Our attitudes to war change drastically when it becomes personal. When it is distant, it involves people whose nationality and culture we do not share, and wrongs of whose cause are disputed. But it does not affect us at gut level. When it is someone who has walked our streets, swum on our beaches, speaks Read more
The Vatican’s Secretary of State has supported military intervention to disarm an unjust aggressor in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. Speaking on Sunday, Cardinal Pietro Parolin cited conditions stipulated under Catholic just war doctrine. He said comments Pope Francis made in 2014 that it is “licit” to use force to disarm an unjust Read more
The moral authority of pontiffs has long been used to cajole world leaders into peace and reconciliation. Earlier this year, for instance, Pope Francis tried to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with a prayer service that included Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas. That tradition of papal peace-making lends even more weight to Read more
The most recent comments by United States President Barack Obama regarding a possible military intervention in Syria indicate views at odds with just war theory – the doctrine emerging from moral philosophy surrounding the just use of military force. On Saturday, President Obama expressed his desire to “hold the Assad regime accountable for their use Read more
Despite a disturbingly inept public-relations aftermath, the American raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound was a great success. Indeed, it was so successful that it should force us to reconsider the presumption that the war in Afghanistan was necessary in the first place. The logic is simple: if bin Laden was killed during a secret Read more