Frequent commenter Ziska has been drilling me on the issue of ‘terrorism” as opposed to “legitimate warfare”. He has drawn several parallels to wars of national liberation, and our discussion has moved from Algeria to Eire, and from India to Sri Lanka.
Others have joined him in criticizing the distinction I make, which seems very clear to me….but obviously not to them.
So I thought I’d take a stab at a broad discussion of “legitimate” vs. “illegitimate” uses for force, and what I perceive to be the tragic, if moral, consequences of legitimate warfare versus the equally tragic and immoral consequences of terrorism.
First, and foremost, let me dwell on the tragedies involved. Innocent people die, are maimed and wounded, have their lives shattered irrecoverably. Whether they are killed by a stray Allied bomb in WWII, a cannon shell in a besieged city in one of the sieges of the 30 Years War, a Palestinian bomb in Tel Aviv, or an Israeli tank shell in Gaza. Some starve because the crops have been ruined or irrigation systems destroyed or livestock killed; some die from treatable diseases because hospitals have no power or are inaccessible. Each of these tragic stories represents an individual noncombatant who did not deserve to die.
But the reality of human existence is that innocents die. The earliest human stories…for example, the ballads of of Homer…talk of the tragedies that befall humans at the capricious whim of the gods.
Our civilized society has little appetite for this, and we have erected structures that ostensibly protect the innocent, in international law and custom. Not everyone follows those laws and customs, however.
So let’s talk cases.
During World War II, German and Allied forces bombed each other’s cities; the stated reason for Allied bombing was:

The deployment of the air forces opposing Germany was heavily influenced by the fact that victory was planned to come through invasion and land occupation. In the early years of the war, to be sure, the RAF had the independent mission of striking at German industrial centers in an effort to weaken the German economy and the morale of the German people.
source: THE UNITED STATES STRATEGIC BOMBING SURVEY (authors J.K. Galbraith, among others)

The German justification was somewhat different:

I believe this plan [raiding RAF airfields] would have been very successful, but as a result of the Fuhrer’s speech about retribution, in which he asked that London be attacked immediately, I had to follow the other course. I wanted to attack the airfields first, thus creating a prerequisite for attacking London . . . I spoke with the Fuhrer about my plans in order to try to have him agree I should attack the first ring of RAF airfields around London, but he insisted he wanted to have London itself attacked for political reasons, and also for retribution.
I considered the attacks on London useless, and I told the Fuhrer again and again that inasmuch as I knew the English people as well as I did my own people, I could never force them to their knees by attacking London. We might be able to subdue the Dutch people by such measures but not the British.
— Reichmarschall Hermann Goering, International Military Tribunal Nuremberg, 1946.

Notice two points of difference: the Allied strategy was set to a) weaken the fighting effectiveness of the German Army by collapsing the industrial economy that supported it, and secondarily weakening the morale of the German people. The German strategy was out-and-out retribution…a lashing out at the British people, and secondarily, if at all, attacking their means to wage war.
The Hague convention of 1923 states:

Bombardment from the air is legitimate only when directed at a military objective, the destruction or injury of which would constitute a distinct military disadvantage to the belligerent.

In general, we understand and support attacks which logically support weakening the ability of belligerent soldiers to fight. The allied raids on the ball-bearing factories in Schweinfurt may have destroyed whole neighborhoods, but they can be justified as attacking a target of military importance (precision machines need bearing); similarly the Allied attacks on steel, oil and nitrate production necessary to produce weapons gasoline and explosives, as well as the roads, waterways, and railroads necessary to transport them – and the food needed to support an urban industrial economy.
The Allies did not limit themselves to ‘militarily useful’ attacks, however. Dresden and Cologne certainly were not. But the other stated purpose was to attack the morale of the enemy, and realistically, satisfy the emotional need to damage the opposing state. How well did they work?

The Survey has made extensive studies of the reaction of the German people to the air attack and especially to city raids. These studies were carefully designed to cover a complete cross section of the German people in western and southern Germany and to reflect with a minimum of bias their attitude and behavior during the raids. These studies show that the morale of the German people deteriorated under aerial attack. The night raids were feared far more than daylight raids. The people lost faith in the prospect of victory, in their leaders and in the promises and propaganda to which they were subjected. Most of all, they wanted the war to end. They resorted increasingly to “black radio” listening, to circulation of rumor and fact in opposition to the Regime; and there was some increase in active political dissidence — in 1944 one German in every thousand was arrested for a political offense. If they had been at liberty to vote themselves out of the war, they would have done so well before the final surrender. In a determined police state, however, there is a wide difference between dissatisfaction and expressed opposition. Although examination of official records and those of individual plants shows that absenteeism increased and productivity diminished somewhat in the late stages of the war, by and large workers continued to work. However dissatisfied they were with the war, the German people lacked either the will or the means to make their dissatisfaction evident.
— Strategic Bombing Survey

