Dershowitz is a douchebag of the first order, and shouldn't be allowed to live in the country, let alone a Blue State. I eagerly await his his explanation that armed settlers in disputed territories are somewhere along the continuum between civilians and soldiers.
This reasoning rules! Let's tell EVERYONE in Iraq to get out, then nuke the whole place! Sweeeeeet! Iran, too.
Also--people who are told to leave in the face of a war and think about doing so shouldn't worry at all about right of return problems? Really? That's fabulous, because I could see that turning into a problem down the road, otherwise.
Once Israel has called on the cities (or towns or farms or each little house) to surrender and they don't, Israel is fully within its rights to sack, burn, rape, and pillage after the they fall. By resisting even the slightest bit, the citizens are complicit. (These guys got lucky.) That is the law of war that AD uses.
When the neo-cons say they want to go all medieval on some country, they mean it. That or they want very large free-fire zones.
Tim, good point, it's not like people who wanted to return would ever face changed "facts on the ground" or...yeah.
Same logic as applied to New Orleans, isn't it? I love the brave new libertarian world! It's all about choices. Choose to live in a war zone? Obviously you deserve to be bombed.
They're all little Eichmanns, really.
Dershowitz for me is an example of the weaknesses of rule-following formal thinking, especially law. He's brilliant at what he does, but he argues from unargued givens which he doiesn't question. For him professionally these include statute law, the body of precedents, the Constitution, etc., all of which have to be taken as given and somehow worked into consistency with each other, no matter how hard that is to do, and applied to reality. In his political thinking he works in about the same way, I presume, and brilliantly too, I would imagine, except that he has added one principle of his own which overrides almost all the others: Israel is always right. It's a lot of work to fit this in with the rest of his principles, but making things fit is a constitutional lawyer's big job.
"Al" the resident troll at Kevin Drum's, has already made the Hezbollah / New-Orleans-resident comparison. (Only on "refused to leave" -- he isn't calling NOLA people terrorists yet.)
Or maybe it's Fake Al, Al has been getting weirder and weirder lately.
11: Problems like that are why I don't write more about Constitutional law. To take it seriously, you have to attach a level of moral importance to the Constitution that I've never been able to.
We could expand the Derschowitz doctrine further. Live in a poor neighborhood with ineffectual police? It's okay if you get shot in a drive-by because you chose to live there, thus relieving the drug dealer of his responsibility not to bust a cap in yo' ass.
Some theologian no one gives a fuck about once pointed out how bizarre it is that Americans act like every important political question was answered in the late 18th century.
After his comments on the whole torture thing, Derschowitz has long since forfeited any right to be taken seriously.
11: In what world is that douchebag considered brilliant at anything beyond self-promotion and (one assumes) blowing people up the food chain from him? Has he written papers or books in his field that must be read by any competent practitioner in that field? Or does he just turn up on TV a lot?
After his comments on the whole torture thing, Derschowitz has long since forfeited any right to be taken seriously.
In a just world, he would have forfeit his right to live in a decent society. Cripes, I'd love to "repatriate" Dershowitz, Bybee, Yoo, and every person involved in Padilla to whatever authoritarian country hates us most in the world. Maybe Yoo can spare a little "creative lawyering" and let us know how to get that done.
17: Yeah, I wondered about that definition of "brilliant" myself. Does "brilliant" in this instance mean "capable of constructing pretty-sounding yet intellectually-bankrupt arguments for the use of police state tactics in a nominal democracy"? That would make John Yoo pretty damn brilliant, I guess.
re: 18
Actually, quite seriously, in my darker moments and faced with the continuing posession of power by the scumbags who started the Iraq war, and advocate torture and the destruction of civil liberties, I think that those opposed to them need to concentrate seriously on how legal retribution will be enacted against them once they lose power. War crimes trials and lengthy prison sentences would be a good start.
One of Juan Cole's correspondants (yeah, I know, but still) wrote that: "the Daily Star reported today that only 1000 of the 30,000 Filipinos have requested to leave Lebanon, and only 5,000 of the 90,000 Sri Lankans. Moreover, some who wish to leave, cannot because their sponsors themselves have fled and left them without papers."
This is kind of off-topic, but my roommate and I have an ongoing debate about abb1, the commenter at Crooked Timber. I have always thought that person was a woman, reading the name as a version of "Abby." He assumes it's a man. Is there any evidence to decide on this?
Some Constitutional-Law gremlin is attacking closing tags, I see.
War crimes trials and lengthy prison sentences would be a good start.
I completely agree, but it'll never happen. Americans think war crimes are something committed by brown men in uniforms with funny mustaches. Henry Kissinger isn't going to the Hague any time soon, either.
16: Dershowitz's position on torture warrants, as I understand it, is less mad than it sounds.
He says his aim is to "reduce or eliminate" torture, but that it is in fact occuring and we need to deal with that:
"The possible case of a ticking-bomb terrorist or terrorist with weapons of mass destruction has provided a justification for a persuasive and unregulated use of torture (or other forms of rough interrogation) by American officials, just as it had in Israel. Few are prepared to give up use of that option in really extreme cases. Instead of expressly limiting its use to such a case - - and regulating it by procedural controls - - many argue that is better to leave it to the “discretion” of law enforcement officials. A sort of “don’s ask, don’t tell” policy has emerged, enabling our president and Attorney General to close their eyes to its use, while being able to deny it categorically - - the kind of willful blindness condemned by the courts in other contexts. With no limitations, standards, principles, or accountability the use of such techniques will continue to expand."
I don't think he's right; I think that if we start handing out warrants for exceptional ticking time-bomb cases, the definition of "exceptional" will expand almost limitlessly almost at once and we'll be torturing suspects as a matter of course. (What, are you soft on crime? Don't you want to catch those drug-dealers?).
But that's an empirical question about consequences, not a moral one. And we certainly don't have any shortage of torture going on right now, either in Iraq or in domestic prisons, so I'm not sure 100% sure Dershowitz doesn't have some kind of point.
(Wow, what a shitty way to delurk).
His column about civilian complicity seems utterly indefensible, though. His brain -- like a lot of brains -- has been corroding in bile daily since 9/11.
Gawd, I hope no one seriously aims for war crimes trials or prison sentences related to their govt. activities. It'll never go anwhere, and it will just make Americans rally around those guys and resist the idea that they did anything wrong. What I'd like is for them to be shunned by people, and so tainted by obloquy that their children lie about their parentage. (I once met someone who had done that for a while--it was over something so minor that I can't remember what it was now--so I know that it's possible.)
I think that you are so obviously right about the emiprical question that it becomes a moral question. Or, if you want to put it differently, I think that the risk of criminal liability is a necessary restraint on law-enforcement officials' decisions whether a given case really merits torture ("If you think it's worth spending years in jail for, go ahead!")
