Asymmetrical Information

I think I'll lose whatever conservative street cred I have with this one, but here goes... If the Palestinians (or the IRA) stuck to blowing up IDF (or UK Army installations), I'd still disagree with their aims, but their methods would be a heck of a lot less reprehensible. In fact, at that point, I would say the morality of their attacks would hinge on the morality of their cause. On the other hand, deliberately targeting civilians is a no-no. Full stop. It's not guerilla tactics I disagree with the guerilla's choice of targets. (Though I still hold more, umm, 18th century ideas as to the "nobility" or some such of facing your foe more directly.) "When in the course..." a little rebellion, even a guerilla rebellion, isn't necessarily bad. It's the cause and the aims of the rebellion (and the targets of it) that give it its goodness or badness.

I think the Iraqis themselves are coming towards this sort of a distinction.

I suspect the real difference is a little more murky, and is a matter of human emotions. When you're producing more carnage than results, or when your goal is carnage, then you're sliding into things that are on the far side of wrong. It's a very slippery slope, so people tend to control themselves by fixing a set of rules, and sticking with it.

On the other hand, there's nothing inherently holy in the "accepted" standards for armed conflict (which are always written by the big powers), any more than there was anything inherently holy about not striking from ambush, inviting your opponents to fire the first shot, or dismounting when your opponent was unhorsed, or any of that nonsense.

I tend to agree with AughtSix. Deliberately attacking civilians is pretty awful. Killing civilians as part of a broader attack on enemy facilities is different. I'm not sure how Dresden comes out on this scale. Tokyo was a legitimate war target by this measure, as were Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both sides of military bases and factories.

As far as the current crisis in the Gaza goes, Hillel Halkin hit the nail on the head in the NY Sun about a week ago. He suggested that Israel say to Hamas, after its raid, "Congratulations, you fought like men this time, instead of girls. You attacked soldiers, not civilians. You hold one of our soliders as a POW. Very well, we'll exchange for his freedom any Palestinian POWs we are holding who were likewise caught while attacking Israeli military targets. That, may be a very small number, since most of the Palestinians in our jails, including all the women and children, were caught attacking or planning to attack civilians. Also, since you have admitted engaging in an open act of war, we hereby declare war on you and will send our armies and air force to kill as many of you and destroy as much of your country as possible."

BTW, I'm paraphrasing Halin above.

A6 is mostly correct. Just have to add one detail. The guerilla's must be distinguishable from the surronding populance. Otherwise the greater powers forces don't know where to shoot and would be justified at gunning down all males of military age (14-65) near the firefight. There is no requirement for the greater power to lose troops just becuase the enemy doesn't play fair.(Though this may be the political decision to pay this price as we are doing in Iraq). The losers in this case is the civilians who are caught in between.

In Iraq the guerrillas no longer try to take on US forces except by laying mines (IEDs) and suicide bombers dressed as civilians. They rarely take on anything bigger than a small police station for that matter and have been repeatedly massacred any time they have (same in Afghanistan). On top of that they are fighting to re-estabilish a fascist dictatorship from a fledgling democracy - so much for any moral rights they have. There treatment of US personel and the repeated head-cutting of even female aid workers places them clearly in the "evil bad guy" side of the black/white equation.

The fact that we have a large group of people in this country who can't see this is rather disappointing. But then I sat alert and watched huge protests go on in the '80s supporting the Soviets over the 'Evil' Americans so I shouldn't be surprised. The war will be won or lost, like Vietnam, in the Western press since their is no way we can be defeated on the battlefield.

By your reasoning, Hitler was more than OK because, on the western front, at least, he fought "fair," and on the eastern front, well, he did what he thought was necessary to accomplish desirable goals. You seem to be trying to work out a morality that doesn't rely on moral judgments. No wonder you're having problems! The (fairly) simple fact is that the goals of the Islamic terrorists are not just. If you can't make moral distinctions, you can't justifiy any public policy at all.

AV,
The Wermacht on the western/italian/North African fronts basically (with many exceptions - like Pipers shooting of US troops during the Bulge) followed the rules of war. the Luftwaffe did so to an even greater extent (the old chivalry of the WWI flying aces still held). The eastern front, Wafen SS organizations in paticular, was incredibly brutal. Prisoners were routinely tortured and shoot (by both sides). Only mass surrenders seemed to result in actual troops making it to captivity. Even them life was brutal. Only 5% of the over 100K german troops that surrendered at Stalingrad lived to see Germany again. Russians in german captivity had equal rates of survival (and many were shot by Stalin after their liberation for surrendering in the first place!).

The true heart of the Evil of Hitler et al, was what happened after the line troops went by and the SS/Gestopo showed up for the exterminations.

Alan, you're missing the entire point, both of just war theory and of the question posed by CT..

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.

That's a really stupid argument; it amounts to nothing more than "it is better to fight from hiding and let civilians die than to fight in the open and risk dying myself". If it seems "crazy" to the Crooked Timber folks that innocent civilians' lives are just as important as those of insurgents, well, I feel sorry for them.

The "we can't stand up to their army" argument is also a bunch of horseshit. There is nothing stopping every person who WANTS to fight from waging open warfare in a legitimate manner. The problem insurgents face is that most of their countrymen don't WANT to fight; they would rather stay alive, thank you very much. Asymmetrical warfare forcibly drafts people who don't want to fight into fighting, by placing them in the enemy's crosshairs.

I see little hope of convincing people who have a fundamentally different idea of what makes or is right and wrong to see things differently, at least solely or primarily by the use of language.

(By which I mean, to clarify, that set of people that believe any offensive action taken on anyone decided to be "anti-Islam" is acceptable, or any action taken in support of a restored Calipgate; I do not mean Muslims in general, as Muslims in general, the non-Islamist sort, are at least not inflexibly militant about the rightness of such actions, even if they're rock-solid about the rightness of Islam itself.

The latter is not a barrier to convincing people about the rightness or wrongness of a tactic such as attacks on civilians.)

Defeating Islamic terrorism (the only really significant kind on the world scene; North Korea isn't so much terrorist as simply crazy - if not in its use of manipulation, then at least in its construction and underpinnings) at the level of "making them decide it's bad to attack civilians" won't happen in the near future.

I also don't expect it could ever happen even if the US and the West had never once killed a civilian, even unintentionally - because "they did it so it's okay for us to do it" is not, to my understanding, part of the calculus of right and wrong being used.

(I concur that the Japanese bombings were A) valid military targets and point out that they B) saved Japanese lives compared to either an invasion or starving out a victory.

