What a year this week has been. By late February, as President Donald Trump accelerated a build-up of U.S. military capacity in the Middle East, it still seemed hard to believe that after the disastrous Iraq experience, the United States could consider launching another war in the region. Yet here we are, a few weeks later, once again engaged in what St. John Paul II memorably called the “adventure with no return.”

You may be dazed by not only the speed of events but also the swirl of terminology as the conflict began on Feb. 28. Perhaps a concise glossary of terms may prove useful?

First of all, what do we call this thing that the United States and Israel have begun, which has so far cost more than 1,000 lives in Iran and 12 in Israel and taken the lives of six U.S. service members? In his declaration announcing the attack, Mr. Trump described the joint Israeli/U.S. air campaign as “major combat operations in Iran.”

Since the strikes began, members of Congress who support that “major combat operation” have struggled to classify it, reluctant to refer to it as a war, perhaps attempting to avoid the delicate problem of constitutional limits on the executive to engage in war-making. The framers of the American Constitution, concerned about the possibility of a renegade, unbound executive abusing this gravest authority, reserved that power to Congress under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11. You can look it up.

But like Congresses before them that demurred as former presidents began a “police action” in Korea, trudged deeper into the big muddy of the Vietnam War or cheerfully pronounced “mission accomplished” as the epic misadventure in Iraq unraveled, the current U.S. Congress has preferred to leave the authority to engage in this latest war (and perhaps ultimately the blame for it) to the Trump administration.

Some members of Congress have settled on “significant military campaign” to describe the conflict, too akin to the Putin-ish “special military operation” to my ears. Others argue that the attacks on Iran can’t be called a war until U.S. boots are on the ground—something not ruled out by the White House.

But I say if it looks like a war, bombs like a war, takes the lives of combatant and noncombatant alike like a war, it’s probably a war.

International humanitarian law, 19th- and 20th-century conventions and agreements meant to temper state tensions that lead to conflict as well as the behavior of warring parties, is likely to be further undermined by this new war. It may seem absurd to seek moral limitations on conduct in something as barbaric as war-making, but I.H.L. had notable practical successes over time in terms of the treatment of prisoners of war and the protection of noncombatants. In recent years it has included conventions abolishing land mines and chemical and biological weapons.

The primary international law that seems to have been violated by the United States and Israel is the U.N. Charter’s prohibition of the use of force except in self-defense. The United States, whose diplomats were among the founders of the United Nations just after the horrorshow of World War II, is a signatory to the U.N. Charter and presumably willingly governed by its prohibitions against wars of aggression or choice.

In the past, the United States has turned to the United Nations to provide a veneer of legitimate authority to its military actions in Korea, during the Gulf War, various Iraq incursions and other military campaigns in Kosovo, Haiti, Libya and Syria. The Trump administration this time did not bother to seek U.N. cover for its attack on Iran, extending its disdain for the United Nations to perhaps this ultimate conclusion. But U.N. officials should not feel especially slighted since the president similarly did not bother to seek an authorization from the U.S. Congress.

Self-proclaimed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has made a point of mocking the niceties of international law as the United States continues an illegal campaign to kill alleged drug smugglers across the Caribbean Sea. He has, with alarming gusto, asserted that U.S. forces, or warriors as he prefers to call service members, will not be limited by international law or “woke” rules of engagement; they will instead be focused on victory, whatever the cost. He appears to be a man of his word in this regard.

A New York Times analysis points to U.S. forces as the likely author of a missile strike on an elementary school that claimed 175 lives, mostly schoolgirls, on Feb. 28. The U.S. military has so far not confirmed its role in the strike nor apologized for its gruesome outcome.

A Just War or just more war? 

The church’s just war tradition has been challenged by contemporary theologians as insufficient and outdated, yet it remains a worthy filter through which to judge the moral defensibility of a turn to war-making. Jus ad bellum is the church’s tradition of moral instruction meant to guide discernment before making the decisions to begin an armed conflict. Jus in bello is the church tradition that governs behavior during armed conflict.

According to just war teaching, conflict can only be joined as an act of self-defense or in defense of an ally, though it may be engaged to protect the vulnerable or respond to a grave threat. Intention in choosing armed conflict cannot be darkened by a desire for vengeance or retribution but focused on preventing a greater evil and the restoration of peace.

War-making must be a last resort, all peaceful avenues of resolution having been exhausted. The use of force must be proportional, that is, the suffering it prevents must be greater than the misery it is likely to create. The conflict cannot be the cause of more disorder and evil than those it seeks to address. In conflict, belligerents must discriminate between combatant and noncombatant, taking all measures to protect the latter.

The administration seems to have ignored or violated a number of these preconditions and prohibitions in its decision to go to war with Iran. It is tough to argue that the actor who fires the first shot is not the aggressor in a conflict, though church teaching leaves modest justification for beginning a pre-emptive war. The threat must be clear and indeed imminent—think Russian tanks and armor massing on the Ukraine border. But preventive war, aimed at forestalling a far-off or speculative threat, is never acceptable according to just war tradition. 

The president spoke of Iran as an imminent threat to the United States in his declaration but pointed to decades of tensions as part of his rationale for war-making this time. Along that extended conflict horizon have been frequent suggestions that Iran has been days, weeks, even hours away from producing a nuclear weapon that would threaten Israel.

Mr. Trump now cites the additional threat of Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile capacity that could one day result in a nuclear strike on the United States. But many military experts have concluded the assessment that Iran was on the verge of either technological feat inaccurate.

On the question of last resort, it appears pretty clear that the administration may not have been seriously engaged in diplomacy to avoid conflict. That’s especially true since the current conflict can be said to have been set in motion during Mr. Trump’s first term in office and his reckless decision to tear up the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. His appointment of inexperienced, overextended if well-connected real estate developers, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and diplomatic factotum Steve Witkoff, to the roles of lead negotiators also suggests a certain lack of seriousness.

The notion of noncombatant immunity has been seriously degraded in decades of conflict that have included the targeting of civilians, including women and children. The death toll so far in Iran already includes hundreds of noncombatants, and Iranian counterstrikes have likewise killed noncombatants in Israel and elsewhere in the region.

With targeted assassinations and decapitation strikes apparently accepted aspects of contemporary war-making, the 86-year-old leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was a legitimate target. But from a more practical angle, it could be argued that the decision to take out the ayatollah created more problems than it resolved—inflaming Shiite public opinion, which the White House hoped to exploit to overturn the Iranian government, and leaving no one in authority to negotiate an end to the conflict.

Final problematic aspects of this hot war with Iran from a just war perspective include its likelihood of success and the problem of egregious, unintended outcomes. The latter is already becoming apparent. Though they were entirely predictable, Iranian counterstrikes on Gulf states’ oil infrastructure seem to have caught the president off guard. With oil and natural gas supplies choked off by the conflict, the U.S. and global economies are showing every sign of becoming collateral damage in the war effort.

U.S. bishops have joined Pope Leo XIV in urging a halt to the spiraling violence and a return to diplomacy and negotiation to resolve the roots of the conflict. With its leadership decimated and the U.S. president now demanding an unconditional surrender, it is unclear how a halt, even a pause, to the violence and a return to dialogue will be possible.

This week, the conflict expanded to Lebanon, where more than 200 have been killed and 300,000 displaced, and the waters off Sri Lanka. Iranian refugees have begun appearing at the Turkish border as they flee cities under attack. The graver evils and disorders that follow an ill-considered decision to go to war appear near at hand.

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