Long-term Redstate contributor Neil Stevens has authored a critique of my previous post, in which it was argued that the Israeli policy towards Gaza is problematic from the standpoint of just war doctrine. In my estimation, the critique is an exemplification of the very tendency against which I protested, the tendency to demand a protracted recitation of the manifold sins of Israel's adversaries - none of which are minimized by silence, inasmuch as, not being a Straussian, I am not writing esoterically and bidding my readers to interpret my silences and omissions as possessing the greatest import - as the condition of the possibility of a consideration, then rejection, of the idea that Israel has acted unjustly and/or counterproductively. I reject this implicit mandate, inasmuch as it is reflective of a type of opinion policing, a sort of surveillance of dissenters, that I reject as deleterious to both rational discourse and conservatism; beyond that, it is simply unnecessary, given that there is a division of labour even among members of the amateur commentariat: There are legions of others who will recite the sins of Hamas, and nothing to be gained by my imitation of these writers, whereas there is, in potentiality, something to be gained by pointing to the ambiguity and complexity of the Israel/Palestine situation. We might, at least, become more circumspect about the rhetoric of moral clarity in foreign affairs, which too often functions as a prophylactic against thought, in much the same way that campaign slogans such as "change we can believe in" function to shape sentiment, and not to guide thought.
There is, however, more to the critique.
Specifically, there are the claims that my views are informed by the mainstream media, or, perhaps, that my analysis simply replicates things I've heard parroted by the media, and the attempt to practice distance psychoanalysis, the upshot of which is the claim that I have both - contradictorily - a bias against Israel, and a certain distancing tendency with respect to Israel's predicament. These claims are worth a few paragraphs of examination.
In the first instance, as I neither linked to any article published by a mainstream media outlet, nor even quoted from such a source, and, as such, did not endorse any specific line of argumentation advanced by any critic of the Israeli policy. This being the case, what must be intended is a sort of family resemblances critique: My arguments are reminiscent, in some unspecified respect - or perhaps it is merely the atmosphere of disagreeing with the policy - of the argument X, of unidentified critic of Israel Y - or perhaps the resemblance is to some amorphous or generic, abstract Critic of Israel - and since Y is a disreputable person, for reason of his opinions on Israel and other subjects, the family resemblance asserted here renders my argument suspect, and my character suspect as well. It is, in my estimation, a subtle sort of ad hominem: disreputable persons and institutions advance argument X, and if Maximos advances a variant of argument X, well, draw the conclusion.
There is more that must be said, for the tendency exemplified by such family resemblance arguments is wholly deleterious, and ultimately precludes rational engagement with issues, and thus issues in the inevitable ideologization and ossification of conservative thought. I'd prefer to illustrate by means of an analogy, inasmuch as the Israel question is quite tedious and fraught. Consider the so-called Elvis of cultural theory, the Slovenian philosopher and Lacanian analyst, Slavoj Zizek, who is also an impenitent Bolshevik of sorts, calling in his most recent volume of high theory for a resurrection of revolutionary terror. Seriously. The instinct of the conservative naturally will be to dismiss Zizek's oeuvre as the output of a philosophical madman, the issue of a moral monster, and to eschew any critical engagement therewith, the assumption being that because he is a monster, nothing he says could conceivably be worthwhile. Of course, to adopt this stance would be to forswear wrestling with his multifaceted concept of the Real, which is at once the inherently conflictual, non-totalizable character of reality, and the ideological fantasies and master signifiers which structure much of our societal inheritance, and often answer to profound personal requirements, positing false totalities - from which is there is always a remainder that cannot be accounted for in terms of the ideological discourse. These ideological fictions, inherently incomplete and contradictory, yet pretending to exhaustiveness, thus generate obscene secret supplements, which we might characterize as embodiments of the myth that all law depends ultimately upon lawlessness. Jack Bauer upholding the law by violating every tenet of the law in torturing and maiming the enemies of the state. The anti-Constitutional doctrine that the President possesses the sole authority to declare war, and to suspend the laws as he deems requisite to the prosecution of the war. Chaos and power are primal, order derivative. Manifestly, one could perceive resonances of this analysis, in addition to the differences, with certain philosophical conservative critiques of ideology, rationalism, and the spiritual disorders of modernity. Now, what too often happens in such cases is that the negative association formed by a confrontation with Zizek's communism, in this instance, will prompt the person reacting against his communism to reject his thought in its entirety, such that, if confronted with a discussion of Zizek's concept of the Real, he will be inclined to think, if below the level of explicit consciousness, that if Zizek's doctrine in one place is repellent, and reflective of a repellent sort of mind, all aspects of his doctrine must be repellent, and that wisdom consists of embracing the opposite. Not thought, but a mnemonic for thought: He's a bad sort, so believe the opposite. And in this instance, such reactive posturing would only impel conservatives subtly away from the critique of ideology and pretenses to totalizing systems, and towards the delusional notion that complexity and nuance are the province of the morally suspect, and that, in consequence, what is most needful is a sort of primal, instinctual "moral clarity". When conservatives ride the bandwagon against this or that media outlet or complex, or the reification of The Media as some hypothetical unity, they enact something analogous to my hypothetical dismissal of Zizek, either reacting against what is perceived to be the media's spurious complexification of a subject by positing some simple and clear alternative, or, least reflectively of all, by simply embracing the opposite of what The Media is supposed to have stated. This is tribalism, and it is intriguing that tribal non-thought and ideology are so similar, functionally speaking.
