While the Trump administration’s strikes on the Iranian regime have gone swimmingly, its efforts to sell the American people on the campaign have more work to do. In at least four polls conducted since attacks began on February 28, American opinion is roughly evenly split, or perhaps slightly negative, toward the attacks, with many respondents still undecided.

Democrats in Congress have capitalized on this ambivalence to question President Trump’s strategy. “The president has a responsibility to make the case to the American people as to the justification for this war,” insisted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in a press conference, “but has provided no evidence that there was an imminent threat to the American people here or abroad.”

Underlying this skepticism is an understanding that there ought to be limits in war and an uncertainty about whether the Trump administration has stayed within those limits. To put it in question form, Americans want to know, “Is there moral justification for the administration’s actions?” as FRC President Tony Perkins put it. And, for Christians in particular, “Does the Bible provide guidance for this?”

War ethicist Mark LeVecchie argued on “Washington Watch” that the Bible does provide guidance on the morality of war and that the administration’s campaign against the Iranian regime is justified.

“All great religious traditions have wrestled with two basic questions: When is it right to fight? And how do you fight these fights?” began Dr. LeVecchie, a distinguished scholar of ethics at Providence Magazine and a professor of Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy. “In the West, the moral framework … is the Just War Tradition. And it draws on classical — that’s to say, Greco-Roman moral philosophy — and the Hebrew Scriptures — Christian scriptures and Hebraic tradition.”

“Just War Tradition is grounded … in the purpose of being a human being. That’s to say, it is interested in human flourishing and to understand what the human purpose is,” he explained. “We can go all the way back to Genesis. Human beings were made in the image of God. You find in the clause that immediately follows a clue as to part of what it means … to exercise dominion.”

LeVecchie appealed to the creation narrative, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Genesis 1:27-28).

The “Dominion Mandate,” as this is called, is “not domination,” but “something like stewardship or providential care over creation,” LiVecchie explained. “That’s a human mandate … that echoed all the way up into Romans 13 and the reasons for human government.”

Of course, the Genesis narrative describes how, “right after we were made in the image of God, we fell on our faces,” LiVecchie continued. “And so now, in a world that is morally conflicted, we have to figure out how to address moral conflict without giving up on ethics. And the Just War Tradition allows us to do that.”

Perkins and LiVecchie unpacked the three basic principles of Just War Tradition that Medieval scholar Thomas Aquinas formalized as “jus ad bellum” (justice towards war). A just war must be conducted (1) by the legitimate authority (2) in a just cause and (3) with the right intention.

With regard to legitimate authority, “under the War Powers Act … any U.S. president has a great deal of both privilege and responsibility,” LiVecchie described. “They can launch particular kinds of deployments of force, and then there are stipulations to constrain them. They have to notify Congress within 48 hours. That was done. They have 60 days to conclude the use of force, unless they get a congressional extension. That presumably will be done.”

With regard to just cause, “the cause is pretty plain. We can recite the history, and President Trump did this, starting from 1979 forward,” LiVecchie said.

“For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America!’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries,” said President Trump in a short video message announcing the strikes. He continued:

“Among the regime’s very first acts was to back a violent takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, holding dozens of American hostages for 444 days. In 1983, Iran’s proxies carried [out] the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American military personnel. In 2000, they knew and were probably involved with the attack on U.S.S. Cole. Many died. Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq. The regime’s proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years, as well as U.S. naval and commercial vessels in international shipping lanes.”

“History makes the case,” LiVecchie summarized. “They want to kill us, and they want to kill our major non-NATO ally Israel.” As for Israel, he added, “Israel is a major national interest for the United States. They are a security producer in the Middle East. They help us with containment. They provide endless intelligence for us to help stabilize and maintain our own interests in the Middle East. When Israel is under assault — and … the Iranian regime has pledged to drive them into the ocean — we have to take them at their word and come to Israel’s aid.”

With regard to right intention, “President Trump spelled it out,” said LiVecchie. “He talked about dismantling, destroying Iranian nuclear ambitions. That’s important. He talked about getting rid of the ballistic missiles — which are a threat both to the United States but especially to Israel — and their drone program. He mentioned destroying their navy … which [is] a direct threat to international shipping and … getting rid of their proxy terror network.”

Just War Tradition also recognizes certain prudential criteria leaders must consider before engaging in an otherwise just war. These include the probability of success, the means of last resort, and the proportionality of means to ends. Perkins argued that Trump’s military operation against Iran met all three criteria. In particular, he said, “the president actually demonstrated that [a military assault was a last resort] by pursuing diplomatic means to resolve this issue, even to the frustration of some.”

In addition to helping citizens hold their government accountable in war, the Just War discussion is also significant for soldiers to avoid what is called moral injury, LiVecchie said.

Sometimes people imagine that Scripture, especially the Ten Commandments, condemns all killing. But “the biblical position is pretty clear that the mandate is not, ‘Do not kill,’ but the mandate is, ‘Do not murder,’” LiVecchie argued.

“There are different types of kills,” he elaborated. “You should never do murder … but [with] other kinds of kills … there’s varying degrees of culpability,” such as accidental kills. “There is another kind of kill: because the innocent need to be protected … justice needs to be requited, and the evil needs to be punished.” Such kills are “morally permitted,” or even “morally required,” he argued.

“From Genesis forward, we see that God will require a reckoning for the taking of human blood,” he said, referencing Genesis 9:6. “This isn’t simply because the victims are made in the image of God, but also because those who stand in behalf of the victims being made in the image of God have to demand an accounting for that blood.”

“I will tell you, I wrestled with this as a young Marine, in boot camp,” Perkins admitted. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have a professor teaching me about Just War theory. I had to kind of come up with it on my own. … And we need to have a clear understanding of that in the church, because we need men and women of faith filling those positions in our military and in our nation’s law enforcement. We don’t want them to be conflicted about the moral aspects of their job.”

“And that [conflict] comes with a cost,” LiVecchie added. “There is an increasing understanding of what is now being called ‘moral injury.’ And it’s a kind of psychic trauma that comes from doing or allowing something [to be done] that goes against the deeply held moral norm. And too many American Christians believe that killing is wrong, period. But in war, it is necessary. And it makes the very business of war fighting morally injurious.”

“This is a crisis,” he continued, “because moral injury is one of the number one predictors for combat veteran suicide. So we need to send our warfighters into harm’s way with a better understanding that killing in combat is not necessarily in dereliction of the ‘law of love.’ It’s a manifestation of it in certain circumstances.”

LiVecchie explained that he’s often challenged about this because of his area of study and expertise. “The question isn’t so much … ‘How can you, as a Christian ethicist, advocate killing someone made in the image of God?’ But the real question is, what am I supposed to do as a Christian and as an ethicist, when one image of God is kicking apart the face of another image of God without justification, and they won’t stop? Mercy always costs somebody something. The cross teaches us [that] this mercy shown to the assailant means that the victim will pay the price of mercy. And that’s unjust,” he argues. “That’s unloving.”

“Make no mistake, war is basically about breaking things and killing things, killing people in your enemy’s territory until they are exhausted and have lost the will or the capacity to fight. That’s terrible,” LiVecchie allowed. “And you would never do that unless the innocent are being so sufficiently threatened, evil is running rampant in sufficiently grotesque ways, and injustices are being permitted that need to be overruled.”

“C.S. Lewis said it well, ‘If wars can be just, then peace is sometimes unjust,’” LiVecchie concluded. “And I think we’re facing one of those scenarios today.”