Proportionality revisited
Mark Shea slaps me over my claim, re: Israel's response to Hezbollah, that "proportionality is madness." I think Mark has a good point. It was wrong of me to make that blanket claim about the abstract principle of proportionality. What...
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This whole situation reminds me of some advice my wife recieved from her father when she was growing up. He told her to run away from a fight when it was possible. But when it's not, keep hitting them until they can't get up. She's from New Jersey, for what that's worth.>
Or, as my mom would put it, never start a fight, but be sure to finish it.
When I do agree with you, Rod, I far too often don't make that clear. In this case, I don't think precise proportionality is a prerequisite for just war.>
This is a step up from simply denying proportionality at all, but still has a ways to go, Rod. Your last post simply swept away proportionality from Just War theory altogether. This post sweeps it away from Just War because this war is so special. The problem is, everybody says that about every war.
I will answer on my blog tomorrow. If Israel's response is disproportional, then Israel does not get a pass and is fighting an unjust war. Period. I make no judgment that it is myself. I merely state that Israel is not exempt from just war teaching.>
Three points. First, as I posted on another thread below, the Church teaches:
"Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility." CCC 2265
In the context of an aggressor launching rockets at civilians from apartment buildings filled with women and children (some of whom volunteer rooms in their homes to serve as launching pads), how does one meet the duty to render this aggressor unable to do harm in a manner more just then is being done currently?
Second, the just war doctrine element of proportionality states, "the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated." So, what is the graver evil, the intentional killing of civilians in an ongoing conflict by an aggressor who repeatedly vows to drive all the Jews into the sea, or the military response that has produced the unintended, yet predictable, deaths of innocents after days of warnings to leave the area?
Third, the just war doctrine provides that the evaluation of what is proportional, that is the degree of force needed to neutralize the threat, belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good. In this case this means the Israeli political leaders, who are in charge of a nation founded on the very principle of "never again", should be given the benefit of the doubt in how they fulfill their duty to protect their citizens.>
Is Israel's response proportionate in response to the kidnapping of 2 soilders? Of course not. They kidnapped the soilders-they didn't kill them(yet).
Is Israel's response proportionate to the threat of Hezbollah? Yes, and I'd say that's what they were responding to. The fact that Hezbollah continues to fire so many rockets despite the interruption to roads in and out of the area shows that they had a huge stockpile. They are backed by Iran. We all heard the crazy things that the leader of Iran has said about Jews and Israel.>
Mark writes:
This is a step up from simply denying proportionality at all, but still has a ways to go, Rod. Your last post simply swept away proportionality from Just War theory altogether. This post sweeps it away from Just War because this war is so special. The problem is, everybody says that about every war.
In this light, please explain Yahweh's instructions to the Israelites various times in the Old Testament when they were faced by a powerful enemy seeking their annihilation. This isn't flip; I am genuinely curious about how we got from "smite or die" to "be proportional," apart from the pat "It's different since Christ's coming."
Theologically, how did we get here from there? Furthermore, are you willing to tell the Jews to "play nice" when, just like in Old Testament times, playing nice well might lead to the nation of Israel ending up quite exterminated.
In principle -- and the great majority of time, in practice -- I stand with the Just War theory and "proportionality." I, however, am not willing to insist that the Jews martyr themselves so that my moral and philosophical bearings might avoid discombobulation.
If we Americans, in these perilous times, lose the war on account of "proportionality," there would be great catastrophe and suffering. If Israel were to do likewise, it might be Holocaust: The Sequel.
Regarding the specific question of Israel's precarious existence in a neighborhood filled with fanatical Islamonazis (who are acquiring better and better weaponry every day), are you really willing to tell the Israeli population "You really need to shoot craps with your lives because total war in the modern age morally offends us"?
Likewise, turning to the past, should Roosevelt, Churchill and Truman have been tried for crimes against humanity for the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, as well as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Should William Tecumseh Sherman have been tried and hanged for his march across Georgia?
Israel didn't start this war, but for its own sake, it damn well better finish it.>
Just to be clear, Mark Shea wrote that, James. I did not.>
James Freeman, I really liked your post.>
Suggested reading - another blog entry from Michael Totten, a conservative American who's lived in Lebanon and actually knows of what he speaks.>
That Michael Totten post is extraordinary, Tope; thanks for bringing it to our attention. I'm going to put it up on the next entry, so more people can potentially see it.
