But, admittedly, no nation state is going to behave that way; it’s hard enough for those who call themselves disciples of Christ. So Augustine, Aquinas, and others came along to give the state some criteria or benchmarks to decide when and whether wars were just. And since governments are not about to live by the ethics of Jesus, that’s probably a good thing. At least, as the "Just War" theory intended, the violence of the state would be restrained by some very rigorous criteria.

Paul suggested the same in Romans 13, that the state has an ordering role, but not a blank check.

NO, by the classic criteria of a “just war,” Iraq was not one. Not even close. And at the time of the run-up to the war, a majority of church bodies and their leaders around the world said just that.

Pope John Paul II was quite agitated about Iraq and, had he been a younger man, might have actually intervened to prevent the unjust war. Even most evangelical Christians around the globe were against the American war in Iraq, and continue to be—a fact that the U.S. media also missed. There were others, like the American Southern Baptists, who supported their President’s war but, on an international scale, they were clearly the exceptions.

There is absolutely no way that the American invasion of Iraq could be considered a “last resort”—one of the just war criteria. The inspections were working to find and contain any weapons of mass destruction Iraq might have had, and the Bush administration both misrepresented and manipulated the alleged threat from the WMDs. The administration lied to start a war.

Over time, the brutal Saddam Hussein could have been isolated, undermined, and overthrown (a very worthy goal) from pressures internal and external, and serious proposals were on the table to do just that when Bush went to war. Instead we bombed the children of Baghdad and then allowed the country to slide into bloody chaos.

There was never adequate “authority” to wage this war (another criterion)—the United Nations, NATO, and the vast majority of the world’s people and nations were against it. Only Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair thought this was a good idea and their political legacies will be forever shaped by the worst foreign policy decision either country has made in decades. Iraq also failed the tests of “proportionality” and “discrimination” with all the societal damage it was likely to cause (and has); and the horrible number of innocents that have been lost through the tactics of “shock and awe,” the resulting insurgency against American occupation, and now the civil war that has turned into ethnic cleansing.

There was never an “imminent threat” from Saddam, as we were told, no connection between Iraq and 9/11, and Bush’s war in Iraq was not a central front in the international campaign against terrorism, but has turned out to be a serious distraction from it (though the war itself has now transformed Iraq into a haven and school for terrorism).

The idea of there even being a government in Iraq is another myth of Bush rhetoric and, for the young servicemen and women who daily die, it is cruel joke to learn we have no real partners in Iraq. The goal of democracy is even not even given lip service anymore; there is only endless sectarian violence—with the government forces themselves simply a part of the tribal warfare.

The depraved scene of Saddam Hussein’s hanging revealed more a revenge lynching than an act of national justice—and became a brutal metaphor for what Iraq has now become. American lives are now both the prime targets of the insurgency, while they are also caught in the cross-fire of a civil war. To send more troops into battle in a senseless “surge,” without any new plan for political resolution between Iraq’s intransigent and hateful factions—is morally irresponsible.

We’ve tried this before and failed. A new surge will simply mean more young Americans in body bags and wheel chairs, more families left without dads, moms, sons, or daughters, and more slaughter of innocent civilians. The war in Iraq was unjust; to continue it now is criminal.

There is no winning in Iraq. This was a war that should have never been fought—or won. It can’t be won and the truth is that there are no good solutions now—that’s how unjust wars often turn out. The mistaken war in Iraq can only be mercifully ended, in ways that cause the least damage to everyone involved: the Americans and the Iraqis, the volatile surrounding region, and a world longing for security. That will likely take new international leadership to help fix the mess of Iraq, because U.S. leadership has brought one calamity after another. We’ll see if the Democrats can offer something better. Unjust wars can cause massive human suffering. When will we learn that?