My uncle is 58 years old. Both of his children recently married. The result (or possibly the cause) of these marriages is grandchildren. My Uncle is family, I love him. That being said, his designs, machinations, and derivations on implaccable assholery are often stunning. Many times I have thought that I would consider it a personal favor if God chose to place him in the path of a large mass transit vehicle. My wife is partial to "the bus", I prefer trains, trains have a certain romantic authority. My uncle was recently deployed to Iraq, and that childrens' song about the wheels on the bus is no longer funny. I feel like Lucille Ball, got some 'splainin' to do, to myself.
I don't support the troops, there I've said it. I tried, and i can't. The argument has likely been exhausted on this site. I cannot support them, and not support their mission. I am not going to go into the paradox. I have one friend dead in the desert, and I now have family in harms way. I don't have to justify my feelings, but I do want to examine them closely. I do not want anyone, anywhere, at anytime to die for vain, inglorious, morally reprehensible policies. If I support the troops, I feel that I have given tacit consent for their death. At one point I did argue that I supported our troops, and now I have their blood on my hands. Not nearly the amount of blood as some, but enough. I've been doing a lot of reading lately about Just War Theory ,in an effort to understand how we got to this Realpolitik state of war. My apologies to those of you who are familiar with this material, but I hope it is useful to some.
The work of Plato, Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and Immanuel Kant forms the backbone of modern Just War Theory.
*A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.
*A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.
*A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient--see point #4). Further, a just war can only be fought with "right" intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.
*A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.
*The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.
*The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.
*The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy outlines the principle of external and internal Jus in Bello, right conduct during a time of war.
Jus in bello refers to justice in war, to right conduct in the midst of battle. Responsibility for state adherence to jus in bello norms falls primarily on the shoulders of those military commanders, officers and soldiers who formulate and execute the war policy of a particular state. They are to be held responsible for any breach of the principles which follow below. Such accountability may involve being put on trial for war crimes, whether by one's own national military justice system or perhaps by the newly-formed International Criminal Court (created by the 1998 Treaty of Rome).
There are several rules of external jus in bello:
- Obey all international laws on weapons prohibition. Chemical and biological weapons, in particular, are forbidden by many treaties. Nuclear weapons aren't so clearly prohibited but it seems fair to say a huge taboo attaches to such weapons and any use of them would be greeted with incredible hostility by the international community.
- Discrimination and Non-Combatant Immunity. Soldiers are only entitled to use their (non-prohibited) weapons to target those who are, in Walzer's words, “engaged in harm.” Thus, when they take aim, soldiers must discriminate between the civilian population, which is morally immune from direct and intentional attack, and those legitimate military, political and industrial targets involved in rights-violating harm. While some collateral civilian casualties are excusable, it is wrong to take deliberate aim at civilian targets. An example would be saturation bombing of residential areas. (It is worth noting that almost all wars since 1900 have featured larger civilian, than military, casualties. Perhaps this is one reason why this rule is the most frequently and stridently codified rule in all the laws of armed conflict, as international law seeks to protect unarmed civilians as best it can.)
- Proportionality. Soldiers may only use force proportional to the end they seek. They must restrain their force to that amount appropriate to achieving their aim or target. Weapons of mass destruction, for example, are usually seen as being out of proportion to legitimate military ends.
- Benevolent quarantine for prisoners of war (POWs). If enemy soldiers surrender and become captives, they cease being lethal threats to basic rights. They are no longer “engaged in harm.” Thus it is wrong to target them with death, starvation, rape, torture, medical experimentation, and so on. They are to be provided, as The Geneva Conventions spell out, with benevolent—not malevolent—quarantine away from battle zones and until the war ends, when they should be exchanged for one's own POWs. Do terrorists deserve such protection, too? Great controversy surrounds the detainment and aggressive questioning of terrorist suspects held by the U.S. at jails in Cuba, Iraq and Pakistan in the name of the war on terror.
- No Means Mala in Se. Soldiers may not use weapons or methods which are “evil in themselves.” These include: mass rape campaigns; genocide or ethnic cleansing; using poison or treachery (like disguising soldiers to look like the Red Cross); forcing captured soldiers to fight against their own side; and using weapons whose effects cannot be controlled, like biological agents.
- No reprisals. A reprisal is when country A violates jus in bello in war with country B. Country B then retaliates with its own violation of jus in bello, seeking to chasten A into obeying the rules. There are strong moral and evidentiary reasons to believe that reprisals don't work, and they instead serve to escalate death and make the destruction of war increasingly indiscriminate. Winning well is the best revenge.
Internal jus in bello essentially boils down to the need for a state, even though it's involved in a war, nevertheless to still respect the human rights of its own citizens as best it can during the crisis. The following issues arise: is it just to impose conscription, or press censorship? Can one curtail traditional civil liberties, and due process protections, for perceived gains in national security? Should elections be cancelled or post-poned? May soldiers disobey orders, e.g. refuse to fight in wars they believe unjust? A comprehensive theory of wartime justice must include consideration of them, and not merely focus on what one may do to the enemy. For some of the worst atrocities in wartime have occurred within, and not between, national borders. Some states, historically, have used the cloak of war with foreign powers to engage in massive internal human rights violations, usually against some disfavoured group. Other states, which are otherwise decent, panic amidst the wartime situation and impose emergency legislation which turns out to have been complete overkill, and which they later regret and view as the product of fear rather than reason.
These guidelines are not new, they are in fact, ancient. They are the product of the combined philosophies of several venerated, and seriously dead, old white men. As a kid I grew up with these ideals, and believed that they were uniquely American. Turns out, "not so much", as Jon Stewart would say. The purpose of this diary was to outline the basic principles of Just War Theory for those who were unfamiliar, or for those who have tried to forget the Ethics class that they were forced to take in college. History , particularly the history of warfare, is studied and judged in terms of good vs. evil. Often ,in terms of those who have fought according to the principles outlined above, versus those who have not. I compiled this diary based on information, or links, provided by justwartheory.com. I encourage anyone intrested to peruse this site at their leisure, it provides a wealth of information on this topic. In subsequent diaries I will offer some examples of what happens when these principles are serially ignored. The latter half of the twentieth century is rife with such occurences. Regional destabilization, leads to global destabilization, leads to brutality, leads to father raping and all kinds of groovy things. Also I will go into the principles of Jus pos Bellum, a real treat for the impeachment crowd.