Just war theory, it seems to me, has to be able to account for the role of radical terror organizations in an age of weapons of mass destruction. Hezbollah, for example, is a Shia militia that, unlike a conventional state, has a grievance that can only be satisfied by genocide of the Jewish people, or at least the elimination of the state of Israel. They're open about that. They are supported by a relatively wealthy nation, Iran, whose leader openly and repeatedly brags about his intention to annihilate Israel. That nation is pursuing nuclear weaponry.
If Hezbollah is allowed to continue, which a "proportional" response that would satisfy you, Mark S., would presumably entail, there can be little doubt that the destruction of the entire state of Israel is in the cards. It's just a matter of time.
Therefore, what are the Israelis to do? Risk the lives of every Israeli, and the utter destruction of their country at the hands of undeterrable religious fanatics, for the sake of observing Catholic social teaching? I'm not asking this in a sarcastic tone; I really do want to know. What is "proportional" when faced with an enemy that has demonstrated a willingness to commit suicide for the sake of destroying you (Hezbollah, recall, pioneered the car bomb in the 1980s), and which is supplied militarily by a radical state seeking your people's genocide, and is pursuing nuclear weapons?
This is what I meant by saying "proportionality is madness" with reference to this conflict. What is "proportionality" if you are Israel facing such an enemy? Seriously, Mark, I'd like to know your thoughts.>
Tope-- seconded. I've seen Totten dismissed as a cementhead conservative on left-leaning sites (ie, MetaFilter); but that post proves otherwise. This is a real catastrophe for Lebanon, a fragile democracy.
Rod: "So I see a disproportionate response from Israel as justifiable in principle. Whether the actual disproportionate response they've made is justified is another question."
Glad to see you saying so. Next up, is addressing that second question. Now that the State Dept has dismissed as "outrageous" the idea that Israel has a free pass to continue with what it's doing, maybe it won't be politically incorrect in conservative circles in the US to suggest that Israel's actions have been counterproductive.
To Mark Shea: If just war theory doesn't account for the situation faced by a tiny nation in a hostile neighborhood under constant threat of terrorism, then just war theory is not useful. Theory must bend to facts, not the other way 'round.>
A bit of perspective from a friend of mine, an Israeli citizen who while expressing very strong opinions still has a strong, ethical commitment to keeping the facts straight. I'm couching this in personal terms because I agree with him 100%.
1) The Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebannon six years ago was a strategic defeat for the IDF. Don't take his and my word for it: Israeli commanders were the first to say it.
2) Nothing has changed in six years. If anything, it has gotten worse. The current active-duty forces and the thousands of reserves recently activated have no preparatory or basic training skills in fighting a guerilla war.
3) The one method that has any chance of succeeding, massive inundation of guerilla controlled areas by large forces, is the one method that has been ruled out by Israeli leadership. Precision guided-bombs and rapid-response fighter jets after launchings has already been proven ineffective. This, by itself, makes the call for a cease fire just to spare the civilians a very reasonable position to take. I don't like it, but I like the lack of commitment to actually win this war even less.
Condee Rice's "false dichotomy" is false as a unit. Throw out the comparison, because it has no foundation in reality. Lebannon stopped being a sovereign nation from the moment the first Katyusha was fired into northern Israel, and the true crime is two-fold: that Lebannon has not asked for international military assistance to forcibly disarm the criminal Hezbollah; that Israel has balked at doing the one thing that has any hope for success, and that's to go in and do what the Lebanese "leadership" is unable to do for itself.>
I think there are (at least) two moral perspectives at work here. One says there are some things you can't do no matter how dire the consequences may seem. The other says that some values (e.g. the survival of the nation) are of such surpassing importance that they justify whatever means seem necessry to defend them.
Christianity has taken the first position almost exclusively and would condemn, e.g. the use of atomic weapons on civilian populations, even if it was necessary for victory (which is itself debatable) and no matter what Charles Krauthammer says.
For traditional Christianity the survival of the nation, or even Western civilization, is not something of such transcendent importance that protecting it justifies actions which are intrinsically wrong. Which really shouldn't be that surprising considering how Christians venerate their martyrs. I realize there are "revisionists" afoot in the churches these days, though. ;)>
Lee-- Which Christian leaders have advanced that view?
