Armed Liberal has begun a thoughtful attempt to unravel the issues surrounding use of force. In the case of what happened in Fallujah, and as we look at the Kos vs. lgf conversation below, I thought it might be useful to consider how the theory of just and unjust warfare addresses these issues.
Below is an excerpt from a book that many professional military officers read -- and debate. The book was written after the Vietnam war and I've selected it because it goes to the heart, not only of how terrorists justify atrocities, but also what actions (including language on blogs) we might want to take - or to refrain from justifying - in response.
From the 3rd edition of Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars:
Overriding the Rules of War
The Decision to Bomb German Cities (note: during WWII - rkb)
The decision to bomb cities was made late in 1940 ... What had once been called indiscriminate bombing (and commonly condemned) was now required ... The purpose was explicitly declared to be the destruction of civilian morale.
... A number of reasons had already been offered for the British decision. From the beginning, the attacks were defended as reprisals for the German blitz. This is a very problematic defense, even if we leave aside the difficulties of the doctrine of reprisals (discussed earlier in the book - rkb) ... Nor was it Churchill's purpose, once the blitz began, to deter German attacks or to establish a policy of mutual restraint.
"We ask no favor of the enemy. We seek from them no compunction. On the contrary, if tonight the people of London were asked to cast their votes whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of all cities, the overwhelming majority would cry, 'No, we will mete out to the Germans the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us.'
...Reprisal was a bad argument; revenge was a worse one. We must concentrate (then - rkb) on the military argument. ...(long analysis of Britain's military posture in 1940 here - rkb) ... Today many experts believe that the war might have ended sooner had there been a greater concentration of air power against targets such as the German oil refineries. But the deicsion to bomb cities was made at a time when victory was not in sight and the specter of defeat ever present. And it was made when no other decision seemed possible if there was to be any sort of military offensive against Nazi Germany.
Bomber Command was the only offensive weapon available to the British in those frightening years. .... 'The bombers alone', Churchill had said as early as September 1940, 'provide the means of victory.'
The bombers alone - that poses the issue very starkly, and perhaps wrongly, given the debates over strategy to which I have already referred. Churchill's statement suggested a certainty to which neither he nor anyone else had any right. But the issue can be put so as to accomodate a degree of skepticism and to permit even the most sophisticated among us to indulge in a common and a morally important fantasy: suppose that I sat in the seat of power and had to decide whether to use Bomber Command (in the only way that it could be used systematically and effectively) against cities. Suppose further that unless bombers were used in this way, the probability that Germany would eventually be defeated would be radically reduced.
... the more certain a German victory appeared to be in the absence of a bomber offensive, the most justifiable was the decision to launch the offensive. it is not just that such a victory was frightening, but also that it seemed in those years very close; it was not just that it was close, but also that it was so frightening. Here was a supreme emergency, where one might well be required to override the rights of innocent people and shatter the war convention.
Given the view of Nazism that I am assuming, the issue takes this form: should I wager this determinate crime (the killing of innocent people) against that immesurable evil (a Nazi triumph)? Obviously, if there is some other way of avoiding the evil or even a reasonable chance of another way, I must wager differently or elsewhere. But I can never hope to be sure; a wager is not an experiment. Even if I wager and win, it is still possible that I was wrong, that my crime was unnecessary to victory. But I can argue that I studied the case as closely as I was able, took the best advice I could find, sought out available alternatives. And if all this is true, and my perception of evil and imminent danger not hysterical or self-serving, then surely I must wager. There is no option; the risk is too great. My own action is determinate, of course, only as to its direct consequences, while the rule that bars such acts is founded on a conception of rights that transcends all immediate considerations. It arises out of our common hsitory; it holds the key to our common future. But I dare to say that our history will be nullified and our future condemned unless I accept the burdens of criminality here and now.
This is not an easy argument to make, and yet we must resist every effort to make it easier. ...This argument says: sometimes it is right to decide an emergency exists which requires us to do things we otherwise judge to be illegal and wrong. Do them we must, if the risk is sufficiently great and sufficiently immediate. But we should never kid ourselves that they were right - just that they were necessary.
Does this argument provide us with a way to distinguish between the murder and desecration of the contractors in Fallujah and casualties inflicted by the Marines there afterward?
And does it provide a useful way to critique terrorism as opposed to war?
UPDATE: I have a few minutes free right now and would like to expand on my questions here, in response to some of the comments so far.
One strength of the argument I quoted is that it accounts for two different, and conflicting, factors at work during war - factors which I believe differentiate just war from terrorism.
First and foremost, this argument ties the loss of civilian life to a pressing danger which cannot be handled (insofar as the decision maker can judge) in any other effective way.
This argument was made about the invasion of Iraq. Can the mob in Fallujah make the same claim about the Blackwater contractors? Can the perpetrators of the Madrid bombs, or of 9/11, do so?
My own belief is that they not only CANNOT do so, they do not even care to try.
Second, this argument acknowledges that the loss of civilians and innocents is deeply regretable and cannot be swept aside as inconsequential.
In other words, the Islamacist terror networks fail to do 2 things that the Coalition forces are doing in Iraq. First, they fail to claim that they face a massive risk which necessitates their actions. And second, they fail to show remorse or concern for having commited acts which might be considered immoral or regretable.
Now, how does this apply (if at all) to the controversy about Kos and lgf?
One way we might apply it is to say something along the following lines:
"Strong emotions and harsh judgements may be the only way to get at the stark realities in a horrible situation.
However, it is regretable when we use this language, because it inevitably makes important discourse impossible, it does serious injustice to those whom we dehumanize this way and it undercuts our own credibility and judgement.
Therefore, extreme rhetoric may occasionally be justified, but it carries with it a true cost. Use it very rarely and very carefully, lest you become what you criticize."
If you support the end, you support the means.
Watch out with the comparison of 2003-4 terrorism with WW II "terror bombing".
1. Bombing of civilian populations stemmed from the German bombing of the UK during WW I and its disruption of the British war effort through civilian casualties. It was theorized as being a possible contributor to the efforts of the Army/Navy through a strategic assault on the war economy by interwar authors. It was "attempted" by the Italians in Libya and Ethiopia, with nominal success against Iron Age nations. (what's to destroy?) The Germans used its threat as part of its Fifth Column/propaganda operations in Norway, the Netherlands, and Yugoslavia with some measure of success as the bombings struck at critical transport nodes. But the overall effect of UK bombing on the Germans was negligible, if for no other reason than the Germans saw how to prepare for it.
2. Terrorism today is really how irregular groups use force to create political and social changes which regular states will not do otherwise. As such, states cannot directly be "terrorists", though they might employ irregular commandos or sponsor terrorist or guerilla groups. These state sponsored groups might sow "terror", but the purposes are clearly those of raison d'etat, just as bombing Dresden was justified by UK/US military objectives (debateably so).
The reality in Iraq today is that there is a combination of "terrorism" and "rebellion". Rebels seek to replace one state with another. Terrorism does not have direct statist aspirations. In either case, "terror bombing" or "exemplary reprisals" will not answer either threat to the US /Coalition forces in Iraq, nor threats against eventual Iraqi sovereignity.
If you support the end, you support the means.
While I agree with this you must be careful. The end must be moral. If the means is itself not moral, it must be the only available means to the end. And the means must be narrowly tailored.
IMO, terrorism in the Middle East fails on all of these tests.
As to the Marines' response, the end is moral. I can't honestly say whether it's the only available means. And we won't know how narrowly tailored the response is until it's over.
Our enemies, reading this conversation, would have absolutly no idea what we are talking about.
Thnin about it.
Our enemies, reading this conversation, would have absolutly no idea what we are talking about.
Thnin about it.
