Iraq and the Moral Judgement

Some readers have complained that First Things, and I in particular, have had a great deal to say about just-war doctrine but relatively little to say about the application of that doctrine to the conflict in the Middle East. The reason is that just-war doctrine is central to the mission of the journal while military and geopolitical questions are not. Closely related to that, I have a measure of expertise in moral theology while on those other questions, as Will Rogers said, I only know what I read in the newspapers. To be more precise, what I read in the newspapers, opinion magazines, and academic journals, and learn from people better informed than I and in whose judgment I have confidence. Having said that, I do have some definite views on U.S. policy in the Middle East. Herewith an interview I did with ZENIT, the Rome-based news service, on March 10, 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Following the interview, I offer reflections on how the situation appears two and a half years later.

ZENIT: On whether there is a just cause for an attack against Iraq, many observers question if there is enough evidence of a direct connection between Baghdad and the September 11 attacks. Others doubt that there is clear evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature by Iraq against other countries. What do you think?

RJN: First it must be said that—although it appears that military action against Iraq may be only a matter of days or weeks away—faithful Catholics are joined with the Holy Father John Paul II in fervent prayer that war may yet be avoided. As he has said, war represents a defeat of the right ordering of peace—what St. Augustine called “tranquillitas ordinis.” In history nothing is inevitable, and with God all things are possible.

St. Thomas Aquinas and other teachers of the just-war tradition make it clear that war may sometimes be a moral duty in order to repel aggression, overturn injustice, and protect the innocent. The just cause in this case is the disarmament of Iraq, a cause consistently affirmed by the Holy Father and reinforced by 17 resolutions of the Security Council.

Whether that cause can be vindicated without resort to military force, and whether it would be wiser to wait and see what Iraq might do over a period of months or years, are matters of prudential judgment beyond the competence of religious authority.

In just-war doctrine, the Church sets forth the principles which it is the responsibility of government leaders to apply to specific cases (see Catechism of the Catholic Church 2309). Saddam Hussein has for eleven years successfully defied international authority. He has used and, it appears, presently possesses and is set upon further developing weapons of mass destruction, and he has publicly stated his support for the September 11 attack and other terrorist actions.

In the judgment of the United States and many other countries, he poses a grave and imminent threat to America, world peace and the lives of innumerable innocents. If the judgment is correct, the use of military force to remove that threat, in the absence of plausible alternatives, is both justified and necessary. Heads of government who are convinced of the correctness of that judgment would be criminally negligent and in violation of their solemn oath to protect their people if they did not act to remove such a threat.

As a theologian and moralist, I have no special competence to assess the threat posed by Iraq. On the basis of available evidence and my considered confidence in those responsible for making the pertinent decisions, I am inclined to believe and I earnestly pray that they will do the right thing.

Strong objections have been raised to the concept of preventive or preemptive uses of military force to overthrow threatening regimes or to deal with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Is the use of pre-emptive force justified according to just war principles?

Frequent reference to preventive or preemptive use of military force, and even to “wars of choice,” have only confused the present discussion. War, if it is just, is not an option chosen but a duty imposed. In the present circumstance, military action against Iraq by a coalition of the willing is in response to Iraq’s aggression; first against Kuwait in 1991, then in defiance of the terms of surrender demanding its disarmament, then in support of, if not direct participation in, acts of terrorism. This is joined to its brutal aggression against its own citizens, and its possession of weapons of mass destruction which it can use or permit others to use for further aggression.

To wait until the worst happens is to wait too long, and leaders guilty of such negligence would rightly be held morally accountable. In the Catholic tradition there is, in fact, a considerable literature relevant to these questions. Augustine, Aquinas, Francisco de Vitoria, and Francisco Suarez, for example, all wrote on prudential action in the face of aggressive threats. The absence of reference to such recognized authorities in the current discussion among Catholics is striking.

Many voices within and outside the Church ask that the United States not go ahead with an attack [in Iraq] without specific UN authorization. Is UN approval just a prudential course of action, which could in the last resort be bypassed? Or is it obligatory, given the provisions of the UN charter and the growing importance of international institutions like the UN?

Resolution 1441 of the Security Council, unanimously approved last November, demands that Iraq immediately disarm or face the consequences. Nobody claims that Iraq has complied, and proposals for “extended timelines” and the like appear to invite no more than a repeat of the defiance of the past eleven years.

