Moral Clarity part 18: Dumb War, Necessary War

"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country.”

The quote is taken from Maj.-Gen. William T. Sherman, commanding officer of Union troops in the vicinity of Atlanta, in early September 1864, as quoted by David J. Bercuson in a National Post commentary. Bercuson argues that the debate over using so-called 'dumb bombs' over so-called 'precision munitions' is largely moot. Yes, dumb bombs are much less expensive which is why they continue to be used. But in neither case can civilian casualties be avoided. Precision bombs don't magically distinguish between enemy combatants and nearby family members or innocent pedestrians in the wrong place at the wrong time either. 

The principal tactic of every war ever fought is to inflict as much cost on your enemy as you can until the point when they decide it's time to surrender. War may be understood as a form of political persuasion, because each side must make a unilateral decision on when the point of surrender has been reached. The tolerance for damage to the point of defeat is variable. Some nations have a very high threshold indeed. During World War 2 hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, and of course Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, before Germany and Japan respectively surrendered. Germany would not surrender until its cities were reduced to rubble and high-school children and retirees were enlisted to fight - in the final battle of Berlin the Nazis called upon the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) and the ragtag Volkssturm (citizen army) to defend the capital against the approaching Soviet Red Army. France, on the other hand, surrendered shortly after German forces breached the Maginot Line and waltzed into Paris within a few weeks, sustaining relatively little damage to their civilian population and infrastructure. 

The difference between Germany/Japan and France? It's who made the decision to surrender. In dictatorships that decision ultimately rests entirely with one person. In a democracy it rests with institutions ie. a government that is accountable to the electorate. Take the war in Vietnam as an example of how the difference works. That war did not end because the US was defeated militarily. The US military had the firepower and resources to continue fighting for decades. The war was ultimately brought to an 'ignoble' end because of widespread disfavour expressed by a politically active and vocal citizenry. It goes without saying that this political dynamic does not happen in dictatorships. More importantly, once defeated militarily, if they surrender, peace can't be made with dictatorships because no dictatorship will negotiate to compromise their absolute power. It's simply not in the DNA of dictatorship. The dictator will sooner die than surrender power, let alone make peace. It's why defeated Germany and Japan had to become democracies in the aftermath of the war. Power had to be ceded to the governed. It was the only possible result to ensure peace in the long term, since the only truly humane form of governance, the only form that embodies the legitimacy to wage war and can ensure that war will end at a point that reflects the interest of the people who wage it, is democracy. 

The analogy of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan holds equally true for the war with Hamas, it has to be seen first and foremost as a war against tyranny. To the extent that the Palestinian people fully support Hamas, agree with their aims, or have accepted the entirety of Gaza being turned into a military facility by them, including rocket launchers installed in residential apartment buildings and elementary schools, and military warehouses and command centers being built under hospitals - they bear moral responsibility for what is happening to them. To the extent that the UN has been complicit, it too bears responsibility. 

Bercuson concludes his essay by writing, "There is really only one way to avoid civilian casualties by aerial bombardment — don’t start a war in the first place. Either Hamas could not figure that out, or they didn’t care." Bercuson doesn't entertain another notion; Hamas wanted to increase civilian casualties and invited aerial bombardment, licked their chops for it, because being so severely militarily outmatched as they knew they were, it was the only way to achieve a political victory in a war with Israel. Hamas needed on their side of the battle the large swathes of the sympathetic (western) public and antisemitic (Arab) public. In the fight between democracy and tyranny, a total victory of democracy is the only humane and moral resolution. Proportionality as a consideration in such a war cannot apply. My corollary to Bercuson's conclusion is, don't start a war you can't finish.