091217-FipsAtRedwood

Fips at Redwood Mountin, Summer 1995

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091213-FN-Original Article, Obama's Jihad - I

This past week, President Barak Obama went to Oslo where he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize and gave a pretty speech.

In now familiar style, he began with a truth; in this case, a frank and engaging confession of his unworthiness for the prize and the paradox of its award to one presently engaged in acts of war. What a relief from the vulgar folksiness of his predecessor!

He followed up with a pleasing patina of intellectualism admirably summarizing and surprisingly invoking the Augustinian doctrine of Just War. What a relief from fuck-you bully-blather of Bush!

He then took the moral high ground and with sparkling phrases, devoid of rancour and tinged with due regret, decked out American policy as one which strove for in earnest for a better, uplifted, all-inclusive World to Come. What a change from the hostile, self-righteousness of the previous Commander in Chief.

But in what is by now all too familiar Obama, it was all nothing but tinselled packing over an empty box. In fact it was worse. As shall be set out in this two-part feature, Obama dragged a delicate principle of justice through the mud of expediency in order to carry on the Neocon crusade under a banner sullied with greed and stained with tears.

To grasp the depravity of what Obama has done, we must return in time the days of a fledgling but committed Christianity.

A Rich and Mighty Man

As is well known, the Early Church was emphatically communistic and pacifist. It abhorred violence and counted as martyrs those who died on the battlefield for pacifism.

Such heroes included Maximilian of Numidia, a 21-year-old North African draftee who refused to serve, declaring “I cannot fight for this world…. I tell you, I am a Christian.” He was beheaded (295 A.D). More fortunate was St. Martin of Tours who had a crisis of conscience during a military action against barbarian invaders. “Up to now I have served you as a soldier. Now permit me serve Christ. Give the bounty to these others. They are going to fight, but I am a soldier of Christ and it is not lawful for me to fight.”

These acts of conscientious objection were not simply exercises of personal moral preference. Early canons of the Church forbade participating in violence.

"Concerning the magistrate and the soldier: they are not to kill anyone, even if they receive the order…. Whoever has authority and does not do the righteousness of the Gospel is to be excluded and is not to pray with the bishop.

"A Christian must not become a soldier, unless he is compelled by a chief bearing the sword. He is not to burden himself with the sin of blood. But if he has shed blood, he is not to partake of the mysteries, unless he is purified by a punishment, tears, and wailing. He is not to come forward deceitfully but in the fear of God.” (Apostolic Canons of St. Hippolytus XII-XVI)

Wherefrom did this doctrine of pacifism arise? It arose in the first instance from the authority of the Crucifixion which first and foremost was a renunciation of violence even unto death. The trip to Golgotha began with an explicit exhortation against violence in Gethsamene.

Martyrdom of St. Peter at Rome

But the Church’s doctrine of pacifism was not simply an injunction against violence. That injunction was the other half of an affirmative duty for charity -- to love the other as one’s self. The negative and the positive went hand in hand and either is meaningless without the other.

The intersection of the two was most relevantly exemplified in Jesus’s injunction to “walk the extra mile” with the man who asks for help in carrying his pack. As early Christians would have understood, the man in question was an enemy Roman soldier who had the right to command any civilian in occupied territories to carry his pack for up to one mile. Jesus enjoined his listeners not simply to obey the law but to do the law one better -- to assist the enemy in his oppression of you.

This arresting paradox was not as novel as one might think. The conversation in Plato’s Republic began with asking how a just man should behave. Oh, that’s easy, says Polemarchus, a young man from a traditional family, Everyone knows that justice consists in doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.

In short order, Socrates led the young horse through the thickets of confusion. Who exactly is your friend and how can you tell? And what do you mean by harm?

Certainly to harm something means to make it less or worse than it is? For sure. As in injuring a horse to make it have less of those qualities of strength that make it a good horse? Indeed. And isn’t the quality of justice the highest human virtue? Without doubt. Justice is to man what power is to a horse? It would seem so. So then, according to your rule, Polemarchus, the just man will seek to make his enemy more unjust?

Uh.... I think we’ve encountered a problem, Polemarchus says much less confidently than before. He and Socrates agree that "the injuring of another can in no case be just." Polemarchus wonders who it was that came up with the traditional definition? Socrates ventures that “the first to say that justice is ‘doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.” must have been “some rich and mighty man who had a great opinion of his power.” “But,” Socrates goes on to ask, “if this definition of justice breaks down, what other can be offered?”

Plato’s answer was the Republic -- that image of the just State which was a mirror reflection of the just man. Jesus’s answer, somewhat more simply, was to “walk the extra mile with your enemy.”

Such conversations were entirely familiar to the early Church Fathers. As the so-called pagan world progressed beyond tribalism and toward an ever more embracing global economy, perceptions of friends or enemies and conceptions of justice and just action also evolved. As of the close of the Third Century, the Church took it as axiomatic that “the injuring of another can be in no case just.”

Ambrose enjoins Theodosius

The highwater mark of Church pacifism came in 390 when St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, threatened the Emperor Theodosius with excommunication for an act of violence, the circumstances of which are worth recalling.

The Empire was by then officially Christian. In 380, pursuant to treaty, Theodosius allowed large contingents of Goths to settle, semi-autonomously, in portions of Thrace, in Northern Greece. This arrangement was considered essential to what today would be called “homeland security”.

In 390 the local population rioted against the Gothic presence and killed the local Gothic commander. Furious, Theodosius, ordered a reprisal in which 7,000 men, women and children were indiscriminately slaughtered as they sat watching the circus games.

“The anger of the Emperor rose to the highest pitch, and he gratified his vindictive desire for vengeance by unsheathing the sword most unjustly and tyrannically against all, slaying the innocent and guilty alike.... like ears of wheat in the time of harvest, they were alike cut down”

Ambrose was equally inflexible. He forbade Theodosius from entering Church or receiving the Sacraments and required him to publicly assume the garb of penitent on the steps of the cathedral.

