent threat that required killing bin Laden on the spot when he was captured, it is a fair question. I can’t answer it, I think it is fairly likely that there wasn’t, but I have no evidence that there wasn’t. Had it been possible to take him alive and it was not necessary to kill him to prevent loss of life, then yes, there was a moral duty to preserve his life.)

And no, none of this is “OK” because a Democrat did it or “not OK” because a Republican did it. Moral law does not work like that.

You talking about Bin Laden? Or Soleimani? Don’t answer

Probably both, yes.

We (as Catholics, meaning as people who have indisputably reliable moral law) don’t have a moral law in which the ends justify using any means to accomplish them.

 

[PetraG]

THE PRESIDENT: Our country is a lot safer, Rush."

Um, no. Based on the crush of mourners at his funeral, Donald Trump just made a martyr.

He’s responsible for all those incredible young people over at Walter Reed — where they do such a great job, by the way — where they lose their arms and their legs and all. He gave so much of that technology. Much of that stuff was made in Iran…

I don’t think the United States is in a position to talk about who is responsible for what killing technology has been furnished around the world since the close of World War II. (Iran-Contra, anyone?)

Again, none of this is restricted to one political party. This has more to do with Presidents not wanting to be bothered with getting permission when they want to use powers that properly belong to Congress. Forget moral law; they don’t want to be fettered by the Constitution, either.

 

[Aquinas11]

I heard they were after him

Ok so now all that is required is that Soleimani knows the US are after him, NOT that Trump give notice of this specific attack.

Raise your hand if you believe Soleimani didn’t think the US were after him

 

[Dave27360]

To clarify the quotes mentioned were from the President’s interview with Rush Limbaugh. They are not my personal opinion.

 

[PetraG]

Killing him was no different than kill any other random hadji that wanted to kill Americans for jihad.

OK, so pretty much the moral law is that we kill their leaders and members of their military whenever and whereever we get the chance and they kill our leaders and members of our military whenever and whereever they get the chance, ad infinitum or until the Second Coming. That’s our military ethics.

Constitutionally, terrorism has given us a world where we are always facing what we would define as an “imminent threat” and an emergency, so the President of any party can order whatever he wants whenever he wants.

Yeah, the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive self-defense means the Just War Theory has been totally gutted.

We’ve been there for 16 years.

It is still a sovereign nation, no matter how long we’ve been there, unless it is only an empty pretense that we’re not actually an occupying authority that gives itself its own permission to do whatever it wants whenever it wants.

At this rate, we’re soon going to go from being the world’s only super power to the worlds Alone Super Power.

 

[PetraG]

To clarify the quotes mentioned were from the President’s interview with Rush Limbaugh. They are not my personal opinion.

I got that, but it was worth saying.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Um, no. Based on the crush of mourners at his funeral, Donald Trump just made a martyr.

Well, he’s definitely a state-ordered martyr. That title goes well with the state-ordered funeral, and it’s mandatory participation.

I’ve always thought that the best ‘fake mourning’ was to be found in North Korea. But the show of “grieving” for Soleimani rivaled even a North Korean state funeral for its sheer entertainment value. It’s quite funny to see all these tough looking Persian men having to force crocodile tears out of themselves for the sake of the regime. It makes one wonder how in love with the regime they really are.

 

[PetraG]

I’ve always thought that the best ‘fake mourning’ was to be found in North Korea. But the show of “grieving” for Soleimani rivaled even North Korea’s for entertainment value. It’s quite funny to see all these tough looking Persian men having to force crocodile tears out of themselves for the sake of the regime. It makes one wonder how in love with the regime they really are.

For its entertainment value??

That quote is right up there with saying that putting on a Lakers uniform doesn’t make a JV team into Kobe Bryant.

If some foreign power (Heaven forbid) were to assassinate our President, even his political enemies in this country would be outraged. An assassination like that is about more than the person targetted. It is about the nation targetted.

This strike was not done out of necessity. This was done out of calculation. It was an immoral calculation, and the chances are that it will be a politically disasterous miscalculation, too.

 

[PetraG]

Indeed. A nation that gave us permission to conduct operations in their borders and in their air space.

