MUST READ: "JUST WAR THEORY" vs. AMERICAN SELF-DEFENSE

“Just War Theory” vs. American Self-Defense
Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein

It has been nearly five years since September 11, 2001—the day that Islamic terrorists incinerated thousands of innocent individuals in the freest, wealthiest, happiest, and most powerful nation on earth.

On that day and in the weeks after, we all felt the same things. We felt grief, that we had lost so many who had been so good. We felt anger, at whomever could commit or support such an evil act.

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we felt the desire for overwhelming retaliation against whomever was responsible for these atrocities, directly or indirectly, so that no one would dare launch or support such an attack on America ever again.

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our leaders—seemingly sharing our conviction in the necessity of decisive retaliation—promised to do everything possible to make America safe from terrorist attack.

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To fulfill the promise to defeat the terrorist enemy that struck on 9/11, our leaders would first have to identify who exactly that enemy is and then be willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat him. Let us examine what this would entail, and compare it with the actions that our leaders actually took.

Who is the enemy that attacked on 9/11? It is not “terrorism”—just as our enemy in World War II was not kamikaze strikes or U-boat attacks. Terrorism is a tactic employed by a certain group for a certain cause. That group and, above all, the cause they fight for are our enemy.

The group that threatens us with terrorism—the group of which Al Qaeda is but one terrorist faction—is a militant, religious, ideological movement best designated as “Islamic Totalitarianism.” The Islamic Totalitarian movement, which enjoys widespread and growing support throughout the Arab–Islamic world, encompasses those who believe that all must live in total subjugation to the dogmas of Islam and who conclude that jihad (“holy war”) must be waged against those who refuse to do so. Islamic Totalitarians regard the freedom, prosperity, and pursuit of worldly happiness animating the West (and especially America and Israel) as the height of depravity. They seek to eradicate Western Culture, first in the Middle East and then in the West itself, with the ultimate aim of bringing about the worldwide triumph of Islam. This goal is achievable, adherents of the movement believe, because the West is a “paper tiger” that can be brought to its knees by sufficiently devoted Islamic warriors.

Given that the enemy that attacked on 9/11 is primarily ideological, what, if anything, can our government’s guns do to defeat it? Our government cannot directly attack the deepest, philosophical roots of Islamic Totalitarianism; however, to defeat Islamic Totalitarianism as a physical threat, it does not need to do so. Why? Because an indispensable precondition of an active, threatening Islamic Totalitarian movement—one for which individuals are willing to take up arms—is its active support by Arab and Islamic states that assist, embody, and implement it. Without this state support, Islamic Totalitarianism, and thus Islamic terrorism, could not exist as a major threat.

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Principal Actors of Islamic Totalitarianism:

I. Iran:

-Founded on Principals of Islamic totalitarianism

-It supports such groups as:

(a) Hamas

(b) Islamic Jihad

(c) Hiz b'allah

II. Saudi Arabia

-It has spent more than $75 billion dollars on the dissemination of the Wahhabi sect of Islam

Secondary Actors in the Global Jihad

I. Syria

II. Iraq (no longer)

III. Palestinian Authority

What specific military actions would have been required post-9/11 to end state support of Islamic Totalitarianism is a question for specialists in military strategy, but even a cursory look at history can tell us one thing for sure: It would have required the willingness to take devastating military action against enemy regimes—to oust their leaders and prominent supporters, to make examples of certain regimes or cities in order to win the surrender of others, and to inflict suffering on complicit civilian populations, who enable terrorist-supporting regimes to remain in power.

Explaining the ration­ale for the German bombings, Churchill wrote, “. . . the severe, the ruthless bombing of Germany on an ever-increasing scale will not only cripple her war effort . . . but will create conditions intolerable to the mass of the German population.” And as we well know, what ended the war—and the Nazi and Japanese Imperialist threat to this day—was America’s dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan.

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In both World War II and the Civil War, once massive defeats were handed to the enemy, the causes that drove the military threats were thoroughly defeated as political forces. There are no threatening Nazis or Japanese Imperialists today, nor was there any significant political force agitating for the reemergence of the Slave South after the Civil War.

To have decisively defeated Islamic Totalitarianism post-9/11, America would have had to both correctly identify the enemy and show the same unmitigated willingness to defeat its identified enemies as it has in past wars.

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Observe that nearly five years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11—longer than it took to defeat the far more powerful Japanese after Pearl Harbor—the two leading supporters of Islamic Totalitarianism and the majority of their accessories remain intact and visibly operative.

