Strikingly, what Obama would not have gotten directly from Augustine or Aquinas is the most basic rule of modern warfare: thou shalt not target non-combatants. It makes no appearance in Augustine, and the nearest we find in Aquinas is a general prohibition against killing the innocent. (Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, question 64, article 6) But this prohibition is not in his writing on warfare, and he nowhere clarifies that non-combatants are innocent.
The most agonizing issue in the drone program is figuring out who is an enemy combatant, who is not, and how one knows. The modern law of war is clear, however, that no matter how difficult the inquiry is, it must be undertaken: parties "shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives." (Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, art. 48) There is nothing quite so clear or straightforward in the just war classics, and they would offer no guidance to the president on this score. The administration claims that it faithfully abides by this rule, and its spokespeople hammer that point home in almost every speech. The tricky part is that the government also asserts that al Qaeda "has no ‘non-military' wing," and so every member can be targeted. This conclusion rests on a factual assessment of al Qaeda that has never been released or explained.
What about unintended civilian deaths, so-called collateral damage? The rule in the modern law of war is that militaries must do everything feasible to minimize collateral damage, and must never launch an attack at a military target if the expected civilian damage "would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated." (AP I, art. 51(4) and 51(5)(b); art. 57(2)(a)(iii)) This rule permits proportionate collateral damage so long as harming civilians was not the intention. This principle also has no clear counterpart in medieval just war theory, but it traces its roots to Aquinas's "doctrine of double effect":
Nothing hinders a single act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts get their character in accordance with what is intended, but not from what is beside the intention, since the latter is incidental. (Summa Theologiae, II-II, question 64, article 7)
In the war context, striking the military target is the intended effect, the collateral damage is the unintended effect, and it is the former, not the latter, that determines the moral character of the action. The requirement of proportionality between the intended and unintended effect is a modern refinement of this principle. The Times article reports that President Obama and his advisors have cancelled targeted killings for fear of excessive collateral damage. It was reportedly for this very reason that the president vetoed his advisors' recommendation of an airstrike on the bin Laden compound in favor of the riskier SEAL operation.
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The most troubling point in the Times article is that the CIA has apparently counted civilian casualties in a self-serving, dishonest way. Any dead military-age male in the vicinity of a targeted strike is presumed a "militant" unless proven otherwise. That sounds wrong, and the more you think about it, the worse it gets.