In the second instance, I repudiate without qualification the practice of distance psychoanalysis, a technique which at once personalizes disputed questions and removes personal factors as permissible counter-evidence. The attempt to discern bias in, well, textual interlocutors, is a tricky undertaking, and one that should be avoided unless someone just comes right out and confesses a hatred for some group. The trouble with it is not merely that it is a sort of ad hominem, but that it reflects a category error, a confusion of policy positions with persons, such that policy positions function as symbols of character; discussions of policy become, not rational analyses of the issues, but exercises in tribal differentiation; and virtue is reduced to a function of stated political allegiances. It ought to be of no consequence to an analysis of the merits of a position that one thinks the person articulating that position does so for invidious reasons. When conservatives critique the agenda of certain homosexualists, they do not do so out of animus towards homosexuals, but out of a concern that the nature of marriage, its ontology, if you will, and that of man, be respected, and we recognize that the attempt to tar conservatives as bigots and haters is merely an attempt to evade the force of a critique. So also is it with attempts to discern bias in the critiques of Israeli policy: They represent an attempt to discourage consideration of dissent, on the grounds that dissenters are morally compromised. There is a Party Line, and it is no surety against its strictures that one can adduce certain features of one's personal life and conduct as defenses against the charge of bias. One will be said to be 'protesting too much', or, most perversely and incoherently, to be introducing irrelevant personal matter into the conversation! The issue, therefore, is the dissenter's character, but his character is irrelevant to his defense! He is damned, infallibly, unless, of course, he humbles himself and partakes of the sacraments, those visual signs of inward graces - confessions of the Party Line. Character becomes a mere function of politics, and this has long been a hallmark of leftist ideologues. Conservatives would do well to eschew such repressions.
As regards the factual matter in dispute, in point of fact, the Israeli policy does not conform to just war doctrine. Israel has not attempted all means, in good faith, to secure a peaceful resolution to the conflict with the Palestinians, who were offered a faux state in which Israel controlled all of the strategic ground and most of the natural resources. It should not be forgotten that Hamas was empowered in part because Israeli policy, including the negotiating positions taken during the various stages of the 'peace process', weakened Fatah and demonstrated it to be ineffectual to achieving the national aspirations of the Palestinians, and not merely those aspirations that can be reduced to killing all the Jews and casting them into the sea. Moreover, we should reject such utterly arbitrary starting points for the present controversy, as though Hamas's refusal to abide by the terms of the cease-fire agreement were all that we needed to assimilate in order to evaluate the conflict. Hamas refused the cease-fire because Israel imposed a blockade; Israel imposed a blockade because Hamas espouses an exterminationist ideology and directed terrorist attacks; Hamas did these things because Islamic motifs became more prominent in the Palestinian resistance with every year of failure to attain more secular goals.... and so on, almost indefinitely, until will arrive discussions of 1948, the Balfour Declaration, and God only knows what else.
Israel has no serious prospects of success, inasmuch as the present conflict will not persuade the Gazans to renounce their ambitions towards statehood, and will probably only strengthen the exterminationist and Islamist sentiments among them; all the Israeli policy can achieve, unless they intend to unleash an horrific slaughter, is to lay the preconditions for the next round of fighting.
The Israeli policy will not produce a state of affairs in which evils and disorders are less prominent than presently, because that policy will only exacerbate the cycle of retribution. Moreover, this criterion does not concern discrete in bello matters such as the Hamas rockets simply, but the military policy in its entirety. This is no mere matter of whether Israel can cause the rocket fire to cease - if Lebanon is at all indicative, it cannot - but of whether the consequences of this entire phase of the conflict will be preferable to the status quo ante; and given the deterioration both along Israel's borders and in the wider region, it cannot credibly be argued that Israel will be more secure, and that the threat of warfare and death will be diminished. In any event, dropping massive pieces of ordinance on the domiciles of Hamas officials, and then waxing ecstatic over the disproportionate amount of death inflicted - and it should be observed that the relevant intention here is not 'killing Hamas officials' - the purely subjective, reality-is-what-I-say-it-is one - but the objective intention of dropping massive ordinance on a house, knowing full well that noncombatants will die, and then ghoulishly celebrating the "message" that one has sent to other Hamas officials.
