Civilian Casualties, a Historical Case

Leonard,

I agree with you in principle, but you should be more specific about your historical claims. I seem to remember several hundred years of Muslims conquering much of the west and then several hundred more years of Church-sponsored attempts to dislodge Muslims from various parts of the world.

Like you, I find Matt's characerization of the situation a bit overly-dramatic and possibly just simply false, depending on what, exactly, he means. If by bin Laden's 'philosophy' he means Islam generally, then I agree that it sounds like jingoism. If, on the other hand, he means radical, fundamentalist, jihadist Islam, then he might have a point.

Matt, nice summation of the jingotic view of life. It's black and white, us or them, die or die trying. Right? Kill or be killed. Rape or be raped.

Well, what Osama says is that he is fighting for several reasons, but primarily our occupation/intervention in the Middle East. You claim conflict is inevitable. I claim we can cease intervening in the Middle East. Quite easily, really. How can we determine which view is correct?

Well, here's a hint: look at history. We lived in peace with Islam until WWII. How was that possible?

Great discussion, all, I've enjoyed reading your comments. I'm sorry for coming in so late.

From Dave: "Jacob’s post is about moral relativism gone out of control. Maybe next this “libertarian” will compare Timothy McVeigh to Murray Rothbard because both harbored anti-government feelings."

Rothbard never killed anyone. Mcveigh did. Taking a human life ought to be considered a weighty and awful thing, only to be done in the most extreme circumstances.

Truman and Osama bin Laden have both taken a great number of human lives. Osama has killed his thousands, Truman his hundreds of thousands. In examining why our culture generally condemns the one and praises the other, I found nothing but empty air and propoganda.

The only difference seems to be that one flew the star-spangled banner and the other the muslim crecent. Harry played for the home team.

Nor do I find this fact to be an isolated occurence. I ask: If another government, any other one, did what the Bush administration is doing right now in the Middle East, how would Americans feel about it?

Pessimistically I believe that we will continue to excuse our leaders' actions because they are OUR leaders.

Dave: "Look at the passive posture he wants the United States to assume. I ask who elected Osama to go around punishing (blowing up) or rewarding people (not blowing them up) for obeying or not obeying his dictates?"

Being elected does not give one the authority to turn wrong into right. I reply with the old libertarian stand-by: Hitler was elected.

Rewards-and-punishment behaviorism is the method of all government. It is all childish and brutal. It is all awful.

Dave: "Now bloodless professors and their naive students sit in their air-conditioned classrooms discussing the fine points of events a half a century ago. They are the product of our leftist infested schools which refuse to teach history that risks making pupils proud of their country, and use it instead use it as a means of instilling liberal guilt."

Most of what I know about history I was taught in government schools using government-sanctioned textbooks. I saluted the flag every day. I learned that every American war was fought for freedom. I learned that each man elected president was a great man and far better than his opponent would have been. I learned that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy were just a hair short of gods.

Afterwards, I went to a relatively right-wing college where I made friends with the most right-wing students and pulled them farther right.

It would be hard to make the case that I believe the way I do because of educational brainwashing. If anything, I believe the exact opposite of what my education has tried to make me believe. I suppose I came up with my views through independent reasoning.

Remember at one time Bin Laden thanked Prince Bandar for his help in getting the CIA to provide aid and training to the muhjahadeen in Afghanistan. At that time Bin Laden had no problem with American culture or values.

I think the idea of a caliphate and that somehow this is what motivates these lunatics is ridiculous. They don't hate us because of our values. If they did then Holland would have been hit first. The recruitment of suicide bombers relies on foreign occupation, as the recent book "Dying to Win : The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" by Pape.

The best thing that would happen would be for the US to stop propping up corrupt Arab authoritarian regimes, get all troops off Arabian soil, and let the lunatics take over. It wouldn't be long before the people realize how awful it is to live under Bin Laden's version of Islam. Only this will cause the real reformation in Islam that needs to take place. Until then we will foolishly continue to foment legions of recruits for Bin Laden, with the next round of blowback causing an even greater increase in US government power at home and abroad.

Jonathan accuses me of having a jingoistic black-and-white view of the world, inferring my views as follows: people only become aggressive if they are first aggressed against, that violence is always a reaction to external stimuli, that cultures cannot evolve internally, that if there is evil in the world, the US govt must be somehow involved.

Well, this challenge is easily answered. I do not believe any of those things that Jonathan has ascribed to me.

(1) people sometimes do initiate aggression. This is why we need protection agencies, or in statist terms, police and military.
(2) violence is not only a reaction to external stimuli. It is also inherent in us, as evolved animals. Some people choose it, others don't, both for justified violence and for unjustified violence.
(3) there is plenty of evil in the world totally independent of the US government. In fact I propound policies aimed at ameliorating the evil of the Wahhibist reaction vis-a-vis the US, not by reforming Islam (very hard or impossible to outsiders), but by simply refraining from pushing around Muslims.

There, I think I have laid it out.

Now, if he could refrain from inserting words in my mouth, perhaps he might reflect on what I said to Matt, who truly was advocating a manichean vision.