From that highwater mark, the Church, even under Ambrose’s leadership began a cautious and gradual retreat. The reason is not difficult to fathom. For over a hundred years the Empire had been under assault from so-called “barbarian invasions.” In large measure, these “invasions” were in fact mass migrations -- ordinary people fleeing demographic pressures from further east and seeking a better life within the boundaries of the Empire. These migrations presented an array of vexing social, economic and military problems which successive Roman administrations met with alternating policies of assimilation, accommodation or resistance.

By the close of the Fourth Century, the situation had become critical. The migrations, whether characterized as peaceful or not, were of such magnitude and impact as to constitute a destructive invasion. The incursions, were indeed often accompanied by acts of violence, pillage and “unrefutable offers”. What was an emperor, now Christian, to do? Retreat the extra mile?

It is said that, beginning with Ambrose, the Church began a slow process of what it considered to be a necessary moral accommodation. That is true in the overall but at no time did either Ambrose or his more famous pupil, Augustine, ever sit down to write a treatise or essay on just war. To say that Augustine promulgated a Just War doctrine is simply a convenient way of distilling a theory by implication from a mass of writings on other topics.

That distillation was in fact made by St. Thomas Aquinas some eight hundred years later and it was his theory of just war -- citing Augustine as authority -- that became the basis for current Church Doctrine.

The attribution of a Just War doctrine to Augustine has been repeated so often that it might as well be taken to be true; and, at the end of the day, we too shall join the chorus. The ideas were in the air, so that stitching together verbal snippets from Augustine’s massive, often rambling, writings is not altogether a falsehood.

There is no question that at close of the Third Century, the Church, as a whole, tempered its earlier insistence on pure pacifism; or, perhaps more accurately, made inevitable exceptions for rulers. However, what is striking and worthy of note is how deeply reluctant Augustine, Ambrose and other ecclesiastics were to explicitly promulgate a doctrine of just war when it would have been easy and natural to do so. To understand the fact and import of the omission it is necessary to take into account both the intellectual and historical scene.

The early Fathers were writing at the close of a thousand year civilization. They and their audience were imbued with the motifs, themes and intellectual monuments. Plato’s Republic would have been as familiar to them as Oprah is to us. So too the Roman lawyer Cicero... (FN-1 A Wealth of Writ)

Four hundred years before Cicero had formulated his ius bellum theory of the just war. Three conditions had to be met:

1. There must be a just cause;
2. There must be a formal declaration of war by the king or emperor preceded by a demand for reparations;
3. War must be conducted justly (eg. unarmed civilians should not be attacked).

“Unjust war is that which is begun from wrath rather than lawful reason. Unjust wars are those begun without a reason. For there is no just reason for war outside of just vengeance or self defense." (De Officiis 36.)

"No war is to be considered just unless it was openly announced and declared, unless reparation has first been demanded." (Op Cit., 38.)

On examination, Cicero’s formulation was little more than a rhetorical gloss on Polemarchus’s received definition of the just man. The discussion with Socrates did not end with the conclusion that the just man would not do injustice to his enemy but rather with the conclusion that the just man will never do harm to another. To say that the just man will do good to his enemy states a paradox. To say that the just man will not act unjustly is a mere tautology.

The Romans were a very superstitious people, with a near phobic obsession for “doing things the right way”. It was extremely important for them to have “right” -- and hence divine favour and assistance -- on their side; for which reason no war could begin without a litany of causes accompanied by a reading of avian and ovarian livers. In Latin, the word ius means “right” as well “just” and the Roman doctrine of ius bellum might be better translated as Rightful War.

In the end, Cicero stated a mere legalism with a veneer of humanistic moderation. It is very dubious that Christ would have agreed with Cicero’s famous dictum that “A just war is better than an unjust peace"

As a formula, Cicero’s legalism comes up short. But mise en scene -- and Cicero was first and last a rhetorician -- the formula fares somewhat better. There are two possibilities.

Cicero had written when the Republic was still expanding and in that context it could be argued that his argument for ius bellum was tantamount to a condemnation of Roman conquests. The weakness of this interpretation lies in the fact that Rome was one of those nations that defended its way to empire. From their earliest defences in Latium the Senate was always careful to specify that Rome was the rightfully aggrieved party. If Rome had been built on just wars a just war doctrine was hardly likely to estopp further expansion.

The redeeming force of Cicero’s formula derives rather from the fact that it was a reflection of a pan-Mediterranean humanism that those very Roman conquests had made possible. Whether or not built through violence, at the end of the day, Romans discovered that others were not very different from themselves; that a ius gentium appeared to infuse all men in common and that, as Cicero put it,

"True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; ... We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, ..."

Not surprisingly, Cicero was popular among the early Church Fathers, at least in the West, and certainly with Ambrose and Augustine.

Now, however, the whole of the Ancient World was collapsing. The economy was in the tank and pestilences ravaged the lands. Cities and fields lay depopulated and fallow. The revenues were falling and the armies were stretched to their limits. The State resorted to hiring mercenary barbarian armies to defend the Empire from other barbarian armies and with falling revenues resorted further to granting vast tracts of land in lieu of payment, the names of which survive to this day -- Burgundy, (v)Andalusia, Lombardi, Belgium, ultimately, even France. It was somewhat like giving California to Blackwater.

The Universal City, Eternal Rome, which had embodied the unchangeable law valid for all nations and for all times was dying.

Vandal Sack of Rome

Faced with this catastrophe -- the collapse of everything known -- Romans fell to mutual recriminations. Pagans accused the Christians of bringing bad luck upon the Empire. For near 1000 years the true gods had been given their just due and the Empire had known increase and prosperity; was it coincidence that the catastrophe began with the turn to Christianity? We are loosing because our cause is unjust and it is so because we have failed to do good to our gods without whom we cannot do harm to our enemies.