Finally, given the astonishingly low casualty rate inflicted by the Hamas rockets, not to mention the fact that such rockets cannot pose a threat to the existence of the Israeli state, it seems strained to argue that the rocket fire constituted a grave, lasting, and certain peril. We should be wary of equivocation here: a moderate and unpredictable danger to a subset of the population is not the same thing as a grave and certain danger to the whole. Nor is the prospect of a life lived under that threat, with frequent trips to the shelter, equivalent to the threat of extermination. This is not to minimize the atrocity of targeting civilians, merely to observe that the Hamas rocket fire was anything but a V-2 barrage, the latter causing thousands of deaths. As I indicated, I'm ambivalent on the application of this criterion. In any event, getting one criterion correct doesn't stamp the imprimatur on the resulting policy, regardless of its nature and prospects.
In any event, I loathe this subject, and feel a profound sorrow when conversing upon it, not least because it discloses all too many conservatives as quick to deal in death.
Comments (50)
Really? Then you could stop putting up post after post, in a row, on it.
Just a thought. I loathe it too, in a sense, when posts on it mean that statements I consider to be the equivalent of "The earth is flat, and the sun goes around it every 24 hours" are coming out of the mouths of people I would like to think of as my friends.
Posted by Lydia | January 5, 2009 2:13 PM
I happen to loathe the fact that conservatives reflexively baptize everything Israel does - for those who have stated in the comments that nothing they have said means that no Israeli policy was ever been unjust or counterproductive, I'd like them to name one, just one, unjust Israeli policy - even to the point of arguing that policies manifestly contrary to just war teaching are, in fact, wholly just, and that only moral turpitude prevents dissenters from making the submission of faith, even more than I loathe writing about this subject. It is a subject, as I have argued, which discloses the weaknesses of much actually-existing conservatism.
Posted by Maximos | January 5, 2009 2:25 PM
for those who have stated in the comments that nothing they have said means that no Israeli policy was ever been unjust or counterproductive, I'd like them to name one, just one, unjust Israeli policy
How about the forced ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza? Would that count?
Posted by Blackadder | January 5, 2009 2:47 PM
Just one unjust Israeli policy? Oh, sure: Driving the Jews out of Gaza.
Oh, my gosh. I started to write that before reading Blackadder's comment. I swear; it was sitting right here, but my eye hadn't dropped down to it yet. That's rather amusing.
Different moral universes, Maximos. But I'll be sure to let the residents of Laredo, Texas, know that if the Mexicans start sending rockets down on them every day, you will tell our govt. to provide them with rocket shelters and won't consider it a cause for going over the border with troops and stopping it unless "too many" Americans are killed.
Posted by Lydia | January 5, 2009 3:10 PM
for those who have stated in the comments that nothing they have said means that no Israeli policy was ever been unjust or counterproductive, I'd like them to name one, just one, unjust Israeli policy
I think you will have to look to Israel for a more sober view of the whole tragedy.
"Were he an Arab leader, David Ben-Gurion once confessed to the Zionist official Nahum Goldmann, he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel. “Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?” he asked. “There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/Margolick-t.html
Posted by Kevin | January 5, 2009 3:11 PM
Russia goes into Georgia after being provoked, but seriously overdoes it: fierce cries of "disproportionate response!" from many conservatives, with cautions and much sabre-rattling accompaniment.
Israel goes after Hamas in Palestine after being provoked, but seriously overdoes it: all manner and sorts of excuses are made by many of the same conservatives.
Query: Isn't disproportionate response, disproportionate response no matter where it occurs? Or is Israel somehow magically immune to such errors?
Posted by Rob G | January 5, 2009 4:14 PM
Russia goes into Georgia after being provoked, but seriously overdoes it: fierce cries of "disproportionate response!" from many conservatives, with cautions and much sabre-rattling accompaniment.
Was Georgia launching rockets into Russia? First I heard of it.
If we want to play the double standards game, we might ask about the comparative lack of concern about Sri Lanka's actions against the Tamil Tigers. Or India's actions in Kashmir. Or Russia's actions in Chechnya. Etc.
Posted by Blackadder | January 5, 2009 4:34 PM
I understand: Israel's policies have been unjust only to the extent that they have embodied concessions to the Palestinians. Got it. This differs from the dispensensationalists, exactly how?
Posted by Maximos | January 5, 2009 5:28 PM
For the matter of that, I think driving the Jews out of Gaza and "disengaging" was probably unjust to the "Palestinians," too. When a man swears that he will kill himself in the attempt to kill you, you are doing him no favors by leaving him to his own devices. The best and most just thing you can do for him is to take away his weapons and lock him up in a padded cell. But I'll say no more about that here and now.
Posted by Lydia | January 5, 2009 5:42 PM
Have we any reason, any reason at all under Heaven, to believe that the perpetuation of such a tutelary surveillance state, a vast, militarized panopticon, would facilitate the resolution of anything in the region?
I didn't think so. But, oh, to think of what a cynical, sardonic playwright could do with the concept!
