Nobody knows for sure when the concept of a “just war” was first articulated — just war meaning the moral justification for waging war against one’s enemies, and the acceptable conduct in war once hostilities arise. Modern war makers don’t seem to care much about these rules anymore, and a lot of people you know are perfectly fine with that…depending on who’s doing the killing, that is.
Some historians point to the ancient Hindu scriptures for the earliest articulation of Just War Theory, and the term Dharma-Yuddha, a Sanskrit word made up of two roots: dharma (धर्म) meaning righteousness, and yuddha (युद्ध) meaning warfare. Once the Hindus agreed upon the necessity of war, a long series of rules were agreed upon by both sides, including:
- Those in chariots or those riding elephants may not attack infantry
- Fighting must begin no earlier than sunrise and should end by exactly sunset
- Those who surrender are to be protected as prisoners of war
And my personal favorite…
- No striking with a mace below the waist (a great rule in any context).
The ancient Egyptians also had rules of engagement, so to speak, and they generally fell along the same lines, with mutually-agreed-upon parameters and weapons that matched strength against strength. Modern war colleges and policy think tanks call this the Doctrine of Proportionality, and we’ll discuss that more later on.
For the ancient armies, one might think of this standard as a classical version of The Outsiders or West Side Story, where the warring factions agree on their era’s version of switchblades, chains, or fists before they rolled out to the vacant lot to duke it out.
As the centuries progressed so did the technology, and also the philosophy that dictated just war theory.
Early Christians wrestled with the concept of war in the same manner that many do today, with some taking the teachings of Jesus as being at odds with the Old Testament declarations about war.
One can still find pacifist Christians who will literally offer their other cheek to someone who strikes them in the face. Others (like myself) would sooner draw our concealed pistols if a threatening individual gets that close to us in the first place. Sheepdogs need to protect the sheep, and the wolves are always on the prowl.
Violence in the early church’s day was no different, and the first Christian to articulate this doctrine of a just war was Saint Augustine of Hippo:
“The real evils in war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power, and such like; and it is generally to punish these things, when force is required to inflict the punishment, that, in obedience to God or some lawful authorities, good men undertake wars, when they find themselves in such a position as regards the conduct of human affairs, that right conduct requires them to act, or to make others act, in this way.”
– Augustine of Hippo, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean XXII
Yet it was Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologicae who spelled out the doctrines of jus ad bellum (the right to war) and jus in bello (law in war), which taken together constituted the classical justifications for a righteous war among civilized nations. This laid out six conditions which must be satisfied for a war to be considered just:
- The war must be for a just cause.
- The war must be lawfully declared by a lawful authority.
- The intention behind the war must be good.
- All other ways of resolving the problem should have been tried first.
- There must be a reasonable chance of success.
- The means used must be in proportion to the end that the war seeks to achieve.
And for many centuries these rules adequately governed civilized nations’ war fighting, albeit atrocities (war crimes) were inevitable, and frequent. Sometimes those guilty of breaking the rules were imprisoned, or even executed. Other times they were not even reprimanded. Such is war. But there were rules, and that matters as much today as it did then.
However, the advent of technology transformed the battlefields, and did so with devastating consequences. The Napoleonic tactics adopted by the Union and Confederate armies during the American Civil War produced bloodbaths via the effective range of rifled muskets, Minié balls, and Colt revolvers.
In the aftermath of that war, explosives, iron-sided warships, and even submarines lopsided the playing field so effectively that a few years later the North American Indian tribes were practically wiped off the map, largely as a result of disproportionate technology such as Gatling Guns and repeating rifles. On the other side of the globe, British settlers similarity slaughtered indigenous Australians (Aborigines and Torres-Strait Islanders) with far superior weapons and tactics.
The doctrine of proportionality was disappearing fast from the battlefield with each new war innovation or tactic, driving higher casualties among combatants and civilians in the First World War. Chemical weapons seemed to be a line in the sand, and the Geneva Protocol of 1925 sought to stem the tide of innovative R&D into ghastly death tolls, and it did so…for exactly twenty years.
Operation Thunderclap
By 1945 the German war machine was already grinding to a halt. Relentless allied bombing had decimated the armies of (and a sizable number of cities occupied by) the Axis powers. Attempting to prove to Stalin that the Allies were serious about stemming German reinforcements to the Eastern Front, Churchill called for a crippling attack of questionable necessity. A big show of force, as it were.
Earlier at the Yalta Conference, Stalin had asked Churchill point blank, “Why haven’t you bombed Dresden?” Churchill no doubt wanted to avoid that question the next time they met and give Great Britain a bargaining chip in the post-war carve up of Europe that was soon to take place.
To put it into sports terms: The Allies needed at least one lopsided win to end the season if they were going to land a sweet free-agent contract in the off season.
The cities of Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz were all on the table, but as the weather and other variables dictated, Dresden drew the short straw. It’s significance was more than military, as the RAF memo issued to Allied airmen about to conduct the raid stated:
“At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance…The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front, to prevent the use of the city in the way of further advance, and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.”