Feebly enough, the Christians (Augustine in particular) answered that Rome was loosing her wars because people were sinful -- which was another way of saying the same thing from the other side. Augustine explained,

“Every victory, even though gained by wicked men [i.e. the Barbarians], is a result of the first judgment of God, who humbles the vanquished [i.e. the Romans] either for the sake of removing or of punishing their sins. Witness that man of God, Daniel, who, when he was in captivity, confessed to God his own sins and the sins of his people, and declares with pious grief that these were the cause of the captivity.” (City of God, Chapter 15)

It was not a very winning argument, to which pagans replied that sin or no sin, matters might be helped a tad if Christians stopped their prattling and praying and picked up a damn sword and did some of the necessary dirty work of civilization. The pagan Celsus, excoriated:

“If all men were to do as you, there would be nothing to prevent the Emperor from being left in utter solitude, and with the desertion of his forces, the Empire would fall into the hands of the most lawless barbarians.”

Res ipsa loquitur. The excoriation all but demanded a just war concession which subsequent commentators have fished out from the massive tomes of Augustine’s City of God, viz:

“But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not rather lament the necessity of just wars, once he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them,.. (City of God, Book XIX,Chapter 7)

Indisputably, Augustine’s use of the term “just wars” triggered a recollection of Cicero’s ius bellum. But it is far from clear that Augustine implicitly adopted it. The Chapter in its entirety reads as follows:

Of the Diversity of Languages, by Which the Intercourse of Men is Prevented; And of the Misery of Wars, Even of Those Called Just.

After the state or city comes the world, the third circle of human society,-the first being the house, and the second the city. And the world, as it is larger, so it is fuller of dangers, as the greater sea is the more dangerous. And here, in the first place, man is separated from man by the difference of languages. For if two men, each ignorant of the other's language, meet, and are not compelled to pass, but, on the contrary, to remain in company, dumb animals, though of different species, would more easily hold intercourse than they, human beings though they be. For their common nature is no help to friendliness when they are prevented by diversity of language from conveying their sentiments to one another; so that a man would more readily hold intercourse with his dog than with a foreigner. But the imperial city has endeavored to impose on subject nations not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace, so that interpreters, far from being scarce, are numberless. This is true; but how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity! And though these are past, the end of these miseries has not yet come. For though there have never been wanting, nor are yet wanting, hostile nations beyond the empire, against whom wars have been and are waged, yet, supposing there were no such nations, the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description-social and civil wars-and with these the whore race has been agitated, either by the actual conflict or the fear of a renewed outbreak. If I attempted to give an adequate description of these manifold disasters, these stern and lasting necessities, though I am quite unequal to the task, what limit could I set? But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars. For it is the wrongdoing of the opposing party which compels the wise man to wage just wars; and this wrong doing, even though it gave rise to no war, would still be matter of grief to man because it is man's wrong-doing. Let every one, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery. And if any one either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling.

Once the full chapter is read it is easily seen that not only has Augustine been taken out of context, he has been grotesquely perverted.

Augustine’s topic was not war but rather the condition of the human race; and he begins with an implicit dual allusion to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel and to Aristotle’s doctrine that articulate language is the foundation of human society since it is through language that man “decides what is just and unjust” (Aristotle Politics, Bk I.)

“Justice,” St. Ambrose had said, “is about promoting the fellowship of the human race, and about furthering community.” But, asks Augustine, how is this possible when half the human race speaks German?

Augustine acknowledges that Rome attempted to solve the problem of “community” by force -- by imposing Latin as a “bond of peace”. He did not need to add the obvious fact that, from a certain perspective, the imperial “furthering of community” had been astonishingly successful. But where Cicero had taken off into flights of hortatory, Augustine now played the realist. But at what a cost!! how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, have provided this unity! Augustine did not need to state what was patent to his audience - Christianity had a better language.

Just then, Augustine shifted his angle and raised a straw man. But, say they, the wise man will wage just wars. Who is “they”? The “they” was Augustine’s contemporaries who were arguing that defence against the current incursions qualified under Cicero’s theory of just war.

Having raised a straw man, Augustine ducks: “Yes well... but rather we should lament our sinful human condition which brings such awful necessities upon us. (See Tower of Babel, the original “imperial city”). The City of God, however, is built on the Word and defended with love.

“The safety of the City of God, however, is of such a kind that it can be possessed, or rather acquired, only with faith and through faith; and when faith is lost, no one can attain to that safety.” (Op.cit. Book 22, Ch. 6.)

It was an astonishing avoidance. Celsus’s accusation, the crisis of the times, the very topic of the chapter and the Cicero on the tip of his tongue, all imminently demanded a formulation of the ius bellum doctrine -- and still Augustine interrupted the flow to say that we should rather mourn our original sin. (FN-2 Culling Augustine)

It is typically said that what can be distilled from the ecclesiastical writers of this period, Augustine included, is a reformulation of Cicero’s ius bellum into a formula requiring (1) right authority, (2) just cause, (3) last resort, (4) right intent, and (5) proportionality of ultimate good to evil done. That is not a bad doctrine, as doctrine goes and it certainly did emerge in later medieval thinking. But what is truly remarkable is the persistence with which the Church Fathers of this earlier period avoided stating it.

I would suggest that what emerges from the writers of this period by both omission and implication is a somewhat more limited acceptance of war as an unavoidable but necessary evil which Christians, collectively and as individuals, should studiously avoid.

Again, it is necessary to take context into account. The collapse of the Empire was not simply the result of external invasions. It was accompanied by a chronic, pandemic of internal revolts and convulsions. The rule of law was itself crumbling under an onslaught of breaches and pretexts.

