(LifeSiteNews) — Joining me on this episode of The John-Henry Westen Show is John Sharpe, a former U.S. Navy commander and traditional Catholic author. We discussed Catholic just war theory, whether the Iraq War and a hypothetical war with Iran would qualify as a “just war,” his cancellation from the Navy, and more.
After discussing how he was canceled from the Navy for opposing the Iraq War, Sharpe laid out why he had opposed that war and how it applies to current global conflicts. Sharpe explained that according to just war theory, military action should only be used as a “last resort” after all other diplomatic options have been exhausted.
“We can’t just rush to take military action. … We’ve got to be forced by the force of evidence into this regrettable conclusion that no further diplomacy will work, no more sanctions, no more international machinery (will work),” he said. “We have no choice, the only thing that’s going to get us relief from whatever the problem is military action.”
Sharpe further stressed the importance of there being a “just cause” in order for a war to be considered “just.”
“Thomistically, it’s an answer to the question, why? Why do you feel that arriving at this sort of irreversible point of no return is necessary?” he pondered.
“This is where I part ways with what’s happening now, and I parted ways in Iraq,” he added. “When the nation believes that war is necessary, that conclusion must be driven by something that is doing harm to the nation that proposes to go to war.”
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Sharpe continued:
The state, just like the Church, is a perfect society, meaning that … the state possesses and should possess the full capacity to do everything for that temporal common good that benefits the members of the state, to include acts of self-defense and to include the judicial power that’s necessary to think through the process of, ‘Are rights in some way are being infringed or (is there) harm being done to us? How grave is it?’ This is one of the other concepts we hear: ‘Is there any other way to fix it other than to go to war?’ And then if you’ve exhausted that whole process of thinking, then you get to the point where, yes, the state is allowed to use military force and, frankly, to commit acts of violence.
Sharpe noted that while St. Augustine teaches us to give our leaders the benefit of the doubt, including when they present intelligence used to justify going to war, they themselves admitted that they couldn’t say with certainty that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) or that Iran was developing nuclear weapons that they intended to use against the United States.
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“Let us presume, as we’re obliged to do, that everything the authorities say is correct. All the conclusions they draw from the intelligence, we accept those,” he said. “Is it enough to say that because Iran is pursuing the technical capacity and the raw materials to take those raw materials and advance them to a next stage of processing, which then would become the raw material for a weapon, which then may or may not be used against another station?”
Sharpe continued: “The question is, can we invert the logic to walk ourselves back to justify intervention by force of arms when all that we’re certain about is that there is the possession of a technical capacity with all the infrastructure to enrich a raw material to a certain stage, which then must be enriched further, which then must be assembled, developed, etc.?”
To hear much more from John Sharpe, tune in to this episode of The John-Henry Westen Show.
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