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America and the Just War Tradition

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America and the Just War Tradition DOWNLOAD CSS Notes, Books, MCQs, Magazines www.thecsspoint.com Download CSS Notes Download CSS Books Download CSS Magazines Download CSS MCQs Download CSS Past Papers The CSS Point, Pakistan’s The Best Online FREE Web source for All CSS Aspirants. Email: [email protected] BUY CSS / PMS / NTS & GENERAL KNOWLEDGE BOOKS ONLINE CASH ON DELIVERY ALL OVER PAKISTAN Visit Now: WWW.CSSBOOKS.NET For Oder & Inquiry Call/SMS/WhatsApp 0333 6042057 – 0726 540316 English Literature MCQs By Nawaz Khalid Emporium Publishers Order Now Call/SMS 03336042057 - 0726540141 Brush Up Your English By S T Imam Call/SMS 0726540141 - 03336042057 BUY CSS SOLVED MCQs BOOKS ONLINE CASH ON DELIVERY CALL/SMS 03336042057 | Visit: http://cssbooks.net International law SK Kapoor & LN Tandon Call/SMS 0726540141 - 03336042057 AMERICA AND THE JUST WAR TRADITION A HISTORY OF U.S. CONFLICTS Edited by MARK DAVID HALL AND J. DARYL CHARLES University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu Copyright © 2019 by the University of Notre Dame All Rights Reserved Published in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hall, Mark David, 1966- editor. | Charles, J. Daryl, 1950- editor. Title: America and the just war tradition : a history of U.S. conflicts / edited by Mark David Hall and J. Daryl Charles. Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018055518 (print) | LCCN 2018056151 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268105273 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268105280 (epub) | ISBN 9780268105259 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268105251 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780268105266 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 026810526X (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: United States—History, Military. | United States—History, Military—Moral and ethical aspects. | United States—History, Military—Social aspects. | United States—History, Military—Religious aspects. | Just war doctrine. Classification: LCC E181 (ebook) | LCC E181.A36 2019 (print) | DDC 355.00973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055518 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper. This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected] We dedicate this book to the men and women who serve, or have served, in America’s armed forces, and to professors who keep the just war tradition alive in our nation’s colleges and universities. CONTENTS Foreword ix James Turner Johnson Acknowledgments xv ONE The Just War Tradition and America’s Wars 1 J. Daryl Charles and Mark David Hall TWO “Fear, Honor, and Interest”: The Unjust Motivations and 50 Outcomes of the American Revolutionary War John D. Roche THREE The War of 1812 74 Jonathan Den Hartog FOUR James K. Polk and the War with Mexico 97 Daniel Walker Howe FIVE The Fractured Union and the Justification for War 114 Gregory R. Jones SIX Just War and the Spanish-American War 136 Timothy J. Demy SEVEN The Great War, the United States, and Just War Thought 155 Jonathan H. Ebel EIGHT The United States and Japan in the Second World War: 175 A Just War Perspective Kerry E. Irish NINE America’s Ambiguous “Police Action”: 203 The Korean Conflict Laura Jane Gifford TEN Vietnam and the Just War Tradition 226 Mackubin Thomas Owens ELEVEN The First and Second Gulf Wars 251 Darrell Cole TWELVE The War on Terror and Afghanistan 271 Rouven Steeves Contributors 300 Index 305 FOREWORD James Turner Johnson As I considered what I might contribute as a foreword to this book on bringing a just war perspective to reflection on America’s wars, among the thoughts that came to mind were various examples of books and shorter pieces whose authors have employed their own understandings of the just war idea to argue against the justice of American uses of armed force in particular cases, against the use of particular weapons or ways of fighting by American military forces, or against war itself as in- herently unjust today, measured by just war standards. This book is dif- ferent from these in conception and execution; yet since it appears in a landscape populated by such examples, they need to be acknowledged in order for readers to appreciate the contribution this book makes. Among the examples that came to my mind were three books that used somewhat different understandings of just war to criticize the 2003 use of armed force to invade Iraq and overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime. One of these extended the author’s political opposition to the government officials who favored this use of force and argued for it during the period of deliberation that ended with the decision to use force: here the introduction of just war reasoning came in second, not first, place, and the interpretation of just war was shaped by the author’s political commitments. Two other books also came to mind, works that defined the idea of just war in terms of lengthy lists of criteria and then used as a checklist by which to weigh, and find wanting, various aspects of the decision process and the use of armed force itself. This way of de- scribing and using the idea of just war not only manifested a simplistic ix x Foreword kind of moral reasoning divorced from the complexity of actual moral reflection and decision making, but it eviscerated the idea of just war itself, which, understood in its fullness, is the composite product of cen- turies of interactions among various formative forces—religion, phi- losophy, law, government, and military experience—all intertwined in the wisdom of a moral tradition. I also thought of various books and articles, as well as statements produced by various groups, using elements from just war thinking to oppose war itself, to oppose the use of particular kinds of weaponry, or to oppose any and every use of force by states—often especially the U.S.—as inherently immoral. Sometimes the thought in these works turned just war reasoning back on itself, arguing that just war thinking justifies immoral uses of armed force and so ought to be discarded completely. Happily, the present book is of a very different sort from any of the kinds of examples I have mentioned. First and fundamentally, in the first chapter of the book the editors rightly insist that just war should be thought of as a tradition, not a theory. This properly acknowledges two core truths about just war thought: that it is the product of a long and rich history of experience and efforts to think morally about that expe- rience in connection with the place of the use of armed force in the ser- vice of the goods of order, justice, and peace within and among political communities; and further, that the moral content of just war tradition is not simply intellectual in nature but also empirically engaged in recog- nizing and meeting the responsibilities of life in an ever-challenging world. Augustine, often cited as the first Christian just war thinker, for- mulated his own thoughts on just war in fashioning responses to the teachings and actions of Christian heretics like the Manichees and the Donatists, and at the end of his life his thinking about just war reflected the grave military and religious threats posed by Arian Vandal armies that laid siege to his home city of Hippo Regius. In the face of all these challenges he argued for restoring and maintaining justice in the face of injustice. This, for him, was what the idea of just war was about: it was an element in Christian responsibility to take part in holding together a world menaced by injustice and chaos, so that God’s purpose for that world might be completed. His was an engaged understanding of just war, not simply a theoretical conception. Foreword xi The same goes for the thinkers who contributed to the definition of the first systematic understanding of just war, the canonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their focus was on just war as a responsibility of temporal government, a tool for securing the common good of all in every political community. Justice and peace for them were not ideal goods for a perfect world but real forms of human interrelations which those responsible for political order should continuously seek to achieve. The same applies to the theological thinkers who followed, importantly illustrated by Thomas Aquinas, who seconded the canonists in empha- sizing use of just war as an aspect of the responsibility of sovereign rule and understood the decision for or against just war as a form of moral discernment of the natural law. The same too for those thinkers of the early modern period who rethought just war in the context of new forms of warfare and new experiences of cultural diversity, and so also those thinkers who transformed just war into a way of ordering and regulating the world of nation-states that followed the Peace of Westphalia. Such was the nature of the thinking of those who in earlier times gave shape to just war tradition, and stepping into that tradition today means taking up the same lines of reflection. One who engages in just war reasoning, on this conception, is one who enters the ever-developing stream of tradition on moral responsi- bility and the use of armed force, joining in dialogue not only with con- temporaries in their own context in the world but also with those who have dealt with similar and other challenges in earlier historical contexts. The result of thinking of just war in this way is to conceive it as signifi- cantly more diverse than can be captured in any checklist of moral crite- ria that might be offered.
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