Officials in the Trump administration are facing intense scrutiny this week after it was revealed that National Security Adviser Michael Waltz accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, in a group chat on the Signal encrypted messaging app. The group was formed on March 13 to discuss strategy and disseminate real-time updates for a set of military strikes against targets in Yemen.
These bombings resumed a campaign begun by the Biden administration against the Houthis, a political and military faction that controls the western part of the country. The Houthis have attacked shipping in the congested Red Sea as a response to Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Christopher Schelin
The incident now known as “Signalgate” combines multiple scandals in one package. Much commentary in the press and on social media has focused on the exposure of sensitive information and the probable violation of federal records law. Journalist Garrett Graff has identified five scandals in total.
A probable war crime
Significantly, Graff calls attention to one disturbing element not getting much play in the mainstream media: evidence that these officials may have celebrated a war crime.
At 1:48 p.m. ET on March 14, Michael Waltz posted in the thread that a “building (had) collapsed” and commended Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, military commanders and the intelligence community for an “amazing job.”
Vice President JD Vance was a member of the group chat and asked Waltz to clarify. Waltz replied that the Houthis’ “top missile guy” was identified as entering his girlfriend’s building. In effect, a residential complex was leveled to kill one man.
“Excellent,” replied Vance.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe followed with, “A good start.”
Waltz replied with his now-infamous set of emojis: a fist bump, an American flag and a flame.
After the strikes, Waltz publicly commented that the United States had struck Houthi leadership, infrastructure and weapons supplies. International media reported that residential areas were hit and civilians, including children, were killed.
American military involvement in Yemen is longstanding and our callousness about the toll on ordinary people is bipartisan. It was on President Obama’s watch that a drone struck a wedding procession in 2013. The government never admitted fault but may have privately compensated victims’ families.
Baptizing war
As a minister and theologian, one aspect of the chat troubled me most of all. Namely, the overt religiosity with which Vance baptized violence and war.
Following Hegseth’s post that detailed launch times, Vance texted, “I will say a prayer for victory.” Two members of the group chat marked his comment with praying-hands emojis.
An hour and a half later, Waltz announced the building collapse. Did Vance consider his prayer answered? He was clearly satisfied with the outcome.
I am a Christian pacifist. I believe faithful discipleship requires the renunciation of all warfare, as exemplified by the teachings of Jesus and the witness of the early church.
For most of Christian history, principled nonviolence has been a minority view. Despite my own commitment, I find this completely understandable. In a harsh and hostile world, it is a painful sacrifice to refuse a natural tool of self-defense.
I don’t, for example, begrudge the Ukrainians for their stalwart but violent resistance against Russian imperialism. I agree with Mahatma Gandhi that nonviolence is the highest ethical choice, but violence in service of the vulnerable is preferable to cowardly submission.
These concessions put me closer to the traditional stance of the Roman Catholic Church, of which Vance is a member. But if Vance were to follow the church’s teachings, he would not be blessing war crimes.
Catholicism and Just War
Ever since the union of church and state in the late Roman Empire, Catholic theologians have wrestled with the tension between the peace witness and violence as an instrument of governance. Beginning with St. Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, just war theory has sought to delineate the parameters in which Christians could participate in conflict.
In just-war thinking, war as such never can be a holy or righteous undertaking. At best, a war can be ethically justified if it meets certain mitigating criteria. These criteria are typically divided into two sets, named in Latin as jus ad bellum (right circumstances for war) and jus in bello (right conduct in war).
To give some examples, the right circumstances must include a just cause, such as protecting the innocent, and the exhaustion of all nonviolent options, such as diplomacy. Right conduct sets limitations on military actions, forbidding weapons deemed inherently evil or the intentional targeting of civilians.
The current Catechism of the Catholic Church states that military actions “deliberately contrary to the law of nations” are criminal in nature. International law as codified in the Geneva Conventions identifies the steps that must be taken to avoid or minimize civilian casualties.
The Signal thread invites the judgment of a likely war crime. Was it so urgent to kill this one military leader that an entire building — with who knows how many people inside — was destroyed?
Imagining an alternative
Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019 after a sojourn as an atheist. In his essay narrating his return to faith, he writes movingly of the Catholic Church’s moral vision. He was attracted by its sympathy “with the meek and the poor,” its protection of “children and families,” and its teaching that Christ both “demands perfection … even as he loves unconditionally and forgives easily.”
“It is difficult to square this vision with jingoistic prayers while bombs obliterate bodies and buildings in one of the world’s poorest countries.”
It is difficult to square this vision with jingoistic prayers while bombs obliterate bodies and buildings in one of the world’s poorest countries.
But what if Vance took Catholic principles of just war theory into the Signal group chat? Instead of going along with prevailing sentiments, he could have been the conscience of the administration. What might he have texted instead?
I imagine Vance asking who else was in the building besides the target. I imagine him pressing Waltz and Hegseth on whether alternative options were considered. I imagine him demanding to know why the targeted individual needed to be killed then, or whether his death would make a real difference in stopping the attacks on cargo ships.
Maybe Vance would have reminded his colleagues that the United States military was not just eliminating “bad guys” and “terrorists.” It was raining devastation on children and families, too.
And perhaps he would have remembered what Augustine, his patron saint, wrote in The City of God. The wise man, declared Augustine, is brought to grief by all wars, even those he deems just. “And if anyone either endures or thinks of (the evils of war) without mental pain … he has lost human feeling.”
Maybe then Vance would have prayed not for victory, but for God’s mercy.
Christopher Schelin serves as dean of students at Starr King School for the Ministry in Oakland, Calif., and as a senior research fellow at the International Baptist Theological Study Centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is the author of The Contestable Church: Dissent, Democracy, and Baptist Ecclesiology.