Following Fagothey’s Right and Reason, I will classify the next four criteria as subsidiary points falling under the second, “just cause” condition (though nothing rides on whether these are considered aspects of the second condition or as separate conditions). Let us proceed now to examine the war in Iraq in light of them:

(A) The good effects of a war must outweigh its bad ones:

Here some of the Neo-CONNED! authors suggest that modern war is so awful that the good to be achieved will almost always be outweighed by the harm caused, so that it is almost always better not to go to war; and some of them also claim support in the just war tradition for this position. To be sure, some of the manuals do indeed take note of the unique horrors of modern war and suggest that these might imply restrictions on how traditional just war criteria get applied to contemporary circumstances. McHugh and Callan, for example, say that in modern circumstances wars ought only to be fought for “supreme interests” (vol. I, p. 567). But while it is certainly plausible to hold that a mere offense against the honor or rulers of a nation, say, would not all by itself suffice to justify unleashing the full fury of a modern army against another nation, the reasons for the war in Iraq summarized in my previous post, especially when taken collectively, are obviously far more serious than that. And McHugh and Callan hold that a nation’s “independence, the policies or interests vital to its existence, its obligations under covenant or treaty of peace” all count as “supreme interests” (p. 566), and that “spiritual values, e.g., freedom from tyranny, freedom to worship God, still hold primacy over material values and can be deemed so precious as to outweigh the great loss of lives and property involved in defending them or recovering them through modern warfare” (p. 561). Surely one of the “obligations” of the “treaty of peace” signed in 1991 was to ensure that Iraq abided by the agreement (otherwise what was the point of it?) And surely the “freedom from tyranny” of the Iraqi people is as compelling a cause for war under modern conditions as under pre-modern ones.

Moreover, the modern circumstances the manuals are most concerned with are things like the use of nuclear weapons and the phenomenon of “total war,” in which the entire citizenry of a nation, including civilians, is treated as if it were a legitimate target for direct and deliberate attack. Neither of these circumstances is relevant to the case at hand, since the United States has neither used nor proposed using nuclear weapons in Iraq, and has not treated civilians as if they could legitimately be directly and deliberately targeted.

Of course, some critics will insist that the fact that many civilians have been killed unintentionally is enough to show that the war is unjust, but the just war tradition and the manuals do not support such a claim. Fagothey says that “killing of the innocent may be an incidental by-product in the legitimate prosecution of the war, according to the principle of double effect” (p. 571), and that while indiscriminate bombing with no attempt to distinguish between military and non-military targets is immoral, “a bomb is simply a larger military weapon and, like any other, may be used against military targets; if any civilians are killed, that is incidental” (p. 573). Moreover, “certain places might become so predominantly occupied with war work that the whole city or area could be designated a military target” (ibid.), and “siege and blockade are legitimate forms of warfare, and can be directed not merely against a military encampment but against a whole city or country as such” (p. 575).

Similarly, Davis says that “air raids on fortified towns, barracks, places of shelter for the forces, munition factories, are permissible, but reasonable care must be taken, if possible, though usually this is impossible, to spare the lives and property of non-combatants” (pp. 149-50). McHugh and Callan write that while efforts must be made to warn and spare non-combatants, “the indirect killing of non-combatants (i.e., killing which is unintentional and unavoidable) is lawful, according to the rules given for double effect… Hence, it is lawful to bombard the fortifications, arsenals, munition works, and barracks of a town, to sink passenger liners that are carrying arms or stores to the enemy, to cut off food supplies from a town or country in order to starve out its troops, although these measures will entail the deaths of some civilians as well as of combatants” (p. 569).

Now this still raises the question of how many unintended civilian deaths would be consistent with the good to be gained by the war outweighing the evil caused by it. Obviously this is not something that can easily be quantified, but we can make the following points. First of all, we must balance the civilian deaths that could reasonably have been foreseen before the war, not only against those that would have resulted from Saddam’s tyrannical methods of government had he been allowed to stay in power, but also those that would have been inflicted by one or more of his possibly more ruthless sons had they succeeded in replacing him upon his death, and those that would have resulted from the civil war and invasions from without (e.g. by Iran) that many analysts believe would almost certainly have occurred had Saddam’s sons even tried to replace him. It is hardly obvious that there have been more civilian deaths as a result of removing Saddam from power than would have occurred had he been left alone.

