Derek: 00:06

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are finishing up our look at just war theory however, the incoherence of just war theory by viewing some of the different wars that that The United States has been in and discussing whether those are just or not. So let's take a look at the Revolutionary War, the war that started it all for The United States. Was there a just cause? There are lots of reasons people tout as as being why we went to war.

Derek: 00:44

Representation or lack thereof is one of the the reasons given, as well as, you know, I mean when you really look at it, people didn't want certain taxes and a lot of it was financial. Some of it may have been the representation as well. But when you ask, is that a just cause to start killing people? And it seems like the answer is no. Even if you're going to say, well look, they fired, the British fired the first shots and once they killed people, then it became just to go to war with them.

Derek: 01:22

And that just that doesn't seem right to me because, you know, Paul's writing when Rome is is in authority and Rome does some pretty terrible things to people, way worse than the British did to the first the first rebels. And you also have I think it was Lecrae who talked about it. I don't remember exactly. But at at one of these conferences here in Atlanta, Lacray was talking about how it's so ironic that Americans, specifically white conservative Americans, uphold the revolutionary war as this awesome patriotic thing and standing up for one's rights. But when the black community feels oppression, which it certainly does, you can just look at justice statistics and and there's so much disproportionate between the white and black community in terms of how justice is divvied out and all that.

Derek: 02:22

But when you have something like the Black Lives Matter movement or or other movements, if you think that one is is compromised by something, But when you have black people who who have movements that have some sort of violence in it, then we we say that those are illegitimate and those are just so wrong and that's un American, which is ridiculous because if you've got a community who is literally having violence done to them unjustly, what is the difference between that community rising up in violence and what the early colonialists did rising up in violence in response to violence by the British? There really is none. I mean, there there's no difference in the terms in the in the ideas of rebellion. The black community feels like they are not represented, and they aren't because I mean, it's getting better, but they aren't represented to the same extent that white people are proportionally. I mean, we we justify the revolutionary war when its basis for just cause is just ridiculous and then we we deny that right to other people.

Derek: 03:48

Right? The French Revolution, you know, we we were against that. So many other revolutions we're against. If it doesn't help us politically, we're against it. But because we're Americans, we love the Revolutionary War even though there was not a just cause.

Derek: 04:09

Legitimate authority for the Revolutionary War? No way. We fought against our king. That's not a legitimate authority when when we are under our king and we declare war against him. That's not legitimate.

Derek: 04:24

Proportionality of the revolutionary war? Yeah. Okay. I can I can maybe give you that? I think we had some some goals.

Derek: 04:36

Right? Well, actually, can't give you that because the goals that we had, right, representation and less taxes, lower taxes so it could be more profitable. Did that justify killing people? No. Killing lots of people on the the scale of warfare.

Derek: 04:55

I don't think it did. Civilian safety. That's the one I can give you. That's the one I can give you. I can give you civilian safety because I think by and large, there was civilian safety.

Derek: 05:05

Now we could look at where where people executed as spies and and all kinds of things. Were there like witch hunts like that? There might have been, but I think by and large civilian safety was was pretty good. But I think that's less to do with the intentions and more to do with just how war was conducted and with what weapons at that time. Just peace?

Derek: 05:31

Well, we we ended up fighting the British not not too much further down the road, and I think if my history serves me correctly, I think we'd still skirmish with them, like, as as they had their presence in Canada and and some of our territories. And so, yeah, I I don't think there was a just peace in the in the immediate future after the revolutionary war. But eventually, now it seems like there is. So I don't know how to call that one. No, But after a long time, yeah.

Derek: 06:08

World War one, was there a just cause? It doesn't seem like it because, we were content to sit out for a long long time. A lot of people wanna use Lusitania to justify going to war because they because they killed a bunch of Americans, but Americans were on a ship that, you know, these ships were carrying lots of materials and weapons and and ammunition to other countries. So if you're if you're on a ship that's carrying products of war, it seems like you're you're fair game and that goes back to our how do you distinguish combatants from non combatants. Alright.

Derek: 06:46

We get we have problems with ISIS or Hezbollah or whatever they're called using, like holding up in hospitals and other places and then when Israel bombs them and kills some civilians, we're like, well, what were we supposed to do? They were hiding in the hospitals. But that's exactly why we went one of the reasons we went to World War I was because we basically had our civilians on military targets. And and another reason that we went to war, the main reason from my understanding is because we were owed like 1 and a half or $2,000,000,000 by the Allies and we only owed like $8,000,000 by the Germans. And the Allies said, hey look, if we lose this war, which it looks like we're going to do soon without your help, then we can't pay you back.

Derek: 07:40

And what do you know? We enter the war. So just causes, we're perfectly content to sit the war out for a long time and we only entered when we knew we needed the money and we used the Lusitania as an excuse. Legitimate authority for World War I? Yeah, it passes.