Posted by Maximos | January 5, 2009 6:15 PM
This differs from the dispensensationalists, exactly how?
Well, there's the kooky theology, for starters.
Seriously, you asked people to provide you with an example of an unjust Israeli policy. It's hardly fair to turn around when people answer your question and act like you've been given a comprehensive list.
If you'd like some less "Likudnik" examples of unjust or counterproductive Israeli policies, I'm happy to oblige. I think that when Israel periodically engages in policies of "collective punishment" (e.g. the Gaza blockade) that this is generally unjust. I thought that it was a mistake to bomb the Beirut airport during the 2006 campaign (one mistake among many made that summer). To take a somewhat broader view, I think it was a mistake to allow most of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza in the first place.
Heck, I'm agnostic as to whether the current Gaza campaign is even a good idea. Peter Hitchens, for example, thinks that the true purpose of the campaign is not the national security of Israel but rather the political security of its current leadership, and while I'm sure there are some people who are vexed by the question of whether keeping Bibi Netanyahu from becoming Prime Minister constitutes a just cause, I'm not one of them. Still, recounting the crimes and blunders of Israel over the years no more changes the fundamental moral calculus involved in the conflict than things like Dresden, Hiroshima, Korematsu, and so forth change the fundamental moral calculus of World War II.
Posted by Blackadder | January 5, 2009 7:31 PM
I don't believe that a thorough recounting of the crimes and blunders of Israel alters the moral calculus; I believe that certain perceptions as to the nature of that calculus are simply mistaken. This conflict has never, no, not even for a moment, not even at the beginning, been a simple morality play of black hats and white hats; it has been shades of grey, all the way down, by the very nature of the case, that case being the settlement and/or conquest of territory, with the inevitable redistributions of populations. It should be grasped in all of its complexity and tragedy, and should not serve as an occasion of pornographic tribalism in which we simplistically cheer our side on to victory; "less unjust" is not a moral status that warrants the tendentiousness of American discourse on the subject.
Posted by Maximos | January 5, 2009 8:10 PM
"This conflict has never, no, not even for a moment, not even at the beginning, been a simple morality play of black hats and white hats; it has been shades of grey, all the way down, by the very nature of the case, that case being the settlement and/or conquest of territory, with the inevitable redistributions of populations."
But isn't the above true for all of human history and therefore not a very useful guide to current policy? I mean, as has been pointed out time and again in these discussions, our treatment of the natives (or as Jefferson liked to say, "merciless savages") wasn't always 'kosher' and one could make a case that the same is true of our war with Mexico. Luckily for all of us, crazy American Indians aren't blowing themselves up in our cities for their lost land...I wish Israel was as lucky.
Here is an interesting question for Maximos -- what would you have Israel do when faced with a hostile government in the Gaza Strip that actively promotes terror inside the Green Line and hopes for the total end to the State of Israel? Israel wants to stop the rockets and degrade the future ability of Hamas to attack again...how would you do things differently to accomplish the same goals?
Posted by Jeff Singer | January 5, 2009 8:24 PM
There is no prospect for any resolution of anything in the region. There is only, maybe, the containment of a suicide-bomber, death-cult society. I don't believe in engaging in suicidal pacifism and games of let's-pretend "negotiation" with an implacable foe in order to "facilitate" the eventual existence of something that will never exist no matter how much "negotiation" goes on, no matter how many concessions are given, until the world ends. Better to face unpalatable reality and decide what to do next from that point on.
Posted by Lydia | January 5, 2009 8:36 PM
Yes, this has been true of all human history, and if there is any applicable lesson to be gleaned from the sordid tale of man's inhumanity to his fellows, it is that those of us capable of some degree of ethical self-awareness ought to forswear the bronze-age ethics of conquest and empire-building, on the one hand, and, on the other, the equally bronze-age practice of legitimating the injustices perpetrated by People Like Us against The Other. As regards specific proposals for the resolution of the current crisis, I haven't any, partially because I consider the rhetorical ploy of posing the question dishonest - Unjust policies are not transmuted to just ones in the absence of just alternatives; there is no necessity of committing injustice - and partially because I have the pessimistic suspicion that the situation is well and truly hopeless. Twenty or thirty years ago, when the Palestinian resistance was still largely secular, and was more diverse than at present, a two-state solution would have been more viable; now, with the Palestinian resistance increasingly coloured in the lurid hues of Islam, who can say? That doesn't absolve the Israelis of the duty to attempt to devise a better policy; it is merely to admit that I do not know what that policy would be - what must be done to reach a two-state solution.
As regards the dispensensationalists, my point there is that, if one's policy positions are functionally indistinguishable from those of people who conjure their positions from that grotesque evangelical heresy, there is a problem.
Posted by Maximos | January 5, 2009 8:41 PM
"'Less unjust' is not a moral status that warrants the tendentiousness of American discourse on the subject."
