Why the Iraq war was not a just war

[T_i_B]

Just thought it best to post this old article here as it explains the Christian "Just War" theology very well and why the Iraq war was not a just war.

It's an old article, written by the Bishop of Oxford before Blair's infamous dossiers came out but it's well worth clicking on the link and reading the article.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,768874,00.html

Some dismiss the 'Just War' tradition as outmoded. But although the context has dramatically changed, with nuclear weapons and terrorism, the principles remain unchanged.

Others, understandably but wrongly, see this tradition only as a spurious device for justifying military action which would be undertaken anyway.

What it provides, however, is a set of criteria by which a potential military action might be judged morally licit or illicit. If a potential military incursion into Iraq is judged morally unjustified, it will in fact be on the basis of criteria which have long been part of Just War thinking.

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The main task of the Churches at a time like this is to put forward and press these criteria, probing and testing whether or not they might be met. In the end political and military judgments have to be made and those who hold power have the awesome task of making them. Churchmen do not hold power and do not have to make those decisions. But on the basis of what we have and know at the moment those criteria are not being met.