In particular, with regards to the questions about Czechoslavia/USSR and Japan/USA, each of those pairs of nations has, in history, lived in peace. During these times, they mostly were acting peacefully towards each other, not intervening in each others' business. The same is largely true of the USA and the Islamic world before WWII. I suggest such a policy, since it is in fact our interventionism that we can control, while we cannot control Osama nor many other Muslims, nor the complex evolution of Islam itself.

Thank you for the thoughtful response, Leonard. Good to know we're on the same page at least.

"If we ceased intervening over there, the Muslims would gradually cease hating us and instead turn their battle inward, into civil strife, struggle in the mosques, etc."

I have a question for you, Leonard: do you believe that the war in Afghanistan was justified? If not, then how should we have dealt with the fact that bin Laden and company were there and likely to remain there to plan and execute further heinous acts? If so, then how do you square this with the idea that "we need to stop intervening"?

The United States has a lot of past sins to atone for with respect to propping up dictators and such. But I find the notion frankly not credible that US military presence in the ME is the only reason it has been targetted. When was the last time you saw a transnational terrorist from Chile or Nicaragua of Cuba, places that have been at least as affected by US actions as any Middle Eastern country? Why do most Iranians (though not their government) have a neutral or positive view of the US, and not a hostile one, despite the fact that the US gave support to Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war? Why isn't Afghanistan currently a terrorist factory despite having so many US soldiers there? Et cetera.

Diseased societies will always find an external scapegoat to blame their ills on (when it's not us, it's Israel). We cannot help but be tangled up in the Middle East one way or another, if only because of economic factors and the ubiquity of our culture. The best course of action, in my opinion, is to do whatever we reasonably can to speed the changes along in the region. It's not about reforming Islam at gunpoint (I sincerely don't wish for another invasion and occupation; one is certainly enough); it's about empowering them and pushing them into confronting these problems and sorting it out amongst themselves. As you say, we cannot afford to wait until a nuke or two leaks out of Pakistan. That's exactly what I'm worried about, because I know the outcome would be disastrous for us and for them. I don't think we have the time to just pull up the drawbridge and wait it out.

(1) people sometimes do initiate aggression. This is why we need protection agencies, or in statist terms, police and military.
(2) violence is not only a reaction to external stimuli. It is also inherent in us, as evolved animals. Some people choose it, others don’t, both for justified violence and for unjustified violence.
(3) there is plenty of evil in the world totally independent of the US government. In fact I propound policies aimed at ameliorating the evil of the Wahhibist reaction vis-a-vis the US, not by reforming Islam (very hard or impossible to outsiders), but by simply refraining from pushing around Muslims.

Very well. My apologies for putting words in your mouth.

In particular, with regards to the questions about Czechoslavia/USSR and Japan/USA, each of those pairs of nations has, in history, lived in peace. During these times, they mostly were acting peacefully towards each other, not intervening in each others’ business. The same is largely true of the USA and the Islamic world before WWII. I suggest such a policy, since it is in fact our interventionism that we can control, while we cannot control Osama nor many other Muslims, nor the complex evolution of Islam itself.

Again, this implies that militant Islam is a reaction to the US "pushing around Muslims". While this is certainly a plausible theory, I think it downplays the internal violence generated by a poisonous set of memes that excuse the use of our evolved violent natures the same way communism, racism, and fascism did. As Nick stated in a prior post, terrorism in the West is probably due to a combination of both interventionism and militant Islam itself, though I lean heavily to the militant Islam side of "root causes".

The point of the Czech/USSR and Japan/US examples is that someone could have easily said in 1970 that if only the Czech had left the USSR alone, the USSR would have had no reason to invade Czechoslovakia. But of course, the Czechs did leave the USSR alone, and the tanks rolled through Prague nonetheless. The USSR wasn't responding to anything unless you believe the pretext that the Warsaw Pact countries were trying to "protect" it from a foreign invasion. Simllarly, Japan wasn't responding to anything that warranted a full scale bombing of Pearl Harbor, unless you believe that aid to China and lack of aid to Japan is cause enough for invasion.

It's pretty clear that the USSR was driven by ideology and a desire to acquire more and more territory. Same with WWII-era Japan. I see militant Islam as the same type of totalitarian ideology as communism and fascism. I wish it would be as easy as the US pulling out solving our problems, but history shows plenty of examples of non-aggressive nations becoming victimized.

Matt, that ideologies are in conflict does not mean that war is a necessary consequence. We can simply live in peace until they change. As we (sortof) did with the USSR - no hot war anyway, and they collapsed. Or as we did with, for instance, Napoleon, and innumerable other despots that existed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Matt, that last was well stated, and I agree. Yes, "they" are reacting against capitalism and its consequences. But many other muslims are accepting it, which means, being "corrupted" by it in their view. In our view, just losing their religion as it was. In the long term, Islam will be neutered just as Christianity was. But it will be a long struggle.

