Part II of III
What would be the requirements of a libertarian just war? Libertarianism permits the killing of another if it is an act of reasonable self-defence. Nothing in libertarianism precludes the possibility of a collectively exercised right to self-defence. This has been accepted by most libertarians as one of the few valid functions of a ‘night-watchman’ state. As long as every individual in a society agreed to be defended by a state and the state acted against only those individuals who were actual aggressors, e.g. an invading army, on what grounds could a libertarian object?
Given that it is not practically possible to fulfil the above conditions, especially the first one, it seems to me that many of those who engage in the debate about war on Iraq for genuine and morally inspired reasons are trying to choose between two evils. Their side in the debate usually depends on which of the two evils seems more morally unacceptable to them. There are also those who find it impossible to choose, their instincts oscillating between the need for self-defence and protection, and fear of compromising their fundamental principles by condoning killing of innocent civilians. One of those is Chris Newman whose comment captures the agony of such moral choice.
The statement ‘as long as harming innocents is not the objective, if a given use of force is justified then innocent bystanders are often just a regrettable consequence’ is based on the acceptance of the doctrine of double effect. It is a useful rule, often used in moral dilemmas that can be summed up as “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. An act with both good and bad effects is morally permissible if and only if the following conditions are all met:
- The action itself is not forbidden by a moral rule.
- Only the good effect is intended.
- The bad effect is proportional to the good.
- The bad effect is not a direct means to the good effect (e.g. bombing cities to demoralise a population and hence hasten a war’s end).
And since Michael Walzer’s influential book Just and Unjust Wars (1971), in the context of war it is common to see added the following condition: - Actions are taken to minimise the foreseeable bad effects, even if this means accepting an increased risk to one’s own combatants (e.g. one’s own soldiers)
In modern warfare the principle of the double effect is frequently applicable. In waging a just war a nation may launch an air attack on an important military objective of the enemy even though a comparatively small number of non-combatants are killed. This evil effect can be compensated for by the great benefit gained through the destruction of the target. This would not be true if the number of non-combatants slain in the attack were out of proportion to the benefits gained, as is clear from the fourth condition. Furthermore, if the direct purpose of the attack were to kill a large number of non-combatants, so that the morale of the enemy would be broken down and they would sue for peace, the attack would be immoral because the third condition for the lawful use of the principle would not be fulfilled. It would be a case of the use of a bad means to obtain a good end.
Chris Newman takes a similar route but ends up with a different point and in the utilitarian camp:
“…our moral calculus has at least three variables: the importance of the objective, the efficacy of a given type of force in achieving that objective, and the cost in innocent lives of using that type of force. Presumably, for any given values of the first two variables, there will be a point at which the value of the third becomes too high, so that the action cannot be justified…”
There appears to be a conflict between a moral justification for waging a just war and a strategic aspect of it. But does exploiting the advantage of superior military capabilities amount to using incommensurate or disproportionate force? It doesn’t because force is defined by effect on the enemy including the civilians, not by the amount of firepower. You can use superior fighting force and technology in order to shorten the war and ensure you destroy enemy fighting forces rather than civilians. There are criteria for determining whether a war is conducted in a morally acceptable manner i.e. whether it is a just war. The exact number and nature of the conditions for just war varies from writer to writer although there is a great deal of overlap:
- Just authority. Only the legitimate rulers of the state may declare war.
- Just cause. In general, nation X may wage war on nation Y only if Y has done some injury either to X or to X’s allies or friends. [It isn’t clear whether Y having harmed Y’s own people is also a just cause for X to wage war on it].
- Right intentions. The intentions of the warriors taking part must be the achievement of peace and of the just cause – not revenge, the desire for plunder or the suffering or destruction of the people on the other side.
- Proportionality. The anticipated good must not be outweighed by the bad likely to be caused along the way.
- Probability of success. There must be a reasonable prospect that the war will succeed.
- Last resort. Peaceful alternatives must all have been exhausted first.
- Proportionality (again). Acts of war must not be out of proportion to the provocation or the needs of the situation.
