Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

THE WAR ON TERRORISM: A JUSTWAR? 59
where the object of a particular action can be precisely defined,
such as the destruction of a truck depot, deemed to be “necessary”
to complete the campaign, how many “collateral” deaths
are proportionate to this? Would the figure be one, twenty or
fifty?
The apparent objectivity of such assessments of proportionality
is an illusion; other factors are operating in such judgments.
In a recent article on the accomplishments of President
Bush, an author writing under the pseudonym “Lexington”,
noted, among the many genuinely praiseworthy achievements of
President Truman, that: “He had the grit to use the atomic
bomb.” 67 In the judgment of the author, it apparently takes “grit”
to accept as proportionate the loss of some 200,000 people.
According to Michael Walzer, Truman, and most of his advisers
accepted the “war is hell” doctrine, and believed that “… the
Americans could do almost anything to win (and shorten the
agony of war).” 68 The combination of the repudiation of the JWD
doctrine, according to which war is not simply an amoral “hell”
but subject to moral restraint, and the alleged “grit” that provided
the inner direction and motivation of the judgment, produced
the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
How then might virtue and reasonable estimation according
to JWD norms yield a more responsible judgment of proportionality.
This provides a crucial test for the doctrine; if no such
judgment can be shown to be “reasonable” in the appropriate
sense, then the doctrine is indeed both incoherent and useless.
First of all, what is to count as reason? In terms of the argument
developed here, this must mean, for Catholics, the tradition of
reason as that has been developed within the actual historical
tradition to which the Catholic community is committed.
Reason therefore, must include the requirements of virtue,
specifically of charity and justice. Thus reason calls for attention
both to the inner requirements of the virtues, together with the
danger of moral corruption their neglect will bring, and to the
67 “A Leader is Born,” The Economist September 20, 2001, 3, URL
http://www.Economist.com.
68
WALZER, Just and Unjust Wars, 264-265.