Insufficient computer data caused more than 50 percent of the Navy's missiles to miss their targets during the U.S. and British bombing raid on Iraq last month.

A team of analysts from the Navy and the defense contractor (Raytheon Co.) who manufactures the AGM-154A "Joint Standoff Weapon" reached that conclusion in the weeks following the raid, as reported by the Baltimore Sun.

"The problem was easy to fix," one official said. "All they needed to do was make a minor adjustment to the software programming."

Remember when President Bush, during his campaign, said that Jesus was the political philosopher who influenced him the most? While that may help explain Bush's faith-based initiative, it doesn't appear to have any bearing on his administration's military planning.

It was St. Augustine who attempted to reconcile Jesus' nonviolent teachings with Christianity's newfound status as the official religion of the Roman empire. Although he argued that Christians had no right to defend themselves from violence, Augustine insisted that it was a requirement of justice to use violence, if necessary, to defend the innocent against evil.

In my own informal surveys of professing Christians, I've found both Catholics and Protestants claiming to support violence only in accordance to what theologians call "just war" theory.

"Whether or not its specific terminology is adopted, just war theory has always played a part in official arguments about war. No political leader can send soldiers into battle, asking them to risk their lives and to kill other people, without assuring them that their cause is just - and that of their enemies is unjust. And if the theory is used, it is also, inevitably, misused," Michael Walzer notes in his acclaimed book "Just and Unjust Wars."

Unfortunately, just war theory has never been taught to the average church member. Even most theologians would be hard pressed to list the seven or more criteria used to determine if a war is in fact just, as the noted theologian Walter Wink points out.

There's a distinction to be made between a just war and a political war. According to just war theory, at least seven criteria must be satisfied if state violence is to be justified: 1.) The war must have a just cause; 2.) It must be waged by a legitimate authority; 3.) It must be formally declared; 4.) It must be fought with a peaceful intention; 5.) It must be a last resort; 6.) There must be reasonable hope of success; 7.) The means used must possess proportionality to the end sought.

Three other rules apply to the conduct of the conflict: 1.) Noncombatants must be given immunity; 2.) Prisoners must be treated humanely and; 3.) International treaties and conventions must be honored.

These general rules are difficult to apply in concrete situations. How do you determine legitimate authority in a war that pits insurgents against a dictator? How do you distinguish between "offensive" and "defensive" maneuvers? How do you figure out who are the noncombatants when Clauswitz's notion of "total war" prevails?

Certain aspects of the U.S. war against Iraq could arguably be considered to meet just war requirements. But where U.S. policy is in stark contrast to just war thinking is when it comes to "noncombatant immunity."

Speaking about the Vietnam War, Paul Ramsey, a leading proponent of just war theory, argues that "no Christian and no moralist should assert that it violates the moral immunity of noncombatants from direct, deliberate attack to direct the violence of war upon vast Vietcong strongholds whose destruction unavoidably involves the collateral deaths of a great many civilians."

But doesn't this lead to the acceptance of civilian casualty rates so high that it renders the criterion of noncombatant immunity meaningless?

If you include civilian deaths that war inevitably causes by disruption of farming, sanitation and food distribution, civilians account for an average of 50 percent of the deaths that occurred in each century in all wars since 1700, according to Ruth Leger Sivard's study "World Military and Social Expenditures (1991)." The only exception is the Falklands/Malvinas war.

Civilian deaths have increased over five centuries from 800,000 in the 1500s to 53.9 million in the 1900s.The 10-year-old sanctions that the United States continues to impose on Iraq has killed enough civilians to fill 10 Vietnam Memorial Walls. Add to that the number of civilians killed because the most technologically advanced military superpower on the planet is still capable of missing 50 percent of its targets.

You don't have to be a just war theorist or a Christian to recognize: If we don't make at least "minor adjustments" to our foreign policy, major "terrorist" attacks will inevitably be considered justified by our enemies. Creative peacemaking is the only alternative.

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columinist.

Copyright © 2001 Cape Cod Times

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