Why Is It So Difficult To Find A "Just War" In History?

I gave more thought to Edwwrd Feser's implicit conclusion that I linked in yesterday's post, that no war can be a just war. If that's the case, this would support my tentative view that "just war" doctrine is a category error, "a semantic or ontological error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category, or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property." If no war can be just by its nature, why are we complaining that any particular war is unjust?

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Can you find any wars in history that clearly fit just war criteria?" It answered,

In political philosophy and moral theology, no historical conflict perfectly satisfies all Just War criteria because real-world battlefield actions invariably breach the strict ethical requirements of wartime conduct.

But it then proceeded to give three partial examples, the Allied defensive response in World War II, the 1991 Gulf War, and the 1982 Falklands War. I'm going to leave the latter two aside, because "victories" in both wars weren't lasting solutions: in less than ten years, the US had to refight the Gulf War, and Argentina is currently renewing its claim to the Falklands, while the UK is no longer able to defend them as they barely did in 1982. In addition, Trump won't support the UK now as Reagan did then.

World War II is a different matter. It looks very much as though it's taken on a world imaginative centrality equivalent to the Trojan War, and it presents a real challenge to the "just war" paradigm, which proponents seriously try to address. For instance, I found an abstract of a scholarly article, The last good war?: The lingering impact of World War II epistemology and ontology in conflict and popular culture:

World War II generated a series of now-defunct assumptions about how war is produced, fought, and ended. However problematic these assumptions, they have been replicated in popular cultural representations of war – from Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan through to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker – illustrating their tenacity and hold on the contemporary imagination. In reality, military epistemology and ontology must move forward to embrace complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty in contemporary conflict, recognizing the elusive and illusory search for fixed solutions.

Postmodernism to the rescue! Nevertheless, on May 25, a matter of weeks, the History Channel will begin a major new series, World War II with Tom Hanks, 20 episodes featuring the star of Saving Private Ryan re-expressing what must certainly be a consensus popular view of Hitler and Tojo as bad guys, Roosevelt and Churchill wearing white hats. In the view of intellectial elites, these are now-defunct assumptions that for whatever reason won't go away.

I noted yesterday that Vice President Vance cited two episodes of the World War II narrative, the liberation of France and the Nazi death camps, as a counterargument to Pope Leo's assertaion that God doesn't support those who make war, and they're in fact a powerful argument, which is why they're not yet defunct. I linked one "just war" response yesterday, a professor of Catholic theology reminding us that the Church condemned the conduct of total war in World War II such as obliteration bombing of cities.

The response of "just war" theorists would be that killing innocent civilians in cases like the firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo, or the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is intrinsically evil, and to try to justify those cases on the basis that they forced the Nazis and the Japanese militarists to surrender is, as Bp Conley put it in my link on Tuesday, a "consequentialist, utilitarian argument. . . But Catholics cannot accept such arguments."

But the popular World War II paradigm of Tom Hanks vs the bad guys prevails, and in fact one of the conditions for "just war" in CCC 2309 is "the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated". I asked Chrome AI mode, "Is the just war condition that the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated a utilitarian argument?" Sometimes AI is just plain on point. It answered,

Yes, this specific condition—known as the criterion of proportionality in Just War Theory—is fundamentally a utilitarian argument.

Why it is Utilitarian:

Consequence-Based: It judges the morality of an action entirely by its future outcomes and results.

Cost-Benefit Balance: It requires a direct calculation of the total goodness produced versus the total harm caused.

Aggregated Well-being: It weighs the collective suffering of a population against the political or moral evil of an enemy.

. . . Because of this rule, modern Just War Theory is considered a hybrid system that mixes absolute moral duties with utilitarian calculations.

So CCC 2309 itself -- i e, the Catholic Church -- enjoins us to mix absolute moral duties with utilitarian considerations. Toward the end of World War II, Japanese massacres of civilians in China and elsewhere continued unabated. The death camps in Europe were only revealed in the closing days of the war, and the Red Army's depredations on German civilians as it advanced would have continued as long as Germany didn't surrender. It is generally understood that the firebombing of Dresden in February 1945 was a major factor that showed the Nazis the futility of their position, as did the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for Japan.

In other words, they demonstrably shortened the war. CCC 2309 instructs us to weigh the utilitarian and consequentialist aspects of these attacks in determining how the war met "just war" criteria. Bp Conley is mistaken if he claims that Catholics can't think this way, but he seems to be influenced by Edward Feser or others who share Feser's views in condemning "consequentialism".

Prof Feser has far less excuse in condemning "consequentialism" in "just war" theory, because he's supposed to be teaching students to use precise language and clear reasoning in his philosophy classes -- but I learned a long time ago what happens to students who learn a little too well. Those in his classes, frankly, have my sympathy. He apparently teaches ethics, but I'm not sure if he'd pass an undergradute course anywhere but at Pasadena City College.

But let's take another episode from World War II to tease out another problem in "just war" theory. This post in r/Catholicsm at Reddit raises an intriguing issue:

Going from Augustine to Aquinas to the Thomistic school of Salamanca forward, it seems that no War in history could be said to live up to these requirements.

The closest thing I can think of are a few rare situations where nations surrendered according to Just War's requirements, ie Denmark surrendering to the Nazis when no chance of military victory was conceivable.

I went looking for more information, and I learned that Denmark surrendered to Germany within six hours of its 1940 invasion, which was made simply to give Germany access to Norway. The Danish foreign minister, Erik Scavenius, who became prime minister during the occupation, devised a collaboration policy, samarbejdspolitikken, which had the utilitarian function of minimizing military deaths, since it avoided futile heroics, and preserved quality of life for civilians, who in return for non-resistance received relatively generous treatment from the occupiers.

In fact, occasional British air attacks on Copenhagen seem to have caused more civilian casualties than any German actions. The queston is, of course, why "just war" theorists favor the Danish reponse to Hitler more than, say, that of the French, who finally embraced the same strategy of surrender and collaboration. After all, CCC 2309 says "there must be serious prospects of success"-- if there aren't, surrender and collaborate, right?

