“There are no more important votes that a senator makes than on issues of war and peace,” writes the late Edward M. Kennedy in his memoir True Compass. In the fall of 2002, Kennedy had to make just such a vote–on a resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq. Congress approved the resolution, but Kennedy was one of only 23 senators to vote against. In True Compass, Kennedy offers insight into his decision making process, writing, “My views on war drew upon the teachings of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. A distillation of their philosophies has yielded six principles that guide the determination of a ‘just’ war, and these principles were my guiding arguments.”

1. A war must have a just cause, confronting a danger that is beyond question;
2. It must be declared by a legitimate authority acting on behalf of the people;
3. It must be driven by the right intention, not ulterior, self-interested motives;
4. It must be a last resort;
5. It must be proportional, so that the harm inflicted does not outweigh the good achieved; and
6. It must have a reasonable chance of success.

Below are the reasons Kennedy gives for concluding that Iraq failed to meet the definition of a just war:

• “There was no just cause for the invasion of Iraq, I declared time and again. Iraq posed no threat that justified immediate, preemptive war, and there was no convincing pattern of relationships between Saddam and Al Qaeda.”
• “The “legitimate authority,” the Congress, indeed approved authorization for the use of force in Iraq in October 2002, but it acted in haste and under pressure from the White House, which intentionally politicized the vote by scheduling it before midterm elections.”
• “As for “motives,” those stated by the Bush administration itself were unacceptable on their face…The war, I charged on the Senate floor in July 2004, was “a fraud, cooked up in Texas” to advance the president’s political standing.”
• “The war failed the “last resort” principle for reasons too obvious to dwell on here.”
• “On the question of proportionality—did the harm inflicted outweigh the good achieved?—I pointed, again, to the loss of American and Iraqi lives, the collapse of Iraqi society, the self-fulfilling prophecy of terrorists flooding into the ravaged country and using it as a base, the heightened tensions with the entire Islamic world, and our loss of international prestige generally.”
• “As for “a reasonable chance of success,” there never was a question that we would win the military phase of the Iraq war. The more significant success—ending terrorism, promoting regional stability, sustaining America’s reputation as a just nation and a model for enlightenment—has yet to be achieved.”

An important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time.

– President Barack Obama

“Today America lost a great elder statesman, a committed public servant, and leader of the Senate. And today I lost a treasured friend. “Ted Kennedy was an iconic, larger than life United States senator whose influence cannot be overstated. Many have come before, and many will come after, but Ted Kennedy’s name will always be remembered as someone who lived and breathed the United States Senate and the work completed within its chamber.”

– Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah)

“He taught us how to fight, how to laugh, how to treat each other, and how to turn idealism into action, and in these last 14 months, he taught us much more about how to live life, sailing into the wind one last time.

“No words can ever do justice to this irrepressible, larger-than-life presence who was simply the best — the best senator, the best advocate you could ever hope for, the best colleague and the best person to stand by your side in the toughest of times.”

– Sen. John Kerry

“Teddy never lost his drive to serve his country and honor his brothers’ memory.”

– Ted Sorenson, former aide and speechwriter to President John F. Kennedy

“I literally would not be standing here were it not for Teddy Kennedy. He was there, he stood with me when my wife and daughter were killed in an accident. He was on the phone with me literally every day. … I’d turn around and there’d be some specialist from Massachusetts, a doc I never even asked for, sitting in the room with me. It’s not just me that he affected like that; it’s hundreds upon hundreds of people.”

– Vice President Joe Biden

Speech at 2008 Democratic National Convention

Edward Kennedy Endorses Barack Obama for President, January 2008

Eulogy of Robert F. Kennedy

On the Urgency of Healthcare Reform

Concession Speech, 1980: “The dream will never die.”

PLUS:

On Saving the World

On Love

More at BigThink.com

We will miss Senator Ted Kennedy as a nation, and I will miss him as a human being.  Over the next few months, as we debate his life’s passion, which was Universal Health Care, we will feel his presence everywhere.  He will be in the Senate Chamber, in the committee rooms, in the White House, and in the minds of most of the reporters old enough to have witnessed the trajectory of this extraordinary generation of America’s First Family from it’s beginning.  Much has been written about Ted Kennedy already.  He was indeed extraordinary.  My mother, who was a solid Upper East Side Republican until 2004, once happened to sit next to him at a wedding of a mutual friend.  She had never met him before.  I’m sure the exchange was lively, and being a Dean, I doubt my mother gave him much quarter.  A week later, a beautiful, kind, and very personal handwritten letter arrived from Ted Kennedy.  My mother, like so many other Americans, was hooked by the Kennedy charm and grace.

Ted Kennedy was a man with a long career of determination as well as charm.  When President Obama signs a Health Care Reform bill late this year, Ted Kennedy’s  may not be standing there next to him, but his presence will be deeply apparent in the Oval Office as the President’s pen moves across the page.

Governor Howard Dean, MD

Gov. Howard Dean is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Progressive Book Club.