21: "lengthy prison sentences" s/b "short ropes", even though I can't disagree with Tim's 27. If I were ever at some function where I was in a position to shake Bush or Cheney's hand, it would take an amount of self-restraint I might or might not have to keep from spitting on them.
26: I'm trying to figure out how, if a ticking-time-bomb scenario were really a ticking-time-bomb scenario, we'd have time to issue a warrant, which is part of the reason that ticking-time-bomb scenarios in general make really retarded law. ("One hour to go, " says Jack Bauer. "That's enough time to determine the location of the bomb from the suspect, but first I have to go break the fingers of the judge.")
But that's an empirical question about consequences, not a moral one.
I desperately want to know where you're planning to get the data sets to sort that one out.
29: That's why you will never be in that position.
26: Except that Dershowitz's torture argument is completely dishonest, because he already knows that legalizing "ticking bomb" torture will lead to widespread torture, because this is exactly what happened in Israel. The man truly is beneath contempt.
apo, why stop at spitting? The doctrine of reciprocal shitting-upon would license a more satisfying course of action.
28: As it happens, I am always so obviously right on all empirical questions that it is a moral failing to disagree with me.
Felix, sweet work on both clownfucking and the law.
Does anyone have a halfway-informed answer to the question of Dershowitz's claim to brilliance? I mean, I read the time bomb remarks and the complicity stuff and all I see is moderately clever. (He sort of reminds me of Volokh talking about sexual assualt: "Mother, I seem to have left an important part of my soul somewhere in a field in Hampshire.")
Felix, that's an awesome superpower! You're like David Hume, with a cape!
SB, the latest doctrine is pre-emptive copropropulsion.
33: My understanding, and it comes mostly from the essay I linked in 26 and I wouldn't necessarily have much confidence in it, is that Israel doesn't have a system of regularized torture warrants. What it has is a 1999 Supreme Court ruling that interrogators may be excused from criminal liability if they do use torture, on grounds of necessity. Dershowitz's argument is precisely directed against that system -- he thinks that the standard of after-the-fact necessity is too open-ended, lacks teeth, and results in a massive expansion of torture. He sees his own system of before-the-fact warrants as more or less the opposite.
I think abb1 is a guy.
On non-Israel questions, as I understand, Dershowitz is a brilliant legal technician. I'm not too crazy about either law or brilliance, but as I understand he is indeed brilliant in that legal-technician kind of way. Not just a Harvard law guy, but one of the top Harvard Law guys.
He's also very aggressive about everything and does a lot of self-promotion and politicking, so he probably gets more credit than he deserves.
Well, now he gets to be known as "Alan Dershowitz, who was supposed to be really smart but is in fact in favor of torturing anyone who looks suspicious."
That's why you will never be in that position.
Probably best for everybody involved.
23: 'abb1' is short for "anybody but bush." See this exchange. That's negative evidence. I also vaguely remember that abb1 is not American; maybe Swiss?
As for the rest, I endorse FL's asterisk, and 1, 3, 6, 18, 20, 21, and pretty much every other nasty thing said about Dershowitz in this thread.
Also, Felix gets a big fat fruit basket, and anyone who doesn't like it can bite me. (Undeleted spam at the end of that thread, btw.)
Dumb ass rationalizations like Dershowitz's will always be around so long civilized, democractic societies turn to war to solve their problems.
This whole business of distinguishing "civilians" from "combatants", of imagining that the enemy consists of a large, oppressed population that wants to be just like us, and of imagining that their leadership consists of small, intrinsically evil cadres which we can simply eliminate simply does not fit with the actual practice of war, which requires destroying an entire society. When you demolish a nations ability to raise an army, you have to demolish their ability to care for their sick and wounded, their elderly and children. If you don't like this idea, then don't wage war.
There is a false individualism--very American--in thinking that the innocent child leads a life you can separate from the rest of his village. Since we Americans never acknowledge our interdependence, we imagine that we can poison Hezbollah's well, and not poison a child's well.
But Rob, 2-year old children are frequently left to care for themselves by terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, didn't you know? Because those people are evil.
38: I fail to see how that would make any real difference. In the existing scenario Shin Bet is allowed to torture a host of prisoners who don't really know anything; in Dershowitz's scenario Shin Bet is allowed to torture a host of prisoners who don't really know anything once a judge signs off on it. In neither scenario are the torturers capable of being restrained once they go into action, regardless of whatever limits Dershowitz or the Israeli High Court put in place.
The bigger problem is that Dershowitz wildly and dishonestly overstates the utility of torture. He simply says "sometimes the leads proved false, other times they proved true," which nicely obscures the fact that the overwhelming majority of Israeli torture victims have produced little to no useful intelligence. What Dershowitz is arguing for isn't a mechanism to reduce the number of innocents tortured, but a means to dress up brutality with the imprimatur of the state.
jTo make my position clear: I don't like Dershowitz at all, but I mistrust lawyers, so I can believe that he's a great lawyer.
Present company excepted.
Who gets a fruit basket and who doesn't? I know this is another smurf thing I should just ignore, but I'm taking the bait just the same.
Everyone should get one. Did you not?
Strasmangelo, I agree. I dont think it would make a difference; largely because I don't think neat "ticking time bomb" cases actually exist. Every case is a grey area, once you give up the principle that torture is never allowed, and judges will just rubber stamp these things; they won't have any ability not to; they'll have to defer to the executive.
My point is just that Dershowitz says he does think it makes a difference, and I think he's probably sincere, though wrong.
If someone notices you're new, you get a fruit basket. If you delurk gradually so that no one notices you haven't been here all along, no fruit basket for you.
The efficacy of torture must not be granted as a premise. The right is so good at sending liberals on wild goose-chases based on complete non-sequiturs -- why is it that liberals can't divert every single discussion of "how to regulate torture since we really really need it" into a discussion of "why the fuck people would ever think torture is effective"? And none of this bullshit of "having to admit" that it works sometimes.
(I'm not saying that empirically it never ever works ever, but discussions always seem to proceed based on the assumption that all that's standing between us and vital information is the testicular fortitude to attach jumper cables to a guy's testicles. That's just not the case. Even President Logan on 24 said that you can get someone to say just about anything under torture, but it doesn't make it true!)
Here's yer fruit basket, strasmangelo. In 51, 'someone' s/b 'Weiner', since no one else seems willing to award them.
I reject your fruit basket! Instead I will seize for myself something of equal or greater value, like... like this bucket of chum, for instance.
I don't need you, Weiner. I can go hang with all my neat shark friends.
52: Because we're so fucking bad at passing up the intellectual exercise of arguing hypotheticals.
, but as I understand he is indeed brilliant in that legal-technician kind of way. Not just a Harvard law guy, but one of the top Harvard Law guys.
