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Like many Americans, I decided in early 2003 that a war with Iraq was increasingly necessary. War seemed justifiable because of the intelligence reports concerning Iraq’s weapons programs and because Saddam Hussein, who had committed atrocities in the past, was likely to be highly dangerous if he acquired weapons of mass destruction. The arguments for war could be supported by reference to the well-known just war theory.

In the preface to the second edition of his now classic Just and Unjust Wars, philosopher Michael Walzer wrote of a “significant revival of just-war theory” that was sparked by the U.S. experience in Vietnam.