Orend considers the 9/11 attacks to be “clear instances of aggression” against America. Indeed, it would be hard to find anyone – inside or outside the Western world – who cared to argue with this point. Furthermore, according to Orend’s theory of Just War, acts of aggression, such as those committed on 9/11, justify a defensive war in response. Orend’s theory allows only one mode of argument against such a defensive war: to argue that America failed one of Orend’s conditions of minimal justice by “somehow violating the rights” of a foreign political community.

Orend addresses and subsequently dismisses several arguments of this nature, including one which concerns America’s support for Israel, a state which Orend admits has engaged in “the persecution of the Palestinians.” Orend argues that Israel alone has “front-line responsibility” for human rights violations against Palestinians, and that the United States cannot be blamed in this regard.

With the US-Israeli relations case in mind, Orend generalizes this line of reasoning. He contends that if a systematic human rights violation is to justify an armed response, this violation must be “a directly, clearly culpable action,” as opposed to an action in support of another country’s “controversial policies.” According to this rule, Israel’s aggression against the Palestinians, even when done so with American material support, does not sufficiently implicate the United States so as to justify an armed response against it. The 9/11 attacks were therefore unjustified.

However, a mere two pages later, Orend adds another rule to his sizable set of stipulations concerning Just War, which I shall term the Indirect Aggression Rule. In order to place blame on Afghanistan for the 9/11 attacks, Orend argues that “if Q commits aggression against R, and Q had substantial support from P in doing so, then P also aggressed against R.” By this mode of argument, if a group commits aggression against the United States, and this group had substantial support from Afghanistan, then Afghanistan has also committed aggression against the United States. Since Orend argues that this was in fact the case, his Just War theory therefore allows the United States to invade Afghanistan after 9/11 in a war of self-defence against this aggression.

A troubling conflict arises between Orend’s stipulations, however, when the Indirect Aggression Rule is applied to the aforementioned US-Israeli relations case. One might argue, using Orend’s own template: if Israel commits aggression against the Palestinians, and Israel had substantial support from the United States in doing so, then the United States also aggressed against the Palestinians. This argument would seem to trump Orend’s earlier argument that the United States did not have “front line responsibility” for aggression against Palestinians.

If this is so, then it follows that the United States was not a minimally just state, and furthermore that the 9/11 attacks must be tolerated by Orend’s theory. Recall Orend’s initial stipulation, however: the 9/11 attacks were clear “instances of aggression” against America. Clearly, Orend rejects any such tolerance of the 9/11 attacks. In order to successfully reject this tolerance, however, Orend must withdraw his Indirect Aggression Rule, so as to keep the United States a minimally just state. Importantly, Orend cannot withdraw this rule without a price. Without it, he is left without his argument that implicates Afghanistan in the 9/11 attacks, and Orend loses his justification for the United States’ invasion of this country.

By the arguments Orend lays out, he must either accept that Just War Theory tolerates the 9/11 attacks, or that the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan cannot be justified as a war of self-defence. Orend finds both of these results unappealing, but must choose between them if he is to hold to the core principles of his Just War theory.