But the French executed Pierre Laval, Joseph Darnand, Fernand de Brinon, Pierre Pucheu, and Robert Brasillach for collaboration; Philippe Pétain was sentenced to death but had the sentence commuted to life in prison. 37 Norwegians were executed during the legal purge (landssvikoppgjøret) after World War II for collaborating with the German occupation, including Vidkun Quisling. But although a number of lower-level Danes were prosecuted, and some executed, for collaboration after the war, neither Erik Scavenius nor other high-level figures who devised and advocated the overall collaboration strategy was prosecuted, much less executed.

According to Wikipedia,

Debate continues over [Scavenius's] legacy, and he remains one of the most controversial figures in the history of Danish politics. For example, on the 60th anniversary of the 29 August dissolution of government, prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen chastised his predecessor for his stance, saying that it was naive and morally unacceptable. However, historians like Bo Lidegaard and Søren Mørch contend that it was only through Scavenius's policies that Denmark escaped the worst hardships of the war.

Thus, there are several problems with application of "just war" criteria in cases like Denmark, even if some people feel it correctly followed the principle of "serious prospects of success". In return for German leniency it simply allowed the Wehrmacht to pass straight through Denmark to invade its neighbor Norway, where conditions under occupation were much worse. More importantly, it solved the limited moral dilemma posed by CCC 2309 and other "just war" principles, but it simply ignored the overall problem of World War II, which was a world problem.

What we're beginning to see in trying to find wars that in any way can be considered "just" according to "just war" criteria is that the only remotely clear-cut cases involve highly specific circumstances that either exist in unique, remote environments, like the Falklands War, or circumstances that are actually just temporary and limited solutions to larger problems that aren't resolved, such as the 1991 Gulf War or Denmark's capitulation to Germany.

The nature of war is so complex and so thoroughly bound up with human nature -- again, the Old Testament gives ample illustration of this -- that trying to apply half a dozen or so general principles to determine whether a war is somehow "just", when even "just war" theorists despair of ever finding a clear example of such a thing, strikes me as a naive and feckless effort. I'm more and more inclined to believe it's a category error.

“Was God On The Side Of The Americans Who Liberated France From The Nazis?"

This is one of the questions Vice President Vance, a Catholic, posed to Pope Leo's assertion that God is "never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs." Vance continued, "Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps?” In effect, he was asking Leo if there can ever be a "just war" under "just war doctrine", because this is actually a key question. By and large, "just war" theorists suggest not. The Jesuit America Magazine reaassured its readers in reporting this exchange:

But Vincent J. Miller, the Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton in Ohio, said that the Catholic Church actually does not take an unqualified view of the warfare that took place in World War II.

“The Church condemned the conduct of total war in World War II such as obliteration bombing of cities,” he pointed out.

There you have it; World War II was not a just war. Take that, J D Vance! But Catholic "just war" theology, taken this way, is a bait and switch. Let's take Edward Pentin's review of a January interview given by Edward Feser on the question of whether the US removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro meets "just war" principles:

A military operation to remove President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela could have been justified on just war principles, but the way in which the Trump administration has so far executed it actually violates the ancient criteria.

. . . Taken together, Feser believes the lack of clear just cause, inadequate planning, questionable motives, and constitutional concerns mean that, while such a war could be just in theory, this particular operation falls short of just war standards.

Pentin goes on to quote the entire interview, which begins:

Professor Feser, could the recent US operation to remove President Nicolas Maduro be justified in any way according to just war principles in your view?

The first thing to say is that we have to draw a distinction between the question “Could a U.S. operation of some kind to remove Maduro be justified on just war principles?” and the question “Is the particular way the Trump administration has actually gone about this justifiable by just war principles?” The answer to the first question is Yes, but the answer to the second question is No.

So, what are the specific defects of the operation that make it unjust?

[C]ertain conditions have to be met. For one thing, there must be a realistic hope of success, which includes a well thought out plan to ensure that the government that replaces the tyrant is actually a significant improvement, and that the country being liberated is not plunged into violent chaos.

. . . The question, then, is whether and how a transition to a significantly more just government is going to occur. And the Trump administration has been vague about that.

Let's return to the point I've been making about the CCC 2309: it places the responsibility for evaluating "just war" conditions on the civic authorities, not philosophy professsors. To begin with, war plans are necessarily confidential, and while it might be reassuring to review those plans, there's no requirement that the civic authorities disclose them. He gioes farther afield as well:

Another serious problem is that the rhetoric from some in the administration, and from some of its defenders, goes well beyond anything that could be justified even in principle by just war criteria. For example, there has for over a year now been talk about annexing Greenland, and the president has explicitly refused to rule out military action as a way of doing this. But military action against Greenland, or even just the threat of it as a negotiating tactic, is manifestly contrary to just war doctrine. It would be naked aggression, nothing more than gangsterism.

Wait a moment. We were talking specifically about the operation in Venezuela, but now he's brought Greenland into the question. We haven't invaded Greenland, there's no war there for us to inquire as to its justice, but he's somehow linked it to whether the Maduro operation was just.

Because the president and some of his allies so freely engage in this sort of irresponsible rhetoric, it is very hard to take seriously the suggestion that they are concerned to act justly where war is concerned.

In other words, a good part of the problem is that Trump is Trump. Let's just allow that reasonable people can differ over Trump, but then we run up against the problem of moral certainty. Those evaluating "just war" condiitons must be morally certain of their conclusions, which for Feser and other "just war" theorists leaves much less room for disagreement: it's right vs wrong.

This view was well represented in standard pre-Vatican II manuals of moral theology. For example, in their Moral Theology: A Complete Course, Fr. John McHugh and Fr. Charles Callan write that “the government may not declare war, unless it is morally certain that right is on its side . . . one should refrain from hostilities as long as one’s moral right is uncertain.” Fr. Austin Fagothey’s Right and Reason holds that “not only must the nation’s cause be just, but it must be known to be just . . . one must be sure of a just cause before fighting.”