No, it's not. But it is usually the only moral status available to people in the real world, as every conservative knows. The right response to this rather pedestrain observation is not to simply flatten out all distinctions and yawn ostentatiously at the enormous moral gulf between the current actors in this particular tradgedy.
Posted by Sage | January 5, 2009 8:45 PM
"Less unjust" still does not, and cannot, mean "keep doing the unjust thing, because the other party is even more unjust than you."
Posted by Maximos | January 5, 2009 8:54 PM
But whatever justice is, it means dismantling checkpoints in Judea and Samaria, driving out all the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria, and bringing the IDF out of there, too. Then it gets turned over to the "Palestinians," who turn it into another sink of absolute misery for themselves, which is also somehow Israel's fault. Then the rockets start falling all over, from that side as well. Then it's "disproportionate" to send the military back in to try to stop those rockets, so we just have to have Israeli civilians living half their lives in rocket shelters in cities all around the country, lest we commit more "injustice" by doing spit about the rocket fire. Unless "too many" are killed or the country is really in danger of coming to an absolute end. Then, maybe, we can do something. But of course everything tried would be called "disproportionate," so maybe not.
But God forbid we should have just left the checkpoints in place in the "West Bank" or Gaza in the first place. That would have been "unjust."
Posted by Lydia | January 5, 2009 9:08 PM
There is another lesson. Many people are incapable of empathizing with Israel. Some of us grasp the uniqueness of Israel's position, and realize that peace is literally impossible with the Palestinians short of divine intervention. They don't seek peace, but respite to rearm and rebuild.
It's also obvious that many religious critics of Israel cannot see that God has clearly hardened the hearts of the Palestinians to a level rarely seen. There is no other explanation for why they continue this stupid war, despite no chances of a military victory, when any other nation would have long since sued for genuine peace.
Posted by Mike T | January 6, 2009 10:14 AM
This is the problem with philosophers and intellectuals. They must take positions that are contrary to what the common man would immediately understand, so as to appear to "get it" when the rest don't. There isn't much difference between what you cite here, and the "intellectuals" who considered Mumia Abu-Jamal to be a political prisoner.
Consequently, I think this also is a dividing line between high church and low church. The high church denominations wring their hands over theories that were invented long before the advent of 4th generation warfare, modern technology and modern politics. The low church recognizes that Israel is surrounded by enemies that seek its utter destruction, and civilians who cheer on Israel's enemies and teach their children to follow in their footsteps. The low church is more realistic here, if for no other reason than it recognizes that it is often no longer possible to sort out the "good civilian" who is truly innocent from those that are complicit in the attacks on Israel.
Posted by Mike T | January 6, 2009 10:22 AM
Posted by Zippy | January 6, 2009 10:26 AM
Yeah, how low does one have to go to be "realistic" about this;
Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians on Tuesday at a U.N. school where civilians had taken shelter, medical officials said, in carnage likely to boost international calls for a halt to Israel's Gaza offensive.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5053R720090106?sp=true
Posted by Kevin | January 6, 2009 11:04 AM
Zippy,
Your point is a strong one, but not one I know how to employ militarily. Here's what I mean:
If our deadly enemy attacks us, then hides himself inside his own civilian population, how are we to defend our fellows and ourselves from attacks and death without seeking him out and, in the process, exposing non-combatant civilians to injury and death?
By hiding himself among non-combatants, our enemy says, in effect, that either we give up on self-defense and leave our own civilian population at risk of injury and death, or we attack him and put their civilians at risk of injury and death. Either way, whether we fight or we do not, civilians will be exposed to injury and death. Given that fact, I think that what Israel does is, on the whole, the right thing. I think that, given the remarkable population density in Gaza, the Israelis do a good (though by no means perfect) job of limiting civilian casualties. They also do a good job of supplying humanitarian aid to those who are injured, and doing so often in the midst of the conflict.
If you think otherwise, I am interested to hear what course of action you think is more moral and better advised -- and why (and how) you think Israel ought to employ it.
Posted by Michael Bauman | January 6, 2009 11:31 AM
The blockade has prevented supplies from entering Gaza for almost 3 years and impoverished the strip. Providing aid during a military invasion is required by the Geneva Convention, though I doubt many Gazans are touched by the gesture. Like the Lebanon invasion this will end as a humanitarian disaster with Israel's enemies strengthened. Seems whenever we violate our own moral code, we usually fail on a practical level too.
Pull-out the troops, start the airlift and bring in the aid workers and hope Fatah hasn't been weakened by this latest blunder.
