ElizabethAnscombe’s “Warand Murder” is a magnificent essay, an intellectually rigorous andmorally serious defense of traditional Christian and natural law teachingagainst pacifists on the one side and, on the other, those who attempt torationalize the unjust killing of civilians. As she argues, both errors feed off of one another.  The essay is perhaps even more relevant todaythan it was at the time she wrote it.

Here is asummary of her position.  The pacifistholds that all killing is immoral,even when necessary to protect citizens against criminal evildoers within anation, or foreign adversaries without. This position is contrary to the basic precondition of any social order,which is the right to protect itself against attempts to destroy it.  It also has no warrant in the orthodox Christiantradition.  A less extreme but relatederror is the thesis that violence can never justly be initiated, but at mostcan only ever be justified in response to those who have initiated it.  In fact, Anscombe argues, what matters is notwho strikes the first blow, but who is in the right.  For example, it was in her judgment right forthe British to initiate violence in order to suppress chattel slavery.

That is oneset of errors.  But another and oppositeextreme error is to abuse the principle that war can sometimes be justifiable,in order to try to rationalize violence that is in fact unjust.  Indeed, this opposite extreme is, inAnscombe’s view, the more common error.  Andit is more common in war than in police activity, because war affords more occasionsfor the evil of killing the innocent, and civilians in particular.  The principle of double effect is too oftenmisapplied in attempts to rationalize such killing.

Having givena general description of these two sorts of error, Anscombe then goes on toexamine each in more detail.  Shesuggests that in the early twentieth century, some were drawn to pacifism inpart as an overreaction to universal conscription (which she regards as anevil).  But her main focus is on thetheme that pacifism derives from a distortion of Christianity.  In part this has to do with a hostility tothe ethos of the Old Testament, which she argues is widely misunderstood andwidely and wrongly thought to be at odds with the New Testament.  But the New Testament too has been badlymisunderstood.  For example, counsels towhich only some are called (such asgiving away one’s worldly goods) are sometimes misrepresented as preceptsbinding on all. 

“The truthabout Christianity,” Anscombe says, “is that it is a severe and practicablereligion, not a beautifully ideal but impracticable one” (p. 48).  But the distortions she describes have madeChristianity seem to be an ideal butimpracticable one.  And the attractionsome Christians have for pacifism is an example.  Many Christians and non-Christians alikebelieve the falsehood that Christ calls us all to pacifism.  And because no society could survive if itpracticed pacifism, many thus conclude that Christian morality is simply notpractical.

Here, asAnscombe argues, is where pacifism inadvertently paves the way for those whorationalize the murder of the innocent.  Falselysupposing that all violence is eviland also noting that violence is necessary to preserve a society againstevildoers, they take the short step to the conclusion that “committed to‘compromise with evil,’ one must go the whole hog and wage war à outrance” (p. 48).  In other words, once we are convinced thatwe’re going to have to do evil anyway in order to protect society, there’s nolimit to the evil we will rationalize as necessary to achieve this goodend.  Unrealistic moralizing has as itssequel an amoral realpolitik, falselypresenting itself as the only alternative.

WithCatholics, Anscombe says, this amorality masquerades as an application of theprinciple of double effect.  True, thisprinciple can indeed in some cases justify actions that foreseeably risk harmto civilians, when that harm is not intended and when it is not out ofproportion to the good to be achieved. (For example, it can be justifiable to bomb an enemy military base evenif one foresees, while not intending, that some civilians nearby could bekilled as a result.)

The trouble,Anscombe says, is that people often play fast and loose with the notion of“intention” in order to abuse the principle of double effect.  For example, it would be sheer sophistry foran employee to say that when he helped his boss embezzle from the company, his“intention” was not really to assistin embezzlement, but only to avoid getting fired, so that the action could bejustified by double effect.  Similarly,Anscombe argues, it is sophistry to pretend that the obliteration bombing ofcities does not involve any intentional killing of civilians, but only theintention to end a war earlier.  Anothersophistry involves interpreting what counts as a “combatant” very broadly, soas to try to justify attacks on the civilian population in general.  Anscombe also responds to various other attemptsto rationalize violations of just war criteria.

That, again,is the argument in outline.  Here aresome ways it is relevant today.  We have,on the one hand, some Catholics who appear at least to flirt with pacifism.  Pope Francis said things that implied thatwar could never be just and that traditional teaching on this matter needed tobe rethought, though healso said things that pointed in the other direction.  As with other topics, his teaching on thismatter was simply muddled rather than a clear departure from tradition.  But it was muddled in a way that gives aidand comfort to the first, pacifistic erroneous extreme identified by Anscombe.

On the otherhand, we also have many who go to the opposite extreme criticized by Anscombe,of trying to rationalize unjust harm to civilian populations by abuse of theprinciple of double effect and related sophistries.  For example, this is the case with much ofthe commentary on Israel’s war in Gaza.  Israelcertainly had the right and indeed the duty to retaliate for the diabolicalHamas attack of October 7, 2023, which killed almost 1,200 people.  But many seem to think that this gives Israela blank check to do whatever it likes in Gaza, or at least whatever it likesshort of deliberately targeting civilians. 

That is notthe case.  Yes, traditional just war doctrineholds that it is always immoral deliberately to kill civilians.  But that is by no means all that it says onthe matter.  It also holds that it isimmoral deliberately to destroy civilian property and infrastructure, andthereby to make normal civilian life impossible.  To be sure, it holds too that it can, by theprinciple of double effect, sometimes be permissible to carry out militaryactions that put civilian lives and property at risk, where such risk is not intended but simply foreseen.  But it also holds that this harm must not be out of proportion to thegood that one hopes to secure by way of such military action.

ThroughoutGaza, however, civilian property and infrastructure have been largely destroyed,and ordinary life made impossible.  The resultinghumanitarian crisis has been steadily worsening.  Casualty numbers in Gaza are hotly disputed,but they are undeniably high.  According toa recent report:

Almost 84,000 people died in Gaza between October 2023 andearly January 2025 as a result of the Hamas-Israel war, estimates the firstindependent survey of deaths.  More thanhalf of the people killed were women aged 18-64, children or people over 65,reports the study.

Suppose for thesake of argument that the true number is half of that, or even just one thirdof that.  That would still be extremelyhigh.  Such loss of life, destruction ofbasic infrastructure, and making of ordinary civilian life impossible are outof proportion to the evil Israel is retaliating against.  And this is putting aside the awfulconditions under which Gazans have been living for years, and the allegationsof cases where civilians have been deliberately targeted during the currentwar.  These too are hotly disputedmatters, but the point is that even if wedon’t factor them in, Israeli action in Gaza seems clearly disproportionateand thus not justifiable by the principle of double effect. 

There isalso the sophistry some commit of pretending that if a civilian sympathizeswith Hamas, he is morally on a par with a combatant and may be treated as such.  And then there is the proposal somehave made to dispossess the Gazans altogether, which would only add a further,massive layer of injustice.

None of thiscan facilitate a long-term solution to the Israel-Palestine problem, but will inevitablygreatly inflame further already high hostility against Israel.  A commitment to preserving the basic preconditionsof ordinary civilian life for Israelisand Palestinians alike is both morally required by just war criteria, and aprecondition to any workable modus vivendi.