The always interesting Victor Davis Hanson chimes in this morning with a warning about the ongoing conflict with Islamist barbarians. His message: it is highly unlikely that the barbarians can win this war, unless we hand them a victory:
Western societies from ancient Athens to imperial Rome to the French republic rarely collapsed because of a shortage of resources or because foreign enemies proved too numerous or formidable in arms — even when those enemies were grim Macedonians or Germans. Rather, in times of peace and prosperity there arose an unreal view of the world beyond their borders, one that was the product of insularity brought about by success, and an intellectual arrogance that for some can be the unfortunate byproduct of an enlightened society.
Such smug dispensation — as profoundly amoral as it is — provides us, on the cheap and at a safe distance, with a sense of moral worth. Or perhaps censuring from the bleachers enables us to feel superior to those less fortunate who are still captive to their primordial appetites. We prefer to cringe at the thought that others like to see proof of their killers’ deaths, prefer to shoot rather than die capturing a mass murderer, and welcome a generic profile of those who wish to kill them en masse.
We should take stock of this dangerous and growing mindset — and remember that wealthy, sophisticated societies like our own are rarely overrun. They simply implode — whining and debating still to the end, even as they pass away.
Like Mr. Hanson, I believe that it is a conceit, a fatal mistake, to treat a war as a court proceeding, and to try to apply peacetime norms in a wartime environment. The danger with the new era of ‘asymmetrical warfare’ is that the threat is much more nebulous, making it that much more difficult to confine the wartime dispensation. We have already seen plenty of ‘slop’ in the US, as the Justice Department is already using its ‘anti-terrorism’ powers to go after pornographers, drug dealers, and so forth.
The dilemma is quite real, and I don’t see any easy answers other than eternal vigilance combined with bloody-minded realism. In other words, pretty much what has preserved the spirit of liberty through past crises.
“I am not suggesting that we … discount the moral issues that arise from killing our enemy leaders and disseminating gross pictures of their corpses.”
At least Mr Hanson does attempt to recognise that there is a moral issue. So I respect his views for that much and a few other points besides.
“Like Mr. Hanson, I believe that it is a conceit, a fatal mistake, to treat a war as a court proceeding, and to try to apply peacetime norms in a wartime environment”.
I understand the gist of this statement and have some sympathy for it. However such ideas can lead to a two tier legal system in which the military operates in one sphere of understanding and the rest of the population operates in another. There are several nasty examples of such practices in the world. In such a situation one quickly comes to what is the definition of a “war” . Generally I think I understand what a war is but there are some more unusual examples that might show some difficulty in the application Mr Dean’s maxim.
Say Saddam declared an “internal war” on the Kurds or anyone else for that matter. In such a war are we proposing that the legalities of normal life be laid aside to allow Mr Hussain to do as he pleases? Obviously not. Or I hope not. So at what point should civilian and military laws share common ground. I for one think they should be more tightly bound than current fashion seems to dictate.
No, not so that we can prosecute soldiers doing a difficult job in the line of duty but so that people like Tony Martin can use a more sensible basis with which to defend themselves next time they are terrorised in their own home.
It cuts both ways…
No, it does not necessarily cut both ways… if a war itself is completely unjust (such as a Nazi attack on Poland or Saddam’s attacks on the Kurds), everything done during that war is unjust and in effect a crime. If a war is just however, some things may be justified which would not normally be acceptable. Certainly it can get hard to determine where the boundaries are at times, reality being the messy thing it is, but the general principle is really just based on the common sense fact that war and normal civil interaction are qualitatively different states and thus actions need to be viewed somewhat differently within the context within which they occur.
Why does no-one just give the Islamists a warning along the lines of, “One more terrorist attack perpetrated in the name of Allah, and we take out Mecca,”?
This is a different enemy to any we have fought before (the nearest comparison I can think of is kamikaze) – people willing to die for their cause – or, in this case, EAGER to die for their cause – are the most dangerous. We’d all do well to remember that.
In past crises a great deal of thought has gone into the way the Western democracies have presented their case to the world. The results of that thought, for example in the wartime speeches of Lincoln and Churchill, served not only as inspiration during the hour of crisis but as guidance afterward, a reminder of why people were asked to suffer and die.
