For most Americans, the words “September 11” continue to evoke fear, anger, distrust, and a desire to return to the way things used to be before we were attacked on our own soil.
September 11, 2011, we learned, to our horror, that we too, the golden people on the hill, are vulnerable.
In this blog, we have devoted several posts to just war principles.
Based on just war principles, can the attackers argue that the 9/11 assault on largely civilian sites in the US was justified?
We can say No in regard to many of those principles:
- The attack was not undertaken as a last resort.
- The attack was not committed by a legitimate authority.
- The attack was committed in pursuit of a hopeless cause, which is considered not morally justifiable by just war principles. (Attacking the U.S. could be seen as a hopeless cause.)
- Establishing peace was not the goal of the attack (as stated by Bin Laden himself).
- The attackers did not discriminate between combatants and civilians; worse, they deliberately targeted civilians.
Whether the attack violated two other just war principles is a matter of debate. Specifically, for a war to be just:
- It must have a just cause. Although some people around the world would argue that there was some truth to Bin Laden’s diatribe concerning American aggression against Muslims in the Middle East, the attacks were not undertaken to prevent or stop a genocide.
- The violence inflicted must be proportional to the injury suffered. The death, pain, and destruction created by the attacks was tremendous. Was it disproportionately high in relation to any violence the U.S. might have been responsible for prior to the 9/11 attacks?
Finally, many proponents of just war principles in the U.S. (including President Jimmy Carter) have argued that the post 9/11 attack on Iraq by the U.S. was also not a just war.
As you consider the just war principles stated above, what do you think about this issue? Was the US invasion of Iraq justified? How about the invasion of Afghanistan? How about US violence elsewhere in the Middle East since 9/11? Have these been just wars? If not, why is the US still killing people there? And what are you going to do to stop it?
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology