(RNS) — As Americans hotly debate the Iran war, many examine the political and economic consequences, while others consider the war from an ethical and moral perspective. For pacifists, the answer is simple: The war is wrong because all wars are wrong. For political realists, the answer is also simple: Might makes right. If you have the power, you can do whatever you want. But there is also a long tradition of Christian theologians examining individual wars to determine if they are just or not, from St. Augustine to Thomas Aquinas to modern leaders. The result is the just war theory, used to justify or condemn individual wars. No one has used this theory to examine the Iran war better than Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington who has doctorates in both political science from Stanford University and in moral theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University. At Stanford, his dissertation was titled “Morality and American Foreign Policy: The Role of Moral Norms in International Affairs.” In an interview with his diocesan newspaper, the Catholic …