Iraq The Moral Reckoning [Paperback]

Craig White analyzes the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq in terms of the moral justification for war, a topic too often treated superficially at best in our foreign policy establishment. With wars ongoing, and many advocating more wars, we would do well to look to Mr. Whites work to see what light the Just War Theory sheds on some of the most momentous decisions we face.Craig White has written an exhaustively well-documented, scrupulously balanced, deeply scholarly consideration of the justice of the Iraq war, informed by the professional insights of a career diplomat. The work exemplifies intellectual courage and a profound love of country while finding the best attempts to justify the Iraq war egregiously defective. White dispassionately unmasks folly masquerading as perennial wisdom, willfulness as virtue, and pettiness as gravitas. What a pity that the sober judgment found in this book was lacking in those leaders given the crisis and opportunity presented by 9/11. History does not doom us to its repetition if we but avail ourselves of the perceptive insights White here offers us.The tragic strategic, economic, and humanitarian consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have long been apparent. Craig White does an important service in taking a comprehensive evaluation of the critical underlying issue of the morality of the invasion itself, specifically its failure to meet widely-accepted criteria for a just war. As a career diplomat, White recognizes that such questions are of great importance not only to theologians and philosophers, but also to policy makers and ordinary citizens. He makes his case in a thorough and convincing manner.A rigorous analysis and application of the six criteria of Just War Theory to the 2003 decision by the Bush White House to go to war against Iraq&.White does an excellent job reviewing the history and importance of Just War Theory and gives us an excellent run down of the meaning and development of the six criterl³„