Douglas A. Pryer

Killing from the Inside Out

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Such Christian thinkers as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas crafted Just War Theory (JWT) in order to limit war. In Killing from the Inside Out, Professor Robert Meagher, a poetic writer and brilliant classical scholar, leverages history to provocatively argue that the opposite has actually occurred and JWT has served only to legitimize and inspire war. JWT, he convincingly contends, has also made it tragically easy to deny the existence of moral injury, a condition that commonly afflicts combat veterans and profoundly and negatively affects psyches. How can combat veterans feel guilt or shame, many wonder, if the war they fight is just? Thus the help these afflicted warriors desperately need is withheld from them. Another fundamental truth this bold, beautifully written, and erudite work powerfully conveys is the following: war kills not only those it buries in the ground; it just as surely kills those souls who march home, heads held high while the music plays and their loved ones cheer, yet feeling inside they are forever lost.”