Dresden is a thornier issue... but on the other hand, plenty of people have been perfectly willing to say that the bombing of Dresden was, in fact, wrong. I'm uncertain, but also not sure it really matters.

Is there really a strong argument that the Dresden bombing was moral only because it shortened the war, rather than being wrong in any case, or moral because a military target even if it didn't?

Certainly this Wikiepedia article suggests military motivations for the bombings - one identical to the practice of artillery bombardment preparatory for an invasion, which was commonplace and unremarkable, to my knowledge, and another goal of disrupting communications and hindering troop movements (by targeting the rail yards in the middle of the city). ("Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things")

And if Dresden was, as the sources indicate, actually and intentionally a military target, then we're back to where we started.)

(I'm also deeply unsure what "the wounds of Colonialism" have to do with this. Are we talking about Algerians? Iran doesn't seem to be motivated by such wounds, does it? Saudia Arabia might be a creation of colonialism, but Wahhabism isn't a reaction to it, but predates it, and the pathology there seems unrelated.
And then there's the issue of terrorism in India, where those pesky Europeans came in late and didn't create the conflict at all, did they?)

Morally, it really is all about what your deliberate targets are, since if the certain but not intentional (in the philosophical sense, of it being the intent, not in the sense of it being "accidental" in that it could not be forseen, since it's known to be certain) killing of civilians makes warfare immoral, then there's the slight problem of being unable to fight against anyone who does not share that view, since they'll quite happily surround their every installation with civilians to prevent any attack (the "human shield" theory).

That makes for a vicious cycle, does it not? Those unconstrained by civilian deaths, even intentional ones, would thus run roughshod over those unwilling to cause a civilian death even without targeting civilians directly, or as an unavoidable effect of targeting a military target. The effect is very unlikely to be more moral than the state where civilians are not targeted by are unavoidably killed.

I suggest that this is not, however, a case of a "just goal achieved by unjust means", but that the means are just because they are the only way to prevent such a state of affairs - which is completely unjust - and that they are further not unjust because the civilians are not the target, even if they do die, and this is known to be the case beforehand.

We must be careful, when deciding what is just, that we don't design ourselves a utopia - what is just must be both possible and not a suicide pact, for reasons which should be obvious. If we declare that any civilian deaths that are certain, even if not the point of the attack, make it unjust, we have created such a suicidal utopia.

(My, that was long, wasn't it?)

Wars against terrorism are not started by governments; they are started by terrorists. The aim of terrorists is to "terrorize" the populace, not to fight the government's military. The role of government is to prevent such terrorization.

The current terrorists in the middle east are not attacking the Israeli military. Rather, they attack civilian gatherings, indiscriminately killing men, women and children, both Israeli and Palestinian. The current terrorists in Iraq, similarly, are indiscriminately killing men, women and children, mostly other muslims who do not share their committment to jihad, or are of a different muslim sect.

The Israeli military and the coalition forces in Iraq are not and have not been indiscriminate. They have focused very carefully on eliminating terrorists, and ultimately, terrorism. When the terrorism stops, the war against terror will also stop. If that does not happen until all of the terrorists are dead, so be it.

I seriously doubt that the alternate position would be acceptable; that is, that the Israeli military or the coalition forces begin killing indiscriminately because the other side is doing so; or, because indiscrimiate killing might scare the remaining populace into "giving up" the terrorists.

The Hiroshima / Nagasaki approach would certainly rapidly solve the instability in Baghdad and get the attention of the terrorists. Sawing Saddam's head off with a dull knife on national television would also get the terrorists attention.

We have not yet reached the stage where civilian deaths can be totally eliminated, but we have progressed a long way from Dresden.

The Iraqi people are realizing that fewer and fewer of the terrorists killing them are other Iraqis. They are also realizing that coalition troops will not kill large numbers of innocent civilians to kill one or two terrorists hiding among them.

Now we must convince the left tributary media (LTM) in the US, such as the "Rag of Record".

"...then it looks as if an important means to pursue justice is open to the strong alone and not to the weak"

Yeah...kinda sucks doesn't it.
Welcome to the real world, eh?

And the indifferent civilians that get caught in the middle...are they strong or weak? Oh...wait...they're dead.

If one takes as given that the radical Islamic cause is a just one, and that nothing can possibly be as important as converting the entire world to radical Islam(that's one whopper of an axiom, of course, but let's assume it for a second), then any method whatsoever that works is permissible. It's the same as when we assume that any other single cause is of ultimate importance, actually - we may regret what gets done to get there, but we'll do it, because the cause is all-important. The only criterion that matters is winning.

Basically, this is the logic that the Allies used when they slaughtered millions of innocent Germans and Japanese in the course of winning WW2 - let's not mince words here, it was mass murder. The reason why we did it was because winning the war was judged to be more important than those dead cities, and it was seen as being important enough to the war effort that the trade was worth it.

Now, don't assume I'm implying that Bomber Harris and Osama bin Laden are morally equivalent - far from it! The difference is a simple one. We were right, and they are wrong. Destroying fascism was an important enough goal to make the desth of several cities worth of noncombatants an acceptible cost, whereas a hangnail is too high a price to pay to forcibly convert the world to sharia law. Terrorists do what they do because they disagree with my judgement on that point, and the US does what they do because they judge that defeating terrorism is worth the assorted costs that they're paying to do so.

While I don't consider Wikipedia to be dispositive, this discussion of the laws of war seems appropriate.

“Some of the central principles underlying laws of war are:

That wars should be limited to achieving the political goals that started the war (e.g., territorial control) and should not include unnecessary destruction
That wars should be brought to an end as quickly as possible
That people and property that do not contribute to the war effort be protected against unnecessary destruction and hardship
To this end, laws of war are intended to mitigate the evils of war by:

Protecting both combatants and noncombatants from unnecessary suffering;
Safeguarding certain fundamental human rights of persons who fall into the hands of the enemy, particularly prisoners of war, the wounded and sick, and civilians; and
Facilitating the restoration of peace.”

From this basis, I believe that Mr. Bertram is completely off point. The purpose of jus in bello is not to establish what is morally right or wrong, but rather to attempt to limit the destruction and hardship of war. Reasoning from this basis, rather than from a philosophical consideration of right and wrong enables us to consider the acts you list on a more concrete basis.

Dresden and Tokyo – to me, the firebombing of these cities were not justified or at best a very borderline case. The purpose of these raids seems to me to have been as much a misguided attempt to defeat the will of the enemy by purposefully targeting civilians as to damage military targets. However, the intent of those who commanded these raids seems to me to be grey at worst.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki – arguably justified. The demonstration of a capacity for destruction beyond any that had ever been envisioned did hasten the end the war with Japan.