In that respect the West is operating with a serious disadvantage as it conducts the war on terrorism, in that the leader of the strongest democracy is wholly unequal to the task of making the case for civilization in a way that commends itself even to American allies, let alone to people outside the West. The prodigious sense of personal entitlement that is George Bush’s defining characteristic ensures that he himself is almost certainly unaware of the problem; from his point of view, if something is good enough for himself and a few of his closest associates it ought to be good enough for everyone. However, the constrast to past wartime Presidents like Lincoln, Wilson and even Truman, who left little doubt that America sought more than just victory on the battlefield, is painfully clear.
Liz writes
Why does no-one just give the Islamists a warning along the lines of, “One more terrorist attack perpetrated in the name of Allah, and we take out Mecca,”?
Probably because those who perpetrate the atrocities would welcome Mecca being wiped out. What better call to holy war could you get?
Eamon
Ah, yes, I suppose so. I didn’t think like that – I figured that if their religion means that much to them, they would do anything to prevent the destruction of its spiritual home. Having given the matter some thought, though, you’re probably right – all the evidence points to Islamists preferring violence to anything else.
In some of the comments here, there are unstated assumptions suggesting we can know what wars are “legal”, and even what acts or hostile activities properly constitute “war”. Maybe some of our thoughtful readers could explain their assumptions on one or both of these points.
I certainly agree that Islamic Extremists use violence, very often in total disproportion to even what they seem to want to achieve. In which case the argument that the die hards will give up the fight upon seeing the bodies of Q & U is a bit less convincing.
Whereas to the more normal Iraqi the sight of grotesquely shot up bodies and then the weirdly madeup heads probably engendered a feeling of mild revulsion. For two reasons. The first obvioulsy being that Q and U were revolting specemins of humanity. But with those feelings some also felt that the parading of the bodies was a bit distasteful.
I understand that something “a bit distasteful” really does not figure in a war but what military objective was being sought in these actions. If no military objective was being sought then the actions, presumably, must be justified within a civil frame of reference.
As for the concept of a just war. That is going to be a long discussion. Which I shall leave to people with more enthusiasm than myself.
What evidence exists for Zathras’ claim that George W. Bush’s “defining characteristic” is ” a sense of personal entitlement”? Any? (cue sound of crickets) Bush’s term has been marked by high integrity, spotless dedication and effectiveness against this country’s (and freedom’s) enemies. It is the Clintons and Roosevelts of the world who see high office as their right and can conceive of no moral responsibility to uphold political, economic and cultural freedom.
mad dog – I believe that the thinking behind the display of Q and U’s bodies was probably threefold.
First, it had to be real blow to the old man. We are still actively at war with what remains of Saddam’s organization, and any opportunity to widen the “psychological breach” that we have opened in his head is worth considering.
Second, Q and U were the next generation of Baathism. Their death is the death knell of Iraqi Baathism in the long run. Convincing their followers that they have no future as Baathists is a worthy exercise, and it is likely, in the conspiracy- and falsehood-rich environment of the Middle East, that only photographs would have done the job.
Finally, the people of Iraq are entitled, in my view, to seeing their enemies laid low and humiliated. And spare me the booshwah about how this offended delicate Muslim sensibilities. The Muslims themselves apply these sensibilities very selectively – I recall no outrage at the much worse treatment meted out to American corpses on several occasions.
Well, it all depends on what the meaning of “high integrity and spotless dedication” is, if I may coin a phrase. To most of Bush’s partisan defenders what it means is that Bush, unlike Clinton, is faithful to his wife. And this is terrific, really. To apply the expression more literally to Bush requires that one overlook more than I care to, however; it is closer to the truth to describe Bush as having Clinton’s character without Clinton’s appetites.
The point of my original post had to do with Bush’s performance in stating American motivations and objectives, and in bringing clarity to the explanation of American foreign policy. I would be very glad to see an analysis comparing it favorably to that of past Presidents, if only for the entertainment such an analysis might provide.
mad dog,
In war – that is, a total, unconstrained and real war – there is no two-tier legal system because there are not two levels of moral reference.
In a real war the population rapidly falls prey to a peculiarly exhilarating, unifying and widespread, moral “shortcut”. Civil freedoms are greatly curtailed in the pursuit of victory. With its attainment and with peace, this condition is openly referred to as war psychosis and literally the first job of political leaders is to sweep it away. This is the reason in that May 1945 flights over bombed-out German cities were organised for journalists and why the German people, objects of total fear and hatred beings for six years, were suddenly and uniformly presented in their full, miserable humanity to all the peoples of the Allied nations.
The undoubted facts that war psychosis is not prevalent and a public moral standard is extanct and constrains military conduct prove that the War of Terror is not a real war, and will not become one. It is a campaign or series of military campaigns, and its potential for impact on domestic law is limited accordingly. If constraints introduced for homeland security are judged excessive, therefore, one should look to other causes beside the casus belli.