So it appears that the goal of demoralizing the enemy seems to have had some effect. The interesting thing is that the bombings in England seemed to have the opposite effect, of infuriating the population and strengthening their will to fight. I might suggest that part of the difference lay in the magnitude of the attacks, meaning that while the attacks on Britain were damaging, they did not represent a force overwhelming enough to call victory into question (there were certainly other issues…of national character, political leadership, the perceived legitimacy of the government, etc.), while the devastating attacks by the RAF and then the Americans certainly would have had to make the average German question the viability of the war enterprise.
Finally, you cannot talk about aerial bombardment without talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There are three broad questions: 1) were the attacks on nonstrategic targets legitimate at all? 2) should we have demonstrated the bomb first? and 3) to what extent was racism toward the Japanese people an element in making us more willing to bomb them?
Serious books have been written on these subjects, and will be for the foreseeable future. I’ve read a few of them. My father was also a cryptographer in Army Intelligence in WW II, stationed in India and Burma, and then Japan after the war, and he and I had some extensive talks about it. Here’s my (personal, inconclusive) take on these three questions:
1) were these attacks legitimate?
Yes, to the extent that the attacks on Cologne, Dresden and Tokyo were also legitimate. Part of the enterprise in national war is to both destroy the fighting ability of the enemy, which can be done both by destroying the men and equipment in their armed forces, and in a modern industrial society, by destroying the economy that supports them. In addition, the effects on morale – both of the enemy and of the attacker – must be considered. Fights are won, in no small part, on emotion. My personal judgment, is that in the context of a global war like WW II, strikes against enemy population centers were not unjustifiable. By hastening the collapse of the enemy as an effective fighting force, they may have saved combatent lives on both sides lives in offset to those non-combatant lives the bombing cost.
I’ll address the ‘combatant’ vs. non-combatant’ issue later.
2) should we have demonstrated the bomb first?
There has been a lot written and discussed about this; about the effect of an announced demonstration over Tokyo Bay or an unoccupied islet. It strikes me as a nice idea, but we are far removed from two things: a) the uncertainty that was widely present at the time about whether the bomb would actually work, or would simply produce a conventional explosion and shards of U238; and b) the genuine emotional hatred in effect at the time, which feeds into:
3) was racism the key to using the Bomb in Japan?
Yes, but. But we would have used the Bomb in Germany if it had been ready in time. But it was racism that cut both ways. The level of cultural misunderstanding between the Japanese and Western politicians and military is probably matched by the level of misunderstanding between the militant Native American tribes and the European immigrants. The Japanese military was to the American view, insanely – no, suicidally – brave, and equally insanely cruel. The Western military was – to the Japanese view – cowardly and weak. From talking to my father and to other men of his age who fought the Japanese (and my father’s battles were quite cushy and non-life-threatening), the real differences in the warfighting styles, amplified by the propaganda machines, led to real and deep feelings of fear and hate. Had this picture of the Japanese not been pervasive – and again, I’ll state that it had its roots in real cultural differences, amplified and ‘played up’ by propaganda – I wonder what we would have done.
The Germans were, on the other hand, perceived as ‘fellow Westerners’, and even the knowledge of the extermination camps did not drive them out of that place. But according to contemporary documents, the fear that the Germans were close to a bomb, and the certainty that they would use it if they had it, I believe would certainly have led to the use of the A-bomb in Europe if VE day had been sufficiently far away.
So, in summary, I’m trying to justify the collateral death and destruction on civilian, nonmilitary targets in WW II as a part of a larger war plan, and in the context of those intentions, legitimate.
Remember that criminality (and hence morality) depends in large part on intentions. The dead are just as dead. But when we judge the living, we have to judge them in large part by what they meant to do.
Next, nuclear war and Homeric war.