- Discrimination. No killing of innocent civilians or of non-combatants such as medics and camp followers.
“In fact, if we’re talking about a country in which public opinion has any effect on control of the armed forces, one could logically conclude that it is legitimate to destroy the country’s ability to make war through attacks directly on the civilian population that will destroy their will to make war. We thus reach the perverse result that, if you have a legitimate reason to be at war with a country, the more democratic it is the more justified you are in targeting civilians.”
The crux of the argument lies in the understanding of democracy and the nature of the democratic state. If by democratic we mean an open and free society, then waging a war on another country would most certainly be an act of self-defence. This has to do more with my view of society rather than any implicit faith in democracy. I believe that a society, consisting of freely associating individuals, will not wage a war as an act of aggression, although it must be capable of effective self-defence. (For example, Nazi Germany was not democratic in the first sense, despite Hitler’s legalistically ‘democratic’ ascent to power. In any case, by the time WWII was declared, Germany had long turned into a totalitarian and autocratic state).
If, however, democracy is taken to mean literally the rule of the people or the majority, then it is possible for a dictator to have sufficient popular support to engage in an act of aggression on behalf of that majority. This hardly merits the description of democracy in the classical liberal tradition – rule of the mob seems to be a more appropriate definition. The ‘paradox’ disappears.
The climax of Chris’s argument ties the discussion back to the current affairs:
“Why can’t they [Al-Qaeda] legitimately respond that since we practice the notion of popular sovereignty, we are all ultimately members of the command structure of the U.S. military and thus legitimate targets? Their ultimate “objective” isn’t killing civilians per se—it’s getting the U.S. to stop doing X, Y and Z, which they regard as acts of aggression. If this is not a legitimate position, why not exactly?… I’m groping toward a clearly articulable set of principles with which to establish beyond peradventure that we’re not [morally equivalent to al-Qaeda]”
It is possible (and necessary) to have a set of principles that one can apply rigorously and objectively to one’s actions as well as those of one’s enemies, in order to make consistent moral judgements. The problem is that formulation, understanding and interpretation of such principles is rooted in the fundamental world-view of those who apply them. This is not moral relativism, but an epistemological one. It means that I could refute Al-Qaeda’s logic of aggression by rejecting the notion of collective responsibility and so argue that civilians can not be in any sense ‘members of the command structure of the U.S. military’. I could also say that targeting civilians is never justified. In western society the monopoly on force is owned by the state. Therefore, targeting civilians amounts to taking defenceless hostages, which is seen as morally unacceptable. But to argue so universally, the understanding of society and individual upon which such principles are based would have to be shared universally too. And as I understand it that is the battle…
Fortunately, purveyers of Just War doctrines and other useful idiots do not set our policy; unfortunatly, as had been the case with British pacifists and American isolationists before WWII, they incite war by making our deterrent less credible. For the sake of world peace, it is absolutely essential that it be perceived that a strike against America (including a major counter-force strike) will result in not merely a historical but, as well, a geographical transformation.
What is your point, Lou? I am not aware of other just war doctrines, so why the plural? You seem to have missed my point completely. Just war doctrine makes it possible for those concerned with morality to wage a war as opposed to tie themselves into a knot over moral implications of using aggression. It provides justification for self-defence by force and retaliation. It sets out conditions under which war can be an act that one has a moral duty to perform. Balls to pacifism and isolationism when someone’s threatening or attacking you! Please, try to work out what I am actually saying before you comment.
By the way, what is a ‘historical transformation’? Like things happening one after another? Hmmm. I can only guess that by geographical transformation you mean something like annexing Iraq and/or Afghanistan?!
I think if you are using something as a deterrent, it is absolutely essential people understand what you mean…
It took me about twenty seconds of looking at that hole in the North Tower to realize that what I was seeing was a deliberate attack. (I suppose that’s because of the advantage I had being a private pilot. Only two weeks prior, I’d spent a whole day at Chelsea Piers studying my New York Terminal Area Chart and watching the traffic up & down the Hudson River VFR Corridor. I knew two things damned well, which combined to an obvious principle: no airplane big enough to cause that kind of damage had any business in that airspace, under any circumstances.)
