Episode 4 The Big Questions

Today on The Big Questions: War - is it ever just?

Good morning. I'm Nicky Campbell, welcome to The Big Questions. We're

back at Oasis Academy in Media City UK, Salford, to debate one very big

question. Is war ever just? Now, this year, it will be 100 years

since the start of World War One, dubbed "the war to end all wars".

Well, it proved to be anything but. Over the past century, British

troops have fought across Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, on

former British territories and in Northern Ireland and the Falklands.

They are still fighting in Afghanistan. Military methods may

have changed from trench warfare to aerial bombing and now to drone

attacks, but the ethical basis should have remained the same - just

warfare. It is a principle first established by St Augustine in 400

AD and now enshrined in the UN Charter and the four Geneva

Conventions. But is war ever just? To debate that question, we have

assembled a very distinguished front row of military men, philosophers,

historians, people of faith, anti-war campaigners and political

commentators. You can have your say via Twitter or online, just log on

to bbc.co.uk/thebigquestions, where you'll find links to continue the

discussion online. And there'll be lots of encouragement and

contributions from our very lively Salford audience.

Bruce Kent, from the Movement for the Abolition of War. You've been an

anti-war campaigner for so long now, and so passionately. And you were a

soldier as well. Are there any circumstances in which war can be

just? Today, war is meant to be the absolute last resort before anything

can be called "just". We have so many mechanisms, negotiation,

settlement, United Nations, European Union. So many means of settling

matters, I don't think a war today can ever be just within the terms of

just war. What about wars of the 20th century? The Second World War

and the fight against German tyranny, Nazi tyranny? Well, yes

indeed, the history... But what were we doing with Germany before the

war? We were selling arms material to Hitler up to July 1939. We never

opposed his moving into the Rhineland in 1936, I think it was.

We did our best to ruin the United Nations, the League of Nations

disarmament conference in 1932. There were so many opportunities to

actually stop Hitler in his tracks long before. We didn't do it for

Mussolini when he invaded Ethiopia, we didn't do that, we didn't do

anything about Germany supporting Franco of Spain. We let Hitler in

and then at the last minute we say, "Oh, what can we do?" And that's too

late at that stage. Is this not hindsight? We were where we were in

1939, our country was threatened. This was a heinous regime doing acts

so despicable, they're almost beyond comprehension. If we had not gone to

war, surely that would have given them even more licence. 50 million

people at least died in that war. Was that balance equal to whatever

we were supposed to be defending? We weren't defending the Jews, we were

actually stopping the Jews from coming here. We kind of invented

reasons for the war as the war went on. And I think we could have

negotiated and we should have negotiated a settlement in that

conflict. General Tim Cross, before I ask you questions about your own

Christianity and your own position, respond to Bruce Kent. Well, I know

Bruce well and I know his views. I just don't happen to agree with

them. I think, you know, we live in an unjust world, warfare is not new.

It's been around since Adam was a lad. Nobody's in favour of war, I

think his organisation to abolish war is absolutely a great ambition,

but it's like deciding you want to do away with sin. It's like

declaring war on terror. It's a great idea but it isn't going to

succeed. So we live in the world we live in, we live in an unjust world

and a fallen world, from a Christian perspective, and I think there are

times when force is necessary. I think there are times when force is

necessary inside a nation through the actions to police forces,

sometimes they need to use force and sometimes on the international scene

we need to use force. So ultimately, although it should always be

reluctant and a just war criteria should always be a very key part of

what goes on, at the end of the day, I think there are times when war is

justified. I invite you to come back if you like. Well, nobody is saying

that at some stage we maybe need physical strength against other

people. That's why we have a police force. Thank God we do have one.

When we set up the United Nations, the first aim to save succeeding

generations from the scourge of war, and a mechanism was set up about how

to deal with conflict. And we have ignored those mechanisms - whether

it's in Iraq or potentially in Iran or in Afghanistan, we've ignored

those mechanisms and we have war. It's no good saying to your police

force,"Do what you like, shoot anybody you want to." Police forces

are meant to act under the law, and so are nation states, and that's

what we're not doing. You became a Christian when you were a soldier.

Part of, as some would put it, "a war machine". Did you feel in any

way that your Christianity was compromised? Well, I became a

Christian when I was 30, I was a Captain at the time serving with the

United Nations in Cyprus. And for about two or three years, I thought

through the issue about whether I should stay or whether I should

leave. I can talk you through the process, but in simple terms, a

couple of sort of bullet points. One is I think the British Army without

any Christians in it would be a worse place, not a better place. I

think The Bible tell us that people who become Christians should not

immediately leave their professions, they should work their way through.

The Biblical examples of centurions, there are four examples in the New

Testament of interactions with centurions, including one by Jesus

Himself. And He says, "I've never met faith like this anywhere in

Israel." The soldiers going to John the Baptist to be baptised - he

doesn't tell them to leave, he tells them, I always think rather sadly,

to be content with their pay. But what he's actually saying is don't

misuse your power and your force. So over time, studying the Scriptures,

talking to people I respected and indeed through my own prayer life

and the circumstances of being promoted, getting to the Staff

College at that time, convinced me I should stay. And I would say that in

staying, I've then been in positions where my Christian faith, I think,

has been very important, crucially important indeed, in the way I've

reacted to events in the Balkans, in Kosovo and Iraq and other places.

