Just War and Jihad: Two Views of War

[Ani_Ibi]

Just War and Jihad: Two Views of WarA Conversation with James Turner Johnson (Rutgers) and Christopher Hitchens(Berkeley)

This is a long – but worthwhile – read. Johnson and Hitchens speak at length, and then a debate ensues among several journalists. I’ve distilled some central notions below, for those who do not want to read the whole debate:

Thomas Aquinas said that jus ad bellum criteria, those necessary for a resort to military force, were (1) sovereign authority, (2) just cause, (3) right intention… What has happened in the twentieth-century recovery of the just war idea is that three additional prudential criteria of (5) proportionality, (6) last resort, and (7) reasonable hope of success have been held up to be the most important things… [In] the ***jihad ***of emergency… individual responsibility and that of [non-combatant family members]… is to oppose… invaders… Muslim radicals claim that not only military invasion but also Western influence amounts to aggression … And anyone who is… by definition a part of the invading army [of Western influence] may be attacked. By whom? Any Muslim and all Muslims.

**James Turner Johnson: **Augustine says that what is evil in war is not the deaths of some who will soon die anyway. What is evil in war is… hatred of the enemy and the desire for vengeance. The point is that war is to be one of the tools that the person or persons in authority have to serve the common good…

David Frum: Just war theory requires us to subscribe to a fiction of sovereignty… We are moving into a world where the circumstances are so radically different from those envisioned by the people who drew up just war theory… that we’ve left the theory behind.

James Turner Johnson: In the quest for proper language, there needs to be some recognition that [Just War Doctrine] is the use of force for the common good, domestically and internationally… [As for] the responsibilities of states when… confronted with… genocide [and] massive human-rights repression… we need to think about the use of force as something that can serve the cause of justice and peace, something that may be a responsibility of a person in sovereign authority.

I suspect that JWD and Jihad have experienced parallel evolutions in very recent years from addressing military threats to addressing notions of common good. Notions of sovereignty appear to have been harder to pin down. In the West, sovereignty straddles duly elected governments and their free citizens and press. In Islamic countries, sovereignty straddles various forms of government, the imams, and figures such as OBL.

In the end, is might right? If not, then what or who is sovereign?

 

[Matt25]

At the time that the Just War theory was developed there were no demacracies in the world. Sovereign nations were nations ruled by Sovereigns. If only democracies can wage Just Wars then the Soviet Union was unjust to fight Nazi Germany. Saudi Arabia supported the invasion of Iraq. Was that decision not Just because Saudi is not a democracy? Was the decision of of France not to invade Iraq Just because they are a democracy?

The Sovereign State of the Vatican is not a democracy does this invalidate its views?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Matt25:

Saudi Arabia supported the invasion of Iraq. Was that decision not Just because Saudi is not a democracy?

Where in the linked debate is this suggested? Is your rhetorical question a strawman?

Matt25:

Was the decision of of France not to invade Iraq Just because they are a democracy?

See my questions above.

Matt25:

The Sovereign State of the Vatican is not a democracy does this invalidate its views?

See my questions above.

I would prefer that posters stay on the topic of the original post, please.

 

[Matt25]

Ani Ibi:

Notions of sovereignty appear to have been harder to pin down. In the West, sovereignty straddles duly elected governments and their free citizens and press.…
In the end, is might right? If not, then **what or who is sovereign?
**

It appears to me that you are suggesting that legitimate sovereignty is related to liberal democracies and illegitimate sovereignty is related to non-democracies. Therefore you seem to be saying that “our countries” can wage Just Wars but “their countries” cannot. I am sugesting that the Doctrine of Just War does not consider the question of “elected governments and their free citizens and press” as being crucial to deciding whether a war is Just or not.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Matt25:

It appears to me that you are suggesting that legitimate sovereignty is related to liberal democracies and illegitimate sovereignty is related to non-democracies.

I haven’t made any observations yet. Merely an original post with some jumping-off points. (This is the Moral Theology forum, not the Secular News forum.) I believe the original post is very clear. There is a discussion of Just War and the evolution thereof. There is a discussion of Jihad and the evolution thereof. A point for comparison and contrast is the notion of ‘sovereignty’ and the evolution thereof.

 

[Matt25]

Ani Ibi:

I haven’t made any observations yet. Merely an original post with some jumping-off points. (This is the Moral Theology forum, not the Secular News forum.) I believe the original post is very clear. There is a discussion of Just War and the evolution thereof. There is a discussion of Jihad and the evolution thereof. A point for comparison and contrast is the notion of ‘sovereignty’ and the evolution thereof.

So whom were you quoting with the suggestion that Islamic notions of sovereignty somehow include Osama bin Laden? And of whom do they suggest he is currently sovereign?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Matt25:

So whom were you quoting with the suggestion that Islamic notions of sovereignty somehow include Osama bin Laden? And of whom do they suggest he is currently sovereign?

Please stick to the topic of the original post. Do you have anything to say about sovereignty, Just War, or Jihad? If you do, go for it. If not, then please start your own thread.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Matt25:

At the time that the Just War theory was developed there were no demacracies in the world. Sovereign nations were nations ruled by Sovereigns. If only democracies can wage Just Wars then the Soviet Union was unjust to fight Nazi Germany. Saudi Arabia supported the invasion of Iraq. Was that decision not Just because Saudi is not a democracy? Was the decision of of France not to invade Iraq Just because they are a democracy?

The Sovereign State of the Vatican is not a democracy does this invalidate its views?

POI: the Italian states of the 1260s, when Aquinas was writing - Florence, Siena, Pisa, etc.- were city-states, not states with single sovereign individuals as their rulers. Many - all ? - were democratic to some degree, in much the same sense as Athens had been. Thanks ultimately to the feuding betwen the Papacy and the Empire, the Italian city-states were frequently at war.

 

[Philip_P]

The concept of sovereignty is central to evaluating the justice of the Iraq war. I think the concept was violated.

Who, or what, grants sovreignty? Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was a sovereign nation. Saddam was not a good man, but that is not what sovereignty is based on. The regime of Saddam was recognized as legitimate by the US and most of the world community. There was an Iraqi delegation to the UN. An Iraqi delegation to the US. Iraqi embassies in most countries, in fact.

Prior to the invasion,the US did not make an argument that Saddam’s government was illegitimate. I do not recall any formal repudiation of our diplomatic recognition of the Hussein regime. Iraq was not thrown out of the UN. As the US invaded, it was one sovereign nation invading another.

So the question then is, what justifies the stripping of sovereignty, of regime change? Gulf War I was arguably justifiable because we acted to restore the sovereignty of Kuwait. How is stripping the sovereignty of Iraq justifiable, according to the rule of sovereignty? Does the US get to make its own rules? This is why the general lack of worldwide support for the invasion becomes important. The UN, which is the collective mouthpiece of the international community of sovereign nations, did not approve of this action. Please explain how sovereignty was respected in the US invasion of Iraq.