An Unjust War

By: Daniel Vargas

In March of 2003, the United States began Operation Iraqi Freedom and engaged Iraq in war as a part of the Bush Administration’s War on Terror. Under the conditions of the Catholic Church’s just-war guidelines, the United States and Britain are in direct violation of Christian values pertaining to war and peace. This essay will present and discuss the five conditions which the United States has disregarded in attaining just war.

The United States’ official reasoning for going to war was that Iraq was illegally harboring nuclear and biochemical weapons that posed a grave and imminent threat to the rest of world. Iraq’s possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) was a violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1441 and had to be disarmed immediately and removed. UN inspectors were sent into Iraq to check for WMDs but were forced out with the onset of war. The UN was unable to find substantial evidence of WMDs and never gave the US permission to invade Iraq. As soon as troops set foot on Iraqi soil in March of 2003 the United States violated five just-war conditions.

The first was Legitimate Authority because President Bush failed to receive required endorsement from the UN Security Council for the invasion of Iraq. Many people see this as a violation of international law since the US was not acting in defense. Also, by the laws of the Constitution, Congress has the right to declare war, not the President. The second condition was Right Intention. There has been much speculation that President Bush used the war with Iraq to resolve a personal vendetta with Saddam Hussein. The evidence for this is the false intelligence reports that Bush used to justify the war in the first place. Another piece of evidence is The Downing Street Memo, a document that presented the minutes of a meeting that took place on July 26th, 2002 (7 months before the invasion of Iraq). In the meeting, President Bush expressed a need for the removal of Saddam from Iraq through military action and discussed possible means of justification of such action. The document was leaked to The Times (London) and when 89 members of Congress formally addressed the President about the document, he refused to answer a single question. On March 20th, 2003, the United States entered the war with 263,000 troops while Iraq had a documented 375,000 troops and thousands of more insurgent militia. The US knew that Iraqi forces would not fight under the laws of the Geneva Convention and would in fact use guerilla tactics. The US still invaded Iraq and thus violated the third just-war condition; Probability of Success. Although the Coalition Forces had superior technology, the troops were unprepared for roadside and suicide bombs which have been detrimental to peace in Iraq. The number of dead Iraqis outweighs the number of American deaths but the US has not been successful in imposing Democracy on Iraq. Let us once again focus on the deaths in Iraq thus far to prove why the US has violated the fourth condition: Proportionality. The estimate for dead Iraqi civilians is between 70,000 and 100,000 while the estimate for American armed forces dead is merely 2,418. That means for every 1 American soldier that died, 40-50 Iraqi civilians died. It is obvious that the inflicted damage is not in proportion to the expected good. The final reason why the Iraq War is unjust is the condition of Last Resort. War was not the only way to solve the conflict in Iraq. There could have been UN sanctioned peace talks, compromises, along with the deployment of other diplomatic strategies.

Nonviolence could have easily been implemented in the conflict with Iraq. The US could have dialogued about the rift between The West and the Middle East. There is a lot of animosity towards the United States because of the coup against Mohammed Mossadegh. The democratically elected prime minister of Iran was toppled by the US government in 1953 because he was seen as a Communist. All the countries around Iran are Islamic and share many religious and cultural ties. They reacted in the same way as Americans would have if, for example, Russia came in and toppled the Canadian or Mexican government. If the US would simply take responsibility for its actions and apologize for the coup against Mossadegh, perhaps the Middle East would be a little more open to Western ideas. Many Islamic middle-easterners see America as an Imperialistic nation. The US should work toward changing that self image by apologizing for previous acts of Imperialism. Lastly, we could have called on our allies in the Middle East to help resolve the conflict in Iraq.

The Iraq War is in fact an unjust war and therefore, it is the Christian’s duty to protest it. The US has blatantly violated five conditions of the Just-War Theory presented by the Catholic Church. Even worse, we barely attempted to make peace with Iraq before March of 2003. Violence doesn’t solve anything and never will.

“I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.”

-H. Rap Brown