Abstract

The Moral Case Against the Iraq War

The author argues that the war in Iraq is unjust. As the Iraq war continues into its second year, the Bush Administration's reasons for being there are more indefensible than ever. Yet the latest polls--including one conducted after the revelations about the torture of Iraqi prisoners--show that about half of Americans remain convinced that the war was morally justified. When do we have the right to kill our fellow human beings or let them be killed? What is needed is a national debate in the presidential election campaign that addresses the most important moral issue of our time. The debate should begin by moving beyond the narrow factual focus on WMD intelligence to an examination of the broad moral principles and values governing the use of deadly force against other human beings. Those principles are to be found in the basic precepts of our more than 200-year-old constitutional tradition and criminal jurisprudence, and in widely accepted standards of international humanitarian law. What is overlooked by those who believe the benefits of the war outweigh the costs is that killing even one innocent person to benefit others violates the most basic human right--the right to life. We denounce terrorists because when the freedom of self-determination they seek is weighed in the balance against the right to life of innocent people, it is the right to life that our collective conscience has decided should prevail. While there will always be disagreement about the way we should wage the war on terrorism, as there will be about the way we should fight the war on crime, a global form of law enforcement that unnecessarily kills thousands of innocent people to punish or prevent crimes for which they bear no responsibility is plainly and simply wrong.