WTF is that, Emerson? It sounds like something out of Bridget Jones' Diary ("top, top barrister"), not out of you. (Yes, while y'all have Critique of Pure Reason close to mind, I have BJD, 1 and 2.) What I've seen of his arguments blow. And I'm pretty sure "legal-technician" translates, in American, to "found a novel way to palm a $50 bill off to the judge."
But Adam, President Logan was bad. What the fuck does he know? He tortured our teddybear agent Aaron.
I figure not needing an exemption for ticking-time-bomb scenarios is rather like not needing an exemption in laws regulating auto theft for the one-in-ten-million chance that the auto could be being stolen to transport old ladies out of a flooded natural disaster resulting from a hurriance.
If there ever is an act of terrorism so imminent and so well-known and so obvious that our heroic Jack Bauer needs to torture the guy to save Manhattan, and he's secure in that knowledge, he'll do it regardless of the law and be hailed and lauded by a happy populace. (Fantasy, you say? So's the ticking time bomb.) The fact that it's illegal will make him sure to ensure that he's sure that he's right.
Cala, thanks for 59. I'm totally going to memorize that as the all-purpose refutation of the ticking time bomb argument.
22.7.06
180 lb (-2 overnight! v.v. good. Must have liquefied fat in sleep. Hurrah!).
Wrote memo on torture today. Puzzled as reaction has been mixed, when reaction should have been much more warm. Am irresistable top barrister, after all.
Cripes, we're willing to torture guys for brawling; what, in human experience, makes anyone think "preventing a nuclear explosion" is going to present much of a problem.
I'm not sure it's a good argument, B, but I like it.
Caveat, though, I've been mixing up the words 'properties' and 'propositions' all evening, so who knows if I can make sense anymore or I should leave my PhD program and take up a job somewhere where it doesn't matter if you distinguish between concepts, like public policy.
Maybe you could succeed Dershowitz after he retires or Hizbullah decides to test out his theories on him.
I haven't read this thread at all, but was planning to write about the paucity of reasoning in the op-ed myself, including the exact thing Labs calls Dersh out on in his (Labs) 3rd and 4th paragraphs. And then e-mail what I wrote to my friend, (one of) Dersh's research assistants. I will now check if the thread notes another error in the op-ed which I think I caught.
Before Dershowitz went crazy on torture and Israel he was, as I understand, highly admired and possibly (I'm not quite sure) angling for a Supreme Court nomination by the next Democratic President. He's lost most of his liberal admirers by now, and he's made too many conservative enemies, so I think his career has peaked.
Posner is very highly admired, and he's a shithead too. Legal experts are admired by me personally when they agree with me and do a good job of it, but not otherwise, and I think that most people are like me. Since almost none of them agree with me, I admire almost none of them.
Emerson for Supreme Court!
(Those would be some fun confirmation hearings.)
I've awarded a few fruit baskets in my day, just not the kind with any produce inside, if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge.
Ok, I've read it now, and 20 gets at the other major point I wanted to.
Dersh: the line between Israeli soldiers and civilians is relatively clear....Hezbollah and Hamas militants, on the other hand, are difficult to distinguish from those "civilians" who...finance...their terrorism.
It's true that it may in fact be more difficult to figure out which people are fighting members of Hezbollah and which people only fund it, but what could this possibly have to do with the acceptability of dropping missiles on them? It can't be the difficulty (it's hard, and therefore not immoral?), so it must be that it's fine kill Hezbollah funders generally. And if that's the case, one of three things (from least to most plausible) must be true. Either it's fine to kill Hezbollah funders because of special characteristics of Hezbollah (I am unsure about this), there's something special about non-state violent actors such that it's fine to kill their funders but not fine for funders of state violent actors to be killed (completely crazy, think about the British walking around killing every American who helped fund the revolution), or their is no such thing as a civilian tax-payer in a state with an army paid for by tax revenues (far crazier than anything Ward Churchill or Osama bin Laden has ever said).
On torture: Dershowitz is more worried about their being too little torture than he is about their being too much. Otherwise he should think that it's fine for the state to vociferously and regularly denounce (and of course completely criminalize) torture and depend on Jack Bauer-types to ignore the denouncement in ticking time-bomb scenarios, even though they know they've committed a grievous crime. I don't think I need to say anymore than this.
I refuse to assess him more generally, lacking a sufficient basis of knowledge.
I sometimes feel like the message of 24 is that if terrorism was a real and dire threat (like it is in the show, but doesn't appear to be in real life), then we could only be saved if the government had a veritable superhero on staff.
And if the superhero had a magic sack like Jack does, where he can pull out all manner of nifty gadgets to pwn the bad guys.
I've only seen a couple of episodes of 24, both of them from this last season, and from what I could tell, the motivations of the terrorists made absolutely no sense; as in, irrelevant or counterproductive to their purported goals; as in, politics of any sort were irrelevant to the fact that the terrorists' being very very bad.
Emerson says that Dershowitz is technically brilliant, but I'm not sure that he's wdely respected in legal circles, not compared to somebody like Arthur Miller. I asked a UCLA law professor about him once, and the guy said that Dershowitz doesn't even bother to publish in legal journals anymore; it's all TV appearances and popular books.
29: aostropher sez: If I were ever at some function where I was in a position to shake Bush or Cheney's hand, it would take an amount of self-restraint I might or might not have to keep from spitting on them.
I've been in the same room with Donald Rumsfeld, who probably has better manners than either Cheney or Bush. I did not go up to talk to him, because I didn't have anything in particular to say to him. I'm afraid that it would be surprisingly easy to avoid spitting.
I find Dershowitz pretty loathsome. The anybody who ever criticizes Israel is objectively anti-Semitic (to bastardize Larry Summers line) shtick he's had going for a while is pretty awful. The torture warrant stuff is disgusting, but Feliz is right that he's trying to make something less awful by regulating it rather than sweeping it under the rug. That's the most charitable reading that I can give it.
BUT, even after all of that, it seems unfair to me to compare him to John Yoo. Yoo is a whole other level fo depreaved. I'm comfortable calling Yoo unAmerican, which I think would be unfair to Dershowitz. Yoo really is the lowest of the low.
Jackmormon, they're bad guys. And they're not even like the Platonic good thief. They're bad, and Jack pwns them with his magic sack. The brain is not required for this show.
75: Really? I see Yoo as a brown-nosing flunky who found himself infamous, and Dershowitz as a free agent who ran after the atrocious entirely of his own accord, checking his bank balance all the way.
76: Okay, but I had some respect for the concept of the real-time drama that may have inflated my respect, from afar, for the writing of the show--and then I kept reading reasonable people who thought it was interesting! I hadn't expected it to be D&D+office politics (limits: gravity=yes, magic=no).