Secondly, we must consider also the innocent lives that might be spared by the enforcement of sanctions of the sort Saddam violated, not only insofar as such enforcement would prevent Saddam himself from keeping, acquiring, or using WMD (which, before the war, there was good reason to believe he had), but also insofar as it would serve as a deterrent to other unjust regimes who might think to stockpile or use such weapons (e.g. Libya).

Finally, we must keep in mind that many of the civilians who have died since the war began in 2003 have been killed, not by American bombs or bullets, but rather by insurgents – bin Ladenists, Baathists, nationalists, and former soldiers in Saddam’s army embittered at having lost their livelihoods – who have not only targeted American soldiers, but often intentionally killed civilians as well in acts of terrorism. Of course, some critics – including the editors of Neo-CONNED! – characterize these people as if they were merely acting in defense against an unjust invasion. But apart from the fact that the motives of especially the jihadists and Baathists can hardly be characterized as just (at least not by anyone claiming to follow the natural law tradition), such a claim presupposes that the war is unjust, which simply begs the question at issue. If the war is in fact just – and I have shown that the reasons for the war are at the very least defensible from the point of view of traditional just war theory – then none of these insurgents, including the ones who are understandably angry at the loss of their livelihoods, has any right to resist the American occupation.

(B) A war must be fought only as a last resort:

The manuals hold that war should be made only after a state has exhausted such other avenues as “negotiation, mediation, arbitration, diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, ultimatums, and every other means known to enlightened statesmanship” (Fagothey, p. 564). Now there was, between 9/11 and the start of the war, a long period of debate over whether to take military action against Iraq, during which such measures were indeed taken. More significant, though, is the fact that such measures had been taken for the entire twelve years after the end of the first Gulf War, and there was widespread agreement, even among those opposed to war with Iraq, that they had failed. It seems obvious, then, that this criterion of a just war was fulfilled.

Those who claim that there was a “rush to war” or who called for a continuation of U.N. inspections often seem to have a rather simple-minded idea of what a “last resort” is. They seem to think that as long as we can at least keep trying to negotiate, however fruitless such efforts have been in the past, we have not yet exhausted all avenues but war. But this sort of thinking, if followed out consistently, would make it impossible ever to deal effectively with evildoers, who could always take advantage of our reluctance to use force by “waiting out the clock.” While, to their bemusement, we hold out the olive branch for the umpteenth time, they consolidate their power, marshal their forces, and attempt to make it impossible for us effectively to resist them when we finally do wise up and decide to take action. There is nothing in the just war tradition that requires such naïveté. If one makes a good faith effort to arrive through various means at a peaceful solution and it becomes evident that the other party has no intention of doing the same, then we have exhausted all other avenues and may take military action.

(C) There must be a reasonable hope for the war’s success:

Certainly there was never any doubt that the United States would conquer Iraq, so to that extent the success of the war was certain. But of course, there is also the question of whether the aims of fighting the war in the first place would be fulfilled. The main aim, of course, was to enforce compliance with the terms of the 1991 cease-fire, and in doing so to “send a message” to all tyrannical states that might think to violate similar agreements that the United States would not tolerate such behavior. Has this aim been fulfilled? The hysteria of the war’s critics, who claim that the United States is itself a “rogue state” that will go to war at the drop of a hat, proves that it has been fulfilled. No one now doubts that the United States will at least consider taking serious military action against a regime it considers a threat to its security. Mission accomplished. Moreover, since the critics themselves warned before the war that the U.S. might end up being seen as “trigger happy” in this way, they cannot deny that the war’s planners could reasonably judge beforehand that they would succeed in sending the message they wanted to send.