Accepting the deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians in order to liberate their countrymen – no war has ever been fought in which one of the belligerents has taken as much care to prevent damage to civilians. The war against Saddam was ended as soon as possible, it was limited to the political goals that started the war, and the US military seems to have attempted to protect against unnecessary destruction.

Islamic terror – includes unnecessary destruction, the purposeful targeting of people and property that do not contribute to the war effort, designed to inflict unnecessary suffering on noncombatants, and doesn’t facilitate the restoration of the peace.

Those who can not distinguish between Islamic terror and the other examples have truly lost their moral compass.

Regards,
Neil

The thing about the Israeli/Palestinian thing is that the Israelis, themselves, did the same sort of thing, back in the day.

For them to squeal and cry about being targeted by evil terrorists is kind of like Michael Corleone, grown old and rich and retired from the rackets, waxing indignant over those evil Italian-Americans in the Mob. Or Willie Sutton, in his old age, finding out that some no-good crooks robbed the bank where his savings were, and getting angry about it. When I hear the Israelis denouncing terrorism and attacks on civilians, I hear a whir in the background---the Irgun and Lehi (Stern Gang) men who were hanged for doing the same thing by the British, whirling in their graves at 1000 RPM.

Also---what _is_ an "innocent civilian?" Even when I'm not in my "Judge Dredd" mood---the one where I could probably find ways to indict Little Red Riding Hood---I have questions about this. Most, if not all, secular Israeli men serve in the army part-time. Is a soldier less a soldier because he's off-duty and maybe wearing civvies? What about someone who doesn't serve directly, but does work in, say, a munitions factory? Even the strictest "just war" theorists allow attacks on munitions factories, but those are manned almost completely by civilians.

If recourse to war is sometimes just—and just war theory says it is—but 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.

Well, yes. This is an explicit part of Just War theory, though, not something implicit that has to be reasoned out.

The Probability of Success criterion for the jus ad bellum portion of Just War theory says arms may not be used in a futile cause or in a case where disproportionate measures are required to achieve success. If it's futile to fight a war under jus in bello restrictions, you aren't eligible to engage in a Just War at all, but must pursue justice by other means.

One can respond by saying Just War theory is unjust, because it discriminates based on power. Its advocates will reply that it's merely the nature of reality; sometimes the real world is such that war to correct an injustice can only make things worse, and so war must be prohibited. At that point it becomes a philosophical debate over the nature of morality, and everybody can futilely rehash the last five centuries (at least) of moral philosophy without coming to a consensus.

Jane,

No doubt some of my readers are about to hop on my back for siding with the terrorists. But it is an interesting--and imperative--moral question: what to do if just aims can only be achieved by unjust means?

If those "aims" were moral and justified, then there would be so many others on your side to achieve your "aims", you wouldn't need to hide among the civilian population. You would have the United States on your side, not against you.

I think you need to read Bill Whittle's essay on Sanctuary. He says it much better than I ever could.

The author of the original piece neatly sidestepped the whole point. Historically, and practically, rules of warfare have nothing whatever to do with drawing room morality. Nothing. They have to do with reciprocity, a contract if you will, that boils down to "If you don't this kind of thing, we won't either."

The Geneva Convention explicitly conditions its protections on exactly that kind of reciprocity, which is the only way to ensure compliance.

On the Western Front Hitler complied (more or less) with the Geneva Conventions because the western allies did so (more or less). On the Eastern Front, neither side bothered, nor expected the other to, either, so the gloves came off. There are your positive and negative control experiments, showing that reciprocity can beneficially influence even a lunatic who was untouched by moral considerations.

The morality argument fails because, as you implied, notions of justice and morality depend critically on one's perspective (and culture), and hence provide a shaky basis indeed for judgment. Everyone thinks his cause is just.

The US military has indeed undertaken this war with restraint to avoid civilian casualties. We can do this because we have the most well-equipped military in the history of civilization. Iraqi insurgents do not have this luxury and are therefore reduced to using whatever means they can scrounge to fight against foreign occupation, those they see as collaborators with the occupiers, and against members of other groups they see as opponents in the ongoing civil war in Iraq.

Terrorists and insurgents in Iraq see that they do not have a choice in their fight against occupation and/or domination by an opposing sect. We however, had a choice, and the result of our tragic choice was the inevitable civil war that is going on right now. This ‘we’re right and they’re wrong’ attitude and the huffy indignation against the Iraqi resistance for remaining in the shadows and not fighting face to face (suicidally) is just childish. But, if it helps you sleep at night, then good for you.

I don't know how much I have to contribute to this discussion because I have not spent a lot of time reading about the philosophical underpinnings of war and the law of war. I spent my military time just trying to do my job to the best of my ability and coming to grips with the notion that I might die for my country.

But let me start with the best definition of terrorism that I have come up with: terrorists are those who deliberately target innocent civilians. Thus flying planes into the WTC is an act of terrorism but flying a plane into the Pentagon is not. Dresden and Tokyo were not acts of terrorism because Germany and Japan were at war with the U.S., and in war, there are no "innocent" civilians in the combatant countries. (Harsh but true.)

Once a country has surrendered, the civilians become "innocent" again for purposes of my definition. Thus the German reprisals in Norway against civilians in an attempt to stop the guerillas who kept fighting after their country were acts of terrorism. I heard a story of that time, which I will relate even though I don't know if it's true or not. The guerillas killed a German patrol, after which the local commandant killed teh residents of a Norwegian village. The guerillas then managed to explode a bomb aboard a German troopship killing about 1,500 German troops. The story goes that the guerilla leader sent a note to the German commandant saying, "Your turn."

So if the issue is when do guerillas become terrorists and not freedom fighters, my answer is when they start deliberately targeting innocent civilians.

I rather doubt Just War Doctrine would ever make much sense to a non-Christian. Historically, Just War as a concept was an attempt to allow Christians at least some moral recourse to violence in a dangerous (barbarians at the gates) world after several centuries of believe in absolute pacifism. 1st and 2nd century Christians were basically 100% pacifist, and there are sects today (Mennonite, Quaker, etc) that are still so. Even main-line Christian doctrine, while allowing for self-defense, grants non-violence a higher moral position.

Just War Doctrine absolutely states that it is better to submit to injustice than fight an unwinable war or one that could only be won with immoral tactics. It's hard enough for committed Christians to accept all this, so expecting non-Christians to accept any part of it, no matter the arguement, is not credible.