The question is, who will bear the consequences of that struggle. By intervening over there, we bring the struggle to us. This is tolerable for us now. We can easily lose 3000 lives every year, if we will; we lose many more to accidents, 100000/year, and could probably reduce that number by 3000 for far less expenditure than we've spent thus far on the War on Terra.

What we cannot afford, arguably, is the consequences of a nuclear attack. Yet that is where we are headed, as terrorist enemy #1. To believe otherwise is to think that we can reform Islam via military force in ways we choose (which is risible enough as it is), and also that we can do so before a nuke or two leaks out of Pakistan, Iran, former USSRistan, China, anywhere.

If we ceased intervening over there, the Muslims would gradually cease hating us and instead turn their battle inward, into civil strife, struggle in the mosques, etc. This will be terrible for them, but it is inevitable. Social change is wrenching. We all know that reformation of any world-view does not come easily. Our own Christian Reformation was a bloody struggle indeed. This is similar, but higher tech, and with a far more immobile and immutable ideology that must be destroyed.

"Now, if he could refrain from inserting words in my mouth, perhaps he might reflect on what I said to Matt, who truly was advocating a manichean vision."

It's a nice little trick to throw words like "Manichean" around as if the sneer is supposed to do all the work for you, but what exactly is your point? I've stated mine unequivocally. Recognizing that bin Ladenism and classical liberalism are in conflict is no different than recognizing that socialism and capitalism are in conflict.

Matt, bin Laden does exist on the same planet as “we” do, rendering your statement crystal clear only in its falsity. I suspect many, many people have engaged in “it’s a struggle between us and them, this will continue till everyone on one side is dead” hypberbole. History moves on anyhow.

But history has been a struggle for liberalism to sprout, and grow in fits and starts, and take root in the modern world. Matt is correct in his implication that the Bin Laden's fundamental worldview is completely antithetical to the open, pluralist, liberal society. That's no hyperbole.

The responses to my above comment kind of prove that some of you guys have not thought hard enough about this. I am not any more a fan of jingoism than anyone else here, but I realize I was being a little terse and cryptic, so let me explain. First of all, I chose my words carefully: bin Ladenism is not Islam. That religion has its own internal problems that it's going to have to work out before this is all over, but that's not what I'm talking about.

In order to understand global jihadist groups like al Qaeda, you have to put them in their proper context. They are, at bottom, a rejectionist movement: they have an old idea of what the ideal way of life is, and they realize that "western" values like individualism, freedom and capitalism are antithetical to that way of life. Western culture is corrosive and repugnant to them, and they correctly realize that in order to keep it out they have to create a complete cultural apartheid. It's not just American soldiers they hate; it's everything about American culture that empowers the individual at the expense of the group.

If you actually bother to read the statements made by bin Laden and the religious figures within al Qaeda, their stated long-term goal is a Wahabbist Islamic caliphate stretching from Spain to Indonesia, and the complete removal of any and all western influences in their society. This kind of society, it should go without saying, is diametrically antithetical to everything libertarians ought to stand for. What they want is the same thing the numerous other enemies of the open society have wanted: a return to the totalitarianism of the tribal society.

Bin Ladenism and "western" culture (which really isn't so western anymore, but you get the idea) are in conflict by their very nature -- because markets tend to naturally spread, leading to what is now called globalization and all the drastic cultural upheavals that come with it. Bin Laden understands this more clearly than most people in the west do. Unless you are willing to accept the idea of consigning an entire 1/3rd of the planet to remain forever in the dark ages, you are the enemy of the bin Ladens of the world (and even then, it's far from obvious that they's stop there if they were allowed to accomplish that much).

At bottom, this is a war of philosophy. The only way to kill off bin Ladenism for good is to drive the stake all the way through its heart -- globalize all the way. That's the only ultimately stable conclusion to this stuggle. Anything less would doom us to fighting the same battles over and over; but eventually they would push too hard, and the US would push back far harder. I don't want to think of the possibly horrible outcomes of such an eventuality.

Like I said, seeing things this way doesn't commit anyone to any particular set of tactics. There's plenty of room to argue over what should or shouldn't be done to arrive at the ultimate end-state, what is justified and what is not, what is prudent or imprudent. But the first step is to wake up and see this conflict for what it is: the last major offensive of the closed society against the open society, collectivism against individualism, totalitarianism versus personal freedom. The bin Ladens of the world understand this conflict and are unequivocal about what side they're on. I just wish most of my fellow libertarians could say the same.

Brian, you write as if the only two possible outcomes of WWII in the Pacific were 200000 more Japanese deaths, or "millions". It just ain't so. The Japanese were trying to surrender, conditionally, when Truman initiated nuclear war. Then, after nuking them, he accepted their surrender. With the same condition.

Which is to say, there was a third option: accept their surrender conditionally with no further loss of life. Why didn't they do it? Bloodlust; fear that domestic politics required "unconditional surrender" even though it didn't; desire to demonstrate nuclear weapons and bloody-mindedness to the world. Was it "terrorist"? Arguably, depends on the exact definition.