Also, of course, since compliance with the terms of the 1991 cease-fire entailed Iraq’s being disarmed of WMD and various other weapons systems, ensuring such disarmament was another aim of the war. Since the United States has now searched Iraq from top to bottom and found that, for whatever reason – because Saddam had been bluffing all along, or because he had been deceived by his underlings, or because he had smuggled his weapons out of the country before the war – there are no WMD, it can confirm that Iraq has now been disarmed according to the terms of the 1991 cease-fire. Again, mission accomplished. And again, there was no doubt before the war that the United States would be able to confirm once and for all whether Saddam had WMD.

A more difficult question is whether the United States could reasonably judge before the war that Iraq itself would be better off after the invasion than it would be if the U.S. did not invade. It was certainly obvious that, all things being equal, the Iraqis would be better off without Saddam Hussein. The real question is whether there was in fact a realistic possibility of replacing him with something better. Here I think the answer is clearly that there was. First of all, the bar for success here is not insurmountably high. As long as any new government would be, however imperfect, at least considerably more just than Saddam’s – not exactly a tall order – then this particular war aim would be fulfilled. The success of the Kurds in developing something like normal civil society in northern Iraq, both before the war (when Saddam was forced to allow them a measure of autonomy) and since shows that this is possible. And while things have been considerably more difficult elsewhere in Iraq, it must be emphasized again both that (a) Saddam’s sons, especially Uday, would almost certainly have been worse than he was had they succeeded him, and (b) it is generally believed that Iraq was bound to descend into civil war and/or be invaded (e.g. by Iran) at some point after Saddam’s death anyway. Some level of chaos in Iraq was, and was known before the war to be, inevitable; the only question was whether this chaos would lead to a better government than Saddam’s. And it was certainly reasonable to hope and believe that the United States would be able to provide a better government than, say, an Uday or Qusay Hussein regime, or an Iranian client state.

Overall, then, there was indeed a reasonable hope that the aims of the war would be fulfilled.

(D) The justice of the cause can be known:

Since, as I have argued, the war is not only defensible on grounds acceptable to traditional just war theory, but was in fact defended by its proponents precisely on such grounds, it would seem to follow that the justice of the cause was indeed known before the war commenced. This condition has, it would seem, therefore been met.

However, some critics of the war have suggested that whether or not the war in Iraq, or any other war for that matter, does in fact meet just war criteria, we are almost never in a good enough epistemic situation to know whether it does, so that we can almost never be justified in going to war.

An especially bizarre example of this strategy is presented in an essay by Thomas Ryba in Neo-CONNED!, which attempts to apply the Gettier problem, a famous puzzle in late 20th century epistemology, to the application of just war theory. The Gettier problem is intended to show that the traditional analysis of knowledge as justified true belief is inadequate, for there seem to be cases where a person believes something that is true, and is justified in believing it, and yet does not have genuine knowledge. For example, suppose that it is 12:52 AM and that Smith believes that it is 12:52 AM because he has just glanced at his clock. Presumably Smith is justified in his belief insofar as glancing at a clock is typically a good way to find out what time it is. But suppose also that, unbeknownst to Smith, the clock is broken and stuck on 12:52, and that his having glanced at the clock exactly at that time was simply a matter of luck. Intuitively, it seems right to say that Smith didn’t really know that it was 12:52 AM, because the having of genuine knowledge cannot plausibly depend on coincidences of this sort. So, knowledge must involve something more than merely justified true belief.

Ryba suggests that we ought to regard the application of just war theory as analogous to the application of any standard of justification that might be threatened by a Gettier-type counterexample. Even if Smith is right, and justified in thinking he is, he cannot really be said to know that it is 12:52 AM. Similarly, President Bush may have been right in thinking that the war in Iraq was just, and may even have been justified in thinking this, but that doesn’t show that he really knew that it was just. But since just war theory requires not only that the cause is just, but that it be known to be just, it follows that Bush’s case for the war did not in fact meet the criteria for a just war. Ryba bolsters his case by suggesting that the fact that just war theory has undergone developments in the course of its history shows that the possibility that Bush (or anyone else contemplating war) lacks genuine knowledge is real and not merely hypothetical. For if the older criteria were inadequate and needed qualification, so too might the current criteria.