No further UN “authorization” is required. The larger and more interesting question is posed by the frequently heard assertion that the United Nations is the locus of legitimate authority in international affairs. That is asserted but it has not been argued, certainly not in terms of Catholic doctrine regarding legitimate authority. In view of the United Nations’ frequent hostility to the Church on family policy, population, the sacredness of human life, and related matters, some Catholic leaders may come to regret their exaggerated and, I believe, ill-considered statements about the moral authority of the United Nations.

Moreover, if the United Nations is not prepared to support the enforcement of its own resolutions—resolutions which it cannot itself enforce—it is likely to go the way of the old League of Nations. The coalition led by the United States intends to act in support of the United Nations. If a minority on the Security Council rejects that support, the credibility and future usefulness of the United Nations will be gravely undermined.

There is a necessary connection between power and moral responsibility. Every nation acts and should act in its own interest, in the hope that interests can be coordinated to serve the common good. The United Nations has sometimes been useful toward that end. Many would understandably regret its self-inflicted diminishment or demise. But in its absence I expect that new institutions more attuned to the nexus of power and responsibility would emerge in order to coordinate national interests in the service of peace, never forgetting that peace as “tranquillitas ordinis” will always be sadly deficient short of Our Lord’s return in glory.

On the question of proportionality, many fear that an attack could destabilize the Middle East and cause even greater hostility among Muslims. Others point to the high cost that civilians might pay, due to the precarious nature of life in Iraq. Is the United States giving sufficient weight to these dangers?

It is striking that the Bush administration has addressed the Iraq crisis with very specific reference to Catholic just war doctrine, including proportionality. Widespread statements in parts of Europe about American inexperience and “cowboy” impetuosity would be insulting were they not so adolescent. They are especially unbecoming when made by distinguished prelates associated with the Holy See.

To take but the last hundred years, the record of the United States in combating tyranny, defending freedom, providing humanitarian aid, motoring economic development, and securing a modicum of world order compares very favorably with that of, for instance, Germany, France, Russia, or Italy.

You ask about possible consequences of military action, including Muslim reaction and civilian casualties. The simple answer is that such consequences are unknowable and therefore unknown, except to God. I know that possible consequences have been considered, day and night for many months, by competent parties. I know there is a determination to minimize damage to innocents, and a reasoned expectation that successful action will weaken Islamist enemies of civilization and strengthen the Muslim forces of decency and freedom. Nobody can know for sure what will happen.

Religious leaders should bring more to the public discussion than their fears. Nervous hand-wringing is not a moral argument. At this point, we should, with the Holy Father, be on our knees in prayer that Iraq will disarm without military action. If war comes, we must pray that a just cause prevails—quickly, with minimal damage to innocents, and with a long-term determination to help the Iraqi people then freed from a brutal tyranny.

The Church cannot bless this military action as though it were a Christian crusade. After the war, if there is to be a war, the Church, and the Holy Father in particular, will be indispensable as a dialogue partner in moving Islam away from the most ominously destructive possibilities of a “clash of civilizations.”

In sum, military action in order to disarm Iraq can be morally justified in terms of just-war doctrine. Whether, in the retrospect of history, it will be viewed as a prudent course of action, nobody can know. If such action is undertaken, however, it seems to me that we have no moral alternative to praying that a just cause will prevail justly.

It is now more than two years since I gave that ZENIT interview, and the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have not been found. Some say that they never existed, others that they are still hidden or were sent elsewhere, probably to Syria, when the invasion was imminent. I don’t know, but for purposes of discussion let’s say they did not exist at the time, even though it is known that Saddam used such weapons against his own people years earlier. The morally pertinent fact is that not only the United States but every major country’s intelligence service—including those of Britain, France, and Germany—believed Saddam had or was very close to having weapons of mass destruction, and that was also the premise of the unanimous ultimatum of the Security Council in the fall of 2002. This may say a great deal about the competence of the intelligence services, but it says nothing about the moral legitimacy of the decision to disarm Saddam. A partial but pertinent analogy is a police officer who shoots a person who is shooting at him, only to discover that the suspect was using a toy capgun. Few would accuse the officer of responding inappropriately.

There has been considerable talk about the “Downing Street Memo” in which a British director of intelligence offered his opinion that the Bush administration was preparing to remove Saddam and was spinning intelligence to support that intention. He also said that Washington had no adequate plans for what would happen after an invasion. That is interesting, but I fail to see its relevance to the justice of the war. One expects the White House and the Pentagon to be planning for all kinds of contingencies. The implementation of such plans is another matter. The British official had the impression that the decision to implement had already been made in the summer of 2002. The Bush administration says the final decision was made only after Colin Powell’s failed appeal to the United Nations in early February of 2003. I don’t know. In world affairs, as in everyday life, decisions move back and forth from the possible to the probable to the definite. The gist of the memo, however, is that Washington did not do sufficient planning, especially with respect to the aftermath of invasion, and that may well be the case.

