Earlier this week, the military completed its mission to evacuate American citizens, third-country nationals, and vulnerable Afghans from Afghanistan. Over the previous few weeks, more than 123,000 civilians were extracted in what was the largest noncombatant evacuation in the U.S. military’s history. Here is what you should know about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Why was …
Continue...Since November, the Ethiopian government and a regional military group have been engaged in a struggle for power and control over Tigray, the northern region of Ethiopia. On June 28, rebels known as the Tigray Defense Forces occupied Mekelle, Tigray’s capital city, following the retreat of Ethiopian government troops, marking a major shift in the …
Continue...Clashes between Israelis and Palestinians lead Tor Wennesland, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, to say on Tuesday, “We’re escalating towards a full scale war. Leaders on all sides have to take the responsibility of deescalation.” The recent tensions appear to be due to a pending decision by Israel’s Supreme …
Continue...Thirty-five years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan stood on a beach in Normandy, France and gave a speech recounting the events of D-Day, commending those who fought the battle, and connecting the fight against Nazi totalitarianism to the fight against the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. “For sheer oratorical elegance,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, …
Continue...Today marks the 76th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii. Here are five facts you should know about the event that propelled the U.S. into World War II: 1. In July 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration imposed an oil embargo on Japan to deter further …
Continue...Note: This is the fifth and final article in a series on the Christian just war tradition. Imagine North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un announces he will finally implement his family’s long-stated objective of unifying the Korean peninsula. To ensure that no one interferes with his invasion of South Korea, he has hidden his nuclear …
Continue...Note: This is the fourth article in a series on the Christian just war tradition. “The difficulty of defining terrorism has led to the cliché that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, implying that there can be no objective definition of terrorism, no universal standards of conduct in peace. That is not true.” …
Continue...Note: This is the third article in a series on the Christian just war tradition. If a nation is able to meet all of the moral requirements for going to war (jus ad bellum) as well as the moral requirements for waging war (jus in bello) they will find they have a new set of moral …
Continue...Note: This is the second in a series on the Christian just war tradition. In 2014, Clint Eastwood directed American Sniper, a war drama loosely based on the memoir of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. The trailer for the film reveals the difficult, split-second decisions military snipers often have to make while in combat. …
Continue...What are the moral reasons for going to war? What does justice require of us when engaging in warfare? What are our ethical obligations to our enemy once warfare has ceased? The attempt to answer these questions has led to the development of just war theory and the just war tradition. The theoretical aspect of …
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