. . . Exactly what degree of certainty is required, and why does the tradition require it? Both questions are best answered by way of stock examples. Suppose a hunter considers firing into some bushes. On standard natural law thinking, he may do so only if he is certain there is no other hunter behind them. If he considers it merely probable that there is no one behind them and fires anyway, he is guilty of wrongdoing, even if he doesn’t hit anyone. For his action was reckless. Or consider a jury deciding whether to sentence an accused murderer to be executed. They may not do so if they think it merely probable that he is guilty (as opposed to being certain “beyond a reasonable doubt” that he is guilty).

But both of his examples are absurd. A hunter never just "considers firing into some bushes". There are legal and ethical constraints that govern why he's in the field at all that go far beyond whether sonmeone might be behind some bushes; the question of whether someone probably is not behind the bushes is absurdly remote. This is simply an inapt example that clarifies nothing. The example of a murder jury is just as bad: juries deliberate based on highly circumscribed rules of evidence and instructions, and their verdict must be unanimous.

Wartime decisions by their nature aren't based on the level of evidence needed in murder trials, they're seldom unanimous, and in spite of the moral certainty juries must have, verdicts are reversed. We're in mushy territory here, and Feser knows this.

To forestall misunderstandings, note that the claim is not that governing authorities must have absolute or metaphysical certainty (of the kind we have when we know, for example, that 1 + 1 = 2). Nor does the tradition claim that we need to have certainty about every aspect of a war. We need to be morally certain only that a proposed war meets all just war criteria . . . one of the criteria of a just war is that “there must be serious prospects of success” (as the Catechism puts it). Hence, governing authorities don’t need to be certain of the success. However, they do need to be certain that there are serious prospects of success.

"Well, doggone, I thought we had serious prospects of success, I'd have bet my life on it. But I guess we didn't, huh? At least I don't need to go to confession over it!" Feser has said nothing useful here, and he concludes by citing Elizabeth Anscombe, whose position is absurd:

In her essay “War and Murder,” Elizabeth Anscombe adds another important consideration. Pacifism, she argues quite firmly, is not a morally serious position. . . . [But war] involves an unusually high number of occasions in which innocent lives might be put at risk, in which combatants will be tempted to put those lives at risk, and in which they might realistically get away with doing so. Consequently, though there can be such a thing as a just war, in practice, Anscombe judges, “wars have mostly been mere wickedness on both sides” and “the probability is that warfare is injustice.”

Put briefly, pacifism isn't a morally serious position, but no wars are just. So, why are we wasting our time debating just war theory? Rabbi Pesach Wolicki provides a possible answer in the YouTube discussion below, in which he expands on some remarks by Sam Harris on why contemporary leftism and Islamism agree on so many key issues:

Both Marxist political ideology and Islamist political ideology are structured around the rejection of what I call Biblical civilization that says human beings have inheent dignity, . . . that good and evil are real and objective, that power is accountable to a moral standard above itself. Marxism rejects that, because it's atheist. So there's no transcendent moral standard if you're a Marxist. . . . Islamism rejects it, because it insists that the only legitimate authority is Allah, and human beings have no standing to assess the value of a particular act or a particular idea.

They have no ability to make law or hold power accountable on human terms, so they end up in the same place. So when Mamdani as a Democratic Socialist of America and Islamist aligneed organizations like CAIR, when they find themselves on the same side, it's not just strategy, it's that they're both operating in frameworks that are structurally hostile to the same thing, which is the concept of human liberty and objective morality and Biblical Wesern civilization. . . . They don't need to agree on the theology, but they agree on the enemy.

What I've begun to notice is that there's a third strain that's effectively aligned with Marxism and Islamism, and that's the current "just war" apologists who are effectively setting up conditions where no war will meet their exceedingly rigorous criteria -- and indeed, as Feser does above, they're effectively acknowledging this. But the key war, or wars, that they're objecting to are the joint US-Israeli actions against Iran, which is the main exponent of radical Islamism.

Why is this? I think it goes to Rabbi Wolicki's idea of Biblical civilization, but of course, since he's a rabbi, the Bible he's referring to is the Old Testament. I've noted in the past that if any collection of ancient philosophy contradicts "just war" theory, it's the Old Testament, where in cases like the Cities of the Plain, the Siege of Jericho, the Amalekites, the Midianites, and the Canaanites, whole populations are slaughtered in gross violation of "just war" theory.

The reason for those violations, of course, is that those groups were messing with Israel or the Almighty Himself. But as I've also noted here, Rabbi Wolicki raises the eschatological problem of modern Israel: Israel has emerged as a modern nation-state in borders corresponding to Old Testament Israel, with the same Jewish people returning to it as prophesied in the Hebrew Scripture. And it's acting in its own defense in ways corresponding to the ways enjoined by the Almighty for the ancient state.

This is a conundrum that won't go away, on one hand. On the other, "just war" theorists are effectively arguing that, since as a practical matter, no war is just, which we saw Feser acknowledge just above, there's no possible way Israel can be justified in taking military action in its own interest, or indeed, the Almighty's interest, even though there's plenty of justification in the Old Testsment.

So as I've asked before, why do we need an Old Testament if we have natural law? One reason is that natural law proves no war is just, when the Old Testament suggests things aren't actually like that.

"Just War 101"

Bishop Conley on just war doctrine: "One could make [a] consequentialist, utilitarian argument... But Catholics cannot accept such arguments. There are certain standards for which we stand, regardless of consequences. Period." https://t.co/rAxvCp4uwE

— Edward Feser (@FeserEdward) May 11, 2026

Edward Feser recommends an essay at the National Catholic Register by Bishop of Lincoln, NE James Conley, Just War 101: Catholic Teaching for a Dangerous Moment. It claims to be a review of Catholic "Just War doctrine", but its statement of this doctrine, even as it cites the Catechism, is seriously incomplete, and I think it also has several problems of both focus and logic.