To make matters worse, military service was becoming a business. In ancient times, soldiers were paid with plundered bounties and/or rights of pillage. Armies sustained itself by living off the cities and lands they marched through to protect. War was an unmitigated disaster. On the other hand, when garrisoned, soldiers lived off their wives, gambling and by engaging in small handcrafts and trades. As economy and empire tanked, men sought security in the brutality of an increasingly “privatized” military life. Being a soldier involved evils totally apart from killing and, at the same time, could entail pursuits which weren’t very evil at all.

Thus, throughout the entire imperial period, the primary thrust of ecclesiastical writings with respect to war and soldiering was aimed at formulating precepts for individual conduct: whether a Christian could enlist or allow himself to be drafted or whether a soldier who had converted could remain in the army in some capacity. At least until Constantine’s conversion, there was no need to formulate political or geo-political theories.

As for ius bellum, there was no need to repackage Cicero. Obviously, if war was to be fought it ought at least be just; but the more predicate question was whether a Christian should fight in it at all. The answer was invariably, No.

It might be thought, as Celsus in fact argued, that this was a colossal exercise in self indulgence. I would suggest that it was in fact a more radical answer that went to what was seen to be the root of the problem: man’s alienation from man.

In the Church’s view, the primary cause of war was that man did not see his brother in his fellow man, and not seeing a brother, saw an enemy. Therefore, the radical solution to the core problem was to make a brother out of one’s enemy -- to learn to speak the same language of charity from empathy.

"The more devout the individual, the more effective he is in helping the Emperor, more so than the soldiers who go into the lines and kill all the enemy troops they can … The greatest warfare, in other words, is not with human enemies but with those spiritual forces which make men into enemies." (Origen Contra Celsum)

Clement of Alexandria described the Church as “an army which sheds no blood.”

"If you enroll as one of God’s people, heaven is your country and God your lawgiver. And what are His laws? You shall not kill, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Protrepticus 11, 116)

Few of these writers could be characterized as illiterate or stupid. They knew all about “just war” and they understood clearly that that doctrine implicitly accepted the status quo of man’s alienation from man. Cicero’s formula may have mitigated the occasions of war, but it did not bring about the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Church (or at least Augustine) had a bigger gambit: to bring about the true universal City of God on earth. And the only way to do that was to do today what you hoped to see materialize tomorrow. “By Hope we are saved,” (Rom 8: 24)

“In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but 'performative'. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known, it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.” (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, I. 2)

Just as the destructive force of an army consists in the accumulated acts of individual violence; so conversely did the healing force of a Christian army consist in the swelling force of individual acts of charity.

The vision was simple and radical. As well as Socrates, the ecclesiastical writers of this period understood that ‘doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.” is a formula that “breaks down”. Conversely, returning good for evil, builds up.

But what was the Church to preach once the emperor himself became Christian? The problem comprised a virtual oxymoron given that the office of imperator was first and foremost a military office. The solution was recourse to a dualism which would become central to medieval thinking. As an individual, the emperor was the same as any man; as emperor he had a duty to protect the innocent and defenceless from both domestic and foreign aggression.

Ambrose does not exposit this, he simply took it for granted. In reproving Theodosius, Ambrose in no wise questioned the Emperor’s authority to punish revolt; he condemned an unjust massacre that was indiscriminate; and goes on to say that this crime sullied the emperor’s other glories on the battlefield. Ambrose followed up with praises for Theodosius’s father, Gratian, whose troops had trampled the Empire in defence of one just cause after another.

Ambrose was a great admirer of Cicero’s and even wrote a moral treatise patterned on Cicero’s ethical essay De Officiis. It is safe to assume, in the absence of a specific repudiation, that Ambrose (as well as his listeners) simply took for granted the applicability of Cicero’s doctrine. After all, would anyone advocate the waging of unjust wars?

That being the case, the issue was not to fashion a new formula, but rather to apply it on a case by case basis. Where the emperor had acted unjustly, reproval was called for; otherwise it was sufficient to encourage imperial acts of mercy and humanity.

As distilled and compiled from ecclesiastical writings, this case by case application resulted in a two-pronged theory consisting of just cause for war (ius ad bellum) coupled with just conduct in war (ius in bello). The requirements were

1. lawful authority (which was a way of specifying that the issue concerns state conduct),
2. just cause (public defence or redress) ,
3. last resort (necessity),
4. right intention (excluding motives of gain or revenge and including refraining from depredations on non combatants)
5. proportionality of means and ends.
   

Celsus might well have smiled. All in all, albeit with unmistakable reluctance, the Church began to punt and shuffle now that one of her boys was at the helm. When the Church’s exhortations, canons and conduct are taken as whole, there can be little question that, in so far as state conduct was concerned, she implicitly accepted the validity of Cicero’s formula while at the same time continuing to urge individual pacifism as the better personal option.

May I with right and conscience make this claim?

In all events, the issue was soon moot. In 476, the Empire in the West collapsed and the issue of just war was eclipsed by the more feudal issue of just and chivalrous conduct. Now the world spoke German or some concoction thereof. Violence was taken for granted and conduct was governed by codes of courage and loyalty.

The Germans were no less superstitious than the Romans. Having right on one’s side was as important as hardened steel and what else is loyalty except doing good to one’s friends and harm to his enemies? Polemarchus was unheard of but he was not unknown.

The low middle ages illustrated the shortcomings of the Ciceronian formula. The instances are legion of kings, counts and ordinary knights consulting and being assured by their priests as to the justness of their cause before riding off to trample down harvests and mutilate their foes.