Assume I'm editing a sentence which discusses laws which don't allow types of fraud. The sentence beings with the words "Anti-fraud prohibitions..." which I note constitute a double negative and strike out the anti. My EIC marks my edit with a stet. I forget to bring this up when we talk about differences between her changes to the author's piece and mine. If I can't reach her between now and when I'm sending things back to the author, can I put mine in? We'd have a chance to change it back later if I missed some reason that my version isn't better.
I wouldn't put it in unless there's a mechanism to alert the author to your edit. (As in, can you put your edit in, marked in red, with a giant "hey, is this better?" sign?)
I would lean against just putting it back in if she overruled you; if you do, you should probably note the difference of opinion. How much time before you send it to the author?
I assume he's editing in pencil on a hard copy.
All changes will be obvious to the author because it's being sent in, among other things, a deltaview of the version the author gave us and the one we're giving back. The issue is that the EIC and I (that's Editrix -in-Chief, according to me) haven't discussed why she didn't think I should change it. I am sending it to the author as soon as I finish going back through it and typing up a memo kindly suggesting a few more macro changes.
82: I had done one edit in pencil on a hard copy, now that I'm integrating the edits it's a word .doc (and eventually a .pdf).
I should also add that to the author's eyes all edits were made by the same composite editor.
I would hesitate to include an edit that was overruled by the EIC if the author won't be able to tell.
Yeah, but the EIC and I get along very well [from my perception, at least], it's just that I didn't notice it when going through her edits and therefore failed to bring it up. I could e-mail her about that simultaneous with sending it to the author, and then even if the author accepts the change we could still take it back.
That's probably okay, as long as you're sure she won't be mad at you.
Basically I only asked so you guys would tell me what I wanted to was fine.
"what I wanted to do was fine."
N.B. My article editing is nothing like my comment editing.
I am not your conscience-placator!
Seriously, though, I'd tread carefully here. Maybe email your e-i-c about the proposed suggested edit? That way, at the worst, she'll see you as anal and kinda pushy; if you include the edit, once overruled, without asking her, the worst could be rather nasty.
Cf. 'Drug prohibition' and 'anti-drug prohibition'. The second, even if communicative of the same idea, is not proper.
42: Weiner, I would have thanked you earlier for the fruit basket but I had to go and watch Clerks II for a thousand hours. It was so utterly abysmal in every respect that now I feel sick and headachy and this fruit, abstract though it is, disgusts me. As does Dershowitz, now without reservations. Thanks anyway I guess.
Of course, the fact, if it is indeed a fact, that my view is correct, is the beginning, not the end, of this discussion.
On preview, fuck, I was somewhat excited for Clerks 2 after reading A.O. Scott's review.
Had I been Dershowitz's copyeditor, I would have objected strongly and suggested alternatives to "continuum of civilianity," as flat-out ugly and altogether too ripe for parody. I would have wasted a lot of energy putting together a tactful, logical argument for my suggested revision; he would have looked through his hooded, old-man eyes and declared that he had written exactly what he had meant.
Or at least that was my experience with the very respected ancient author of The Systematic Key to Postmodern American Literature, or whatever it was called. God, he didn't pay me nearly enough to worry as much as I did about his impenetrable prose.
Yoo? Naw, I'd clearly say Addington is worse than Yoo, and Cheney the lowest of the low.
Dershowitz occasionally gets a good point in, sufficient to stop and smell the hypotheticals, (thanks for that point, Bitchphd!), but the bottom line of his present argument is to envision the ultimate extension of Likud logic, which is to suggest that if Israel feels sufficiently threatened, it'll be acceptable for it to turn a number of Arab cities into little Hiroshimas.
'Acceptable civilian casualties' remains a logical impossibility to any being with a legitimate claim to civility. The number doesn't exist.
An accomplice is not a civilian, period. And as long as we're discussing accomplices, let's not forget that Hezbollah began as a response to the '82 invasion of Israel, so does that make Israel an accomplice?
As for torture, I agree with Felix that ticking bomb theory is only that. And it only deserves to be granted legitimacy after an actual ticking bomb situation occurs at the WMD level.
I would, however, turn over my mother if I was subjected to 24/7 of the combined verbal offal of Coulter, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Malkin, Goldberg, Sullivan and Dershowitz. A cattle prod would be nirvana by comparison.
Dershowitz, somewhat like Lieberman, has done many good things and would look very different if one (for some bizarre reason) didn't let things they've done or said in the course of the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism have any weight at all in their view.
The argument, "Take that fucker's argument in context," never made much sense to me until about 2003.
You know, just about any argument gets stupid when you carry it to extremes it was never meant to reach.
So instead of claiming that Dersh is saying that Israel gets to rape and pillage like latter-day Visigoths after a quick warning (as if this were a war of conquest and not a response to Hezbollah attacks!), let's flip it around:
Should Israel be barred from responding to Hezbollah rocket attacks and kidnappings so long as one civillian stays in his or her house and might get hit by an attack? If so, isn't that just an incentive for unscrupulous attackers to use civilians as human shields?
A morally consistent and sensible position is that civilian lives matter and should be spared — and civilian casualties are the fault and responsibility of the side that provokes an attack likely to hit civilian areas.
Oh boy. Does anyone want to respond to the flipped rhetorical question about "one civilian"?
Apparently every single human being in the whole state of Lebanon is a potential military target now, even the ones in the anti-Hezbollah areas, and it can only be Hezbollah's fault, and certainly never Israel's.
Why don't we all just bite the bullet and declare that all Arabs, including Christian Arabs and Druze, are terrorists already in the blastocyte stage, and just get worse from then on.
Innocent little babies? -- Who are you trying to kid?
No-one has said they couldn't respond. But what they announced they would do "turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years." There has been no realistic attempt to distinguish Lebanon from Hezbollah and they've created half a million refugees in a country with fewer than 4 million people.
Regardless of who has the better "he started it" claim, Israel is systematically destroying any chance the central government of Lebanon had of evolving into a stable and non-antagonistic neighbor. In the long run, this only hurts Israel.
That aside, though, the civilianity argument being forwarded by Dershowitz is the exact same "little Eichmanns" argument made by Ward Churchill, as noted in 10. You willing to grant that legitimacy?
That aside, though, the civilianity argument being forwarded by Dershowitz is the exact same "little Eichmanns" argument made by Ward Churchill, as noted in 10. You willing to grant that legitimacy?
Not at all. In fact, I explicitly said "civilian lives matter and should be spared". This is the exact opposite of the Ward Churchill "They're all guilty!" claim.
GB, this thread is mostly about Dershowitz, and only secondarily about Israel in Lebanon. Based on what you've written I'm not sure what you think about Dershowitz's statements, though you seem to be distancing yourself from our view of it here (which is pretty unified I think).
