Thomas Ricks has taken up the thankless task of arguing with contributors at First Things about the immorality of the war in Iraq, and here I should note with appreciation that he has linked to one of my old disputes with another war supporter writing at First Things. Ricks has taken the (unremarkable) position that the continuing presence of American forces in Iraq is immoral. I call this an unremarkable position because the injustice of aggressive war seems obvious to me, and inasmuch as the continuing military presence in Iraq is the result and continuation of that aggression then it, too, is immoral.

Ricks has been slightly diverted by the question of the war’s false premises. While I would say that there is ample reason to doubt that the war met tests of just cause and right intention, it is important to distinguish between administration claims that turned out to be false and claims that they made with certainty when they possessed no sure knowledge at all. In the case of the latter, such as when the Vice President asserted that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program, or when Mr. Bush stated that intelligence “leaves no doubt” Iraq possessed WMDs, these were dishonest claims. There was no evidence of the former, and a great deal of doubt about the latter. To say that they exaggerated but did not “lie” is to engage in spin: an exaggeration is a kind of falsehood, and not a trivial matter when it serves as part of a rationale for war. Manipulation of facts and the telling of half-truths are hardly laudable things, but somehow we are supposed to believe that if a charge was not created out of whole cloth that it was therefore made honestly and in good faith. It is not nearly that simple.

More important than the dishonesty of officials in government, however, was the cause in whose service these claims were made. Because the administration described the war as “pre-emptive,” when it was at best a preventive war against a future, allegedly “growing” threat, there has long been a diversionary pro-war argument about the possible merits of pre-emptive war against imminent threats. Engaging that argument is to end up going round in circles and has led some antiwar arguments into blind alleys, because what the Bush Doctrine set forth in 2002 proposed and what the administration did was not actually pre-emption against an existing, immediate threat, but was aimed at probable or possible threats. When administration defenders said that the administration had never spoken of imminent threats, this was narrowly true in that the administration had actually argued for going to war on a much flimsier, much less defensible basis than this.

Of course, if it is true that the concept of preventive war is not to be found in the Catechism, as then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, said at the time, preventive war of the kind proposed and executed by the last administration is simply unthinkable if we take the standards of just war theory seriously. No wrong was being remedied, because none had yet been committed or even immediately threatened against us. If the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated, as it says in the Catechism, preventive war must necessarily fail the test of proportionality because the “evil to be eliminated” was merely potential and not yet real, while the evils produced by the war have been all too real. If “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain,” preventive war fails yet another test because the damage has not yet been inflicted and is not about to be, but theoretically might be at some point in the future. The damage is neither lasting nor grave, because it has not yet occurred, and it is anything but certain. Most obvious of all, all other means could not have been exhausted, because preventive war necessarily involves making war something other than a last resort.

As I have noted before, though, there are two camps that invoke just war theory: those who seek to find loopholes in it that permit wars as often as possible, and those who seek to use it as a barrier for the prevention of unnecessary wars and the preservation of greater tranquility and peace. As the restoration of peace is the proper end of any war, it seems to me impossible to make a credible argument that starting a preventive war is anything other than unjust and immoral. It is difficult to say that the evils arising from that war and the continuation of the military presence remaining in the country following the invasion are not also unjust and immoral.

Ricks has made the additional claim that leaving Iraq now would be immoral, and this is not a view that can be dismissed easily. Our government invaded without just cause, which I hasten to add we would not have had even if Iraq had possessed the weapons it was accused of having (see the above points on preventive war), and this does impose an obligation to repair the damage unleashed by our invasion. Indeed, it seems to me that the second part of Ricks’ view derives from the first part. It is an acceptance of moral responsibility for the wrong done to the Iraqis that Pavlischek seems incapable of acknowledging was done to them. I agree with Ricks that we do owe the Iraqis a debt for the destruction caused and unleashed by the invasion, and where we would probably differ is in gauging how effectively we can repay that debt by remaining in the country even for the next few years.