Cynical twists that make wars unjust

The dodgy deals and human shields of a past war still disgust George Pitcher, who questions if just war criteria remain fit for today.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A destroyed airliner lies on the apron of a war-torn airport.

A destroyed British Airways plane at Kuwait airport in 1991.

USN, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

In the very early hours of Thursday 17th January 1991, I was despatched as a young journalist on The Observer to the dealing rooms of Smith New Court, a worthy firm of stockbrokers in the City of London, to witness how the markets reacted to the outbreak of the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

A yellowing newspaper cutting shows I reported that, a little before 8am, Smith New Court’s chairman, Sir Michael Richardson watched prime minister John Major declare war on a TV monitor and then said:

“I had a nudge on the political line a little early, so I’ve been up all night. We have to keep things tightly under control.”

He did indeed say those words, but it’s not the whole story. Walking up to him on the dealing floor, I asked how we were positioned in the markets for war. Mistaking me for one of his dealers, my notes showed that he replied:

"Number 10 called me last night, so we could adjust our positions in oil. So we should be okay.”

It was a magnificent example of insider-dealing, in collusion with the government. A few minutes later a Smith New Court PR woman ran up to me to say that Sir Michael hadn’t meant that and even if he’d said it, I was a guest on the floor and everything said there was confidential.

Kuwait was always about oil. This was an insight into where the UK’s political and financial priorities lay. Richardson had been at the heart of Margaret Thatcher’s Government as an unofficial adviser to the Treasury. This was his dividend. Eventually he was to lose his dealing licence for making unsafe loans to an American entrepreneur. He died in 2003.

I’m reminded of this story today, Thursday 21st September, the United Nations’ International Day of Peace, because it reminds me of where governments’ priorities really lie, because these are the priorities that invariably threaten peace.

And it matters because over 300 people on board were subjected to unimaginable suffering as “human-shield” hostages.

I’m also reminded that only last week passengers and crew aboard British Airways Flight 149 are preparing legal action against the government for being treated as “disposal collateral”, as the aircraft was used to plant special forces in Kuwait in the early hours of 2nd August 1990, as Iraqi forces crossed the border.

Their claim is that the UK government and BA have “concealed and denied the truth for more than 30 years". The issue has come to a head now because documents released in 2021 show that the Foreign Office was warned of the invasion an hour before the plane touched down.

And it matters because over 300 people on board were subjected to unimaginable suffering as “human-shield” hostages over the following five months.

These stories have a common thread. Smith New Court, with the government’s help, was about money. The government, with BA’s help, was about protecting its Kuwait oil reserves. It’ll be proven that the lives of innocent people mattered much less against these priorities, if they win their case.

That should make us very angry indeed. The sheer hypocrisy of rhetoric that spoke of defending the people of Kuwait is one thing. The idea that they could simultaneously serve God and Mammon is quite another.

But it may be that just-war criteria have failed to keep up with the motivations of global late-capitalism.

The principles of the “just war” have enjoyed a long tradition in Christian thought. The foundations that were laid in the classical Greek school by the likes of Aristotle were built upon to provide a moral architecture for armed conflict by the Italian Dominican friar and philosopher Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century.

The just war tradition distils into two sets of criteria: jus ad bellum (the right to go to war) and jus in bello (right conduct within war). The former set contains consideration of “just cause” and rules out war as a simple means of recapturing things or punishing people who have done wrong. The second includes matters of proportionality. By these clauses, combatants must ensure that harm caused to civilians or civilian property is not excessive in relation to military advantages gained.

In the second war with Iraq, an adventure that prime minister Tony Blair started with US president George W Bush in 2003, neither of these criteria arguably were met, along with others besides. To paraphrase Wilde, they knew the price of oil and values counted for nothing.

But it may be that just-war criteria have failed to keep up with the motivations of global late-capitalism. Economic dependence on oil is now more usually something we hear about in the context of the green movement’s war on the climate crisis. Dependence on oil actually has a firmer grip on political control of the cost of living in western democracies.

These are not issues that occurred to hot-shot stockbrokers playing war games in 1991, nor to a privatised national airline allegedly being requisitioned for military purposes. But it’s surely not too much to hope that the senior actors in either instance should have summoned at least a religious folk memory to say: No, this isn’t right.