You're still, obviously, by definition, willing to kill. Yep.

Thou Shalt not Kill. Thou Shalt not Murder. That's what the Commandments

actually say. State-authorised, Sovereign State. You read the

Commandments in the Old Testament, the follow-on verses from the Ten

Commandments have all sorts of instructions about killing. So I

think the Ten Commandments is about not murdering, I don't do this on my

own bat, it's under the authority of the nation, the state, the

democratically elected government, in a democratic country. I don't

decide whether I'm going to go to Macedonia or Kosovo or Iraq, it's

the nation that sends me, and I operate under the authority of the

nation state or, indeed, under the United Nations authority, as Bruce

quite rightly, says in today's world. Symon Hill. I just saw you

reacting to the "thou salt not kill" point. Well, Tim's point about the

nation state, as a Christian, I became a Christian after reading

Jesus's teaching. Very radical stuff all about the Kingdom of God. As

Christians, we're called to follow the Kingdom of God. Jesus proclaimed

a different power, a higher and subtler power than the powers of

violence and greed which dominate our world. And to give up my own

conscience and say, "Well, it's not my decision, it's the nation state,"

I find that - not just for a Christian but for anyone - a sort of

abrogation of your own conscience. There are no circumstances under

which you think it is necessary not to murder, but to kill for your

country or indeed to protect your brothers and sisters globally? For

example, UN troops in Bosnia felt that their hands were tied when they

saw people before their eyes being massacred and they were not able to

respond. There are certainly situations in which I think

responding with violence is entirely understandable. I think that's

different to being just. I certainly don't condemn someone for resorting

to violence in extreme circumstances I don't face. But the reality is, in

war, often the people who are hit are not the aggressors, they're not

the oppressors, they're ordinary civilians. The Holocaust didn't

justify the mass bombing of German civilians. The atrocities committed

by Japan in World War Two don't justify the atomic bombs on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The people who die as a result of war are not

the aggressors, they're not the oppressors. They're ordinary people

who happen, through no fault of their own, to be born the wrong

nationality. Peter Lee. Yes, when it comes to this argument about can war

be just, we've seen here what often happens, we see a caricature of just

war where on one side you have claims that you have a simple

decision to make between doing good and doing evil. And if you're doing

violence, you're doing evil and if you choose the non-violent way,

you're doing good. That is an over-simplification of the Augustian

or anyone else's argument. It is always, in a just war tradition, or

it should be seen as, choosing between a greater evil and a lesser

evil. Because there is no simple choice between choosing pacifism. I

deeply respect the pacifist tradition, but to be able to stand

back and watch someone innocent being massacred, someone mugged in

the High Street, terrible things done, and say, "I choose a

non-violent way, that's the right way," I think that's a heinous moral

choice. Bruce Kent. That's deeply unfair. No-one has put forward the

pacifist position in the way you're saying it. Of course I'd protect

anybody who is being beaten up on the street. So you're wrong to use

violence then? You're wrong to use force Of course I'd use force.

That's what the police force is about. Under what rule does that

force apply? And in nation states, they're bound by certain rules which

they constantly ignore. Tony Blair for one. We'll get on to that later.

This is a game of tennis and there's referee in the middle saying,

"Right, gentlemen, let's play nicely," what if one of them doesn't

want to play nicely? What if Hitler doesn't want to sit down and talk to

you? What if Gadaffi doesn't want to talk to you? German civilians are

not Hitler. It's like saying somebody comes to attack me and you

say what would I do? I wouldn't go and attack his children. Hitler came

to power in a democracy. The German people had something to do with him

gaining his position. So you think that justifies killing German

civilians? I've not said anything about killing German civilians.

