Right Intention

George Weigel in The Just War Case for the War (3/31), argues that the war against Iraq is justifiable in light of traditional just war thinking. While I find his reflections on the criteria of just cause, legitimate authority, proportionality and last resort both reasonable and in some places compelling, I am surprised that he says nothing whatever about the criterion of right intention. According to Aquinas (who follows Augustine), It is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention in order for a war to be just (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 40, a. 1). This was never an add-on to classic just war reflection, but an indispensable factor. I think Weigel’s case for the justice of the present war is significantly compromised by his decision to omit the question of intention.

It is no doubt true that this criterion is difficult to apply: intentions (as opposed to reasons or pretexts) often go unarticulated, and different people within the government and armed forces of a nation will have different objectives and different motives. Nevertheless, thanks to our democratic institutions and advanced forms of communication, we can know a great deal about what our leaders are thinking and what motivates their decisions. We know, for example, that a number of the prevailing voices in the current administration believe that the United States should exercise unfettered global hegemony in the 21st century. Does the White House’s National Security Strategy propose an ethically acceptable approach to international relations, or, like Athens at the close of the 5th century B.C., are we descending into a reckless and dangerous policy of aggrandizement?

Our intellectual culture urges us to be ever suspicious of the intentions of the powerful. When this attitude preempts serious thought and discussion, it departs from rather than contributes to a responsible moral debate. But the dogmatic rancor emanating from Noam Chomsky and others does not excuse someone in Weigel’s positiona theologian who is also a Washington insiderfrom making a critical assessment of what motivates his fellow neoconservatives, who presently dominate our government and are severely reorienting our relationship to the rest of the world. Without applying some kind of hermeneutics of suspicion to current U.S. foreign policy, our appeal to the just war tradition in debating the present conflict will not only be unconvincing, but tendentious and untraditional as well.

Tom Irish, O.P.