Far more than even the Romans, the Germans were sticklers for justice so that war now became as much a lawyer’s game as a knight’s. Slaughter was preceded by the Battle of Scribblers who drew up precise and lengthy statements of grievances, remonstrances and demands for satisfaction which were met in turn by counter claims and further demands. Nor should anyone think that these patents were primitive affairs. The medieval mind was extremely acute, active and inventive. These remonstrances verged on being theological or legal treatises. One need only call to mind Lord Canterbury’s parody in Henry V

The Church’s position was little different than under Ambrose, save only that localization of temporal power in the person of a chieftain, count or duke cast the issue into a less public and more private hue. It also meant that, in any given instance, an ecclesiastical ruling was little more than bought and paid for.

God watching His Children's Just Wars

The foreseeable result was that Europe was torn asunder by just wars; so much so, that in the Tenth Centuries the Gallican Church organized a peace movement to persuade nobles to renounce private war and violence. In 989 a council at Charroux proclaimed Pax Dei which prohibited men from robbing pilgrims, plundering churches, or from usurping the flocks,tools and produce of peasants. Anyone using violence on noncombatants in war was to be excommunicated.

In 1023 Robert the Pious of France and German emperor Heinrich II proposed a universal peace pact for their kingdoms and eventually for all Christendom. Starting in 1027 the Truce of God was proclaimed by church authorities in Aquitane to regulate warfare with specific laws. Among other things, military actions were confined between sunrise Monday and Wednesday sunset.

Alas God’s Truce, as if by logic, gave rise to notions of God’s War. Around 1130, writing in the wake of the First Crusade, a monk by the name of Gratian compiled a series of Decrees synthesizing rules of conduct from Roman and ecclesiastical sources. It was here that the distillation of a theory of a just war from Augustine first emerged.

To the list just causes which had previously included national self-defense and defence of innocents at home, Gratian added defence of innocents abroad, particularly the at-risk and long suffering innocents in the Holy Land. It all went to show how easily a Just War can become a Jihad.

Since God is Justice itself, it follows that a truly just war is willed by God. Deus lo vult!! Pope Urban exhorted the assembled crowd of restless knights:

“From the confines of Jerusalem ... a horrible tale has gone forth... [A] race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God,... has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire... They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they ... spread upon the altars.. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows..... Of the abominable rape of the women, why to speak of it is worse than to be silent!”

No question about just cause here.

"But how can the ignorant teach others? How can the licentious make others modest? And how can the impure make others pure? So first correct yourselves, in order that, free from blame , you may be able to correct those who are subject to you.”

Nor doubt about right intentions either.

When things didn’t quite go as hoped, it was deduced that the fault lay in an insufficiently pure intention. And so a Crusade of Children set forth - innocents to succour the innocent. It was all quite logical.

Learning little, a century later, St. Thomas Aquinas pronounced the then definitive distillation of Church doctrine:

"In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior. [Whereas] it is the function of rulers to defend the common weal against external enemies. [and to] "Rescue the poor: and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner;

"Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault.

"Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. ... [Because] "True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good."

Aquinas then quoted a letter of Augustine as evidence that Christians are permitted to wage war.

"Augustine says [that] : "If the Christian Religion forbade war altogether, ... the Gospel would have counselled [us] to give up soldiering altogether. On the contrary, it states: 'Do violence to no man . . . and be content with your pay' [*Lk. 3:14]. If he commanded them to be content with their pay, he did not forbid soldiering."

To which it might well be answered that if the Gospel truly counselled war it would not have said “Do no violence.” Aquinas was evidently ignorant of the military conditions in the Fourth and Fifth centuries.

As a formula, Aquinas’s distillation was a pale copy of Cicero’s which had a least included a pre-requisite of war as a last resort and an injunction against cruel and disproportionate acts over and beyond merely nice “intents”. The listing of "some fault" as a casus belli was wide enough to drive through a cart-load of pretexts.

But, at bottom, Aquinas’s temporizing made little difference because as Socrates understood the justness of any cause is always arguable and never knowable. Once it is assumed that war can be justified we are cast adrift on a sea of wrath and lust. Aquinas forgot what Augustine and Ambrose still remembered and what the Middle Ages proved: that even if war is in some sense unavoidable either out of weakness or from a concept of duty, doing harm to your enemy is never productive of good.

This is very hard for us to accept and perhaps given the feebleness of our reason we ought not always accept it. After all, Christ drove the money changers from the temple and what mother bear will not ferociously defend her cub?

Given these perplexities, the modern Church has attempted to fashion a doctrine that justifies war under the strict conditions when it appears to be unavoidably necessary.

“The use of force to obtain justice is morally licit in itself” and “is the right, and the duty, of those who have responsibilities for others, such as civil leaders and police forces.”

The resort to force “must be done with a good intention, ... to correct vice, to restore justice or to restrain evil,

The use of force “must be appropriate in the circumstances. An act which may otherwise be good and well motivated can be sinful by reason of imprudent judgment and execution.”

The Just War doctrine establishes certain conditions for the legitimate exercise of force, all of which must be met:

1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
3. there must be serious prospects of success;
4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition [CCC 2309].

Nor is everything licit in war. Actions which are forbidden, and which constitute morally unlawful orders that may not be followed, include:

• attacks against, and mistreatment of, non combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners;
• genocide, whether of a people, nation or ethnic minorities;
• indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants.

Lastly, it is not enough to wage war to achieve justice without treating the underlying causes.

In the end, the Church ended up much where Cicero began, although specifically updated for modern times. In the pagan world, the terms “just” or “right reason” meant more than repayment. The predicate concept of balance, implied right ordering and moderation in all respects. Thus, when Cicero wrote that a just war had to be fought with right reason, it was implicit that war would not be entered into hastily or frivolously, that means would be proportionate and moderate and that it would not be undertaken for base and ignoble motives. The glosses of the middle ages and of current doctrine were simply specifications of what was implicit in the original doctrine.

