Ethics Daily reports that the National Council of Churches has issued a guide listing ten principles for evaluating political candidates. Here's the first principle:
1. War is contrary to the will of God. While the use of violent force may, at times, be a necessity of last resort, Christ pronounces his blessing on the peacemakers. We look for political leaders who will make peace with justice a top priority and who will actively seek nonviolent solutions to conflict.
All ten are good principles, as far as they go, but I am afraid the first one is not strong enough for the present moment. Our current President has made the practice of pre-emptive war an explicit doctrine of our nation's foreign policy and the major candidate opposing him in our
national elections says he too is willing to launch pre-emptive strikes against "terrorists" if he has "sufficient intelligence." (See Ken Guggenheim's, July 17, 2004 AP report "Kerry supports pre-emption in principle")
Instead of hinting at the problem with American foreign policy, somebody needs to state clearly and explicitly that the entire notion of "pre-emptive" strikes is immoral and unjust. It violates all principles of just war theory. If the quotations I've seen are accurate, President Eisenhower expressed these concerns most succinctly in 1953 when he said, "Pre-emptive war was invented by Adolf Hitler. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't take anyone who came up with such a thing
seriously."
No comments:
Post a Comment