Princeton prof discusses the moral choices in ME conflict
By Michele Alperin
March 14, 2008

Michael Walzer, a political philosopher and professor emeritus of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, spoke to a crowd of 100 about "War and Death: Reflections on Lebanon 2006" March 9 at the Jewish Center in Princeton.

All civil and religious traditions express horror at civilian deaths during a war, Walzer said, citing early Jewish and Muslim texts calling for a distinction between killing soldiers and civilians.

But when thinking about bystander deaths and, indeed, when using those deaths to make a political point, it is the images of children, with their "obvious, palpable innocence," who best represent the consequences of war, he noted.

Yet, Walzer warned that the death of innocents is not necessarily a reason to condemn a particular war.

"The difficulty is that this argument can be made about any war, one of aggression or self-defense, to conquer a country or rescue it, to defend an empire or stop a massacre -- children die in all those wars," Walzer said.

So the argument about children is heartrending and must be considered, but it is by far not the only consideration, according to Walzer.

"What if stopping fighting now means victory for a conquering army or a government bent on mass murder?" he asked. "Should we still be persuaded by those pictures?"

Because of the terrible cost in innocent life, all war is abhorrent, but avoiding war through surrender, appeasing a deadly enemy, or postponing fighting, may or may not be appropriate, he said.

"Sometimes doing these things will produce even more dead children," Walzer stated. "Sometimes it is morally necessary to fight."

After the carnage of World War II, a fierce aversion to war developed, along with revised ethical analyses that put such stringent limitations on civilian deaths that it is nearly impossible to find a battle that can be justified, Walzer said.

But sometimes it is necessary to fight, and not doing so can do even more damage. He cited, for example, the reluctance of France and England to rearm in the face of the Nazi threat.

But when it is necessary to fight -- for example, to stop the Nazis -- it is necessary to kill, and this is where just war theorists step in.

One criterion long in place for determining whether civilian deaths are justified is "proportionality" -- are the deaths somehow commensurate with the goal of a military action? This principle appears even in the book of Exodus in laws of self-defense with regard to intruders. A nighttime intruder is considered a threat to one's life and a householder is allowed to kill in self-defense. But this is not true of a daytime thief. The idea is that the extent of the householder's response must be proportionate to the danger he is in, and darkness was considered more dangerous.

The difficulty, however, is answering the question "proportional to what?"

Walzer reported that at the end of the first week of the 2006 Lebanon war, Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, claimed that the war itself was just -- because Israel had the right to defend herself when attacked; but he insisted that Israel's response was disproportionate and excessive, hence Israel was not fighting justly. But Walzer pointed out that Annan never gave a measure of proportionality to justify his arguments.

So, Walzer asked, what number of civilian deaths is proportional to the value of destroying a Hezbollah base in Lebanon? He maintained that people who talk about proportionality don't make a serious attempt to answer questions like this, but emphasized that they must be addressed.

Walzer explained that the doctrine of reprisals in just war theory demands exact proportionality -- if eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two captured, then eight Hezbollah soldiers could be killed and two captured. Then the captives could be exchanged and Hezbollah would be deterred by the fact that its violence was exactly matched by that of the opposing army.

So goes the theory, but reality is always different. Since Hezbollah's leadership was intact and may be ready to fight again with greater force, maybe the appropriate measure of proportionality is the value of reducing Hezbollah's arsenal in order to protect millions of Israelis from future attack. But this measure, he said, would allow for far too many civilian deaths.

Since there are no good answers to the question of how many civilian deaths meet a criterion of proportionality, Walzer brought in a different criterion -- responsibility -- which he believes needs to come before proportionality.

He cited an example from World War II where the Germans were operating a heavy water plant in Norway that was vital to their effort to produce an atomic bomb. The plant needed to be destroyed, but it was in the center of a town. Walzer maintained that an argument strictly from proportionality would justify an air attack, no matter how many civilians would die.

But the Allies decided instead to send in commandos. As a result, thirty-four British soldiers died on the first failed attempt -- although the second try succeeded with no losses. The Allied decision makers, Walzer said, felt they had a responsibility not to kill civilians, so they risked their own soldiers.

Later in the war, however, the plant went back into production and because security was much heavier, the only choice was an air attack, which killed 22 civilians.

Next Walzer raised the question of where the locus of responsibility lay when the Hezbollah terrorists placed rocket launchers in front of apartment buildings. The deaths that resulted from the Israeli response, he said, were entirely the responsibility of Hezbollah. The rockets were being fired into Israeli cities, he said, and this was a war crime.

But in cases like this, Walzer maintained, Israel still had a responsibility to do everything it could not to put civilians at risk, even if that meant putting Israeli soldiers in danger. Exercising as much care as possible is Israel's responsibility in this case, he said, but proportionality does not apply.

Walzer added another piece to the moral equation: "Soldiers must intend to hit a military target and intend not to kill nearby civilians," he said, "and this must be manifest in the planning and conduct of the attack." He said that armies must take positive measures to avoid or minimize injury to nearby civilians, shielding them as best they can.

So, Walzer asked, given the limitations on arguing purely from proportionality rather than also taking account of responsibility, why is the proportionality argument usually given priority in the face of high civilian casualties? Because it is logically easy to understand, supports the natural aversion to civilian deaths, and allows critics to blame military forces for deaths whether they are responsible or not, he said. And when a non-state militia is fighting against a state army, even when the responsibility lies on both sides, the army will almost always cause the most deaths.

Again he cited one of Kofi Annan's spokesmen with regard to the fighting in Gaza in the summer of 2006. Annan claimed that the killing and injury of hundreds of civilians was utterly unjustifiable and only at the end of his statement did he call for an end to the rocket attacks on Israel. But he conveniently forgot that that the rocket attacks preceded the "indiscriminate targeting of civilians" and were often being fired from civilian cover.

"The rockets have not been very effective, but are fired with the hope that they will hit homes, schools, and hospitals," said Walzer. "The Israelis' weapons are effective so the onus of destruction falls on Israel. That's the way proportionality often works; and the result is a misshapen political argument."

In a war, Walzer said, people get killed, and it is important to assign responsibility clearly and firmly for these deaths. His hope is that his own efforts to elucidate the importance of looking at both responsibility and proportionality will have political consequences in terms of public opinion, debate, and policy decisions.

"We will have done as much as we can to hold down the deaths of civilians and will have to acknowledge the painful truth that some of those deaths, painful as it is, have been brought about by soldiers fighting justly," he said.