"... 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

"My message is one of freedom and individual rights."

"My message is one of freedom and individual rights.  I believe individuals have a right to life and liberty and that physical aggression should be used only defensively.  We should respect each other as rational beings by trying to achieve our goals through reason and persuasion rather than threats and coercion.  That, and not a desire for "economic efficiency," is the primary moral reason for opposing government intrusions into our lives: government is force, not reason. 

People seem to think I am speaking of principles foreign to the Republic tradition. But listen to the words of Robert A. Taft, who in the old days of the Republican Party was once its standard-bearer:

"When I say liberty I do not simply mean what is referred to as "free enterprise." I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and to live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they want to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world; liberty of every local community to decide how its children shall be educated, how its local services shall be run, and who its local leaders shall be; liberty of a man to choose his own occupation; and liberty of a man to run his own business as he thinks it ought to be run, as long as he does not interfere with the right of other people to do the same thing."

As we'll see in a later chapter, Taft was also an opponent of needless wars and of unconstitutional presidential war-making. THIS is the Republican tradition to which I belong."  -Page 5 and 6 of The Revolution, A Manifesto