No one's said that the only number of acceptable civilian casualties is zero. I'm not quite sure what your flipped around hypothetical is supposed to show, GB.
I'm even less certain of your claim that an attack by one group (here, Hezbollah) relieves the other group of any duty to provide a proportional response. This is how I am reading this: A morally consistent and sensible position is that civilian lives matter and should be spared — and civilian casualties are the fault and responsibility of the side that provokes an attack likely to hit civilian areas.
Well, sometimes it's the fault of the provokers; if the casualties are human shields. But *all* attacks are likely to hit civilian areas. The world's just full of civilians, all over the place. We still need a way to distinguish between the attacks that kill innocent shields of threats (hardly Israel's fault) and those that are the result of indiscriminate or careless bombing. If you don't see a difference between those, then that *is* the little Eichmanns error; if the civilian casualties are all Hezbollah's fault, then their deaths aren't anything Israel should be concerned with.
Matt Yglesias points out that Dershowitz is essentially making the case for ethnic cleansing here.
We still need a way to distinguish between the attacks that kill innocent shields of threats (hardly Israel's fault) and those that are the result of indiscriminate or careless bombing.
I think it's a little generous to describe some of the bombing as "indescriminate." Many, many, many civilian targets have been destroyed by fairly advanced precision-guided bombs, and it stretches credulity to maintain that power plants, hospitals, milk factories, and medicine factories were all hiding Hezbollah rockets.
Matt's missing part of Dershowitz's claim: that's it's okay to disregard it given (hand-wave) that it's self defense. The maxim he attributes to D isn't one he'd accept. (This is Brett Bellmore's criticism, and he's right.)
But the right maxim isn't much better (This is why Brett Bellmore is wrong.): If acting in self-defense, notification of hostile intent suffices to relieve the agent of moral responsibility for the outcome.
But that isn't true even of normal self-defense. A mugger comes up to me and threatens me with a gun, saying, 'Your money or your life.' Acting quickly, I knock the gun out of his hands. I don't have the right to shoot him now; I can only act to remove the threat to me. And if I tell him I'm going to shoot him unless he runs in five seconds, I'm not in the clear if I pull the trigger in second six.
This comment is pretty much a nitpick.
105: All I'm saying is that bombs are harder to aim. Precision guided is one thing, but they're bombs. They explode. They're not exactly known for their surgical precision, these exploding things.
I don't know enough about bombs to judge Israel's care in this matter. I suspect they really don't give a damn at this point. But I wasn't making any claims either way on that point.
One of the many criticisms of Israel's actions is that they have bombed non-Hezbollah and anti-Hezbollah areas.
Should Israel be barred from responding to Hezbollah rocket attacks and kidnappings so long as one civillian stays in his or her house and might get hit by an attack?
What if we flip it around again, and ask, "Are the Cowboys going to win the Superbowl?" Oh, wait, that has nothing to do with what Dershowitz said? Well, at least it's diverting.
We still need a way to distinguish between the attacks that kill innocent shields of threats (hardly Israel's fault) and those that are the result of indiscriminate or careless bombing.
We should also work in that Israel is not required to bomb. They could go house to house. Massive casualties, and less likely to be successful, of course. But if we're just looking for quick and easy, let's pull our troops out of Iraq and nuke the motherfucker.
Are the Cowboys going to win the Superbowl?
No.
All I'm saying is that bombs are harder to aim. Precision guided is one thing, but they're bombs.
Do you actually believe that all of the civilian targets blown up by Israeli bombs have been blown up by accident? Factories, hospitals, ports, airports, roads, trucks, grain silos, power plants, carloads of fleeing refugees? I have read nothing, absolutely nothing to indicate this is not part of Israeli strategy, and in fact I've read plenty of articles claiming that this is an attempt to coerce the Lebanese government into "cracking down" on Hezbollah. "Oops" certainly doesn't seem to be a plausible explanation anymore.
Are the Cowboys going to win the Superbowl?
No.
The Cowboys have given well-publicized notice of their intention to win the Superbowl. Civilian supporters of opposing teams who voluntarily attend the game will become complicit.
This consideration should inform our assessment of the resulting casualty figures.
The primary responsibility of the Israeli government is to protect Israelis. It is not required to risk Israeli lives by going "door to door" in a Herculean effort to minimize Lebanese civilian casualties in the process.
The government that is supposed to protect Lebanese civilians is the one in Lebanon. And letting a terror group use Lebanon as a staging ground for attacks on Israel is not the best way to fulfill that responsibility.
No one's said that the only number of acceptable civilian casualties is zero.
Uh, see 95, the comment which I read Gaijin Biker as addressing. I read it as making exactly that claim.
'Acceptable civilian casualties' remains a logical impossibility to any being with a legitimate claim to civility. The number doesn't exist.
The primary responsibility of the Israeli government is to protect Israelis.
And it is failing spectacularly in that capacity by escalating what should have been a rescue operation for two captured soldiers into a full-fledged war with hundreds of civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees which will inflame anti-Israeli hatred in the region for years to come.
The primary responsibility of the Israeli government is to protect Israelis. It is not required to risk Israeli lives by going "door to door" in a Herculean effort to minimize Lebanese civilian casualties in the process.
So, just to be clear, you think we should nuke Iraq.
GB, before we respond to your defense of the Israelis, could you spell out your opinion about Dershowitz's statement? We're really dumb here and no good reading between the lines.
Right now I'm reading your shift of attention from dershowitz to Israel a diversion away from the dershowitz question, possibly indicating a degree of sympathy with Dershowitz. Once that question is steeled, we can argue Israel.
could you spell out your opinion about Dershowitz's statement?
I haven't read it yet.
OK, how about your opinion of the excerpts, which is what we're talking about here, and which are pretty explicit and unmistakable?
Alternatively, why don't you read it and get back to us?
SomeCallMeTim, that's a silly argumet. War is not a switch that flips from "door-to-door searches" to "nuclear armageddon".
GB: Think their might even be something between pretending civilians are really terrorist so you can terror bomb them and allowing Israel to be destroyed?
And also, Tim, the objectives of the US in Iraq are not necessarily the same as those of Israel in Lebanon. Your analogy is just bad all around.
And in case you forgot, we DID bomb Iraq quite heavily at first. We didn't just walk in on Day One and start doing door-to-door searches before destroying the immediate military threat.
Alternatively, why don't you read it and get back to us?
What's with this "us"? You make it sound like I'm on a job interview or something.
Quit being an asshole, GB. Are you presenting a back-door defense of Dershowitz? Everyone else here is apparently in agreement that he went way over the line.
What's with this "us"?
You're entering, or at least addressing, a group of people in conversation.
And also, Tim, the objectives of the US in Iraq are not necessarily the same as those of Israel in Lebanon.