Our enemies, reading this conversation, would have absolutly no idea what we are talking about.
Thnin about it.
uh.... think about it, too :-)
This is my first time to your site, and found it to be excellent. The commentary on the Kos fiasco was rather insightful.
As it relates to the Marines response, I think it was only a matter of time until a mosque with worshippers was bombed. The terrorists / rogue militants have always utilized otherwise civilian complexes as a means of deterring our actions. They know that we have a collective mentality that would shudder at the thought of having a church with innocent worshippers bombed. However, as they have been prone to do, I think they underestimated our resolve in this matter. When a terrorist takes refuge in a mosque, and uses it as a shelter/shield to continue their activities, they convert it to a military target, and in doing so, make it nearly impossible to identify the actual combatants. Their actions alone lead to the deaths of the innocents.
This question makes me nervous.
Although I never supported the war, I always thought our army was following a reasonably humane plan. Our bombing was fairly targeted, I think we really have tried to keep civilian casualties down in the aftermath. I'd say that the biggest atrocity we committed was allowing the looting that took place - which I do think was callous, but it doesn't compare to the kinds of things that have taken place in other wars. That makes me wonder why this question about "what's justified" is being brought up. I don't think we're doing anything even close to crossing the line of what would be considered a war crime - are we?
I guess the reason the question worries me is that it presumes a worldview: "if only we could use unlimited force, we could whip the insurgency and eliminate it!" I think that worldview is missing the obvious.
Our objective in Iraq was to liberate group 1, "the good people of Iraq", from group 2, "the violent thugs who rule them." But with every month we spent in Iraq, the two groups melded closer and closer together. We've reached the point where all Iraqis hate us, where almost all of them feel that the use of violence against the coalition is acceptable. There is no longer any boundary between the insurgents and the "good people of Iraq." To eliminate the insurgency is, almost by definition, to eliminate the people of Iraq.
In that context, even thinking about "eliminating the insurgents" is a bad idea. Instead, we should be thinking about how to subdue them, or calm them. In which case, asking "how much force is justified" is a bad question.
- Josh
Except in a few circumstances, bombing German cities was tantamount to bombing German industry and the ability to wage war. The fact the the technology of the day didn't allow for the precision needed hit militarily significant targets effectively, did not diminish the need to strike at Nazi Germany's industrial capability.
A survivor of those air raids in Nazi Germany, Wolfgang Samuel, Col, USAF, ret, pointed out to several people who would sit and listen that assuring that a military target was hit entailed walking bomb trains across adjoining civilian areas. Wolfgang Samuel has at least two books in print that takes the child's view of the experience -- and then revisited as aging adults. Everyone should read both of those books; they are enlightening.
I wrote: If you support the end, you support the means.
Dave Shuler wrote: While I agree with this you must be careful. The end must be moral. If the means is itself not moral, it must be the only available means to the end. And the means must be narrowly tailored.
The sentence is true regardless whether you personally judge any particular end as moral; obviously if you judge a particular end as not-moral, you personally are not supporting that end and therefore are not supporting the means used to achieve it.
What means were necessary to achieve any end are proven by the fact that the end was achieved; all the means were necessary, and all of them are part of the end, part of the thing you decide to judge either acceptable or unacceptable.
If you want to argue that it's best to choose the least means possible to achieve any particular end, feel free. Most people do seek the least means, in my opinion.
Sorry... C a n 't stop.. p ost..
What about the least mean means?
All - I've added some more material to my post above. Comments on those points welcome.
George, it's not true that British bombing mainly targetted industry. The campaign I'm citing did indeed specifically target civilian housing - at one point, British pilots were FORBIDDEN from hitting industry in lieu of homes.
Hence the need to think very carefully about what, if anything, might have justified such a choice.
Just to make clear, George is right (however) about the limitations of targetting technology at the time. Civilian injuries and deaths due to those limits are one issue and I agree with George's position on them.
Josh, just to clarify, I personally do not hold the view that "if only we could use unlimited force, we could whip the insurgency and eliminate it".
You're mixing two different questions in your honest response. Both are worth considering, but they are different.
One is the question of what actions might be EFFECTIVE.
The other is the question of what actions can be JUSTIFIED.
I have some thoughts about the first question, but won't expound on them here. What I wanted to accomplish with this entry at Winds of War is to further the discussions we've been having about what actions are justified in a time of danger and high emotion.
Military officers study and debate just war theory, not because they are insensitive to suffering and the value of life, but precisely because this sort of dilemna faces military and senior civilian leaders anytime war breaks out.
The author of the book I cited, by the way, is not a military officer: he was (and I believe still is) Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has written several highly regarded books including Spheres of Justice; Exodus and Revolution; and The Company of Critics.
Robin - Was the catalyst for this question the bombing of the mosques?
(Just so you know, I think the bombing of the mosques is probably a necessary step, but it's frustrating the degree to which we're playing into their hands. It's obvious they set that up as a no-win situation for us, successfully.)
Josh, I'm not specifically addressing the mosque issue, although the argument I cite is directly relevant to it.
Rather I'm bothered by the inability of our public to think about these issues clearly. To put it another way, the Kos / lgf controversy illustrates the need for us all to have a framework through which to think about the tradeoffs, responsibilities and culpability that violent actions carry.
The utilitarian argument that Walzer lays out is an uncomfortable one for most of us. I also think this argument does articulate what many in the West (at least) tend to feel, namely that there are situations in which extreme violence is justified, even if it causes innocents to suffer, but that we should never be comfortable with that suffering. In fact, we should be so uncomfortable about it that we undertake extreme violence only in the most extreme circumstances.
Now, that is a moral position that the mob in Fallujah, and al-Qaeda and their ilk, clearly do not adopt. They are happy to use extreme violence and they delight in the innocent suffering.
So the burned girl, and the Blackwater consultants, are NOT the same sort of situation - at least, not according to the utilitarian just war ethic that Walzer articulates. And our Marines in Fallujah, whose commanders refused permission to bomb the mosque until there was no other way to protect the Marines, are not the same as the Islamacist terrorists.
Now: provocative question. Is there a valid analogy in all this to the use of deliberately violent, extreme language on posts like lgf or to Kos' smug and (in my opinion inexcusable) devaluing of the mutilated contractors?
My understanding is that the latest research has shown that our bombing of German industrial areas was largely ineffective. I don't know to what extent you could attribute our military victory to carpet-bombing civilian areas. If it was indeed helpful, then I suppose the extraordinary circumstances of the war justify it in my mind. But the bombing of London seems to have brought the British together and strengthened their resolve. Was the effect on the Germans somehow different, because the nature the Allied bombing was so severe?
Blackwater "contractors" "consultants" "security guards" So many colorful words, used to spin what truth I would like to know. I have a suspicion. Another word used was mercenary. I know this, judging from their death, they pissed someone off big time. They made someone feel unsafe, threatened. They may not have been millitary, or maybe they were, but not officially. Still they represented me, an American citizen, to the people of Iraq. And I don't think I like the way they did it. I don't subscribe to the ends justify the means mentality. That is the language of excuses. When the ends do justify the means you won't have to mention it, people will know, and you won't get murdered, burned and beaten for your "help".
I agree with Dave that it's disingenuous in the extreme to still be talking about the Blackwater contractors as "civilians" and to be assessing the mob in Fallujah based on whether or not they were killing "civilians." (Using the popular phrase "security guards," as though these guys were just harmless mall rent-a-cops who wandered into Iraq by mistake, is just as silly.) It's implausible in the extreme to think these people wound up in the middle of a hostile, cordoned city at the heart of the tribal insurgency for completely nonviolent reasons, and A.L. should know better. One doesn't have to pretend these guys must have been noncombatants to denounce what happened in Fallujah.