I think you're arguing not from the historical actions of Christian leaders, but from your view of what Christianity compels.>
While I understand and even agree with some of Mr. Krauthammer's points,I would have to point out that at the time we were attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor in 1941, that imperial nation had already overrun dozens of nations in the Pacific and enslaved, murdered, and tortured thousands of people. When we went to war with Japan it was because we had been attacked by a nation that, left unchecked, was intent on dominating the entire Pacific region, including western parts of the U.S., with terrible and uncompromising force.
Israel, yes, has been attacked by Hezbollah and deserves to defend itself. However, equating the level of damage by Hezbollah done at this point with the level of carnage already wreaked by the Japanese at the point of Pearl Harbor is a bit of an exaggeration.>
Lee, if the Gestapo were standing outside your door ordering you and your family to come out with your hands up, and you were morally certain that if you did as they demanded, they would murder you all ... and you had the means to kill all the Gestapo men before they killed your family, well, by what moral calculus should you go to your death because that's the moral thing to do?
(This is the moral conflict at the heart of the film "The Mission," which is one reason I love that movie.)>
Rod, no one except absolute pacifists would deny that you should exercise self-defense if you're able. But the moral calculus gets much trickier when you extend it to killing thousands of innocent people as we did during World War II. Charles Krauthammer says we had "every right" to slaughter the people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and Dresden and Tokyo) because their government "threaten[ed] our security." That seems to me like an entirely different kettle of fish, even assuming that doing so was necessary to win the war.
Do you think that fighting a war licenses anything that's necessary to win? Torture, murder, rape?
P.S. "The Mission"? The Robert de Niro film? I love that one too.>
Rod-- your hypo is thought-provoking, but it is structured to give an answer that, as far as I can tell, Jesus as quoted in the Gospels would never have countenanced. Am I misreading or overlooking something? How do we know when Christianity does, and does not, provide a relevant ethical framework?>
Tom,
To reply to your earlier comment, if by "Christian leaders" you mean Christian statesmen and certain church leaders then I think you're right. But Christian moral theology has generally held that some acts are intrinsically wrong and can't be justified, even in service to a good cause.>
Part of the problem is that in warfare, ethics is defined under the rules of war. Peacetime ethics are deliberately ignored in some important respects.
For example, Dresden was a military target. It contained industrial and infrastructure targets that were high priorities in the German capability to wage war. The civilians there were not collateral damage, they were deliberate targets insofar as they worked the trains, the factories and the storage facilities.
I'm not suggesting, by any stretch, that this is analogous to southern Lebannon. But it is important to get our comparisons straight, and to understand that there is exactly one goal in war, to win, and no method of winning is too desparate to take if losing means extinction. This includes the individual deciding or implementing the method going to jail or execution after victory, if that's the consequence. Extinction is not acceptable, period.>
Thanks for clarifying my comment Lee-- we're in agreement.
I don't see how, or why, "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemy" could be effective statecraft as a universal rule.
Someone a couple days ago brought up the "out," that when you're running a country, you're responsible for lots of lives other than your own, so Jesus' dictums about personal behavior are no longer operable in that situation.>
A bit of a digression here, so forgive me:
"Likewise, turning to the past, should Roosevelt, Churchill and Truman have been tried for crimes against humanity for the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, as well as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"
No.
"Should William Tecumseh Sherman have been tried and hanged for his march across Georgia?"
Yes.
Thanks. Carry on.>
Rod, your hypothetical Gestapo-at-the-door doesn't seem to me to provide the right analogy. Only an out-and-out pacifist would say you can't kill the Gestapo. A more relevant question is whether there are any limits on what you can do to, say, the children of the people who live in the same neighborhood as the Gestapo.
Suppose we add to your scenario that somewhere in the enemy's nation there is a locked and guarded school packed with children and explosives. There's no reason to think that any of the children happen to belong to these or any other soldiers. You hold in your hand the trigger that will detonate them. Now what's the right thing to do?
Whether or not the principle of proportionality is valid is not even a legitimate subject of debate for Catholics. There's room for argument about what's proportional in any given case, but the principle is just not negotiable. Krauthammer has no standing in this debate. (Not that I think the principle only applies to Catholics, but it's binding on Catholics.)
