A necessary moral equivalence
“We are all Lebanese now.”
That is not a phrase likely to be heard coming from any American politician or official of either party, much less from any professional pundit. It is the sort of phrase that people utter when they see devastating attacks that kill and maim innocent civilians, but it is not the solidarity extended to the innocent in states that are at war with our government or with one of our allies. As I have read about and seen pictures of the damage from the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, it occurred to me to ask myself why there was not the same sense of goodwill and charity towards the innocent who have suffered death, injury or displacement. I still do not have a satisfactory answer.
In the days and weeks after terror attacks on friendly nations, be they in Madrid or London, the American responses included, of course, criticism of government policy and security measures and scrutiny of the Islamic terrorists who committed the atrocities — but there was also an outpouring of grief and sympathy for their victims. It became fashionable for a time to refer to the British as “our cousins” once again, and on the Right, praise of British stoicism knew no bounds. You did not have pundits and talking heads only too eager to dismiss the dead, wounded and displaced with a mix of indifference, the sentiment of “they’re all guilty, they had it coming,” and the cynic’s reply that “it’s terrible, but these things happen.”
In the case of Lebanon, the enthusiastic endorsement of Israel’s campaign by some Americans has been rather astonishing, as has the stunning lack of sympathy and, in some cases, outright contempt for the people of Lebanon of all sects. In every other comparable situation, the claim that we should not “blame the victim” will always be heard, but here the victims have been grouped together with Israel’s enemy in an indistinguishable mass and made to suffer the consequences for things they did not do and of which the vast majority of them had no knowledge whatever.
Perhaps most shocking of the cynical replies have been the responses that cite the fire-bombing and nuclear attacks of World War II as the appropriate standard by which to judge what is and is not “disproportionate” and justified, as if to say that the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians was legitimate, or that the same treatment of Lebanon would be desirable and laudable. The bottom line, coming from such prominent “conservative” writers as Thomas Sowell and Charles Krauthammer, was that America had done far worse to civilian populations, because things like Dresden and Hiroshima were supposedly “necessary” for victory. Besides being historically false and morally repugnant, these columnists’ arguments took to an extreme logical conclusion a more general sentiment that extends beyond a mere double standard in concern for innocent victims of war (or the lack thereof) when they are on the “other side.” This is not a recent phenomenon: whenever faced with the human toll from Iraq sanctions, policymakers, pundits and ordinary citizens alike would routinely insist that all of it was really Hussein’s fault because of his despotism, his lack of cooperation, and so on.
If our civilians are targeted here or abroad, Americans reflexively pounce on those who suggest government policy may have had something indirectly to do with it, they decry as outrageous any suggestion that the victims brought it on themselves and they refuse to make excuses that minimize the loss of life. I submit that these responses are, within reason, natural and understandable — and they are also completely absent when innocents are suffering at the hands of an allied government or as a result of U.S. policy. This is troubling, not least because it implicitly identifies the people with the state or, even more perplexingly in Lebanon, with a terrorist group with which most of the population have nothing to do and which most of the population despises.
In a spirit of solidarity, after September 11, Le Monde famously declared in a front-page headline, “Nous sommes tous americaines!” More recently, RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman was met with both cheers and, later, with only a very few critiques when he declared at the outset of Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, “We are all Israelis now.” In both cases, the message was simple, exaggerated . . . and ludicrous in its way. It is ludicrous because, no matter the feelings of goodwill and solidarity, we cannot seriously identify ourselves with another nation, nor can they identify themselves with us, because in so many respects every nation, every people is significantly different in meaningful ways that precludes an identification of any two. The fundamental differences between nations also prevent a ready and reflexive identification of the interests of any two nations on the basis of decent moral outrage at evils perpetrated on another people’s civilians.
The impossibility of such an identification does not absolve us of the obligation to condemn and, insofar as it is possible, oppose excesses and outrages in war, but it also points to the truth that our outrage, if it is as genuine as it should be, cannot be selective or one-sided and should not prefer the innocent of one side over the innocent of the other. If we are unwilling to excuse the deaths of civilians on one side by referring back to what their government has done in the past, we must also refuse to excuse the deaths of civilians on the other. This is what some critics may call moral equivalence, and well they might, since the lives of innocent civilians on both sides of a conflict are morally equivalent and of equal moral significance. Try to undermine or compromise that truth and you are that bit closer to allowing terrorist methods a small dose of legitimacy or justifiability.
Daniel Larison, a Ph.D. student in Byzantine history at the University of Chicago has written for Chronicles and The New Pantagruel. He blogs at Eunomia.
3 Comments - add your own
Alex Cacioppo — August 15, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Mr. Larison:
Toward that “spirit of solidarity”, my sympathies from the beginning lay with the Israelis and Lebanese.
You’re right; it is not moral equivalence, nor does it even approach it, to recognize that a civilian on any front is of the same moral weight.
It is surely a marker of how insane times have become when stating obvious realities is condemned as radical by the intelligensia.
Thanks.
Alan Gura — August 17, 2006 at 9:53 am
And where is your sense of outrage and sympathy regarding the Israeli civilian deaths, the million or more Israelis internally displaced or in bomb shelters for a month? Do those pictures ever tug at your heart? Do they even make the news you watch?