Moreover, the passage talking about the bombing of Germany illustrates precisely why the US seems consistently unable to formulate a practical response to insurgencies. More so, I think, than any other contemporary power, American political and military thinking seems to still be mired in fighting WWII. If you label any form of opposition you face as "the Nazis" and ask yourself "what would Churchill have done in WWII?", you're going to wind up relying on firepower to solve all your problems and get precisely nowhere -- especially in a murky political environment like Iraq. Arguably, that's precisely the sort of thinking that lost America the Vietnam insurgency. It is not a good model for salvaging the situation in Iraq.
(There's a good book on this topic entitled Eating Soup with a Knife, I think -- name of the author escapes me at the mome.)
> Is there a valid analogy in all this to the use of deliberately violent, extreme language on posts like lgf or to Kos' smug and devaluing of the mutilated contractors?
Well, obviously, your real question is, "Isn't Kos Awful?" I'll bite. His original post was quite short. He said three things:
1. "They aren't trying to help the people make Iraq a better place."
2. "They are there to wage war for profit."
3. "I feel nothing for [their] deaths... Screw them."
So my first question: was it wrong to say #1 and #2? I know that most of the people here don't believe these two statements, but clearly, Kos did believe them. What does this prove about Kos? Well, basically, that he's cynical about paid security guards in times of war. I can understand this cynicism. It may be incorrect, it may even be irrational, but it's not monstrous to be cynical. I think if he had only made statements #1 and #2, he never would have been the target of a conservative firestorm.
I'm going to add another statement that Kos didn't specifically state, but which is patently obvious:
#2a: "The guards triggered a firestorm, they made the situation in Iraq a lot worse through their actions. This wasn't their intent, but the outcome was so predictable that they deserve some responsibility anyway."
Personally, If I truly believed that that these guys only cared about themselves, that they were war profiteers, and that they should have known that their actions would endanger the future of Iraq, if I believed all that, then I too would have said "screw them."
In other words, I think that Kos's "screw them" declaration is justified in terms of his beliefs about those four guys. You can argue that those beliefs are wrong, but having mistaken beliefs doesn't make him a monster. And, for what it's worth, I think his beliefs are uncheckable: we can guess all day what those four guys were really up to, but we'll never know for sure. His instincts about them might be right.
And now, back to your regularly-scheduled thread.
The basic problem with Kos' comments was that these human beings were shot, burned, flayed, mutilated, and dragged through the streets of Fallujah on worldwide television like pieces of meat.
It was vile, and saying "screw them" was deeply offensive, no matter what they were doing or what their military status was.
Don't try to overanalyze.
> The basic problem with Kos' comments was that these human beings were shot, burned, flayed, mutilated, and dragged through the streets of Fallujah on worldwide television like pieces of meat.
Heh, normally I agree with you, Praktike. I'll have to make an exception.
Essentially, you're saying, "don't speak ill of the dead." I think this is a valid rule, if you're at a funeral, or talking to a widow. But in the sphere of politics, to follow the rule would be to refuse to debate history. Yes, it's bad that their bodies were desecrated. But I don't think that should make them immune to criticism.
Just dipping in...
Dave, I call bullshit. The role of private securoity forces in Iraq and Afganistan is well-documented; they perform a role in defending civilian assets and, under military supervision, trinaing Iraqi police and military.
Roland thre Headless Thompson Gunner this isn't, nor is some Dirk Dagger or whatever spy novel.
Wow. They 'pissed someone off big time'; that's really grounds for what happened to them, isn't it?
They were escorting a shipment of supplies; they got ambushed; they were killed and then dismembered and burned. I've got a problem with that, and absent some concrete evidence - not 'I have a feeling, or I believe, or I heard from my second cousin's brother-in-law' Internet rumor tha they were on a super-secret torture and assisination mission, I'd suggest that you argument shows more about you and your beliefs than about your knowledge of the facts on the ground in Iraq.
Josh, the fact that Kos (probably wrongly) believes that they were bad guys doesn't in any excuse the calloousness of his post.
I think you're stretching more than a little.
A.L.
Air power enthusiasts in the UK had predicted since WW1 (or before) that if enough bombs could be dropped, it could achieve victory, without need for precision.
This was never subjected to objective analysis, and probably mistaken, below a 'nuclear scale' destruction by firestorm of most enemy cities.
Then, in 1940-43, there was no incentive to analyze bombing; it was the only way to strike Germany. That meant 'area bombing': only night raids were practicable, as without escorts Bomber Command would have been wiped out in mere months of daylight operations.
Lessons?
Warfare is a continuum; it always involves an irreducible level of death and injury of innocents. The question is where you can halt on the degree of horror.
A nation that sees itself in mortal peril will cast aside all restraint.
Objective analysis beforehand is a good idea.
That it best to avoid being in a situation where options have run out, and such choices have to be made.
I believe the actions we are undertaking now are the best way to avoid such choices in the not too distant future; that is their fundamental justification.
I had a conversation with my father a year or so ago. He was a 'double volunteer', first for the RAF, then for flight duty.
I think the fact that he was from Coventry influenced this.
Assigned to Bomber Command, he was then posted to a squadron in India. Fortunately for me: had he been posted to UK operations, odds are high I would never have been born.
Would he have had any regrets then, or after, had he taken part in city-obliterating operations against Germany?
- No. It was war, it was necessary, it was inevitable. Any anger and regret is best directed at the Nazis, to a lesser extent Germany in general, and to those whose failures in the 1930's led to that point of terrible decision.
Let it never happen again.
> Josh, the fact that Kos (probably wrongly) believes that they were bad guys doesn't in any excuse the callousness of his post.
I'm going to go a step further. All this "oh, my, you've offended my delicate sensibilities" stuff is pure crap. Like I said in my previous post, this blog and Kos's blog are hard-nosed political debate forums. We aren't here to be polite, and nobody expects anybody to be polite. We flame each other constantly. Calling somebody "callous" is silly. As if there were some delicate individual out there who burst into tears when he read Kos's post. Gimme a break.
The simple summary is, he feels they're bad guys. He said so in blunt, harsh terms. You can disagree with him that they were bad guys. But to say he should have called them bad guys more politely, that's absurd.
John Farren:
Another very nicely written comment. Gosh, it is you guys' language after all.
Josh: What if they had been U.S. soldiers and he had 'felt' that they were 'bad guys'?
Josh,
Civilised people do not spit on corpses, particularly when the dead died in a way that shocks the conscience. Were you unaware of this social convention?
Gabriel: if he were to say the US soldiers are bad guys, then that would be obviously delusional. I wouldn't accuse him of being impolite, I'd accuse him of being a crackpot. In fact, I'd say that accusing somebody of being callous is a dumb accusation. Nobody expects anybody to be polite around here. Accusing somebody of being too harsh is silly.
If you had accused him of being biased against paid soldiers, I'd have agreed. Since I know where the bias is coming from, his experiences in El Salvador, I tend to feel it's an isolated sort of thing. I think his leap to judgement against these guys reflects on his objectivity in the matter of private soldiers. But it doesn't reflect on his morals.
Well said by Josh. One other thing: I don't know where Armed Liberal is getting his certainty about what the "security guards" were doing in Fallujah, nor his certainty that everything the PMCs are doing in Iraq is "well-documented."
We've also been over in some detail in previous threads why some people have justified suspicions of and low opinions of PMCs. Has there been some massive info dump about the PMCs in Iraq that I've missed in the last couple of days? We've had a couple of threads on this topic now and I've yet to see any direct references to any such information, so if A.L. would like to post something I'm all ears. (Well, all "eyes," I guess.)
Barring that, my read is that we still really don't know one way or the other.