Posted by Kevin | January 6, 2009 11:41 AM
I think there is a perverse alliance between hawks and doves when it comes to distinguishing between accidental deaths and on-purpose deaths. Both hawks and doves would prefer to keep the distinction unclear, for different reasons. Doves want to be able to call all deaths in wartime murder; conversely, hawks want to be able to take what is really deliberate murder and categorize it as morally licit collateral damage. The (moral) reality is more difficult than either would like to believe. If I use a modern weapon to indiscriminately blow up a whole group of people, some of whom I know are innocent and some of whom are terrorists, the deaths of the innocents are not an accident. I killed them on purpose, precisely because they got in the way, and the technical capabilities of my weapon did not allow me to kill the terrorists without killing the civilians. On the other hand, it is not merely permissable but noble and valiant for me to risk death and kill the terrorist himself, to defend the innocent from him. If I drop a smart bomb on his safe house, to the best of my knowledge clear of innocents, that is, clear of individuals who are not engaged in attacking behaviors, then I have done a good and noble deed. If my smart bomb misfires and kills some civilians, it is indeed an accident: the attack did not go according to my plans, and innocents were killed.
If my plans for this specific attack entail killing some specific identifiable civilians, even if I wish I could make different plans which did not entail killing those particular civilians, then what I am planning is murder.
So the moral situation is I think tactically far more difficult and perilous than the 'realists' would like it to be. Distinguishing accident from on purpose is not really as difficult as many would like it to be. 'Realists' would like to move forward without moral constraint, because doing so would in fact make for a more effective war with fewer casualties. These 'realists' want to blame our deliberate murder of civilians on the other guy, because the other guy created and forced the circumstances which made us view it as necessary to murder civilians. Circumstances which make murder a very tempting option do not excuse it, though. Pacifists on the other hand want to be able to condemn violence tout court. This results in a perverse obscurantist alliance between the hawks and the doves.
Posted by Zippy | January 6, 2009 12:03 PM
Fatah was already desperately weakened. It lost the last election to Hamas. It was defeated by Palestinians. The civilians themselves rejected Fatah. You can't reasonably hitch your wagon to that star. Even if you did, Fatah is impressively warlike itself, and its gunmen have killed large numbers of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel's fighting is not up to your standards. Israel's humanitarianism is not up to your standards. But both are, to me, rather impressive. I don't think there's a real-world way to do these things much better than they are done right now, especially by a nation surrounded on all sides by deadly enemies.
Posted by Michael Bauman | January 6, 2009 12:04 PM
Zippy,
I would purpose to kill their civilians in order to save the lives of our civilians if there were no other way to protect us from injury and death. Their civilians did not "get in the way." They were intentionally put in the way by their own countrymen, our intended killers, so as to serve as human shields. The intended effect of that plan, as you know, is to get us to stop defending ourselves and our fellows (the enemy wins), or to kill their civilians (we look bad; the enemy wins).
If I do not attack the enemy where he is, then I know, and therefore purpose, to put my own fellows at risk of injury and death. The purposefulness problem attaches both to fighting back and to not fighting. Either way, we will purposely take a course of action whereby we know with virtual certainty that non-combatants will die. There is no escape from that fact, none at all. No position is open to us that does not require us to do something that leads directly and knowingly to civilian deaths.
Posted by Michael Bauman | January 6, 2009 12:20 PM
Posted by Zippy | January 6, 2009 12:27 PM
"It lost the last election to Hamas. It was defeated by Palestinians."
We should not forget that election was insisted on by the Bush Administration which also had a role in the internal armed conflict which Hamas also won. Your 2004 vote is still paying dividends.
Those who believe the Palestinians can't win should reflect on the decades it took Zionism to prevail. Absent a diplomatic solution, Israel as a democratic Jewish state is on borrowed time.
How the rest of the world sees all this:
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/20091585448204690.html
Posted by al | January 6, 2009 12:31 PM
Michael,
You've lost the argument right there.
See my post at the bottom of the "Just saying..." thread.
Posted by George R. | January 6, 2009 12:44 PM
The Israeli government said one of the goals was to strengthen Fatah as a negotiating partner by "decapitating Hamas". Your argument is with them, though I agree their plan will likely backfire.
Posted by Kevin | January 6, 2009 12:57 PM
Kevin,
Perhaps we agree:
Is Fatah preferable for negotiations, compared to Hams? Yes.
Is Fatah an avenue to peace? No, even though it's the best path now available.
Mike
Posted by Michael Bauman | January 6, 2009 1:14 PM
Michael Bauman's statement suggests that if I do nothing, I am to watch my own family be killed. Can I do anything in self-defense?
Zippy says if I kill innocent civilians in the process, the answer is no because that would be murder. So I cannot prefer the lives of my own kin, my own flesh and blood, I am to be Adam Smith's disinterested observer, treating everyone equally?
Posted by Gintas | January 6, 2009 1:19 PM
Posted by Zippy | January 6, 2009 1:27 PM
Michael,
Every time you and I come close to agreeing, you back-off at the last minute, so I won't get my hopes up. But here are the scenarios;
* a negotiated 2 state solution
* the ethnic-cleansing of the Palestinians
* the Israelis abandoning the region in moral disgust or fleeing from an overwhelming existential threat.
Fatah is the only vehicle for securing the one humane option available - a 2 state solution.
