ISIS and the Just War Doctrine

Matthew Tyson

Let’s not go to war with ISIS.

 I know, radical idea; and honestly, I understand why so many people want to. The Islamic State is brutally destroying the Christian foothold in the Middle East. They’ve produced hundreds, if not thousands, of martyrs; and they’re desecrating Christian holy land, in the name of an extremist version of an already-misguided heresy.

 My heart hurts for the persecuted Christians in the Middle East; there have been so many moments over the past year where I’ve read the articles, seen the photos, and felt myself utterly lost on what should be done. Thank the Lord I don’t have to make that decision.

Still, though, as red-blooded Americans, our first response to a monstrosity like ISIS is to blow them to pieces. The moment the media actually started paying attention to the horror in the Middle East, the Internet was flooded with those “We’re coming for you,” memes, and started getting everyone pumped up for yet another bout of bloodshed in the exotic “cradle of civilization”.

But as an American and a Catholic, I’m begging, please, God, no more war.

I realize it’s a touchy situation. I mean, what are you supposed to do with such a seemingly unstoppable killing force? They certainly aren’t going to listen to reason; and there’s probably no way to get to the other side of this issue without some isolated instances of military force.

What Does the Church Teach About War?

As I’ve wrestled with this issue, I’ve given plenty of thought to the Catholic teaching on war.

On this subject, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.

However, “as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed.” (Catechism 2308, cit. Gaudium et Spes 79 § 4)

It then goes on to lie out the strict conditions that must be met before going to war. They are:

—The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.

—All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.

—There must be serious prospects of success.

—The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition. (Catechism 2309)

Applying the Doctrine

While I think most people would agree that the damage ISIS has caused is absolutely lasting, grave, and certain, I can’t reconcile the use of force in this situation with any other of the above criterion, especially the last two.

If we have learned anything from our past actions in the Middle East, then how could we even entertain the idea that more war will lead to success? So far, our occupation of Iraq has only increased turmoil, instability, and anger — the conditions that allow extremist groups like ISIS to thrive in the first place.

At the same time, can we truly say that all other means have been shown impractical or ineffective?

I don’t think so.

I understand that the driving force behind ISIS is an ideology. While we may not be able to kill an idea, it can be contained, picked apart, and wrestled into submission.

We can’t keep marching into the Middle East every time there’s a problem. Instead of more bloodshed, we, and the rest of the international community, need to put our efforts together in order to build stability and security.

The Last Resort

I think the biggest disconnect with modern thinking on the Catholic concept of a just war is that many of us either reject it completely in favor of a more nationalist ideal, or we only pay attention to the first priority and jump to military action as the first response to any violent aggressor.

But in reading the Catechism, that’s far from what the Church teaches. While our Church may understand that in some extreme situations, force becomes necessary for self-defense (another portion that seems to get overlooked), She lays out some extremely specific guidelines.

Going to war is supposed to be an absolute last resort. An act of desperation. An action that is only to be taken when there are literally no other alternatives or options left. You can almost get these sense that the Church is allowing the use of force begrudgingly. Why? Because to quote William T. Sherman, “War is hell.”

It’s horrific. It exists solely because we live in a fallen world. It always results in death, destruction, and suffering. Haven’t we had enough of that?

Summing Up

The “just war” conditions don’t exist to answer the question, “When do we get to go to war?” Rather, they ask us, “Do you need to go to war?”

In this situation, no, we do not need to go to war, and we shouldn’t.

There are other solutions. There are methods we have not exhausted. There are ways to correct the problems in the Middle East without reverting to the very thing that caused those problems in the first place.

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24 thoughts on “ISIS and the Just War Doctrine”

  1. someCatholicdude

    Matthew,

    I respect your argument but I have a few questions. What are the other options? Are we to sit back and watch them kill innocents? Although you are probably right that the ideology cannot be beaten by war, cannot the actors be beaten? ISIS is an entity which quite reasonably can be beaten, is committing grievous crimes against humanity and will continue to do so if allowed to. Also an important characteristic which I think needs to be addressed is that THEY are the invading force. War and turmoil is already in the middle east. Who will stand for the innocents?