Now, I instantly took it as an explicit act of war. The open question, to me, was what it was *aimed* at. (This has long since been resolved. I am convinced that the distinction I will describe here was irrelevent to the attackers, and still is to those who would emulate them.)
It was a natural — virtually instinctive — question to me whether the attackers would have killed *me*, even though I have despised and resisted this government in my country for all my adult life. Would that have made any difference to them? (See the parenthetical above. I do not think so.)
That conclusion is, however, quite beside the point when I reflect on the fact that a military “command structure” is necessarily a *bi-lateral* relationship. It necessarily implies endorsement of command authority with obedience to command. (Here is a principle: “authority” is *never* imposed. It is *always* granted.) Since the dawn of the industrial age, this fact about the relations of command structure is compounded by the division-of-labor economy of military operations, which necessarily involves nominal “civilians” in their material requirements.
Observe the following:
“We were going after military targets. No point in slaughtering civilians for the mere sake of slaughter. Of course there is a pretty thin veneer in Japan, but the veneer is still there. It was their system of dispersal of industry… I’ll never forget Yokohama. That was what impressed me: drill presses. There they were, like a forest of scorched trees and stumps, growing up throughout that residential area. Flimsy construction all gone…everything burned down, or up, and drill presses standing like skeletons.”
(Memoirs of Gen. Curtis LeMay, cited by Richard B. Frank, “Downfall: The End Of The Imperial Japanese Empire”, Penguin Books, 2001, p. 67)
What you have in this is an exemplary waypoint on a logical trail which is consistently extensible toward *validly* including anyone whose productive effort in any way contributes to the efficacy of this so-called “monopoly on the use of force”. And if the logic is consistently extended, then what it means is that your distinction of “civilians” (in your final paragraph, above) is no better than Al-Qaeda’s was on September 11, Adriana.
I maintain that it is a legitimate — and *crucial* — question to ask, “Just who, exactly, is involved in this ‘monopoly’, and *how*?”
I find it despicable, of course, that Al-Qaeda didn’t bother with the question, but I wouldn’t expect of them, because, after all, I dig shopping malls and rock & roll, and my endless hatred of the United States Government has nothing to do with what people like that think of me. Whether I am part of the “military command structure” has nothing to do with it: just being an American is, evidently, enough for their indictment and sentence.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the lefties play it all wrong, but there are important questions at the bottom of this mess.
I can’t spare time this instant to take the next step in this discussion, but I want to say thanks, Adriana, for taking my comment in the spirit it was intended and giving it such thoughtful treatment.
I already agreed to begin with but what I like is your stuff is thought out so well it really helps me form my own arguments. You are a bloody treasure.
A few further thoughts:
Again, Adriana’s just war principles sound eminently reasonable in the abstract. It’s when I try to apply them that I find terms like “important military objective”, “great benefit gained” and “comparatively small number of non-combatants” to be less than well-defined. Billy’s quote from LeMay illustrates the problem. If the drill presses are spread throughout the residential area, presumably we have to apply our “proportionality” principle: will the damage done to the enemy’s war effort by destruction of these presses be sufficient to justify the deaths of all the civilians who live here? Now I realize that such a question cannot have an absolutely clear answer, where you just plug the variables into your function and out comes a crisp moral conclusion. But what disturbs me is that I don’t even know how to go about evaluating it in rough, approximate terms. What commensurable units are there into which I can convert each side in order to weigh them? Do I try to express the value of the drill presses in terms of the approximate number of lives they will enable the enemy to kill? (Which number, I take it, I would have to discount if I follow Walzer’s principle, and the lives in question are of my soldiers.)
Presumably there are people who have spent a good deal more time than I in addressing these kinds of workaday questions of military ethics. (God, I hope so!) It seems as though they’d be a lot easier to answer when one is defending oneself in a clear war of aggression, as was our battle against Japan. When we’re discussing the question of starting a war in the first place, though, the proportionality principle as you’ve stated it–“The anticipated good must not be outweighed by the bad likely to be caused along the way.”–looks a lot more slippery. One might restate it invidiously as “The anticipated goodness of the omelette must not be outweighed by the eggs you have to break along the way.” I think we need to say a bit more about what kinds of “good” justify inflicting what kinds of “bad”.
