"... it is essential not to lose sight of the moral dimension of war..."

"... it is essential not to lose sight of the moral dimension of war, and the lengths to which Christian and later secular thinkers have gone over the centuries to limit and restrict the waging of war.  For well over a thousand years there has been a doctrine and Christian definition of what constitutes a just war.  This just-war tradition developed in the fourth century with Ambrose and Augustine but grew to maturity with Thomas Aquinas and such Late Scholastics as Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suarez.  The requirements for a just war varied to some extent from commentator to commentator, but those who wrote on the subject share some basic principles.  The war in Iraq did not even come close to satisfying them. 

First, there has to be an initial act of aggression, in response to which a just war may be waged.  But there was no act of aggression against the United States.  We are 6,000 miles from Iraq.  The phony stories we were told about unmanned drones coming to get us were, to say the least, not especially plausible. 

Second, diplomatic solutions had not been exhausted. They had hardly been tried.

Traditional just-war criteria also demand that the initiation of war be undertaken by the proper authority.  Under the U.S. Constitution, the proper authority is neither the president nor the United Nations.  It is Congress - but Congress unconstitutionally delegated its decision-making power over war to the president." -Pages 22 & 23 of The Revolution, A Manifesto