Is Iraq an unjust War? Miroslav Volf's Take

This week's "On Faith" question concerns the justifiability of the Iraq War. Miroslav Volf of Yale, and formerly of Fuller Seminary, weighs in. He suggests that both the reason for the war and our continued involvement in Iraq cannot be justified on the basis of traditional just war criteria. He also writes that the idea of preventative war cannot be justified.

Volf writes:

A preventive war of the kind proposed against Iraq is morally unacceptable for a very simple reason: It cannot be just to condemn masses of people to certain death in order to avert potential death of an equal or lesser number of people. President Bush seems intent to act as if the entire population of Iraq consisted of one single person named Saddam Hussein. In his speech before the United Nations the suffering of the Iraqi people (who themselves opposed American
intervention as much as they disliked their cruel leader) figured only as motivation for war. Their suffering was not seen as an inescapable consequence of the war.

This is an interesting comment -- can we justify the deaths of masses of people to prevent the deaths of a much smaller number of people? [And besides, as we've been told by Pat Robertson, we're going to be attacked and masses will be killed -- despite our efforts.] Preventative war is a slippery slope kind of idea. We might as a nation find it necessary, but it will never be theologically justified with a "just war" philosophy.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Amen!
Kitty Wenk

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