Let's take the biggest problem of logic first. He cites the case of Father George Zabelka, "a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force [who] served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

In August of 1945, he was called upon to give the crew of the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a blessing for their safety. This was an action that he had routinely performed hundreds of times, if not thousands. In fact, priests are called upon to bestow blessings for a variety of reasons. Blessing people is one of the gifts we priests are privileged to perform.

But not long afterward, he counseled an airman who had flown a reconaissance flight over Nagasaki and witnessed the terrible suffering of the civilians who'd been burned in that blast.

Over the next 20 years, Father Zabelka gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This has me puzzled. Bp Conley says Fr Zabelka had blessed bomber crews hundreds, if not thousands of times. He was assigned to Tinian, where the B-29s that dropped the nuclear bombs were based. Tinian was one of the bases from which conventional firebomb raids on Japan were conducted throughout the final year of the war. In fact, if he blessed bomber crews hundreds of times during his assignment there, we may surmise he likely blessed the crews of the B-29s that participated in Operation Meetinghouse, on the night of March 9–10, 1945. This raid on Tokyo

constitute[d] the single most destructive aerial bombing raid in human history. Sixteen square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.

. . . With over half of Tokyo's industry spread out among residential and commercial neighborhoods, the firebombing cut the city's industrial output in half. Some modern post-war analysts have called the raids a war crime due to the mass targeting of civilian infrastructure and ensuing large-scale loss of civilian life.

In fact, firebombing raids of Japanese cities were routine from mid-1944. Bp Conley strongly implies that Fr Zabelka had no problem blessing the hundreds of bomber crews that conducted these raids, and he began to question US strategy only after hearing of the suffering following the Nagasaki attack, but this misrepresents Fr Zabelka's actual stance, which was complete non-violence. In any case, the bomber crews who conducted the Meetinghouse raid were just as aware of what happened to civilians as the airman who'd flown over Nagasaki:

As the bombers passed over the target area and opened their bomb bay doors to unleash their payload, many of the crews were met with a sickening odor. Maynard David, a bombardier, recalled that, “when the bomb bay doors opened, the plane filled with smoke from the ground and we smelled this horrible odor. We closed the bomb bay doors after we dropped and headed to sea. The odor was still so strong in the plane that the pilot ordered me to open the doors again to let the fresh air in. You could only imagine what was going on down below us.” The odor, of course, was the smell of burning human flesh. Such were the casualties on the ground that the smell would permeate the airplanes and the flight suits of the crews for days after the raid.

Although Bp Conley doesn't mention this, Fr Zabelka eventually came to condemn the conventional firebomb raids as well, but this was part of a journey that actually took him away from Catholic just war theory:

In August 1980 Sojourners magazine published an extensive interview with Zabelka, titled “I was brainwashed. They told me it was necessary.” In the interview, he described the process of his conversion from a hard-core belief in the moral validity of Christian Just war theory as a viable moral option for a disciple of Jesus to instead making a full-fledged and public commitment to the nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels.

In the interview, he effectively acknowledges that he did bless the crews that firebombed Tokyo, but this was because he'd been misled by just war theory into thinking this was OK, and he'd left just war theory behind; just war theory was incorrect from the start, because it did tolerate civilian suffering under certain circumstances. In a 1985 speech, he said,

For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie.

War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.

So it's at best incongruous for Bp Conley to cite Fr Zabelka if he wants us to understand Catholic just war doctrine -- Fr Zabelka thinks the Church's Magisterium is in error here. But in addition, Bp Conley's explanation of the Church's teaching in the Catechism is incomplete and thus misleading. He correctly cites CCC 2309's four conditions for just war:

(1) The damage inflicted by the aggressor must be lasting, grave, and certain
(2) All other means of putting an end to it must have shown to be impractical or ineffective
(3) There must be serious prospects of success
(4) The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated (the principle of proportionality)

But he leaves out CCC 2309's key conclusion, "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good." On one hand, Fr Zabelka explicitly rejects this aspect of Church teaching, although he died in 1992, before CCC was published -- but if he knew of it, he'd say, as he said above, "This is a lie." There's no legitimate way either the Church or civil authorities can evalate the conditions for "just war", there's no such thing.

But the actual teaching of the Church places the responsibility for evaluating the moral conditions of just war on civil authorities, using their prudential judgment. Edward Feser, who recommends Conley's essay in his tweet embedded above, says of prudential judgment:

In contemporary debates in Catholic moral theology, a distinction is often drawn between actions that are flatly ruled out in principle and those whose permissibility or impermissibility is a matter of prudential judgment.

. . . The more complicated and variable the circumstances, the more difficult it can be to decide on a single correct answer and thus the greater the scope for reasonable disagreement.

. . . Abortion and euthanasia are flatly prohibited in all circumstances because they violate the negative precept “Do not murder.” But principles like “Pay a living wage” or “Ensure health care for all” are affirmative precepts, and how best to apply them to concrete circumstances is highly dependent on various complex and contingent economic considerations. There can be no reasonable disagreement among Catholics about whether abortion and euthanasia should be illegal. But there can be reasonable disagreement among them about whether a certain specific minimum wage law is a good idea, or which sort of economic arrangements provide the best way to secure health coverage for all.

The same point can be made about other contemporary controversies, mutatis mutandis.

I'm a little troubled that Bp Conley uses the word "prudential" only once in his essay, and not in the context of the specific designation in CCC 2309, which places the responsibility for evaluating the moral conditions for just war within the prudential judgment of civic authorities. The meaning of CCC 2309's statement as Prof Feser would explain it is clear: these are matters on which reasonable people can disagree; indeed, they're matters on which people can be mistaken. But Feser endorses Bp Conley's pronouncement: "There are certain standards for which we stand, regardless of consequences. Period."

As I read this, Bp Conley is trying to place "just war" theory in territory where certain actions are ruled out in principle -- "period" -- when the Church's teaching explicitly places the evaluation of these actions within prudential judgment. In fact, Bp Conley cites a thinker on "just war" theory whose criticism says the Church is explicitly wrong to place evaluation of moral conditions within prudential judgment -- except that the Church in CCC 2309 does explicitly teach this.

