At the time of the Pope’s day of prayer for Syria on 7 September, most Catholic theologians who specialise in the ethics of war and peace, including Just War proponents and not only pacifists, regarded the US bombing of Syrian targets as morally unjustified, writes Tobias L. Winright.Although most ethicists acknowledged there was just cause for doing something to defend innocent civilians, they expressed doubts about other Just War criteria. Was attacking the Assad regime a last resort? Would so-called surgical air strikes even be able to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants in urban areas there? What sort of probability of success could be expected when the rebel forces included numerous factions, including non-Syrian al-Qaeda insurrectionists? Would armed interventio