When it comes to making a convincing arguement against terrorism as a tactic, I wouldn't waste time argueing from Just War principles. In Iraq, the message will have to be "give up, it's pointless to resist", perhaps cloaked in the language of a truce. Just War is about how WE should act, not a tactic to constrain the choices of our enemies.

what to do if just aims can only be achieved by unjust means?


Just and unjust? You should start by defining a universal Just and the rest of the answers will fall into place. Since that's unpossible, let's just settle for the old axioms of:

"Might makes right"
"History is written by the victors"
"Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line."

As I understand the laws of war, the penalty for a combatant out of uniform in the field of combat is summary execution. This is a measure designed discourage hiding among civilians and reduce the loss of innocent life. The US, by failing to enforce this penalty, has increased the risk to civilian populations by encouraging this conduct. Enforcement would not completely remove the benefit of hiding among civilians but at least increases the cost of this abhorrent conduct.

i think the context is everything. in WWII, the populations of germany and japan were not innocent because entire nations -- almost all of the people and resources -- were at war. the treatment of prisoners/conquered by german and japaneese demonstrates pretty clearly there were no "innocents" in any meaningful sense of the word (civilians clearly were fair game, civilians were contributing enormously to the war effort, etc.). you'd be correct that bombing hiroshima and dresden was wrong if there'd just been some standing armies squaring off in a napleonic dance on some battelfield far from urban centres. but that wasn't the case. put another way, the contract between the nations was that all was fair in this war, because this one was for keeps. leaving aside the thorny issue of whether nations should be able to sell out their citizens in that way, they clearly can do so in a fascist dictatorship, let alone a democracy.

by contrast, with guerillas, it's rare that the entire populace/nation is at war with another nation. instead, it's some fairly small portion of the population actually at war, while others may be sympathetic or unsupportive. so there is generally no real "enemy" to attack other than specified individuals and organizations. similarly, there's no one to contract with, in part because the sides have such different strengths there's no way they will agree on how the conflict should proceed.

but don't kid yourself -- if islamic fascists succeed in exploding a nuke in a US city, there'll be hell to pay. that is, there's some calculus of harm vs. responsibility that plays into this (kind of a reverse pascal's wager). if there's enough harm, that will outweigh concerns about innocents, rules of engagement, etc.

Jayson: That's a cop-out. I don't expect everyone to agree on a moral code, but to be entirely devoid of one is an altogether nasty thing. Your statements may be true, but they cannot be the entirety of what a person believes, or even close to it.

Chris Bertram writes as though just war theory and jus in bello rules are meant to assure that wars have just outcomes -- i.e., that the "good guys" (however defined) can follow the rules and still prevail against an enemy that possesses superior skill and materiel. I have never understood either the theory or the rules to have anything to do with outcomes, and hence nothing Bertram describes "looks crazy" to me (except the part where he seems to award the moral high ground to the side that most regularly and avowedly violates the jus in bello rules).

I also have a different understanding than Stephen Poole of the asymmetric warfare in which we're currently engaged: I think we are fighting a military war in an effort to achieve short- and long-term political objectives in the areas in which we're fighting and the broader region, while our enemy is fighting a propaganda war, aimed at Western public opinion in general and the American electorate in particular, in an effort to thwart those political objectives. Poole's take is more amusing, though.

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.

Fighting a classic guerrilla war, hiding behind civilians, isn't necessarily any more "morally impermissible" than aerial bombing, in that it can be reasonably expected to cause innocent civilians to be killed. (Although you could argue that classic guerrilla theory is morally worse because getting civilians killed collaterally in a counterstrike against the guerrillas, thus inflaming them against the regular force, is often the guerrilla's specific intent.)

No, the point is not whether the tactics are moral or immoral. The point is that a person who believes his cause is so just as to justify the high risk of fighting a powerful army as a guerrilla, must further assume the risk of not being entitled to the protections the laws of war afford regular or uniformed irregular troops. Even though preventing all civilian casualties is impossible, the laws of war are set up to attempt to minimize them. The whole point of uniforms, etc. is to do so. If you don't accept the burden of wearing a uniform (i.e. walking around with a nice green "shoot me, not that kid playing soccer across the street), you can't claim the benefit (entitlement to be treated as a POW).

"...then it looks as if an important means to pursue justice is open to the strong alone and not to the weak"

Doesn't this sort of imply that the relative strengths of the parties involved has nothing to do with their morality and isn't this a fallacy? If the size of your forces is small (possibly just yourself, in the extreme case), isn't it just slightly possible that your cause isn't all that just?

Would our war against Islamofascism be asymetric if a sizeable fraction of the Islamic world was united in a desire to eradicate the US?

Also, don't the ends that a side is seeking have something to do with their morality? If I'm using a small force to in asymetric warefare to take on invaders hoping to enslave me, it seems that I have more inherent morality on my side than if I am using a small force asymetrically to, say, keep the police from arresting me for crimes.

In other words, there is a difference in morality between someone using terror to defend their homes from invaders with the intent to kill or enslave them and someone using terror to kill police who come into their neighborhood.

Ius bello exists by mutual agreement. If one party is forced into al qaeda mode where
1. there is no chain of command
2. there are no channels for communication between leadership and troops except the MSM.

then that party must resort to terrorism.

The only method the leadership has to communicate with the troops and with potential recruits is via the MSM. It would be nice to be able to write a treatise on war aims and justifications. OBL did this and no one in MSM printed/broadcast it.

If it bleeds, it leads. The only way to get guaranteed front page coverage is to kill lots of people. Terror helps, which is why scary movies are popular. Scary killing gets headlines; headlines bring "why they do it" stories; and boom the treatise is published, the troops get their mission and sociopathic recruits are recruited.

Terrorism will disappear if it is never reported. A terrorist act cannot cause terror if no one knows it happened. Close down the MSM and terrorism will disappear.

The thing about the Israeli/Palestinian thing is that the Israelis, themselves, did the same sort of thing, back in the day.

According to Jewish histories the destruction of the Temple was caused by the sin of causeless hatred. Palestinians should take note.

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.

It might look crazy to us, but didn't Osama say people are supposed to bet on the "strong horse"? By his standards, if we are strong enough to not need asymmetric tactics, his side should surrender.

According to Jewish histories the destruction of the Temple was caused by the sin of causeless hatred. Palestinians should take note.

I'm certain the Palestinians will go to great lengths to learn and adhere to Jewish histories...

Way back near the top, Buff Pilot said, "A6 is mostly correct. Just have to add one detail. The guerillas must be distinguishable from the surronding populance. Otherwise the greater powers forces don't know where to shoot and would be justified at gunning down all males of military age (14-65) near the firefight."