I must say that among the anti-war arguments I’ve encountered, this one strikes me as exceptionally feeble. The first thing to say about it, in fairness to Gettier, is that his puzzle was not intended to promote the sort of skepticism that Ryba seems keen on defending. Gettier does not deny that knowledge is possible; he merely suggests that we need a better analysis of what constitutes knowledge than the standard one. And if any of the many proposals for such an analysis that philosophers have developed since Gettier first raised the issue is acceptable, Ryba’s argument collapses.

Furthermore, if Ryba’s argument had any force at all, it would undermine far more than our ability to know whether a particular war was just or not. Science has constantly developed over the course of its history too; so if Ryba is right, we cannot claim to have any scientific knowledge, since our current theories might prove to be inadequate. Our moral understanding has developed too, so that if Ryba is correct we cannot claim to have any moral knowledge. Even worse for Ryba – at least if he is, as I gather from his essay and his resume, a Catholic – Catholic doctrine (not only where just war theory is concerned but even in the most central areas) has developed over the course of Church history, so that if Ryba is right, we cannot claim to have any theological knowledge either. But such skepticism would itself be contrary to Catholic doctrine, in which case Ryba can hardly claim that his position more faithfully upholds Catholic teaching than does the position of those who support the war. Furthermore, if Ryba’s position implies (whether he realizes this or not) that moral and theological knowledge are impossible, then he can have no solid basis for criticizing the war in Iraq on moral or theological grounds. His position is self-undermining.

In any event, since the thinkers who have been most central to the development of just war doctrine (e.g. Augustine and Aquinas) were very far from advocating the sort of epistemological skepticism that Ryba seems to be pushing, it is hardly plausible to suggest that their criteria for having knowledge that a cause for war is just were intended to be as absurdly stringent as Ryba suggests they should be. Indeed, Aquinas and other thinkers in the tradition rather famously uphold common sense where matters of knowledge are concerned. The manuals follow them in this, and argue that it is always possible to arrive at certainty about what course of action to take, even if this must sometimes involve the application of various “reflex principles” telling us how to make a decision under conditions of imperfect knowledge. And where the decision in question involves war, the manuals imply that unless the cause for a particular war is manifestly unjust, we should defer to the judgment of those whose special responsibility it is to make decisions about whether to go to war, viz. government officials.

Thus McHugh and Callan hold that “subjects called to the colors should fight for their country, even if they are in doubt about the justice of the cause, for the presumption is on the side of the government” (vol. I, p. 564). Jone says that “both the soldiers already enlisted and the subjects conscripted by the state may fight in a war that is doubtfully just if the doubt cannot be solved” (p. 143), and Fagothey tells us that “if [the cause] is doubtful, subordinates can form their consciences and trust to the wisdom of their leaders” (p. 577). As Bellarmine states, “the soldiers do not sin unless it is plainly evident that the war is unlawful, for subjects ought to obey their superior, nor should they criticize his commands, but they should rather suppose that their ruler has a good reason, unless they clearly know the contrary” (quoted in Fagothey, p. 565).

These statements reflect the Catholic view that “the evaluation of [just war] conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good,” i.e. “public authorities” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, sections 2309 and 2310). This has nothing to do with blind submission to government, especially not in a free and democratic society where public debate and criticism is part of the process of official decision-making. It is simply a matter of common sense, insofar as in any workable society someone has to have the authority to come to a final decision after discussion and debate have taken place, and that decision should be in the hands of those who are in the best position to know all the relevant circumstances.

Moreover, none of this rules out the legitimacy of continuing debate over the conduct of the war after it has begun, etc. The point is just that, given that the manuals indicate that we are justified in deferring to those in authority when we cannot settle the question of the justice of the cause on our own (as long as it is not blatantly unjust), it is clear that the manuals do not understand the condition that “the justice of the cause can be known” to be anywhere near as stringent as some of the critics of the war assume it must be.

3. Right intention:

All of this presupposes that the leaders themselves have the right intention in going to war, which is itself (by Fagothey’s count) the third condition set out by traditional just war theory. It is not enough that there be a just cause for war, according to that theory; that cause (rather than a desire for glory or plunder, say) must in fact be the reason why the war is being fought. Now since the reasons the war’s defenders, including the administration, have given for the war are, as I have argued above, just reasons, it would seem to follow that their intentions are just.

