Should the United States attack Iraq? My answer to this question is "never." Should it remove Saddam Hussein and his supporters from power? My response to this question is "not now." Some may hold that this distinction is a quibble. I don’t think it is.

After the terrible events of September 11, 2001, political leaders in the United States and elsewhere announced that our quarrels are not with Islam but with its murderous minority. When the United States began bombing military targets in Afghanistan, they declared that our target was not its people but the Taliban regime and the Al Queda terrorists. A similar distinction between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the citizens of Iraq is now required.

We have needed this distinction for some time. The economic quarantine of Iraq allows some to portray the United States as a foe of its citizens. Debates continue as to whether Suddam Hussein has imposed the resulting hardships on his people, or if such boycotts inevitably hurt a nation’s citizens more than its leaders. Either way, the United States looks to some observers around the world like a bully that starves innocent men, women, and children. This perception can only worsen if it keeps talking about attacking Iraq.

We have inherited from our theological and philosophical traditions a cluster of ethical guidelines about whether to use military power in cases like this. If there is to be war, we have been taught, it must be (1) fought for a just cause, (2) declared by the proper authorities, (3) waged with proper intentions, (4) possess a reasonable chance for success, and (5) be proportionate to the wrongs it attempts to correct.

The fulfillment of only one of these requirements, the fourth, is now clearly in place; the satisfaction of each of the others is more or less debatable. This is why I believe that this is not the right time to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime. I am particularly concerned about the mood of inevitability about this option that seems to be developing. This decision to remove the current government of Iraq should not be forced on those of us who are U.S. citizens, it should be made through our elected legislators.

We have also inherited ethical guidelines about how to use military power if we are morally justified in doing so. The principle of proportionality surfaces again, this time with the insistence that the means we use in the conduct of war—and not merely the war as a whole—must be commensurate with their ends. The principle of responsibility holds military and political decision makers accountable for the choices they make. The principle of discrimination underscores the ethical unacceptability of intentionally harming or killing noncombatant citizens.

Some doubt the continuing validity of the principle of discrimination. The idea that the conduct of war should be restrained by no ethical guidelines whatsoever may be true to the savagery of military conflict. Yet when we use any and every means to win, no matter how brutal and sweeping, we become as barbaric as those whom we oppose. This is defeat, not victory.

A different objection claims that in our time, when entire societies are mobilized in the conduct of war, the distinction between combatant and noncombatant citizens vanishes. This strikes me as an exaggeration. Although the differences in how people support a war may be matters of degree rather than kind, they are still ethically decisive. A child who grows vegetables in a backyard garden because they are no longer available in the markets is hardly in the same moral and military circumstances as a soldier schooled to kill.

Still another objection is more practical. It reminds us that in some circumstances, particularly when unscrupulous military leaders use civilians as "human shields" to protect legitimate military targets, it is difficult to avoid wounding or killing noncombatant citizens. Much depends in such cases on the difference between outcomes that are foreseen and those that are also intended, however.

We understand and accept this distinction in other contexts. A surgeon anticipates that he or she will leave a scar but does not aim at doing so. If it were possible to avoid scarring the patient, the surgeon would. We can say the same thing about the nausea oncologists produce and the damage to healthy tissues that radiation causes. This is what we mean when we say that some outcomes are foreseen and that others are also intended. It is a mistake to discard this distinction as though it is moral hairsplitting.

It is also an error to think that we can justify anything we do to civilians by announcing afterward that we foresaw but did not intend the harms we forced on them. Again, a medical analogy might help. Many years ago, I served on a committee that reviewed the action of a physician whose patient had died after this doctor had prescribed far too much pain relieving medication. One member of the committee observed that the doctor was either incompetent or immoral because the prescription had been enough "to stop six galloping horses." The physician in question was not able to persuade the committee that the patient’s death was foreseen but not intended. Actions can speak louder than words in military contexts too!

Although distinguishing between military targets and civilians is always important, it is especially so in the present circumstances. Somewhat like the former Soviet Union but on a smaller scale, the nation of Iraq is a cluster of groups with significant ethnic, cultural, and religious differences held together by a powerful central government. Very few of these people have ever said or done anything to harm the United States. Their battles are with other groups within their own nation. Likewise, the United States' quarrel is not with them but with the regime that has overpowered them since 1979.

Contrary to what some declare, all is not fair in love and war. Even in these most intense contests, ethical considerations do matter.

Let’s speak up!

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