Many of the contributors to Neo-CONNED! are Catholic traditionalists in this sense, as are some other paleoconservative critics of the war. They claim, as the book’s editors put it, that “the principles of the Catholic just-war tradition… convict the war in Iraq of manifest injustice” (emphasis mine). Like so many left-wing critics of the war, these people are not content to say that the war was unwise, ill-advised, or poorly thought-out; they insist on branding it as evil through-and-through, and its architects as moral monsters. I find this attitude completely indefensible, indeed preposterous. I do not deny that reasonable people can disagree about whether the war was a good idea, or even, on balance, the morally best course of action. But I think there are no grounds whatsoever for claiming that it was “manifestly unjust,” at least not in traditional natural law theory. In my view, the natural law tradition – especially as understood by the pre-Vatican II thinkers the paleoconservative critics would claim to follow – quite clearly shows the war in Iraq to have been, at the very least, a morally defensible (even if not the only morally defensible) course of action. And paleoconservatives who claim otherwise are, I would argue, often motivated less by traditional Catholic or natural law thinking itself than by certain other ideological commitments – commitments that are not only distinct from the Catholic and natural law traditions but sometimes even incompatible with them. ~Edward Feser, Right Reason

It would be easy enough to poke holes in Mr. Feser’s accusations of a “lack of charity” from the paleo side (and also exceedingly easy to catalogue the vituperative hate directed against paleo and other opponents of the war), but why rehash all of that? Here he makes a far more serious set of claims. His main claim is that the war is morally defensible on the traditional Catholic understanding of just war and natural law. “Our” main claim, if I may be so bold as to speak generally for all paleoconservatives here, is that a war of aggression can never be morally defensible and any war of aggression has to be recognised as a “manifest injustice” (to use the language of the Neo-CONNED! books). Why this is “completely indefensible, indeed preposterous” truly does escape me, but let’s try to understand it.

Why would an aggressive war be unjust? For starters, an aggressive war cannot be proportional, because it is not in response to any injury or slight, and it cannot be from right motivation, because aggression is the fruit of a fundamentally disordered soul and stems from a vicious will. If the motivation of the magistrate in launching the invasion was some kind of libido dominandi, which seems at least plausible, the war is automatically unjust. Aggression cannot be setting right a grievance, because it is itself an injury and not a remedy, and it cannot be redressing a wrong, as it is itself fundamentally wrong because it is spiteful, cruel and vicious.

It may be that some paleoconservatives who are traditional Catholics also have other motivations and commitments (any person possesses any number of different kinds of commitments), such as patriotism or a particular political philosophy of, say, Jeffersonian republicanism. It will be amusing to see how Mr. Feser argues that these other commitments are incompatible with traditional Catholic teachings.

Mr. Feser begins with lawful authority, and manages to stumble even here:

Of course, some might quibble that the war was not officially “declared” by Congress, but it is hard to see how this could be a serious ground for objecting to the war from the point of view of just war theory. For just war theory per se is not concerned with the specific mechanisms by means of which a nation or government might decide upon policy.

Note that strict adherence to the Constitution is considered “quibbling.” Yes, well. The defenders of the war really cannot have it both ways. The folks at First Things, for example, routinely invoke the “prudence” of the magistrate to do end-runs around moral objections to military actions all the time. Surely it is not insignificant if the magistrate in question, in this case Mr. Bush, has acted illegally by starting a war in contravention of the Constitution? Mr. Feser dances around the issue:

Congress did pass a resolution authorizing it.

No, not really. They acquiesced in their constitutional duty and vested the President with authority to take whatever action he deemed necessary. This was a resolution that washed Congress’ hands of its responsibility to deliberate on going to war. The purpose of vesting this war power in Congress is not simply to let the representatives of the people sign off on a policy already decided upon, which is what that vote was, but so that there would be an appropriate check on the will of the executive that would prevent him from starting wars on his own authority (which is precisely what Mr. Bush did). If the President violated the Constitution and broke his oath to uphold it when he started the war in Iraq, as I firmly believe he did (and as any honest strict constructionist would agree), he did not possess lawful authority to wage that war. The war is illegal under our own fundamental law. The war fails its first test of justice. But, wait, Mr. Feser looks for a way out:

Moreover, almost no one, left or right, paleoconservative or otherwise, has denied that the war in Afghanistan was just, even though it too has been fought without a formal Congressional declaration.

One shouldn’t have to point out that everyone, left or right, assumed the war in Afghanistan was an act of direct and immediate retaliation for 9/11. The invasion of Iraq was, at its very, very best, an attack (and a basically unprovoked one at that) to prevent the Iraqi government from someday obtaining weapons that it might one day then use or give to someone to use against the United States, which is such a strained and sorry argument that I marvel every time someone uses it. Mr. Feser uses it again, and I marvel.

Clearly, a formal declaration of war need not precede operations carried out in self-defense and retaliation for an attack, but no serious person committed to a strict reading of the Constitution believes that the President can send armies off indefinitely with no more authorisation than a vague resolution of Congress. To use one of the favourite examples of the warmongers, President Jefferson did not wait for Congress to assemble to launch the retaliatory strikes against Tripoli, but everyone acknowledged that Congress needed to declare war, and Congress did just that nine months after hostilities had started. It is four and half years after 9/11–we are still waiting for the proper legal authorisation of the Afghan “war.” There was, of course, no provocation and no real casus belli in the case of Iraq, which makes the example of Afghanistan a red herring.

