Against “Just War” Pacifism in Iran

It is not hard to see why President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is incredibly controversial. There is plenty to criticize in the freewheeling execution of Operation Epic Fury or in the multiple rationales proffered to justify the war to the American public. Whatever battlefield successes have been achieved so far, frankly, the administration has not done a very good job reassuring the American people that it is approaching this crisis with all due seriousness.

And yet some critics of the war have gone beyond arguments about prudence and into what my Law & Liberty colleague Daniel J. Mahoney described in a recent essay as “functional pacifism.” The stridency of their opposition to the conflict bleeds, intentionally or not, into a moralistic condemnation of almost any use of military force. This tendency is especially concerning among self-proclaimed advocates of “just war theory.” The reduction of the tenets of just war into a rigid, overly theoretical, almost-Kantian formula undermines the very rationale behind them.

One recent example of this “just war pacifism” that appeared last week in the pages of Providence is my friend Henry Long’s “Catholic Case Against War with Iran.” While I applaud the ethical seriousness with which he approaches questions of life and death, I fear the rigidity of the moral standards he outlines ultimately fail to account for the responsibilities of states to their citizens. Rather than clarifying when uses of military force can help secure justice, Mr. Long’s humanitarian impulse obscure what statesmanship requires in periods of international crisis.

Read more in Providence.