What this inadequate and brief survey of a complex subject may serve to illustrate is that the doctrine of Just War:

1. stands at the juncture of a fundamental moral choice between suffering or doing harm;

2. that no war is ever truly “just” but only excusable because, given our limited capacity to endure or countenance evil, it appears to be unavoidably necessary; and

3. that unless rigorously and narrowly construed, this limited exception almost immediately unfurls into an obnoxious rhetorical tissue masking a lust for blood, power and riches.

Deus Lo Vult- The Sequel

Over eight years ago, the Gazette, took note [here] of how the United States, “intoxicated with self-righteousness and fired with bellicosity” rushed headlong into a Crusade against the Infidel in Afghanistan. We noted how medieval man at least preceded his wars with self-examination and pre-penance for what was about to be done. All those scribblings and remonstrances at least served the purpose of having us examine our cause. Intoxicated, Americans skipped this preliminary step. “This,” we wrote “is the surest way to disaster ... If we do not pause beforehand to examine ourselves honestly and humbly, we become mere agents of Fury which like a fire is only interested in consuming what it burns.”

It is now eight years and our “incursion” into Afghanistan has produced nothing but wretchedness and destruction at a bankrupting cost to ourselves. None, but absolutely none, of the avowed goods have been obtained.

Alas, there is no Ambrose to enforce a penance that is long overdue.

“Are not rather those to be called Christians who condemn their own sin than those who think to excuse it? The just accuses himself in the beginning of his words. He who, having sinned, accuses himself, not he who praises himself, is just.. Add not sin to sin by acting in a manner which has injured so many.” (Ambrose Letter LI, To Theodosius, 390)

Instead of confessing sin and withdrawing from an ill begotten war, Obama now compounds sin with a shameless and spurious claim of Just War. We Chipsters are no Ambrose, but Obama’s villainy needs to be exposed for what it is.

1. The Opening Muddle.

“There will be times when nations ... will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Why the juxtaposition? As has been seen, it is necessity of last resort that pre-conditions a war as “just” and there is no morally justified war that is not also “necessary”. The purpose of this nonsense is to introduce a diffusion of thought which unwittingly accepts that a war could be moral even if not necessary or necessary and not moral.

In truth, the real juxtaposition would be between “expedient” and “necessary” or “convenient” and “moral”. But the false dichotomy asserted allows Obama to create a fall-back position; namely, that the war would still be “necessary” even if he has failed to morally justify it. In other words, at the outset he informs us that he wins his case even if he fails to make it.

2. Mutilated Synopsis of the Legal Rule

Embarking on his proof, Obama distills the doctrine of just war as one which is sanctioned “if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.”

Obama’s formulation sounds so right it might as well have been lifted out of the very pages of Augustine himself. But like an expert thimblerigger, Obama has shuffled out the most important pea of all; namely that the war be excused by a just cause.

It is true that self-defense is sufficient to constitute just cause; but it is false to say that waging war as a last resort is its own justification. Under traditional formulations there must exist a just cause (self defence) and war be waged as a last resort. Under Obama’s formulation the other parties’ mere refusal to meet specified demands would justify recourse war.

We asked them to cut out their tongues. They refused. We asked again. They refused again. We asked a third time and they still refused; so we nuked ‘em.

Under Obama’s formula that would be a just war.

But, it will be said, the “or” was inadvertent. No it was not; and it was not because Afghanistan never attacked the United States. The war was launched, as a “last resort” when the Taliban refused demands to turn over Al Qaeda operatives on asserted but unproved allegations that they were “behind” the September 11 attacks. The “or” was not a slip of the presidential tongue.

3. Smarms of Irrelevance

Instead of applying the legal rule to the facts of the case, Obama’s synopsis of the doctrine was followed up with a smarmy irrelevancy,

“This concept of just war was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible...”

after which Obama went on to yap about people praying to another God, Hitler and the horrors of the Second World War.

It was not means of killing that avoided observation of just wars, rather it was the excuses for killing that avoided it. What avoided a good faith adherence to the just war doctrine was the very kind of sophistry Obama was serving up at the palace.

Whether a war is fought with swords and spears or drones and bombs, what makes it unjust is the inexhaustible capacity of man’s mind to come up with bullshit reasons for doing violence. Obama would rather distract us with thoughts of destructive pyrotechnics and the dread dirty suitcase, than have us look to closely at his bullshit. But look we must.

4. The Empty Case

Strangely enough after invoking the doctrine of just war -- howsoever muddled, mutilated and covered with smarm as it may have been -- Obama’s logical mind offered little by way of justification for the war his country is waging.

This war “is a conflict that America did not seek” It is a war “to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.”

Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.

As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.

Pacifism is great but “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies in the midst of two wars.”

Obama begins this justification with another false dichotomy. As has been seen, the doctrine of Just War constitutes an rejection of pacifism. Pacifist don’t engage in any war whether or not justified. The choice between fighting this war or passively letting Hitler’s armies roll over us is a completely false choice spiced up with the usual spooky hobglobing of Evil Nazi Darkness , blah blah blah.

It has been understood, at least since Ambrose, that the Emperor will not be a pacifist. That does not mean that any war he wages is necessary and just. The issue here is what justifies this war.

As to this question, Obama offered up an idle protest. I “cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.” No indeed. Even under Augustinian formulations, he would be derelict in his princely duties to do so. But the issue is not whether he should stand “idle” but whether he should “wage war” and more specifically wage a war that after eight years has not achieved its avowed purpose and daily inflicts misery and devastation on non combatant civilians.

Nor can justification found in the allegation that the United States is faced with “threats” -- ie. things that might happen. The question under the Just War doctrine is whether the alleged victim was been actually harmed by an attack. By casting the issue in terms of threats Obama sought to create a non existent category of the preemptive just war. He has simply taken Bush’s doctrine of preemptive war and dressed it up in a hand-me-down of Cicero's cloak.

