just war

At every level of officer training I attended, from the Platoon Leader’s Course to Command and General Staff Officer College, we wrestled with the concept of what makes a war just. It was an important discussion for me, a Christian in uniform.

I’ve been told many times, by Christians of all stripes, that there is no such thing as just war. But this morning I read in three chapters of Joshua the history of the Israelites’ fight for their new homeland. The story was summarized in Joshua 10:42: “All these kings and their lands Joshua conquered in one campaign, because the Lord, the God of Israel, fought for Israel.”

So that war, at least, was clearly just. But what makes another war just is less clear. One traditional consideration has been to oppose evil, and defense of the helpless is another. But those concepts are beginning to fray. Americans as a whole disagreed that the evil of Saddam Hussein justified the most recent war in Iraq, and in fact no longer agree on the concept of evil. And America took a pass when the world called on us to protect the defenseless in Rwanda and Darfur. In fact, our current President is the first who has not explained his rationale for why his use of the military meets the requirements of just war, preferring instead a pragmatic approach.

Especially in an election year this is a critical question for me. I can’t reject the use of military force out of hand, because we have a military and we will use it, and because I think verses like the one above demonstrate that sometimes the use of force is appropriate.

But not very often, and then it is critical that we as a nation lay out the moral and legal case for war before we begin. As a voter, an important question to ask is, “How will this candidate use our military?” It seems to me that a good indicator of the answer is the candidate’s use of power in other forms. 

At the same time, I need to search my heart to see how I view power, and how I use it when I have it. Power used in any way except on behalf of the powerless creeps toward abuse.