Brace yourselves, lovers of peace, for I will start by defending war. Sing this psalm with me that I have composed: Glorious is the Lord, almighty, and righteous in all that He does. With disdain and ease He smites the blind and insane in their conceit Armies of darkness that break apart without feeling Without knowing what killed them and why they die. His name and glory be praised to high heavens.
He breaks the proud across His knee And throws them away. He condemns the wicked to just punishment. He rewards the righteous with infinite generosity. May the ungodly tremble before the power of the Lord.
Yet to those who repent the Lord is merciful In His loving kindness He forgives all sins He sends the Holy Spirit into them, beautiful and precious, with life-giving gifts Though He may plunge the sinner into Hell To force him to fight the demons in him or die.
Perhaps it is in similar vein that Brian Doherty argues that “tendencies and beliefs” can, at times, be “bombed out of existence”. That much is true, and, indeed, even Ludwig von Mises considered it a good argument that “[t]here is no record of a socialist nation which defeated a capitalist nation,” implying that the destructive force that can in principle be unleashed by free societies far exceeds that commanded by the unfree ones. Power, in other words, whether creative or destructive, is given only to those who obey economic laws, for obedience to the divine law entails obedience to the natural law. Hence those nations that fail to arrange their affairs properly at home and cannot help but project their internal disorder onto the world by aggressing on their less rapacious neighbors can be humbled by the application of force and shown that their behavior will not lead to success.
Further, St. Thomas denies that a war is sinful if it is conducted “by the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged”; has a just cause, “namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault”; and the “belligerents… have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil”.
We may at this point stop and object to the Angelic Doctor that modern war scarcely discriminates between the combatants and non-combatants, and, indeed, as Richard Weaver explains, War used to be described in the language of diplomacy as the ultima ratio, the “final resort”: what a nation fell back on when all other means of settlement had failed. It implied that you had a logical reason on your side which in the existing situation had to be given the support of force. Moreover, the history of civilized warfare does in fact reflect this rationale of war. The rationale assumes that there is an arbiter of the destiny of nations… When a nation has done its best, when it had exerted its maximum lawful strength, it accepted the “arbitrament of the sword,” whether that was given for or against it. If against it, the defeated party had to admit that the other side had “the better reason” and had to accept a settlement that accorded with that reason. That was the only way that warfare could be assimilated into the framework of rational thinking. So conceived, war is used as a means of reinstituting reason or of bringing people to their senses.
But once the “old chivalric concept of the war of limited objectives conducted against soldiers only” has given way, especially after the American War Between the States, to total war in which “the sole object is to win and impose your will” by any means whatsoever, Weaver continues, war “no longer survives as an ‘institution,’ which can be described in rational terms, but becomes pure and ultimate unreason… The advocate of total war… does not regard victory as something that is up for decision through approved methods of arbitrament, but is something the warring party has from the beginning, or rather would have except for the inexcusable resistance of a totally depraved opponent.” An interesting twist in the present war on Iraq is that that whole nation has been coalesced into “Saddam,” a monstrous bogeyman who must be dispelled by the forces of “light” before the reign of “freedom,” whatever meaning the imperial speechwriters attach to this term, can begin. That “Saddam,” being head of the Iraqi state will likely escape while the regular citizens are blown to bits escapes their grasp.