I'm pretty sure we've said, repeatedly, that we went in to Iraq to stop the terrorists from attacking us here. What is it you think the Israelis are claiming as their reason for their attack on Lebanon?
Not to pile on, but rather then asking broadly about Dersh, here's a differnent question: Do you think anything Dershowitz previously said, accepting it as true, justifies what he says in Labs's third quoted paragraph? That is, in my opinion, the whole ball game.
Do you actually believe that all of the civilian targets blown up by Israeli bombs have been blown up by accident?
Nope, didn't say that. When I said that Israel was being 'indiscriminate', I meant that Israel was being 'indiscriminate.' And also, when I said, "I don't know enough about bombs to judge Israel's care in the matter", I meant "I don't know enough about bombs to judge Israel's care in the matter". I don't know if the roads and airports are legitimate targets or not, and I don't think they're only targetting Hezbollah targets. I'm not even sure if 'Hezbollah targets' is a concept that makes sense because I'm not sure what Israel is trying to accomplish. I'm still trying to figure out how the hell Israel is invading Lebanon without being at war with Lebanon.
It is not required to risk Israeli lives by going "door to door" in a Herculean effort to minimize Lebanese civilian casualties in the process.
It is if Israel wants to be the good guys (or effective in the long run.) Again, there's something between 'they attacked us, so we'll kill them all indiscriminately' and 'we must never, ever hurt anyone innocent even by accident.'
114: Fair enough.
Quit being an asshole, GB.
Thanks for showing me that you're not worth my time. Good day to you, sir.
Who'd like to guess how Dershowitz would rationalize the following news from this morning's AP report: "Israeli warplanes struck a minibus carrying people fleeing the fighting Sunday in southern Lebanon"? Cleary these folks are somehow complicit with Hizbollah (after all, they're dead, right?), so I'm guessing that this should be filed under "demented suicide PR campaign to make Israel look bad" -- not unlike those selfish bastards who hung themselves in Gitmo to make us look back. Any other theories?
Thanks for showing me that you're not worth my time. Good day to you, sir.
Your position isn't vindicated just because Emerson called you an asshole.
I feel the same way about you, GB -- you silly, prissy young thing.
You're an evasive game-player who came here with an agenda and tried to hijack a thread, and you will not be missed by me. You will note that the first several responses to you were quite civil.
I am not The Unfogged Community, and others here will form their own opinion of you, of course. Most here are closer to your political point of view than I am, but I suspect that I'm not the only one you annoy.
How is Israel supposed to tell the difference between a minibus full of terrorists and a minibus full of people dispersing as ordered? I mean, really, jw. You're just being ridiculous.
Anyway, those people should have gotten out faster. By delaying, they're effectively supporting Hezbollah. Heck, they probably put off leaving in order to leave notes for Hezbollah about where they would be and how often to water the plants.
Your position isn't vindicated
That is, whatever your position (on the Dershowitz) happens to be, which I believe we're still waiting to hear.
Right-wing trolls on Unfogged are a great example of the radical ahistoricism of wingnuts -- they walk in here and want everything to start over from scratch.
Actually, it's well known in certain circles that getting called an asshole by Emerson will pretty much get your stuff into print post-haste. This is why Journal of Philosophy can be so uneven.
How is Israel supposed to tell the difference between a minibus full of terrorists and a minibus full of people dispersing as ordered?
Can a warplane see a minibus from the air? I'm not being snarky, but I just don't know if the mission was even 'bomb a minibus' as opposed to 'bomb that stretch of road.' It's like saying al-Qaeda used a passenger jet to take out Joe's Hot Dog stand across the street from the WTC. (And this says nothing about whether bombing the road is a good idea or a moral one.)
Am inappropriately amused at leavinig notes to water the plants. "Only once a week on the orchids! These terrorists are awful housesitters. Last time I came back and their kids had gotten into my hydrangeas.'
Quick, JE, call me an asshole! I need a job!
No, no.
I was encoraging him NOT to be an asshole. I was trying to help. I was lighting my small candle, trying to make the world a better place.
Now he's off by himself again, with his Slayer 8-tracks and his bong, and I ask myself: What did I do wrong?
If word gets out, even authors with articles likely to be accepted on the merits will be calling on Emerson for the asshole treatment, for that extra "boost".
137: Yeah, the sights on those things are good enough to be able to see individual people, let alone buses.
Like Cala, for instance.
My gentlemanly nature doesn't allow me call women assholes. There is an orifice-designating word used for women, but the finer blogs don't allow its use under any circumstance.
So no JoP publication for you.
John Emerson: proof that civility is just another word for patriarchy.
I was encoraging him NOT to be an asshole.
If I encourage you to stop fucking pigs, I have called you a pigfucker by implication, have I not?
142: Wait, Cala is a bus? I don't get that.
Cala, every time I call someone an asshole they later go on to make it past at least the third round of American Idol. Will that do?
So no JoP publication for you.
Goddammit.
Journal of Philosophy is a terribly dull name for a journal of philosophy. Pigfuctica much better.
Patriarchy: this is just a footnote to history and does not prove that men are as oppressed as women, but my substance-abuse-counseling sister has a male client whose father beat him and publicly humiliated him on a regular basis, but whose sexism didn't allow him to hit girls and women. I know the client's sister, and she's a successful, happily-married, model-beautiful career woman whose self-esteem seems entirely intact.
Not an urban legend. First-hand and second-hand knowledge.
Can we leave Slayer out of this?
But B, can it see the little terrorist license plate? [JIHAD4EVA]
It's absolutely amazing that I stand accused of being a "troll" who tried to "hijack" a thread about Israel's tactics, by posting a comment about Israel's tactics.
I should have posted about something more on-point, like pig-fucking.
This was a thread about Dershowitz, and you refused to say anything about Dershowitz, even when asked directly to do so.
Back to the Slayer tapes, dude. (Sorry, Armsmasher.)
a thread about Israel's tactics
It wasn't a thread about Israel's tactics. It was a thread about Dershowitz's douchebag justifications for Israel's presumed tactics.
GB, You're not being accused of being a troll -- you objectively are one.
147: You mean Tia, not Cala. Not all women look alike! Felix is teh sexiest! (Actually Felix is my favorite newbie in some time. Hi, Felix.)
151: Indeed. I remember getting hit by the boy across the street, whose mother then frog-marched him over to my house to apologize because "you don't hit girls." My mom's response was, "the girl thing isn't the point."
Dersh was wrong to say that failure to flee after being given a warning turns a civilian into a terrorist sympathizer. Some people may just not want to leave for various reasons besides a desire to aid or express solidarity with Hezbollah.
What is true, however, is that Israel has no way to distinguish "guy who just didn't want to flee after a warning" from "guy who supports Hezbollah". Warning people in the area and giving them time to leave is the best it can do if it is going to be able to launch a meaningful attack at all.
