evaluating just wars

This post was conceived earlier this year. Posting it now seems a bit outdated as the Gaza conflict has faded from the headlines, but then again, war and violence continue and so our discussion about their justice must also go on.

In this LA Times opinion article, writer Etgar Keret of the "The Girl on the Fridge and Other Stories,” responds harshly against the proportionality principle. The writer was responding to those who argued that Israel’s main injustice was not in retaliating, but in responding out of proportion. (This Economist article suggests something of that sort, but comes down a bit harsher on Israel).

Is there anything in the proportionality principle that can rationally justify killing of any kind?

The motives of vengeance, which drive us to kill those who have killed people we love, are completely irrational, even if we try to wrap them in rational packaging. We exact vengeance because we hate and are hurting, not because we excel in mathematics and logic. Early in the aerial bombing of Gaza, five young girls from the same family were killed, and many more children have died on both sides of the border in recent years. The attempt to introduce their bodies into an equation that would make their deaths justifiable or comprehensible might be necessary to influence current events, but it is still enraging.

The only equation I can wholeheartedly accept is one whereby zero bodies appear on either side of the equation. And until that time comes, I'll choose outcry and protest that appeal solely to the heart. I shall reserve my appeals to the mind for better times.

Walter Wink wrote over ten years earlier in Engaging the Powers:

Most Christians assume that any war that they feel is just, or merely necessary and unavoidable, is just. The just war criteria, however, are extraordinarily demanding. They presuppose that no Christian should be involved in a war unless it meets all or atleast most of the criteria. The burden of proof is always on those who resort violence.
We can easily kill oppressive rulers, but doing so makes us killers. We want to believe in a final violence that will, this last time, eradicate evil and make future violence unnecessary. But the violence we use creates new evil, however just the cause.
…
The problem is not merely to gain justice but to end the Domination System. Those engaged in a struggle for liberation may actually achieve a relatively greater degree of justice for their side, yet do so in a way that fails to address the larger issues of patriarchy, domination hierarchies, ranking, stratification, racism, elitism, environmental degradation, or violence. In the struggle against oppression, every new increment of violence simply extends the life of the Domination system and depends on faith in violence as a redemptive means. You cannot free people from the Domination System by using its own methods. You cannot construct the City of Life with the weapons of death. You cannot make peace – real peace- with war.
But we also cannot condemn those who in a desperation resort to counter violence against the massive violence of an unjust order. We must wish them success, even if they are still caught in the myth of redemptive violence themselves. Who knows? Perhaps their victory will usher in a better society able to divest itself consciously of some of its oppressive elements.
…
A nation may feel that it must fight in order to prevent an even greater evil. But that does not cause the lesser evil to cease being evil. Declaring a war just is simply a ruse to rid ourselves of guilt. But we can no more free ourselves of guilt by decree than we declare ourselves forgiven by fiat. If we have killed, it is a sin, and only God can forgive us, not a propaganda apparatus that declares our dirty wars “just”. Governments and guerrilla chiefs are not endowed with the power to absolve us from sin. Only God can do that. And God is not mocked. The whole discussion of “just” wars is sub-Christian.

whoever fights monsters...

... should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

~ Fredrich Nietzsche

~

Conquerors have all through history been conquered by those they conquer. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, proved either a shrewd student of history or a prophet when he reputedly said, “Even if we lose, we shall win, for our ideals will have penetrated the hearts of our enemies.”

~

World War II, many still feel, was a just, or atleast a necessary, war. Nonviolence as a means for settling international disputes is so recent—an international nonviolent movement (apart from the “peace churches”) dates only from 1914- that the means were simply not in place inside and outside Germany to mount an effective nonviolent alternative. It may well be that in ten or fifteen years we will be more prepared to respond to conflicts with an international outpouring of nonviolent resistance. So perhaps there was, tragically, no alternative at that time to war.

The point I am making is that even if a war does appear to be just, or atleast tragically necessary and unavoidable, it will inevitably require that relatively more just opponent (if there be such) to become increasingly molded into the likeness of its adversary. The greatest evils are usually perpetrated by people determined to eradicate an evil by whatever means necessary. War is not, then, a mere continuation of diplomacy by other means, as Clausewitz claimed. It marks the abject failure of diplomacy, and the adoption of means that have very little likelihood of achieving desirable ends.

