Almighty God, our heavenly Father, let thy protection be upon all those who are in the service of our country; guard them from all harm and danger of body and soul; sustain and comfort those as home, especially in their hours of loneliness, anxiety, and sorrow; prepare the dying for death and the living for your service; give success to our arms on land and sea and in the air; and grant unto us and all nations a speedy, just and lasting peace. Amen.
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Saturday, July 22, 2006
Israel - Hezbollah - Lebanon, "Proportionality" and Just War Theory
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the loss of civilian life and the targeting of "civilian infrastructure" compromised by Hezbollah has provoked a discussion of proportionality and just war criteria -- for the benefit of our readers, this post will compile the key articles and contributions on this subject.
Israel is now at war with an enemy whose hostility is extreme, explicit, unrestrained, and driven by an ideology of religious hatred. But this is an enemy that does not field an army; that has no institutional structure and no visible chain of command; that does not recognize the legal and moral principle of noncombatant immunity; and that does not, indeed, acknowledge any rules of engagement. How do you--how does anyone--fight an enemy like that? I cannot deal with the strategy and tactics of such a fight. How to strike effectively, how to avoid a dangerous escalation--those are important topics, but not mine. The question I want to address is about morality and politics.
The easy part of the answer is to say what cannot rightly be done. . . .
a discussion in moral theory of the just war, from two years ago, of differences between Catholic just war theory and other versions of the theory, notably that of Michael Walzer in his celebrated Just and Unjust Wars. I have been thinking about these differences in reading the commentary on the Lebanon conflict, particularly that of the Catholic law professor Stephen Bainbridge . . .
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