FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 651 12 October 15 UNJUST WAR ON SYRIA

Use this area to offer a short teaser of your email's content. Text here will show in the preview area of some email clients.
ANGLICAN MORAL THEOLOGIAN CALLS FOR WAR ON SYRIA. WHY HE IS WRONG.
------------------------------------------------------------


‘War is mother of all things’ wrote philosopher Heraclitus. A crisp metaphysical opinion. Instead, Oxford professor Nigel Biggar, a slim, gimlet-eyed Anglican Canon sporting a devilish goatee beard, beats a lofty, humanitarian war drum. In a nutshell: Britain must go to war on Syria because ‘morality demands’ it! And he wants Britain to attack both ISIS and President Assad. Cazzo! (As you might exclaim in Italian.)

Actually, many Syrian bishops have spoken out against the crimes and brutalities the Islamists have unleashed on their communities, Beheadings, tortures, rapes, kidnappings of priests and nuns, forced conversions, burning of churches and similar trifles. In pre-civil war Syria the Christians felt protected by Assad’s secular regime. Naturally, they are not calling for strikes against their President. Maybe Canon Biggar should deign to listen to what his fellow Christians are saying, unless of course Anglicanism has decided to side with the butchers of ISIS. Not impossible.

Anyhow, the snag is that to intervene militarily inside Syria would appear to violate international law. The UN charter says that war is only permissible for self-defence and Biggar's war looks pretty aggressive. Besides, the Security Council would have to authorise it. What is to be done?

Biggar’s tactics is both crafty and breezy. He does not say the law of nations is bunkum but cites another academic, Michael Reisman, who boldly dismisses the UN Charter as a ‘paper world’.

Huh! Shades of Von Bethmann-Hollweg. Does it ring a bell? He was German Chancellor in 1914. Britain went to war because Germany had invaded Belgium, thus violating its neutrality. The Kraut statesman justified it by calling the international treaties that protected Belgium ‘chiffons de papier’ – only scraps of paper! That remark made his name for ever infamous. He was rightly pilloried in Britain and across the world. Now Biggar and Reisman follow in Bethmann-Hollweg’s footsteps. Makes you think…

The Just War doctrine was forged by worthy theologians and Saints. Minds like St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas taught that war is generally a sin but it can be morally justified when strict conditions obtain. It must be declared by a lawful authority, has to be for a just cause and the result of a right intention. Additionally, the innocent, i.e. civilians, must not be directly targeted and there must be proportionality between the means and the end. Some means are intrinsically evil. You can’t wipe out whole cities with their civilian inhabitants (e.g. Dresden in WW2) in order to destroy some ammunition factories.

Cynics claim Just War doctrine is a useless and toothless medieval relic. That it has never stopped anybody from fighting an unjust war. Rather, it served to legitimise conflicts already decided on. Maybe. Nonetheless even war criminals swear they never deliberately kill innocent non-combatants, so just war criteria, even in the breach, gesture at something morally important.

In an interview Biggar has spoken of war as an instrument to punish the perpetrators of wrongdoing. Providing that punishment here does not mean revenge (as in the case of the US nuclear bombing of Japan), which is ruled out by Christian ethics, that could be accepted. A just reason for war may be the desire to redress a grave wrong or to get back what has been unjustly seized by the aggressor. The problem is: who does the punishing? And who gets punished?

Biggar rejects the role of the UN Security Council, with its ‘paper world’. Presumably it must be a matter for the stronger, powerfully armed Western states – US, UK and France – with their ‘iron world’, to determine the matter. Alas, the military adventures of such nations since 2001 have proved catastrophic, let alone legally right. Their horrendous record is enough to discourage anyone naïve enough to believe their intentions. No, the two ex-Anglo-Saxon nations and their Gallic ‘Marianne’ concubine can claim no more moral authority to punish anyone that than Uganda’s Bobby Mugabe can.

The Just War examples the professor gives are all respectable, ‘safe’ ones. Churchill in WWII, Poland resisting Hitler in 1939 and NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999. Few would dare object. But Just War principles show best their moral bite when they expose the crimes of your own side. Father John Ford SJ during WWII had the courage to criticize the Allied policy of obliteration bombing of civilian centres. And so did the wonderful George Bell, the Anglican bishop of Chichester. Truly a Christian saint and hero. So unlike many contemporary Anglican establishment dignitaries.

Biggar contends his idea of war as punishment demonstrates love for the neighbour, in this case the perpetrators. (Kant held that being punished is a culprit’s moral right. Don’t figure many villains ever rushed to claim that peculiar privilege!) Not too bizarre. An insight that goes back to St Augustine. But again, there is an unchristian smugness and arrogance about it, when he wields this concept without showing any signs of national self-criticism, while brushing aside the key prerogatives of international law.

The Canon trusts in ‘God’s eschatological intervention at the End of Time’. He hopes so because history leaves ‘too much unfinished business…too many un-vindicated innocents, too many un-punished perpetrators’. Good. I too am big on eschatology. God’s own tremendous vindication of right and wrong. When scoundrel war-criminals like Bush and Blair will stand before Christ, the awesome, supreme judge. And when fawning, war-mongering Anglican panjandrums will get their comeuppance.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli



============================================================
** follow on Twitter (Twitter Account not yet Authorized)
| ** friend on Facebook (#)
| ** forward to a friend (http://us7.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=05b2dabee5&e=5707b9e8db)

Copyright © Fr Frank Gelli
Email Marketing Powered by MailChimp
http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=monkey_rewards&aid=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&afl=1
** unsubscribe from this list (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db&c=05b2dabee5)
| ** update subscription preferences (http://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/profile?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db)