Conclusion

The ongoing critique of war-making is a centrally important democratic activity. Some dismiss the present articulation of just war theory as reducible to “declarations of personal preference” [1] even while speculating about the potential of future philosophy to provide foundations for a more substantive theory of just war. The principles that underlie intuitive conceptions of justice and rights may yield to further theorising, yet there may never be a reliable and practically applicable distinction between combatants and noncombatants. For the realists view of war this discrimination need not necessarily be made. For pacifists, this creates a moral dilemma only resolvable by forbidding civilian casualties outright. Just war theory goes some way towards resolving the problem by imposing moral limits of warfare, attempting to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable use military force. The aim is to conceive of how the use of arms might be restrained, made more humane, and ultimately directed towards the aim of establishing lasting peace and justice.[2] This description of what is legitimate and what is illegitimate is what just war has always been about: it makes morally problematic actions and operations possible by constraining their occasions and regulating their conduct[3]. It is a “doctrine of radical responsibility”[4] for it holds political and military leaders responsible for the immunity of noncombatants on the other side.

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[1],Noam Chomsky. On Just War Theory and the Invasion of Iraq. Retrieved 12^th November 2006 from http://readingchomsky.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-just-war-theory-and-invasion-of_30.html

[2] Mark Rigstad, JustWarTheory.com. Retrieved 7^th November 2006 from http://www.justwartheory.com

[3] Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 22.

[4] Walzer, Arguing About War, 14.