Of course, the war’s critics have suggested all sorts of nefarious hidden motives: a lust for Iraq’s oil, a desire to enrich Halliburton, etc. Typically, though, the existence of such motives is merely asserted rather than argued for, and it seems that many of those who believe this sort of stuff arrive at their belief in an a priori fashion, on the basis of some global theory of politics on which the true reasons for a government’s actions are almost always different from the publicly stated reasons. Marxism would be the best-known example of this sort of view, but there are others (including a right-wing variant that I will discuss in my next post). It should go without saying that there is nothing in just war theory that implies such a “hermeneutics of suspicion.” Indeed, the cynical and reductionistic epistemological doctrines (Marxist, Freudian, Nietzschean, etc.) that underlie this kind of thinking are radically at odds with the metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions of the natural law tradition. So no one who claims to follow that tradition can coherently base a critique of the war on such a doctrine.

The conspiracy theories are uniformly implausible in any case. For example, and as has often been pointed out (e.g. here) the suggestion that conquering Iraq would be a good way for oil companies to increase their profits makes no economic sense. Moreover, the critics who make these sorts of accusations also frequently make other accusations that are inconsistent with them. The same people who accuse the president of cynical venality also often characterize him as beholden to a naïve Wilsonian idealism. So which is it? The fact that such critics seem willing to believe any and every accusation made against the war’s defenders strongly indicates that their criticisms are driven more by an irrational hatred of the president and his administration than by an honest and dispassionate assessment of the war.

Like conspiracy theorists generally, those critics of the war who allege hidden motives also often cite esoteric sources, or “experts” whose testimony, when not seriously questionable, is at the very least countered by the testimony of “experts” on the opposite side of the question. Yet these sources are appealed to as if they provide irrefutable evidence of the bad intentions of the administration. But that the late Jude Wanniski makes a long string of provocative assertions in an interview – see Neo-CONNED! for 75 pages of this – or that LewRockwell.com linked to a story from Antiwar.com which cited a passage from Counterpunch.org which quoted a disgruntled government official’s statement about what a friend of his allegedly overheard some other official say at a cocktail party (or whatever) hardly constitutes serious grounds for claiming that the injustice of the war should be evident to all.

We might also note that if there was anything to the various conspiracy theories peddled by the war’s most vociferous critics, it is likely that some hard evidence for them would have surfaced by now. However sycophantic you think FOX News is, CNN, CBS, The New York Times and the like are no fans of either Bush or the war, and have shown a willingness (as in the “Memogate” affair) to push the envelope of journalistic standards in order to try to embarrass the president. If there were any way to substantiate the various conspiracy theories, surely at least one of these organizations would have aired it by now. Of course, the most extreme conspiracy mongers would insist that even these news outlets are hopelessly right-wing or otherwise beholden to the “party line.” To justify such paranoia, though, they typically have to appeal to some version or other of the “hermeneutics of suspicion” mentioned above – which, as I have already noted, no one committed to the natural law tradition that underlies just war thinking has any reason to take seriously.

The bottom line, though, is that Occam’s razor suffices to defuse any doubts about whether the right intention condition has been fulfilled. For it is not at all mysterious why someone might think, post-9/11 and given the considerations in favor of the war mentioned in my first post, that the war in Iraq was a good idea. A reasonable person could doubt that it was a good idea, but the point is that another reasonable person might not doubt it. So there is simply no need to appeal to any hidden or suspect motives in order to explain why the president and his advisors decided to go to war.

Finally, even if these people had in fact had bad motives, that would not necessarily be the end of the matter from the point of view of the manuals. For as long as there is, objectively speaking, a just cause for a war which has already begun, the badness of the subjective motives of those who initiated it does not by itself suffice to show that the war should be ended. As Fagothey writes, “a wrong intention will make the war subjectively immoral, but not necessarily unjust” and “in the prosecution of a just war an evil intention, if present at the beginning, can be corrected and the war continued for a worthy purpose” (p. 566). Especially given that so much blood and treasure has already been lost in the enterprise, there is good reason to hold that a just cause pursued initially with bad intentions ought nevertheless to be pursued until the end, at least if there is still hope for success, so that the losses accrued so far will not have been in vain.

