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March 10, 2007
In his Just and Unjust Wars (1977), Michael Walzer argues that we must make two separate evaluations of the morality of war: the justice of the cause or purpose for which war is fought and the morality or justice of the methods of warfare. Just cause is usually understood in terms of a self-defense against physical aggression is putatively the only sufficient reason for just cause. The consensus is that an initiation of physical force is wrong and may justly be resisted. Just methods is conventionally understood in terms of the rule that military responses must be proportional to the military provocation, and the rule that civilians must never be intentionally attacked. The inference is that even a just war must be waged justly.
Thus Israel is entitled to defend itself, but is not entitled to do so disproportionately or to wage war on civilians. Israel was judged to Israel to have engaged in unjust, because disproportionate, military activity in Lebanon for the kidnapping of three of its soldiers, the scale of death and destruction. The damage Israel inflicted on so much of Lebanon’s infrastructure through the use of air and sea-power in response to these kidnappings, especially on the civilian population of Lebanon, was deemed to be out of all proportion to these kidnappings.
Was the second Lebanese war a just war?
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