Table of Contents - The Barnes Review

action declared and entered into by Congress? Are we comfortable
allowing one man so much power over the lives of so many people?
3) A just war must be engaged in with the right intention. So,
not only must the cause be just, but the disposition of the warriors
on the side of justice must be honorable. Prolonged periods of denigration
of the enemy and his culture do not produce a spirit of “right
intention.” Instead, they produce a spirit of hatred, vengeance and
pseudo-righteous wrath.
4) There must be proportionality between the evils of war and
the good to be attained. That is, the evil that the war intends to correct
must be greater than the evil the war itself will unleash. I
remember seeing a picture of an Iraqi father grieving over the
death of six family members, including several of his children.
Questions of proportionality need to be asked before bombs are
dropped on civilian centers.
5) Every avenue of peaceful resolution must be explored
before entering into hostilities.
6) There must be a reasonable hope of success in countering
evil.
7) Just conduct in a just war demands that honorable combatants
practice discrimination. 4 That is, only enemy combatants
are to be targets for killing. Women, children, men who are in the
civilian sector, and even enemy soldiers who are on leave or are
injured or captive, are not to be targeted for killing. Needless to say,
point number seven, discrimination, is a perpetually thorny issue in
just war discussion. How can modern weapons of mass destruction,
such as our own bombs dropped from airplanes, be considered discriminatory
in any way? They can’t be. Bombs do not distinguish
between a soldier in uniform or a child on the playground. Modern
technology threatens to render a rich 2,000-year legacy of Christian
and western principles null and void.
I would like to review some of the above discussion and provide
some specific examples of just war issues. For a war to be just
there must be a just cause. Remember, that involves the defense of
a nation, but even this issue can become complicated when the
issue of preemptive action is introduced.
Even if a war can be entered justly, or legitimately, the justness
of the cause can be undermined if the war is not conducted
justly. Thus we have issues of just conduct during
the actual war. Just conduct includes providing safety for
civilians, proper treatment of POWs, and the prohibition of mass
destruction of people and property. Only when there is a just cause
with just conduct can there be a just war with the ensuing hope of
a just and enduring peace.
I would like to add that for a war to be just there must be some
discernible moral benefit to the actual combatants, a benefit that
coheres to the other principles of just war theory. In other words, a
young man or woman asked to don uniform and rifle must have
some personal benefit, moral in nature, as a promise for their
involvement in the war. Thus, neither hazard pay, medals, promotion
in rank, victory celebrations nor patriotic fervor qualify. Rather, such
considerations must be: Is the soldier’s family free from a real,
immediate threat? Is his or her life safer? The promise of moral benefit
must be at least as great as the sacrifice of life to attain it.
Adoption of this principle would challenge the battle cries of interventionists
seeking to involve our youth in foreign wars. The actual
moral benefit gained by the American soldier fallen or crippled in
Europe, Panama, Korea, Vietnam, Somalia or Iraq would be hard to
demonstrate. It would be equally difficult to determine the moral
benefit to his wife or children who must now go on without him.
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Sadly, there have been some flagrant departures from just
war theory in our recent history. I’ll begin with the Civil War, also
known as the War Between the States. One southern gentleman
informed me that the real name of this conflict should be the War of
Northern Aggression. At least three departures from just war principles
may be observed in this war, whatever name you may prefer
to give it. One departure is the violation of southern women by
Union troops. We may associate and dismiss the fear experienced by
the young women in Gone with the Wind as Hollywood movie-making.
But in fact the women in the defeated South did indeed suffer
some degree of “spoils of war” status. In New Orleans the Union
General Benjamin Butler issued an order that women of the city
who insulted a Union officer or soldier would be regarded as prostitutes
plying their trade and would be treated as such. This in effect
amounted to a “right to rape” order. It was at least interpreted that
way in Europe. The British prime minister wrote to the U.S. ambassador
in London,
I will venture to say that no example can be found in
the history of civilized nations till the publication of this
order of a general guilty in cold blood of so infamous an
act as deliberately to hand over the female inhabitants of
a conquered city to the unbridled license of an unrestrained
soldiery.
He later said to the English Parliament, “Any Englishman
must blush to think that such an act has been committed by one
belonging to the Anglo-Saxon race.” The French minister in
Washington likewise voiced his objections to Butler’s order. Butler
was eventually removed from his command, not because of this
objectionable order, but because he was caught confiscating foreign
property. He was given the post of commissioner of prisoner-of-war
exchanges. 5
Asecond departure from just war principles is the abuse of
Confederate POWs in Union prison camps. Thanks to
Hollywood we are familiar with Andersonville, a prison
camp for Union soldiers deep in the South. The suffering
there was real and extensive. What is questionable is if the South
intended to maliciously mistreat these prisoners by depriving them
of food and medicine. In 1864 the Confederacy was hard-pressed to
feed itself. Union victories throughout the South included the
destruction of farms and crops. Food was in short supply for southern
civilians and soldiers, making it doubly difficult for the Confederacy
to adequately feed enemy soldiers who had invaded their
homeland. Additionally, Union blockades made it difficult for the
South to transport food throughout her land. Yes, Union soldiers suffered,
but the population of the South suffered along with them.
Unfortunately, Hollywood has not found as much interest in
Elmira, a prison camp in New York for captured Confederate soldiers.
Elmira was built to house 5,000 men, yet by September 1,
1864 the camp’s population was 9,480 prisoners. Overcrowding led
to the contamination of water systems used by the prisoners for
drinking. The POWs were also deprived of adequate amounts of
food. While the area around the prison camp boasted a bumper crop
of fruit and vegetables in the fall of 1864, prisoners inside the camp
were dying of starvation. In September 1864, 385 prisoners died.The
federal government had to purchase an additional two acres for burial
space since the one-half acre previously allotted for burial was
now full. A Union officer wrote to his wife, “The rebs are dying quite
fast, from eight to 30 per day.” In October, when 276 Confederates