Leslie H. Gelb and Anne-Marie Slaughter don’t say it in their WaPo Op Ed piece, but the problems with “blank check” wars are 1) that no one can tell if they are being fought for a just cause; and 2) that our political process for deciding to go to war founders on structural ambiguities in our constitutional version of the just war criteria of legitimate authority.
Gelb and Slaughter write
Time and again in recent decades the United States has made military commitments after little real debate, with hazy goals and no appetite for the inevitable setbacks. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson plunged us into the Vietnam War with little sense of the region's history or culture. Ronald Reagan dispatched Marines to Lebanon, saying that stability there was a "vital interest," only to yank them out 16 months later after a deadly terrorist attack on Marine barracks. Bill Clinton, having inherited a mission in Somalia to feed the starving, ended up hunting tribal leaders and trying to build a nation.This is a restatement of lessons the US military drew from its reflections on Vietnam.
The just war doctrine insists on the principle of Legitimate Authority - that “Only duly constituted public authorities may use deadly force or wage war”. In our constitutional system nations founders specified that authority. As Gelb and Slaughter write:
As often happens, an answer can be found with the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. They could not have foreseen the present age of nuclear missiles and cataclysmic terrorism. But they understood political accountability, and they knew that sending Americans to war required careful reflection and vigorous debate. Their answer survives in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution, which gives Congress -- and only Congress -- the power to declare war.The problem, as everyone recognizes, is that this has never worked very well. The Administration would have benefited from a more thorough debate about political objectives in each of our conflicts over the past thirty years. Clear political objectives and public support are essential to the victory – a lesson that Harry Summers emphasized in his reflections on Von Clausewitz and Vietnam. Without clear political objectives, no one can reach a judgment on the criteria of just cause.
In the Islamist mobs we are, however, facing a loosely organized use of violence by groups that are not subject to the just war criteria of legitimate authority, just cause, and discrimination. We also have an administration that has declared a preemptive strategy against terrorists. The nature of warfare is changing, even as the incidence of warfare is declining worldwide
In view of the changing nature of violence, the question of war-making authority ought to take priority on the human life agenda.
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops could put this topic on their agenda for their meeting on November 14-17. Being occupied with other issues, such as rearranging the order of the Mass, they won’t.
NOTE: This posting linked to Beltway Traffic Jam for November 8, 2005.
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