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A Just War Revisited

© Andrew Willis

A few months ago, I wrote in “A Just War” http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1292... that the military has been misused more in the last 20 years than it had ever been. Not in what we do, but in why we’re doing it. I argued that the job of the military is to kill people and break things for the “national interest,” i.e. economic, political or defensive reasons. That is exactly what we’re doing now in Afghanistan.

Many times in the last month and a half, I have heard the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon compared to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which obviously caused our entry into World War II, a far broader conflict than the one that faces us now, with a more visible enemy, and a more easily defined and executed mission. The comparison is a valid one, considering the size and nature of the attack, but the similarities end there. At least at Pearl Harbor, the attack was on a military target, with concern for civilians and non-combatants. The cowards who attacked us last month weren’t interested in disabling our military; they know they can’t, despite the damage at the Pentagon (the attack there was more symbolic than practical).

Now, though, we are retaliating. But our retaliation begs a few questions.

First, is it in the national interest? As I mentioned before, our national interest can be defined in economic, political and defensive terms. The objective of terrorism is nothing less than to change our way of life. Our national interest is to maintain our way of life in the manner in which we desire it to be. So yes, this war is in our national interest, and is so in any terms one wishes to use to define it.

Second, is the scope and style of our retaliation in proportion to the danger presented by the enemy? Obviously, neither the Afghan military nor the al-Qaeda network of terrorists (or any single country or group anywhere) can challenge the United States in anything resembling a real threat to our sovereignty, and they know it. That’s why terrorists operate the way they do; it’s the only way they can force their views upon others. However, these terrorists are willing to do literally anything in their cause, and they can’t attack us directly with a military, so they choose indirect methods, and that’s where their threat to us comes from. While the threat to our sovereignty is non-existent, the threat to our lives and our way of life is immense. Just look at some of the ideas out there that would infringe on our civil liberties that have been proposed and some already implemented. That’s the real danger to us as a country and as a civilization. But if we cut off their figurative head, bin-Laden and unreasoning fanatics like him, then we reduce that threat, at least in the short term.

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