On War
When The Hell That Is War Loses Its Power
in The American Interest (2014)
The prejudice that there must be a solution to the mess in the Middle East assumes that one even knows what the problem is that is to be solved. One side says the problem is terror. The other says the problem is occupation. The humanitarians say the problem is the killing of children. The internationalists say the problem is war crimes (either disproportionality on one side or using civilians as shields on the other). Somehow, “we”—whoever we are—must solve the problem.
in Just War in Religion and Politics (2013)
At stake in the effort to justify war is not simply some academic exercise. We ought not to aim for a series of justifications, legal or ethical, that will answer the question of when wars are justified and how they may be justly fought. War, like any deeply human activity, will exceed all efforts by humans to control and to regulate it. What is needed, rather, is a determination to recall that justice, and not merely strategy and utility, has a place in war. Instead of justifications, what just war thinking offers is the insistent determination that those who fight not blind themselves to the illumination of justice amidst the fog of war.
Melville's War Poetry and The Human Form
in A Political Companion to Herman Melville (2013)
At the climax of Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), Captain Vere is overseeing the trial and conviction of Billy Budd. Billy, Vere recognizes, is wholly innocent, a messenger of divine judgment. And still, for the captain is forced to become judge, the necessary outcome of the impending trial is clear: “Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!”