evaluating just wars

This post was conceived earlier this year. Posting it now seems a bit outdated as the Gaza conflict has faded from the headlines, but then again, war and violence continue and so our discussion about their justice must also go on.

In this LA Times opinion article, writer Etgar Keret of the "The Girl on the Fridge and Other Stories,” responds harshly against the proportionality principle. The writer was responding to those who argued that Israel’s main injustice was not in retaliating, but in responding out of proportion. (This Economist article suggests something of that sort, but comes down a bit harsher on Israel).

Is there anything in the proportionality principle that can rationally justify killing of any kind?

The motives of vengeance, which drive us to kill those who have killed people we love, are completely irrational, even if we try to wrap them in rational packaging. We exact vengeance because we hate and are hurting, not because we excel in mathematics and logic. Early in the aerial bombing of Gaza, five young girls from the same family were killed, and many more children have died on both sides of the border in recent years. The attempt to introduce their bodies into an equation that would make their deaths justifiable or comprehensible might be necessary to influence current events, but it is still enraging.

The only equation I can wholeheartedly accept is one whereby zero bodies appear on either side of the equation. And until that time comes, I'll choose outcry and protest that appeal solely to the heart. I shall reserve my appeals to the mind for better times.

Walter Wink wrote over ten years earlier in Engaging the Powers:

Most Christians assume that any war that they feel is just, or merely necessary and unavoidable, is just. The just war criteria, however, are extraordinarily demanding. They presuppose that no Christian should be involved in a war unless it meets all or atleast most of the criteria. The burden of proof is always on those who resort violence.
We can easily kill oppressive rulers, but doing so makes us killers. We want to believe in a final violence that will, this last time, eradicate evil and make future violence unnecessary. But the violence we use creates new evil, however just the cause.
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The problem is not merely to gain justice but to end the Domination System. Those engaged in a struggle for liberation may actually achieve a relatively greater degree of justice for their side, yet do so in a way that fails to address the larger issues of patriarchy, domination hierarchies, ranking, stratification, racism, elitism, environmental degradation, or violence. In the struggle against oppression, every new increment of violence simply extends the life of the Domination system and depends on faith in violence as a redemptive means. You cannot free people from the Domination System by using its own methods. You cannot construct the City of Life with the weapons of death. You cannot make peace – real peace- with war.
But we also cannot condemn those who in a desperation resort to counter violence against the massive violence of an unjust order. We must wish them success, even if they are still caught in the myth of redemptive violence themselves. Who knows? Perhaps their victory will usher in a better society able to divest itself consciously of some of its oppressive elements.
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A nation may feel that it must fight in order to prevent an even greater evil. But that does not cause the lesser evil to cease being evil. Declaring a war just is simply a ruse to rid ourselves of guilt. But we can no more free ourselves of guilt by decree than we declare ourselves forgiven by fiat. If we have killed, it is a sin, and only God can forgive us, not a propaganda apparatus that declares our dirty wars “just”. Governments and guerrilla chiefs are not endowed with the power to absolve us from sin. Only God can do that. And God is not mocked. The whole discussion of “just” wars is sub-Christian.