University of Texas philosophy professor Robert C. Koons has published a courageous essay on whether an attack on Iran — whether by the U.S. directly or with the U.S. aiding Israel — would be a just war. For the sake of argument, Koons grants the worst-case scenario about Iran’s intentions and capabilities, but still finds the case falls far short at present. Consider:

If the justification for the attack were simply Iran’s imminent possession of nuclear weapons, then clearly neither the United States nor Israel would be in a position of comparative justice, since both have nuclear weapons as well. Even if the cause for war were the likely use of Iranian nuclear weapons against innocent civilians, this situation is a murky one, since the United States is the one nation that has actually used nuclear weapons against an enemy and, in at least one case (Nagasaki), against a civilian population center with no significant military installations. In addition, the United States has never officially apologized for the nuclear attack on Japan nor disavowed the future use of its nuclear weapons in such an indiscriminate fashion. Until both the United States and Israel renounce such unjust use of nuclear weapons and make such institutional reforms as are needed to prevent it, we cannot claim that the comparative justice condition has been met.

I am not claiming that there is moral equivalency between America or Israel and Iran. Far from it. However, comparative justice has nothing to do with the overall moral fitness over another. In many cases of just war it would be impossible to make such a judgment. Rather, comparative justice concerns the rectitude of our intentions, as demonstrated by our holding ourselves to the same standard on the issue in question to which we hold the enemy.

Koons is not only “a first-rate philosopher,” as a friend of mine in that field relates, but a conservative and Christian thinker who is not easily ignored by traditionalists who have been pulled into the orbit of militarism. Oddly, or perhaps not, the response from the editor of First Things has been to argue that war does not require a congressional declaration — no comment on the moral questions at the heart of Koons’s argument.