We have abused the permission, and so their parliament has asked their President to rescind it. He probably won’t, but let’s not pretend that this was an action on the “anticipated” list when we were invited in.

The reason the President didn’t ask for permission is not that he assumed he had permission to do it because it was a just action that anyone might have anticipated was implied when we were invited. The reason he didn’t ask is because he knew he wouldn’t get permission and he didn’t want to be told “no.” I know what we’d think of someone who abused our permission like that, particularly if they abused our permission in order to, say, assassinate someone visiting Washington because they had been warned to stay home.

Yeah, there would be hell to pay, that’s what there would be, even if the power had been invited in to help to protect our nation and to fight a common enemy. Of course, we’re not in the habit of thinking how we would see things if someone else were the “super power” and we were just an average-sized sovereign nation expecting to be given respect due to a sovereign nation in spite of whatever political or military difficulties we were having. It has apparently been too long for us to remember how we took things back then.

Again, though, that does not mean that if the Iraqis had given permission or even urged us to do it that our Catholic understanding of moral law would have allowed us to do it. Those are two very different things.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

An assassination like that is about more than the person targetted.

Clearly, that is the case.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (L), accompanied by Ebrahim Raisi, Chief Justice of Iran, in front of the coffin of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani (AFP Photo/-)

 

[PetraG]

Clearly, that is the case.

I suppose it could be argued that they could not possibly hate us any more than they already do, but I think there will be those who were not so hardened who will be hardened against us now.

Can we blame them? This wasn’t according to our stated morals. If anything, I would think that they’d say that among all our Presidents, at least Trump is open about his lack of moral restraint and his willingness to do whatever he feels like doing, if he sees a strategic advantage to doing it. In their place, I’d say that the other US Presidents were all hypocrites, and this one is brazen. The difference is that this one is very impulsive and careless in his political calculation. He doesn’t bother to learn about a situation; he assumes he knows it all and that being willing to do anything at the drop of a hat gives him the advantage.

I am afraid we are all going to live to see the world show why governments usually know better than to operate like that. Diplomatic pretense may be hypocritical, but I think we may find out the hard way how much violence it has actually been preventing. I hope I’m wrong, but I can help but think Mr. Trump made us thousands more enemies willing to martyr themselves because of this one action.

I also don’t think anyone in the Middle East gives a fig about US Democrats or Republicans. The difference has to be Coke and Pepsi to them.

 

[o_mlly]

We (as Catholics, meaning as people who have indisputably reliable moral law) don’t have a moral law in which the ends justify using any means to accomplish them.

Yes. And we do have moral laws that define human acts that are justified by their ends. All acts of and in war are not intrinsically evil. As posted previously, acts in self-defense are not intrinsically evil.

 

[PetraG]

Yes. And we do have moral laws that define human acts that are justified by their ends. All acts of and in war are not intrinsically evil. As posted previously, acts in self-defense are not intrinsically evil.

This is true, provided certain conditions must be met. I think it is time to admit we’re getting pretty fast and loose with those definitions, to the point that our “just” actions have become indistinguishable from any other nation’s code of conduct.

The more dangerous the world is, the more willing people are to trade being free and being ethical because they want to feel safe. Being free and being ethical takes a lot of courage.

At any rate, I don’t think the assassination met the requirements we are taught by the Church. There are people here who disagree. I don’t think we’ve had from anyone with any formal status when it comes to answering the question, and whatever the answer is, what is done is done. Time will tell what consequences will follow.

Oh, and by the way, just as a parting thought: Deliberately destroying cultural sites (rather than tolerating damage because it cannot be helped) as the President has threatened to do would be utterly indefensible. There is no excuse for it. I wish Congress would exclude it to the point of specifically defining violation of that boundary by the President or his deputies as an impeachable offense.

 

[phil3]

I hope I live to see the fall of western democracy, and that all governments submit themselves to the authority of the church. But as long as secular government remains the norm I think it foolish to expect them to act as though there’s anything above them.

You wont, but why just Western Democracies?

 

[phil3]

Very strange reasoning.