I'm not about to wade too far into this, but let's try keep one thing crystal clear, gentlemen: Osama and ilk espouse a philosophy that cannot coexist on the same planet as ours. This is why he is our enemy, and there is no avoiding this; this conflict will not go away until he and all those like him are dead, or we are. We can argue back and forth over tactics and how far we're willing to go to win, but let's keep our eyes on the ball at all times.

Thanks Joe Miller, you made several of the points I was going to bring up in response to Brian.

I also like the “if” qualifier for bin Laden; I suppose, though it strains credulity to the utmost and farthest, one can never be metaphysically certain that he was responsible for it…

Have you ever heard of a "syllogism" Dross? Like something in logic, sometimes involving statements of the form "If A is true then B is true"? Your innuendo that Jacob would not append "But bin Lady IS a terrorist..." to his argument is pretty weak; he clearly believes that both bin Laden and Truman were in the moral wrong.

As with most moral equivalence arguments, it depends greatly on the reader’s gross ignorance of history and context to avoid falling apart.

The uncharitable interpretation of Brian's aversion to "moral equivalence" is that he is adverse to pretty much any attempt to demand that people be consistent in their moral beliefs. The charitable interpretation is that he feels there is something important separating Harry Truman from bin Laden which makes it ok for Truman to target civilians but not ok for bin Laden to do so. Given Miller's comments, I'd be interested to know what he believes this important distinction to be.

Jacob may raise good points against the nuclear option as used in WWII. But the comparison to Osama bin Laden is dicey, at best.

Lest we forget that OBL and his minions have a lot more in mind than "freeing the Arab World from Western imperial influences". After all, according to bin Laden himself, one of his demands is for us to turn ourselves into a hard-core socially conservative and economically socialist Sharia Law-style country. If we fail to do so, he says we must "prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation".

Brian: "And it is telling that he thinks its a feature, not a bug, that we could have defeated Japan with “conventional means"- the same conventional means that were firebombing civilians with average deaths GREATER than the immediate damage of the bomb (no one foresaw the extent of the radiation deaths) and the fact that an invasion of the home islands would have, in all scenarios except for the seriously self-serving, resulted in MILLIONS of Japanese dead as well as hundreds of thousands of allied troops (American and Soviet) dead."

I'm afraid that I don't see how this argument is any different in kind from something like: "Killing several thousand innocent people is of course a bad thing, but if it results in millions of Muslims not being corrupted by Westerners and thus spending eternity in paradise, then surely the deaths of those few thousand is worth it." Once you start playing this sort of game, namely, counting bodies against probable outcomes, then you really have no in principle reason to object to the deliberate targeting of civilians.

I agree with you that the "conventional" means that the U.S. was using in Germany at the time were horrible, but I'd put them in the prohibited category, too. The right move here, I think, is to draw a sharp line between actions that deliberately target non-combatants and actions that do not. The firebombing of Germany and the nuclear attacks on Japan both fall into the 'deliberate targeting of non-combatants' category.

Most definitions of terrorism, or at least most of the philosophical definitions I've seen, describe it as something like, "The deliberate targeting of innocents to achieve a political aim." That sounds like a pretty good description of Dresden and Hiroshima, no? Michael Walzer calls it 'military terrorism'. I'm inclined to think he's right.

As for "total war" somehow making a relevant difference, well, the problem as I see it is that total war is itself grossly immoral. It's also worth pointing out that, strictly speaking, millions dead from an invasion vs hundreds of thousands dead from a nuclear attack is a false dilemma. Japan had offered conditional surrender already; conditional surrender is all that the allies were morally justified in demanding.

Even leaving all that aside and granting that the first bomb was justified, nothing could possibly justify dropping the second one that quickly. That one had nothing to do with inducing Japan to surrender and lots to do with showing the Soviets that we had more than one bomb.

In what sense is Tom's impulse pragmatic? Anyone here have plans for being in a foxhole? Is being in a foxhole a useful model for anything anyone here will do?

Scott-

Ignorance of the context/history of what you're equating to current events is part and parcel with moral equivalence (ME). IF you believe that its better to kill more people conventionally than fewer people nuclearly can you say that Truman took the "terrorist" way out. Almost any way you slice it, the comparison is ridiculous. And to re-iterate, this passage is a textbook example of ME:

As most Americans condemn bin Laden for putting civilians in harm’s way, so too do I condemn Truman. If bin Laden is a “terrorist”, then so is Truman. In fact, Truman’s actions are more indefensible because eventual victory was available through conventional military means. For bin Laden, direct military action, against the most feared armed force in all of history, is out of the question.

I also like the "if" qualifier for bin Laden; I suppose, though it strains credulity to the utmost and farthest, one can never be metaphysically certain that he was responsible for it...

If you don’t believe that your country’s citizens are “worth more” than the citizens of other countries – that is, entitled to live even if it means the death of citizens of other countries – I don’t want to be in the same foxhole with you.

A perfectly pragmatic impulse, I suppose, though I can't help but find something disturbing in it.

If you don't believe that your country's citizens are "worth more" than the citizens of other countries -- that is, entitled to live even if it means the death of citizens of other countries -- I don't want to be in the same foxhole with you.

