OK So Apparently The ‘Just’ In ‘Just War Theory’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Only’

by Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah Leader

Beirut, October 19 – Boy, is my face red. I finished reading some background material on what scholars call jus bellum justum, the philosophy of the Just War, and only now did I realize the whole time none of those thinkers, ancient through modern, interpret the phrase to mean “all war all the time,” as I had assumed and endorsed. Silly Hassan.

It’s an easy mistake to make under the circumstances. My organization and its Iranian patrons need a state of war to persist, or at least to seem necessary, to justify our control of various Lebanese resources, and our dominance of this nation’s politics and economy. In that sense, we require a constant state of war, if not outright warfare, to keep the people distracted by the external enemy –  the Zionists and their American sponsors, in our case. Allowing the population of Lebanon to realize that our obsession with imagined Israeli territorial ambitions serves only to conceal our genuine motive of cementing Tehran’s influence in the Levant simply will not do. Thus “just war.” Not sanitation, not public health, not port safety, none of that. Just war.

But then I finally got around to reading up on the theory – just clicking around on Wikipedia one day, you know, bored – and boom, so to speak, the facts hit me. From Aristotle to the Romans to the ancient Chinese and Indians, all the way up to modern times, the evolving doctrine of the Just War involves determining the morality of a given war, or of war in general, and of the conduct of a given war once initiated. In other words, nothing like what I had always assumed. Imagine my surprise!

It’s a fascinating subject, and of course important, don’t get me wrong. I did notice, for example, that few, if any, Muslim theologians have contributed to the ages-old discussion, at least judging from the Wikipedia entry. This buttresses my assumption that Islamic thought at large views war not as a necessary evil, which the Just War Theory as properly understood (I realize that now) posits, but a glorious event that illuminates who enjoys divine favor and who must suffer the shame of defeat. The Religion of Peace, you understand. All that is well and good; it’s simply not what I had always interpreted the phrase to mean.

Ah, well. At least I’ve learned something. Now it’s back to sacrificing Lebanese blood and money in a Sisyphean battle to vanquish the Jews.

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