So I’m tied up in arguments over the police, the definition of terrorism, the progress of peace in Palestine, and I can’t articulate my ideas and my head just hurts. I usually take this as a good sign, one that means that the purpose of this blog – forcing me to think through and clearly articulate my thoughts and opinions – is being met.
(thanks by the way to everyone who is tossing rocks into the soup)
But right now I can’t write about them worth a damn.
Then, scanning the blogs, I read Dawn’s prayer to become a better parent, and there’s something I can start to talk about.
I love being a dad, even when one of my kids gives me shit online. Somehow especially then…
I think I’m a pretty good Dad, although time will tell. I know that I work harder at it than I ever have at anything in my entire life, and that it gives me more pleasure than anything I’ve ever done in my life.
It’s also true that it’s different – and I think harder – for moms. It may be coincidence, but both of my marriages started to splinter about the time the first child were born, and while I certainly have to carry my share of the weight for that, I can also say that I saw the women I’d married…smart, tough, professional, independent women…crack under the burden. Not only the burden of physically bearing children and tending them when they are small and helpless…I was up nights, too, and we were lucky enough to have household help…but the burden of conflicting expectations and conflicting images of who they ought to be and what they ought to hold important.
But those are issues for them, and their blogs, if they ever choose to have one.
For me, becoming a parent has been so incredibly liberating, because it has taken me out of myself.
The best story I can tell is about a ski trip we took with the boys and two childless good friends … they had the ‘first chair up, last chair up’ attitude we’d always had when we skied together.
But now we had the boys…ages six and four…and the reality was that we were going to move on what I called ‘kid time’…we were going to get it done, but on the boys’ pace. By the end of the trip, we were so frustrated with our friends, and they with us, that violence felt like a real possibility. And I felt like I had to make a choice, and I did…I chose to move on ‘kid time’. And learning about ‘kid time’, and the ability to still get them where I want them to go while accepting that the path we take may not exactly be the one I planned on, is the best lesson I could have received.
This means that I’ve always dealt with my sons as ‘people’ even when I recognized that when young, they didn’t have the capacity to be truly independent. I called this ‘peas or carrots’; they always had choices at dinnertime…I just determined what the choices were…peas or carrots? And they were always willing to stand up and tell me what they wanted…while I determined if they got it or not.
I have close friends who have raised their children along the other paths…where the children were browbeaten and given no say; and where the children basically ran the house. In both cases, both the parents and kids seem to be coming out broken.
It’s damn hard. You get called away just as you’re getting ready to go to the important meeting, or there is a knock at the bedroom door at the worst possible breathing-hard moment. Their shoes come untied – again – as you are late getting them to school.
And for me, somehow, the burden always lifts just as it becomes unbearable. I find another bit of patience when I thought I was done. I turn and apologize after saying something that I wish I hadn’t said, and the anger lifts. And the road ahead becomes that much less steep when I do. And that ability…the ability to reach a little further,to be a little better…is the gift my sons have given to me.
We’re not done yet…one is away at school, one in high school, and one in first grade…but I’m proud as hell of them, and hopeful for all of our futures.
Hang tough, Dawn. It’s all worth it.

This sure looks like Israeli terrorism. There are evil fools on both sides, it appears (actually, this has been true for years).
(via Jeff Cooper).

I’ve talked endlessly about the need for a ‘moderate’ Palestinian politics to step forward in order to have any chance of meaningful peace, and my belief that there was a substantial number of people living on the West Bank and in Gaza that weren’t sold on the “Palestine from the river to the sea or Death” meme.
There have been some encouraging signs here and here. These are not conclusive, nor answers, but they are steps in what smells like a right direction.
Commenter Mostapha Sabet pointed this out:

Something that bothered me is how a lot of people sort of blew off the Fatah announcement. Saying things like, “Oh, well the Pals don’t consider settlers civilians” or “They only said they would stop attacks on civilians not all targets” without recognizing that this may be one small step in the right direction, but it’s a huge step in the quest for peace. Now there is a somewhat major group (and growing in relative strength as IDF wipes up Hamas) that might actually prove to be a voice of reason. Let’s hope it sticks.

I think this is critically important, and goes to my apology to Ziska, because it is incredibly hard to fight against and opponent and still maintain their humanity, but it is necessary because someday the fight will be over.
Aram Rubyan pointed out in a comment that I was wrong to apologize, inferring that humanizing the Palestinians was the wrong way to go.
I disagree. I think that Israel is right to use force to defend itself, and as long as the Palestinian leadership persists in propagating their evil “River To The Sea” fantasy, that defense will be fierce. And the people on the sharp end of the spear will doubtless have feelings and attitudes about their opponents which are not humane and charitable and warm.
Which is why it is important for the rest of us to do so. Because of our distance we can both fiercely defend Israel, as I have done – as far as words can go – and humanize and sympathize with the individual Palestinians who are trapped by bad leaders, evil allies, and damaged culture.
Someday, this fight will be over. All fights are.