I take it that a libertarian theory of either “just cause” or “proportionality” has to begin from the premise that the only “good” which can justify the taking of human life is the elimination thereby of a violent threat to life or liberty. (The first of the medieval tenets–“just authority”–seems entirely too statist to have any place in a libertarian theory, by the way.) And I take it that the threat has to be a proximate one, otherwise I don’t know how to justify Adriana’s principle that civilians are never a legitimate target. It’s not sufficient to say that the “monopoly on force is owned by the state,” when the civilians in turn own the state. At least, they do if popular sovereignty means what it purports to. But it is true that the civilians are absentee owners, relatively far removed from the means to wage war, able to exercise their control over those means only en masse and through cumbersome lumbering processes. No group of them has an immediate ability to project force the way actual soldiers or their immediate commanders do. Whatever twisted justifications the 9/11 bombers may have had (and I hope the tortured dialect of my initial comment didn’t give anyone the impression that I buy those justifications), they cannot claim that what they did served the purpose of eliminating our capacity to carry out a military attack that they had reason otherwise to expect.
Which brings us to Iraq. The central question is: how proximate is the threat? Is it proximate enough that its elimination justifies the forseeable if unintended killing of Iraqi civilians? How do we define an approach to this question that leads neither to the conclusion that we are justified in invading any well-armed regime with whom we are not on good terms, nor to an inability to act until Hitler’s already in Poland? Here I’ll say that while I don’t have a satisfactory answer to this question for myself yet, I do incline to the belief that whatever it is, war with Iraq will probably satisfy it. Why? Because here the choice isn’t between killing no civilians and killing many to remove a threat of uncertain proximity. Here civilians are already dying under sanctions and under Saddam’s rule. We have reason to believe that the number we kill in an invasion may well be lower than the number who would die in a year from the status quo. And we’d be putting an end to that status quo.
As for Lou’s comment above, I think by “geographical” he meant rearranging the topographical lines on the map, not the political ones–by means of Oppenheimer’s bulldozer, I presume. His comment restates the rule utilitarian position I mentioned: effective deterrence of aggression requires that we eschew proportionality restraints on our response to it. I think this raises the same problem as capital punishment—it raises the cost of enforcement error to unacceptable levels.
THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR IS THE TRUTH. BUT WHY?
THE PARABLE OF THE MAFIA FAMILY SECRET
by Wayne Lusvardi
In the movie “The Godfather,” mafia son Michael Corleone tells his fiancee that his father’s methods are no different from those of the leading elected officials.
Cast of characters:
The Godfather – Saudi Arabian Prince
Uncle Ossie – Osama bin Laden
Sad Punk – Saddam Hussein
Police Chief Dub Yahoo – U.S. President
Police Chief’s Daughter – Victim of 9-11
Neighbor Across the Street – Western Europe
Neighbor Who Lives Next to the Sad Punk – Eastern Europe
Neighbor Whose Face Was Disfigured by Acid – Kuwait
The Contralto Family – The Saudi Family
The Town Council – the U.S. Congress
The 19 Thugs – Nineteen 9-11 mass murderers
The United Municipalities (U.M.) – the United Nations
Drugs – Proxy for oil
The Neighborhood – the Public
Storyline: The web of deception about the impending war against Iraq can be analogized to a mafia family morality story where everyone has something big to lose if they tell the truth about a family secret.
Imagine for the moment you are a member of a tight knit Italian mob family called the Contraltos. Things are kept secret in “la familia,” as much of the family business is illegally involved with drug running. The Godfather of the Contraltos runs the town, and as his family name implies, he is a con artist and a mob boss. He literally and figuratively owns Police Chief Dub Yahoo (also “dubbed” the Texas Ranger). Police Chief Dub Yahoo was recently appointed to office by an appeals court after he “gored” the former chief in a runoff election.