Derek: 08:00

Proportionality or reasons? I guess so. You could say that we went in with the objective of overthrowing the aggressor Germany. Civilian safety, no. Lots of civilians killed.

Derek: 08:17

Reasonable success, once we entered, yeah, there's reasonable success. And just peace, no. It fails just peace. Because out of World War one, came World War two and Hitler. Now let's take a look at everybody's favorite war who they think, you know, this war is absolutely just.

Derek: 08:38

World War two. Was there a just cause for World War two for The United States? Absolutely not. We retaliated against Japan. Right?

Derek: 08:50

Revenge was the reason we entered World War II. If it wasn't, we would have entered World War II long before. We were perfectly content to turn away fleeing immigrants and Jewish immigrants who were escaping the horrors of what was going on in Europe. We didn't care enough to accept them on our shores in in great numbers, and we didn't care enough to enter the war to help them. It wasn't until we got bombed and we wanted some revenge that we entered World War two.

Derek: 09:20

So, no, I don't think we we had a just cause, or at least if we did have somewhat of a just cause, it was largely overshadowed by other interests as well. Was there a legitimate authority? Yes. We're gonna find legitimate authorities in all the rest of our wars. Was there proportionality?

Derek: 09:45

Sure. I guess we could say that there was proportionality in the sense that we had clear objectives, but in terms of the means we used, which this proportionality then goes into civilian safety, World War two fails both of those because we just I mean, you've got the two atomic bombs, you've got the bombing of Dresden, the fire bombing of Tokyo, which was even worse than the atomic bombs. We just decimated civilians. We just we used means that were insane in in World War two. Reasonable success, again, when when The United States entered, yeah, sure, there was reasonable success.

Derek: 10:25

And just peace, there was just peace in terms of Europe. Now what we did with our dealings with the Middle East seems like that created lots of problems which have led to future wars. So if you wanna say there's a partial just peace, sure. But just peace altogether, no. We are concerned about the white Europeans and them being being happy and them being our friends, but we weren't concerned as much with the Middle East and and what was going on there and their their relationship with us.

Derek: 11:06

So everybody's favorite war war in terms of just wars, World War two, right, didn't have a just cause or at least was significantly tainted by by ulterior motives. It it didn't have proportionality or civilian safety, failed both of those tests, and it didn't pass the Just Peace test. It fails four of the six criteria. And then of course I've been I've been forgetting last resort here on all of these others, And yes, the the Revolutionary War, World War one, World War two all failed the last resort test. So World War two gets two two points out of seven.

Derek: 11:51

It gets the legitimate authority point and it gets the reasonable success point. So that's it. We could go down the line, we could look at war with Iraq, War with Afghanistan, Vietnam War, Korean War, and what you're going to find is the same thing. All of them, as far as I can tell, do not have just causes. Even if if somebody can say, well there's this cause and these other causes, we get into that question again of, okay, well, if you have one reason that makes sense to me, but you have all these other reasons of self interest and objectification, does that make it a just cause?

Derek: 12:36

And I don't I don't think that it does. I think that's overshadowed by all of these, faulty reasons, as well as the fact that there are other other places where you could go to help out to exact justice where you wouldn't have these inappropriate causes or reasons, but you're unwilling to go there because you have no interest. So I don't think just cause is you can never find a just cause in any of our wars, or almost never. You'll always find legitimate authority. You will rarely, if ever, find proportionality or civilian safety.

Derek: 13:18

You, at least with the current United States and our power, you will find reasonable success in a lot of places, and you will almost never find just peace or last resort because just peace, how do you get that out of violence which is cyclical and self perpetuating? And last resort, how are you gonna say that there were no other creative ways that you could have resolved the situation, rather than seeking immediate results or revenge or whatever else you're seeking. Yeah. So feel free to push back and question some of the wars maybe I'm missing that you think were were justified, but I think you're going to find time and time and time again that just war is more idealistic than nonviolence. And you're going to see that borne out in the research which shows the success rates of violence versus nonviolence.

Derek: 14:25

And I think it just makes sense from a Christian perspective of understanding reconciliation and how violence breeds more violence and how peace revolves around self sacrifice and patience. And that's not something you're going to get from the use of war. So just war theory, it's idealistic and I think it's a misnomer, it's an oxymoron. You can't have a just war from a human perspective. You know, we could talk about the Old Testament wars, the holy wars, whatever you want to call them, God's decrees and that kind of thing.

Derek: 15:05

I adjust that in season one and you can go back and listen to that. But as far as war as waged by humans go, you're just not going to find a Just War or the possibility of a Just War. And even logically, I I don't even know if a Just War is logically possible because as I've shown in the past seven or or so episodes, there are just there are way too many internal inconsistencies and it just falls apart. So hopefully, this series has been helpful to you. And as for now, peace.

Derek: 15:50

And because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.