So all I can conclude is that Bp Conley's understanding of Fr Zabelka is imperfect; Fr Zabelka in fact rejects the Church's teaching on "just war", which makes him an odd authority to cite in support of it, especially when he claims to be explaining "Just War 101". But it also suggests that both Conley and Feser are trying to move an argument against the Iran war into territory where certain actions are ruled out in principle, when the Church's teaching makes it clear that they are matters on which reasonable people can disagree.

Why are they doing this? Bp Conley on one hand simply may not be familiar with Fr Zabelka's full career, but I call logical inconsistency on Feser, who after all is a philosophy professor. I'll try to get into this tomorrow if nothing intervenes.

The Spencer Pratt Fantasy

🚨 JUST IN: LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt announces Los Angeles criminals and homeless degenerates will have 2-3 WEEKS after he gets into office before MASS ARRESTS ensue

"First 3 weeks: signups, no nakedness, no drug use, no robbing, no dog abuse."

Love this guy MORE AND… pic.twitter.com/exoqW3j28e

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 10, 2026

I'm seeing a lot of wild predictions about Spencer Pratt's electoral chances with very little backup -- most of it is just an adrenaline rush following laast week's ads, the most visible of which didn't come from his campaign. Here's Tyler Durden yesterday:

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, best known for his role on MTV’s The Hills, is gaining traction on online prediction markets, including Polymarket and Kalshi, as well as local polling, after a series of viral campaign videos and last week’s mayoral debate.

Pratt’s campaign has released hard-hitting viral ads that have spread across social media like wildfire. His election odds are rising as voters realize that the far-left incumbent, Mayor Karen Bass, and socialist Councilmember Nithya Raman have transformed one of America’s top cities into a cesspool of crime, chaos, drugs, and out-of-control taxes.

But LA has been LA a lot longer than just the past four years. There was mild hope for some sort of reform in the 2022 election, when developer Rick Caruso, a former Republican who changed his registration to Democrat, ran against Karen Bass for the open mayor's seat:

Real estate developer Rick Caruso's campaign strategy in the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral election is being critically re-evaluated after his defeat by Karen Bass, who secured 54.83% of the vote compared to Caruso's 45.17%. The outcome has prompted commentary regarding Caruso's approach, with one social media user, Matt Bilinsky, stating, "And Rick Caruso thought he needed to support every brain dead liberal initiative to best her. An all-time fumble."

. . . During his campaign, Caruso adopted positions that some observers considered aligned with traditionally liberal policies, particularly on issues such as climate change and certain social programs. For instance, he advocated for aggressive measures to combat climate change, including transitioning to 100% renewable energy and electrifying city vehicles. He also proposed expanding mental health services and addressing the root causes of homelessness, alongside his tough-on-crime stance.

The last successful quasi-reform mayor of Los Angeles was Richard Riordan, who was mayor from 1993 to 2001. One of his accomplishments was a ballot initiative to impose term limits on city council members, which passed in 1994. Before that, council members stayed in office for decades, got rich, and died in office. Nevertheless, term limits had no effect on the continuing political machine, which simply continued to put its favored candidates in place, just more often. Other Riordan programs were mostly ineffective:

As Mayor, the heavily Democratic Los Angeles City Council blocked many of his proposals, or they proved unfeasible in reality. For example, the police academy did not have enough classroom space or instructors to train as many new police officers as Riordan had initially promised. He streamlined certain business regulations and established "one-stop" centers around the city for services, like permit applications.

Riordan feuded with police chief Daryl Gates' successor, former Philadelphia police commissioner Willie Williams, but oversaw a general decline in city crime. Ultimately, Riordan replaced Williams with LAPD veteran Bernard Parks in 1997, the year he was re-elected mayor over California State Senator Tom Hayden.

If Spencer Pratt wins the election, he'll face the same problems Riordan did. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Does the Mayor of Los Angeles have the authority to order the police to arrest the homeless?" It answered,

While the Mayor of Los Angeles has the executive authority to set policy and sign ordinances that regulate public spaces, they generally do not have the power to "order" the police to arrest someone simply for being homeless. Instead, legal authority for arrests comes from specific city ordinances and state laws, and law enforcement operations are typically managed by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) under its own chain of command.

The Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department reports directly to the Board of Police Commissioners, not the mayor. This five-member civilian board, appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council, functions as the head of the police department, setting overall policy and overseeing operations.The Chief of Police is appointed by the mayor (with city council consent) and works with the mayor's office on public safety priorities.

The sweeping policy changes Pratt is suggesting in the X tweet at the top of this post wouldn't be possible without the support of the Police Commission.

Police Commissioners serve five-year terms, limited to two terms. While the mayor can fire members of the Polce Commission, a fired member can appeal the mayor's decision to the city council. The council can override the decision with a two-thirds vote. Any attempt by Spencer Pratt to force a crackdown on homelessness as he suggests would face heavy resistance from the current Police Commission and the very liberal city council.

Mark Halperin is another observer who says, "I think Spencer Pratt's going to win. I almost never predict anything, but I think he's going to win, because those videos are just too good." Nevertheless, in the absence of any reliable polls, Polymarket as of today has Bass at 49%, up 1%, Pratt at 30%, up 10%. and Raman at 18%, down 14%. If these were percentages for the June 2 primary results, Pratt would squeak by to put Bass into a runoff, but Bass would still be a heavy favorite in November.

Although Pratt's momentum has surged since last week's debate against Bass and Raman, a second debate scheduled for Wednesday, May 13, won't have the same effect. Bass, still the front runner, has withdrawn from that debate.

Of the five candidates originally invited, three are still slated to appear: Councilwoman Nithya Raman, businessman Adam Miller [1% on Polymarket], and community advocate Rae Huang [1% on Polymarket].