B, are you a "happily-married, model-beautiful career woman whose self-esteem seems entirely intact." Are you named Pam? What an astonishing coincidence.
#157: GB, You're not being accused of being a troll -- you objectively are one.
Kotsko, I read the post, started reading the comments, and read #5, which said:
Once Israel has called on the cities (or towns or farms or each little house) to surrender and they don't, Israel is fully within its rights to sack, burn, rape, and pillage after the they fall.
My first comment, #98, was a direct response to this:
So instead of claiming that Dersh is saying that Israel gets to rape and pillage like latter-day Visigoths after a quick warning (as if this were a war of conquest and not a response to Hezbollah attacks!), let's flip it around
This comment addressed a point from comment #5 (which perhaps I should have referenced for clarity), about the nature of Dersh's argument.
If that is trolling, then you and I have different definitions of the word.
160: Not coincidence! Definitive proof that the way to raise happily married, beautiful, well-adjusted women is to beat up on boys.
John Emerson: feminist!
So far I don't know of any evidence that Israel recognizes any targets at all as non-military targets. As I've said, they seem to be bombing the whole country, when only the South is Hezbollah-controlled. And they're bombing fleeing people too.
Dershowitz is normally a civil libertarian, which is one thing which makes his current positions so infuriating. First he argues for legalizing torture, and now he's virtually erasing the civilian-combatant distinction for anyone above the age of about 14. His argument makes South Lebanon into a free-fire zone.
In practice, there are lots of civilian casualties in wars, which is always an argument against going to war. But the civilian casualties have to be recognized for what they are, not relabelled.
158: Hi, Dr. B! I'm pretty sure it was Cala. You asshole.
(Oh god now I'll look really stupid if that doesn't work. I want you to promise to practice really hard and work on your presence and projection. Don't make me look bad, OK?)
Oh right, Felix, because it's all about you.
I can agree with 159 (with some reservations about the necessity of "meaningful attacks").
However, that's not all Dershowitz was arguing for. He wants journalists to investigate Lebanese civilian causalties and render judgment on their "civilianity"--presumably with the goal of stopping all those nasty headlines.
He wants to create a demand for articles that go: "150 people were killed in Lebanon by Israeli missiles this week: 20 Hizbollah supporters, 30 Hizbollah associates, 50 Hizbollah neighbors, and 50 whose guilt has not yet been determined."
GB, That was a near-perfectly calibrated non-response. You say D. is wrong, then you qualify it in such a way that I can't possibly parse out the practical consequences of your disagreement.
The plain fact is that collective punishment is prohibited under international law -- collective punishment based on the premise that you assume everyone is somehow implicated in the crimes committed by a few is still... collective punishment, which is prohibited under international law.
The people who ordered the current operations in Lebanon are war criminals.
164: After all the opportunities I've given you the doors I've opened the sacrifices I've made the endless music lessons oh how sharper than a serpent's tooth I see how it is then I'll just sit here going blind in the dark shall I?
He wants journalists to investigate Lebanese civilian causalties and render judgment on their "civilianity"--presumably with the goal of stopping all those nasty headlines.
That reminds me of a John Turturro line towards the end of Rounders.
Some people may just not want to leave for various reasons besides a desire to aid or express solidarity with Hezbollah.
Because a foreign nation told them to, for example? In his post about Dersh, MY is right to draw analogies to other scenarios in which Dersh (or Israel sympathizers, or Palestine sympathizers) might not have a stake. Are we to vote to pick assign one group in a crisis continuity of civilianity-granting status? It's just not clear how this is supposed to work, mechanically, except in the case of Israel, whose authority is self granting and whose might makes right (so it seems Dersh is saying). Whereas it is the asymmetry that appals Israel's critics, Dersh says it is the asymmetry that should mollify the same.
Tia's the American idol fan.
And 166 gets it right. Civilian casualties are nasty, largely unavoidable side effects of war. Dershowitz wants to solve the problem by re-naming it. They're not civilians, they're co-conspirators. Then we can have headlines praising the deaths of 150 conspirators instead of those lamenting the deaths of fleeing villagers.
This is about as morally bankrupt as it gets.
Felix, despite sharing a name with my best friend's much-loved (by me, as well as my friend) father, may he rest in peace, you sound a lot like my mom. Coincidence?
Tia's the American idol fan.
Who's the asshole now?
172: your mom talks a lot about clownfucking?
174: Yeah, she remembers you fondly.
Kostko, I've made my position quite clear, and it in no way justifies "collective punishment". To repeat:
It is wrong to assume that people who remain in a warned area are terrorist sympathizers or supporters. But warning them to leave is the best an attacker can do if it's going to launch an attack at all. It is simply not possible to hand out surveys saying "rate your support for Hezbollah on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being the highest" and then bomb only those people who said 8 or higher.
What Israel is doing is not "collective punishment", but rather the only practical way to attack an enemy that bases itself in civilian areas and has a considerable degree of overlap with civilians themselves.
I can't speak for Gaijin Biker, nor will I defend all of what Dershowitz wrote, some of which we pretty ill-conceived, but on the other hand, I think a number of people here are being unfairly dismissive of Gaijin Biker's point.
The New York Times article referred to above is interesting in that it says absolutely nothing about terrorist casualties. This seems to be the standard for their reporting and that of the major news services.
It is possible, of course, that Israel has decided--their claims and the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding--simply indiscriminately to kill civilians. However, there is another--to mind much more plausible--explanation. And that is that, it being impossible in many cases to tell, the media tends simply to call all of the casualties in Lebanon civilian casualties regardless of whether the people killed were terrorists or connected to terrorists attacking Israel. And it is this I think Dershowitz was reacting to. Why are the Israelis accused of killing civilians when they kill terrorists in civilian clothes, when they kill people who store weapons for the terrorists or who harbor them. What makes those people any less military targets than uniformed Israeli soldiers performing the same tasks? On this point, all he is asking for is an attempt at truth-telling rather than adopting--whether intentionally or not--a mode of describing the war that is guaranteed to paint the Israelis in the worst possible light.
Of course, there have been a number of incidents--for example, their attacks on infrastructure targets--where the Israelis have killed civilians whose only sin was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And, as much as I think that the Israelis are treated unfairly by the chattering classes here--and much much more so in Europe--I think it is hard to argue that they are not doing the wrong thing in Lebanon this time, and that their actions are operationally, strategically and diplomatically inappropriate responses to the provocations they have faced.
In sum, I think the core of what Dershowitz wrote, and what I read Gaijin Biker to be saying is right. The media--and we--should try to be a little more evenhanded and honest in how we describe what is going on.
It would have been possible for Israel to bomb only Hezbollah areas, to avoid civilian targets such as power plants, and to refrain from attacking fleeing buses. Israel and Israel's supporters seem to recognize no limits at all. The enemy apparently is all of Lebanon.