I'm not so sure... Deliberately using civilians as shields is clearly a no-no. (And very different from aerial bombing--sorry ProudDuck, I have to disagree)

On the other hand, attacking (otherwise legitimate targets) and disappearing has got to be okay, otherwise a resistance movement has to wear a uniform while in everyday life--that's just silly as we're back to the week having no option than to get their butts kicked by the strong. According to me (who has absolutely no authority on such things), the obligation is to minimize civilian casualties, not to ensure that the enemy is able to direct any reprisals solely on the resistance. To paraphrase, the guerillas must be distinguishable from the surrounding population when they attack.

Buff, I don't mean to nitpick, so if I'm just agreeing with you, my bad. :)

As I sit here contemplating my navel lint and reading these comments, I reflect back on my 23-years of service including two tours in Vietnam.

Why do people want to bring morality into warfare? Is that so they will feel better?

The Civil War began to be won when the civilian population of the South began to hurt. I suppose that today, Sherman's march through Georgia and Sheridan burning the Shenandoah would be looked upon as severe, but it worked.

In more recent times, the "greatest generation" routinely refused to take SS prisoners and the air force bombing was legendary. We (the US Army) didn't win in Vietnam because we refused to take the war to the North. I suspect that if we turned out the lights in Hanoi and went after the Red River dikes and demolished the food supply, that Uncle Ho might have reconsidered his little adventure in the South.

What I'm saying here, as nasty as it sounds, that when wars are fought brutally, they are won faster and the peace that follows will last longer. Look to the Roman legions for comparable examples.

As I used to say when I was on active duty, there ain't no military occupational speciality (MOS) for philosopher.

George

If one hides among the civilians to wage war on the Waffen SS, that is morally acceptable, if doing so has some utilitarian value is defeating the Waffen SS. Of course, the Waffen SS may respond to such a tactic in such a way that yields no utilitarian value to the tactic. This must be weighed as carefully as possible.

If one hides among the civilians to wage war on a enemy which is preventing you from re-instituting a Baathist dictatorship, or from forming some other form of despotism, then the tactic is morally unacceptable.

In other words, waging war in support of despotism, or waging war in support of the most dangerous desopt, as opposed to a less dangerous despot, is always morally unacceptable, whether one is weak or strong.

On the other hand, the choices that are presented in the Vale of Tears are often grim, indeed. Waging war in support of Stalin, in order to defeat Hitler, even if it means hiding among the civilan population? Morally acceptable. Waging war in support of Pol Pot, in order to defeat the despotism of the Lon Nol government, by any means at all? Morally unacceptable.

AughtSix: But if guerrillas can blend into a crowd, put on their "distinctive mark distinguishable at a distance" two seconds before they shoot, and then discard the uniform mark and blend instantly back into the crowd, the other side will have no choice but to respond in a way that is very likely to cause civilian casualties among the crowd. It's OK for guerrillas to "disappear," as you put it, by hiding in a cave. What they can't do is hide in a crowd, by blending in with it. Or to be more precise, if they do choose to hide that way, they're not entitled to protection by the laws of war.

Remember, the starting point in war is to compel the enemy to do your will, using whatever force is necessary to do so. "War means fightin', and fightin' means killin'." In order to try and minimize the human cost of war, societies have set up a few conditions on that primary rule, one of them being the right to surrender. Societies have also, in turn, traditionally attached conditions to that right, among them being certain rules designed to prevent combatants from hiding behind civilians by posing as them. If those conditions are not met, the primary rule of warfare -- "kill your enemy" -- comes back into play.

Thus, when an unlawful combatant is subject to summary execution, it's not because he's "immoral," any more than when a regular soldier is killed. Rather, it's because he is deemed not to be entitled to forbearance from the ordinary course of war, namely "you lose, you die." Simply put, if you don't accept the rules designed to temper the human costs of war, you aren't entitled to their protection. Nothing personal -- that's just basic equity.

AughtSix: But if guerrillas can blend into a crowd, put on their "distinctive mark distinguishable at a distance" two seconds before they shoot, and then discard the uniform mark and blend instantly back into the crowd, the other side will have no choice but to respond in a way that is very likely to cause civilian casualties among the crowd. It's OK for guerrillas to "disappear," as you put it, by hiding in a cave. What they can't do is hide in a crowd, by blending in with it. Or to be more precise, if they do choose to hide that way, they're not entitled to protection by the laws of war.

Remember, the starting point in war is to compel the enemy to do your will, using whatever force is necessary to do so. "War means fightin', and fightin' means killin'." In order to try and minimize the human cost of war, societies have set up a few conditions on that primary rule, one of them being the right to surrender. Societies have also, in turn, traditionally attached conditions to that right, among them being certain rules designed to prevent combatants from hiding behind civilians by posing as them. If those conditions are not met, the primary rule of warfare -- "kill your enemy" -- comes back into play.

Thus, when an unlawful combatant is subject to summary execution, it's not because he's "immoral," any more than when a regular soldier is killed. Rather, it's because he is deemed not to be entitled to forbearance from the ordinary course of war, namely "you lose, you die." Simply put, if you don't accept the rules designed to temper the human costs of war, you aren't entitled to their protection. Nothing personal -- that's just basic equity.

Patrick above does the best job of explaining why Bertram's premises are flawed. Augustine, the originator of "Just War Theory", would never have acknowledged any right of an instrumentality other than a legitimate authority to wage war. Period. The theory is about right action not about just or equitable outcomes.

Quite the contrary I think that Augustine would have argued that any taking up of arms by individuals or anything other than a legitimate government was itself a violation of justice.

Rex wrote; " ... But let me start with the best definition of terrorism that I have come up with: terrorists are those who deliberately target innocent civilians. Thus flying planes into the WTC is an act of terrorism but flying a plane into the Pentagon is not...."

I am going to put on a flame-proof jacket, and play devil's advocate: How can the (adult)citizens of a democracy ever be considered as 'innocent civilians'? If we really believe all the stuff about "government of the people, by the people, etc." then doesn't it follow that, when our government does something wrong, WE are morally responsible???

In other words, "We the People" are supposedly the sovereigns here, and all the government employees, from the President on down work for us. Not the other way around, Right?

Now, put yourself in the position of, say, an Iranian whose parents were tortured to death by the Shah (an American puppet). And for all his life, he has been taught that America is the "Great Satan," trying to destroy his country, his culture, his religion, etc.

From **HIS** point of view, if it is morally justified to attack America's soldiers, why isn't it equally moral to attack the soldiers' bosses, i.e. the Citizens who (indirectly) give the soldiers their orders???