~

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy”

~ Martin Luther King

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Some of us engaged in struggles for social justice have been incredibly naïve about what has been happening to our own psyches. Our very identities are often defined by our resistance to evil. It is our way of feeling good about ourselves: if we are against evil, we must be good. The impatience of some activists with prayer, meditation and inner healing may itself represent an inchoate knowledge of what they might find if they looked within. For the struggle against evil can make us evil, and no amount of good intentions automatically prevents it from happening.

~

No wonder so many people, gentle and kind people, quiet and unaggressive people, find themselves saying at long last: “There’s only one way to deal with the Marcoses and Enriles. There’s only one way to deal with the Khmer Rouge. There’s only one language these people understand – we say it not joyfully, but reluctantly and sadly—the only thing they understand is the gun.”

To such people I say: Welcome home, welcome to the largest consensus the world has ever known: a consensus between east and west, between capitalist and communist, between mosque, church and synagogue. All agree that there comes a time when it is just to kill each other. Welcome home to the consensus on which our world is built.

Ultimately we are faced with two choices: to accept the “myth” of the just war, that as a last resort killing is moral, or to accept the ”myth” of nonviolence: we have no last resort, killing is never right. In the first case, we will come to the moment when the conditions for using violence are verified, when we reach the “last resort”. In the second case, believing in our “myth”, that violence is never justified, having no “last resort,” human beings come up with alternatives from the depths of their creativeness… We can and we will learn to live together, but only when we have closed off that escape route known as the last resort”

~ Niall O’Brien, “Making the Myth Real”

~

All of the above text, including quotes, are from the chapter “On Not Becoming What We Hate” in Walter Wink’s Engaging the Powers (Published in 1992). (Is the history of the world but a narrative of violence where right and wrong is determined by the victors? I suppose the answer is not so simple.)

no man's land

Terra nullius. From the Latin terra, earth, ground, land, and nullius, no one's
Thus: no one's land, land not belonging to anyboyd. Or at any rate, not to anybody that counts.
Originally: land not belonging to the Roman Empire.
In the Middle Ages: land not belonging to any Christian ruler.
Later: land to whcih no European state as yet lays claim. Land that justly falls to the first European state to invade the territory.

~ excerpt from Terra Nullius

I am not familiar enough with the Israel/Palestine history to have a strong opinion on the current conflict, but in watching the violence escalate, I am reminded of the near impossibility of forgiveness and redress for land appropriated and lives lost. It reminds me of how deeply our world is still rooted in the power of violence and how much of our world was established on the basis of dispossession.

We can condemn Israel's aggression (or defense, depending on your viewpoint) and condemn Hamas' terrorism, but we also need to be reminded that we have all benefited from violence. And when blood is shed and homes are displaced, it is not always easy to say who is more right or who is more just.

A re-posted excerpt from Terra Nullius, regarding the theft of land from Aborigines in Australia:

According to my Religious Education teacher in at secondary school, ‘contrition’ is at the core of all religions. It’s easy to make mistakes. Anybody can make mistakes, even commit crimes. The important thing is knowing how to feel contrition afterwards. That was why he began every lesson with the same question: ‘What constitutes contrition?’ To this day, I can still rattle off the answer in my sleep:
I realize I have done wrong.
I regret what I have done.
I promise never to do it again.
Today I tend to think these three criteria for contrition are far too introverted. ‘Realize’, ‘regret’ and ‘promise’ can all be done internally, in complete secrecy, without betraying any outward sign of realization of promise. Such an internal contrition process is precious little comfort the victim of the wrong I committed. And the promise is easily forgotten if nobody knows it was made. So the criteria should demand a more public process of contrition. Perhaps like this:
I freely admit that I have done wrong.
I ask forgiveness of those I have wronged.
I promise to do my best to make amends to them.
Here, the third criterion promises not only that I will not repeat the crime, but also that I will make efforts to put things right to the best of my ability. For the victims, redress is the most tangible result of my contrition and a measure of sincerity.
Can we feel contrition for other people’s crimes? Can we feel contrition for crimes we have not committed personally, but have subsequently profited from? How can we formulate the criteria for contrition to make them applicable to collective responsibility for historical crimes? Perhaps like this:
We freely admit that our predecessors have done wrong and that we are profiting from it.
We ask forgiveness of those who were wronged and of their descendants.
We promise to do our best to make amends to those who were wronged for the effects that still remain.
The larger the collective, the more diluted the personal responsibility. The less intimate the contrition, the greater the risk that it will just be hollow ceremony. A representative steps forward on our behalf, admits the wrong committed, apologizes, pays what it takes and appoints a committee to ‘monitor our practices’. Australia isn't even doing that.