  2. The bible talks about Armageddon so there will be at least one more war so stop praying for peace because we HAVE to have THAT war.

    I believe the current crisis “may” eventually lead to WW3 but not Armageddon.

  3. Pingback: 9/11, Christianity, and Islam - BigPulpit.com

  4. It matters little to me if anyone wants to define this as a “just war” or not. There are no alternatives…other than tea and crumpets with a sect which believes and thrives on genocide. It is often said that people who do not recognize the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Remember he Shoah; remember Action T-4. The world and the Church remained silent and millions were killed. The indifference to mass genocide is appalling. Read Elie Weisel’s speech on human indifference in 1999:

    http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/wiesel.htm

    ISIL is a Aunni extremist group that is predicated upon global jihadist principles. Beheading, forced conversion. rape, slavery, stoning, Sharia Law all violate every principle of humanity and these are crimes against humanity. ISIL must be destroyed because genocide is intolerable and there are NO alternatives….even Al Queda had disavowed links to these murders who are declaring the establishment of a caliphate. They kill, not only Christians, not only Shiites. not only Yazadis , but all who are not converts to this distorted religion. They must be stopped by all means necessary….now.

    “But a belief in martyrdom, a hatred of infidels, and a commitment to violent jihad are not fringe phenomena in the Muslim world. These preoccupations are supported by the Koran and numerous hadith. That is why the popular Saudi cleric Mohammad Al-Areefi sounds like the ISIS army chaplain. The man has 9.5 million followers on Twitter (twice as many as Pope Francis has). If you can find an important distinction between the faith he preaches and that which motivates the savagery of ISIS, you should probably consult a neurologist.” Sam Harris, Sleepwalking to Armageddon, September 10, 2014.

    I would not want to create the impression that most Muslims support ISIS, nor would I want to give any shelter or inspiration to the hatred of Muslims as people. In drawing a connection between the doctrine of Islam and jihadist violence, I am talking about ideas and their consequences, not about 1.5 billion nominal Muslims, many of whom do not take their religion very seriously. Harris…..

    We as a human race can never allow a religious ideology to condone, support or dictate genocide, enslave people, murder the innocents. We have stood on the sidelines in the past and millions needlessly died as people debate “just war.” Very simply, ISIL is evil incarnate, evil needs to be destroyed. If there is option to stop ISIL, name it!

  5. What the Catholic Church, the Pope and the Catechism have to say about current events and our war on terrorism is of no practical use. You are carving out a nice niche for yourself presenting Church teaching as some source of wisdom of which the world is not aware. These are worldly problems that will only be solved by worldly people applying worldly wisdom. A wet behind the ears champion of Church teaching is not going to help us get through the problems we face.

    1. They have plenty of practical use. They are the most practical, actually. Fighting fire with fire or flesh with flesh will fail. “Worldly wisdom” is misnomer. The only thing in which we can have hope is Christ. One day, the world’s prideful faith in itself will be its undoing, and the Church will be the only establishment that remains standing a midst the rubble.

    2. You do realize that the only difference between you and religious extremists of other faiths is that you are a Catholic religious extremist? While it is good that Catholic religious extremists do not strap bombs to their chests or fly planes into buildings like Islamist religious extremists, your mutual lack of rationality is the same. You need to be less religious and more rational.

    3. Unforetunately, Romans 13:4 comes from Christ and from the Holy Spirit and from the Father….it says the state carries the sword as God’s minister of God’s wrath against him who does evil….like ISIS. The passage (Rom.13:4) is absent in Evangelium Vitae by a Pope who verbally called the death penalty cruel in 1999 in St. Louis. Keep in mind that as Cardinal Dulles once noted…God gave c.34 death penalties to the Jews ( now rescinded) but also one for murder to the gentiles in Gen.9:5-6/ Rom.13:4 ( now ignored in practice because we are trying to undo the Inquisition by posing as Ghandi). The Inquisition deaths were wrong….now we’re going to the other extreme for image sake with no regard to God’s Scripture in Rom.13:4. So you had a Pope call cruel what God repeatedly mandated and no one in a whole Church says boo….money my friend is often at the root of “loyalty” to the doctrine of the day.

