| The president who is known for the “audacity of hope” was quite bold, even audacious, when he chose to use the world stage offered him on the occasion of his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize to make the case for war. So it would hardly be charitable to criticize him for failing to flesh out that audacity with a full-blown vision of just war, complete with all the criteria spelled out. Moreover, from what was said, it is clear enough that he (or his speech-writer) is familiar with the criteria. Nevertheless, there is something that sits uneasy with the way just war was invoked in the speech, something that goes beyond the brief and incomplete account of the tradition that was offered. The American exceptionalism that was on display starts to get at the source of this uneasiness. Of course, in and of itself the American exceptionalism, appropriately accessorized according to the inclinations of the person and party currently holding the office of US president, is thoroughly unsurprising. We expect nothing less of a US president. What is unsettling is the juxtaposition of American exceptionalism and the justice of just war. What does not sit right is the manner in which the president wed North American war making and the justice toward which history bends. This is no pacifist or partisan potshot; it is simply the recognition of the details that the president elided in his speech. He reaffirms the US’s commitment to the Geneva Conventions. Yet one might ask why such a commitment needs reaffirming? One might also observe that the past president also reaffirmed the US’s commitment to the Geneva Conventions – and that did nothing to prevent the abuse of detainees. The president points out that he has ordered the closing of Guantanamo. But Guantanamo is still open. And why, if the US is so deeply committed to a universal ideal of justice, was it opened in the first place? To these questions of justice we could add others. While many are hopeful that the new administration is committed to justice, there are signs and warnings coming from various human rights organizations that what we are being dealt may not be a new hand so much as the old deck reshuffled. And while the president speaks of places like the Congo, Darfur and Burma, it is far from clear that US actions match the president’s words about justice. Put simply, in the very cases the president mentions the US has shown itself to be not all that exceptional. The point here is not to belabor or berate the US for its shortcomings but to point out that just war requires a certain kind of exceptionalism. The justice of which the president speaks in such lofty tones does indeed require an exceptional people to pursue and uphold it. For whether or not war must be hell in the sense that William Tecumseh Sherman meant it when he uttered his now famous aphorism, it certainly feels that way to many involved in it. And this holds not only for soldiers but also for civilians and entire communities as loved ones are put in harm’s way, as resources and priorities are diverted, and as values and commitments are tried and tested. In such circumstances, to adhere to the justice of which the president so eloquently speaks and of which Martin Luther King Jr never tired of preaching is indeed an extraordinary thing. And this is where the president’s speech falls short on the matter of justice and war. The president speaks as if justice can be summoned out of thin air, that with the stroke of his pen or by the sheer eloquence of his words justice can be called forth. So just war is invoked as a checklist of criteria that anyone can uphold, no matter their character. No matter if yesterday they abused prisoners and ignored the cries for justice in places like Colombia, East Timor, New Orleans, Rwanda, Sudan or Burma. Now, we are on the side of justice, because I say so, because I want it to be so, because I can check off the list of criteria. But the justice that is the heart of the just war tradition is not like that. It is not reducible to a check list and will power. Rather, it is a way of inhabiting the world and interacting with others that embraces more than the will and more than war. It is about habits and dispositions and how one is inclined to act in the course of the quotidian tasks of life when one is not consciously thinking about or willing it. Which is to say that the justice on which the classic just war tradition is erected, by the likes of Augustine and Aquinas, is a matter of character. It is a virtue. More specifically, it is the virtue of a people whose life is disciplined in a manner that they ordinarily, habitually care for and seek the good of their neighbors, including their enemy neighbors, in times of peace as well as war. This is the problem with the president’s speech. A truly exceptional people, a people truly committed to justice even in the face of terrible evil and injustice, cannot afford to elide reality in the way the president did. For it is precisely in carefully attending to such situations and practices that the exceptional justice of which the president spoke shows itself to be truly just and not simply the mask of a well-worn and rather unexceptional American exceptionalism. Where is such a truly exceptional people to be found? Prior to its (mis)appropriation by modernity, the justice of just war was thought to be nurtured in the community called church, whereby through its disciplines and various means of grace, rather unexceptional sinners could be formed to do the extraordinary: to love even their enemies in war by fighting according to the just war parameters. The modern just war tradition, reduced as it is to a checklist, does not think such formation necessary. The Niebuhrian realism that many religionists claim to find in Obama’s speech does not believe such formation possible. Hence, perhaps the best response to the president’s speech is that of being about the business of forming a truly exceptional people – a church whose life is characterized by justice, a church who can tutor presidents, nations and armies on what it means to be attuned to the justice toward which history does indeed bend. |
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