I'm going to discuss the two opinions on war (for and against,) and then I'm going to propose a middle ground opinion. I'm also going to link these opinions to the Iraq War as an example. Then I'm going to discuss the draft, and more specificially, if it is humane to force someone into war or not.
For:
You may be familiar with the term "jus ad bellum." It's latin for "justice before war," and it is a set of criteria that we must meet in order to declare war:
1. The war must have a just cause.
2. It must be waged by a legitimate authority.
3. It must be formally declared.
4. It must be fought with a peaceful intention.
5. It must be the last resort.
6. There must be reasonable hope of success.
7. The means used must possess proportionality to the end sought, meaning you realize your goal for the war, and you treat people in the war based on that goal. For example, if you're goal is to evacuate all the terrorists in your country, and not to kill them, then it's not reasonable to nuke them all.
And then, if you are familiar with "jus ad bellum," then you're certainly familiar with "jus in bello," which means "justice in war." It is a set of standards that must be kept in mind and utilized during war:
1. Noncombatants must be given immunity. (Civilians can not be killed intentionally.)
2. Prisoners must be treated humanely.
3. International treaties and conventions must be honored.
So, if you understand these, you realize that people who are for war believe that there should be standards. They don't just believe you should run around declaring war and bombing people for stupid reasons. They believe that violence can be a necessary evil.
Against:
There are a lot of people who believe in nonviolence and resistance. Their huge problem with war is that the criteria listed above is subjective. For instance, Paul Ramsey believed that soldiers could kill civilians if it was because they were killing a terrorist. For example, if a terrorist were in a crowd of civilians, then he believed soldiers should be allowed to bomb the terrorist, even if it meant taking down the civilians next to him. According to him, in this case, we wouldn't be intentionally killing the civilians; it would be killing the terrorist and, inadvertently, killing civilians along with him. As another example, the Vietnam War was never declared by the only authority that had the power at the time: the United States Congress. Yet we still had the war. See what I mean by the rules being subjective and sometimes not followed at all? The point is, who gets to determine if we have done all we can to prevent the war, and that war truly is our very last resort? Because, in a lot of cases, wars haven't seemed to be the last resort, but the easiest resort, or maybe the one everyone wanted at the time. But, also, who gets to decide if we've truly found a just cause for the war we want to declare? Who gets to decide when it's critical that civilians die in order for a terrorist to die? In Walter Wink's article "Beyond Just War and Pacifism," he writes "If we include in civilian casualties those deaths made inevitable by war's disruption of farming, sanitation, and food distribution, we arrive at an average of 50 percent civilian deaths for all wars since 1700...In the decade of the 1980s, the proportion of civilian deaths jumped to 74 percent, and in 1990, it appears to have been close to 90 percent. On this basis alone, very few wars in the last 3 centuries have not violated the criterion of civilian immunity." That's shocking. So the point is, there are a lot of people who simply believe in nonviolence, which is great, but the huge point a lot of these people are trying to make is that there's no fine line in what is too violent and what is not. Everything is subjective. So where do we draw the line? A lot of nonviolence promoters just say, well, since we can't draw a line, and it's all subjective, then we should just not promote violence in any situation.
