A Just War?

For any decent liberal, anyone who believes in individual human rights, the initiation of war is inherently disturbing for two reasons. Firstly it requires a heavy financial tax on all individual citizens and an even greater sacrifice on the part of those citizens who might risk their lives. Secondly, 'collateral damage' clearly violates the human rights of innocent individuals in the opposing country.

These are valid and important concerns, and they make any unjustified war a truly shameful endeavor. However it is equally shameful for any liberal to claim that no war is ever justified, since an extension of the logic of individual freedom, which is any true liberal's noblest goal, leaves little doubt that there are clear cases in which war is not only justified, but a moral imperative. The situation arising from the recent Islamic terrorist attacks on Mumbai seems to be quickly approaching the point where this debate must be held.

A liberal government, meaning one which considers the promotion of human rights and freedoms as its foremost objective, must come to terms with the fact that its legal jurisdiction is geographically limited. While such a government should consider legally defined individual rights to be the basis of any punitive legal judgments within its borders, it must find a way of dealing with cross border violations of the freedom of its citizens, which are a modern reality. The preferred method is the use of diplomacy to extradite the responsible individuals from their home country to face justice.

If it is not possible to penalize the culprits as individuals, then steps must be taken to penalize their governing jurisdiction for preventing a fair judicial process. Whether this government is directly responsible for the crime, or simply unwilling to spend its resources to cooperate, is utterly irrelevant. Whether the human and financial cost of military action would be somehow 'greater' than any sense of justice is equally not subject for debate. If the primary objective of government is to protect individual human rights and freedom, then the primary action of government must be to bring to justice, by any means necessary, all criminals who violate these rights.

Cross border terrorism, like that which has just struck India in such a ruthless fashion, is simply a law and order problem. Individuals have committed a crime and must be held accountable along with those who supported them. Any external protection of these individuals must be held as a form of support and punished as well. Pakistan must take every effort to round up every suspected individual and expedite their extradition to India. If Pakistan claims difficulty in apprehending the suspects, it must temporarily turn its jurisdiction over to Indian authorities until the task is complete. If it does not do one or the other in a reasonable length of time, India must ignore any internal arguments for 'pragmatism' or 'proportionate' action and punish Pakistan as a whole. This would clearly be a just war, and the only kind of just war is an imperative one. In plainer words, the any war that should be waged.. must be waged.