Spencer Pratt had never agreed to appear, while Bass likely sees greater downside if she participates and does as poorly as she did last week.

The most recent polling as of five weeks ago had Bass at 25%, Pratt at 11%, and Raman at 9%, with 40% undecided. According to Ballotpedia,

UCLA's Zev Yaroslavsky writes, "It is unusual for 40% of likely voters to be unsure of their choice just two months before an LA mayoralty election. Although Mayor Bass faces the most challenging reelection of an incumbent mayor in decades, it is highly likely that this election will be decided in a November runoff." The last time an incumbent mayor was not re-elected was in 2005, when Mayor James Hahn lost to Antonio Villaraigosa 58.6%-41.4%.

Spencer Pratt's problem is on one hand, there's not a whole lot of actual subatance there, but on the other, even if he's elected in November in a runoff with Bass, it doesn't seem like he has a realistic chance to put his policies in place. There's a glimmer of hope for him in the possibility that unlike Rick Caruso, the electorate will vote for a candidate who represents a clear-cut choice, but the question remains whether Pratt can follow through and implement real policy changes.

More On What's Bugging Tucker

I ran into a YouTube commentary by an Australian lady more or less at random, but in the middle, she made a point I hadn't seen before: Tucker Carlson's wonderful new Muslim audience is courtesy of state media in certain Islamic countries. I was puzzled at this, because the Arab states are positioned against Iran, which Carlson supports. Poking around farther, I got this response from Chrome AI mode:

Tucker Carlson's content is being broadcast by state media in certain Islamic countries, most notably Iran. Current reporting and social media evidence from early 2026 indicate that the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the country’s state-controlled media, has been airing his interviews dubbed into Persian on its 24-hour news channels. State TV has utilized Carlson's segments to support its own narrative, specifically amplifying his criticisms of Western foreign policy and Israel. Observers note that his commentary often aligns "point for point" with the strategic messaging of the Iranian government.

But that's just AI, I had to do more digging, and I came up with this, from early January of this year:

As Iran’s protest movement intensifies, the Islamic Republic has moved on two tracks at once: cut the country off from the internet while flooding state TV with curated messaging—including Persian-dubbed Tucker Carlson content.

Sources inside Iran are consistent with what outside reporting has captured: when the internet is throttled, IRIB becomes the loudest -— and for many, the only -— national feed. In that information vacuum, clips from Carlson’s interview with Iran’s leadership can be edited into “proof” that the regime is right and its critics are liars.

There can be no question, months later, that Carlson's stance is pro-mullahs and anti-US. The mullahs are at minimum exploiting this:

There is broad commentary and reporting about Carlson’s repeated criticism of Israel and claims he amplifies narratives about Israeli influence in U.S. politics; this has generated strong backlash from pro-Israel voices and analysts.

Why Tehran benefits: Iranian state TV can clip Carlson’s Israel-critical framing and present it as: “Even prominent Americans admit Israel is the problem,” which supports Tehran’s external narrative while it represses dissent at home.

This has been noticed here and there on social media:

Just perfect https://t.co/u1WSFHEGBL

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 8, 2026

But neither legacy nor alt media has picked this up. This is puzzling, because to do this sort of thing is, as Ben Bankas put it in another context, to swim with the sting rays like Steve Irwin.

Let's look at two potentially parallel cases: First, William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, who made pro-Nazi, anti-UK broadcasts from Germany throughout World War II:

Joyce was captured by British forces in northern Germany just as the war ended, tried, and eventually hanged for treason on 3 January 1946. Joyce's defence team, appointed by the court, argued that, as an American citizen and naturalised German, Joyce could not be convicted of treason against the British Crown. However, the prosecution successfully argued that, since he had lied about his nationality to obtain a British passport and voted in Britain, Joyce owed allegiance to the king.

Another is Iva Toguri, one of several English-speaking Japanese women who broadcast propaganda aimed at US troops from Japan during World War II, collectively known as "Tokyo Rose":

After World War II ended in 1945, the U.S. military detained Toguri for a year before releasing her due to lack of evidence. . . . But when Toguri tried to return to the United States, an uproar ensued because Walter Winchell (a powerful broadcasting personality) and the American Legion lobbied relentlessly for a trial, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to renew its investigation of Toguri's wartime activities. Her 1949 trial resulted in a conviction on one of eight counts of treason.

She was fined $10,000 and sentenced to ten years in prison, but paroled after six. During the 1970s, investigative reporters uncoovered numerous irregularities in the trial, and President Ford gave her a full pardon in 1977.

This suggests that people who broadcast support for US warrtime enemies in particular face at best unpredictable consequences. Jane Fonda never suffered legal consequences for posing on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun in 1972, but it tarnished her reputation as "Hanoi Jane", something no public figure presumably wants. It appears that Tucker Carlson's son Buckley, who had what appears to have been a patronage job as J D Vance's deputy press secretary, may already have suffered for his dad's sins:

The son of right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson has left Vice President JD Vance’s press team to set up his own political consulting firm amid escalating tensions between his father and President Trump.

Buckley Carlson, a 20-something who had served as Vance’s deputy press secretary since the start of the second Trump administration, is joining a group of several White House alumni departing for the private sector.

While such moves can be typical in presidential administrations, Buckley’s departure comes against the backdrop of a growing rift between Trump, 79, and Tucker, 56, once an avid backer.

It seems to me that Tucker's problems are twofold. The first is that although he's now well known for his anti-Trump stance over the war, neither legacy nor alt media has covered the issue that his podcasts have become a direct anti-US priopaganda tool for the Iranian mullahs. If this changes, it could certainly hurt Tucker's public image, perhaps as much as "Hanoi Jane" hurt Jane Fonda's. Consider that the mullahs don't even have the underdog leftist appeal of the North Vietnamese; they're nothing but murderous thugs who happen to like Tucker.

The second issue is whether Tucker was paid in any way by the mullahs for the use of his podcasts. It's bad enough that the mullahs like them, but if they were in any way paid propaganda, Tucker would run into bigger problems for violating US sanctions and failing to register as a foreign agent. The overall issue of working on behalf of the mullahs, even if unpaid, could well trouble his conscience.