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Death & life

10 September 2024

4 min read

A covering of feathers for the terrors of the night

How to struggle with the burden of other people's suffering.

Katherine Amphlett

Katherine is a counsellor based in the West Midlands.

Evie S. on Unsplash.

It’s one of the sad facts of life: that many of us at some point will see our parents get old and fade away. Sigh. It doesn’t matter how well prepared you are or how much you’ve thought about it before hand, the reality of a fragile mum or an exhausted dad can break your heart.

I’ve talked to my parents about this for years here and there. We’ve done lots of joking about seeing them off with a pink pill in the sherry, or ‘it’ll be a pillow for you Pa, if you’re too annoying’ – type thing. But when they left after Sunday lunch a couple of weeks ago, I had to clutch my husband. He lost his own mother last year… we’re still fluttering around the gap she’s left in our family. And now there’s my beloved olds too, looking diminished and moth eaten and moving at crepuscular speed. Ask Dad how he is these days, and he says ‘Old, dear’, and won’t elaborate further.

I can cope with this when it’s in short bursts. Visiting them for lunch or taking them out on a trip is OK and manageable, and there is still joy in family occasions. Mum’s birthday was full of love, even though she took all afternoon to open her cards and became hopelessly confused about who’d given her what.

But staying with them… that’s hard. Seeing the dust thick over the spare room; worrying about just how long that bowl of leftovers has been in the fridge. I whip about as unobtrusively as I can, scrubbing the bottom of the washing up bowl or putting their jerseys in a wash. I don’t want to be annoying – they won’t accept help and I’m not going to push – but it makes me sad. In particular I hate that my mum is in constant pain from crumbling bones, and that dementia has stolen her mind. Also, that as a consequence, Dad is irritable with her; he who has always adored her so much.

I could picture them vividly, the feathers, soft and heavy and beautifully patterned like an owl’s, and imagine I was peering out through them at Mum’s pain.

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Since childhood, I have struggled with the burden of other people’s suffering. I sometimes wonder if I’m exaggerating when I think about how much I mind, but I don’t think I am. I can only manage if I’m really ready for it. With my counselling clients that takes the form of very firm boundaries, regular supervision, colleagues to talk to etc… but with family it’s much harder. It’s just your own naked, soft-bodied self-shrinking from all the nettles and thorns – like a hermit crab without a shell.

So when I went down to Mum and Dad’s this time, I felt the need to prepare. ‘Put on the armour of light,’ St Paul says, which sounds just the thing. I hardly slept last time, tossing and wriggling through small-hour horrors with my neck hurting and a feeling of tears not being far away. What to arm myself with though?

The answer came in the form of an ancient poem - Psalm 91. I was listening to a Premier Radio presenter who is a pastor – a big, tattooed fellow with rings in his nose and lip – and he said it was his main defence when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. So, I looked it up, and I loved it. It was all about how the Lord will cover you with his wings and keep you safe from the terrors that visit in the night and the pestilence that stalks by day, or words to that effect.

Malcolm Guite (a poet and priest whose writing I love) says you have to treat Psalm 91 with care: it was the one Satan tempted Christ within the wilderness, challenging him to throw himself from the temple roof and God would send his angels to catch him (as it says in the psalm). It’s not to be taken literally, this psalm: you can’t deliberately put yourself in harm’s way and expect to be immune because you’re a Christian, like some of the vehement anti-vaxxers around the world who think faith alone will protect them from lethal diseases. But the message is that if you put your trust in God, he won’t let you be damaged in any important or lasting way by the evils of the world.

I memorised as much of it as I could. And then when I woke in the night – inevitably – with the dread hovering over me, I kept thinking, ‘The Lord will cover thee with his feathers’. I could picture them vividly, the feathers, soft and heavy and beautifully patterned like an owl’s, and imagine I was peering out through them at Mum’s pain and muddliness and Dad’s frustration and my own fear. They were like malevolent ghosts drifting through the dark, menacing and cruel. But Mum and Dad and I, our actual selves, were curled up safely, warm and hidden with the great wings over us.

And eventually, I was able to go back to sleep.