I'm pretty sure that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were objectively wrong, although in Truman's place I might have done the same thing and if I had been a soldier in the Pacific I would have been glad he did it.>
When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin.
I don't think you make a very persuasive case for Israel's current actions by citing the terror bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
But to give a closer parallel to the Israel-Lebanon situation, when the United States was attacked by terrorist non-state actors under Pancho Villa at Columbus, New Mexico, we did *not* respond by levelling Mexican cities between the border and somewhere south of Mexico City, or even large blocks of such cities. We did *not* attack Mexican army bases and personnel. We did *not* declare (in words like those of the Israeli minister of justice) that every civilian remaining in northern Mexico was a terrorist and that we would employ "huge firepower" to destroy Villa's army. In short, we employed proportionate means.
(Of course, I can already hear people saying, "But they didn't work. Villa got away. We *should* have left northern Mexico a smoking wasteland. That woulda taught 'em.")>
The example of Pancho Villa is hardly applicable. He might have raided some border settlements, but given the vastness of the United States, he hardly imperilled the existence of the entire country. Moreover, whatever his motives, I rather doubt they included completely erasing the U.S. from the map. From the U.S. perspective, Villa was flea -- annoying, and worth trying to chase away, but hardly a real danger.
On the otherhand, Israel faces and enemy committed to its complete destruction.
Moreover, consider geography. Hezbollah is lobbing missles into Haifa. I think the equivalent for Pancho Villa would have been if he had raided as far across the border as, say, Denver. If he had penetrated that far across the border, with the kind of force that Hezbollah has been using, I think we would in fact have retaliated by pounding a great deal of northern Mexico into the ground.
As it was, Villa was really little more than a pesky nuisance, not a mortal threat.
I don't think you make a very persuasive case for Israel's current actions by citing the terror bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
Oh, please. The Japanese deserved everything we threw at them, and more. In the context of World War II, saving one single American life was worth the deaths of any number of Japanese. We had to destroy their capacity to make war, and show them that we could keep pounded them into the dust if they tried to raise their head again. Notice that neither we nor Japan's East Asian neighbors have had any military trouble from them since then.
Israel need to pound both Hezbollah and Hamas into the dust. It's a question of survival. It's not the job of Israel's government to worry about the lives of anyone but Israelis, just as it wasn't Harry Truman's job to worry about the lives of anyone but Americans.>
Therefore, what are the Israelis to do? Risk the lives of every Israeli, and the utter destruction of their country at the hands of undeterrable religious fanatics, for the sake of observing Catholic social teaching?
France was faced with a similar question during the Algerian war. Did they risk the life of every pied noir in Algeria, and the utter destruction of the colony that had been established there, for the sake of observing the moral prohibition on torture? (It had become clear that the French could keep Algeria if they and the French were willing to use torture to destroy the FLN.) Maybe if the pieds noirs had a powerful enough military force of their own, they'd have made a different choice, but the French decided that they were not willing to hold onto Algeria at that moral cost. And nearly all the pieds noirs evacuated Algeria, most of them coming to a France that they had never been to (and in many cases that their ancestors hadn't lived in, since they had come to Algeria from Spain, Malta, or other Mediterranean lands--an ingathering like the colonization of Israel). Are we to say that the French made the wrong choice?>
How can one fight a "proportional" war against a genocidal enemy that has no committment to such principles?
We saw the kind of "proportionality" that enemy uses on Sept. 11. Furthermore, we've seen it in Madrid, London, Bali, Istanbul and Beslan (among other places) we're seeing it in Iraq.
Now, we're seeing it in Lebanon, where an Iranian front group hides behind women, children, even the UN!
"Proportionality" would make sense if legitimate Muslim authorities were doing their best to fight the terrorists, as well. But they're not. Indeed, they're abating them.
The kind of "just war" theory that Shea supports reflects the all-too-Catholic trait of looking at real-world situations with an esoteric, almost etherial, approach. Shea's kind of Catholicism is among the worst kinds of evil: It sacrifices the innocent for esoteric nonsense.>
Jd'H: "We saw the kind of "proportionality" that enemy uses on Sept. 11."