It would be a totally different situation for, say, the citizens of Imperial Japan during WW2; they had no control at all over he actions of their government, so they truly were "innocent" civilians.

This is not a complicated question, Jane.

War is a nasty business, yes, and to make it less nasty we've put in various safeguards to limit civilian deaths.

Soldiers are in the business of killing and being killed. Civilians should be spared to the extent possible.

The US code of war tries to minimize civilian casualties. The terrorist code of conduct tries to maximize civilian casualties.

Dressing up in uniform minimizes civilian casualties (since you are no using them as sheilds). Hiding amongst civilians (the terrorist tactic) maximizes civilian casualties.

Saying that "if I fight fair I lose so I refuse to fight fair" is understandable, but by doing so you are maximizing civilian casualties and, therefore you should be punished more severely for making that choice by, as an example, losing Geneva Convention priviledges.

"If Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were not wrong because they hastened the end of the war, then why is Islamic terror different if it achieves aims that seem to the perpetrators to be at least equally just?"

Because if it all just comes down to picking a side, then pick one.

-winterspeak

Technomad,

Members of Lechi and the Irgun were hanged for attacking British soldiers, for the most part. Not exclusively, and not all the time, but there was never a campaign of slaughter against British or Arab civilians. And still, those two groups were considered extreme, and won themselves the scorn of mainstream Zionists at the time. Compare this to Hamas, which prides itself on its commitment to kill or enslave and convert every last Jew, and to a society that idolizes suicide bombers for killing and maiming as many Jewish civilians as they could.

So rest easy. The whirring you hear is just in your head, and while there may be good reasons for the dead to spin in their graves, Israeli indignation over Palestinian terrorism is not one of them.

I read this as sort of a thought experiment. Clearly, we all think the aims of al-qaeda are bad aims, and so any ethical evaluation of what they're doing must conclude that the cause is unjust so the means are irrelevant.

But what if your side, with the just cause, was weaker? Weaker sides resort to assymmetric warfare, and guerrilla tactics, and sometimes terrorism. What if killing enemy civilians was the only way to achieve--not the unjust goal of the terrorists--but the just goals that we have?

Some folks here have said that you do have to be brutal in war and that this brutality is a lesser evil. If that's so, then is Just War Theory as Jane describes it full of baloney? It forbids a lot of stuff but that's just a luxury for strong actors. The weak have to do what is necessary.

-- Well, that's what I think she's saying anyway.

Hillbillies don't give up.
You have to kill them one by one and it's too much trouble. The Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Mongols, the French, and the Turks all conquered Palestine and all eventually gave up and went home.
Only the Arabs managed to conquer Palestine and that was by convincing the Palestinians that they were now Arabs instead of Jews.
And even that took almost a hundred years.

ProudDuck,

Summary execution would be an acceptable punishment for someone found to be in such a guerilla/resistance/what-have-you group. Take the French resistance in World War Two. I've got no problems with them (well, that I know of). They carried out attacks now and then, moved within the civilian population, but didn't go around killing German civilians. I, frankly, don't much care what the combatants do when they're not actively fighting. (Hiding in a cave, "hiding" in a city, whatever.) I understand your point, and I can't say I'm doing much more than nitpicking. It's just that I put the vast majority of the weight on not dileberately targeting civilians. If you don't target civilians, then the rest is more or less gravy. Set ambushes for soldiers, blow up military infrastructure, whatever, even if some civilian casualties result (And I'll agree or disagree based on their aims, not their methods). But civilians as targets are off limits.

I would, probably, more greatly respect the "Red Dawn" sort of guerrilla than the one who hides in a city, but, frankly, that's more a function of geography than tactics.

If millions of muslims still feel themselves to be victims of colonialism, then they should study the example of Mahatma Gandhi, who successfully fought colonialism without killing anyone. You can 'fight' a democracy through ideas if you're dedicated enough and if those ideas are truly superior (ah, there's the rub...).

The terrorists are killing civilians because they think that it's the easiest, quickest way to get what they want, not because it's literally the only way to achieve their goals. They can't take such a shortcut and still claim high moral ground.

The CT post conflates asymmetry with violations of the laws of war. If you think you have a just cause and don't have conventional forces, IEDs, DDOS attacks,etc, etc are jus in bello if the same restrictions apply to their use as apply to your conventional opponents. This is true if you're a guerilla, "provisional government" or whatever, so long as you meet the GC standards.

The CT post seems to imply that the US claims that asymmetric opponents (presumably AQ and the Iraqi Sunnis) aren't playing fair. This isn't the case. Asymmetry is something you plan for and deal with. 9/11, 3/11, 7/07, 7/11, bombs in Shia mosques, etc, etc aren't asymmetrical warfare. They're law-of-war violations and punishable as such.

WWII Allied strategic bombing is morally deplorable but almost certainly legal under contemporary law. Anyone arguing otherwise might want to speak to Putin about the default target sets for Russian strategic forces. More to the point, a Sunni IED targeting US or Iraqi forces that kills civilians may well be jus in bello. One targeted at a Shia mosque isn't. To make the distinction sharper: the 9/11 attacks on the WTC were pretty certainly illegal under the laws of war, unless you really stretch. But what about the attack on the Pentagon? Were the civilians on the aircraft legally acceptable collateral casualties in an attack on a military target? Does the hijackers' not wearing uniforms, etc vitiate any jus in bello rationale? I think so, but it's not a slam dunk, to paraphrase someone.

Hi -

Two points.

First: the goal of the insurgent is to win the hearts and minds of those he sees as oppressed, to radicalize them into becoming as he is. This means that for the insurgent, the use of terror, as long as it is either non-ascribable (anonymous death squads) or directly from the opponent, is a fundamental part of his panopoly of tools. He needs to radicalize the population, turning them into terrorists themselves, in order to win. This means that everything is fair, in his eyes, as long as the hated, existing government and society is destroyed and he, as a revolutionary elite, can recreate society in the way that he wants. I'm simplifying here, but this is fundamental to the ways that urban terrorists operate.

In other words, the terrorist, the insurgent, doesn't give a rat's crap about how he achieves his goal: the goal is taking power. Everything else is secondary. This is part of the legacy that the generation of communist training of 3rd-world terrorists by the former SovUnion has left us: this is part and parcel of how the Sovs trained their useful idiots to destabilize countries in order to achieve the revolution. If anything, you targeted the opponent's morality directly, get him to do terrible things in order to drive a moral dagger into his heart to destroy his will to resist. If he didn't do it, if he was strong enough to refuse to be manipulated into blowing up schools and churches that you were using, if his soldiers were so good that they would shoot between the human shields in order to get you, well then you create atrocities and get useful idiots to make it look like your opponent did it instead of you.

