Justifying the War in Afghanistan

Justifying the War in Afghanistan

Before arguing whether or not the war in Afghanistan was a just or unjust war, I am going to give some history about what was happening before 911 or talks of war even began. The Taliban was the government in Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. The Taliban means "Students of Islamic Knowledge Movement". They came into power during the civil war in Afghanistan, and were detested from the world community because of their actions. They held about 90% of the country's territory, their policies, including how they treated women and how they supported terrorists. The Taliban's power was taken away from them in December of 2001 by the U.S. military and Afghani opposition forces in response to 911. The Taliban government harbored Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist group. Afghanistan refused to turn over Bin Laden so the U.S. and UN coalition forces invaded. This is when the Taliban's power was taken away from them and many terrorist camps in Afghanistan were destroyed. Basically negotiating with the Taliban was like negotiating with a terrorist group which is unacceptable by the United States government. So I believe that invading the country with military forces and declaring war was the only successful decision the American government could have made. We are a very powerful country, and we couldn't allow an irrational terrorist group to disrupt our society without protecting ourselves and there being some kind of retaliation.
The war in Afghanistan has been discussed over and over whether it is a just or unjust war. There are two sides to every story, and each side makes valid points. I happen to agree with the opinion that the war in Afghanistan was a just war. Augustine was one of the first theorists to come up with criteria for there being a just war. They were later revised and added to by other theorists. The seven properties of Jus Ad Bellum, which means justice before war, are legitimate authority, proportionality, right intention, probability of success, last resort, comparative justice, and just cause. These are Walzer's criterion for a just war. I believe that all of these criteria were met and justified, but some have stronger arguments than others do. I believe that the criterion of legitimate authority was met. President Bush stood behind the war and believed in it 100%. Congress also stood by his decision and supported the funding of the war and agreed with keeping soldiers in Afghanistan. Even though the UN didn't approve of the war, I believe the United States was still justified in starting it because we had the approval and support of our government. Currently the government has approved $81 billion being used to fund this war. If your own government has the authority to spend that much money on a war, it is legitimate. The criterion of proportionality was also met considering the amount of lives that were lost because of the attacks of 911 compared to the amount of lives that were lost during the war. About 3,000 American civilians were killed in the attacks of 911. There were an estimated 137 American soldiers that were killed in combat while fighting the war against terrorism. In retrospect, about 3,500 Afghan civilians died during the war, which is a higher number of civilians that were killed during the attacks on 911. But if you look at this through a realist point of view, 137 soldiers dying for 3,000 American lives is reasonable. Bush's main responsibility is to protect the American people and our land. If the terrorist groups continued to invade our country and suicide bomb us, a lot more American lives would have been lost, so I believe that for America's sake, it was just to declare a war on Afghanistan for this reason. Bush and the government also had right intention for declaring a war on Afghanistan. Bush had "declared war on terrorism". His plan was to stop terrorism everywhere, not just the United States. This is obviously a cause for the greater good of humanity. Negotiations with terrorists can not be made by the American government because they are irrational and we don't see them as a legitimate authority. Bush had also stated "I will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons".
Our probability of success was also very high. The United States is the most powerful country in the world with one of the strongest armed forces. We basically have access to any of the world's resources that we chose because of the wealth in our country. The United States and Great Britain both in this war together, there was almost no way that we would lose the war. Our armies together would be unstoppable against a small country like Afghanistan. Although, they do take part in terrorist attacks, the American and British armies were able to defend themselves so those attacks.
There were no other options for the American government after 911, declaring war was a last resort. The Afghanistan government had declared war on us because they had attacked American civilians without a reason. The government in Afghanistan, the Taliban, had supported the terrorist group al-Qaeda. They wouldn't give up Bin Laden, which means it was possible that Bin Laden and al-Qaeda could venture another attack on American civilians again or our government. By attacking the buildings they did, they sent out a strong message to the American people and government. They attacked the financial headquarters of the United States and the Pentagon, which is a symbolic factor of our government. They tried to attack the United States in the worst way possible. Attacking civilians is far worse than ever trying to attack a military base. They used our own equipment (our airplanes) to kill our own people. Violent measures cause for violent extremes. An action like that can not be compromised with.
Comparative justice can also be justified by similar conditions to last resort. We were justified in invading their country because they had declared war on us first by terrorist attacks. Even though it was a terrorist group who really did attack our nation, the government supported and advocated the terrorist group so we can look at is as really Afghanistan starting a war with the United States.
The just cause in declaring war was the fact that our government had to protect the American people against acts of terrorism. It has been suspected that al-Qaeda had been performing terrorist acts in different countries since 1993. That is almost 10 years that this group had been around without any kind of government really successfully intervening to stop this group. But no other attack in their history was nearly as horrible as 911 so I feel as though that was the breaking point of everything. They had gotten away with their attacks thus far, but the attack on the Twin Towers was too monstrous to leave be.