Please be aware that Hezbollah was not involved in the 9/11 attacks. Nor was Saddam Hussein. Or the Jews.>
Joe:
You'd know all about sacrificing the innocent, given your repeated advocacy of nuking Mecca, Medina, Teheran, Damascus, and Tripoli, in addition to your recommendations for murdering the entire Muslim population of Jersey City or Newark. I'll take Just War Theory over your sociopathic Richard Heydrich imitation any day, Joe.
Rod: Seriously. Is Crunchy Connism such a big tent that it includes the aspiring Future Architects of Lidice like D'Hippo? Are Just War teaching and Malmedy just two parts of the broad spectrum lifestyle choices open to us?
Sheesh!>
The example of Pancho Villa is hardly applicable. He might have raided some border settlements, but given the vastness of the United States, he hardly imperilled the existence of the entire country.
Well, in that case the example of Pearl Harbor is hardly applicable either. The attack on the naval base was no more a threat to the existence of the United States than the similar Japanese attack on the Russian base at Port Arthur in 1904 was a threat to the existence of Russia. In both cases, Japan's goal was not to conquer the Western power it was attacking, but to push the Western power aside so it could have a free hand in China.>
Um, Mark Shea? I humbly point out that Beliefnet is an open website, permitting browsing without registration, and the Holoscan window opens to all comers whether they are logged in as Beliefnet members or not. In fact, I'm posting this without being logged in.>
Franklin:
Okay. Fair enough.>
Should Gen. Sherman have been tried for war crimes? Well, yes, he should have. Especially since the South was excercising its right under the Constitution to secede. He and the Federal goverment were the agressor. Yeah, yeah, I know, slavery, and all that, yadda, yadda. But at least at first, the war was not about abolishing slavery, but keeping the South from seceding. The feds invaded us and we had the right to resist the invader and occupier. I am not one of those the South will rise again types because the Feds have the Bomb now ;). Even if you feel like the South was wrong in the Civil War (and of course, we were wrong about slavery), it is hard for me to understand how men like Sherman and Sheridan can be held up as heroes of any sort whatsoever.
AFA Roosevelt and Truman, yeah, according to Catholic doctrine, nuking Japan was wrong. Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe very much protested an honorary Oxford degree being awarded to Harry Truman, as under Catholic moral teaching, he was a war criminal. Spin it how you want, but sometimes, being a Catholic might mean that you can't agree with everything our government does in the conduct of a war.
Yeah, maybe it saved lives. That makes it a difficult question, one of those hard cases where we are tempted to do evil that good may come of it. Should we? In an imperfect world, must we sometimes do the lesser of two evils and then, I don't know, go to confession or something? Why or why not?
Of course, stem cell research might save lives too, but we'd have to kill embryonic human beings. Would using those embryos who are going to be thrown away anyway be like killing civilians so we can avoid more killing?
And remember the whole Schiavo affair. Was her life more valuable than that of a Lebanese child? I suppose one could say that Israel is not trying to kill the child. But they can reasonably assume that from their actions, many civilians will die, and in fact have died, the casualties in Lebanon have been overwhelmingly civilian and children.
I don't pretend to know the answers to the whole Middle East mess. I do know that continuing to do the same thing which is not working and hoping for a better outcome is often said to be the definition of insanity. I am sort of suffering from Middle East crisis fatigue and don't think there will ever be a solution to the whole thing. Even though I don't buy the whole Left Behind dispensationalist fundy claptrap, maybe they are right that the whole thing will never be solved until Jesus comes back. Until then, I just feel sort of helpless watching all those poor suffering people on both sides of the border and think perhaps we should pray more and mouth off less.
My 2 cents worth.>
Gold pennies there, Marty. I for one am grateful to read your perspective.
There is a bit of insanity in Israel's tactics, I must admit. It didn't work six and more years ago (leading up to their withdrawal from southern Lebanon), and it doesn't seem to be working in about the same ways now.>
The damage to Israel and Lebanon are real enough, but the moral damage to the Catholic Church (or what passes for it) will be also lasting. No, this doesn't mean the Church has to abandon its long-held principles, nor does she (or her spokespersons) need to cheerlead the war.
Catholics should think long and hard before telling six million Jews in Israel "Shape up, boy! I know you had some unpleasantness sixty years ago from some similar types, but our Catholic teachings are binding on you too, with or without the ghetto."