Posted by Kevin | January 6, 2009 1:34 PM
Did al just refer to Al Jazeera as "the rest of the world."
Wow.
Posted by Jay Watts | January 6, 2009 1:39 PM
Aye, Zippy, but I've never seen any practical arguments about all those other things, but maybe I'm just not reading the same places as you. I only ever see practical arguments about killing people.
If I kill someone in self-defense (defense of my family), and someone happens to be in the blast area (we're talking shotguns here), and I don't have time to _calculate_ odds, it's now or never, I just shoot. All in Christian love, of course.
Posted by Gintas | January 6, 2009 3:18 PM
Hard to believe, isn't it, Jay?
No, Kevin, those are not the only scenarios. The continued "occupation" rather than capitulation to a withdrawal that makes everything *much worse for everyone involved, including the Palestinians, and is an absolute lose-lose proposal* is also a scenario. Absent a miraculous change of heart on the part of the "Palestinians," it is the one I favor for the indefinite future. And yes, I do have serious disagreements with the present Israeli government on this, because I think they should stop all negotiations, probably permanently (since I see no prospect of said miraculous change of heart).
Posted by Lydia | January 6, 2009 3:28 PM
Zippy,
I'm just coming back into the faith and you make it so hard! Seriously though, one quick question. I read that Israel has been making phone calls to the homes of its targets and telling them if they don't get out of the house they will die. Assuming Israel issues such a warning but then knows that their target does not leave the house and may in fact have innocent people in the house, can they bomb? My guess is that you say no. But if Israel doesn't know whether or not innocents are in the house, what then...can they bomb?
Posted by Jeff Singer | January 6, 2009 3:53 PM
And who the dickens _ever_ heard of _any_ country before waging warfare by calling up people with munitions in their basements ahead of time?
I mean, it's very bizarre.
Posted by Lydia | January 6, 2009 3:55 PM
Gintas,
You must defend your family and your fellow country men against the murderous onslaught of a deadly enemy, even if doing so means that civilians on the other side will die because your enemy hides himself among them. Why? Because if you do not defend yourself and your countrymen, your own civilians will die. In short, no matter what happens in a time of war, no matter what you do, civilians will die -- and that fact of itself does not make the war unjust, and it does not mean that civilian deaths are always murder.
Zippy,
You did not answer my objection in the least; you simply mischaracterized it as murder. I'll say it again: If you do not defend yourself and your fellow countrymen against attack, you knowingly pursue a policy that leads to the death of your own civilians. If you do the opposite, if you pursue a deadly enemy that hides himself among his own civilians, you knowingly pursue a policy that leads to the death of civilians, in this case, theirs. No matter what you do, you pursue a policy that with virtual certainty leads to the death of civilians, whether you fighting or do not fight.
Have you got some third approach whereby no civilians will die? If so, I want to hear it. How will you suggest to the Israelis that they stop Hamas' deadly attacks on Israeli citizens without any civilians dying on either side. Waht do you suggest they do? I honestly do not see how its possible. Perhaps you do. I'm interested in your proposal. At the moment, my own view is that the Israelis do a rather good job of pursuing the right goal in the right way.
Posted by Michael Bauman | January 6, 2009 6:17 PM
Posted by Zippy | January 6, 2009 6:38 PM
Jeff Singer,
I don't think a "no" here is straightforward. In particular, I think the term "innocent" means something like "not engaged in any attacking behavior", where "attacking behavior" can be construed pretty broadly.If an adult person is deliberately placing himself in harms way as a putative human shield, it seems to me that that is an attacking behavior. He is deliberately using his body in psychological warfare as a gambit to protect a military asset. It is not quite as far removed as "making ball bearings for the munitions plant", and it doesn't seem outrageous to construe the latter as an attacking behavior.
In general I think we can be pretty broad in what we understand to be attacking behaviors. I'm not comfortable just blessing the general idea that if we warn someone and he doesn't get out of the way that is an attacking behavior, but in particular cases it certainly can be.
To reiterate, as I mention in my own post (which is a re-work of a comment in this thread), I don't think the true results of a moral inquiry under right reason here are especially comfortable for either hawks or doves. If we distinguish between voluntary and involuntary human shields, it is never licit to deliberately kill the latter but it certainly can be licit, if proportionate etc, to kill the former.
All as I understand it, for what that is worth, of course.
Posted by Zippy | January 6, 2009 6:58 PM
Kevin,
I hope you read a broad spectrum of Israeli analysis and opinion. Here is the great Natan Sharansky discussing the suffering of those in Gaza. The only thing that gets me angry when I read that story is the fact that the U.S. goes along with the U.N.'s charade.
Zippy,
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Posted by Jeff Singer | January 6, 2009 7:59 PM
There is vivid moment in Bowden's Blackhawk Down in which the US special forces troops find themselves under fire. They se that the gunman has literally draped himself in children -- he is protected by involuntary human shields in the most literal sense. If I recall Bowden's account, The American troops return fire. As I understand Zippy's view, this illicit, and may even be murder. The US troops should have died rather than return fire.
