March 8, 2003
WHAT'S WRONG WITH MILITARY MUSIC?:
Ethical War? Do the Good Guys Finish First?: Morally complex incidents from the annals of modern combat and debating the lessons they provide for the current crop of military leaders and foot soldiers. (EMILY EAKIN, 3/08/03, NY Times)Pondering...morally complex incidents from the annals of modern combat and debating the lessons they provide for the current crop of military leaders and foot soldiers is the aim of a new scholarly publication, the Journal of Military Ethics.Determined skeptics - like Groucho Marx, who joked that "military justice is to justice what military music is to music" - can roll their eyes. But serious talk about the proper moral conduct of combat has been around almost as long as war itself. [...]
"We are consciously committed to showing the moral tradition relating to war is very old and embedded in Western culture," explained James Turner Johnson, a professor of religion and political science at Rutgers University and the journal's co-editor. Among armies operating today, he said, the United States has led the way in making ethical concerns a priority, and not just in cadet classrooms.
"It's pretty clear if you look around at the various militaries," Mr. Johnson said. "People think war is mainly about the technology, but the point is that it's not the technology that determines whether a particular war is discriminate or indiscriminate. It's the strategy and tactics behind that, and the training aimed at discriminating between combatants and noncombatants. The U.S. military has always said we do not directly target noncombatants."
Consider, for example, the protocol surrounding target selection, a topic covered at length in the journal's second issue. American military policy requires legal advisers to approve combat targets in advance. As a consequence, soldiers can find themselves within range of enemy forces but without permission to strike. This situation occurred repeatedly during the war in Afghanistan, where, according to American Air Force officials, clearance delays and denials allowed important Taliban and Qaeda members to escape unscathed.
The problem, the officials complained at the time, was that the military's Central Command was overly concerned about killing civilians. "The whole issue of collateral damage pervaded every level of the operation," The Washington Post quoted one officer saying in November 2001. "It is shocking, the degree to which collateral damage hamstrung the campaign."
But in the journal, scholars defended the policy, arguing that its ethical advantages outweighed its tactical costs. As Michael N. Schmitt, director of the Executive Program in International and Security Affairs at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, put it: "Legal advisers are crucial clogs in any mature targeting system."
Just War doctrine seems more sensible when it comes to the manner in which battle is pursued and it's entirely appropriate to seek to minimize civilian casualties, but at some point there's a psychic disconnect if the theory says that every government is de facto consensual and legitimate but that those who consent to that government and its behaviors are "innocents".
MORE:
Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics
Links to other Ethics related Websites (Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics)
Economy of force is the single most important factor. Because of our far greater ability to see what is going on, and the simultaneous ability to hit precisely what we want and nothing else, economy of force considerations would drive us to more "humane" ways of fighting, even if nothing else did. The Air Force is developing smaller
bombs, not only because the existing ones often unnecessary damage, but because carrying larger than required weapons is wasteful.
That is not to deny the moral fiber of a country. Which leads to every US service member is required to get Law of Armed Conflict training. Which leads to including the risk to non-combatants in to tactics selection.
During GWI, my squadron (dropping dumb bombs) rejected an attack axis because if we missed short, we would hit residential a residential area. The decision complicated our planning, but it never occurred to anyone to question it.
Regards,
Jeff Guinn