Let's stick with German civilians, if I may, Nicky. We bombed Germany

in World War Two and we committed heinous, heinous crimes as a

country. I think we did terrible things. What was the option? We

could not do all the things that you'd love to do? I get what you're

saying, it's a lesser evil? We embrace a lesser evil to a greater

evil. It boils down to the lesser of two evils, that's what it boils down

to. Yes. It's still evil though, it was still evil, but it was the

lesser of two evils. General Tim, I'll come to you in a second. I can

see you're wanting to come back. But I want to speak to the Reverend

Doctor Andrew Francis from the Mennonite Trust, a peace church. Now

you believe there are never any circumstances whatsoever for

violence. We believe that as part of a historic peace church movement, we

follow the way of Jesus, who told us to turn the other cheek. He went to

suffering to death on a cross at the hands of a very cruel punishment. We

follow that way of Jesus. We're not seeking martyrdom ourselves. But we

aren't prepared, as a movement, to be part of something that sanctions

the bombing of civilians. We're not prepared to enter into violence as

the way forward. Andrew, what if that were to save lives? As, it is

argued, was the case in Kosovo, when those civilians were being

terrorised? Or, indeed, shamefully, we did not intervene in Rwanda as

millions were killed in a holocaust. Now, had there been military

intervention and had hundreds of thousands of lives been saved, would

that not have been justified? For us, we would not have got that far

because we actually believe there are alternative means that Bruce

Kent has already outlined, that Symon Hill has referred to. How

would you have stopped the tribal conflict? I think tribal conflict is

something different to the kind of questions about just war that you

are proposing. I'm not trying to split hairs here, you have referred

in your introduction to what is going on under the terms of the

Geneva Convention, which enshrines just war, that goes back through

Aquinas to Augustine. The whole principle is that it's legitimate

authorities waging war. Now, we have to accept that there are

circumstances where violence will occur in this world. One thing that

we would need to say as Mennonites is that often, the Mennonite Relief

Agency were some of the first people on the scene after the bombing at

9/11. They took the role in North America that the Salvation Army

often takes in this country. You would have been able to get the

Tutsis and the Hutus, the two tribes, around the table and get

them to work it all out? I said you wanted to come back to this. Yes,

the start of that point was about Jesus and I love the scriptures. I

know the Bible very well. But that would be the same pacifist Jesus who

trashed the temple, who turned over tables, who resorted to force and

violence. That violence can actually be non-violence. He wasn't hurting

people. And you know that? All right, so if I go into a shop and

trash the place, that's non-violent? I believe it is violent, You're just

disputing whether someone may or may not have been involved in it. It was

definite use of force at that time to put a political point. Force but

not violence. Pacifism isn't about being passive, it's about actively

being non-violent. Resisting injustice, like Jesus did, actively,

but a table doesn't have feelings. Overturning a table is not a violent

action. What about...? Tim, I promise I will come to you. Let's

take it to the personal. What if you were at home and a violent man got

into your house and was threatening your wife and children, and the only

way that you could counter that would be an extreme act of violence?

Active resistance, as Symon's referred to, can mean restraint

under the due process of the law. It doesn't mean actually hitting

somebody. When we talk about just war, it is about the amount of

force. Proportionately. Resisting with an appropriate level, so if

somebody breaks into my house and he intends to commit violence to me and

my loved ones, I am going to stand in the way of that person. Would you

hit that person? No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I like to think that I

wouldn't. Nicky, I've never been faced with that. Tested, yes. And

it's about that moment, and I have to believe that I will have the

courage, in that moment, and the grace to act in the way that my

belief demands that I should. Helen, I want to talk to you, actually, on

the whole concept of a just war and how it came about, but make your

point first. I find it hard to see why that would be considered the

moral choice, to let someone come in and, say, murder your children and

to do nothing. I find it hard to see why you think of that as being a

graceful response. And also I think it's a mistake to say proportionate

force is only resistance. That's just not true. Proportionate force

is judged in terms of what this person's proposing to do to your

wife and children and if they're going to kill your wife and children

then proportionate force is lethal? -- lethal defence. And I find it

really hard to reconcile your duties as a parent, for example, in the

special duty you have to protect your child with this refusal to

prevent them from being murdered if it's within your power to do so. I

can protect my child from being bullied, I can protect my child from

people in particular ways by using active resistance, by using not

violent means, by actually just standing with a chair at the top of

a set of stairs you can actually stop somebody getting... You can

think of one scenario in which that's sufficient, but we can easily

think of others in which the guy's got a gun and that's not sufficient.

Or a knife. I have to say that our position would lead us naturally to

the acceptance that it is better to kill - better to be killed than to

kill. That would be where our historic peace church witnesses. And

the Quakers as well. We do a tremendous amount of work with the

Quakers, we share so many common platforms, and what we would have to

say is that if that takes us unto death in terms of our wives and our

children as well, which is part of our history, which has been tragic

at the hands of others, we may have to accept that. You may have to

accept that. I want to ask Helen here, because I think we should make

clear, clarify this whole concept of just war, and why and how it came

about under the aegis of Christianity. It does begin, as you

said in the introduction, with Augustine. Augustine is tackling

this question of, how do we reconcile the general Christian

belief that it's wrong to kill people with Augustine's belief that

there could be just wars? And he decides that the way in which we can

do this is by conceiving of wars as a way of punishing aggression,

because if aggression is a sin, the punishment is a loving act. Was this

because as Christians we're thinking about the salvation of our souls?

But there was a dilemma that we were discussing with Tim earlier on. They

had this "thou shalt not kill" in the back of their minds. How are we

going to get round this one? Is that what it was? It's partly that. It's

also partly the question of Christian teachings about, for

example, people getting what they deserve. A lot of Christianity is to

do with getting into Heaven if you behave Well, and if you behave badly

then you will end up somewhere rather less pleasant, and yet war,

inevitably, involves inflicting, as we've heard, massive harm on people

that we would ordinarily think of as being innocent people. If you're

Augustine and you're faced with this question, well, how could it be just

that we engage in activities knowing that they're going to perpetrate

these massive harms on people? And the way in which Augustine tried to

solve this problem is by positing this notion of kind of collective

guilt. And thinking that when a nation aggresses, you can view each

member of that nation as in some way responsible, and so it's a very

early just war theory, quite far removed from what we think of as

just war theory these days. That has a very strong commitment to the

principle of community. So Augustine starts out with the notion of just

cause, but it's not until later that we start to get the broader just war

theories which we divide up into principles that were suggested prior

to the war. -- that judge justness. Tom Holland, while we are in the

mists of history. Well, I think the origins of the notions of war are

actually way back beyond Christianity because I think that

the entire sweep of human history you see two contradictory human

impulses embodied. One is instinctive recourse to violence.