When it comes to the Jus in Bello norms, I think the situation is a little more complicated. If you use Double Effect, which justifies the killing of civilian's lives in order to save the lives of your own soldiers, the Unites States government might not have taken that into consideration as well as they should have. But in my opinion, I don't really believe that they had any other options. We were dealing with a very corrupt government that was killing its own people. When fighting a ground war the risk of civilians being killed is always there. To send troops in on a ground mission is far more risky and unsafe than dropping bombs from the air, which is what the military mostly did in this war, and that is the reason for most of the civilian causalities. But I believe that the American government did the correct thing in protecting their own people, although killing civilians wasn't a moral thing to do. But moral and just are two different words and mean two different things. I believe we were justified in air bombing the Afghanistan military points, even though civilians were killed in the process because it was never our intention to kill the civilians. And intention is a norm to consider while deciding if a war is just or unjust.
There were specific reasons why terrorism was used in the attacks against the United States. A part of it was religious fundamentalism. Christians and Muslims have two totally different beliefs. Some Muslims hate Americans because of whom we are and what we stand for, and that might never change. They consider the world that we are involved in to be evil and corrupt. Our civilizations clash, partly because we glorify sex, while the women in their country are constantly covered from head to toe with clothing. Walzer believes that terrorists seek out to destroy the morale of a nation, which the terrorist Muslims intended to do to our country by taking out our financial and military symbolic buildings. They have so much hatred for us that they wanted to cause psychological distress to the American people with random acts of violence. They targeted us because of our class, nationality, ethnicity, not because we had actually did something wrong to them.
I believe that the American military invading Afghanistan could possibly be considered humanitarian intervention because the Afghan people for the most part, were living in fear and being tortured and killed. The people were living in fear and eventually this could have had psychological effects on them. It has also been argued that some of the people of Afghanistan were happy to see Americans, while others were not. It is hard to argue either way unless you are actually over there fighting, but I do believe both sides. I believe that some of the natives were happy to see Americans while others were not. But I believe that we as humans and Christian people had some sort or responsibility to stop the terrorist acts that were taking place by the Taliban and al-Qaeda, whether or not the civilians of the country wanted us to or not. And F.W. Kelsey believes the same…"But just as the laws of each state have in view the advantage of that state, so by mutual consent it has become possible that certain laws should originate as between all states, or a great many states; and it is apparent that the laws thus originating had in view the advantage, not of particular states, but of the greatest society of states. And this is what we called the law of nations, whenever we distinguish that term from the law of nature." (Natural Laws and The Laws of War pg. 232).
Walzer believes that genocide is a situation in where a government turns savagely on a group of people (pg. 101). I am not trying to argue that genocide was going on in Afghanistan but the government definitely wasn't working for the good of the people of the country. The United States intervened to help the country and to protect our own country. We wanted to fight the war against terrorism throughout the United States while also helping the people of the country distinguish a democracy or some kind of fair government for the people of Afghanistan. And because of the United States involvement in the affairs over there, a new constitution has been drafted. It states that no law should be "contrary to Islam". The nation is obligated to create an affluent society based on social justice for the people of the nation. They are to protect human dignity, human rights, and have a realization of democracy. They are also obligated to ensure national unity and equality among all ethnic groups and tribes. This basically means that the government can not legally discriminate against different ethnic tribes and cultures. Obviously this change isn't going to happen over night but it will take time and with the help of the UN and the United States, I believe a fair government is definitely something that can be accomplished. The nation also must abide by the UN charter, international treaties, international conventions that Afghanistan signed, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Many people disagree with humanitarian intervention because it usually involves some kind of military action. Some people also believe in sovereignty, which states that people can only really free themselves. But in the case of Afghanistan, sovereignty would be nearly impossible. The people were being oppressed and had no resources in order to relieve themselves from the oppression of the Taliban. The wealth was controlled by the government and the rest of the country is very poor. The majorities of the people living in Afghanistan were dirt poor and had to abide by the rules of the Taliban just to survive. No one would dare to speak out against the government because of the torture that might be involved. So in this sense, it was also just and morally correct for the United States to get involved in helping out the people of Afghanistan.
In order for the new government to be successful and actually work, in reality it will take decades. It isn't something that we can hope to see in the next five years. Paul Lederach discusses this in his book "Building Peace". He criticizes the traditional view of peacemaking and tries to expand people's horizons. He explains that there are three levels in the peacemaking process (Building Peace pg. 39). The top level includes all political and military leadership. The middle-range level includes ethnic and religious leaders, academics, intellectuals, and humanitarian leaders. The grassroots level includes local leaders, community developers, health officials, and refugee camp leaders. This is obviously the lowest level. All three of these levels have to be involved for a true peacemaking process. He also believes that the 2nd level is the most important. In most third world countries, the government is trying to take over and that is why peacemaking has not been successful.
For all of the reasons stated above, I believe the war against Afghanistan was justified. There might have been small acts that were taken place during the war that might have been unjust, but overall the war was justified. In the end, I believe that the United States has helped the greater good of humanity for the people in Afghanistan and at least as made some kind of progress against fighting the war against terrorism.

Sources:

1. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/af.html#Govt

2. http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/militaryoperations.html

3. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908792.html

4. Building Peace, John Paul Lederach

5. Natural Laws and the Laws of War (course pack)

6. Just and Unjust Wars, Walter Wink