Questions for Zippy:
1) Is this in fact your view: the US soldiers should not have returned fire, because in so doing they would certainly kill innocent human shields? Should they have died themselves rather than doing this?
2) Does the answer change depending on consequences? Let us imagine that the soldiers in Bowden's example had been themselves protecting civilians, and knew that if they were killed the gunman employing the human shields would himself murder the civilians under their care. In this case would they have been justified in returning fire?
Posted by Ben A | January 6, 2009 11:49 PM
Ben A:
It is not morally acceptable to shoot through the children, directly killing them ourselves, to get to the enemy. And no, the consequences do not alter the moral determination. More about this particular kind of case in a moment though, because there is a subtlety.
When I say that it is not licit, that does not mean that it is not a terrible moral dilemma for the men faced with a terrible choice. But nevertheless, the moral conclusion is that no, we mustn't murder the innocent under any circumstances or for any reason -- not even if we are morally certain that someone else is about to murder them if we don't do it first, and not even to save our own lives. It is not OK to murder an innocent man and steal his organs in order to save our own lives; and the "and steal his organs" part is superfluous.
There is a scene in a dumb movie called Speed where a policeman deliberately shoots a hostage in the leg so that he cannot stand, and no longer makes an effective hostage. While very risky, this seems to me to be morally acceptable: the policeman isn't killing the hostage, he is removing the hostage's usefulness as a human shield, saving his life, by wounding him.
The existence of tricky cases isn't really what is at issue in these kinds of discussions though. There will always be tricky cases which can be discussed. Casuistry is often a proxy for resistance to less tricky cases, like the case of dropping a bomb on a crowd of innocents in order to kill the intermingled terrorists. That is a cut and dried case of murder.
Posted by Zippy | January 7, 2009 12:02 AM
How long can the status quo continue into the "indefinite future"? It is unsustainable as a long-term strategy. Israel knows the history of India, Ireland, South Africa, Algiers and a host of other 20th century religious-racial insurrections. To avoid a heartbreaking diaspora or a an immoral war of extermination she will drop the policy of collective punishment in time to avert both. I hope.
Jeff, I sent you an interview with a Zionist historian and hope you get around to reading it. I totally agree with Sharansky on the dynamics at work, but nothing he wrote changes the verdict on Israel's strategy in Gaza.
Posted by Kevin | January 7, 2009 1:41 AM
Zippy,
Are you actually arguing that, in order to avoid being what you (wrongly) call a murderer, one should intentionally fire upon Palestinian school children who are being used as a human shield, aiming below the waist, effectively shooting off their legs?
Posted by Michael Bauman | January 7, 2009 12:00 PM
Thank you for the response Zippy.
If I have understood your position, it is that it is impermissible to kill an innocent human shield in the process of the otherwise permissible of killing an evildoer (terrorist, violent criminal, soldier engaged in an unjust war, etc.). This position raises three concerns.
First, it seems that it will increase the use of human shields. Indeed, it appears to place an enormously powerful tactical weapon in the hands of the evil. They can largely secure themselves against retaliation by endangering innocents. I wonder – and this is only partially fanciful – why a criminal, terrorist, or tyrant would not protect himself by carrying a baby around with him at all times?
Second, it seems to put extreme emphasis on the distinction between doing and allowing. We have an absolute prohibition against killing an innocent human shield. But if a murderer, protected by an innocent human shield, is in the process of killing other innocents, we cannot kill him. And numbers don’t matter in the calculus, so we may be forced to watch the murder of hundreds, or thousands. Or see a just regime destroyed by an unjust one.
Third, it seems an odd principle when one considers the situation of a human shield from the inside. Were some mass murderer using *me* as a human shield while he slaughtered tens of others, I would want the police to shoot. I wouldn’t think the police had murdered me. I would think they had done the right thing. I would hope I had the strength to ask them to do it, just as I would hope to have the strength to sacrifice myself to kill the murderer given the opportunity.
Posted by Ben A | January 7, 2009 12:23 PM
It is not difficult for civilized persons to agree that the *intentional* killing of innocent civilians (leaving aside the definition of this designation) is immoral at any time. If the intention to spare innocent life is genuine and consistent, but there is an imperfectly known risk-- at times verging on certainty-- that civilians will be killed in any given operation, should this knowledge paralyze the ability to act with force?
Surely the soldier in the Black Hawk example (above) would not *intend* to kill children in that situation; he may have had genuine faith that in firing he might only injure one or several of the kids yet kill his adversary, or force him out so that he could be despatched as an isolated target.
Here we are awfully close to the razor's edge of truly knowing an outcome, which is impossible, and calculating a likely outcome that carries inherent deadly risks.
Posted by Hannon | January 7, 2009 12:52 PM