I listened to several hours of the rump hearings convened by Representative John Conyers and supported by leftward representatives such as Barney Frank, Maxine Walters, and Jerrold Nadler. They’re calling for withdrawal from Iraq, and much was made of the Downing Street Memo, together with numerous conspiracy theories of the kind readily garnered from the Internet. It was show-and-tell time for what Richard Hofstadter once called the paranoid style in American politics. The administration is fortunate in its more strident critics. There are, to be sure, more thoughtful critics who deserve a careful hearing.

Opponents of U.S. policy continue to invoke John Paul II’s opposition to the war, and I address that in the ZENIT interview. When in November 2003, 18 of the 3,000 Italian soldiers in Iraq were killed, the Holy Father condemned the “vile” act of the killers and said the soldiers were on “a mission of peace.” In the days and weeks following, Camillo Cardinal Ruini, who is head of the Italian bishops’ conference and was very close to the pope, sharply criticized pacifism and anti-Americanism and declared that the Church strongly supports the vision of a more free and just world. The Holy See hoped that war could be avoided, and when war came hoped for a just outcome. As noted also in these pages, after the coalition action in Iraq, the more strident curial voices of opposition were silenced or significantly muted.

Questions come hard and fast from many quarters. It was a mistake not to put more troops on the ground in the first place, some say. Instances of the torture of prisoners have been highlighted and officially acknowledged, and, one has reason to think, effectively addressed. Serious questions are raised about the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists. A great mistake was made, it is said, in disbanding the Iraqi army and excluding members of the Saddam regime from participation in a new government. And always the discussion returns to the more than 1,800 American soldiers killed, and to the question of how many more American lives and how many more billions of dollars will be exacted before the job is done. And to the question: How will we know when the job is done? Or are we in a permanent state of war?

A recent poll asks Americans: “All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting or not?” Almost 60 percent said No. The benefits to the Iraqi people who have been liberated from a murderous regime that killed hundreds of thousands of people is quite another matter. And few would deny that the American-led demonstration of resolve is related to a movement toward decency and democracy in countries as various as Ukraine and Lebanon, with ripples of hopeful change in Egypt and even Iran and Syria. Has the action in Iraq checked or exacerbated radical Islam’s war of terrorism against the West? For an answer, pick your experts. Exclude those who have a track record of contempt for Bush, along with his uncritical partisans, and the weight of opinion is that U.S. policy has made a difference for the better. On these questions I read very carefully Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins. Would bombings by Islamist radicals in Madrid, London, and elsewhere have happened without the invasion of Iraq? On the basis of the stated aims of those who sponsor such terrorist acts, there is reason to think so.

The question of whether any military action is “worth it” is hard to answer. How much is a human life “worth,” whether American or Iraqi? Sub specie aeternitatis, every human life is of infinite value. In the calculus of temporal affairs, whether in war or in the designing of automobiles, the loss of lives is weighed against other goods. Many thought the American Civil War was not “worth it.” There was and still is the judgment of some that American participation in World War II was not “worth it.” The inevitable question is: What would have been the consequences of alternative policies? All agree that Saddam Hussein aimed, with the help of weapons of mass destruction, to dominate the Middle East. Had he succeeded, would we now or next year be fighting him under much more adverse circumstances? I don’t know, but I know it is a legitimate question. About the contingencies of history, we make decisions on a postulate of ignorance.

The goal of U.S. policy is clear enough. Consider Bush’s second inaugural. Whether one finds the soaring rhetoric inspiring or over the top, there is no doubt about the direction:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

This is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary. Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.

The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations. The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it. America’s influence is not unlimited, but fortunately for the oppressed, America’s influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in freedom’s cause.

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner “Freedom Now”—they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.

There you have it, the unfurling of the banners of idealism joined to the qualifications of realism, although, to be sure, not qualifications enough for some who call themselves realists. Recall Herbert Butterfield’s observation that realism is not a school of thought but simply a boast. The address is a statement of national purpose in international affairs. Others are made nervous by the intimations of national mission and even destiny. But “the eventual triumph of freedom” is a hope; it is not America’s task to achieve, and certainly not to achieve alone. The address simply declares that America is on the side of its achievement.