Even assuming that a preemptive war against alleged prospective harm were to qualify as a just cause, Obama failed to enunciate compliance with the further condition that all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.

In this regard Obama states “Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.” But other than this bald a priori assertion, Obama failed to disclose a single instance where negotiations were attempted and rejected.

This last non justification in fact undermines the first. The war the US is currently engaged in is a war against the very rulers of Afghanistan (the Taliban) that our initial invasion deposed. But, as noted, neither Afghanistan nor the Taliban attacked the U.S. In addition to shuffling the elements of the rule, Obama engages in a shell game as to the identity of the guilty enemy party.

Obama’s argumentation is so pitiable, we feel obliged to help him out. So let us putty up the cracks and in doing so indulge all inferences in favor of the case;

1. Al Qaeda committed the September 11 attacks
2. Al Qaeda had training basis in Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to turn them over when they could have.
3. The Taliban’s refusal meant that Al Qaeda had a safe haven of operations from which it could continue to make attacks on the United States or its facilities abroad and the threat of these attacks was if not “imminent” reasonably foreseeable and likely in the short term.
4. Ergo, the Taliban and the country it ruled were aiders and abettors of a hostile enemy who had attacked and would continue to attack the United States, without provocation.

Granting all these predicates, the case for a just war in and against Afghanistan can still not be made because it falls short of establishing the requirement that “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.”

It may be conceded that Americans are a very high strung and sensitive people who are struck dumb with distress at the thought that anyone might want to attack them. But in the historical scheme of things, pyrotechnic as it was, the aero-ramming of two buildings was a pin prick. Even if it is assumed, arguendo, that future attacks are “certain” and that Al Qaeda thus represents a “continuing” threat which qualifies as “lasting harm” -- that harm is not “grave”.

The purpose of this precondition is to exclude precisely what is at issue here. The 9/11 attacks were not the first time rogue or criminal elements safe-harboring in one country crossed into another to wreak some harm. It may be conceded that such actions are wrong but they do not constitute the kind of harm that warrants the full bore response of retaliatory war.

Would any American agree that the United Kingdom would have been warranted to invade the United States and bomb Boston in order “smoke out” IRA operatives lurking in sympathetic Irish pubs under the noses of studiously inactive authorities?

No nation can be expected to silently suffer criminal terrorist attacks; and any nation is within its right to take coordinated and effective countermeasures. But the doctrine of just war requires just and proportionate response. Applied in good faith it is someting more than a free for all upon plausible pretext.

It also requires reasonable prospects of success, which after eight years of not catching Bin Laden can no longer be deemed likely -- which in turn shows, after eight years of no further attacks, that whatever is or is not in Afghanistan it no longer constitutes a continuing or lasting threat.

Last but not least, the just war doctrine requires proportionality of means which is utterly lacking in this war where the United States is routinely laying waste to vast areas, drone-killing innocent civilians, while abducting and torturing non combatants and even children. Far from being in accord with “right reasons” the U.S. conduct of the war in Afghanistan is a moral excrescence.

A Hint of Shame

Let us return to Athens and rejoin Polemarchus and Socrates who have just decided that doing harm to one’s enemies is not a very good definition of justice.

“Several times in the course of the discussion Thrasymachus had made an attempt to get the argument into his own hands, and had been put down by the rest of the company, who wanted to hear the end. But when Polemarchus and I had done speaking and there was a pause, he could no longer hold his peace; and, gathering himself up, he came at us like a wild beast, seeking to devour us. We were quite panic-stricken at the sight of him.

"Thrasymachus roared out: What bullshit has taken possession of you all? And why do you dick around with one another like a bunch of sillybillies? I’ll tell you what Justice is, if you really want to know; only you’ll have to pay me first.

Socrates protested that he didn’t have any money; but when others in the company vouched for him, Thrasymachus straighten up and after deriding Socrates for being a snivelling child in need of a nurse continued,

"Listen up, he said, so entirely deceived are you in your pretty ideas about the just and unjust that you haven’t a clue that in realty justice is simply the other’s benefit." What is called justice is simply the deception the smarter criminal imposes on the lesser; and "that is why I say, that justice consists in the interest of the ruler and stronger; no more no less."

Far from establishing the legitimacy of a Just War, Obama’s putative justification of the violence his country has embarked on was a cynical piece of work worthy of Thrasymachus save only he was ashamed to admit it.

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091213-FN2/Obama'sJihad-I

As noted, snippets of a just war theory can be culled from Augustine’s voluminous writings. But whatever might be argued by inference or implication the salient fact remains that he refrained from an frank and direct articulation of such a theory at the very time that the Empire was being torn asunder by invaders and that Rome herself had been sacked (410).

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091213-FN1/ObamasJihad-I

The mass -- one is reluctant to say ‘wealth’ -- of early Church writings is simply astounding. This mass is as fascinating as it is boring, frequently dealing with hot topics and issues that are no longer of interest or relevance to us. What is fascinating is the extent to which these ponderings, exhortations, disquisitions and discourses take place within a larger and completely pagan context.

Unlike their Protestant counterparts plus a thousand years later, these Christians are not out and about monotonously pounding tribal Jewish texts. The Old Testament gets used as a collection of moral metaphors and to provide a theory of divine historicity for Christian Faith. But the conversation that is really taking place is with pagan participants and counterparts.

The Fathers quote pagan philosophers, pagan laws, pagan poetry, pagan theology pagan myths and legends as if it was yesterday’s news. And not just “quote” -- the engagement is with the larger antecedent culture in all respects. The early church doctors were not out cavilling in the Judean desert to a bunch of Israelite shepherds. That was Jesus’s mission. These men were cavilling in Rome, Constantinople, Milan and Alexandria.