It is ridiculous and absurd to suggest that there is no sympathy for the Lebanese. Any fair view of world media reveals it is obsessed with civilian death on the Lebanese side, and blames Israel for causing them. Your very post describes how you’ve seen these reports and they’ve upset you.
Against this current, it is not unreasonable to remember that yes, unfortunate civilian deaths are a consequence of any war, but that the fact a civilian has died does not mean his death was intended by the side whose force was the immediate proximate cause of the death.
That’s not an “excuse that minimizes the loss of life.” It is a reminder that blame has to be assigned rationally, not on the basis of reflexive and irrational emotion.
The facts are that Israel was attacked by a genocidal terrorist group which murdered 8 people and kidnapped two others (where’s the Red Cross? Where’s the Geneva Convention?), while simultaneously launching rockets at civilian population centers. These were all war crimes.
Israel had to defend itself. It is regrettable that civilians died as a consequence but the fault lies with Hezbollah and the Lebanese, Syrian, and Iranian governments.
And yes, it is impermissible moral equivalence to blame Israel as much as or, as is usually the case, MORE than the aggressors, for causing civilians harm.
Meanwhile, how many civilians have died in Darfur? What about Chechnya? Do you have any sympathy for those civilians? Aren’t some of THEM being deliberately targeted? How just are those wars? Even in Iraq, does the US take the same level of precautions to minimize civilian deaths that Israel did in Lebanon?
*ALL* civilian deaths in war are regrettable. Even Israeli civilians, and those not killed by legitimate Israeli defensive action.
senatortombstone — August 20, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Hopefully, Daniel Larison is not the typical product of the University of Chicago’s History Ph.D. program; because if he were, it would not speak well of the ÃÂââ?ìà?credentialsÃÂââ?ìÃÂàof any other student emerging from same program.
He is simply wrong when he disagrees with the sensible position that the blame for the deaths of civilians in war is on the initiator of force.
In the case of the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein is the initial aggressor because he refused to comply with 18 U.N. resolutions, continuously fired at our spy planes, and refused to grant full access to U.N. weapon inspectors.
Hussein forced the US’s hand, and because of that, the blame for every Iraqi and coalition death during the course of this conflict is on him.
An analogy to this might be the police officer who accidentally shoots a civilian being held hostage by a bank robber, when he actually intended to shoot the hostage taker. While the police officer’s bullet may have caused the injury to the civilian, it never would have been fired in the first place had the robber not illegally initiated force. No rational, fair-minded person would blame the police officer for whatever harm befell the hostage. A rational person would hold the initial aggressor (i.e. robber) responsible for all damages and loss of life because he is the one who imperiled the lives of the hostages.
It is the same case with the Iraqi war and Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. Both Hussein and Hezbollah put other people’s lives in peril because of their criminal actions.
The next fallacy to address is the assumption that civilians are innocent by default.
Adolf Hitler was beloved by the majority of the German people, who knew full well of the evil he was perpetrating. They had no problem with the genocide of the Jews and other ÃÂââ?ìà?untermenschen.ÃÂââ?ìÃÂàThey hoped and prayed for an Axis conquest of the world. This included possible 35,000 Germans who were killed during the bombing of Dresden. This is what Winston Churchill had to say about it: ÃÂââ?ìà?I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.ÃÂââ?ìÃÂàIt is interesting to note that several hundred Jews were able to escape Dresden during the chaos, and some were used to help in the rebuilding of the city. In both instances, some Jews escaped dying in a concentration camp.
It is the same case with the fire bombings of Tokyo and the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The majority of the Japanese worshipped the emperor as a god and were willing to fight to death to defend him and Japan. They may not have been armed combatants, but they were by no means innocent.
Hezbollah enjoys a strong showing of support amongst Lebanese Muslims. In the general election of 2005, it won 14 seats nationwide (of 128 total), and an Amal-Hezbollah alliance won all 23 seats in Southern Lebanon.
Indeed, Hezbollah would not be capable of what it is, if it weren’t for support from Lebanese Muslims (and Iran).
So to say that civilians are automatically innocent and not legitimate targets is just plain stupid. It is the civilians who give moral support to their military, and because of that, they are indeed legitimate targets.
Also keep in mind that in any war there are two objectives:
1) Completely eliminate your enemy’s ability to wage war against you.
2) Completely eliminate your enemy’s desire to wage war against you.
Sadly, often times to accomplish this requires a tremendous amount of devastating force that leaves an enormous number of casualties, but in light of the alternatives, this is the optimal choice.
Lastly, why do we only claim solidarity with Israel and other Western nations victimized by Islamic terrorism and not everyone who is the victim of violence?
Israel, Great Britain, and the US have one specific thing in common: we have all been victims of Islamic terrorism; so yes, we can sympathize with the victims of 7/7 and those of hundreds of Palestinian murder bombings.
Why didn’t the Palestinians claim solidarity with the US by saying that they were all Americans? Oh that’s right, they were too busy celebrating the attacks.
It would be ridiculous for the US to claim solidarity with our Muslim enemies.