The Godfather of the Contralto family is involved with a sad neighborhood young punk who does his bidding and drug running for him. The sad punk keeps illegal automatic weapons, plastic explosives, and an illegal lab full of chemicals in his home to brew drugs. One day the sad punk starts to think that he can grab power and money from the Godfather and rule the neighborhood. Like all “wanna-be” gang bangers, he has a power fantasy. The Godfather is too old and too cagey to directly confront the punk.
The sad punk is dating the Police Chief’s daughter. But the daughter breaks it off. The ego of the sad punk can’t stand it so he threatens to get some acid from the drug chemicals in his home lab and throw it in the face of the Police Chief’s daughter. The young punk is on probation for “breaking and entering” and previously attempting to throw acid on another neighbor who was going to tell the police about his drug activities.
This is just the opportunity the Godfather was looking for. So he devises a scheme to get someone to do his bidding for him to eliminate his new rival. The Godfather gets his brother Ossie and his 19 thugs to gang assault the Police Chief’s daughter and throw acid on her face.
The whole town and the Contralto extended family are dependent on the Godfather for their livelihood. The Police Chief’s wife tells her daughter not to tell anyone who really did this to her for fear they will all lose their social position and conveniences of life. So they find a convenient scapegoat – the sad punk drug runner who had previously threatened the Godfather’s daughter. The Police Chief files a police report. The daughter is ashamed about what happened and doesn’t want the whole family to blame her for any misfortune. She now is wearing a veil, in say Muslim fashion, to cover her shame and her disfigured face.
But your neighbor across the west side of the street senses that the sad young punk didn’t commit the crime because he never saw him at the Police Chief’s house when the crime was committed, but he did see Uncle Ossie and his band of 19 thugs enter the home. Another neighbor who lives next door to the punk drug runner on the east side of the street wants him arrested so his property values won’t go down.
Now the Police Chief’s daughter is pregnant and threatening suicide. Abortion of the fetus must now be handled discretely so the police don’t find out. Uncle Ossie is thinking of rubbing her out to shut her up; or rubbing out other family members to keep them quiet. Other family members start asking for bribes to stay quiet. It isn’t that crime begets more crime, but that lying begets more crimes. The Police Chief tries to bribe the rank and file police by offering them combat pay to fight the “drug war.” The rank and file police eventually suspect they are dupes and that something is going on, but no one will talk. The local media is skewering the Police for doing nothing. The radical feminists want action taken against the sad punk. The radical Left sees the sad punk as a “causa celebre” and a victim of police abuse. The Right Wing conspiracy nuts are suspicious about the connections between the Police Chief (now mayor) and the drug lords. The local town newspaper, called “The Town Mirror,” just reports what everybody wants to hear.
The police want to send in inspectors to the sad punk’s home. All that they find are household chemicals and instruments that are used in everyday activities. They can find no link that the young punk was at the Police Chief’s home when the crime was committed. The Police call in the United Municipalities (U.M.) and ask for authority to arrest the punk. The sad punk drug runner barricades himself in his “drug house” and refuses to come out after the police arrive to arrest him. The police become afraid that the punk will ignite the chemicals (WMD’s) in the house resulting in a huge explosion that will destroy the entire neighborhood and wipe out the swat team surrounding the house. The police become involved in a long standoff and siege lasting months. The sad punk drug runner allows some visits to his home, but lives in an impregnable bunker in his basement. The police can’t subdue him and can’t figure out if he has booby-trapped the chemical lab or even his natural gas meter and gas stove. The chimney extends all the way down into the basement and the police are afraid he might send some device up the chimney that will rain dirty chemicals all over the town.
Eventually the whole Town Council is thrown out of office for doing nothing about this heinous crime. Police Chief Dub Yahoo is now elected the new mayor in a wave of populism.
Events are now spiraling out of control with demonstrations in the town and the neighboring towns and where it will stop no one knows. The only possible way for this to stop is for someone to tell the truth about what really happened. About who set whom up? But no one will say anything. Everyone has too much to lose.