The oldest remains of homo sapiens show signs of having been scalped

but on the other side there has always been a sense of anxiety about

recourse to violence. Even in the early civilisations, you do not want

to go to war if there is the risk of offending the gods, and essentially,

to begin with, the gods were there as a kind of insurance policy. If

they are happy with you, then it is safe to go to war. But gradually

over the course of time, that concept is moralised and so the

great Persian king Dorias I in the fifth century BC, he tells his

soldiers it is legitimate to go and attack this enemy because they have

offended the great god and those of you who die in battle will go to

Heaven. In the Roman Empire, the Romans had the conviction, and

Cicero, this great inspiration to Augustine - he had this conviction

that the Romans had never gone to war unjustly, that they had always

gone to war either because they had been insulted or because they were

defending their allies. And so you have this sort of wonderful notion

that in fact the Romans conquered the world in self-defence.

LAUGHTER So to take this from a just war,

this is a self-justification war. The Romans wouldn't say so. The

Romans would say... They're not here to answer. They would say the gods

had blessed them and it was for the good of the conquered to be

conquered. And that, of course, is a notion that has then fed into

Christian and Muslim nations of imperialism as well. We will come

onto that because you have written about it extensively, and, some

would say, contentiously! So, can there be a just war? I'm glad that

point's just been made because the tradition of just war is not just a

Christian one but common to all major religions and non-religious

traditions. And I think, yes, there clearly can be just wars and I think

part of the problem with the discussion we've been having is the

setting-up of full-on pacifism, people who don't believe in violence

in any circumstances, against people supporting war in a multitude of

circumstances. And I would say that war in genuine self-defence, in

defence of your own territory, as Britain fought in 1914, that is a

just war. I think it's a just war when people rise up against tyranny

and foreign occupation and use arms against foreign occupation. That can

be a just war although it's not always the right thing to do. And in

certain circumstances, as in the case where under international law

and the United Nations are fully endorsing a military campaign, that

can be just. I think the problem is that the large majority of wars that

are being fought today, particularly those that are involving Britain and

the United States and their allies, have not been just wars. They have

been disproportionate, they have been wars of aggression and wars of

domination. I think that's what we need to... To discuss. Stephen. You

twitched. I just want to pick up the point that has been made about some

of the wars that are going on at the moment. What is not being addressed

very often when we're engaging the war is the postbellum. What happens

after the war. And the way in which the societies which have been

victims, in a sense, of the wars that we've waged have actually been

left, almost, to their own devices. That is a very good point and I want

to explore that more in just a few minutes. But I think just while

we're here, I'd like to look at the religious justifications, and I want

to speak about the Muslim empire expansions in the Caliphate in a

second, Tom. Usama, there are in all scriptures you can find, if you want

to, justification for violence, justification for war, and I suppose

the jihadist would point to the verses of the sword in the Koran.

The idea of jihad is classically very similar to just war, actually.

A holy war with a strong sense of ethics for that are. In fact,

contemporary Muslim theologians agree with things like the Geneva

Convention, international treaties etc. The problem with the jihadists

is they are stuck in medieval concepts where it's very old school.

It's "us versus them", it's "obliterate the enemy", it's "behead

prisoners", etc. So they violate all kinds of modern international

conventions. We saw the 7/7 terrorist on that video saying, "we

are at war with you", and we had similar messages from the two men at

Woolwich. They feel they have Koranic justification, don't they?

Yes, of course they do, like all religious fundamentalists and

extremists do. But the overwhelming mainstream Muslim theology on this

is very clear that jihad must be underpinned by ethics and it's a

necessary evil. The Prophet himself went to war as a last resort. This

was always understood in classical Islam. War is sometimes,

unfortunately, a necessary evil. But if we can eliminate war, Muslims

would wholeheartedly welcome the abolition of war. One of the

practical issues is, like the police force, you need and impartial police

force to demilitarise society. If you want to demilitarise the world

you need an international police force which is impartial, and we

don't have that. The United States or Britain - one power cannot do

that. As an honest broker? Exactly. And I think that's one of the issues

for the next century for us to work to. When did martyrdom come into

play? Tom Holland? It's very difficult to fight against an enemy

who is willing to die. "We love death", all that stuff. Martyrdom is

crucial to the evolution of the Christian Church and the famous

phrase "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church". What is

distinctive about the Christian conception of martyrdom is that it's

essentially passive. You do not resist it. You go to Heaven

willingly. Once the Roman Empire has become Christian, there then becomes

a need to demonstrate your devotion to God in another way, and so you

get the concept of monasticism, of aestheticism, and the monks who go

out into the desert and mortify their flesh, cast themselves as

soldiers of God. They see themselves engaged in spiritual warfare with

the demons. What then very interestingly happens with Islam is

that the Muslims look at the examples of the monks and they

declare that jihad is the monasticism of Islam but they

literalise what, in monasticism is a metaphor, so the soldiers of God, in

early Islam, become literal soldiers of God and they go off to the

frontier in Syria with the Byzantine Empire and they literally fight.

What is the Koranic justification for martyrdom and for rewards for

dying in battle? What is in that? The idea of martyrdom is about dying

a noble death. Living a noble life and dying for a greater cause. Has

that, in a sense, been misinterpreted? Oh, yes, absolutely.

The suicide bombers and the crazy jihadists who kill civilians, mainly

Muslim in the world, totally don't get this. And earlier on, in

addition to what Tom said, the spiritual aspect of jihad, the

greater jihad, was always understood as the struggle within your own soul

against evil and the outer jihad again was a last resort of necessary

evil. And Muslims especially, and others, have to recover the idea of

an inner jihad, the greater jihad, which is bringing out the goodness

of our humanity and resisting the evil within.