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America has done nothing to end the threat posed by Iran and Saudi Arabia, nor by Syria and the Palestinian Authority. In the rare cases that it has taken any action toward these regimes, its action has been some form of appeasement: extending them invitations to join an “anti-terrorism” coalition (while excluding Israel); responding to the Palestinians’ jihad with a promised Palestinian State; declaring “eternal friendship” with Saudi Arabia and inviting its leaders to vacation with our President; responding to Iran’s active pursuit of nuclear weapons with the “threat” of possible, eventual, inspections by the U.N.

Of course, America has done something militarily in response to 9/11; it has taken military action against two regimes: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But in addition to these not having been the two most important regimes to target, our military campaigns in each case have drastically departed from the successful wars of the past in their logic, aims, methods—and in their results. In Afghanistan, we gave the Taliban advance notice of military action, refused to bomb many top leaders out of their hideouts for fear of civilian casualties, and allowed many key leaders to escape in the Battle of Tora Borah. And in Iraq, we have done far worse. While we have taken Saddam Hussein out of power, we have neither eradicated the remnants of his Baathist regime, nor defeated the insurgency that has arisen, nor taken any serious precaution against the rise of a Shiite theocracy that would be a far more effective abettor of Islamic Totalitarianism than Saddam Hussein ever was.

In terms of ending the (limited) threat posed to America by the respective countries, the “war” in Afghanistan was a partial failure, and the “war” in Iraq is a total failure. Our leadership, however, evaluates these endeavors not primarily in terms of whether they end threats and dissuade other hostile regimes from continuing aggression, but in terms of whether they bestow the “good life” on the Middle Eastern peoples by ridding them of unpopular dictators and allowing them to vote-in whatever government they choose (no matter how anti-American). This objective is presently consuming endless resources and thousands of American lives in Iraq, where we are sustaining a hostile Iraqi population until they can independently run their new nation—in which Islam is constitutionally the basic law of the land.

How is all of this supposed to fulfill our leaders’ pledge to defend America? The democratically elected Iraqi government, we are told, will somehow lead to a renaissance of “freedom” in the Middle East, which will somehow stop terrorism in some distant future. In the meantime, we are told, we should show “resolve,” take off our shoes at the airport, and pay attention to the color-coded terror alerts so we can know how likely we are to be slaughtered.

Empty talk of “complete victory” notwithstanding, our official foreign policy regarding America’s security against Islamic terrorism is: accepted defeat. We have not been willing to take military action against the most important threats against us, and the type of military action we have been willing to take has not succeeded in making us safer. And most disturbing of all, despite our travesty of a foreign policy, the vast majority of once-enraged Americans has not demanded anything better. Most Americans acknowledge that Iraq is a debacle, that we will not be safe anytime soon, and that we have no plans to deal effectively with threats such as Iran’s nuclear weapons program—yet there is widespread resignation that this is the best we can do. This—in response to a threat caused by pip-squeak nations, against the most powerful military in history.

Why? What explains the defeatism of the leaders and citizens of the most powerful nation on earth?

One crucial factor is the failure of our intellectual and political leadership to clearly identify the nature of our enemy, to recognize that terrorism stems from a religious ideological movement that seeks our destruction and that that movement is widely supported by Muslim peoples and states.

One intellectual motivation for this evasion is the doctrine of Multiculturalism, which holds that all cultures are equal, and thus that it is immoral for Western Culture to declare itself superior to any other. Having swallowed this doctrine, most of our intellectuals and politicians are reluctant to identify a clearly evil, militant ideological movement as an aspect of Arab–Islamic culture or to acknowledge its widespread support in that culture.

An even more significant motivation is the religiosity of many Americans (especially conservatives). While the militant methods of Islamic Totalitarianism are anathema to religious Americans, the ethical prescriptions of the movement—a life of faith, material renunciation, and sacrifice for a “higher” cause—are consistent with everything religious Americans hold as ideal.

These Americans are thus reluctant to indict such ideas as the cause of a massive evil and, instead, are drawn to the theory that our enemy is confined to isolated individuals such as Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and a few crazy followers. Our leaders go even further; not only are they reluctant to indict Islamic ideas, they bend over backward to claim that no truly Islamic movement can be responsible for terrorism because “Islam is peace.” Islamic terrorists, they claim, have “hijacked a great religion.”

