PART 1: INTRODUCTION
The quotes are flying fast and furious from Condoleeza Rice and Pentagon officials these days. "We must maintain our doctrine of pre-emption. We cannot afford as a nation to wait until we are attacked, or even to wait until we have absolute certainty that a nation has weapons of mass destruction and that that nation is planning to use them against us." So goes the logic which is used to defend the continuation of a policy first announced by the current Bush Administration as a warrant for going to war with Iraq.
Why the high defensive tone? Why the use of "must," as if, perhaps, the policy itself were now deemed suspect and had to be defended from its attackers abroad and even at home? Is it not self-evident that, in the current global circumstances, it is justifiable and perhaps necessary for the United States to use military force to attack another sovereign nation upon the basis that it might pose a threat to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States?
From the standpoint of history and international law, the simple answer is, "No." If one uses the internationally accepted and widely used "just war principles" as a guide for making decisions about going to war, it is not self-evident that pre-emption under any circumstances is justifiable. It is also not self-evident that current global circumstances are so terribly different from any previous global circumstances that a new basis for going to war should be added to existing just war principles.
Yet what one hears on talk radio from persons who claim to be Christian, and even from many religious broadcasters and religious leaders, seems to chime an equally resounding "Yes!" What are Christians to make of this apparent conflict between the "secular" principles used by most persons in the international community to justify war and the genuinely religious fervor with which the doctrine of pre-emption appears to be supported in the United States?
Editor's note: This insightful essay is the first in a series of six, by Rev. Taylor Burton-Edwards, United Methodist minister and adjunct professor at Anderson University, presently working with United Way of Madison County.