The Choice of War: The Iraq War and the Just War Tradition

In this book, Albert Weeks, a longtime scholar of military affairs and the Cold War, weaves together the tradition of just war and current events in an effort to show how the time-honored concepts of jus ad bellum, or justice of war, and jus in bello, or justice in war, apply to the current U.S. military involvement in Iraq.
This timely analysis of President George W. Bush's foreign policy deals with the cornerstone of his first and second administrations - the war on terror, as implemented in Afghanistan, Iraq, and on the preventive front at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with well-noted spillover effects at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. He discusses NSS 2002, the national security statement that became the blueprint for the Bush Doctrine, and he explains the differences and similarities between preventive and preemptive war. He also explores reasons given by the administration to the American people for the necessity of the March 2003 invasion. Finally, he analyzes the conduct of the war (jus in bello), the occupation, and the post-occupation phases of the conflict.

Albert L. Weeks, formerly professor of international affairs at New York University (1961-1989), teaches politics and foreign policy at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL.