Perhaps There Should Be No Just War Analysis
In discussing the situation in Gaza, the primary vehicle for understanding the morality of the various actors has been the just war theory. The thought is that since militaries engage in wars, therefore the military is engaged in a war. The most common use for troops, when they are brought to action, is not war though. For example, the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 is not considered a war even though federal troops were used to suppress the action.
The launching of rockets by Hamas into Israel is considered an act of war by those wishing to assert a defensive war action is being taken by Israel. To add complexity to the situation, the governing authority in Gaza (Hamas) denies that they are sanctioning these actions; they have claimed that the rockets attacks have been done by individuals. Israel for her part has made the legitimate claim that regardless, Hamas (as governing authority) needs to bring these attacks to an end. Like gang violence along either of our borders that at times has involved more advanced weaponry, we give and take grievances with the respective governments, but we don’t consider them acts of war. The other part that is often considered an act of war is Hamas declaration that that they want to see the end of Israel. Certainly that is a warrant for action against Hamas and its members, but it was issued through the government in Gaza, so I don’t believe it should be treated as a State action.
I have attempted to stick to official positions of both sides for the reason that they’re less debatable in actuality, even if one believes the position is feigned. Getting back to our Whiskey Rebellion above, the military engaged in a policing action. This isn’t as familiar to us, because of our laws circumscribing military action against our own people. (This was one impedance to military involvement in Katrina.) In discussing a policing action, the end is order. With war actions, the end is removing a governing authority over either a portion of its territory or its entirety; in defensive actions, it is preserving the same from a governing authority attempting to assert itself. One will note that in both the U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the causes were the removal of the government. Israel’s official policy goal in this action is not to remove the Gaza government, but to kill terrorists residing in Gaza.
Without getting into a debate over prudence, morality places more of an emphasis on being right than due process, so martial justice isn’t intrinsically immoral. Given that we are dealing with one non-State actor, I think the most appropriate designation of the act is an act of martial justice. If we are to accept this categorical designation, then it is difficulty to see how the bombing of a terrorist’s house with his family inside fits the licit side of the equation. On the other hand, the deaths at the school were most likely licit given that the troops were under immediate mortar fire from the school and their ability to account for civilians was most significantly diminished, at least as Israel is presently claiming.
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Mr. Forrest:
I don’t see that why the Israelis’ Gaza operation requires some special label of “martial justice” and it’s not clear to me what you mean by the term.
More to the point, if a person chooses to become a belligerent in a war then he has purposely chosen to become a military target. Should he then decide to go home for dinner he has brought a bona fide military target to his family’s table. There is moral culpability here certainly but it isn’t the IDF’s.
The reason a special label is required is that wars are between States, and Israel is not fighting the State of Gaza. I use martial justice to denote an inability to arraign a person for trial but having a security need that necessitates him not being able to roam freely.
Additionally a military target is generally an agent of the State. Terrorists generally aren’t agents of states and in this particular case are not claimed to be.
I like Andrew Sullivan’s reply today to all those who are denigrating the applicability of “just war theory” to what’s going on in the Gaza:
“There is something striking about how rigorously theocons apply Vatican teaching to questions of private individuals’ sexual and emotional relationships and how loosely they apply it when it comes to tempering right-wing governments from embracing torture, economic inequality, the death penalty and pre-emptive war. “
I wasn’t nearly as impressed. In Larison’s case (upon whom Sullivan was praising), his Orthodoxy opposes same sex marriage and pre-emptive war and he submits to his church on both. So, since he is being praised, is he less of a theocon than the folks Sullivan points out as only taking half of Christian teaching seriously?
Well, no; he’s just a more honest “theocon”: one can respect someone’s integrity without necessarily agreeing with him, don’t you think?
True enough.
Mr. Forrest:
Wars are not always between states, though I agree that’s the standard model. Hamas is, among other things, a military power carrying out military operations – war crimes, every one of them – against the state of Israel. Hamas is no state but it is certainly a party making war and Israel has a right to respond militarily to it.
To accept your view of it is to accept the loophole that Hamas and like organizations have exploited for years. They act as states but during battle demand that rather than be treated as states – or even as cohesive organizations – each and every one of their members must be treated separately as individuals. The terrorist that got blown up in his house with his wives and children was certainly an individual. But in the context of the event, he was simply a legitimate military target in a shooting war between two organizations: Israel’s military and Hamas.
He should have had dinner at the canteen.
This fellow is representative of the Israeli Jews whom the West SHOULD be supporting–not the ones who see wives and children as “legitimate military targets”:
The man above knows that the Zionist State is UNDERMINING its own viability in the Middle East by its state terrorism against a million and a half “legitimate targets.” He KNOWS—as Americans refuse to acknowledge—that the Israeli government has, for years now, put new penurious refugees who don’t want to go there into “settlements” on lands that, under international law, have been illegally seized from the Palestinians—making them, in a sense fully appreciated by Arabs (but not by us, not by “neo-conservatives,” not by AIPAC), MILITARY “occupiers,” and, thus themselves “legitimate targets” for the dispossessed.
This editorialist in the New York Times this morning also understands full well that the Israeli strategy in its “go nuts” military campaign against the Palestinian people of the Gaza is foreclosing the possibility of peace between the Israelis and the Jews for the next generation:
My courageous Times colleague in Gaza, Taghreed el-Khodary, quoted a 37-year-old father weeping over the corpse of his 11-year-old daughter: “From now on, I am Hamas. I choose resistance.”
Barack Obama has said relatively little about Gaza. At first, given the provocations by Hamas, that was understandable. But as the ground invasion costs more lives, he needs to join European leaders in calling for a new cease-fire on all sides — and after he assumes the presidency, he must provide real leadership that the world craves.
Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator for the United States, suggests in his excellent new book, “The Much Too Promised Land,” that presidents should offer Israel “love, but tough love.”
So, Mr. Obama, find your voice. Fall in tough love with Israel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/opinion/08kristof.html?_r=1&hp
And even one more example of the only type of Israeli whom the U.S. and her allies should be supporting:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053426.html
Let me point out one fundamental error here. Just war theory goes back to St. Augustine. The Nation State is a relative latecomer to history — a few hundred years old. You don’t need a state to have a war. Follow Occham’s Razor — there is no reason to treat “non-state actors” different than state actors in terms of morality even though they are tactically different.
Try googling “4th generation warfare” and read about the moral component of war. Whether state or non-state the side with the moral high-ground will eventually win.
We could go back to the Bible if you would like to see war between peoples. Hamas isn’t a people. The representatives of the people in Gaza are the Gaza government. I don’t see the need for obfuscation.
Summa II:II 40 a1
I answer that, In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior. Moreover it is not the business of a private individual to summon together the people, which has to be done in wartime. And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers, according to the words of the Apostle (Rm. 13:4): “He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil”; so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies. Hence it is said to those who are in authority (Ps. 81:4): “Rescue the poor: and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner”; and for this reason Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 75): “The natural order conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and counsel war should be in the hands of those who hold the supreme authority.”
Mr. Forrest:
How does “just war analysis” see the information below?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/SendMail.aspx?print=print&type=0&item=129290
(IsraelNN.com) When Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan was assassinated in an IAF strike last week, his four wives and 11 of his children died with him. According to his surviving children, the death of the Rayyan family children was not an accident: Rayyan had trained his wives and children to die with him as “martyrs.”
Surviving family members spoke to local Arab media and said that in the days before his death, Rayyan had repeatedly asked his children, “Who wants to die with me as a martyr?” The children would respond, “Yes, daddy, we all want to be with you alive or dead.”
Rayyan’s adult daughter, Wala, said even the younger children wished to die with their father. “If you had asked my four-year-old sister Aisha, who died in the attack, she would have told you that she preferred to die as a martyr,” Wala told Ma’an news.
One of Rayyan’s daughter-in-laws said she was offered the chance to die with the family. She stopped by the family’s large home in Jabaliya and was asked by Rayyan if she wished to die with him, his wives and their children. She agreed to die, but later left the building, shortly before the IAF strike.
As it turned out, when Rayyan offered his daughter-in-law the “opportunity” to die he had already received a phone call from the IDF warning him to evacuate his house due to an impending airstrike.
The 11 children who died with Nizar Rayyan ranged in age from one year old to 16. Another son died years earlier when Rayyan sent him to carry out a suicide bombing in Gaza. Two Israelis were murdered in that attack. %ad%
Rayyan was one of Hamas’ extremist preachers, and believed that those who die fighting Israel die as “martyrs” and go directly to paradise. He encouraged his followers to have several wives and as many children as possible, in order to provide future soldiers in the fight against Israel. He also encouraged Hamas to take over Judea and Samaria and carry out suicide attacks targeting Jews.