Scott - the entire argument is that Truman and Osama are morally equivalent because they set into motion events that killed civilians. As with most moral equivalence arguments, it depends greatly on the reader’s gross ignorance of history and context to avoid falling apart.

Could be, although all I asked was what you meant by "moral equivalence," about which you found nothing "praiseworthy." It was an odd statement. As revealed by later comments, your problem seems to be with Lyles' knowledge of history or military tactics, not moral equivalence per se.

Not being a military historian, I don't know which of you is correct.

And it is telling that he thinks its a feature, not a bug, that we could have defeated Japan with "conventional means"- the same conventional means that were firebombing civilians with average deaths GREATER than the immediate damage of the bomb (no one foresaw the extent of the radiation deaths) and the fact that an invasion of the home islands would have, in all scenarios except for the seriously self-serving, resulted in *MILLIONS* of Japanese dead as well as hundreds of thousands of allied troops (American and Soviet) dead.

What a twisted and sick analytic world it is, indeed, that one can prefer the deaths of millions to the deaths of 200 thousand. That prefers the total destruction & virtually guaranteed annihilation of Japan's infrastructure, root and branch, to the destruction of two industrial port cities (sparing the cultural heartland to the north in the Kansai region).

Stefan - I disagree with putting WWII bombing of civilians in the course of "total war" in the same analytic context as "government sponsored mass murder of civilians", which is both incredibly facile and (IMO) guilty of begging all sorts of questions.

Scott - the entire argument is that Truman and Osama are morally equivalent because they set into motion events that killed civilians. As with most moral equivalence arguments, it depends greatly on the reader's gross ignorance of history and context to avoid falling apart.

There is nothing particularly libertarian about Jacob’s post

Well I suppose you're right that logic per se is not particularly "libertarian"; but of course that's not what I meant. I merely meant that opposition to government-sponsored mass-murder is libertarian. Would you disagree?

What do you mean by moral equivalence?

I'm afraid I have to violently disagree. There is nothing particularly libertarian about Jacob's post, nor anything praiseworthy about moral equivalence in general. Certainly very paleo, either of a conservative OR lefty bent (so kudos on the double-double, at least).

I see nothing controversial in Jacob's post.

And you shouldn't, really; for libertarians at least, the reasoning makes perfect sense.

The argument here, I think, is one of ends vs. means. Clearly Truman had lots more jus ad bellum than bin Laden will ever have. That's not in dispute. Any comparability adduced between Truman's actions and bin Laden's is as a matter of jus in bello only.

And as long as it's narrowed to those grounds, the comparison is a fair one. The argument Stefan brings up, that dropping the bomb on an unpopulated island might not have been intimidating enough, doesn't hold in part because we know they had two bombs. Maybe the first unpopulated-island-drop would have worked and maybe it wouldn't have, but if the latter, they had the second in reserve; there was no excuse for not trying the mass-casualty-avoiding strategy first.

Libertarians are, as a rule, prone to emphasizing that means matter independently of ends, that laudable goals are poisoned when pursued by horrible methods-- which is a great and necessary thing in the modern political climate, where "by any means necessary" rules most of the conventional spectrum. But we shouldn't forget the point that Brian et al. make, which is: ends do matter.

Dave,

_I don’t think this problem is going to be solved by the self hating universalists who spend their time examining our souls for corporate guilt and saying things like “ Osama is like Truman” while excusing Bin laden and condemning Truman!_

I haven't seen anyone here excusing bin Laden. I happen to think that he's one evil bastard and will be quite happy to see him captured and tried. I might even be willing to overlook my general reservations about capital punishment in his case. The point of the comparison was not to excuse bin Laden while condemning Truman. The point is that the actions of each are, at bottom, the same _type_ of act, even if the reasons and the scales are different. The fact that bin Laden killed Americans while Truman killed the enemies of Americans doesn't seem to be a morally relevant feature of the discussion.

_Now bloodless professors and their naive students sit in their air-conditioned classrooms discussing the fine points of events a half a century ago._

I know that this is purely anecdotal, but I first got interested in these sorts of questions while teaching ethics at West Point, where Walzer is required reading for all sophomores. I don't know if all the professors are bloodless; lots of them had a bunch of fancy stuff on their chests that, as I understand it, had something to do with shooting at people. The classrooms were air-conditioned, though.

_They are the product of our leftist infested schools which refuse to teach history that risks making pupils proud of their country, and use it instead use it as a means of instilling liberal guilt._

Yeah, that's far worse than, say, history that risks making pupils understand that the world is complex, and instead use it as a means of instilling jingoistic nationalism.

_When these students see America get hit they immediately retract into their shells like snails._

Yep, you should have seen my students react. Little grey snails they all were. Very sad to see.

Well as far as I know Brandon Berg they considered that (Japan has several small islands they could have used as examples, for instance), but I guess they ultimately decided it wouldn't intimidate them enough to do that (or possibly, as others have suggested, it wouldn't make a big enough show to intimidate the Russians).