APPLAUSE Go on, Tom, yes? There's a

fascinating moment in the tenth century where the Byzantine Empire

and the Caliphate are at war and the Byzantine emperor, who is a seasoned

Saracen fighter, recognises that the teachings of Islam, that if you die

justifiably in battle in the cause of Islam you will go to Heaven. This

is tremendous in inspiring a sense of enthusiasm in battle for the

soldiers that he's fighting against. And so he goes to the patriarch in

Constantinople and essentially says, could you possibly rustle me up a

doctrine that would enable me to tell my soldiers that if they die in

battle... Because of a just war, could you rustle this up? "Could you

rustle one up, please, so that my soldiers will then feel that

fighting for our Christian empire, they will go to Heaven". And the

patriarch turns round and says, "no, afraid not. And not only that, but

if any of your soldiers kill people in battle, they'll have to do three

years' penance". Were they not even offered absolution? They have to do

the penance and then they get the absolution. And so the Byzantine

model of Christianity, Imperial Christianity, was always very, very

pacifist. Of course, at the same time in the Latin West, a different

notion was evolving. And so that explains why the Crusades come from

the Latin West and not from the Byzantine Greek Orthodox world. How

fascinating. Let's speak, if we may, and, Tim, you want to make a point,

but I want to move it on to discussion, if we can, about World

War I. But Tim, you want a minute to make a point? Reasons for war, and

how war is conducted. I think it is important to say, the Times put out

an article in the 1930s asking what was wrong with the world and GK

Chesterton said, "I am". We are all involved in this, we are all sinners

and we need to keep that firmly in focus, this is not an ideological

issue, this is about reality. My point about the distinction between

killing and murdering is that individual people should not be

going off and doing their own thing, and part of the just war criteria is

do you go to war in the first place, under the authority, the sovereign

authority of the United Nations. Bow sovereign states have sanctioned a

terrible things. The other thing then is how you conduct warfare, and

one of the point is that it was quite rightly is how you can --

conduct war. One of the responsibilities of the United

Nations is quite rightly saying we cannot stand by while people are

massacred but that does not give you the authority to do bad things in an

indiscriminate way. Let's get a couple of audience contributions. I

would like to say to this gentleman that if somebody came into my house

and started to attack my children and my wife and my dog, I would lie

down and die for them and I think that is what everybody would do, but

going on to what you just said, I am against war but if people are

getting massacred in places like Syria and what has been going on in,

say, Zimbabwe, surely there is justification for the United Nations

to go in and stop that sort of thing? I am not saying that his walk

I'm just saying that has to a dividing line -- that is war. And it

may involve the use of force, inevitably. I think so and I

disagree, those who say we should not be involved in these things have

to answer the question, in simple terms. I built refugee camps in

Kosovo, go and visit those in Turkey and other places around Syria and

ask yourself, is this right? My answer is it isn't. Another

gentleman. I would like to say to this gentleman, he mentioned that

his religious sector has a very tragic history. Don't you think it

will continue to be tragic if you just lay back and do not fight for

your family in the case of a murderer coming into your home? You

have a bit debate going here, you? Will move on to World War One in a

moment, thank you for the opportunity to respond. I don't seek

martyrdom, I don't seek... I love my partner dearly and I would die for

her today, without being ever able to say I love you to her as she

watches this live, I would die for her and I would die for her

daughter, but my principles and I know my principles and I know hers,

is that we do not want to inflict violence on anyone else and we have

to accept that the way we live and work with our friends and moving

groups and do community work, each of us, and the way we operate

professionally in my writing and teaching live, I have to say I want

people to engage more and more in dialogue to lift this issue are just

well. I'm not aiming this at you and your producers and the bar has to be

raised much higher. Bruce said at the outset of the programme, the

reasons that went on with Hitler, the root causes, we didn't get on

soon enough into that discussion. If you want to go to the First World

War, you can say similar things about that. Does it's not remain the

fact that there have always been bad people doing bad things. Or do we,

collectively, you said we are all in this together, do we create these

tyrants. I think we do to a large degree. If you look at the

beginnings of that, there were not many people around here who do not

think it was a just war. You have to see how people at the time saw this

and reacted to it, so the decision to go to war with Germany over their

invasion, there had been plenty of conversations beforehand, but none

of the things that Bruce mentions about crisis management, but there

were no people in this country who did not think it was not try to stop

Germany after they invaded Poland and the whole Western Sobran system

was in ways tied up in this, that it somebody invaded someone's sovereign

state, we had to do something about it, hence we got involved in Iraq

when they invaded Kuwait. So I don't think anyone saw anything other than

World War One being just. Now, the numbers are people who died, how it

was conducted 60 million deaths. Shore, and is it justified? I don't

know, but I don't know if I am going to sit here and say we should have

done nothing about Germany invading Belgium. I find that breathtaking,

the First World War was in no way a just war fought for the rights

of... It was a savage imperial slaughter, which was, in fact,

opposed by many people when it began, despite the jingoistic

fervour at the time, which quickly dissipated. It was a war to carve up

markets and resources and territories by Imperial College

around the world. They all shared responsibility for the way that

began -- imperial powers. Belgian sovereignty was just one factor in a

process of inexorable drive to war, which of course

Does this mean women and children, civilians should be shot out of hand

by invading German armies? I don't think two wrongs justify a right.

