14). Pangle & Ahrensdorf said that the Athenians believed that men were guided by self-interest and in any war they initiated "no self-interested behavior can be justly blamed or condemned" (p. 16). In the pursuit of its national strategic interests, Athens executed the Melian adult male population and enslaved its women and children. On the other hand, its principal adversary, Sparta justified its war against Athens as a war of liberation, a struggle to free Sparta's weak allies from Athenian aggression.
Elshtain identifies herself with the Christian concept of just war as originally articulated by St. Augustine (354-450 A.D.). She says "the just war traditionally requires that the philosopher, the moralist, the politician and the ordinary citizen consider a number of complex criteria when thinking about war" (p. 56). War can only be waged by legitimate authority; it must be initiated in response to specific unjust acts; it must be begun with good intentions; and can only be started as a last resort (pp. 57-58). Her position is in accord with the thinking of the Stoics and Cicero: "those wars are unjust, that are undertaken without cause" (p. 66).
Moral Justification for Contemporary American Wars
According to Elshtain, America in recent years has had two principal justifications for going to war: 1. self-defense; and 2. preservation of its moral and political values. As a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in which 3000 Americans were killed and other suicide bombings around the world which were conducted against America and other countries by the violent and fundamentalist Muslim Al-Qaeda group, America has been forced to go to war to defend itself against further assaults. The war in Afghanistan which involved the overthrow of the Taliban and the mostly successful elimination of the sanctuary it provided Osama Bin Laden was justifiable as an act of self-defense. She point...