I don't see how even the first bombing of Japan could be justified. If the idea was to demonstrate to the Japanese leadership the destructive power the US had at its command, wouldn't it have been just as effective to drop it outside of a major population center? Wipe out a forest, or blow the top off a mountain, or something like that?

I'm not sure what my views on the nuclear bombings of Japan are, but I don't see it as easy choices to make if I was Truman (not that I would ever be in such a position), but like Joe, I believe that the first bombing was vastly more justifiable (even if still unjustifiable) than the second.

What I can't really relate to though is the statement, "He thinks freeing the Arab world from Western imperial influences is important enough to sacrifice civilian lives," though I know many libertarians feel the same way.

I also find Tom's statements that American citizens are automatically worth more than other nations' citizens pretty abhorrent.

Matt, nice summation of the jingotic view of life. It’s black and white, us or them, die or die trying. Right? Kill or be killed. Rape or be raped.

Well, what Osama says is that he is fighting for several reasons, but primarily our occupation/intervention in the Middle East. You claim conflict is inevitable. I claim we can cease intervening in the Middle East. Quite easily, really. How can we determine which view is correct?

Well, here’s a hint: look at history. We lived in peace with Islam until WWII. How was that possible?

I believe that your statements here are also a black-and-white, jingoistic view of life: people only become aggressive if they are first aggressed against, that violence is always a reaction to external stimuli, that cultures cannot evolve internally, that if there is evil in the world, the US govt must be somehow involved.

The same sort of statement can be made about all sorts of events of the past. For example, "Well, here's a hint: look at history. The Czecks lived in peace with the USSR till August 21, 1968. How was that possible?"

Or, "Well, here's a hint: look at history. We lived in peace with the Japanese until 1941. How was that possible?"

Brian's comments seem irrelevant to me. All Jacob is saying is that foreign citizens should be relevant, and even equivalent to compatriot lives, in one's moral calculus, an argument with which I utterly agree (thus rendering me unqualified to share Tom's foxhole). Brian is arguing about the relative numbers of one particular example, which doesn't disqualify the main point at all.

In fact, to compare the numbers of deaths of the two strategies, and to disagree with the (strawman) idea that fewer nuke deaths are better than more conventional deaths, implies that one has already accepted the argument that foreign lives matter.

Part of my contempt for formal Objectivism (of the ARI/TOC type - I think it was the TOC) stems from their "Nuke the Middle East" reaction to 9/11. I remember reading an article, I think on the TOC site, which specifically said that we should ignore enemy civilian lives, because the purpose of a govt. was to defend its own citizens, and hence the lives of citizens of other countries are irrelevant. And this from a supposedly individualistic philosophy! It seems the ultimate in collectivism to suggest that whether an individual's life has worth depends on which mafia gang's control he is under.

Jacob’s post is about moral relativism gone out of control. Maybe next this “libertarian” will compare Timothy McVeigh to Murray Rothbard because both harbored anti-government feelings. Look at the passive posture he wants the United States to assume. I ask who elected Osama to go around punishing (blowing up) or rewarding people (not blowing them up) for obeying or not obeying his dictates? Does Jacob really not conceder the secondary and tertiary effects of such obedience, such as turning over vast swaths of the earth entirely to domination by these people? Nobody can tell what Bin Laden wants anyway because he keeps changing his mind. It is getting so bad that I can only think of a few countries where Muslim terrorists haven’t hit.

I don’t think this problem is going to be solved by the self hating universalists who spend their time examining our souls for corporate guilt and saying things like “ Osama is like Truman” while excusing Bin laden and condemning Truman! It is habitual of these amateur revisionist historians to make their point be touting superficial resemblances, between events which are entirely separated from them in time, place and scale.
WW II was an all-out brutal slugfest between large powers. WE were attacked and damn pissed off. In the heat of battle winning was the overriding objective. Now bloodless professors and their naive students sit in their air-conditioned classrooms discussing the fine points of events a half a century ago. They are the product of our leftist infested schools which refuse to teach history that risks making pupils proud of their country, and use it instead use it as a means of instilling liberal guilt. When these students see America get hit they immediately retract into their shells like snails. I don’t think this has worked very well in the past as a survival tool except for abused women and slaves.

Touche Mike!

Matt, bin Laden does exist on the same planet as "we" do, rendering your statement crystal clear only in its falsity. I suspect many, many people have engaged in "it's a struggle between us and them, this will continue till everyone on one side is dead" hypberbole. History moves on anyhow.

Eddie,

No, I think that Americans don't generally deliberately target civilians, or at least haven't done so as a matter of policy for the last 50 years. There were some low points in Vietnam, but most of those were the responsibility of soldiers much lower in the food chain. Gitmo and Abu Ghraib might rest with those pretty high up, but there we're talking about torture of (mostly) combatants and not deliberate killings of noncombatants.

By and large, the U.S. is pretty good about avoiding deliberate targeting of civilians. Most of my complaints would be that policies sometimes call for missions that greatly increase the risks of killing noncombatants in order to protect the lives of American soldiers. I have worries about that, but they are different sorts of worries. Double-effect can be stretched too far: it hardly justifies nuking a city because there is a single tank in the city and the tank really was the target.