The Bishops denounced Israeli checkpoints, even as a suicide bomber destined for an Israeli hospital had to prematurely detonate at a checkpoint, killing a dozen people. These types of situations, all too frequent, give the impressing that Catholics simply cannot apply moral reason to a complex situation. We simply don't get it, and "real" decisions have to be made independent of us, while we languish in our convenient plattitudes.
Catholic leaders frequently remain silent while Jews die, only repsonding later when Israel fights back. This current war is a case in point. A thousand bombs dropped on Israeli cities, but wouldn't have to search five minutes before finding some Catholic "thinker" who says the war is disproportionate because the damage on the Israeli side consists of two kidnapped soldiers.
The tortured, and often selective, way in which Catholics "apply" Church teachings on war would make any thoughtful person think it's an esoteric exercise in which Israel is destined to fail, perhaps by design.
No, I don't think this represents the truth of Catholic teachings, but the glee with which Catholics leap forward to criticize Israel is jaw-dropping. Victor Davis Hanson makes a good point:
"When in late 1999 Russians stormed Grozny, thousands of Chechnya Muslims died. Yet the press was mostly silent. Baathist Syria went after the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, wiping out much of the city of Hama and killing perhaps more than 10,000. Not many U.N. resolutions or international refugee efforts there."
Alas, VDH could've added "Catholic leaders" to the list of those who didn't scream bloody murder in the face of military action not involving Israel.
We could go on and on with examples. You don't hear much about proportionality when someone other than the U.S. or Israel is doing the bombing.>
I think the reason you don't hear more about proportianity unless it's us or Israel is that we claim to be more moral and better than the bad guys, and in fact we are. We do at least try to live up to our ideals, whether we do or not.
The fact that we are trying to think about these things shows that. And the other side has no problem whatsoever with killing civilians so it's kind of pointless to expect better of them.
What's troubling is people on our side saying things like there are no innocent civilians because they support their side, the bad guys. That is the same exact reasoning Osama bin Ladin used in the 9/11 attack-all of us are complicit in the "war against Islam by the West". I have seriously heard Catholic people on our side say that all their civilians are guilty so we shouldn't worry about killing them. Well, what about kids and babies?
This sounds like the "kill em all and let God sort em out" mentality. Not good.>
Proportionality is a relational term, so when someone says that Israel's actions are disproportionate, the question arises, disproportionate to what? Underlying at least some of the criticism of Israel's actions is the idea that it force it uses against Hezbollah must be proportionate to the force Hezbollah uses against it. That notion of proportionality really is madness, but fortunantly it has never been a part of the just war teaching.>
Josiah - I do not think that the proportionality you are talking about is particularly Catholic or even christian. There seems to have been a newspeak dictionary or two slipped in without us knowing it. Our language is deformed and when we try to say the right thing we end up with "the party is double plus ungood". In this instantiation, a rejection of proportionality because the non-catholic usage has become normative and adopted by many catholics.>
Should Gen. Sherman have been tried for war crimes? Well, yes, he should have. Especially since the South was excercising its right under the Constitution to secede.
Whether the South was exercising a constitutional right (and the Union was therefore fighting an unjust war) is a question of ius ad bellum; whether Sherman was guilty of war crimes is a question of ius in bello. The two should not be confused. The Union's cause could well be just, and Sherman still a war criminal. Conversely, Sherman's actions might have been completely in accordance with the laws of war, even if the Union was fighting an unjust war.
That said, it should be noted that under the Lieber Code, approved by President Lincoln and meant to be a codification of the laws of war, said that "Private property, unless forfeited by crimes or by offenses of the owner, can be seized only by way of military necessity, for the support or other benefit of the Army or of the United States," and that "Military necessity does not admit of . . . the wanton devastation of a district." It's hard to see how Sherman's actions can be reconciled with these articles.>
When in late 1999 Russians stormed Grozny, thousands of Chechnya Muslims died. Yet the press was mostly silent. Baathist Syria went after the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, wiping out much of the city of Hama and killing perhaps more than 10,000. Not many U.N. resolutions or international refugee efforts there.
Yes, those were wrong too. And yes, it's pretty galling to listed to the Russians calling for restraint by Israel when they've showed no such restraint in Chechnya. (The Syrians aren't part of the civilized world, so I'm not surprised at any hypocrisy on their part.) That doesn't mean that the obligation of proportionality isn't binding on Russians *and* Israelis.>
Paul Pennyfeather, I couldn't have said it any better myself. The Catholic bishops' anti-Israel slip is showing.