    4. It’s always a very good idea to use a singular verse to back up an entire theological idea. Solid thinking.

    5. Oh I can show you a pattern. Go to section 42 of Verbum Domini by Pope Benedict. He states that ” the prophets challenged every form of violence…individual and communal.”
      You do know the Bible don’t you Matthew? Elijah killed a minimum of 552 men. Eliseus was ordered by God to kill any of the house of Ahab that escaped the sword of Jehu. And the prophet Samuel ” hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal” because Saul failed to for which God removed him from the kingship. Here is Jeremiah mandating under pain of curse that the Chaldeans killed the Moabites perfectly:
      Jer.48:10 ” Cursed are they who do the Lord’s work carelessly; cursed are they who hold back their sword from shedding blood.”
      Now does Pope Benedict’s aforementioned statement look a little uninformed perhaps. Go to section 40 of Evangelium Vitae by John Paul II where he says that the OT death penalties lacked the refinement of the Sermon on the Mount. But wait….God kills Herod in Acts 12 and has the angel of death leave his body for worms to eat. Does this post Sermon on the Mount action by God mean that unrefinement has returned in God by Acts 12 and by Acts 5 when God kills Ananias and Sapphira.
      But to return to Romans 13:4. It can be quoted alone because God gave the mandate to gentiles only once in each Testament so His once is something you might do well to not circumvent.

    6. Fighting fire with fire actually works and can be practical – the key question is to know when and how to apply it. If I understand you correctly, you are not really objecting to fighting fire with fire in this case, but only to the US doing the fighting. I think I can agree with you that for the US to get entangled in fighting ISIS directly may not be justified (mostly because our direct involvement is likely to cause more ills than it cures, particularly if the US uses this as a back door way of toppling Assad – which I fear is the real objective). The US involvement should be limited to providing support to the other countries in the region without “mission creep” of toppling one government or another “while we are in the neighborhood.”

    7. That’s pretty much what I’m saying. The issues in the Middle East which, again, we caused, do not fit the bill to launch yet another offensive. For those in the Middle East, it certainly does. Our job should be to provide support where we can, and with the international community, help build stability so that groups like ISIS aren’t able to thrive.

  6. Matt, you can only kill a body – not a soul. Don’t worry about these evil people, God will give
    them a new body that will be sufficient to work off their karma. There are four divisions in
    human society. Householders, like most of us, merchants, to sell us what we need to live,
    holy persons, to lead us toward the light, and warriors, to make right with might. This is a
    just war.

  7. Absurd. And the just war theory doesn’t fall under universal ordinary magisterium since it began with Augustine….which means we had four hundred years without it prior to him. It’s not under infallibility.
    This may be the clearest just war along with fighting Hitler. We just saved thousands of totally poor people from being murdered by bombing at the base of Sinjar Mt….around Irbil…and around Amirli. Had we listened to Pope Francis ” I do not say bomb”, thousands would have been murdered. We just saved thousands of poor people. Tell me how many people Pope Francis saved with his repeating the late life pacifism of the last two Popes …our “war solves nothing” duo? War is why the nazis didn’t rule Europe….and why Japan failed to enslave China. The Pope gave one million dollars which is Vatican money and that’s good….but there are one million internal refugees in Iraq so it’s a dollar each. If he taxed all Catholics a dollar, he could give one billion to Iraq. He could accomplish that in three months of haranguing.
    But let’s promote the just war theory when the other alternatives clause is totally irrelevant in emergencies. If you Matthew come home and your wife is being attacked by a large drugged out strong man, you had better know where his carotid artery is and get to work on it with a kitchen knife instead of dialoguing with him first and offering to help him with resumes for job hunting. By talking, you’ve lost all hope of getting to his carotid. Now you’re both dead and you helped him commit two mortal sins of murder by your fear of fighting.
    The dictators in the mideast were keeping a lid on chaos for decades artificially. They’re removal in Libya, Iraq, Syria etc. simply removed the lid off the tribalism that was always there. This stage must work through.

