The Persian Gulf War: A Case Study in Just War Theory.

The Just War Debate Although President Bush faced widespread opposition from U.S. religious leaders to his Gulf policy, most Americans supported him. The Presidents decision to deploy troops touched off a debate in America that reached into nearly every aspect of our lives. George Weigel observes There has rarely been such a sustained and in many cases impressive public grappling with the moral criteria and political logic of the just war tradition. Administration officials, members of Congress, senior military officers, columnists, talk-show hosts, and ordinary citizens debated the goals and instruments of U.S. gulf policy in such classic just war terms as just cause, competent authority, probability of success, last resort, proportionality of ends and means to ends, and discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. President Bush himself took an interest in just war theory. As a writer for US Friends, advisers and religious leaders familiar with his thinking say that, over time, he has adopted eight moral principles that he believes justify war and four additional principles governing the actual conduct of war. In his mind, he has complied with all of them. Those familiar with the presidents thinking say that he hews to the classical doctrine of a just war based on the belief that deadly force is sometimes a tragic, but moral, necessity. Bushs view of the moral necessity of this war has emerged from two forces. The first is the long evolution of his religious beliefs. The other is his more recent discussion of war and peace with a variety of spiritual leaders.