NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — A Baptist ethicist says President Obama's Dec. 1 speech outlining his Afghanistan strategy did not satisfy criteria used by Christians for centuries to justify war.
Robert Parham, pictured here at BCE's 15th anniversary celebration in 2006, says President Obama needs to reassure the American people that his Afghanistan policy is likely to succeed.
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Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, said in an editorial on EthicsDaily.com that in order to be "just," a war "must have a high chance of success."
Parham, who founded the non-profit BCE in 1991 after leaving a position with the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said Obama's "make more war in order to end the war" rationale did not adequately address the question of likelihood that the plan will succeed.
Specifically, Parham said, the president failed to explain how sending an additional 30,000 U.S. troops would achieve goals, repeated throughout his remarks, of building the capacity of the Afghan military and government and those of its neighbors enough to permit a "responsible transition" of forces by July 2011.
"If by 'capacity,' Obama means that the corrupt Afghani government must become less corrupt, then what is the real probability of success?" Parham asked.
"If he thinks that training 50,000 more Afghani soldiers — to join the unimpressive Afghani armed forces — will allow the U.S. and its allies to leave behind a stable government, what is the probability of such a successful outcome?"
Parham said the president must define what he means by "capacity" and "responsible transition" if he hopes to win support of the American public.
"As it stands now, more war to end war is no just war," Parham concluded, "for there is low probability of success."
Just-war theory is an attempt to distinguish between ethically justifiable and unjustifiable uses of organized armed force. Unlike pacificts, who believe all war is wrong, just-war theorists contend that military action can be moral if it meets certain criteria.
The first is "just cause." Just-war theory says the use of force is legitimate in order to defend against aggression or to protect the vulnerable or allies. The American public strongly supported the original justification for going to war in Afghanistan — defending America against the aggression that spawned the 9/11 attacks. But with leaders of al-Qaeda's move from Afghanistan into Pakistan in 2001 and 2002, some have begun to question the wisdom of continuing to wage a war with the Taliban now in its ninth year. Recent opinion polls show increasing percentages of Americans say they now believe the war was a mistake.
The second standard for just war is proper authority — it must be carried out by a legitimate government or internationally recognized authority like the United Nations.
The third is last resort — a country must exhaust all reasonable means before resorting to military force.
The fourth is probability of success. Recently, faith leaders from the Sojourners community wrote President Obama calling for a "whole new approach" in Afghanistan, one focused on humanitarian assistance and sustainable development instead of more troops.
Other Christians object to plan
In a Dec. 2 blog, Jim Wallis, president and executive director of the Christian social-justice organization, said he believed the decision by President Obama to send additional troops to Afghanistan was a mistake.
"We needed a new approach to the very difficult and complicated situation in Afghanistan, and this isn't it," Wallis wrote. "We were promised fundamental change in the direction of U.S. policy around the world, and this isn't it. We were promised change we can believe in, and this military escalation is not something many of us as faith leaders can believe in."
Wallis said relying primarily on military solutions to defeat terrorism has not worked and that "ultimately, only a whole new approach to Afghanistan will have any chance of success."
The fifth just-war principle is proportionality. That means force must be limited and non-combatants should be protected from harm. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan rose sharply in the last year, and some observers believe air support for more troops will only increase collateral damage.
The final measure of a just war is good outcome — force should be limited in scope with a definite end and no extended warfare. Parham said Obama's critical qualification for withdrawing troops in 18 months — "taking into account conditions on the ground" — also raises a concern. "That, of course, means that if the war doesn't go well, our troops don't come home on the projected date," he said.
Just-war theory isn't settled doctrine but rather a framework for thinking ethically about war. Many U.S. religious leaders, for example, questioned the morality of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, while Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, quickly pronounced it a just war.
Land told Baptist Press Dec. 2 he is "nervous" that Obama gave generals on the ground fewer resources than they requested in order to finish the job but "hopeful that the president's plan will work."
Some observers have lamented that moral considerations have been largely absent in discussions about troop levels and money in deciding what the country ought to do in Afghanistan.
In largely unnoticed remarks in April while visiting France, however, Obama called the war in Afghanistan "just," a term a Washington Times blog recognized as "usually reserved for theological debates about whether state-sanctioned bloodshed can be morally justified."
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.