But the rights of small nations all over the world were not just

violated but were ripped up, and we are living with the consequences

today. Sticky yellow well, look, I'm sorry, I don't think this is a

football match where somebody scores a goal. We are trying to get at

something important here. Just look at the history of the Middle East.

It is more complicated... Can I just finished? Can I finish what I'm

saying? What I am trying to say is history is not a simple process,

that there are many explanations and one of the reasons we're talking so

much about the First World War and its origins is because there is so

much fear about it. The important thing is the discussion. The

problems in the Middle East, in part, date back to the settlements

made at the end of the First World War but they also date and due to

the fact that the Middle East is a very complicated part of the world

with many religions and ethnicities. There is a certain arrogance when we

assume the West is responsible for everything going wrong in the world.

Let us at least try to understand that people have agency as well. But

ask them what they feel about it today and the carving up of their

country between imperial powers? It has happened all over the world.

Certainty is usually the enemy of truth. Thank you. If your country

gets handed to foreign powers it has nothing to do with the rights of

small nations. Actually, it was something called self-determination.

Not only for Europeans. For India... But what about 20 years later? I do

think 20 years later is very long, actually. You get something called

self-determination that was not perfect. If we are looking for

perfection we are not going to get it. But we were looking through the

introduction where European powers had certain responsibilities...

Mandates were colonies. Like Syria, like Palestine. It is fascinating

listening to both of you, but the point made by Bruce early on about

the roots of war, it is coming into my mind, a famous cartoon after the

Treaty of Versailles with politicians having signed the

treaty, and there is a double boy crying, weeping because of the

unresolved issues and the dangerous road ahead, so it is almost as if

there was acknowledgement of that, as Bruce was saying, that they were

already planting the seeds of the next conflict. You can always go

back and see the seeds of conflict. In 1919 they were dealing with a

shattered world. I'd expect the circumstances were not very good and

you have nationalism running ramp -- rampant. This was not a peaceful

world. You had a whole lot of wars breaking out. The First World War

did not solve all the problems, it opened the door to other ones. But

to say that what happened in 1919, and my view, again, is that it was a

dangerous oversimplification. Why was Hitler rising in Germany? What

will people doing for 20 years? We'll have to allow agency interest

-- in history. There were choices and moments where Europe did not

have to go to war and it could have gone in another direction. And the

rampant anti-Semitism. Let's hear from some who have their hands up.

Good morning. Was listening to the gentleman on the front row who is

taking a very strong pacifist position. Andrew, you have everybody

talking! I think he is quite controversial and it has caused a

lot of debate, what he has said. One of the things he said is as a

pacifist you could never justify the targeting of civilians in warfare.

Everybody agrees with that, even if you support the notion of warfare.

Nobody wants the targeting of civilians. And what you have to take

into account is that the military technology we have today allows us

to target much more accurately those people who seek to do evil in the

world, and I accept there is a degree of some collateral damage, as

it is sometimes called, at it is nothing like the bombing of Dresden

during the war, where there is wholesale slaughter of people. So,

you know, you have to be a bit careful in the words you choose,

suggesting people who support the notion of a just war somehow justify

the killing of civilians. I am glad you raise the issue of weaponry,

because, of course, in the First World War, we saw an extraordinary

and frightening exoneration of this sort of technology of war. I mean,

you know, the poem of Wilfred Owen. "The white eyes writhing in his

face, his hanging face like a devil's sick of sin," the shock of

seeing the gas. Did it not move war to a new level where justification

and the idea of a just war was far more difficult because of the way it

was carried out? Yes, but I come back to my earlier point which is

still, I think, important which is the justification hyphen-macro is

this the right thing to be doing? And if it is, how do we conduct

this? But if they're using gas, you've got to use gas. Not

necessarily If they use machine guns... No? Not necessarily. How you

use technology, how you use weapon systems is, you know, dependent on

what you're trying to achieve. We don't use the same weapon systems

today that maybe we would have used then. And, quite rightly, people

regale against the use of gas, hence the position in Syria. So technology

moves on, counter technology and so on. But you're right, obviously, and

I'm supporting the general point that in terms of collateral damage,

targeting, the use of weapon systems, we are in a different world

today than we were back in 1914, 1918 or indeed 1939. But there were

weapon systems being used in the American Civil War that caused an

awful lot of people to be killed. I mean the weapon system is not, I

don't think, part of this debate in one sense. It's a related issue.

It's not the key driver. It's the scale of killing, surely. 800,000

people died in Rwanda using machetes, as you made the point

earlier. So let's not get confused by that. How many more would have

died had they had some of these... It's believed that modern technology

enables us to be more accurate. In reality, World War One, about half

the deaths were military. World War Two, most of the deaths were

civilian. Wars fought in the last 20 years, over 90% were civilian. So

far from modern technology making things more accurate, the percentage

of deaths that are civilian is going up. You're distinguishing two

different things. You're quite right. Warfare in 1914 era, 10%

civilian, 90% military died on battlefields that were contained in

an area of operations. Modern warfare is not like that. Modern

warfare does involve more deaths of civilians. Yes, it does, but that's

not because of... ALL TALK AT ONCE.