Middle Ground:
In the Bible, Jesus said to "turn the other cheek" if someone strikes you in Matthew 5:39, yes? Well, a lot of people take this to mean that you should just take violence and not fight back, all for the sake of promoting peace. However, in his article, Walter Wink explains what Jesus really meant by this. In Bible times, punching someone on the LEFT cheek was meant to show that you look down on them, and that they are inferior to you. But touching the RIGHT cheek would show that you are equals. So, Jesus was saying that, if someone punches you on the LEFT cheek, therefore calling you inferior, you're supposed to "turn the other cheek," as in show them your RIGHT cheek. This meant that you were asserting your equality with the person who thinks he's above you. This, of course, would start a revolution and show people that they can't look down on slaves, women, children, etc. Jesus meant for us to not take abuse and take up for ourselves, rather than to just show kindness to our abuser or, as Wink so hilariously put it, "to hug the terrorist." The reason I'm using this as an example is because a lot of people use this Bible verse as an example for why we should be engaged in nonviolence. But, in order to find middle ground and be realistic, maybe it's just good to establish some rules. Maybe we're not supposed to stand down. Maybe we're just supposed to not take abuse. Maybe we should simply defend ourselves, rather than declare war ourselves, even in trying times that seem to call for war. So maybe we just need to be more careful the reasons we go to war and what we do in war. Maybe there need to be some extreme ground rules. Wink suggests that, instead of calling it "just war criteria," we should call it "violence-reduction criteria," because there is no such thing as "just war," just like there is no such thing as "just rape" or "just child abuse." It's all bad, but sometimes it may be necessary, so we should just work to reduce the damage as much as possible. This is just an idea for a middle ground argument that Walter Wink makes, and I think it's a compelling argument, at that.
Iraq War Example:
So there are a lot of opinions as to whether or not the Iraq War met jus ad bellum and jus in bello. A lot of people say there was no "just cause" for the war. First, we were outraged by the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, and we wanted to get rid of the man in charge, Osama bin Laden. Ok, that's pretty legitimate. It probably should have been a man hunt, rather than a war on Afghanistan, but at least we have something to go on. Then President George W. Bush decided Iraq had possession of weapons of mass destruction, which apparently we're allowed to have, but they aren't. So he decided he wanted to take those away. After 9/11, that's a legitimate thought to want to protect ourselves against weapons of mass destruction, but it's not our place to take them away from other countries. Then Osama bin Laden had this regime called al-Qaeda that was supposedly a terrorist group, and some U.S. officials accused Iraqi president Saddam Hussein for supporting and harboring the regime, even though no evidence was ever found to prove it. So, whether or not the accusations were true, Saddam Hussein was still an evil dictator, so Bush decided it was necessary to invade Iraq in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein, if not just to protect the United States, but to protect Iraq from their own president. And on down the line, he was successful, as we all know. But were these "just causes" for war? We never had evidence to prove most of it. And who decided that we had reasonable hope for success? Where's the evidence to suggest that we had peaceful intentions? And we didn't treat civilians with immunity; that's for sure. (In that war, we did, afterall, kill more civilians than Saddam Hussein did in his entire reign as dictator. That's counterproductive. We were supposed to be saving the citizens, not killing them.) And, of course, a lot of people don't believe the war was the last resort. Also, what was the goal of the war really? I just went of them. Does bombing a boatload of civilians count as proportionate to the supposed goals of the war? NO! So was the Iraq War just a misuse of power on President Bush's part? Was it just an ignorant president taking his power too far, jumping the gun, and doing something that really shouldn't have been done? Or was the war necessary? I'll let you guys decide that, because I've already made my take on this pretty obvious. But the point is, it's hard to tell whether or not it's right to go to war. There's no fine line there.
Draft:
So now I'm going to just throw out there an idea that isn't related to this debate at all, but it's related to the topic (war.) Should we be allowed to issue a draft if necessary? The thing is, if we need to fight in a war to defend our country, and we need soldiers and don't have enough, then you would think we'd be allowed to enforce a draft on people. It is, afterall, for the good of the whole. But then again, enforcing a draft definitely takes away a person's inalienable right to freedom, choice, and life. That man you draft may die in the war. He may never see his wife give birth to his baby. He may never get to live his life. Those families may lose their sons, daughters, wives, husbands, friends, sisters, brothers, etc. Is that fair? Or is that violating our human rights? If it's for the good of the whole, you would think it would be a necessary evil, but I'm not intent with people's rights and LIVES being taken away by the government. So what is right? Again, I'll let you decide. These questions are too hard to answer.
The bombing of Bagdad in the Iraq War.
Civilian casualties in the Iraq War.
No comments:
Post a Comment