The attack was to occur in waves, first taking out communications and generating chaos, then taking out fuel depots and preventing the ability of firefighters to contain the blazes.
Since Just War considerations were still considered in those days, the Allied high command were all over the map in their opinions of the raid.
British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris and U.S. Eighth Air Force General Carl Spaatz were opposed to the bombing this late in the game; Spatzz was vehemently so, and warned of the U.S. being “tarred in the morale bombing aftermath.”
Nevertheless, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower approved of the bombing and it commenced on Feb 13th, 1945. The result was the complete decimation of the city of Dresden, where anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 people — military and civilian — were crushed or exploded by the bombs that leveled the city, or burned to death in the fires that swept the city afterward.
An American airman recalled:
“At 20,000 feet we could we could see details in the unearthly blaze that had never been visible before; for the first time in many operations I felt sorry for the population below.”
The pilot of the last aircraft to bomb later declared:
“The heat striking up from the furnace below could be felt in my cockpit…We were so aghast at the awesome blaze that although alone, we flew around in a standoff position for many minutes before turning for home, quite subdued by our imagination of the horror that must be below. We could still see the glare of the holocaust thirty minutes after leaving.”
When the fires finally subsided after four waves of bombing over three days, the U.S. Army would formally declare 25,000 killed, many of which were civilian refugees from other parts of war-ravaged Germany. Later estimates are hotly debated to this day.
With little criticism from Western media, additional firebombing raids in the Pacific theater claimed 85,000 lives in Tokyo, and before the war was over, another 210,000 via two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — the vast majority in all three cases being civilians.
An exhaustive study of Operation Thunderclap with respect to Just War Theory was undertaken by Lieutenant Colonel Richard Conroy for the U.S. Army War College in 1989. It articulated the ethical problems with conducting war from 30,000 feet:
“Unlike the Army, where these ethical decisions are made day by day at each new doorway or foxhole, the air crews carry out their orders far above the populace and the air leaders are even further removed.”
In the same study, Chaplain Tatum of the U.S. Army War College put it even more succinctly:
“The Army and soldiers on the ground make ethical decisions at every doorway. Is the enemy in there? Do I risk the lives of the civilians to find out? Do I risk my life and those of my buddies if I don’t?”
Operation Thunderclap: The Bombing of Dresden by Lt. Col. Richard Conroy,
U.S. Army War College, March 31, 1989
That study concluded that Dresden failed to meet the criteria for a justifiable attack, and yet even today, Dresden is held up as merely another example of the unfortunate reality of necessary war instead of the senseless and politically motivated statement operation it was.
This moral ambiguity, and almost outright flippancy, drives much of the rhetoric we see across media platforms regarding war. Unless we’re willing to reevaluate our prejudices regarding war and tactics, history will not judge us very well, and neither will a just God who cares very much about the innocents in those places, even if we don’t.
Stuff Happens, It’s Just War
Many argue that in the age of modern terrorism, the Just War doctrines of the past are no longer applicable. Rarely do nation states declare war on other nation states, and instead are forced to conduct all manner of limited, highly targeted, often covert operations across the globe. This is merely the reality of fighting an enemy who hides within civilian populations. Accordingly, Just War theory was essentially replaced with the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) which affords military units far broader definitions of legitimate targets:
“Hostile forces are ‘any civilian, paramilitary or military force, or terrorist(s) … declared hostile by appropriate U.S. authority.’ There is no requirement for members of the forces declared hostile to have demonstrated any hostile intent or committed a hostile act. It is rather their status as members of an organized armed group, dissident armed forces, or a State’s armed force that provides the basis for targeting them. This accords to the rules under the law of armed conflict that allow for targeting members of such groups at any time.”
—J. Cherry, M. Rizzotti, Understanding Self Defense and the Law of Armed Conflict, Leiber Institute at West Point, 2021
What that means is that if person X is declared a terrorist, or domestic terrorist, or associated with a terrorist organization, they are essentially fair game as far as the law is concerned. Who makes that determination is a little murky. In America, those speaking at city council meetings, anyone flying a Betsy Ross flag, homeschool parents, and many more were investigated as domestic terrorists by the FBI and persecuted as such, including placing them on terrorist watchlists.
To what degree those targeted persons associate with the terrorist organizations is rarely if ever defined, assuming the operation (or government surveillance) even comes to light in the first pace, or is acknowledged if and when it does.
In the wake of a “brilliant operation,” we’re merely informed that the good guys laid another bomb on the bad guys. Our guys crack a beer, share some videos, and quote out-of-context Bible passages to celebrate another scumbag biting the dust.