4. Right means:

Finally there is the requirement that for a war to be just the means used must be morally acceptable. Most of the objections to the war alleging that immoral means have been used to fight it have emphasized the civilian casualties involved, and I have already dealt with this issue when considering whether the costs of the war outweigh its benefits.

There is also the question of how the U.S. has treated prisoners of war, though, and here many have alleged that the methods of interrogation that have been used are intrinsically immoral. Now there have undoubtedly been individual cases where prisoners have been unjustly abused. But that is bound to happen in any war to some extent, just as it is bound to happen in police work, and by itself it no more de-legitimizes the war as a whole than the occasional corrupt cop casts doubt on the legitimacy of having a police force. What really matters is whether the methods officially approved of and widely practiced are on the whole unjust.

Here again, it seems clear that the tradition and the manuals support the conclusion that there is no violation of just war criteria. To be sure, the manuals – or at least the ones I have seen – do not specifically address the question of how prisoners of war may be interrogated. But they do nevertheless have much to say that is relevant, particularly in their treatment of the question of how ordinary criminals can legitimately be dealt with.

So, for example, McHugh and Callan explicitly rule out “torture” as a legitimate way of punishing evildoers, and give as examples of torture “rack, thumb-screw, prolonged scourgings, etc.” (vol. II, p. 130). But they also allow that such “bodily harms” as “wounds, blows, restraint” and even “branding” are permissible as punishments for people known to be guilty of serious wrongdoing, as long as they are administered on “sufficient authority” (such as that of the state), for a “sufficient reason” (such as the “good of the public”), and so long as there is “moderation in the harm or pain inflicted” (pp. 129-130). Similarly, “mutilation is lawful by public authority in punishment of a criminal; for if the state has the right to inflict death for serious crime, much more has it the right to inflict the lesser punishment of mutilation” (p. 127). In short, while torture is always wrong, the manuals allow that under the right conditions such punishments as wounds, blows, restraint, and even branding and mutilation do not count as torture.

Along the same lines, Prümmer’s Handbook of Moral Theology says that “since the State has the power to put the criminal to death, so it has the power for a sufficient reason to mutilate the criminal (v.g. by cutting off his hand) or to flog him” (p. 126). And Jone tells us that “corporal chastisement is lawful if done by, or with (at least tacit) consent of, competent superiors. Public authorities have this power over malefactors, as also parents over their children” (p. 144).

If spanking a child can be morally permissible, then, it is hardly plausible to suggest that there is anything intrinsically immoral or contrary to human dignity in, say, slapping a known terrorist. And while my point here is certainly not to defend any particular case of alleged mistreatment of prisoners – much less to recommend the likes of mutilation, branding, or amputation as methods of interrogation – the manuals do clearly suggest that if a certain prisoner (Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or Saddam Hussein, say) is known to have engaged in seriously immoral behavior (e.g. terrorism or mass murder), then it can be justifiable to use rough methods in dealing with him. It is no good, then, piously to condemn as “torture” or as “violations of human dignity” the methods the U.S. has used in interrogating terrorists, since what counts as “torture” is part of what is at issue. And clearly, the tradition and the manuals, while sometimes condemning torture, also sometimes allow that some very harsh punishments indeed fall outside the scope of torture.

It might still be objected that whether or not certain methods are intrinsically immoral, they ought not to be used because they are incompatible with the Geneva Conventions, or with some other international standard of lawful wartime conduct. But while the manuals hold that such international agreements ought in general to be respected, they also allow that “if they are repudiated by one side, they cease to bind the other, unless they are the subject of Natural law and justice” (Davis, p. 149; cf. also Fagothey, p. 578). In regard to reprisals against those who have committed acts that violate international law, McHugh and Callan hold that “if the act of the enemy is opposed only to international law [and not the natural law], it is not unlawful to use the same act against him, for, since he has broken faith, the treaty obligation no longer binds the other side” (vol. I, p. 573). Insofar as the tactics used by terrorists are violations of international law, then (not to mention the natural law), the United States has, according to the teaching of the manuals, no moral obligation to respect standards of international law in dealing with them (though of course it does have an obligation to respect the natural law).