Now substitute the characters in this morality play with those listed above. Then ask yourself the question: “what’s the difference between this morality tale and what is currently transpiring with the Iraq War?” Answer: probably not much. The evidence all points to the fact that Saudi Arabia was directly involved with 9-11. A Saudi Princess reportedly sent money to the attackers. It has now been reported that a Saudi ambassador aided them or aided those who aided them. A story came out the day after 9-11 that bin Laden’s buddy was Turki al-Faycal, the Saudi spy chief, who resigned within 24-hours of the World Trade Center attack. Fifteen of the 19 mass murderers were Saudi. Osama bin Laden is Saudi. The Saudis have been acting “sub rosa” for the U.S. for decades going back at least to when they supplied weapons and drug money to Ollie North against the Contras in South America. The 9-11 attack was carried out with the precision characteristic of the support and training of a modern government military. Much of the cover for the mass murderers was likely aided by the use of secure diplomatic pouches that cannot be inspected. Now Saudi Arabia has called on the U.S. to appoint them the lead nation in reconstructing Iraq after the war. Do we need to hear more?
That the Saudis set up Saddam Hussein and are provoking the U.S. into fighting their war with Iraq is about the only explanation that answers why no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq (not that there aren’t any) and why no connection with Iraq and 9-11 has been conclusively found. But we can’t afford to go to war against Saudi Arabia, so everybody looks for scapegoats, tries to exploit the political capital involved, and spins the truth for their special interests. Pretty soon we forget the real facts and only believe what is convenient. Historians call this re-spinning of the facts “revisionism” and sociologists call it a “social construction.” The events of 9-11 and thereafter are “theater” more than politics or some conspiracy among oil barons. Somewhat like the neighborhood “crips” and “bloods” gangs in the south central neighborhoods of the City of Los Angeles, the mass murderers of 9-11 have a power fantasy ideology of influencing world events that apparently has panned out.
Covering up this crime may wreak havoc on the U.S. national family just as it would on anyone’s family in the above morality story. Those on the political Right are capitalizing on the situation with jingoism and renewed political power. The political Left won’t state the truth for fear they will lose jobs due to an oil crisis or Depression; or lose their waning political power for lack of credibility in the eyes of the public for being “do nothings” against the war on terrorism. Masking the crime may eventually lead to massive morale problems with U.S. troops, reminiscent of Vietnam. There may be a serious corrosion of the credibility of our moral and religious institutions that continue to preach either “just war” theories (“Causa Bella” Right Wing religious theology), or conversely knee-jerk “anti-war and peace” theories (“Contra Causa” Left Wing religious theology), instead of gaining the high moral ground by speaking the truth to the power elites and the public. As in the mafia family morality story above, events are starting to spiral out of control. And no political faction, religious denomination, nation, or international body has a corner on the truth or morality, with the possible exception of the Catholic Pope who apparently realizes how complicit everyone is and how deep-rooted the problem is.
The U.S. faces the dilemma of either fighting someone else’s war for them or brace for the specter of more terrorist attacks from its “allies.” It used to be said in international affairs that: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Now this has been twisted to “my friend can sometimes manufacture convenient enemies.”
Conspiratorial nonsense you say to the above?! Try reading Rudyard Kipling’s historical novel Kim about the contest for empire between Russia and Britain. Or read historian Peter Hopkirk’s Like Hidden Fire: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire, by the fomenting of a Muslim holy war by the Germans against the British in Afghanistan prior to World War I, with terrorist cells scattered around the world, including London and California, USA. Another book to help gain historical perspective on the Iraq war is Karl E. Meyer and Shareen B. Byrsac, Tournament of Shadows which tells the story of the “Great Game” for empire in Central Asia from the 1800’s to 1990.
Informing the public of the realpolitik involved with the war on Iraq would seem critical to maintaining a true democracy and citizenship, rather than treating the public only as consumers of misinformation or dupes.
Wayne Lusvardi, lives in Pasadena, California, USA
waynelus@pacbell.net