I don't know that we really would do so again, at least not in the near future. There really is little need, as the U.S. is capable of overwhelming nearly any other nation using purely conventional means.

Jonathan, as my exchange with Matt should make clear, I do not believe that "militant Islam is a reaction to the US 'pushing around Muslims'". Militant Islam is a reaction of an embattled "ancient regime" religion against modernity. It is going to be spraying violence for a long time to come, regardless of what the USA goes.

I do believe that the selection of the US as a target by militant Islamists is a reaction to the US pushing around Muslims. This seems obvious to me, in spite of the propaganda that "they hate us for our virtue". They aren't attacking Japanese, Swedes, etc.

As you say, there are more than one "root causes" here. In a strong sense militant Islam is much more to blame for this conflict than we are; the US pushes around all sorts of people in this world (not the least ourselves), and largely they just shut up and take it. I don't think we should be pushing around anyone; however I also note that most people don't escalate the situation. On the other hand, while I generally believe that damping conflict is wise and virtuous, I can't say that is always true. Sometimes, people must fight. So it's hard to issue any blanket condemnation against Muslims who resent living under US-installed and US-supported dictators, who resent being maimed and killed by us, who resent our presense in "their" holy country, etc. What are they morally allowed to do in such circumstances?

Not that they care about such niceties. But we should.

Anyway, to get back to my point, even if the blame for our conflict is, say, 10% ours and 90% theirs, that doesn't change the fact that we don't control them, whereas we do control us. Therefore, we should stop the morally wrong things we are doing. If we did control them, we should stop the morally wrong things they are doing, too. But we don't.

As for the examples you proffer: sure, cases of real, completely unprovoked aggression exist, as in the case of Czechoslovakia. So what? This isn't one of those cases.

Wow.

"Look at all the comments," said the needle in the haystack.

Leonard,

I do believe that the selection of the US as a target by militant Islamists is a reaction to the US pushing around Muslims. This seems obvious to me, in spite of the propaganda that “they hate us for our virtue". They aren’t attacking Japanese, Swedes, etc.

But they are. Okay, not Swedes and Japanese specifically, but "they" have attacked people unrelated to any US-led military intervention, whether it be Salman Rushdie, Theo Van Gogh, vacationers in Bali, Christians in the Sudan, infidels in Malaysia and India, opposing sects and innocent civilians in Iraq, etc. It seems the only way to be completely out of the crosshairs is to have zero interaction - like Japan - militarily, culturally, or economically, with Islam.

As you say, there are more than one “root causes” here. In a strong sense militant Islam is much more to blame for this conflict than we are; the US pushes around all sorts of people in this world (not the least ourselves), and largely they just shut up and take it. I don’t think we should be pushing around anyone; however I also note that most people don’t escalate the situation. On the other hand, while I generally believe that damping conflict is wise and virtuous, I can’t say that is always true. Sometimes, people must fight. So it’s hard to issue any blanket condemnation against Muslims who resent living under US-installed and US-supported dictators, who resent being maimed and killed by us, who resent our presense in “their” holy country, etc. What are they morally allowed to do in such circumstances?

I'd sympathize with your views if the people behind the attacks were mainly ones the US govt had screwed over in the past. If everyday Iranians were angry against the US govt and carrying out the attacks, I'd agree with you. Or everday Iraqis who were screwed over by economic sanctions during the 1990s. Or the Shiites and Kurds who were abandoned by Bush 1 at the end of the first Gulf War. But by and large, the lead terrorists have been from outside Iraq. The lead terrorist is a rich guy from Jordan. The suicide bombers of the Underground were Pakistani immigrants who grew up in one of the more liberal societies in the world, and a full third of their Muslim compatriots admit to wanting to see the corrupt society around them torn down. Now, you might claim that somehow Shahzad Tanveer had some sort of moral claim on behalf of his Muslim brethren on a different continent against the British govt or the riders of the tube, but I think sort of reasoning gives too much credit to illiberal impulses.

Similarly, the attackers in 9/11 were Saudis who were enemies of the Saudi Arabian govt pissed off at the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, support of Israel, and the general "corruption" of non-Muslim West. But the US troops were leftover from an act that ultimately protected Saudi Arabia. I'd even have a shred of understanding if the govt that stayed in power as a result was totalitarian and the pissed-off people were less totalitarian. But they're pissed about not being able to impose even harsher totalitarian Sharia law! While I can see the general argument against "meddling", I don't see any sort of moral claim that they possess against the US govt.

I don't really want to get into US policy toward Israel here.

As for the examples you proffer: sure, cases of real, completely unprovoked aggression exist, as in the case of Czechoslovakia. So what? This isn’t one of those cases.

Well, that's the crux of our disagreement. Taken from a broad view - the US "provoking" them over there in the Middle East - superficially seems to fit your argument. But the people who ought to the have the greatest animosity toward the US don't seem to, and the people who who do are upset that the US is preventing them from imposing their Sharia law. These aren't the cripples created by the US govt. Meanwhile a strong plurality of Muslims in Britain even though they disagree with the acts themselves, empathize with kids blowing up the tube. And in the last week alone, there have been militant Muslims engaging in acts of terrorism against Britain, Iraq, Sudan, Israel, and Egypt. I think that while the case may be that the actions of the US govt provide motivation for people who need a justification for their barbarism on the margin, it's hardly convincing that terrorism is wholly or even in large parts provoked by the US govt.