And there's a bigger overall question. Estimates of Tucker's salary at Fox run from $15-20 million per year, with total compensation including bonuses as high as $35 million per year. Nobody makes that kind of money from YouTube -- even if they have millions of followers, they have side hustles selling merch or promoting other businesses. Tucker has an expensive lifestyle, with two multimillion-dollar adjoining homes in Florida and and a sumnmer home in Maine. And even if Iran was making up for houusehold deficits, I can't imagine it's paying him now, with Trump cutting off its oil money.

Yesterday I posted comments questioning where Tucker's often bizarre behavior comes from -- the possibilities include addiction, neurological, psychological, or medical problems. I think we can reasonably add others, including a troubled conscience, fear of potential prosecution, and dire financial straits. What's surprising is that nobody seems to be seriously following through on pretty obvious leads.

What On Earth Is Up With Tucker And Megyn?

The video embedded above is YouTuber Brandon Tatum's astonished reaction to Tucker Carlson's disastrous interview witn Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times, which is entertaining enough, but he also interposes Megyn Kelly's commentary, "Tucker sat down with Lulu, and Tucker handled himself, of course, very, very well. . . . Any sort of would-be trap she was laying, he saw from a mile away." It's as if she saw an entirely different interview from the one everyone else watched.

But that took me back to her "hostage video" that I discussed Thursday, where she explains to captive Mark Halperin about the wonderful new audience of young Muslims that she and Tucker are reaching. Her typical wardrobe, though, isn't exactly Muslim-friendly, so it's hard to imagine what kind of Muslims are tuning in to watch her.

In other words, I'm not sure if she understands much about Islam -- certainly if she wanted to appeal to Muslim sensibilities, she'd at least cover up her arms and shoulders. Robert Spencer has the same sort of questions about Tucker. Does he actually know much about Islam?

Carlson includes a kernel of truth in his lies and deflections, and that makes them all the more insidious. Like Christianity, Islam does indeed teach that “every person has a soul.” But the Qur’an also teaches that non-Muslims are “like cattle, no, they are worse.” (7:179) It says that non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings” (98:6), and calls them “the worst of animals” (8:55).

These aren’t mere words, either. The Qur’an also states: “Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are ruthless to unbelievers, merciful to one another.” (48:29) Ruthless in what way? The Qur’an tells Muslims to “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89, 4:91) and, just in case that wasn’t clear enough, adds “kill the idolators wherever you find them” (9:5). This includes pretty much everyone, for in the Qur’anic view, virtually every non-Muslim is an idolater.

Dominic Green in the Washington Examiner provides some insight when he compares Tucker to the Roman historian Tacitus:

Tacitus never saw the Teutonic forests, but in his first-century bestseller Germania, he told Romans that the German tribes who lived there had an “inherent love of liberty” and a rude kind of self-government. The men kept their women “fenced-in and chaste, without seductive display,” and if they caught a woman jumping the fence in adultery, they scourged her in public. They were an honorable and warlike people, and levying interest on loans was “unknown” among them.

Tacitus was an old-school republican orator from an established patrician family that had lost its status. The new, imperial Rome was glitzy, materialistic, hedonistic, and promiscuous. Tacitus rose through the system by playing a game he despised. When he praised the uncivilized Germans, he implicitly damned his over-civilized contemporaries. After writing Germania, he stepped back from public life. Perhaps he despised himself for his complicity in the trashing of republican virtue.

Tucker Carlson was an old-school Republican orator from an established patrician family that lost its status. He rose through the system by playing a game he despised. He now praises Islam in terms closely resembling Tacitus’s praise of the German tribes, and with a similarly thwarted passion. Perhaps he despises himself for his complicity in the trashing of republican virtue, or at least the Republican coalition.

This might explain some part of Tucker, but not everything -- yes, his background is upper-class, even to the point of glaring family dysfunction, but he shows remarkably little self-awareness. Just this past February, Rabbi Michael Barclay went in a different direction at PJ Media discussing Tucker's interview with Mike Huckabee:

Carlson showed what appeared to be signs of either mental distress, a neurological issue, or possible addiction.

Throughout the interview with Huckabee, Tucker suddenly begins laughing nervously. It happens frequently, often at some of the most inappropriate moments. During exchanges about war, death, or even his own personality (he repeatedly calls himself a “jerk”), Tucker breaks into a strained, almost hysterical laugh that feels out of place—arguably even more so than the cackling often associated with Kamala Harris. It seems uncontrolled, inappropriate, and at times extreme. If you watch the entire interview, this happens repeatedly: he suddenly starts laughing and lowers his head, almost as if in embarrassment.

To act like this once or twice would suggest a level of nervousness that is not typically attributed to Tucker Carlson. To repeatedly behave this way could be a symptom of something much, much deeper and more troubling for his own well-being.

. . . More than anything, aside from his obvious anti-Semitism, this interview is a warning sign for Tucker Carlson. I pray that he is evaluated by professionals in both mental health and neurological disorders, and that he also considers speaking with an addiction specialist.

His flat-out denials in the New York Times interview that he said things like Trump could be the Antichrist, when this is clearly contradicted by the evidence on tape, is yet another troubling sign -- as is Megyn Kelly's insistence that he "handled himself, of course, very, very well" in that interview. This is almost beginning to look like a folie à deux -- but what is it they both have to be delusional about? Is it their wonderful new audience of young Muslims, who, if it exists at all in Megyn's case, must be watching only to ogle her shoulders and upper arms?

A typical jury instruction says that if a witness is shown to be lying aboukt one thing, he's lying about everything. If Megyn and Tucker are lying that Tucker never said Trump maybe was the Antichrist, Megyn is lying about their wonderful new audience of young Muslims -- but why would she lie about that? I'm actually wondering if both have much bigger financial problems than we know about.