Tom Tolberg, the "enemy" is an Islamic militancy that seeks to impose its version of a Caliphate on the world, and those nations that support terrorism. Iraq and Hezbollah, despite their differences, are therefore part of a greater whole.
Mark Shea, personal attacks aside, I would like to know how you would fight genocidal, imperialist terrorists using "just war" doctrine. I would also like to know how you would have reformed such enemies as Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan without the social evisceration that forced their radical reform.
Show that you can do something besides make visceral personal attacks.>
And, now, to all those who worship at the altar of "proportionality"?
Was WWII a proportional response to Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo? I'm not talking about individual incidents such as Dresden or Hiroshima. I'm talking about the Allies' prosecution of the war as a whole. If you believe it wasn't proportional, would you be willing to live with the results of a possible Allied defeat: the dominance of a genocidal, imperialist German power in Europe and a genocidal, imperialist Japanese power in Asia?>
Was WWII a proportional response to Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo?
The unconditional surrender policy arguably prolonged the war for two years, demoralized the German opposition to Hitler, and led to Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe:
">http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/Archives/cw_recent/warcrime.html>
Seamus; The unconditional surrender policy arguably prolonged the war for two years, demoralized the German opposition to Hitler, and led to Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe.
Seamus, I tend to think that Stalin's thirst for territory. led to the occupation of Eastern Europe. Remember, Stalin occupied Eastern Poland (compliments of the non-aggression pact he signed with Hitler) *before* Churchill and Roosevelt decided on a policy of unconditional surrender.
As far as "prolonging the war for two years" is concerned, do you seriously think Hitler would have surrendered even conditionally? Don't forget that he was ultimately in charge of the Nazi war machine (he never let his generals forget). The article you cite never deals with that fact.
Besides, Seamus, citing an article that uses David Irving as a source doesn't enhance the credibility of either your arguments or position.>
Hey, Mark Shea, come up with any ideas yet on how to fight genocidal terrorists using "just war" doctrine?
The crickets are chirping....>
Seamus, I tend to think that Stalin's thirst for territory. led to the occupation of Eastern Europe. Remember, Stalin occupied Eastern Poland (compliments of the non-aggression pact he signed with Hitler) *before* Churchill and Roosevelt decided on a policy of unconditional surrender.
But even by the end of 1943, the Red Army hadn't succeeded in recapturing the Polish territory it got in 1939. And it wasn't likely to recapture it without a stream of American lend-lease aid.
As far as "prolonging the war for two years" is concerned, do you seriously think Hitler would have surrendered even conditionally? Don't forget that he was ultimately in charge of the Nazi war machine (he never let his generals forget). The article you cite never deals with that fact.
It specifically talked about the plan of certain Germans to overthrow Hitler so that he wouldn't be in charge of the German (no longer Nazi) war maching.
Besides, Seamus, citing an article that uses David Irving as a source doesn't enhance the credibility of either your arguments or position.
There were exactly two points in the entire article for which Irving was cited. And even if Irving were wrong on the particular points for which he was cited, to suggest that those citations somehow discredit the whole article brings to mind the legendary Jesuit who, when accused of killing three men and a dog, triumphantly produced the dog alive.>
But even by the end of 1943, the Red Army hadn't succeeded in recapturing the Polish territory it got in 1939. And it wasn't likely to recapture it without a stream of American lend-lease aid.
So, Seamus, you think the Americans should have made as their primary strategy relying on Hitler's assassination by domestic elements rather than relying on a known quantity, Soviet belligerence against the Nazis?
It specifically talked about the plan of certain Germans to overthrow Hitler so that he wouldn't be in charge of the German (no longer Nazi) war machine.
We saw how well that plan worked on July 20, 1944. Not to take anything away from the heroism of the perpetrators, but too many variables (turncoats among the conspirators, the bad luck of Hitler escaping with minor injuries) worked against them.
There were exactly two points in the entire article for which Irving was cited. And even if Irving were wrong on the particular points for which he was cited, to suggest that those citations somehow discredit the whole article...
Given the voluminous number of historians of WWII and Nazi Germany, you had to pick a "controversial" figure like Irving to site anything? That choice, in and of itself, does cast doubt on the article's ideological credibility.>
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