Actual physical aggression or the threat thereof is one potential jus ad bellum (ground for war), but so, according to the standard moral theology manuals of the 1950s, are freedom from tyranny and liberation from religious oppression whereby a nation is prevented from worshipping God. Even a grave dishonor to a country can be a good reason for going to war. And the standard pre-1960s theology books also teach that it might be an act of charity for a nation to go to war to bring orderly government to a country in chaos. ~David Oderberg, NRO

The larger argument of Prof. Oderberg’s article is contentious, if not ludicrous (Mr. Bush has a better understanding of traditional Christian ethics than John Paul II did), and, I imagine from a Catholic perspective, potentially quite offensive in its remarks about John Paul II himself. It is somehow held against the late Pope that he “never seems to have met a war he didn’t abhor,” when there were arguably no actual just wars during his pontificate (none leaps to mind). In any event, abhorrence of war is usually considered a good trait in most Christians and especially in bishops. All of this hints at a sort of sneaky disregard by Prof. Oderberg for the spirit of just war theory, which is charity, and a subtle desire to find the exceptions to the prohibition against killing other people so that good Christians can support shedding blood just like everyone else. A thoughtful Christian might have to make sure he is sitting down when he reads things like this: “When it comes to applying tradition to life-and-death moral issues, Bush 43 wins hands down over John Paul II.” Given nonsense like that, it is not exactly a mystery why someone in the Neo-CONNED! volume might have referred to Oderberg as a neocon, even if the label in this case might be a little tendentious.

The easy reply to some of Prof. Oderberg’s examples is that Suarez also taught that it was legitimate to go to war against heretics to rid them of their heresy, and few if any Catholics today are going to defend that proposition (even if, technically speaking, they should). But I will not go down that historicist road, because that is exactly the sort of disreputable tactic that George Weigel & Co. engaged in before the war. “Preventive war may have seemed unjust back when, but nowadays we have the possibility of terrorists with nukes! Prudence demands…etc., etc.”

Among the reasons Prof. Oderberg gives, freedom from tyranny is the only one remotely applicable to Iraq, c. 2003. But weighed against that would have to have been the almost certain knowledge that the relative orderliness of Iraqi society would have broken down. The consequences of years, perhaps decades, of chaos and violence following the invasion would have to give anyone serious pause, especially when the response of invasion seems so absurdly disproportionate to any of Iraq’s alleged violations of a cease-fire agreement. The chaos that Mr. Oderberg cites as an evil justifying intervention is precisely the product of the actual war waged in Iraq. One wonders what he would have to say about the actual Iraq war. Even if a war is justified previously, the occupier’s failure to establish order and provide for the common peace and the administration of justice in some sense nullifies or certainly undermines the justice of the war.

The war may be just when it prevents greater evils than it causes (though not necessarily), but certainly not when it causes more evils than it prevents, and I think after three years a fair observer has to conclude that the latter is the case. It is difficult to imagine realistically the greater evils that would have ensued had we left Iraq as it was. (By the way, pointing to the alternative of continued starvation sanctions imposed on Iraq only underscores the injustice of those sanctions–stopping the starvation of innocents and replacing it with the killing of innocents is not exactly moral progress.)