This does bring us to war and also Iraq, of course, because a lot of

people died in Iraq, You served there didn't you? Yes. Did you feel

that you were fighting in a just war as you served for the British Army?

Iraq's a controversial issue now. At the time when I left the military, I

questioned it but I know the good things that we did in Iraq. Whether

it was a just war, that's a massive umbrella term. That wasn't really

what a soldier was thinking when he was on the ground. Am I doing the

right thing here? You weren't thinking that? I wasn't thinking

that, I was thinking, "I'm very excited, I'm a soldier, I'm trained

and I want to go to war." As most soldiers were. But it wasn't... We

weren't sat there thinking about the just-war tradition, we weren't

reading the Testament while we were out there. Usana, you were fighting

for Mujahadjadin for a while in Afghanistan, weren't you? You

understood that sense of excitement, and the here and now, don't you?

Absolutely. There's a famous line of poetry in Arabic and Hebrew from the

Islamic and Jewish tradition which says, "War, it's like a beautiful

young woman to a young man. Very seductive until he chases after her,

she turns round and she's an old hag." And that's very deep wisdom

which says war is attractive, but the reality of it is terrible. I was

in Afghanistan again three years ago and I saw the reality of the current

conflict from both sides. Both sides, the Taliban and the NATO

troops, kill civilians routinely. Roadside bombs or rockets or drone

strikes. What you have to understand is the reality of 21st century

technology means so many civilians die in a war. We have to concentrate

on pre-emptive peace-making and strengthening the international

structures to avoid war, because war is so damaging now and so deadly.

Stephen. This is why just war theory needs rethinking now in the light of

what's happening after the consequences of war, what I was

trying to say before. The effect of some of the wars that have been

waged in the last 20 years has been that we've actually developed

terrorists who actually are so angry about what has been done to their

communities, done to their families, in the name of just wars, that in

fact they themselves become part of a new problem of war and terror. And

one way or another, we have to look at the consequences of what happens

after any war that is being waged. And frankly, one of the great

mistakes in the Iraq war was that was just not thought through

properly by the United States. And also interestingly, Peter... And I

know you wrote Blair's Just War. The subtitle is the important bit

though. What was the subtitle? "Iraq and the illusion of morality". Oh,

right, yes. I was going to put it in that context but the subtitle kind

of does it. It's interesting, because Stephen raised it here about

what you do in the aftermath, because I think Tony Blair touched

on this in his famous hyphen-macro people at the time were saying

landmark hyphen-macro speech in Chicago in 1999, when he was talking

about the concept of liberal intervention. He was talking about

Kosovo in this case, but he said, "When we're talking about

intervention..." He listed criteria, three of which were these ones. "We

must be sure of our case," he said. "We must be prepared for the long

term," and I guess he means a long conflict and also the aftermath. He

said, "Do we have national interests involved?" He asked those three

questions. Many would argue there are no ticks there at all, in terms

of Iraq. With Iraq he violated... His own arguments were very good and

actually, they weren't written by him. They were written by Professor

Laurence Freedman from King's College London. He read them out,

though. He read them out, and interestingly, for your interest,

Professor Freedman is sitting on the panel judging the Iraq war, which I

find fascinating. A good reflection of British politics. However, Blair

did not satisfy his own criteria over Iraq. And this issue of let's

intervene on humanitarian terms, on an ethical basis, but have we got

national self interest involved? It is a contradiction. Blair was one

constant contradiction, and he presented moral argument, or

supposedly moral argument after moral argument because he knew he

had no solid intelligence, he knew he had no legal basis and he was

trying to use highly emotive arguments to gain support from a

sceptical country. And he apparently studied Thomas Aquinas in detail and

St Augustine, he went through them with a fine-tooth comb. I'm sure he

did, and there's no-one that Tony Blair cannot bend to his own

advantage when it comes to the use of words. And the use of truth, come

to that. Bruce Kent. I just think that we're losing the main issue,

which to me is to stop wars in the future, to build the world

structures that makes war barbaric. I don't go around armed where I live

in Finchley. I come to Manchester, I'm not scared of people in

Manchester. We've actually built a world within our domestic society,

where non-violent settlement of dispute is normal. We have an

International Criminal Court which doesn't actually work. We have a

manifest arms trade for which this country is very responsible. We

threaten other people with nuclear weapons, we ignore law where we can.

And we're not building a world and children in school are not taught

global citizenship, they're taught British nationality. And I think

we've got a lot of changes to make in our whole system if we're going

to get rid of war. Some responses. The guy in the black top, first of

all. Hi. I'm an RE teacher and I must say, I do teach global

citizenship. That's something that's very important to me. But on this

issue, I think what we need to think about is we stress so much the first

instance of why we should go to war, the just cause, the suffering, the

response to suffering, and whether we've got legitimate authority. I

think this debate has shown, and I do agree, that we do need to think

more about the consequences. Whether we actually got a chance of success,

if we're going to have a peaceful resolution, those are also very,

very important principles of a just war. And if we are going to move

forward, we do need to build a UN that has actually got a chance of

putting that into practice. Which is easier said than done, given all the

competing interests and competing principles within that organisation.

