“Just War” and Targeted Assassinations (Part One)

I just read a fascinating article in the New York Times:  Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will.  The article recounts how U.S. President Obama has placed himself at the top of a secret process to designate terrorists for kill or capture.  The President approves of every name on the “kill list” and is said to be determined to limit the extent of the secret program, and to make sure that the fight against Al Qaeda is aligned with American values.  That such a program involves a number of difficult legal and moral issues goes without saying.  For example, the killings are often carried out by drone strikes and as a result innocent bystanders have also been killed.

The Times article refers to Obama’s reliance on “the ‘just war’ theories of Christian philosophers” and it occurred to me that perhaps not everyone is familiar with these doctrines.  I thought it might be useful to say something here about the “just war” tradition, since it remains one of the bases of international law.

With the exception of pacifist cultures that eschew violence, every culture has ways of thinking about the morality of war and observes some conception of “warrior’s honour.”  This is the idea that, even in war, some things must not be done.  The “just war” doctrine sums up the ways in which western Christian tradition has thought about the moral issues arising from war.  (Originally, these restrictions concerned only what Christians could do to other Christians.  Non-Christians were given protection a few centuries later.)  The “just war” tradition stands in contrast to the “political realist” point of view, according to which war is an instrument of foreign policy and its use is restrained only by prudence, not by morality.  The concept of “just war” is also different from what we might call the doctrine of “holy war”- the idea that attacking others is justified in the name of spreading some “faith,” whether that is a religious faith or a political ideology.

The “just war” tradition divides the moral questions about war into two groups:  Jus ad bellum, having to do with the reasons for going to war, and jus in bello, concerning conduct during war.  The targeted assassination program brings up both kinds of questions.  I’ll discuss jus ad bellum in this post and jus in bello in my next post.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) formulated three requirements for the declaration of a just war.  Each is necessary, and taken together they constitute a justification for going to war.

1. Those who command the war must have the lawful authority to do so.  (There cannot be “private” wars.)
    
2. The war must have a just cause.  The enemy must deserve to have war waged upon it because of some wrong it has inflicted.
    
3. Those waging war must intend to promote good or avoid evil.  (War must not be fought for the sake of vengeance or self-interest.)

Does the U.S. targeted assassinated program meet these requirements?  I’ll leave it to my readers to think about that.

Next time:  Moral restraints on conduct during war.