Second: the goal of the non-insurgent is to win the hearts and minds of the people, to get them to collectively deny and reject the terrorists. This is heavily dependent upon the structure of society: if you have a largely intact society, this is relatively easy, especially if the terrorists really don't have a base to operate from and really don't have legitimate grievances (like Baader-Meinhof in Germany).

The problem is when the society involved is in tatters, as it is in Iraq, as it was to a certain extent in Vietnam. Then you have the joint task of reconstructing society **while** denying the enemy the necessary radicalization at the same time. This is much, much more difficult than what the insurgenet must do: he must merely destroy; you must not merely prevent the destruction, but also aid in the reconstruction.

This is part of the asymmetric nature of the conflict. It's not just that one side has all the neat toys and walks the walk, forcing poor Mr. Terrorist to hide and skulk (a rather irresponsible romanticisation of how terrorists work!); it's much more that Mr. Terrorist has a vastly simpler job, of using terror and the ensuing intimidation to dominate the situation. That's his advantage in the asymmetric side of the story.

So, given this, the key question becomes: are we even talking the same language here? Those perpetrating terror see their aims as being absolutely just, of having perfect and indeed moral certainty that their aims are just, that the society they are destroying is not one that is just and therefore MUST be destroyed (otherwise they'd not have bothered!).

But their goal is the destruction of the existing system. That is the difference, the fundamental and core difference. They are not interested in the niceties of restoring pre-war borders, or of returning territories once lost, or stopping genocide, or any such goal. They are only interested in destruction and acquiescence, and indeed have moved violence from the military to the population in order to force the issue.

The difference is fundamental: on the one side you have existing societies with their inherent problems, contradictions and conflicts. Wars may be fought, but tradition has it that you have a winner and a loser and that you no longer behave like a barbarian, slaughtering and depopulating in order to destroy your enemy.

On the other side you have the destroyers and nihilists, those who hate societies so much that they will do literally anything to destroy their structures. They are, literally, outside the realm of civilization.

And failing to see the fundamental difference between the two is an act of appalling political and cultural blindness.

If Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were not wrong because they hastened the end of the war, then why is Islamic terror different if it achieves aims that seem to the perpetrators to be at least equally just? If we cannot answer this in a convincing way--convincing to millions of muslims

Maybe we need to convince them that the aim of Islamic terrorists - subjugating first the Middle East, and ultimately the world, to a tyrannical theocracy modeled on the 7th-century Muslim Caliphate - is not just?

Justness aside, Allied victory in WWII was not a hopeless cause. If it was, Dresden, Hiroshima, etc. would be nothing more than massacres perpetrated out of hatred. Also, I believe these targets were selected to cripple the enemies' ability to continue with their war effort, not simply to kill civilians. Finally, it can be argued that these massive attacks saved more lives than they took. I believe that was a major justification for using the atomic weapons, at least - Japan’s situation was grim, but incredible as it seems, their military leadership was hell-bent on fighting to the bitter end. A land invasion by the US and Soviet Union (which had just entered the war) would have cost millions of military and civilian lives, and devastated the country.

Apply the same tests to acts perpetrated by al Qaeda:

Is their cause hopeless? That is, will the death and destruction they bring ultimately achieve anything besides death and destruction? Ultimately, I think it is hopeless, though they may win minor victories through appeasement along the way (e.g. Spain's withdrawal of troops from Iraq, following the Madrid bombings).

Do they strike at targets that have anything to do with crippling their enemies' (i.e. the US specifically, but non-theocratic democracies that generally uphold the concepts of natural rights and liberty) combat capabilities, or do they mainly just try to murder a lot of random civilians? One possible retort is to claim that they don't have the capability to strike legitimate targets, so they are forced to kill civilians. In that case, see above regarding hopeless causes.

If their cause is not hopeless, is the massacre of civilians via terrorism a tactic to expedite victory and ultimately save more lives (Muslim and/or non-Muslim) than it takes? An answer in the affirmative would be laughable.

If the West was, say, perpetrating genocide against Muslims, and if it seemed that terrorist acts against random Western citizens had a legitimate shot at ending their government's genocidal policies (rather than just killing more innocent non-combatants in a hopeless cause, which is more likely), then I guess I would have to say that the terrorists were justified in pursuing this end, and justified in using the only means available to them (albeit a tragic one) to achieve it.

As it stands, I do not believe that Islamic terrorists are fighting for a just cause (though the so-called "Arab street" remains ambivalent or even supportive of them, and we do need to win their hearts and minds), and I also believe it's a hopeless cause. It's hard to see, for example, how the destruction of the World Trade Center achieved anything for al Qaeda and it's supporters besides a sick glee at having murdered thousands of Americans.

I fail to see why killing young conscripts instead of the civilians that sent them is morally superior.

Just to expand a little on the Hiroshima/Dresden thing - it seems to me the moral question also hinges on the technology available. In both Dresden and Hiroshima, a great deal of industry was farmed out among small facilities dispersed among the civilian population. If the Allies had the means to a) accurately identify where those facilities were and b) deliver a bomb to that site with minimal collateral damage, there's no question that a large-scale firebomb or nuclear attack is utterly immoral since you have the option of accomplishing the same ends with much less collateral damage. That wasn't the case then so you saw wide-area bombing attacks. It is the case now to a much larger extent, so you see bombs aimed at specific places with the intent of sparing as much collateral damage as possible. So on this basis, an insurgent IED detonated by a convoy is a moral attack; a car bomb into a civilian market is not.

The second issue I'll raise is the question of policy. In WWII, policy expressed by the highest levels of both the German and Japanese governments not only tolerated atrocities, but explicitly stated that those sort of things were to be done (e.g. SS on the Eastern Front, Japan in pretty much any treatment of POWs). The US had no such stated policy of which I'm aware. At the front line level, atrocities will occur; that's just how it is. The question is whether such things are part and parcel of the overall policy of the agency.

I'd argue that if you have the technology to do better but your policy is to deliberately avoid using that technology or is to pervert it in order to maximize collateral damage, then you are in fact a Bad Guy and fitting subject of jus bello.