And you know this how? Isn't more likely that their only crime was bing at the wrong place at the wrong time?
Exactly!
Is it proper to condemn those about whom you know nothing?
I really just wish these liberals would just let us get the job done over there.
---------
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Last month a girl who lived on my street was shot to death.
Her killer, a guy with a history of violence, committed suicide afterward.
Would you wonder what she had to have done, to make that guy so mad that he felt he had no choice but to kill her?
As it turned out, she had done nothing. She was a neighbor of the guy's ex-girlfriend, who had committed the grave sin of asking for a restraining order against the guy, citing his violent tendencies. The killer mistook her for his ex, killed her, and then shot himself.
People make mistakes. People who have been surrounded from birth with conspiracies and superstitious beliefs, whose sources of information are streams of blatant slander like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia, and then join a mob out to commit a vigilante slaughter, are likely to make far more mistakes than most.
Why do people persist in assuming that horrific crimes are always the victims' fault? Is your apathy really so great that it's better to just assume "they had it coming" than to look things over for yourself?
Dave and "Dr" Slack:
Y'all are wack! What we know of the contractors is that they were escorting a food shipment, right? Why you insist on some more sinister turn to their activities at the time of their death is a complete puzzlement to me.
Would you wonder what she had to have done, to make that guy so mad that he felt he had no choice but to kill her?
Probably not. Was she wandering around armed in a warzone as an employee of one of the world's largest PMCs? No? Then your example is kind of a strawman, innit?
Is it proper to condemn those about whom you know nothing?
Again, I'm with Josh on this. If the criticism of Kos has come to sniffing over the "improper," it's entered the realm of the ludicrous. I wouldn't defend what he said as "proper" by any stretch, and I don't believe in dancing on graves. But, the point that's been belabored time and again by now, his motive for saying it is hardly beyond the pale.
And now that we've beaten that dead horse into glue...
What we know of the contractors is that they were escorting a food shipment, right?
No, we don't "know" this. If you links to information we don't -- like, say, a clear statement from a military outlet to this effect -- have at it.
Perhaps the Doolittle raid on Tokyo was closer to the various Islamic attacks than the Bomber Command campaign in Europe was. Postwar analysis has not been kind to the analyses made at the time by the strategic bombing people, but it appears that many of them at least hoped their campaign could change the course of the war by degrading the physical capability of German industry to support the armed forces. In contrast, in the Tokyo raid, as I understand it, the US went out of its way to attack a concentration of mostly civilian Japanese, as a symbolic demonstration that they weren't safe anywhere, without even a pretense that it was a useful attack against Japanese military capabilities; and even ignoring many ordinary military objectives that were easier to attack. (That'll show those sneaky cowardly bastards how wrong they were to make preemptive strikes against US military capabilities without declaring war! or at least to be ruled by a military junta which would do such a thing...)
The justification, if any is needed, may be as simple as "we were the good guys" or "it was war, what do you expect?" but I don't know, I've never heard anyone try to justify it.
Incidentally, for a long time I sort of assumed that sinuous moral flexibility about their evil targeting of civilians and our judicious targeting of civilians was in large part a product of desperate WWII times, but last year I happened to read Alan Moorehead's history of Gallipoli, and I was struck by the proximity of outrage at German bombing of British cities and smug anticipation of Turkish capitulation as their capital was under British naval guns. So pending finding out a bit more about it (and whether Moorehead had an axe to grind), I think I may have to give up on my assumption.
I disagree that the blitz caused British resolve to stiffen. In fact, the book "Living Through the Blitz" shows the opposite to be true - had the Luftwaffe pressed their attacks against Southampton and other cities, a general collapse of morale would have occurred. In some British cities this did happen, at least for a few days. I don't know what would have happened if the attacks had been pressed. The matter was considered a wartime secret in Britian, but I think it's safe to say Churchill was aware of the problem. And the Cabinet's response to homelessness and other problems in bombed cities was quite inadequate, even by standards of the day.
Parts of Germany and Japan were carpet-bombed quite thoroughly, so it may be more revealing to study civilian reactions in those situations. I'm primarily thinking of the bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and that of Tokyo on March 9-10th, 1945.
The Allies had a more systematic plan to attack industrial, civilian, and military sites, even going to the trouble to do statistical studies of serial numbers of vehicles found on battlefields to find the most productive industrial sites. In spite of this, German tank production was rising as late as the last month of the war.
The blitz book is still in print; I hope the url comes thru ok:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805208925/qid=1081384680/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-1180157-9228659?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
I also refer readers to Richard Rhodes "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". The book is excellent, and provides the necessary historical and scientific context. Unfortunately, Amazon.com is not working for me right now.
Dr. Slack & Josh,
I know, this is off topic for this thread....
Well, when we are talking about statements of opinion that are unsupported by any facts and whose only purpose seems to be provocation, then why are you surprised when the discussion devolves to the subject of propriety? Why are you surprised that, indeed, people are provoked? Miss Manners would probably have more definitive opinions on this subject than all bloggers combined.
Empty, provocative statements beget flame wars. Serious statements beget serious discussions. On this topic, Kos was the troll. He got what he wanted and maybe more than he expected.
Just got back online after a series of meetings.
Doctor Slack suggested that citing WWII is a sign we are stuck in that era. Actually, I chose that issue (and, I suspect, so did the book's author) precisely because it is sufficiently distant from our current situation so that we can see the ethical arguments more clearly. But there are some direct links to the situation in Iraq: Saddam's emulation of Stalin and his admiration of Hitler does offer a potential tie, as reflected in the full name of the Ba'athist party, an echo of the Nazi party name.
Praktike considers the bombings of Germany to be justified if they had the desired effect on German morale. But as Wezler points out, the decision must be taken without being sure what the results will be - hence the pressing need to be clear about whether and how we will justify making (or refusing to make) that choice.
More on the Kos / lgf thing in a second comment below.
Empty, provocative statements beget flame wars. Serious statements beget serious discussions.
Lurker gets my point, which Josh and Doctor Slack seem to have misunderstood.
I personally found Kos' statement repugnant, in part because I personally know some of the contractors who are in Iraq right now with various companies, know their motives and have a pretty good idea of what they are (and are not) doing.
However, I also find many comments on lgf repugnant, and some of the ones on Rantburg also, along with Democratic Underground and a variety of blogs on all sides of these issues.
My big concern is this: at a time when there are serious and legitimate debates we must have about difficult and complex issues .... say, the tradeoff between security and civil liberties, to pick one out of the air ... at some point extreme rhetoric so corrodes the atmosphere that such debate becomes impossible and we are just left with grandstanding.
I fear we're at that point, or near it, in this country and posts like Kos' on the Blackwater guys, or some of the rhetoric or lgf and elsewhere, contributes to that corrosion.
Moreover, Kos has an overt and official link to one of the national political parties. I have some quaint beliefs, among them that we all have some responsibility for the effects of our behavior on society.
I'm not calling for censureship. I've been involved in online discussions since before the Arpanet became the Internet - I'm quite aware of the online culture and don't want to change it, by and large.
But I do want to remind every one of us that gets involved with this culture that there are bigger stakes involved in what we do and say than just scoring ego or political points.
Actually, I chose that issue (and, I suspect, so did the book's author) precisely because it is sufficiently distant from our current situation so that we can see the ethical arguments more clearly.
Well, that's precisely the problem. Seeing the ethical issues of WWII more clearly doesn't automatically throw more light on the ethical issues we face today, and I'd argue that the assumption it does has led American policy down any number of blind alleys.
The WWII Allies vs. Nazis model is not a model of pretty much any conflict the US military and state is engaged in now, or is likely to be engaged in at any point in the near future. It most emphatically does not provide a model for fighting insurgencies -- especially given that all of the insurgents fighting in WWII were fighting on the side of the Allies. WWII's conditions and politics were exceptional in any number of ways.