We wouldn’t have the more repressive domestic applications of wartime regulation (i.e. using Justice department anti-terrorism laws against domestic civil crimes) if most of the population currently didn’t tacitly approve of it. Prior to 9-11, mindsets were different, as they were prior to Pearl Harbor and the attack on the Lusitania. The change is more than just a reaction to a commonly perceived threat though. There is no reasonable way in which, say, pornography can be seen as a terrorist threat.
What is going on is a fit of moralism in the population. This reminds me of a comment Eddie Rickenbacker made in his autobiography. He saw prohibition as the start of modern drug dealing , as an illegal industry, once created, sought new products as old ones lost their profit upon relegalization. More to the point, he observed that prohibition would never have been passed if the troops hadn’t been overseas.
Why do we suddenly become such a bunch of moral paragons, when a few months before we were all in favor of having a good time? After reading Rickenbacker, I used to think it might be because the men were all away and the women were running the place. That can’t be the case this time around however. Perhaps it is an atavistic response to a threat: We must stop being bad so we won’t be punished. Or perhaps there is an economic reason: Wars may be an economic reaction to boom times and overproduction, with the following busts and slowdowns. Like a drunk the morning after, we all rue our bad behavior and resolve to lead more upright lives.
The danger is that the strictures we agree to don’t go away after we get over our moralism. Rickenbaker, I am afraid, was right: our drug czars and their tightening strait jacket on American life are the consequence of the temperance zealots using WW1 to force their program on a country that would never have accepted it otherwise.
If we would apply warlike approaches to warlike matters only, there would be no problem. That doesn’t satisfy many of us however. So we apply a ‘tough’ approach where it doesn’t belong. Later we will react to that, not by undoing the damage, but by flagellating ourselves for our ‘guilt’. Uday and Ousay will probably never be heros in Iraq, but I confidently look forward to reading some bilge in Newsweek about our ‘inhuman mistreatment’ of them in an upcoming 2006 issue.
I will probably need to show my ID card to buy my copy.
Sigh. Another testament to the central place illegal drugs occupy in libertarian thought.
“…drug czars and their tightening strait jacket on American life, ” indeed! Leaving aside the small point that antidrug laws are generally of little consequence to people not determined to break them, look again at the links to Prohibition, a measure taken against a product that had been legal and widely consumed in America for centuries. Some of the drugs in use today had not even been invented 20 years ago; it is, to say the least, counterintuitive to argue that their use was encouraged by laws discouraging it.
A more significant issue that anti-drug laws is the continuing, widespread use of drugs, a symptom of moral decay in at least part of society and a signal that at least part of society is unlikely to contribute anything useful to our future.
Hey Perfesser Zathras,
“Free Mumia!! While supplies last.”
Where can I buy some of them there two dollar words? I want to sound impotent too.
And here’s a news flash Gore, Saddam Hussein, and France all lost. So MoveOn.dammit
And France is still losing. Bwahahahahahahahaha
Hey Zathras:
You have almost totally missed the point about drugs. The one aspect that you got right is the “small point” that you “left aside”. There are indeed, and always will be people who don’t care about laws-against narcotics or anything else.
Libertarians care very much about laws and oppose laws which unnecessarily limit freedom. I am not talking about the freedom to use drugs. I have no desire to use them. I have never used them and will not as I see their use as a character flaw.
That does not protect me from government restrictions which ostensibly ‘fight drugs’. There are draconian restrictions on my use and movement of US currency, government surveillance of my economic behavior, high taxes to support a vast prison system; I am threatened by large numbers of skilled criminals -trained in that same prison system, by correspondingly large numbers of police, judicial officials, lawyers and others who restrict my freedom. The fact that I have nothing to do with drugs does not shield me or any other American from any of the negative effects of all this.
I see a continuous thread from Prohibition directly to the current situation. The fact that alcohol has been around for centuries and that many modern drugs had not been invented then is irrelevant. The opposition of the government police forces and an illicit industry supplying addictive substances began then. The two sides have fed off each other ever since, each growing stronger year by year. To say that drugs didn’t exist then is like saying that radio has nothing to do with modern electronics because we no longer use vacuum tubes. Obviously businesses modernize and change.