How would you have Dealt? what would your response have been, if you were

the American President, Bruce Kent, to 9/11? To 9/11? What would I have

implemented? A criminal prosecution against the people concerned. I

would have debated with the authorities in Afghanistan who

actually wanted to put Bin Laden on trial in a Muslim country, if I

remember. I'd have explored all the non-violent ways. He had no

authority to go to war in Afghanistan whatsoever according to

the charter. None. Tim? Well, I understand that and I said earlier

on, declaring a war on terror is like declaring a war on sin, I don't

think it achieves very much. I do think when 2,000 people are killed

in a city like New York, there is an inevitable? I mean, I understood

that intellectually, but I only understood the emotion of it when I

lived in Washington in the run-up to Iraq in 2003 and I ended up by

working in Baghdad with the post-war, such as it was, the

post-war team. So, again, coming back to this point, I don't like

this football match, black and white. I'm not against what Bruce is

saying, I absolutely agree. So you're for it? We need institutions,

we need to develop the United Nations, we need crisis management.

We look at the roots and consequences. Ultimately, I have to

say the reality is, nonetheless, I sat and watched the mass graves

being dug up in Iraq and those who did not want that war have to say to

themselves, "What about those people?" What about the people being

killed in? I'm not suggesting that it's either or, I'm simply saying?

TALK OVER EACH OTHER. Seamus Milne. At the time the

invasion of Iraq took place, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch

estimated that maybe 200 people were dying every year because of

political causes or repression. Although many more were dying

because of sanctions. As a result, a direct result, of the invasion of

Iraq, which was aggression, which had no authority, false pretext and

was not a just war in any sense, the current estimates are that 500,000

people died. I think there has to be some realism about what's taken

place in this war. In Afghanistan, as well. We're talking about tens of

thousands of people who've died and none of the objectives have been

achieved. The war on terror has spread terror, rather than reducing

it, all over the region and beyond, including in this country. A quick

response, Usana. I want to speak to Joan about her grandson, Kevin. I

want to give a non-Western view. After 9/11, had the Muslim countries

been stronger, they could have implemented the Taliban desire to

put Bin Laden on trial. Similarly, in the First World War, don't forget

this, was seen by the rest of the world as a European civil war

between colonial powers. Also the Ottoman Empire, which allied with

the Germans who tried to get Muslims to rise up against the British

Empire and, of course, thousands of Muslims fought for the British

Empire in the First World War. So the rest of the world was caught up

in the politics, which most people thought wars are about politics and

economics. And the religious justification really comes

afterwards for some people. Joan, you lost Kevin, your grandson, and

you work very hard with Military Families Against the War, is that

the organisation? Yes, and the Stop the War Coalition. What happened to

Kevin? He was out on patrol, a company he'd never been out with

before someone couldn't go. And apparently was hit by an RPG. He and

another guy were killed at the same time. A sergeant. Did he believe

what he was doing was the right thing? Did he think that he should

have been there? I guess you had conversations. I did. He didn't

really think it out. All he would say to me was he served in Iraq and

that was much better, the people were better, everything was better

in Iraq compared to Afghanistan. The Iraqis didn't hate them quite as

much. Whereas every Afghani loathed them. Which I understand, because

our soldiers had attacked their country. If someone attacks us,

you're going to fight back. I can't agree with that chap saying no

violence. You've got to stand up for yourself. And Kevin just did not

enjoy? he'd actually left the army, he was walking out the gates, and

turned round and went back in again because he reckoned he couldn't

leave his friends to face it. Now that is one thing the army does

teach, I admire it. The camaraderie. They all look after each other. And

if schools and other organisations could get that, it would be

wonderful. If you could say anything to Tony Blair what would you say to

him? Well, he killed my grandson. He's responsible for his death.

There's no doubt about that. You really think that, do you? Oh, yes,

and I think Tony Blair and George Bush. Now, I've listened to a lot of

religious statements today, I have no religion at all. And I think

sometimes Blair and Bush were sort of making their Christian beliefs

against people who were not of Christian beliefs, Muslims and other

different religions. I think Tony Blair and George Bush, with their

extreme Christian beliefs, and they were extreme, they were quite happy

to attack Muslims. Let's put that to Tim, because what you said is very,

very strong. She believes Tony Blair killed her grandson. Well, I don't.

I understand the point about? I've been in the military for 40 years

and there's no better community, I can tell you. British soldiers are

fantastic. But, I have to be honest and say that I think the idea that

Tony Blair sort of rubbed his hands together with glee and goes to war

because he thinks it's a great idea, or Bush, or most other ordinary

people, I just think is wrong. Leadership is difficult, people make

difficult decisions, they make the choices they believe are right. Now

I don't believe that what happened in Iraq is necessarily a good thing,

I don't want to give that impression at all, but again you've got to put

it into context of history hyphen-macro where Blair comes from,

what he's seen through Rwanda, which had a searing effect on him, it had

a searing effect on Kofi Annan, the whole idea of the responsibility to

protect begins to emerge, your point about the Chicago speech? We get to

a place, Kosovo works well and I think Iraq, you know, flows from

that. And I'm not saying he's right. But the idea that he killed, in that

sense, deliberately, I just think it's wrong. He committed an act of

unprovoked aggression. For which he has not been held to account. Ladies

and gentlemen, there's been some fascinating points made, we have

unfortunately come to the end. But thank you all very much indeed.

Thank you very much for your participation. As ever the debate

will continue on Twitter, online. Join us next Sunday from Bishops

Stortford, but for now, it's goodbye from everyone here in Salford.

Thanks for watching.