America’s intellectual failure to identify the nature of the enemy is a major cause of its defeatism—but this failure, and its responsibility for our policies, only goes so far. For example, none of our politicians identify our enemy as “Islamic Totalitarianism”; however, they all know and admit that Iran and Syria are active sponsors of terrorism, that Iran is developing missiles and a nuclear weapon, that Saudi Arabia turns out legions of wannabe terrorists, and many other facts pointing to the conclusion that if we are to be safe, these states must be stopped. Shortly after 9/11, President Bush demonstrated some understanding of the role of state support of terrorism when he declared: “From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” Recently, despite his misgivings about indicting any variant of any religion, he has been condemning “Islamic Radicalism” as a major source of the terrorist threat.

If America were to take military action to end the threats we face, even based on our leaders’ limited understanding of these threats, it would be far more significant and effective than what we have done so far. Why, then, haven’t our leaders taken such actions?

The reason is that, despite their claims that they will do whatever is necessary to defend America, our leaders believe that it would be wrong—morally wrong—to do so. They believe this because they consistently accept a certain moral theory of war—one that has come to be universally taught in our universities and war colleges. This theory is accepted, at least implicitly, not only by intellectuals, but by our politicians, the leadership of our military, and the media. And while the American people are not explicitly familiar with this theory, they regard the precepts on which it is based and the policies to which it leads as morally uncontroversial. The theory is called Just War Theory. To understand today’s disastrous policies, and to reverse them, it is essential to understand what this theory holds.

“Just War Theory”

Consider the following passage from the book Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer:

A soldier must take careful aim at his military target and away from nonmilitary targets. He can only shoot if he has a reasonably clear shot; he can only attack if a direct attack is possible . . . he cannot kill civilians simply because he finds them between himself and his enemies. . . . Simply not to intend the deaths of civilians is too easy. . . . What we look for . . . is some sign of a positive commitment to save civilian lives. . . . if saving civilian lives means risking soldiers’ lives the risk must be accepted.

Walzer’s prescriptions are not the idle musings of an ivory tower philosopher; they are exactly the sort of “rules of engagement” under which U.S. soldiers are fighting—and dying—overseas. When our marines in Baghdad do not shoot back when fired upon from a mosque, or when our helicopter pilots are shot down while flying too low in an attempt to avoid civilian casualties while in pursuit of their targets, they are following the dictum that we should show a “positive commitment to save civilian lives” even if this entails “risking soldiers’ lives.”

Just and Unjust Wars serves as the major textbook in the ethics classes taught at West Point and dozens of others colleges and military schools. More broadly, Just War Theory—for which Just and Unjust Wars is the most popular modern text—is the sole moral theory of war taught today.

Just War Theory is conventionally advocated in contrast to two other views of the morality of war: pacifism and “realism.” Pacifism holds that the use of military force is never moral. Just War theorists correctly criticize this view on the grounds that evil aggressors exist who seek to kill and dominate the innocent, and that force is often the only effective way to stop them. War, they hold, is therefore sometimes morally necessary.

“Realism” is the view that war has no moral limitations. Just War Theory rejects this theory as well, holding that war, when necessary, must be conducted in accordance with strict moral principles. Since “realism” renounces morality, Just War theorists observe, its advocates cannot in principle oppose wars or acts of war in which the guilty unjustly kill the innocent. More broadly, Just War theorists argue, “realism” is deficient because it denies the need to think carefully about the moral issues raised by war. Given that, in wartime, thousands or millions of lives hang in the balance—given that war is a major undertaking with the potential to do massive good or massive evil—we are obligated to consider the important, and non-obvious, moral questions that war raises. These questions include: Under what circumstances should a nation go to war? And: What should a nation’s policies be toward the soldiers and civilians of enemy nations?

These questions, Just War theorists argue, must be thought about systematically, in advance of any particular war, so that we can do the right thing when the circumstances arise. These are not questions to be answered by the seat of our President’s pants, in response to the international or domestic whim of the moment. To act in such a way, they say, would be an injustice to all those who are sent to war, and especially to those whose lives are ended because of it.

All of these arguments against pacifism and “realism”—and for systematic analysis of the morality of war—are valid. They lend credence to the claim that Just War Theory is a practical and moral theory of war. But an investigation of Just War Theory—and its consistent practice in our so-called “War on Terrorism”—demonstrates that it is neither practical nor moral. To the extent that Just War Theory is followed, it is a prescription for suicide for innocent nations, and thus a profoundly unjust code.

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Read the whole thing for it has implications for generations to come, if the United States has generations left before being islamicized...If you print it out, it is around 30 pages...

Pertinent Links:

1) “Just War Theory” vs. American Self-Defense