I have no doubt that President Bush is sincere, recognizing that his sincerity is precisely what frightens some of his critics. Not only in his speeches, and not only in the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq in the past two years, but in very publicly receiving the victims of tyrannies, in bolstering diplomatic initiatives favoring democracy, and in numerous other ways, he has tried to underscore that America is on the side of “freedom’s cause.” But one may wonder whether it could ever really be the case that “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.” One may wish it to be always the case and hope it to be ordinarily the case, while remembering St. Augustine’s caution that politics, including politics among nations, is inescapably marked by libido dominandi, the lust for power, advantage, and glory. American exceptionalism does not extend to immunity from that truth.

There is the underlying assumption that what is good for America is good for the world. It is a pleasing thought, although not widely shared among those who are envious and resentful of America, and it is rudely rejected by anti-Americans, both foreign and domestic, who believe that what is good for America is bad for the world. Declared U.S. foreign policy under Bush has abandoned the lodestar of stability to follow freedom’s moving star of change. The hope, of course, is that a world more free will be a world of greater security, also for America. As is frequently said, democracies do not go to war with one another, and it is frequently said because it is generally true.

In world affairs, as in human affairs more generally, somebody, or a cooperative of somebodies, has to take the lead. In the Vietnam era it was thought that the idea of America as “the world’s policeman” had been thoroughly discredited. But where bad people are up to mischief and great wickedness, it is a very good thing to have a policeman on the beat. The image of policeman is quite modest. He has limited powers under the law to enforce the law. When there is no superior authority and he has accepted the task that is his by default, he must the more rigorously impose discipline and limits upon himself. It is necessary to have a policeman, and what other candidates are there? Europe? China? Russia? To ask is to receive the answer. The United Nations? To ask is to invite derision.

This does not mean the United States is Gary Cooper at high noon. For one thing, others may come to the nation’s aid. More important, world affairs are not like a decisive shoot-out. There are numerous actors, interests, ambitions, and fears in play. It is a matter of deterring and enticing, punishing and threatening to punish, encouraging and rewarding—and doing it all at the same time. Former Secretary of State George Shultz was fond of saying that the conduct of world affairs is seldom a matter of choosing between war and peace. War and peace is not an on-off switch. It is more, he said, like sitting at the control panel of a hundred rheostats, applying or reducing power in order to achieve a measure of equilibrium. George W. Bush’s addendum is that equilibrium must be decisively tilted toward democracy and freedom.

Even if one agrees with all or most of the above, it does not answer the question of Iraq. There are thoughtful people, both liberal and conservative, who think that regime change in Iraq was a disaster in both conception and execution, and not all of them can be easily dismissed as “isolationists.” I agree with and have often cited John Quincy Adams’ caution that America must not “go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” On September 11, a monster came to us. If he comes again with similar or greater force, which I expect is more than possible, Americans will support, indeed demand, an even more forceful response.

Among the reasons for Bush’s reelection in 2004 is that he ran as a “war president.” But now, without the shock of another September 11, people are growing weary of war and the costs, in both lives and dollars, that war exacts. It is not, I suspect, because we are a peace-loving people but because we are a comfortable people. “The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations,” said the president.

They are stirring words, even if one knows that tyranny will never be decisively ended short of Our Lord’s return in glory, and that, apart from those directly engaged in matters military and diplomatic, Americans are concentrated on many other things.

George W. Bush has provided a fresh conceptual framework for America’s role in the world, and has acted upon it with remarkable energy. Whether the energy is matched by wisdom is debatable and is, in fact, hotly debated. He believes, and urges us to believe, that idealism is realism. We do not have to choose between national interests (such as oil) or national commitments (such as the security of Israel) and our moral responsibility in world affairs; they are all of a piece.

It is a bold and comprehensive proposal, and it may well be vindicated. It may be unfair that such a proposal will stand or fall upon the outcome in Iraq, but so it probably is. If there is not another September 11, and if there is not another major conflict to distract attention from Iraq, and if two years from now the situation there seems to be only more of the same, except with many more Americans dead, the Bush proposal will be judged a reckless failure, as many are rushing to judge it now.

There are other and more positive “ifs,” of course, and they are confidently asserted by the administration every day. I believe the confidence is not feigned, and I hope it is warranted. “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.” We should all want to believe that, and some of us can succeed in believing that it is approximately true. As I have written on many occasions: On balance, and considering the alternatives, America has been and is a force for good in the world. The Bush proposal ups the ante on how much good America can be for the world. If he is wrong, and considering the alternatives, the consequences would likely be disastrous, both in domestic politics and world affairs. Which is good reason to hope he is right.