That book I mentioned earlier, incidentally, is Nagl's *Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife.* I highly recommend it.
Doc Slack, I think you still miss the point of the argument Wizler makes.
Neither he nor I suggest we face exactly the same specific issues that Britain did in WWII.
But he and I do think it is useful to consider under what sort of circumstances could ANYone in ANY circumstances justify extreme violence that has a good chance of causing civilian injury and death.
To put it more broadly - under what circumstances, if any, is a country justified in abrogating the normal conventions by which we deliberately restrain ourselves from such violence.
Wezler examines Britain's bombing campaign in order to show clearly the nature of that decision. His position is twofold: First, that if such a decision is to be justified at all, the situation must present (to the best judgement of the decisionmakers) an immediate and serious threat for which there is no other likely recourse.
And second, given such a threat, we must do what we must - but we should never pretend that we did not do something wrong, only that necessity demanded it in order to prevent a greater wrong from occurring.
I could make a similar argument using incidents in Vietnam, other insurgency wars during the 20th century or even the ancient Greeks -- the choice of situation isn't the central issue here. The "two edged sword" of the dilemna is, for Wexler and those who accept his analysis.
Not all people do, by the way. But many credit him with having brought moral clarity and a disciplined approach to the question of justified force after the ambiguities of Vietnam. His book is one of the starting places for most serious discussion about justified and unjustified war -- whether one accepts the utilitarian approach or not.
Yes, Robin, I do understand what you're saying. Perhaps I'm writing too much on the fly to make myself sufficiently clear: I'm not accusing Wezler of assuming that WWII is a one-size fits all model, per se. What I'm saying is that his choice of it as an exemplar is symptomatic of a wider tendency among many writers to default to WWII as an instructive example for various facets of strategy, tactics and policy, and to using vague analogies with WWII decision-making to guide their thinking about current conflicts.
When that happens -- when, for instance, we start talking about the ethics of actions in Iraq based on parallels with decisions in WWII -- the details start to matter. A lot. The reason for that is that the precise kind of threat matters, a lot. Nazi Germany in WWII was an immediate and serious threat in an entirely different way than the VietCong, or the Sadrists of today, in no small part because WWII was an entirely different kind of war. Someone looking at the Sadrists and seeing an "immediate and serious threat" requiring the abrogation of the rules of war could very easily make a blunder that could cost the US far more than it gains there. The devil, truly, is in the details.
That is indeed clearer, DS.
I don't find Sadr analogous to Hitler.
I do find the threat of terrorism fueled by Islamacist ideology pretty damn close though.
And, I find the entire situation throughout the Arab and Moslem worlds to be spiralling down rapidly, in ways that result in such ideology and such terror acts. I've been worried about this since the mid-1980s, when I did a bit of business in the middle East in and around the time of the big spate of aircraft hijackings, passenger assasinations and airport bombings of 87.
So I believe the analogy has some applicability. The details are indeed different, as must be our response. But I find Wexler's basic discussion sound: for all that I've chewed on just war arguments for years and found them less than statisfying, I think in his discussion of the Britain bombings he comes as close as we are likely to get to a coherent way to evaluate whether we are justified in using extreme force - and how we should feel about it if we do.
Note that in Iraq, and with Sadr, we have scarcely approached the level of "extreme violence" of the Dresden bombing, for instance. So if the details of the threat are different, so too are the details of our current response.
Whether that response matches the threat is something we can and should debate. Wexler's argument gives us a starting place to have that debate IMO.
I thought that the Dolittle raid on Tokyo did in fact end up having a real effect on the war, in that it provoked a bit of a political crisis in Japan, leading them to make suboptimal decisions in order to prevent the recurrence of the raid. Moreover, it had a clear effect on morale in the US, which is not insignificant.
See page 22
John Farren:
Air power enthusiasts in the UK had predicted since WW1 (or before) that if enough bombs could be dropped, it could achieve victory, without need for precision.
US theorists of air power took a different approach, though. They argued that precision high-altitude bombing, directed at a very narrow range of targets, could knock out vital links in enemy production and destroy his ability to fight, at a very low cost of lives. Civilian casualties, it was thought, would be very low, and civilian morale was simply not a target.
Thus the efforts to destroy German ball bearing production, which were actually very effective - in spite of the limited technology of the time, the Norden bomb sight was pretty damned accurate.
But the effort failed, because German military production was too broad and flexible to be dismantled by pinpricks delivered from the air. (German production increased steadily and peaked in late 1944; only with the invasion of Germany did it start to fall apart). Germany had large stockpiles of ball bearings and never ran out, in spite of blown up factories. And they were very good at rebuilding anything we bombed.
Precision bombing was an effort to take a short cut to victory - some enthusiasts even thought it would result in the virtual abolition of war. Instead it morphed into the horror of Dresden.
WWII proved the superiority of combined arms and mobile ground warfare, striking as violently and quickly as possible, and defeating the enemy by taking away the ground under his feet. Attempts to minimize "collateral damage" can lead to more suffering and death in the long run.
Though I agree with Armed Liberal's conclusions, I don't think he has illustrated the state of the planet in the 1940s sufficiently in his essay. The world was in a state of total war. That is to say that each of the major powers were completely mobilized for war. Not only the entire economy was directed toward the war effort, but also all of society was focused on that one goal. In fact the term total war has become synonymous with the Nazi Germany war effort during that time.
We can easily see what a negative outcome of WWII would have been by Germanys own actions. When Germany invaded Poland, did they avoid civilian casualties? No, they purposely targeted civilians. They enslaved large portions of the population to staff munitions plants. They killed millions in death camps. Losing was not an option.
There are three available outcomes of any war: win, lose, or draw. To lose would have meant a dark age from which the world may not have recovered. To draw (meaning to negotiate a peace other than victory), would have doomed us to another 20 year armistice; only the Third World War would have been fought with atomic weapons. To win meant the Allies had to overcome an army of 16 million men and an industrial juggernaut. Precise strategic bombing was like pushing a rope uphill, it just wasnt very effective. One of the most basic rules of warfare is to exploit tactics and systems where you have an advantage. The Allies had a definite advantage in heavy bombers (the Germans didnt have any.)
So the real question should be: Given that (virtually) all of German society was supporting the war effort, did that make all of German society legitimate targets?
For the benefit of those folks unfamiliar with the extent of the horror of the WW2 bombing of Dresden.
Winston Churchill was the the wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain and together with 'Bomber' Sir Arthur Harris was resposible for ordering the phosphorus fire bombing of Dresden, a town of no strategic importance.
From 150,000 to 250,000 refugees, mainly women, children and old men (most young men in military service) fleeing from the invading Russian Army were immolated at the very end of the Second World War, resulting in more deaths than at Hiroshima (80,000) or Nagasaki.
The raids were carried out by the Royal Air Force bombers together with the United States 8th Air Force, first with explosive bombs to break open the rooftops of buildings, followed up by phosphorus (nasty stuff) bombing which successfully created a fearsome firestorm of unparalleled dimension.
Interestingly,in view of the current situation in Iraq, the dynamic duo first practiced terror bombing against rebellious Kurds then under British occupation. (Yes folks, even back in 1920
the locals were telling the occupiers to get the hell out of our country and leave us alone. At the time Churchill was Secretary for War and Air while Harris held the rank of Wing Commander.
Churchill opted for the use of poison gas. "I do not understand this sqeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using gas against uncivilised tribes .To quote Harris...
"The Arab and the Kurd now know what real bombing means in casulties and damage. Within forty five minutes, a full size village can bepractically destroyed and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured"
Hi praktike.
