Speakers debate ethics of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq

Published: 2005-03-22

NEW YORK (CNS) -- The questions of how and when the United States should withdraw from Iraq present different ethical considerations from the issue of whether going to war was justified, speakers at a conference in New York said March 21. Just-war theory focusing on criteria for entering a war -- in traditional terminology stemming from St. Augustine called "jus ad bellum" -- and for determining ethical means of pursuing war -- "jus in bellum" -- needs to be supplemented by further development of thought about "jus post bellum," or obligations of the victor after a war, they said. "The United States won what I judge to be an unjust war in Iraq," said Franciscan Father Kenneth R. Himes, chairman of the theology department at Boston College, a Jesuit institution. But he said that "an unjust war must not become an excuse for leaving behind an unjust peace." Father Himes was a panelist at a conference at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus on "The Ethics of Exit: The Morality of Withdrawal From Iraq."

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