Mr. Feser sidesteps the fact that the U.N. Charter forbids aggressive warfare and the unprovoked violation of the sovereignty of a member state. The Charter is a treaty that our Congress ratified. It is supposed to be legally binding, alas, on our government. Mr. Bush violated that treaty and broke international law. Again, the war fails its test of justice.

I will go through the rest of his post and make my objections as I have before, but common sense forces me to say something glaringly obvious: the invasion of a small, weak, isolated and pitifully despotic country by the world’s greatest military power in the name of self-defense and collective security is an insult to the concepts of self-defense and collective security. Of all the countries in the world, ours had the least realistically to fear from Iraq. Our treatment of Iraq in 2003 was like Austria’s high-handed treatment of Serbia in 1914, except that Austria had at least actually been provoked and injured. Iraq posed no real threat to the United States or anyone else, and whatever threat many people imagined it to pose was so remote, so miniscule and so far-fetched that all Americans should be embarrassed and ashamed that their government waged that war.

Mr. Feser is very keen to find things that do not violate the “spirit” of this or the “spirit” of that in his post, so perhaps he should consider whether rummaging through pre-Vatican II theology manuals to find some slender reed on which to base a war of aggression is really in keeping with the spirit of justice.

Mr. Feser marshals a small raft of quotes to the effect that offensive war in a just cause can be justifiable. That may make sense. But what constitutes the just cause? He quotes a manual of one Fagothey: “offensive war is just when fought to vindicate seriously violated rights.” Okay. What are the “rights” of the United States that were seriously violated by the government of Iraq? We’ll be waiting an age for the answer, because Iraq never violated American rights in any conceivable way.

Are we supposed to believe that we attacked them in 2003 because they violated the terms of their cease-fire agreement in the 1990s (while we were doing much the same)? How did the Iraqis violate the terms of their cease-fire? By not fully cooperating with the weapons inspectors, whom Mr. Clinton then withdrew in 1998 to provide a lame pretext for his impeachment bombing campaign against Iraq. The subsequent failure to readmit weapons inspectors, whom our government withdrew, then justified invading the country, even after Iraq then admitted them again in early 2003? Mr. Feser does really know how dodgy his position is, doesn’t he?

He digs up the possibility of “punitive war” to punish a “guilty nation.” Whatever else one wants to say about the 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions that followed, most people could readily agree that Iraq had already suffered its punitive war and sufficient punitive consequences. How many times does one get to launch punitive wars against countries that have never attacked your own? For as long as the existence of its government offends you? At that point it is no longer a question of justice and has become a loophole used to justify aggression. Since we’re all being very keen on traditional just war doctrine, how about considering the role of some other traditional virtues, such as charity, temperance and moderation? At what point do all these punitive wars become immoderate and simply hateful? At what point is a “guilty nation” deemed cleansed of its guilt?

Mr. Feser goes on (and on and on):

Fagothey also cites as just causes for war “the carrying off of part of [a nation’s] population, the seizing of its territory or resources or property, or such a serious blow to the nation’s honor as to weaken its authority and jeopardize its control” (p. 563). Also, “a nation has the right to come to the help of another fighting a just war, and, if it has pledged itself by treaty to do so, must fulfill its contract” (p. 576). Similarly, the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia cites as legitimate causes for war “the request of another state in peril” and “the oppression of the innocent” when “the intervening state may justly assume the communication of the right of the innocent to exercise extreme coercion in their behalf” (article on “War”).

McHugh and Callan provide an especially thorough list of possible justifications for war, which is worth quoting at length (omitting various scriptural references):

“Sufficient causes for making war are: (a) grave injury to the honor of a nation, such as insult to its ruler or ambassadors… (b) injury to the natural right of the nation to existence, self-preservation, property, free action within its own sphere; thus a people may make war to defend their independence … to recover territory taken from them unjustly, to resist a violation of neutrality… to protect their own citizens and commerce; (c) injury to the rights of the nation under positive law. Thus, a nation may make war to uphold important international agreements, to enforce the observance of treaties, and the like. Injury done to a third nation or to the subjects of a third nation may also be a sufficient reason for war. (a) Thus, out of justice, a nation is obliged to help its allies in a just war; for to help those with whose interests one’s own interests are involved is only self-defense. (b) Out of charity, a nation that has the right of intervention may lawfully go to war to protect a weaker nation against a stronger and bullying nation, to assist a government unjustly attacked by its subjects, or to help innocent subjects who are tyrannized over by their government.”

Out of all of these many justifications, the Iraq war might be remotely justified by one: the “oppression of the innocent.” No one will quibble that the Iraqi government was oppressive. But relatively few believe that is why we went to war, and even if it were the actual reason and not merely something to be thrown in to justify a decidedly aggressive war after the fact the deaths of some tens of thousands of the oppressed “innocents” muddy even these waters. As for all of the other reasons listed in that quote, the Iraq war that began three years ago fails to match any.

Invoking the cease-fire agreement of 1991, which our forces repeatedly violated with our so-called “no-fly zones,” which had no legal warrant in either the cease-fire agreement or under any resolution from the United Nations, is just dishonest. Invoking Iraqi resistance to these illegal “no-fly zones” as a casus belli is also dishonest. If he really thinks that the alleged assassination attempt against President Bush in 1993 justifies a war in 2003, he is welcome to make what I regard as an essentially silly argument.

He complains that critics of the war do not take the case for war cumulatively. But if the war fails each and every test, as I believe it does, what difference will viewing them all together make, except to confirm that the war was essentially wholly unjustified?