"My understanding is that the latest research has shown that our bombing of German industrial areas was largely ineffective."
That appears not to be the case, according to the experts.
The top expert seem to be Richard Overy.
Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy is good. I hate it, because I find the argument that monstrous means were justified by success revolting. But the argument by a top military historian is not invalidated by my feelings of moral revulsion.
There is also
The Air War 1939-1945 (Cornerstones of Military History) by Richard J. Overy. I haven't read that.
Also,
The Battle of Hamburg by Martin Middlebrook comes to a conclusion that supports Bomber Command. I don't know about you, but I have a great deal of difficulty with a "battle" that consists of successful efforts to slaughter a city full of civilians from the air. Yet Middlebrook is not negligent in considering the moral problems.
There are many other books I can't comment on because I haven't read them. But in general, this seems to be the state of play: morally we would be off the hook if the bombing offensive had been a bad idea in practical terms as well at morally monstrous. But the experts tell us we are not off the hook.
Glen Wishard:
Yes, spot on about different USAAF doctrine. And also that it never really paid off decisively as hoped.
Though the switch to the oil target seems to have finally found a vital and vulnerable target.
But even absent anti-oil, there were some major payoffs:
- From 1943 long range escorts were able to engage and destroy the Luftwaffe.
- Germany was compelled to pour massive resources into air defence (esp. guns and shells that it also needed elsewhere, and around 2 million men tied up in bombing defence and damage repair).
- By 1944 the combination of the USAAF daylight and RAF night attacks was having real, if not decisive impact; German estimates in Jan 1945 were shorfalls of 30 to 40% in 1944 production of some key equipment due to bombing.
- See Speer on the RAF obliteration of Hamburg: "It put the fear of God in me"; or Jeschonnek "besides this Stalingrad is trifling."
E.A. Woodman:
Dresden was a continuation of a policy earlier determined.
A policy that was ethically questionable, but which produced results that were not to be had otherwise. See above.
And that Dresden was "a town of no strategic importance" is not a statement all analysts would agree with.
Re. Bombing Kurds: Churchill suggested using poison gas; it was never used.
Annoying Old Guy writes "I thought that the Dolittle raid on Tokyo did in fact end up having a real effect on the war, in that it provoked a bit of a political crisis in Japan, leading them to make suboptimal decisions in order to prevent the recurrence of the raid. Moreover, it had a clear effect on morale in the US, which is not insignificant."
Indeed.
Earlier in this thread, Doctor Slack made an important point that is worth revisiting. To excerpt the second of three posts, he said (2:57am):
"Seeing the ethical issues of WWII more clearly doesn't automatically throw more light on the ethical issues we face today, and I'd argue that the assumption it does has led American policy down any number of blind alleys.
The WWII Allies vs. Nazis model is not a model of pretty much any conflict the US military and state is engaged in now, or is likely to be engaged in at any point in the near future. It most emphatically does not provide a model for fighting insurgencies...WWII's conditions and politics were exceptional in any number of ways."
Re-analysis of WW2 and a time machine will give us a leg up in re-fighting WW2--anything else? In thinking about Iraq today, is a discussion of Michael Walzer's WW2 case study worth anything?
To paraphrase Dr. Slack (out of context), automatically making the assumption that overall lessons of WW2 are relevant will lead us down blind alleys.
The contributions of praktike, John Farren, Bill, Dalem annoying old guy, Glen Wishard, Bildo, and David Blue provide a powerful counter-argument. Specific questions about the justifications for our use of violence can be carefully asked by thoughtful people with a knowledge of history. These answers do provide the starting point for asking "what should we do now?"
Robin Burke is right to connect the '40s to today in this way. This is a useful entry to an important question: how do we fight a ruthless and powerful set of advesaries while holding on to our own humanity, or as much of it as we can?
BTW John Farren (4/7, 11:52pm):
I'm around because my dad flunked out of RAF training when his color blindness was unmasked. His cousin did many missions as a Lancaster navigator. To this day, he is troubled about the part he played in Harris' campaigns.
Winds of Change.NET has a great comments section because it has great commentERS. Thanks for showing why yet again. AMac's summaries, John's trenchant points, Glen Wishard your stuff is great, Robin of course, plus Praktike, Dave Schuler, Josh had an interesting point - even Slack has made a positive contribution.
You're all regulars here, and I just wanted to tell you that your ongoing contributions are appreciated.
John Farren:
Though the switch to the oil target seems to have finally found a vital and vulnerable target...
True, though it didn't prevent the Ardennes offensive. And if the Germans hadn't lost on the ground at Stalingrad, our bombing of oil targets would have been little more than expensive harrassment. The point is not that bombing didn't hurt, but that it fell far, far short of its ambitions. Those ambitions resemble the recent practice of tossing cruise missiles around.
I won't argue the point of Dresden as a "strategic target" - but if it was, I'd like to think that there are better ways to take down strategic targets.
Specific questions about the justifications for our use of violence can be carefully asked by thoughtful people with a knowledge of history.
Absolutely this can be done. I'm not saying historical analogy itself is entirely useless. I guess I'm just saying that the subtle (or not-so-subtle) differences in context can lead to hidden assumptions that derail the analogy as a useful tool. It explains why I really haven't seen much in the way of specificity and careful questions, particularly where WWII comes up... and that's why it almost always raises red flags for me.
A couple of examples might help:
1 Robin mentions in his last reply to me that he finds the Islamist terror threat "close to" analogous to Nazism. If one wants to say political Islam is clearly a religious variant of fascism, I think that's evidently true (though every form of fascism is singular, and I don't think the comparison can usefully go beyond that). But in other crucial ways, the situation isn't close to analogous to Nazism at all and isn't likely to become so; particularly, the political and military situation of the Islamists vis a vis us is radically different from the Nazis, and thus their short-term objectives are also radically different. This will remain true even in the nightmare scenario of the Islamists getting control of a major state like Pakistan -- a very real and frightening possibility, but one for which close analogies with the Nazis arguably wouldn't usefully prepare us.
2 There's even the potential for hidden and damaging assumptions in the phrase "how do we fight a ruthless and powerful set of advesaries while holding on to our own humanity"? The Islamists are most certainly a ruthless adversary, but before we go forward with discussing that question we'd have to specify exactly what "powerful" means. Because the Islamists wield significant political power in a certain region in the world, but they do not wield military power in the same way and have no real prospect of doing so. And that again brings us to the specificity of the threat they pose, a specificity that would have to affect the ethical calculus in how "we" fight "them."
Given problems like this, I'm a bit of a harder sell on the usefulness of very general and removed analogies (esp to WWII) in working out the ethical problems of what is basically, at this stage, a kind of worldwide counterinsurgency campaign. I'm especially skeptical given that there are almost certainly much more direct and relevant historical analogies to hand.
Re Joe's remarks: I do need to commend all the Winds of Change folks for the thoughtful quality of the site and the comments here. Winds of Change is a rarity, and I'm sorry not to have looked in sooner. That discussions like this can happen here is a very postivie reflection on the people running this blog.
(And Joe: ummm, thanks, I think. The sentiment is mutual. ;-))
Glen Wishard:
Once again, I agree.
Sort of.
The oil campaign did not prevent the Ardennes offensive, but did inluence it insofar as Wehrmacht was v. limited on fuel.
And Germans had to face Allied air superiority which bomber escorts had largely won.
Problem was, oil targeting only really got going summer 1944, with rigorous operational analysis of targets.
Before that, targeting decisions had tended to be based on guesswork, or just wishful thinking, not rigour.
(See Stephen Budiansky, "Air Power" for a pretty good short summary)
And, yes, the Eastern Front was the key fighting of WW2.
On Dresden: I'm really unsure if it was or wasn't a valid target in hindsight.
