Just War

On December 10, 2009, President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.  The occasion caught the attention of the media not only because it was involving Obama and/or the Nobel awards, but because there are practically two controversies that surrounded the Nobel Peace prize awarding to the first black president of America. 

When Nobel Peace Prize committee made their announcement that Obama was their awardee for their year, even the President was surprised.  Practically, it was said that awarding Obama with the Nobel Peace Prize was premature – i.e., he’s still on his 11th month as president of America – as he is still to prove himself as leader of his country that happens to be the most powerful in the world.  His critics pointed out that he has still very few tangible gains as a leader.

Similarly, the award was criticized because he’s a wartime president for the peace award.  While it may be true that his extraordinary diplomatic efforts are making significant impact in the global arena, it is also known to everyone that he has raised the possibility of a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East or East Asia and lobbied for tough sanctions against nations such as Iran and North Korea.  As he was receiving his award, it was only nine days after he ordered the deployment of 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan in view of expanding the eight-year-old war.

With this backdrop in mind, it was not surprising that his acceptance speech carried dominantly a theme of war.  Justifying his being the commander-in-chief of a nation in the midst of two wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan), he maintained that he faces the world as it is, and he cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.  Noting Martin Luther King’s dictum that violence never brings permanent peace, he argued that there will be times when nations will find the use of force not only necessary but, more so, morally justified.

As I was watching the footages of the awarding, I was trying to refresh my mind about the issue of just war.  When is war, which is never neat and where innocent civilians will be killed, just?

Of course, we have known rather elaborate principles of just war since the time of Cicero, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.  In 1983, too, the US Catholic Bishops Conference issued a pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, on this issue, while we also find this issue discussed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 2309.