This cultural tradition was so ancient and familiar that issues could almost be (and in a certain sense were) argued by the numbers. One could say, Plotinus Enniad 7 ... Ah yes.. but Lucretius De Rerum Natura. And so when Church Fathers said “ius bellum” -- everyone understood, Ah Yes, Cicero ... but Socrates to Polemarchus.
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091213-FN / The Same Gods Everywhere

"Were not the immortal gods the same everywhere?" Not in Mexico or Peru. The discovery of the New World brought the discovery of new and often freakish gods

The Spanish humanist clerics rose to the occasion with ingenuity. Fray Berhardo Sahagun, Vitoria's contemporary, ministering in God's maguey fields, compiled a massive sociological study of Aztec society, customs and religion. Aztec society and morals, he pronounced, were superior to Europe's and all but equaled Plato's Republic. How then was it they worshipped such freakish and cruel gods? Sahagun answered that the Devil had deceived the Indian with "false images" of the true god. Absent such diabolical distortions, God and Man were, in their truth, the same everywhere.

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091213 -FN6 / Animal Justice

It cannot be gainsaid that virtually all animals feel a natural impulse to defend against a clear and present, immediate attack on one’s self or one’s offspring. To this limited extent, defensive violence appears to be “natural” and at least excusable or perhaps tolerable. However, modelling human behaviour on animal conduct is problematic; not because we are supposedly morally higher than they but because our instincts and calibrated responses aren’t as accurate as theirs, rendering us poor practitioners of what might by called “natural justice”. As a result we are left to the desires and devices of our hearts which are far worse than the simplicity of animals.
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091213-FN5 / Realtime Sociology in the Middle Ages

The condescension modern man has for the medieval has blinded us to the lessons to be learned. Medieval man had a different way of speaking about things which to us seems nonsensical because we have lost sight of his cultural or factual reference. But we should not assume that he was an idiot or that his mind worked differently from ours. In fact his mind was often more disciplined, logical and candid than ours.

There are several versions of Urban’s Exhortation to the the Troops, each of which may be considered an after-the fact elaboration. However, the retellings coincide in essential respects: the crusade, --a penitential “bearing” of the Cross for those who bore arms -- was a charitable war, willed by God, to succour needy brothers and rescue them from a foreign invasion of Roman territory.

Modern historians have penetratingly discovered that the “real” motive for the Crusades was an attempt to relieve demographic and economic pressures in Europe. But this was nothing unknown to the medieval contemporaries who, beneath the patina of justice and charity, are themselves astonishingly frank about the material motives of the war:

Fulcher of Chartres

"You have seen for a long time the great disorder in the world caused by these crimes [of robbery, pillage and violence]. It is so bad in some of your provinces, I am told, and you are so weak in the administration of justice, that one can hardly go along the road by day or night without being attacked by robbers; and whether at home or abroad one is in danger of being despoiled either by force or fraud. Therefore it is necessary to reenact the truce, as it is commonly called, which was proclaimed a long time ago by our holy fathers. I exhort and demand that you, each, try hard to have the truce kept in your diocese.

Robert the Monk

Let none of your possessions detain you, no solicitude for your family affairs, since this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.

Gesta Francorum & Balderic Bishop of Dole

Listen and learn! You, girt about with the badge of knighthood, are arrogant with great pride; you rage against your brothers and cut each other in pieces. This is not the (true) soldiery of Christ which rends asunder the sheepfold of the Redeemer. The Holy Church has reserved a soldiery for herself to help her people, but you debase her wickedly to her hurt. Let us confess the truth, whose heralds we ought to be; truly, you are not holding to the way which leads to life. You, the oppressors of children, plunderers of widows; you, guilty of homicide, of sacrilege, robbers of another's rights; you who await the pay of thieves for the shedding of Christian blood -- as vultures smell fetid corpses, so do you sense battles...

"We say this, brethren, that you may restrain your murderous hands from the destruction of your brothers, and in behalf of your relatives in the faith oppose yourselves to the Gentiles. [i.e. them heathens o'er yonder] Under Jesus Christ, our Leader, may you struggle for your Jerusalem, in Christian battleline...."

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Each of these sources confesses the same salient facts: the Truce of God had not worked; the lusty population was exceeding space and sustainibility resulting in criminality, for all of which reasons it was better to go kill Infidels than good, decent Christians at home.

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091213-FN4 / The Blockheads is Us

I feel obliged to point out that the gloss is not as inane as it might seem. We ought not presume that everyone before “us” was an utter fool. Medieval man was nothing if not subtle and we are the dummies for reading him literally. The formula “when God secretly inspires” is a simple but rigorous way of covering all those instances of either just or excusable homicide. God would not inspire an “unjust” killing or one that was not forgivable on account necessity or hardship. Thus the claim, “God made me do it” would be followed up with an inquisition guided by the standards of what God would allow and assisted, as might be needed, by boiling water.

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091213 -FN3 / The End of Dualisms

The whole business of correlations and dichotomies within dualisms was put to an end by Niccolo Machiavelli who established a separate moral (or amoral) universe for the State. The so-called Divine Right of Kings was not a medieval doctrine but rather a product of the Rennaisance. Louis XIV was rather more down to earth. Who stood above "the many"? L'Etat, c'est Moi.

In truth however, dualisms and analogies between them cannot be avoided. To this day our thinking is replete with correlations between the one and the many and dichotomies between the "actual" and the "ideal".
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091213-FN2 / Vengeance vs Retribution

In the passages here cited, I have substituted “just reparations” as more true to the sense for what is usually translated as “just vengeance”. Throughout the literature, authors will speak of “unjust or unbridled vengeance” or similar terms. Such statements can be misunderstood given current usage. During the period in question and unless the context indicated otherwise, “vengeance” meant the same as retribution - i.e. pay-back. Qualifiers indicated whether the vengeance was appropriate or excessive. To my knowledge, it was Immanuel Kant who first defined “vengeance” standing alone as meaning the lust for disproportionate and excessive pay-back.