Paul F. M. Zahl, Daniel M. Bell Jr., and Brian Stiltner all offer food for thought, see what you make of it.
Paul F. M. Zahl, Daniel M. Bell Jr., and Brian Stiltner all offer food for thought, see what you make of it.
Might does not make right, but when the deadly threat of might is overwhelming it can bring about an end to violent hostilities and open the way for cool-headed conversation aimed at establishing enough peace with justice (shalom/salaam) to satisfy all sides who previously have been resorting to violence against one another. That a small minority of ideologues may refuse to accept any negotiated compromise and may instead persist in vengeful acts of suicidal mass destructiveness as somehow “holy” is no reason to forsake using the deadly threat of overwhelming might in hopes, at the end of the day, for a just peace benefiting the great majority of people. Given bad luck and imperfect human nature, however, and like bandits and those who “go postal,” self-righteous terrorists are always possibilities about whom the rest of us are wise to be on guard. As far as violent weapons systems go, only a special forces sniper can spare collateral civilian death more than a missile-firing drone.
It depends who is President.
This is a basically silly debate. The whole notion of a just war is merely windowdressing to make theologians and intellectuals who never actually particiapte, feel better. Dead is dead. Why is it better to kill someone with a bullet than with a drone? Why was it better to level Tokyo and kill 150K with naplam than it was to level Hiroshima with an atomic bomb and kill 100K? Why do people think Hiroshima and Nagasaski were awful, but don’t think a whit about the rape of China in gereral and Nanking in particular. Is it because Hiroshima is/was so visible and the rape of China was/is mostly unknown to the American public? War is a sad human event. And history has shown that some bad people will never sit down and bargain about it. And the notion that it is unfair to use drones and thereby risk collateral damage doesn’t take into account that the bad guys in that part of the world intend and carry out maximum collateral damage with suicide bombs, IED’s, hijacked airplanes and that the places they live knowingly harbor them.
I think that all our enemies should be killed by ethicists and theologians. We should send in committees of such people armed with knives, so that they may render a proportional response to our enemies personally, so that our enemies can “live in to” (or is it “live out of”) such justice. We should continue with this policy until we run out of ethicists, or they change their minds, both eventualities which would probably occur almost instantaneously.
[blockquote] Why do people think Hiroshima and Nagasaski were awful, but don’t think a whit about the rape of China in gereral and Nanking in particular.[/blockquote]
Nanking was not an existential threat. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were. And are. Why are we not worried about The Iranian mullahs creating a nuclear bomb?
(@Creedal Episcopalian) Please spell out why certain attacks are existential threats or not. I’m uncertain what you’re implying.
Thanks-
The Japanese invasion of China was a political event with (at least in retrospect) little likelihood of being repeated and causing mass casualties in the US. Firebomb attacks were a recognizable extension of prevalent chemical means of destruction, which the Japanese were particularly vulnerable to due to high density concentrations of habitations often made of paper, but in general quite flammable.
The introduction of the indiscriminate destruction caused by nuclear weapons represented a new threat that could easily be envisioned being used to great effect in the continental US. Thus they presented a threat to the very existence of mankind that was immediately evident as something new and dangerous.
This is in contrast to the discriminating nature of attack drones as they are being used today (I don’t make any moral defense of that use). Drone attacks are not mass killing, they are being individually targeted. It is also conceivable to defend against them.
The nuclear mass exterminations of people being proposed by the rulers of Persia against the west, in hopes of precipitating the return of the 12th Iman, are disturbing in the context of their possession of nuclear explosives.
[blockquote] In addition, unmanned predator drones prevent war from being a fair fight. They emasculate the enemy.[/blockquote] War is not supposed to be a ‘fair fight.’ Only academic intellectualoids could speak such nonsense. Intellectualoids, after all, don’t join the military, and their children don’t join the military. So their meanderings are abstract and disconnected from the impact they have on real soldiers. The purpose of war is to compel the enemy by force. The objective is to break his ability to fight. You aren’t supposed to give him a “fair chance.” You don’t worry about his self-image. A fair chance, and a good self-image mean a soldier who is a threat to your people.
During Gulf War I, the US Army broke the will of Iraqi soldiers to fight in initial trenches by bulldozing large amounts of dirt into the trench. They buried about 1500 people alive. Soldiers down the trenchline saw what was coming, got out of the trench, and surrendered. Was it a fair fight? In truth, it wasn’t even a fight. But what does that question even mean? What is a “fair fight?” Does it mean the enemy inflicts as many casualties as he takes? And who cares about the answer. We aren’t interested in taking casualties to protect the self-image of the enemy soldier. It is an objective of war to break his self-image as a soldier so he won’t fight.
Clueless academics play parlor games about childhood fantasies like ‘Just War’ and this is the nonsense they produce. I guarantee you they would have a different opinion if their own sons had to go clear the trencline the old-fashioned way – with bloodshed. But that’s why academics don’t send their sons into the military.
carl
I think drone strikes are certainly morally permissible acts of war. They target specific enemy personnel. That said, they are prone to causing collateral civilian casualties, which I find regretable, but impossible to avoid completely in every instance. I do not find the concept of “Just War” a fantasy and I consider the deliberate targeting of the civilian population a war crime, whether it is the Rape of Nanking or the strategic bombing campaign against Germany and Japan. Read “Among the Dead Cities” by A.C.C. Grayling. In the post-WWII conflicts against non-state combatants, however, the onus is on the insurgents/terrorists/guerillas/ partizans/etc., who purposely blend into the civilian population, inviting attacks against them as a means of inciting hatred for the enemy forces. If innocent civilians are casualties by mistake, however regretable, it is the fault of the insurgents, not the regular forces.