I'd say that in the history of conflict, most aggression has been unilateral and has continued to exist until it was realized that it was not in the self-interest of the aggressor to continue his aggression. Czech/USSR was the rule, not the exception.

This, I think, misses the point entirely. The deliberateness of killing civilians is the problem, not the fact of doing so.

Point taken, and well said. But do you think that America does deliberately kill civilians? Even if we have in the past, do we still? Would we do so again?

Dave,

What matters, I think, is intent. No one thought, "Hey, dropping a nuclear weapon in the middle of a city is a great way to destroy some minor munitions factories." Rather, the entire purpose of dropping bombs on cities was to say, "Hey, surrender or we'll kill a lot of people." That strikes me as deliberately targeting non-combatants. Evidence? Marshall advocated telling Japan about the bombs so that civilians could be removed and military targets be hit. That advice was rejected. Indeed, the Strategic Bombing Survey Report mentions explicitly that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because of their large populations. Add to that the fact that Eisenhower, MacArthur and Leary (Chair of the Joint Chiefs) all argued that the bombs were not necessary to defeat Japan. Dropping nuclear weapons was about killing a lot of people, not about securing some tactical advantage.

As for workers in munitions factories, I would argue, with Michael Walzer, that they are targets while they are at work, but not at any other time. You can't kill them at home in bed, but you can kill them when they're at work. There the distinction is that, when they are work, you aren't aiming at them; you're aiming at the building in which they work. When you blow up their house, you're aiming at them.

I have to disagree, though, with your claim that it's pointless to think about these things after the fact. Indeed, it's precisely when the issue is not pressing that one should think about such questions. As you point out, it's much harder to decide questions of this sort when you have mothers crying and soldiers getting killed. That's why it's important to work out our conceptions of morally permissible action _before_ the shooting starts. Or at least that's always the answer that we gave at West Point when cadets complained that talking about military ethics was pointless unless you were actually getting shot at. That seems the worst possible time to start thinking about what one ought or ought not do.

Eddie:

_Jacob, you sell yourself and your fellow countrymen short in moral character._

Maybe this is true, but as I see it, it's also pretty much beside the point. We are talking about whether it is permissible to intentionally kill noncombatants; whether the noncombatants are good people has nothing to do with the question. A guy who shoots his cheating spouse is just as much a murderer as the racist who shoots a civil rights worker. The character of the victim might make us dislike one more than the other, but it doesn't make the murder any more or less wrong.

_We do not abandon military goals simply because they may incur civilian casualties; no military ever has, and no military ever should...I would not purchase the services of a protective agency that would refuse to protect me if it meant that non-combatants might die. If you sincerely believe that that is a moral failing on my part, then we will simply have to disagree._

I don't think that this is quite fair to Jacob. Maybe he does hold this view, but nothing that he's said here would obviously commit him to the view. There is a real difference between a military target and a non-combatant target. Attacking military targets will often entail causing civilian deaths. For example, I live not too far from Ft. Bragg. Now that's a legitimate military target. But dropping bombs on Ft. Bragg might well result in a number of bombs that end up falling on the city of Fayetteville, which surrounds the post. I don't think that a military would have to refrain from attacking Ft. Bragg on the grounds that it might kill civilians in the area. (I do think it's a good argument for locating military bases away from cities, but that's another discussion.)

Just war theorists often offer the double effect doctrine to make this distinction. What matters is what it is that you're aiming at, not the unintended but known side-effects of the action. In bombing Ft. Bragg, the aim is to kill the 82nd Airborne; that some civilians will die is a known side-effect, but not the real intention.

Truman's action was very different. He was not engaging a military target, but was rather deliberately intending to kill large numbers of civilians. That makes his action very different from dropping bombs on a military target knowing that some civilians would still die.

_If you accept civilian casualties as an acceptable price to pay under certain circumstances, then as Churchill said, “now we are simply negotiating the price.”_

This, I think, misses the point entirely. The deliberateness of killing civilians is the problem, not the fact of doing so.

We get the fucking point, Eddie! Stop being a pest!

Not to completely make a pest of myself, but this line:

Rewards-and-punishment behaviorism is the method of all government. It is all childish and brutal. It is all awful.

deserves a quick comment. Rewards and punishments are the methods used by everyone, for everything, all the time. Freely acting agents dealing with one another non-coercively will constantly and naturally use rewards and punishments: your reward for doing as I wish is payment; your punishment for not doing as I wish is that my payment goes to someone else. There's nothing childish, brutal, or awful about using rewards and punishments to affect the behavior of others.

I would also question the premise that America has been a source of great suffering, let alone that it will continue to be so. This is something of a different discussion, but in case anyone wants to have it, you might want to check the scorecard first.