To minimize the libertarian concern with drug laws in the face of countries like Columbia and even Mexico and the SW United States, where drug money is increasingly influencing politics in an ever more sinister replay of 1920’s Chicago is naive. Of course drug use is being encouraged – via the illicit drug industry- by laws discouraging it. The point of my post is that wartime attitudes accelerate this and similar trends. Drugs are just one example, albeit a significant one. There will always be those who see increasing the restrictions our actions as a good thing. Unfortunately, in wartime, too many people blindly and emotionally agree with them.
Mr Collins, I am in accord with much of what you write, particularly the last two sentences. Many of the unconvinced would do well to re-consider those words.
The drug laws have two purposes. One is to keep the price artificially high and therefore keep the economies of some South American countries from imploding and causing a even greater landslide of economic immigrants into the US, and the other is to make money and work for law enforcement. That is to have large fines, tax law, and confiscatory methods to create the cash flow and use the drug war as an excuse to keep a large police contingent (local, state, federal, and international) to, ahem, deal with illegal drugs. Keeps the prison idustry going full bore too. A large number of jobs not to mention lawyers depend on keeping drugs illegal.
Then there’s the fact that we take mood altering drugs all the time, caffiene, alcohol, and allegery medication for over the counter. But we are prescribed anti-depressants, pain-killers, sedatives, tranquilizers, hypnotics, and anti-psychotics by the billions. But God forbid you self-medicate, then you’re on the medical profession’s and the pharmaceutical industries’ turf and we can’t have that, now can we?
Perry wrote – “if a war itself is completely unjust (such as a Nazi attack on Poland or Saddam’s attacks on the Kurds), everything done during that war is unjust and in effect a crime.”
You are assuming that the people prosecuting the war are all doing so voluntarily. Conscripted soliders are obviously acting under extreme duress, so describing their conduct as unjust and criminal is inaccurate. Even volunteers are strictly limited in their freedom to act – UK and US pilots who viewed the recent Iraq war as unjust would have been jailed if they had refused to go in and bomb targets next to densely-populated Iraqi civilian areas.
“If a war is just however, some things may be justified which would not normally be acceptable.”
Isn’t that begging the question? If a war requires things which are morally unacceptable, then it is not a just war.
“Certainly it can get hard to determine where the boundaries are at times, reality being the messy thing it is, but the general principle is really just based on the common sense fact that war and normal civil interaction are qualitatively different states and thus actions need to be viewed somewhat differently within the context within which they occur.”
It is quite possible to believe that, whilst still believing that the nost widely accepted and basic laws of morality (e.g. universality, not deliberately harming innocent people etc) apply equally to both situations. Saying that war and peace are qualitatively different is not the same as saying that what is morally acceptable in war is qualitatively different to what is morally acceptable in peacetime. The former assertion is obviously true – the latter is controversial to say the least. Hence, more proof than “war is different to peace” is required before drawing up an alternative “war morality”.
I’m wondering if anyone posting actually read the VDH essay. The bottom line of the essay is that our political correctness is going to kill us. Many of the same people who are reading the 9/11 report and complaining that it wasn’t prevented are the same ones on PC watch. That PC watch meant that a FBI agent suspicious of the those attending flight schools was unable to get a warrent to search the student pilot/terrorist home for a lack of evidence to warrent a search.
While we debate racial profiling etc, the next attack is being planned.
I agree absolutely with what Catherine says.
As to what Doug Collins says, it is eloquent and insightful, along the lines of the many essays I have read arguing that the Civil War was not really about slavery. You can make a good argument for that proposition, but in doing so you have to step around the fact that most Southerners and all Southern leaders believed it was about slavery.
I don’t doubt that there are many people who share Mr. Collins concern about overcrowding in the prison system, released criminals in society and so forth (I’m one of them, actually, and would be open to specific ideas designed to address these concerns), without having any interest themselves in using drugs. But as he knows very well the loudest libertarian arguments against drug laws have little to do with these concerns; they have instead to do with “oppression,” “tyranny,” “cruel injustice” and all the other hyperbolic expressions people typically use when something they personally want to do is being objected to. This isn’t true of everyone and may not be true of Mr. Collins, with whose view that drug use is a symptom of flawed character I agree.
Teh gentleman who writes Caerdroia posted insights about this subject, but more specifically how the worldview/foreign policy approach of the GenXers differs radically from the Boomers.
Canticle
A threat to destroy Mecca is unlikely to work. If the Islamofascists believe that Mecca will never be destroyed, they will either regard the threat as an empty bluff or they will think their next blow will knockout Western Civilization.