I’ve been working on a post on the whole ‘wilding’ thing, and it just keeps on coming out badly. Maybe it’s just that I am friends with too many cops, and see the damage done to them – and to their ability to be what we want them to be – by the overt hostility coded in these articles. I want to write something thoughtful and evenhanded and my emotions keep getting in the way.
Here’s the objective point: First, there is error in any system, and our system of justice is no different. Some of the error is caused by bias, some by laziness, some by unavoidable chance, all of it is tragic. Every system of justice has the same problems, and has had them for as long as there have been systems of justice…or human systems of any kind. What is unique about ours is the very faith in its perfectability…in the attainability of a justice beyond that given through personal relationships, connections, clout, or bribery. On one hand this faith is misplaced…the reality is that we are nowhere close to there.
But on the other…on the other…the goal speaks to virtually everyone in our society. The shining, Platonic, unattainable ideal of perfect justice is one that we do believe in, and fight for, and the genius of our system is that it lets us do it, and harnesses our desire for it, and does so in the name of progress toward the unattainable perfection. It speaks to us, and we act on it.
I think that’s great, and that’s what I spoke to when I gave my opinion on this case.
I think that sets our system of justice apart from any other that I have read about.
I think that the root of my kind of liberalism is that belief that we can build human systems that strive toward improvement, believing that perfection is unattainable and still worth struggling for.
And what I don’t see in these rounds of endless criticism is a real belief in making the systems better; what I see is a wholesale rejection of the systems…the brutal cops, corrupt prosecutors, the enforcers of the intolerable status quo…that protect the middle-class critics, who seldom acknowledge the benefit of the protection they receive.
See, I believe that there are Really Bad People out there…and that there are many of us who given the right circumstance can be really Bad. The police and the folks in the criminal justice system deal with it every day, at its very bad worst.
We need them. It’s a crappy job done for little money and less respect. It has its own satisfactions, and the good cops I know live for them…for the times they can save someone, the times they can “hook up” a bad guy, the times they can bring some justice and order to an unjust and chaotic world.
I know the “choose” the job, but as a consumer of their services, I’ll tell you that we all have a vested interest in seeing them do as good a job as possible.
Some, very few of them are corrupt in meaningful ways (not talking about free donuts); some are racist, some cruel. But fewer today than ten years ago, and fewer still than fifty years ago.
Some of my employees do a bad job, too. Sometimes my sons do bad things. But I find that a blanket condemnation is seldom a good way to get good performance out of them; and if you want to deepen the “us v. them” chasm, the kind of criticism I’ve seen levied at the NYC folks seems like a pretty good shovel.
So I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to set out the logical social critique of the case and the arguments; I’ll work on it and try to do better.

He’s losing faith in the whole blogging thing, so go visit him and leave some intelligent comments.

I still can’t believe my dad can even log onto the internet, let alone have a friggin site……

William Burton hits another brilliant post out of the park. he expresses, in one post, the process that took me months to understand and realize; that while I didn’t like the Israeli policies, they never, ever, in any way, justified the current spate of suicide bombings.
Zika reminds me that the people on both sides are human, and they are. But some of them haven’t been acting that way. He also reminds me of the campaign of the Tamil Tigers, who also used suicide bombers…including those who assassinated an Indian P.M.
I’ll do some more research, but I’ll bet that the prime targets of the Tamils weren’t pizza parlors, but military bases and military and political figures.
Different game, Ziska…guerilla war, not terrorism.
The good news is that the Palestinian ‘moderate middle’ I looked for appears to be appearing. I’m sure it’s hard to give Sharon credit for anything, but it looks like something is working.

Ziska points out, in a comment below:

Actually, the point I was trying to make, and failed completely to make, was that you shifted gears between the Israeli individual and the Palestininan “they”.
You could have commemorated a Palestinian victim without even softening your opposition to what “they” are doing, simply by commemorating (for example) commemorating the 18-year-old woman who was recently killed by thei’m Palestinian Authority because her uncle (who was also lilled) had implicated her in Israeli intelligence work. Or you could have commemorated apolitical Palestinians who die because of the curfew.
So what we got from you was a humane comment about real people with real lives (Israeli) followed immediately by the same old objectifying talk about “they” (the Palestinians).

I was wrong, and will remember that.

Here’s a new-to-me blog with some sensible commentary on the Central Park case: Just One Minute; take a look. I’m working on a more philosophical piece, but having stayed up Really Late last night (the concert ended close to midnight and was an hour and a half away) and danced a little too hard, I’m taking some Motrin and going to bed. I wonder if the twenty-year olds have to do that…(not really)…
(Link from Instapundit.)