This puts an almost insurmountable onus on those seeking to validate the legitimacy of a modern battlefield (or clandestine “special”) operation. With zero access to the intel or evidence, We The People are forced to accept the pinky swears of the intelligence agencies who claim, “Don’t worry. They were all bad.” No matter that these same intelligence agencies are universally acknowledged as habitual liars with a mandate for deception. An astute student of history, especially military history, might raise his or her hand at the latest operation and ask: “Why are we expected to swallow their talking points this time?”
But many do, dismissing it as “just war,” completely disregarding the concept of Just War.
This designed ambiguity is a prospect that the door kickers themselves may find abhorrent; case after case has demonstrated the military’s propensity to pass the buck, seeking the lowest ranking officer to pin a mistake on. Many former military men and women (and their families) are coming forward every year blowing whistles.
Lost in all of these moral and legal contortions are the inescapable realities of civilians caught in the crossfire. Any honest appraisal of modern operations — leaving aside their justifiability — must conclude that indiscriminate military strikes and dramatic “statement” ops have taken a heavy toll on civilian populations everywhere they occur. One would have hoped that the atrocities of the Second World War and the Cold War against civilian populations would translate into greater discrimination when green-lighting a new tactic. But the opposite seems to be the case.
If you want an accurate accounting of civilian deaths from military action, you’ll soon find a wild disparity between official government findings versus estimates from journalists and aid workers with boots on the ground. There are several handy sites for the statisticians researching the details, but here are few civilian numbers to chew on as of 2024:
Ukraine: 11,520 deaths and 23,640 injured
Israel: 1,200 deaths and 5431 injured
Palestine: 35,091 deaths and 78,827 injured
Source: Statista
Mind you, it will likely take historians a few decades to settle on accurate figures; those figures might even hold up on a Wikipedia page for a few years until new investigations muddy the waters once again.
What nobody contests is the fact that thousands of civilians are being killed or maimed daily as a result of these operations and their increasingly brutal tactics. Furthermore, what nobody in the political ruling class or anyone absorbed in social media war-porn seem concerned about is preventing civilian casualties.
When I first learned to shoot a pistol properly, my instructors hammered into me the four rules of gun safety:
- Know the condition of your firearm (or assume every gun is a loaded gun)
- Only point at what you intend to destroy
- Keep your finger off the trigger
- Know your target and what’s beyond it
If knowing your target and what’s beyond it matters in your church sanctuary, why doesn’t it matter in the heads up display of an F-35, or with the exploding radio next to the old lady sitting on a bus, or on the screens of modern war practitioners conducting operations from thousands of miles away? Too often the answer is: It’s just war, we just need to accept it.
Try telling that to the cops and bereaved family members should you tag a few extra bystanders in taking out an active shooter. Concealed carry professionals frequently warn that every bullet has a lawsuit attached to it, but for some reason a few thousand bombs never do.
The Laws of Armed Conflict
In the wake of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Corn (Ret.), wrote an op-ed for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. In it he describes the parameters for conducting a war against an enmeshed enemy:
“Constant care and precautions: Whenever military operations have a potentially adverse impact on civilians, forces must take ‘constant care’ to implement all operationally feasible measures to mitigate that risk and reduce civilian suffering. In relation to launching attacks, this requires the implementation of all feasible precautionary measures to mitigate civilian risk.”
— Israel-Hamas and the Law of Armed Conflict, Oct. 24, 2023
One year and over 100,000 casualties later, we can say with relative certainty that constant care to mitigate civilian suffering has not only been rarely calculated, it’s been completely disregarded across several battlefields. People who purport to uphold standards of civility, Christian principles of just conduct, and proportional responses to overt threats, seem unconcerned with such things when speaking about violence on grand scales.
“The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such things, all these are rightly condemned in war. We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace.”
— Augustine, City of God
This is something every follower of Jesus should consider as they watch the news, which is filtered and calculated to shape their opinions of it.
When Christians claim that tens of thousands of deaths are merely the unfortunate byproduct of evil terrorists putting civilians in harm’s way, they dehumanize entire populations. In the past, followers of Jesus might have balked at ethnic cleansing; nowadays they celebrate it with posts describing how God is great for killing another thousand terrorists with rockets — men, women, and children notwithstanding. The callused vitriol regarding innocent humans is odd coming from staunchly pro-life believers. How that compassion is switched off as long as the dead kids are in Lebanon or Iran, I’ll never understand.
A person’s value is not dependent upon who his father was or which part of the globe they happened to be born on. It might seem justified to blow up a known terrorists’ hand with his own cell phone — it might even be delightfully ironic to some — but not when one considers that this “confirmed terrorist” might have had his four-year-old sitting in his lap at the time.
For followers of Jesus, such concerns should matter. The standards we hold on the small scale should be even more prescient on the large sale, because even though Joseph Stalin may have believed “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic,” God’s people should have a higher standard within the law of armed conflict.
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Post Image: The ruins of Dresden in 1945. Facing south from the town hall (“Rathaus”) tower. Statue „Güte“ (“Good” or “Kindnes”) by August Schreitmüller, 1908–1910. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. Attribution: Deutsche Fotothek