But I'm wary about passing judgment on an action that likely seemed of an obvious continuation of previous strikes.
Was it for good or bad that atomic weapons weren't available in quantity earlier?
Maybe the lesson is always to think: is this next step, that seems so natural, really necessary and justified?
It goes back to Robin's original extract, I suppose.
Joe:
Thanks for having us here!
I'm not so sure that Robin's original point is as much about WW2 analogies with prosecution of the War on Terror, as it is about the general ethics of warfare and how to wage it. What is the ethical basis of our strategy and tactics in the War on Terror?
In that conversation, it is a certainty that the relative strength of our opponent comes into consideration, as does the risk to our own population undeterrable nuclear strike anyone. This must be a part of the calculus as well.
Joe:
I just wanted to tell you that your ongoing contributions are appreciated.
And I appreciate the effort here to tackle some of the tough questions about war, and I hope it continues.
Lurker nailed it. Doctor Slack has it backwards:
Wexler did not derive the utilitarian analysis of the justification for using extreme force from the British bombing campaign in WWII.
Utilitarianism has had a long history. It has been the predominantly and characteristically American strain in philosophy and ethics since the mid-19th century, if not earlier.
What Wexler did in using that example was to illustrate as an example how a utilitarian approach does two things:
First, it undercuts rationales for the use of extreme force based on revenge or retaliation
Second, it forces us to confront the fact that the use of extreme force is only justified in very extreme circumstances. Moreover, when we do decide we are facing such circumstances, our use of extreme force is still wrong -- it's merely the lesser of two evils.
What shall we say about the utilitarian theory of just warfare, and in particular the utilitarian argument that there are rare occasions in which it is justified to go beyond the normal restraints placed on the conduct of war?
In my mind it is a deeply pragmatic and inherently tragic approach. Pragmatic because it recognizes the overwhelming instinct and rightness of defending oneself against serious attack. And tragic because in so doing, if we remain the best we can be in such circumstances we will acknowledge and carry guilt as a result.
DS, perhaps this helps you see that I am not advancing facile arguments that will justify stupid or evil actions by drawing analogies to Nazis or Hitler.
Indeed, under the utilitarian approach, a huge burden is placed on decisionmakers. For they must judge in the face of uncertain information whether a sufficiently dangerous threat exists to justify the use of massive force. Moreover, they must do so without knowing whether that use will produce the desired results.
By the way, good to have you here Doc Slack.
And, a small point, but I'm a 'she' rather than a 'he'. [smile]
Lurker:
What is the ethical basis of our strategy and tactics in the War on Terror?
We could do worse than to take a page from Israel, and wage war with civilized restraint - wage war as a nation of laws does, as a nation with a humane tradition does - but with unflinching resolve and determination. This resolve can only begin with the recognition that democratic pluralism is superior to the imperialist ambitions of the terrorists and jihadists - that they are the imperialists, the conquerors, the tyrants, the war-mongers, and the destroyers of human dignity, not us. On which basis we fight, and conduct ourselves accordingly. The ends and means must justify one another.
This is not merely about survival, but about demonstrating those things that are worth surviving for, and worth fighting for, and worth killing for. Our civilization is first and foremost not a tribe crowding for space, it's an idea. And the War on Terror should be a war of ideas, as much as a war of weapons.
Oops, sorry for the gender confusion, Robin. Thanks for your reply.
Wexler did not derive the utilitarian analysis of the justification for using extreme force from the British bombing campaign in WWII.
Sorry, I'm really not saying he did. I'm just saying that the frame chosen for carrying out the utilitarian analysis can have effects on its course and content. But I've really said pretty much everything I have to say on the topic at this point -- I'll leave it there lest I start repeating myself even more than I already have!
We could do worse than to take a page from Israel
Ouch. Your general points I agree with, but I find it hard to imagine why you think Israel is a success story in this regard. Not as though it's the worst of counterinsurgencies, but I should think the British in Malaya or Lansdale in the *Philippines* are much better models to work from.
Robin,
I'm not sure that I nailed anything. It appears that the shorter my comments, the smarter I seem. Perhaps the shortest one's are like the Rorschach ink blots, and you just read what you want into them.
This has gotten more interesting the longer it goes on. Please consider these thoughts:
In case you haven't noticed, I've also found that I seem smarter when asking questions than when spouting off.
I'll call and raise you:
It will be in the realm of ideas, where we will ultimately win or lose.
Indeed there is a subjective component in deciding if one faces a threat that justifies extreme force.
There is no outside body to approve us - sorry. There are commonly - but not universally - accepted constraints we agree with, such as the Geneva Conventions.
How do we differentiate ourselves from the terrorists? First, by noting that they were NOT under threat of massive attack from us and they don't claim they were. They justify death and destruction on other grounds - on their superiority and/or on grievances that are vague and historical rather than pressing and immediate.
Furthermore, and perhaps most telling, they express no remorse whatsoever for the actions they take.
To return to my comment on what differentiates us from the terrorists:
We use massive force out of necessity, and with care. I have a little awareness of what went into selecting targets and the weapons to use in missile attacks on Baghdad, for instance. A huge amount of effort was made to limit damage to the intended targets, wherever and to the degree possible.
Compare that to the railroad bombings in Madrid or to 9/11. Compare it to the gloatings and the fervid prayers on many islamacist web sites, which hope for multitudes of civilian deaths.
We do not claim as a right and a privilege the deliberate infliction of suffering on large numbers of people.
And we do - or should - feel a deep sense of unease when massive force is used. We second guess ourselves afterwards, we try to analyze the events for lessons-learned that can help us better evaluate threats in the future. (for instance, the analyses of the British bombing campaign).
To repeat Wexler's important point about the utilitarian justification for use of force when civilians are likely to be harmed:
(The argument that the situation warrants such force) is not an easy argument to make, and yet we must resist every effort to make it easier.
If we do so, we will preserve as much of our humanity and ethical core during war as may be possible.
Doctor Slack, I get to agree with you about the use and misuse of WW2 analogies. My favorite example is the invocation of the shade of Chamberlain by uttering the word "appeasement." Per Churchill, this was an awful choice at Munich...but we use terms like "flexibility" and "good-faith negotiation" to describe similar behaviors in other contexts.
However, the question for this discussion is whether such sloppy thinking is in evidence in Robin's essay or in the comments on this thread. I'll submit that it is not.
In re WWII strategic bombing:
An invaluable resource are the Strategic Bombing Surveys done by the USAAC after the war. These were full scale on site surveys, complete with interviews of both Germans, Japanese, and Allies. The are available at:
http://www.anesi.com/ussbs02.htm#tc
http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm
Readers should keep in mind the authors were biased in favor of the strategic effort, but in the case of Europe they concluded that the effects of strategic bombing only became decisive when the collapse of the German ground forces in the East and West was already occurring. Moreover, until Fall 1944, production aggregates were rising in almost all cases. This is the basis for my comment that the effect of this bombing was strategically negligible, despite its profound tactical implications for the Germans and costs for the Allies.
"1. "They aren't trying to help the people make Iraq a better place."
2. "They are there to wage war for profit."
3. "I feel nothing for [their] deaths... Screw them."
So my first question: was it wrong to say #1 and #2? I know that most of the people here don't believe these two statements, but clearly, Kos did believe them. What does this prove about Kos? "
That Kos believes them shows that he is one of those people of whom Glenn Reynolds says: "He isn't really interested in peace. He's just on the other side."
Thanks for the comment, AMac.
RKB: They justify death and destruction on other grounds - on their superiority and/or on grievances that are vague and historical rather than pressing and immediate.