    1. Your initial argument is absurd, homie. Whether we had 400 years without it or not, it’s in the Catechism, laid out plainly, and supported by the Church authority. But I’m sure you know better than the Church.

      Also, I find it REALLY telling that if I come home and there is, in the most unlikely of scenario’s, some cranked out dude attacking my family, then my only options are to die (and commit mortal sin? really??) or to kill him. Never mind the fact that good ol’ Southern boy beat down would probably suffice plenty, maybe a solid sleeper, or a bat to the lower back. But kill is your first option. Your first instinct. Your first solution.

      I never said war was unnecessary, I just said America doesn’t need to go to war. There are other options. Options we can utilize to fix the problems that we caused in the first place.

      Also, if you want to insult the Holy Father within your own circle of anti-Francis buddies, then be my guest, but don’t do it here.

    2. So by your logic, the thousands of Yazidi on Mt. Sinjar should have been slaughtered by ISIS three weeks ago rather than our bombing ISIS forces at the base of the mountain and armed Pesh Merga escorting Yazidi off the mountain? Is that your position?

    3. That’s a non-sequitur, and a fallacious inquiry. I have admitted in this blog that we probably won’t be able to get to the other side of this without some use of force. I still don’t support going to war…again. It’s not just.

      We, as a one of the most powerful nations in the world and along with other world leaders, have the ability fix the instability that we caused which allows groups like ISIS to thrive. More war won’t fix that. It’s like saying, “Ow, I burned my hand. Maybe if I set it on fire it’ll get better.”

    4. But you are completely avoiding the reality that alternatives to war take years and time is more people murdered by ISIS. There is no alternative to warring against a group that has killed hundreds per week and enslaved their wives to sexual work…per week.

    5. The correct response to ISIS is to kill them. That is so plainly obvious that only religious beliefs would cause anyone to see it any other way. You are a victim of your own success. You have found a measure of personal success (as insignificant as it may be) in defending the Catholic stand on controversial issues. But this success has robbed you of your ability to use common sense and see no brainers like the necessity to kill terrorists. That is the price of your meager accomplishment.

    6. You could be a little less demeaning. I mean, I get it. You’re Mr. Enlightened who has shaken off the bonds of religion. But still.

      That being said, in my blog I mention, quite specifically, that force will probably be necessary. However, I oppose America, specifically, from launching another war in the Middle East because for us to get involved in that way, again, is unjust.

      It’s our fault. We caused the turmoil. We caused the instability. Hell, our bombs and indiscriminate killing are part of why people join groups like ISIS in the first place. All they see is America killing their families and destroying their homeland, so in turn they want to kill us back.

      Our war mongering has only cost innocent lives. It hasn’t fixed a damn thing. More war won’t fix anything. Our responsibility is to clean the mess we made so that countries in the Middle East CAN fight back and destroy ISIS. For them, it is a Just War, for us, it’s not. It’s just our fault.

    7. Then why is ISIS killing Yazidi in the hundreds and thousands if they could…a group who bombs no one.

    8. However, I oppose America, specifically, from launching another war in the Middle East because for us to get involved in that way, again, is unjust.

      What would be unjust would be for us to allow religious fanatics to impose their religion on others. Islam is being imposed on defenseless non-Muslims. Sunni is being imposed on Shiites. These are human rights violations that must be condemned by the international community. Unfortunately, when we look to others to stop these abuses, we find that we are the ones with the ability to act unilaterally in time to make a difference. Deadly force is required to eliminate these abuses. The alternatives to our taken action are a far greater evil than anything we might do in responding to these abuses.

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