{"id":1176,"date":"2006-08-08T06:32:10","date_gmt":"2006-08-08T06:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:50","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:50","slug":"proportionality_2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1176","title":{"rendered":"Proportionality And History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Beirut_Before.JPG\"<\/p>\n

One of the issues bandied about has been that of “proportionality”, or for that fillip of insider jargon, the question of in jus bello<\/i>, or justice in war.The issue is how one prosecutes a war, and the limitations imposed on the prosecution of war by the need to maintain moral legitimacy in victory.<\/p>\n

The charge frequently made is set out (in a fairly rich post – he’s not watering down the moral issues at all) by Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber<\/a>, who says:<\/p>\n

…here lies a real difficulty for conventional just war theory. If recourse to war is sometimes just\u2014and just war theory says it is\u2014but it may only be justly fought within the jus in bello restrictions, then it looks as if an important means to pursue justice is open to the strong alone and not to the weak. Faced with a professional army equipped with powerful weaponry, people who want to fight back have no chance unless they melt into the civilian population and adopt unconventional tactics. If those tactics are morally impermissible because of the risks they impose on non-combatants, then it looks as if armed resistance to severe injustice perpetrated by the well-equipped and powerful is also prohibited. And that looks crazy.<\/p>\n

\n…<\/p>\n

\nOn the other side, though, it hardly seems to be satisfactory to say that non-conventional forces should be subject to weakened jus in bello restrictions, since the restrictions are there to protect those who have immunity from attack and whose immunity is not removed or diminished by the fact that one side or the other are militarily disadvantaged.<\/p>\n

\n…<\/p>\n

\nSo I was interested to read a recent paper by David Rodin, \u201cThe Ethics of Asymmetric War\u201d in The Ethics of War (eds Sorabji and Rodin). Rodin proposes to address the problem by strengthening the jus in bello constraints on the strong. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are of course two broad questions. Just war theory, to a naive reading, ought to be about conducting war in a manner which allows for the possibility of peace afterward. The minimization of suffering is an end in itself, but this is not simply a calculus of pain. The basis for the laws of war were set down by the Greeks, because the alternative to war conducted in a manner showing some restraint was simply slaughter.<\/p>\n

And slaughter did happen often enough.<\/p>\n

The question is – can we fairly say that Israel (in Lebanon) and the United States (in Iraq) are behaving with restraint?<\/p>\n

The picture at the top of the page is an aerial photo of a neighborhood in Beirut.<\/p>\n

Here is that neighborhood after it was bombed by the Israelis (images from this site<\/a> via Juan Cole<\/a>, who misses the point as he so often does).<\/p>\n

\"Beirut_after.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Juan suggests that this juxtaposition suggests that:<\/p>\n

The difference between Ahmadinejad and Olmert is that the Iranian president is a blowhard. The one who had practical plans to wipe a country off the map was Olmert.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Juan is a history profesor so he ought to know better (yes, I know…). Here are some images from Wikipedia. I have cut and sized them in Photoshop, and raised the contrast a bit to make them more legible.<\/p>\n

\"Frampol_Before.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Frampol, Poland before being bombed by the Luftwaffe.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Frampol_After.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Frampol, Poland after being bombed by the Luftwaffe.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Cologne_1945_1.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Cologne after the “Thousand-Bomber Raid”<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Hamburg_-_1944-45.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Hamburg, after the firebombing.<\/i><\/p>\n

We’re much better at area bombardment today – with conventional weapons. It would be easy for Israel to simply and literally flatten the neighborhoods in Beirut where Hizbollah is based.<\/p>\n

The fact that they haven’t should buy them some standing in reviewing their in jus bello behavior. But somehow I doubt it. <\/p>\n

If I get into a barfight with Mike Tyson, the fact that he hits harder than I do is less material than whether he hits as hard as he could have or harder than he needed to.<\/p>\n

This pattern is repeated thoughout the conduct of this war, in the air and on the ground. Every day, Israeli and Coalition troops put themselves in unneeded danger in order to act with restraint and proportion. <\/p>\n

It happens that these photos offer a quick way to make my point. Do awful things happen? Of course they do. It’s war. Am I saying “Gee, Israel hasn’t nuked them, so give them a break…” No, not even close.<\/p>\n

I’m saying simply, that Israel (and the U.S.) are<\/b> acting with some restraint.<\/p>\n

The war that some commenters here look forward to won’t be restrained, and the aftermath will look much more like the World War II photos.<\/p>\n

And that’s why I’d like to avoid it, and why I’ll support a restrained war in the hope that it can eliminate the conditions for an unrestrained one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal looks at restraint in warfare. With pictures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}