Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 The Meaning of August 1969: Calibrating the Standard Republican Narrative
- 2 Blood Sacrifice and Destiny: Republican Metaphysics and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 3 Republicanism's Holy Grail: ‘One Nation United, Gaelic and Free’
- 4 Permission to Kill: Just War Theory and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 5 ‘Pointless Heartbreak Unrepaid’: Consequentialism and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 6 Violating the Inviolable: Human Rights and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 7 ‘Crime is Crime is Crime’: British Counter-Terrorism in Northern Ireland
- 8 ‘When the Law Makers are the Law Breakers’: State Terrorism
- Epilogue
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
- Plate section
4 - Permission to Kill: Just War Theory and the IRA's Armed Struggle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 The Meaning of August 1969: Calibrating the Standard Republican Narrative
- 2 Blood Sacrifice and Destiny: Republican Metaphysics and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 3 Republicanism's Holy Grail: ‘One Nation United, Gaelic and Free’
- 4 Permission to Kill: Just War Theory and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 5 ‘Pointless Heartbreak Unrepaid’: Consequentialism and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 6 Violating the Inviolable: Human Rights and the IRA's Armed Struggle
- 7 ‘Crime is Crime is Crime’: British Counter-Terrorism in Northern Ireland
- 8 ‘When the Law Makers are the Law Breakers’: State Terrorism
- Epilogue
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse…
(John Stuart Mill 1868, p. 26)Introduction
Detonating bombs that over the course of three decades injured, maimed or killed hundreds of people certainly counts as causing harm to others, if anything does, and would prima facie seem to be morally wrong, if anything is. Yet what is morally impermissible in ordinary circumstances may be morally permissible in the extraordinary circumstances of war, which by its very nature involves intentionally harming others. Just as clearly, not everything done in war is morally justifiable. The fact that certain types of actions are by international agreement classified as ‘war crimes’ suggests that there are moral limits differentiating permissible from impermissible wartime acts. Since at least the Middle Ages, philosophers have drawn a distinction between just and unjust wars, and have attempted to identify the conditions under which the resort to war, and sorts of actions undertaken in war, are morally justifiable (Evans 2005). ‘Just War Theory’ formalises these conditions.
From its beginning the Provisional IRA conceived of itself as an army engaged in a morally justified armed struggle against the British occupation of Ireland. On occasion the IRA has asserted that its armed campaign is justified according to the formal rules governing warfare.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2008