Mennonite Weekly Review

DURHAM, N.C. — Remember How to Win Friends and Influence People? Let’s just say Duke University ethicist Stanley Hauerwas has been hugely influential, but that doesn’t mean his salty tongue has made him a lot of friends along the way.

Hauerwas, a Christian pacifist, is an expert on just-war theory who says Iraq and Afghanistan fail to meet the criteria of a just war.

In an interview, Hauerwas, 69, talked about his views on war and peace, his dismal assessment of the state of America’s churches, and why President Obama isn’t likely to come calling.

Q: What should President Obama do about Afghanistan?

A: Afghanistan was understood to be part of the war against terror, and that was a decisive mistake because as soon as you said we are at war, you gave Osama bin Laden what he wanted — he became a warrior, and not just a murderer. I would be much happier with a whole reconsideration of our involvement there — not as a war, but as a police function, and how the police might intervene to arrest bin Laden.

I know that sounds utopian, but just try thinking you’re going to win a war in Afghanistan. I can’t imagine anything more utopian than that. Ask the British. Ask the Russians. It’s never going to happen.

Q: Was Afghanistan ever a just war?

A: Afghanistan has the possibility of being limited in a way that might make it a bit more justifiable, but it’s still not clear what we’re fighting for. It’s so deeply ambiguous that it’s hard to fit into just-war criteria. The very idea that you begin to assess the justness of a war after the war is already going to happen — I’m sorry, it’s already too late.

How would you assess the church’s response to the Iraq war?

A: Awful. Christians — and it started with Sept. 11, as soon as we said we are at war — Christians said “that’s us.” We never asked the hard questions about the war on terror, and that is, I think, why Iraq happened. It has everything to do with the inability to distinguish between the Christian “we” and the American “we.”