Catherine made me go back and read the article again more carefully (I admit to scanning it the first time). Leaving the drug argument (thankfully) behind and getting back to the topic at hand, I have to think that there is more going on here than PC foolishness. Much of the electorate seems to be resoundingly NOT up in arms over this stuff. Can anyone doubt the reaction if, in 1943, Edward R. Murrow had agonized publicly over our dehumanizing of the Japanese. He might have objected to the racism inherent in the term ‘Nips’. He might have, that is, if he was interested in being horsewhipped.
There has been a lot of talk over the last two Gulf wars about not ‘repeating the mistakes of Viet Nam’. This has led to the idea of the ‘Exit Strategy’ – an absurd idea in warfare that would only occur to a nation that had been through Viet Nam. There is only one correct ‘Exit Strategy’. In past wars, we knew it was obvious and didn’t have to waste time thinking about it. I suppose this is better than what we were thinking in 1968, but not much. Another post Viet Nam improvement is a slight reluctance to direct military tactics on the part of civilian officials.
But I think the biggest “Mistake of Viet Nam” was letting the civilian population see a little of the horror of war on television – but not enough to give them a sense of balance. Everyone remembers the VC being shot in the head by the police chief and the little burned girl running down the road. And the body counts. Our dead and our horrors (although I heard later that the little girl had actually been burned by the enemy – not by US napalm) What we never saw was their horrors. Back sometime around 1968, National Review ran an article on VC atrocities. They had some very graphic photos of villagers who had been garroted and/or dismembered for non cooperation. Apparently the DOD had many such photos that they had offered to the press. The writer said he asked how often the media asked for them and was told that he was the first who ever had done so.
I realize that there should be some restraint on propaganda, but not to the point of twisting the truth. Look at the salutory effect the photos of the Shiite graves have had on some of the less stupid of the Not In My Name crowd.
Sherman was absolutely correct – War is Hell. And until such time as Christ returns, it is going to be a condition of human existence (or nonexistence for those societies that fail to come to terms with it.) In modern industrial democracies most people are shielded from the experience of warfare. Yet as citizens in a democracy, they are expected to make intelligent decisions about it. At least when we had the draft, there was a reservoir of experience in the general population. We didn’t need Tom Clancy to tell us what it was like. We could just ask dad or our older brother. Now Americans are following the Europeans down the road of letting someone else defend us and then whining about how awful war is.
My problem with Ashcroft and with the Homeland Defense Department is their paternal attitude toward Americans: “Just go about your business and let the experts take care of everything”. if the government takes this attitude, how can they be surprised when people don’t appreciate the seriousness of the threat? After all, we don’t worry about urban poverty, crop failures, school lunch nutrition and so forth. “The government takes care of all that. Isn’t this the same thing?”
Hanson is right about societies eroding away, but I think PC correctness is just a symptom. The real problem is state paternalism and a corresponding public willingness, nay eagerness, to be treated as children. PC correctness is just the petty bickering of 45 year old children trying hard to pretend that their opinions have some significance.
A thought or two about some of the earlier posts.
Cobden Bright said: “If a war requires things which are morally unacceptable, then it is not a just war.”
He must not think any war, other than perhaps a purely economic one, can be just. Because killing is wrong. Period.
However other things may also be wrong. Some of them, such as allowing a sadistic monster to continue to torture people to death, may be more wrong than killing his agents and his accomplices and thereby putting a stop to the evil when we have the means to do it. While I don’t think that ends necessarily justify means, I can conceive of the possibility that sometimes they do justify them.
Also Liz caught some flak for her bombing Mecca comment. She really doesn’t seem that bloodthirsty. I think the point that she appeared to be wanting to dramatize, is a valid one: Our opponents are taking huge advantage of our moral scruples. We are limited to attacking whole countries and thereby antagonizing large populations that are otherwise not overly sympathetic to the terrorists. Bombing Mecca is a metaphor for finding a point of leverage on the terrorists and applying pressure.
An example was the technique that I understand the late King Hussain of Jordan used to eliminate the Abu Nidal gang. After all the terrorist incidents, the Achille Lauro and various other murders, they attacked Jordanian interests – and Nidal injudiciously made a public remark about the “Pygmy King”.
The families of various gang members were arrested and allowed to telephone their progeny. They explained that they were in an execution chamber, and that unless young Abdul came by to turn himself in and be interrogated……
Yes this was immoral. Allowing Abu Nidal to continue to operate when one could stop him was also immoral. Anyone who is unwilling to make the moral calculation, by his corresponding unwillingness to face grim reality, has lost his right to have his opinions taken seriously.