Iraq Just War Essay

It was such statesmanship that was signally lacking in the decision to embark on military action in 2003.David Fisher is a Visiting Senior Fellow at King’s College, London, where he completed a Ph D in War Studies.Different reasons were adduced at different times for the war.

It was such statesmanship that was signally lacking in the decision to embark on military action in 2003.David Fisher is a Visiting Senior Fellow at King’s College, London, where he completed a Ph D in War Studies.Different reasons were adduced at different times for the war.

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To contribute to the public discussion of whether the United States and its allies should invade Iraq, the U. Institute of Peace organized a symposium on December 17, 2002 to address the question "Would an Invasion of Iraq Be a "Just War"?

In other words, is war likely to bring about more good than harm?

So how does the Iraq War fare against these criteria?

The war failed fully to meet any of the just war criteria. The charge against the Iraq War is not, however, that it fell somewhat short of a number of conditions.

But rather that such individual failures, when taken together, mutually reinforced each other, so building up cumulatively to support the conclusion that the war was undertaken without sufficient just cause and without adequate planning to ensure a just outcome.

We now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

But even that startling disclosure by the Iraq Survey Group would not necessarily invalidate the coalition’s disarmament objective as just cause if there had been strong grounds for believing that Saddam had such weapons.

It has to be undertaken: for a just cause, with right intention, with competent authority, as a last resort, and the harm judged likely to result should not outweigh the good achieved, taking into account the probability of success; while in its conduct the principles of proportion and non-combatant immunity have to met; and the war end in a just peace.

This may appear over-prescriptive: erecting so many hurdles that war would become impossible.