I rather doubt this, actually. The mujahideen see their "holy war" in religious terms, but that doesn't mean they don't see their concerns as pressing and immediate, nor are the incapable of recognizing what people outside their circle think of as pressing and immediate and capitalizing on it*. I think they've shown the ability to play very effectively on the Arab world's feeling of insecurity -- and I mean literal insecurity, as in the lack of security from foreign bombing, attack or invasion, as well as cultural insecurity.
This brings to mind something earlier in the thread that I meant to respond to and never did, where someone said that "our enemies" wouldn't understand what this thread is about. I think that's dead wrong and dangerously complacent. The core of the mujahideen came about with Western training and funding as an anti-Soviet guerilla force, and some of them came from privileged backgrounds and had sophisticated educations. It's a crazy movement, but not necessarily an unsophisticated one.
[* I think maybe what you're trying to say here is that the mujahideen mindset isn't fighting on the basis of anything that could rationally be regarded as a pressing and immediate concern -- but then the staunchly religious mindset finds rationalism itself offensive in certain contexts. That's not something that's limited to the mujahideen.]
ralph: I think you'll find that the habit of screaming "treason!" at the drop of a hat has cost Reynolds a lot of credibility among people who once respected him. *Max Sawicky* rather exhaustively explains why, and Josh's debunking of the moralizing on the Kos "issue" doesn't need repeating. But since we're bringing up the contractors again, *this letter from one of them* should be of interest.
Hi.
I think that in assessing the means to be employed in war, and especially the bomber offensives, people radically under-rate the importance of combat activeness: just plain hitting the enemy, trying to seize the initiative by any means including mere bloody bluster.
Offensive action can have all sorts of beneficial knock-on effects. Mere boldness can achieve marvels against a morally weak opponent. But failure to strike at the critical time weakens morale terribly.
There is no middle way, once the enemy presses you hard enough. (And what is "enough" is a matter of mass psychology, not objective material reality.) If you put off the choice when the choice is pressed upon you, you are choosing anyway, and you are choosing to crumble. No matter what anybody says, regardless of any slogan such as "no peace, no war", the critical time of maximum potential willingness to fight will pass, and defeat will be consolidated. A little time lost, a change in the mood, and what once could perhaps have been done easily becomes politically and diplomatically impossible. Concessions must and will follow.
The bombing raids were vile. But what would you have Churchill do? He absolutely had to hit Germany bloody blows. After Dunkirk, it was clear the British Army was not going to deliver these body blows any time soon. Nor could the navy maul Germany in a satisfactory way. So air it had to be.
And in a similar way, the Doolittle Raids were a blow. It does not matter that they were not strategically rational, what matters is that they were fighting, and fighting was needed. And in the same way, when there was nothing useful that Bush could yet to to the Taliban, it was right to launch useless bombing raids, blowing up empty training camps. It was time for the war to begin, and if it had to begin with air swings, so be it.
And in the same way, Maggie Thatcher was right, profoundly right, to order military action in the Falklands which served no real purpose but to "get blood on the carpet," aborting peace negotiations which would have been about the consolidation of a British defeat. Her main job was not to see that every life was expended only in a way that met certain strategic and tactical criteria, it was to win, and she did what she had to.
I think calculations that tacitly assume that people under attack as the British were, or even as the Americans were after vastly lesser but still sufficiently critical attacks of 11 September 2001, had some third way are common, and profoundly misleading. Those struck had only a choice to strike back or crumble, and if you don't like the way they attacked, you have to show another way for them to strike that would have been better, or justify the alternative, which would not be to keep things as they were, which is impossible, but to make some form of submission.
By the way: does this line of thinking support the terror raids of our enemies? Yes. I fundamentally reject the rightness of their cause. I reject the whole religion, world view and culture within which that cause makes sense. I do not agree that it would have been reasonable for them to think that they had been pushed to the point of fighting or collapsing, and anyway that is not what they are about. But, I do not deny that given the cause, and their means, and the signs of moral weakness that we were giving off, their terror tactics can logically follow.
John Farren,
Checked out a few facts. Regarding my assertion that Dresden was of no stategic importance you were correct. I was thinking more in terms of manufacturing war materiel.
Dresden actually had a large railroad marshaling yard and was in fact the reason given for the operation in the first place, A request to bomb the marshaling yards was submitted by the Russians to cut off troop movement from the Russian to the Western Front.
Regarding the use of poison gas by the British, I still stand by my statement (I always thought it was common knowlege) with the correction that it was not dropped by the RAF but applied by army ground attacks.
Being mostly of Irih extraction I was more interested in having a swipe at Churchill. My father absolutely detested him, blaming him for a large naval and army operation at a Turkish place called Gallipolli.
It looked good on paper but proved an utter fiasco
I have a medal from a past relative who was a soldier there. Unfortunately e was shot in the head and repatriated home. Well, he volunteered for it. Went thhere to kick some ass and got his own kicked. Tough.
To give Churchill his due, after accepting the blame (He was First Lord of the Admiralty) he went to France and served a stint in the trenches.
I admire him for that. He was certainly the right man to lead England in WW2 but he had his faults.
He retained a fascination for for the Mediterrainean, regarding it as the 'soft underbelly of Europe. Greece, Scicily, Italy and the Greek Isles proved that the underbelly wasn't as soft as he imagined.
My mother hated Churchill as well but more for Irish events which occurred during the uprising in 1916. Guess my own prejudices come from her.
Sorry for crapping on so much. Get right off the subject. Thanks for pulling me into line on specific points instead of going for the jugular
with a tirade of personal abuse like the Little Green Stormtrooper mutants at LGF.
Cheers,
Ed.
Okay, taking a fresh run at Walzer now:
... should I wager this determinate crime (the killing of innocent people) against that immesurable evil (a Nazi triumph)? ... Even if I wager and win, it is still possible that I was wrong, that my crime was unnecessary to victory.
But the overall moral calculus has to include the fact that we didn't choose to play the game in the first place. It was Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan who decided to play the game of God.
If our choices were not correct ones, that has to be mitigated by the fact that before the Axis embarked on a campaign of world conquest, we had no intention of incinerating hundreds of thousands of Germans and Japanese. (I'm one of those who question the need for Hiroshima and Nagasaki - but regardless of whether that choice was correct, we did not choose to be confronted with that choice in the first place.)
Likewise, we did not choose to go to war with radical Islam - a war that really began 30 years ago, with the rise of the ayatollahs. We have only occasionally chosen the time and place, and Iraq is really only a battle in that war. And even that was initiated by Hussein, with the invasion of Kuwait. Until recently, we have been trying very hard not to fight this war, which we never wanted in the first place.
But even if we didn't choose the war, and are faced with hard choices because of it, we are still obligated to ensure that we don't make choices that are overly harsh just because we feel our just and necessary cause gives us unlimited license (Jupiter Syndrome).
If we did that in WWII, it still has to be mitigated by a couple of things:
1) So long as the Axis were still standing and still defiantly vowing victory, it was pretty hard to tell the difference between too much force and too little.
2) It might have taken sheer horror itself to bring down German and Japanese resistance permanently. If we had won the war with less force, we might have faced decades of guerrilla warfare - conceivably, we might have wound up abandoning those countries to chaos. (See "The Dean Plan for Iraq")
The second one is the really disturbing one. Do we have to make the jihadists drink an ocean of blood - which is what we essentially did to Germany and Japan - to assimilate them to a peaceful coexistence with the rest of the human race?
I'm hopeful that the answer is a big fat NO, but if we're not going to show every mujihadeen wannabe in the world the pointy end of a bayonet, it is vital that we show them our resolve - our willingness to do exactly that if necessary for survival.
To show them that we are determined and capable of survival we have to believe it ourselves, which is why this is a war of ideas that we must fight among ourselves as well.