The paper explores three routes by which the moral is implicated with the political, two of which emphasize how moral theory can be politicized rhetorically and manipulatively. I will focus mainly on Just War Theory (JWT) to argue and demonstrate those three routes: 1. JWT has rhetorical capital that drives practitioners to use it politically. 2. JWT is contextually dependant. Namely, to be applicable for judging real world situations JWT is dependant on delineating the temporal boundaries of the situations (their temporal contexts). Because the boundaries of the contexts are characterized by indeterminacy, contexts are essentially contested inasmuch as political concepts are. Being essentially contested invites the political into moral judgment. 3. In several cases politicians substitute temporal contexts by the more fuzzy and misty historical narratives. This is a political move and it politicizes JWT in such a way that makes difficult, if not impossible, the employment of JWT for moral judgment. All theses routes implicate the moral in the political and vice versa, and this mutual association is inherent and inevitable.