Evan Miller, LTC (Ret)
Evan Miller
Could you refuse to obey a direct order on the basis of Just War Doctrine? Could you say “Sorry, Mr President . You don’t have just cause.”
carl
How much difference is there between a person in DC controlling a drone watching his target in the Mid-East on sattelite or video, and a WW2 sniper in the belltower of a church in France looking through the scope of his rifle at his target?
None!
The sniper is at risk. not least from other snipers.
The drone pilot is putting in a 12 hour shift in Texas somewhere.
Both are under orders, but the sniper has more skin in the game.
#9–I understand the concept and agree with it; but the just war doctrine the philosphers talk about is something differenet than you or I would envision. Interestingly the US has practiced Total War pretty much since 1861. I share your concern about intentional targeting of civilians but we have been guilty of it. But WWII in the Pacific is hard to judge. It was so brutal and almost every Japanese considered him/herself a combatant. In Europe I am really not certain that bombing German civilians shortened the war by a single day. Churchill says in hisi history of WWII that had they had teh ability to firebomb other cities than Dresden and Hanburg, that the war would have ended sooner. We will never know the answer.
David Keller LTC (Ret).
The comment above regarding sniping vs drone control is surely apt. It encapsulates much of the current temptation by our leaders who believe that technics will win without having to put a military boot on the ground. Hence perhaps a certain casualness about civilian casualties – they do not count as much as deaths of our own military. But, as the unfolding stalemate in Libya seems to be showing at the moment, it is a delusion to think that this will work. It stokes up resentment and bitterness.
[13] Creedal Episcopalian[blockquote]The sniper is at risk. not least from other snipers.[/blockquote] You say that like it’s a good thing. Ideally you want to make your warfighters as safe as possible and as lethal as possible. You don’t have a moral obligation to make your soldiers vulnerable for the sake of fairness.
carl
btw, the applicability of Just War doctrine is inversely proportional to the risk of defeat. There are no rewards for losing nobly.
carl
It appears that many, if not most, have not been to war. Was the us of the F117 Stealth fighter more moral than a drone? What difference does it make other than as an intellectual exercise. If you have been to war, you learn to hate it. However, when necessary take the fight to the enemy to win. Do it as quickly as possible, doing as much damage as possible. That is the only way to make a quicker end to it. Look how fast Iraq fell in 1991. My unit was charged with shineing laser designators in the opening of the war. Smart bombs weren ‘t quite as smart as today’s. Were we immoral? We snuck in, we stole food to eat and did everything in our power to be like ghosts. It worked, and it helped bring things to a cease fire quicker. The only reason I would speak against drones is that they cannot overwhelmn an enemy, taking his will to fight away. That is what stops war, taking the enemy’s will to fight away by demonstrating that continued conflict is useless. Then it will end. Surgical strikes here and there do not end wars, overwhelmning force does.
Carl,
As I said before, I am not making a moral judgement. That will take much thought. Personally though, if I was required to fight a war, I would much prefer to be in an air conditioned hanger in Texas.
It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that the necessity for war has arisen again.
Drummie,
Drones are a tactical weapon, not a strategic one. Would it have been moral to take Hitler out in 1939? Or even effective? (Not to invoke Godwin’s law or anything). I’m still stewing on it.
Look, war is a dirty business, [i]and there is no way to make it clean![/i] Been there and done that.
“When Jesus said, ‘love your enemies. . .’, at the very least, He probably meant, ‘don’t kill them.'”
#10
Carl,
Every soldier has the right and responsibility to disobey any order that is illegal or immoral. BUT, he also has to face the consequences.
evan miller
The military does not train its members on just war doctrine. Illegal and immoral orders reflect the laws of war. To presume to judge a political decision to go to war seems above a soldier’s pay grade.
carl
jkc1945
When Jesus said “Love your enemies” He wasn’t talking to agents of state authority. The officer of the law isn’t supposed to turn the other cheek.
carl
Carl,
True, but all soldiers, and everyone else for that matter, have the right and obligation to decline to participate in illegal or immoral acts. If a soldier believes a particular war is immoral, he has the option of requesting a discharge and taking the consequences. He may, on the other hand, out of committment to his men or his unit, choose to take part despite his misgivings. Honorable men have take both routes in the past. I believe in WWI, Sigfried Sassoon (or perhaps Robert Graves, I can’t recall) chose both options at different times.
carl, I am not as certain as you are. I don’t see Him saying, Love your enemies, except of course for . . . . . .”
I too have difficulty with the moral arguments in the article against drones. They don’t seem to make any point that wouldn’t apply in a dozen other situations, which are accepted as a normal part of warfare.
Drummie at #18 sums it up well:
[blockquote] “If you have been to war, you learn to hate it. However, when necessary take the fight to the enemy to win. Do it as quickly as possible, doing as much damage as possible. That is the only way to make a quicker end to it.” [/blockquote]
That doesn’t preclude moral considerations applying, as Lt Col Miller aptly reminds us. But I don’t see how any of that precludes the use of drones.
As to whether drones are effective or efficient at doing their job – that is another matter entirely!
Do drones do their job? They are a tool to use tactically. When we took out Bin Ladin, Intellegence was “99%” sure that he was in the compound. We could easily have used a drone to flatten the entire house, as we have done on many occasions in Pakistan. In this case we needed hard, reliable, first person evidence for political reasons. A drone could not provide that, but he SEALs could.
Very good point, Creedal.
Another advantage is that if drones were used, all the non-combatants would have died. I accept that civilian casualties occur in war, and often they are unavoidable, but we are still under a duty to avoid them or minimise them, wherever that can be done without compromising the mission, or needlessly endangering our own troops. In this case, the lives of several women and children were spared, which was useful for political as well as moral reasons. If you can do that, as well as getting all our own troops out in one piece, then that is a very good result indeed.