Suddenly, Spencer Pratt Is Everywhere

Spencer Pratt’s LA mayor ads are incredible. pic.twitter.com/uEge9Q9yyH

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 5, 2026

On Monday, I poated about Spencer Pratt's campaign for mayor of Los Angeles, focusing on an ad -- at the time, it wasn't clear that his campaign had in fact not commissioned it, but this is the case. But within days, two more independent, "fan produced" ads have come out: one, embedded above, is based on The Dark Knight Rises; the other, embedded below as part of a Mark Halperin 2WAY segment, is based on the Hitler-in-the-bunker scenes in Downfall.

But then there was an enmtirely separate development: at a Wenesday night debate, Pratt wiped the floor with his two opponents, incumbent Karen Bass and Democratic Socialist Mamdani clone Nithya Raman. (Some commentators get several things wrong about the candidates -- first, Los Angeles City elections are "non-partisan", and candidates don't idenmtify by party, and second, Pratt, although formerly Republican, is registered independent.)

Spencer Pratt CRUSHED the LA Mayor debate last night on NBC4! 🔥

The viewer poll afterward was striking: Pratt took 88% of the vote, while the others were way behind. It felt like the outsider energy connected with a lot of people who are tired of the same old results in Los… pic.twitter.com/26KiUWMlTG

— SafetySwipe (@SafetyNotorious) May 7, 2026

On Gutfeld last night, Spencer Pratt stayed composed while the Dems got exposed. Megyn Kelly, Why Spencer Pratt's BRILLIANT Debate Performance Has Megyn Supporting Him For LA Mayor.

The Dark Knight Rises ad was even on Sky News Australia. Mark Halperin's reaction to the Downfall ad is embedded above. The Hill reports,

A new AI-generated ad promoting Spencer Pratt, a Republican [sic] running for mayor of Los Angeles, depicts the city as a Gotham-influenced dystopian hellscape with only Pratt, presented as Batman, able to save it.

The ad, shared Tuesday on social media by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Charles Curran of Menace Studios, shows the Hollywood sign and City Hall burning. It also depicts Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), as the Joker, flanked by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

. . . While Curran is not directly affiliated with Pratt’s campaign, the candidate reposted the ad on social media. As of Thursday morning, 3.9 million users on the social platform X have viewed it, and 10,000 have reposted it.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) gave props to the ad, writing Tuesday on X, “Maybe the best political ad of the year.”

. . . A poll conducted in March by the University of California, Berkeley, and the Los Angeles Times found that a quarter of respondents backed Bass in the race, with 17 percent backing Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, a democratic socialist, and 14 percent backing Pratt. About a quarter of respondents were undecided.

. . . Early voting in the nonpartisan mayoral primary is set for May 23 through June 1, with an official voting day falling on June 2. Unless one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary, the top two finishers, regardless of party, will advance to the general election.

There are several takeaways from the Pratt phenomenon that we see here, whether or not they'll impact the outcome of the election. The first is that the campaign is completely disconnected from legacy media. The LA Times has endorsed Karen Bass, who remains at the top of Polymarket's odds as of today at 45%, but those odds have fallen 4% from yesterday. Nithya Raman's odds are now 27%, having fallen 6%, while Pratt's odds are now 25%, nearly tied with Raman, having risen 6%. Clearly it's the debate results and the ads on social media that are driving opinion, not the LA Times.

Second, Pratt seems instinctively to be following Trump's innovative formula: he either diaregards legacy media coverage, ignoring or outright denouncing it, or he turns it against itself, forcing it to report on campaign rallies, controversial remarks, stunts like the campaign garbage truck, and so forth. Not only did Pratt not have to commission three highly effective ads, he didn't have to pay to have them run -- social media users distrubuted them for free.

Third, as Mark Halperin pointed out above, the ads themselves were likely dirt cheap to produce using AI. The Spectator also comments,

It cannot really be said that videos like these lower the tone of public life. Traditional political broadcasts are already awful and people go to great lengths to avoid seeing them. The most famous spot of the 1960s showed a little girl being blown up by a nuclear bomb.

However, it should also be noted that the Johsnon 1964 campaign never paid to air that ad -- it sent it to TV stations to use as news, so it didn't have to. Pratt and his supporters are using precisely the same strategy, except they're bypassing the network news gateway by going through social media. The link goes on,

AI videos are effective in politics for the trivial reason that you can create whatever scenarios you like for rhetorical purposes. In Curran’s clip Kamala Harris is drinking vodka straight from the bottle, and Mayor Bass has her face made up like the Joker – in a pre-AI age the only way to depict this would be to animate it, which would take much too long. “Storytelling” is meant to be the secret to political communications and AI lets one do this in a much more literal sense. Donald Trump’s famous 2024 ad told viewers that “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” but here Gavin Newsom is simply made to say that “if you were a transgender migrant I could get you a free pussy.”

But then it makes a non sequitur:

It is perhaps telling that Trump, the master of all mediums, only uses AI for jokes rather than for actual communiques to the public.

But even the jokes have storytelling punch: consider the one where Trump swings at a golfball that hits Hillary in the head. The longer AI Pratt ads are nothing but a series of equivalent skits.

A bigger question is whether Pratt has a future. The June 2 primary has two possible outcomes: one is that a single candidate polls above 50%, in which case he or she becomes mayor without a runoff. Polling up to now suggests Raman could win this. Otherwise, the top two have a runoff in November. So far, Pratt\ has consistently polled in third place, and as of today, there have been no new polls reflecting the past week's developments. To have any chance, Pratt needs to mnve a few points up to second, and then he needs to continue an effective campaign through summer and fall. This is uncertain.

Keep in mind that the dead people vote, the illegal alien vote, and the usual-suspect vote are still for Bass, while the boutique affluent vote is still for Raman. The indy ads seem correctly leaning toward appealing to the solid-citizen Latin vote.

But even if he's elected mayor, he needs to get his program through the far-left city council, which right now is a deeply uncertain question. Winning the election will be only the first of his tasks. It's best not to get carried away.