The case so far

Overall, then, it is, I think I have shown, quite clear that the war in Iraq is perfectly defensible from the point of view of traditional just war theory, especially as presented in the manuals of the pre-Vatican II period. Since these manuals represent an unmistakably conservative and even traditionalist approach to morality, they cannot be written off by paleoconservatives as “neocon” deviations from true conservatism. Obviously, many readers would not accept the teaching of the tradition and the manuals in the first place. My aim here, however, is not to defend the manuals, but merely to show that anyone who does take them seriously – as the paleoconservative and traditionalist Catholic contributors to Neo-CONNED! surely would – has no grounds for claiming that the war in Iraq is “manifestly unjust.”

It will not do to suggest that the case I’ve presented is irrelevant given that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI (while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger) opposed the war. For neither man ever claimed to be presenting some binding statement of just war principle, as opposed to making a prudential judgment about whether the war in Iraq met the already established principles. And prudential judgments of this sort are not binding on the consciences of Catholics, even though Catholics have to give them serious and respectful consideration. As mentioned above, Catholic teaching is that it is public authorities who have the ultimate responsibility for determining whether a certain war meets just war conditions, and who will have to answer to God for their decision.

That this is the Vatican’s own view of the weight of its statements on the war is evidenced by then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s statement in 2003 that John Paul II “did not impose this position as doctrine of the Church,” and his now famous 2004 letter concerning the conditions under which Catholics are worthy to receive communion:

“Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.” (emphasis mine)

Since this letter was issued during a presidential election in which the war in Iraq was the central issue, and in which the question was raised of whether Catholic politicians who support abortion and euthanasia should be allowed to receive communion, there can surely be little doubt that then-Cardinal Ratzinger, the highest doctrinal authority in the Church next to the Pope himself, was acknowledging that Catholics were not bound in conscience to agree with the Pope’s position on the war even though they are bound in conscience to follow the Church’s teaching regarding abortion and euthanasia.

Second, it is important to keep in mind that the Pope’s statements on the war never approached anything like the vitriol and personal invective so common among the war’s paleoconservative critics. Nor is this plausibly interpreted as a matter of mere diplomatic restraint. For one thing, as the statement from then-Cardinal Ratzinger just quoted makes clear, diplomatic restraint does not keep the Vatican from denouncing abortion and euthanasia as gravely immoral, even if this might offend certain political leaders. If the Pope or the Cardinal had believed the war in Iraq was “manifestly unjust,” as the editors of Neo-CONNED! claim it is, they would surely have made it clear that Catholics can no more support it than they can support abortion and euthanasia. Moreover, once the war was a fait accompli, the Vatican began to express support for the task of transforming Iraq into a functioning democracy. This is surely not something it would have done had it regarded the continuing occupation of the country as inherently unjust and the insurgents as legitimately acting in self-defense, as the most extreme critics of the war do.

Finally, and as I indicated in my first post, it is disingenuous for Catholic traditionalist critics of the war to present themselves as merely “following the pope,” for they have tended to be extremely critical of recent popes in other contexts. Indeed, they have been especially critical of the popes where theological and liturgical matters are concerned. Yet if such traditionalists believe that popes can be wrong even in these areas – where, after all, popes are supposed to be experts – how can they consistently maintain that the pope must not be questioned in matters of politics? How can they accuse other Catholics of being disloyal for disagreeing with a pope’s judgment on such matters, while claiming that their own disagreement with the pope about how the Mass ought to be said, whether Vatican II was a good idea, and so forth, casts no doubt on their own loyalty?

I rest my case, then. But we might still ask: If the war is as defensible from the point of view of traditional just war theory as I have claimed, why do so many paleoconservatives and traditionalists oppose it with such vehemence? It is to this question that I will turn in my third and final post in this series.