Theories of when a war can be justified are practical and widely embraced, especially amongst our nation’s military leaders. To be considered a just war the conflict needs to be the last resort to settling a dispute, it must be defensive in nature; it must have clear objectives; operationally, it must be proportional to the threat, and it must have a good chance of success with minimum loss of life.

Additionally, the target of attack must be combatants. Not only are non-combatants illegitimate targets, excessive non-combatant casualties disqualifies the conflict as just in any sense.

Though this theoretical understanding of just war provides a useful framework for considering war, it hardly answers all the questions. It leaves plenty of room for argument when faced with the practical realities of any given situation. However, it is now clear that, contrary to the President’s original claims, this war fails to meet virtually all of the standards that might qualify it as just.

Among the gravest moral dangers of this war however, is the extent to which we, as a nation, have been led to embrace the tactics of our terrorist enemy. I think especially of our present Administration’s acceptance of torture as though it were a legitimate tactic in the war against torturers. Or the secret prisons in which the innocent as well as the guilty have been swept up into silence; a terrorist tactic against terrorists. We are a better nation than that.

We, as well as the courageous and loyal men and women of our armed forces who follow the orders of their commanders, deserve much more than this from our leaders.

But we have what we have: a tragic war of our instigation which is leveling a society. We have ignited a conflagration we do not understand and can not control. We are obligated to return to civilized standards for conducting war even when our opponents do not behave in a civilized manner and to recognize that we cannot fix what we have broken, though we may, working with others, be able to be part of that fixing.

Having unleashed this pandemonium of tribal blood-letting it would be wrong of us to abandon the field simply to save our own lives.

We must take those steps that will, as quickly as possible, bring to an end the civil war that is engulfing Iraq. Many argue that the way to do that is to get out of the middle of it by bringing our troops home. Apparently the President believes that the war must be escalated to be resolved.

He needs to make the case why he is right this time when he has been so wrong for so long.