War to spread faith unjust and unholy

According to the Qur'an, there are times when war may be justified. War in self-defense -- not preemptive self-defense, but true self-defense when your country is being attacked by another -- and war to prevent severe oppression are both cases when war is allowed and warranted.

But in order for a war to be considered just, or holy, there are further conditions it must meet. Two of the most important restrictions on warfare are that non-combatants must not be killed, and that buildings, croplands, and vital infrastructure should not be destroyed. In light of these requirements, all modern warfare is unjust and unholy.

Obama has said that no holy war can be just, but I would turn that on its head: only just war can be holy. Clearly the Jihadis have abandoned just warfare, and all pretense at holiness. In either case, the more standard notion of holy war -- a war in order to spread one's faith -- is neither just nor holy by the standards set forth in the Qur'an, and the humanist ethics most of us adhere to.

Afghanistan represents a particularly thorny problem with regard to warfare.

Afghanistan, like Iraq, did not attack us. A group of terrorists did. None of those terrorists were Afghani (or Iraqi for that matter). The Taliban complicated the matter when they refused to hand the 9-11 masterminds over to us for trial, but it remains a fact that the Taliban did not attack us, they simply challenged our judicial system, maintaining that the men would not receive a fair trial in the US. They were willing to send the men to a neutral country, such as Switzerland, for trial, but we rejected that offer, demanding they be brought to justice on our soil.

Was our desire, our need, to prevent these men from planning further attacks on us great enough to justify the invasion of a country? Would it not have been better to accept the offer to extradite them to a neutral country, see the men sent to jail, than to have thousands of our young men and women lose their lives in battle, not to mention tens of thousands of Afghanis, including many civilians? Would a more proper solution to what was basically a disagreement over criminal procedure have been negotiation and recourse to international criminal courts?

Complicating the picture is the fact that the Taliban were (and are) horribly oppressive. If war is justified to end oppression, then one could make a good case that war against the Taliban was justified for this reason alone. While some mention of succoring the women of Afghanistan was made of this during the time period that the government was seeking public support for the war, the events since the war call into doubt our commitment to the welfare of Afghani women as the new government continues to pass legislation that is horribly punitive to women and grossly contravenes basic civil and human rights for them. If the Karzai government were not so corrupt and so unconcerned about rights and freedoms we consider vital, and if we did not turn such a blind eye to those violations, perhaps we could justify our war on a two-pronged platform... but our failures to protect the women of Afghanistan have weakened our ability to claim the moral highroad.

Clearly something needs to be done about the extremist forces in Afghanistan and border areas of Pakistan. Military solutions, however, may not be the most effective.

By Pamela K. Taylor  |  December 24, 2009; 8:58 AM ET Save & Share:                 
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