Mennonite Weekly Review

In recent years, Mennonites and other pacifist Christians have been reaching across theological and philosophical lines to find common ground with proponents of the just-war tradition.

Kathleen Kern, of Rochester, N.Y., serves with Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Just-war theory sanctions war only when an aggressor is inflicting devastating violence on whole populations and when all other means of responding to this violence have proven ineffective. Most important, it considers all attacks on civilians unjustifiable.

Thus, pacifists and just-war proponents can work together toward a similar goal: reducing the number of dead and damaged people in violent conflicts.

Of course, pacifists have a sneaky agenda of trying to convince these people that no wars in recent history have followed just-war criteria.

But even when we do not make converts, we can affirm the sparks of conscience in soldiers and guerrillas who want to protect the defenseless and who think killing noncombatants is always wrong.

I suspect that pacifists besides myself who watched the Sept. 27 60 Minutes interview with Gen. Stanley McChrystal felt a brief stirring of approval when we heard him say that the U.S. should make not harming Afghan civilians a priority, even if it means losing more U.S. soldiers.

Thus, I was shocked when I read a New York Times article criticizing McChrystal by Lara M. Dadkhah, who called for the U.S. not to try to avoid civilian casualties in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s directive, she wrote, shows that the “pendulum has swung too far in favor of avoiding the death of innocents.” She said U.S. troops should not “fight fair” and that the military should resume air strikes that kill civilians as well as combatants.

Media critics denounced the article’s cynicism. But then they turned their critiques to the Times. Why, they asked, had it sought out the opinion of someone whose only identification was that she worked for a “defense consulting company?”

“What defense consulting company employs her?” asked Salon’s Glen Greenwald. “Do they have any ties to the war effort? Do they benefit from the grotesque policies she’s advocating?”

Eventually, the Times responded to the criticism by revealing that Dadkhah worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm with deep connections to the military-industrial complex. However, the Times said, it had solicited her article because of her work at the Small Wars Journal, not because of her work at Booz Allen.