One more thing about Hiroshima, Dresden, et al.: Even though those massacres hastened the end of the war (or arguably did, in Dresden's case), they would probably not have been justified if the Axis hadn't already upped the ante to total war. By the time of the attacks on Dresden and Hiroshima (1945), the Axis powers had already made it perfectly clear that civilian populations were fair game. Thus, Nanking, Rotterdam, the Blitz, etc. were immoral, because they escalated World War II beyond what had theretofore been considered the acceptable bounds of warfare, and Dresden and Hiroshima were not. Just as an unjustified use of deadly force becomes justified once the other side ups the ante from fists to guns, once it was clear that the Axis was fighting a total war, the Allies were justified in playing by the new rules.

(Of course, due to the Allies' ultimately greater military ability, matching the Axis' depredations on civilians amounted to "I'll see you and raise you 10." Lancasters and B-17s turned out to be much better at burning cities than the Germans' little Dorniers and Heinkels.)

Japan may be a little tougher case, because while they gave the Nazis a run for their money in their treatment of the Chinese, they never really had much success in mass-murdering other Allied civilians. To justify Hiroshima, it's probably necessary to treat the Allies and Axis collectively, with an injury against one Ally being an injury against all and an atrocity by one Axis power as an atrocity by all.

None of this matters. AQ et al view this as a war to the knife, where any and all tactics are legitimate. Their stated desire is to exterminate the jews and to kill or convert the heathens (including Shia, Sufi, and Ismaili muslims as wel as those Sunni who are insufficiently Wahabbist for their tastes). We can expect no quarter.

Is our determination to survive and not convert moral? This is the question that Crooked Timber is asking. For the most part the folks over there do not believe the "silly brown people", projecting their racism onto those of us who do take OBL, LET, JIT, AM, HAMAS, Hezbollah, HIT, AAMB, MILF, PFLP... seriously. If it's just a bunch of crackers getting their panties in a twist, then of course we're immoral for complaining and should accede to the "real" demands of Islamists and we can all live in peace and harmony, with unicorns and rainbows and jelly bean rain.

The alternative is to try to exterminate the guerillas without requiring a full scale war, not for the sake of the populace, but for our own. At this point, I'm quite ready to bring back the old rules of war. We should really be experimenting with crucifixion as a means of social control, Roman agricultural practices in the Carthaginian territories, and political reform attempts by Hulagu Khan in 13th century Baghdad. Providing the Islamists with the full benefits of reciprocity for their tactics, based completely on all known laws of war prior to Socialist and Nihillist infiltration and sabotage of the West starting in the early 1900s.

As they sowed, so shall they reap, and they fully deserve to reap the great whirlwind.

Hey, LOL that was good! This also points out the real mistake the Islamist made. Right now the west is trying to reform radical fascist Islam by providing an example in Iraq/Afghanistan and counterpointing that to the 'success' of such countries as Iran. What the terrorist are most scared of is that in 20 years Iraq will look like a S. Korea or Japan or Germany did after 20 years. Then Iran will look a lot like N. Korea in comparison and they WILL lose the hearts and minds of the people who will chose prosperity / freedom / etc that the west has to offer vs. the 14th century 'future' that OBL and his ilk off. We are doing that with kid gloves right now.

If the terrorists do set off a nuke in the US or France or Russia they can expect a fury that they will not be able to stop similar to our actions in WWII, except with nukes. I gather that the terrorists want a full out war with the west. If that actually happened I would expect Islam as a religion to end along with a big chunk of the current adherents. (And we can do it).

BTW, even though we interned a large number of US Japanese citicens during WWII, they supplied enough soldiers to outfit one of the most highly decorated regiments in the European theater. Where are the arab speaking US Islamic citizens?

wkwillis - Its an all-volunteer force, no conscripts and you are one of the civilians..

Japan may be a little tougher case, because while they gave the Nazis a run for their money in their treatment of the Chinese, they never really had much success in mass-murdering other Allied civilians

Oh, they did a reasonable job in the Philippines; the death toll for Filipinos in WWII was somewhere between 1 in 16 and 1 in 18.

Lunatic: Point taken.

There is, of course, no reasonable justification for Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Tokyo. The targetting of the civilian populations of these cities was an act of murderous barbarity. Anyone who would justify deliberately burning alive babies, women and children has completely lost touch with their moral center.

If Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were not wrong because they hastened the end of the war, then why is Islamic terror different if it achieves aims that seem to the perpetrators to be at least equally just?

Because they are wrong in thinking that their aims are equally just.

Anyone who would justify deliberately burning alive babies, women and children has completely lost touch with their moral center. - Matthew Cromer

Not to mention the poor defenseless kittens!! I suppose no men died in those attacks, and if they did, it was no big deal?

In your moral calculus, how many lives of American, Soviet, and Japanese soldiers were equivalent to one Japanese baby, woman, or child? And while we're at it, how many of the latter would have died in a mainland invasion anyway?

It must be easy to live in a fantasy world where there are no difficult trade-offs.

The justification for Dresden was Coventry and London. The laws of war allow you to break the rule your enemy did as a demonstration that their rule breaking will not be tolerated, call it the Zidane exception if you like. You can't very well expect them to change by saying, 'Point of order!' To an extent of course, you fight as you are. America is pragmatic; Hiroshima and Nagasaki 'worked.' In part this may have been because, Japan was a 'face or shame culture.' Faced with 'coup de gras,' Japan could capitulate and still have face. Thus, in a way, the 'morality' of it depended on the military situation and the psychological reality of our enemy.

"If those "aims" were moral and justified, then there would be so many others on your side to achieve your "aims", you wouldn't need to hide among the civilian population. You would have the United States on your side, not against you."

Posted by: Paul

Wow.

Buffpilot: "Hey, LOL that was good! This also points out the real mistake the Islamist made. Right now the west is trying to reform radical fascist Islam by providing an example in Iraq/Afghanistan and counterpointing that to the 'success' of such countries as Iran. What the terrorist are most scared of is that in 20 years Iraq will look like a S. Korea or Japan or Germany did after 20 years. Then Iran will look a lot like N. Korea in comparison and they WILL lose the hearts and minds of the people who will chose prosperity / freedom / etc that the west has to offer vs. the 14th century 'future' that OBL and his ilk off. We are doing that with kid gloves right now."

Air Force, the goal of the administration was never to help Iraq or Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the goal was to satisfy the desire for revenge for 9/11; once that was (a little bit) done, the administration started pulling critical assets out for Iraq. In Iraq the goal was to obtain a useful client state; democracy was plan 'C', after Sistani explained reality to the administration. Plan A was Chalabi as man on horseback; plan B was to run Iraq as a military dictatorship for a few years.

Of course, for some reason many in the Middle East saw this as the USA deciding to skip the often-troublesome puppet dictator, and to run things directly. Odd, but that fits in with reality much better than US rhetoric.

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