The Lebanese only got control of the north recently, and have never controlled the south. Having a Lebanese government at all was a big accomplishment of which the Bush administration and the warbloggers were very proud. That's history now.
warning them to leave is the best an attacker can do if it's going to launch an attack at all
This is just factually wrong.
I can agree with 159 (with some reservations about the necessity of "meaningful attacks").
We can all agree that
What is true, however, is that Israel has no way to distinguish "guy who just didn't want to flee after a warning" from "guy who supports Hezbollah". Warning people in the area and giving them time to leave is the best it can do if it is going to be able to launch a meaningful attack at all.
if we're willing to caveat "best it can do" and "meaningful attack." But that's always the problem, in situations ranging from this one to police going after criminals embeded in communities of poor, law abiding people--sometimes you're resticted in your range of action in going after legitimate targets because they've so entangled themselves with non-targets. It sucks, but that's the tough problem. There isn't a solution you like, that gives deep satisfaction? Welcome to the real world.
The problem, though, for journalists is that they cannot know whether the civilians were terrorists, terrorist supporters, etc. I've read interviews with Gazans who claim that Hamas will demand to use your house, and if you say no, Hamas will beat up your kids--or deliberately use your house to launch a rocket, inviting Israeli counter-attacks. Yes, that's despicable behavior from Hamas, and yes, it games the entire system of dividing combattants from civilians. But I don't think that journalists should be attempting to make the fine distinctions of culpability, and particularly not on deadline.
But I don't think that journalists should be attempting to make the fine distinctions of culpability, and particularly not on deadline.
This is all fine and reasonable taken in isolation. The effect, however, is that what gets reported is that all that Irael is killing is civilians and there is no attempt to explain who or why. This results in retail dishonesty and wholesale dishonestly, because the result is to--intentionally or not--fail to describe what is going on in significant ways.
There is plenty enough honestly to criticize the Israelis about here. Wouldn't it be better if people tried to stick to that.
retail dishonesty and wholesale dishonestly
s/b
retail honesty and wholesale dishonestly
I gather that this (who harbor them )and this uniformed Israeli soldiers), plus compulsory service and the fact that people normally live with others (parents, children, friends, etc.) gets you to "every Israeli citizen is a legitimate target." I don't agree with any of it, but I'm now wondering what you mean by "terrorist."
And, just to be clear, here (The media--and we--should try to be a little more evenhanded and honest in how we describe what is going on.) you're saying that the media is notably anti-Israeli? That is completely crazy. IIRC, within the last five years, someone got in trouble for suggesting that the US should act as an honest broker between Israel and (maybe) the Palestinians. Pelosi (IIRC) was particularly irate, and noted that we have a special relationship with Israel, and being "an honest broker" is not in the cards. What I don't recall is media outrage in reporting this.
171: Once again, though, I want to stress that what's happening is not simply the unavoidable "civilians caught in the crossfire" aspect of war. Israel is not merely bombing Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon and accidentally killing civilians there. Israel is carrying out airstrikes across the country, including regions and targets which have no connection to Hezbollah. Civilian casualties are not a regrettable byproduct of this war; they are an intended consequence. This makes an argument like Dershowitz's all the more grotesque, because he's arguing for stripping away the civilian status of noncombatants who weren't merely caught in the crossfire, but were targeted as part of a campaign to cripple a country.
182: What? I haven't read any reporting that Israel is only killing civilians. What I've read is reporting that, in retaliating against Hezbollah, Israel has killed a lot of civilians. Everyone knows why: because there are a lot of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Whether or not that fact excuses the killing of civilians is something one can argue about, but it's ridiculous to pretend that what's being reported is that Israel is just willfully killing civilians for no reason whatsoever.
Civilian casualties are not a regrettable byproduct of this war; they are an intended consequence.
I am aware of no evidence that this is true. If the Israelis wanted to focus on civilian casualties, they could and the results would be much more terrible than they already are. It is obvious that they are attacking infrastructure targets throughout Lebanon, and civilians are getting killed. The Israelis can quite rightly be condemed both for the attacks themselves and for the fact that they have resulted in civilian casualties, but that is quite a different thing.
This makes an argument like Dershowitz's all the more grotesque, because he's arguing for stripping away the civilian status of noncombatants who weren't merely caught in the crossfire, but were targeted as part of a campaign to cripple a country.
I do not see Dershowitz's argument as intended to cover the casualties you are referring to.
The effect, however, is that what gets reported is that all that Irael is killing is civilians and there is no attempt to explain who or why.
I agree with Jackmormon that the reporters aren't in a position to judge whether the dead in a house were sympathizers, terrorists, or innocents. The reporters don't seem to be in a position to do more than grab wire reports or watch Lebanese TV.
Anyhow, Idealist, I'm not sure that statement holds. The front-page article today talks about guerilla fire, death of guerilla fighters, that it began when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed three others. And it quotes a UN coordinator who laments the response and the civillian toll.
it's ridiculous to pretend that what's being reported is that Israel is just willfully killing civilians for no reason whatsoever.
While there are some comments in this thread which could be read as agruing just that, that is not what I wrote. Go read the Times article referred to. It quotes uncritically a statement by Hezbollah that three of its people were killed, but otherwise makes no reference to Hezbollah casualties. Leading the reader to assume--as I think some in this thread do assume--that all of the casualties were not Hezbollah, but rather were civilians who had no relationship to the fighting other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It is obvious that they are attacking infrastructure targets throughout Lebanon, and civilians are getting killed.
Yes, throughout Lebanon - including vast stretches where Hezbollah has little to no control. These are attacks on Lebanese civilian infrastructure, and in the process Lebanese civilians are getting killed.
And yes, Lebanese civilians themselves have been targeted, including numerous cases of cars, vans, and trucks full of fleeing civilians getting hit by Israeli missiles. That's not even an attack on Lebanese infrastructure, which itself is an indefensible act of collective punishment; that's just slaughter.
Infrastructure is a civilian casualtiy. The Israelis aren't trying to kill as many civilians as possible, but they're targeting civilians and civilian structures.
This argument is hard to do, because there's a latent argument which is never expressed except by undisciplined loudmouths, but which is a constant background idea both for Israeli and the US superhawks (who are not rare, and people like Ledeen have very influential connections).
That's total war against the whole Arab Middle East, as in Germany and Japan during WWII.
189: I know that's not what you wrote, come on. But it is pretty much the implication of what you did write, to wit: The effect, however, is that what gets reported is that all that Irael is killing is civilians and there is no attempt to explain who or why. I deliberately said what I said in order to point out that that's the implication.
175 is too awesome a burn to spoil with an attempt at a comeback.
187:
I do not see Dershowitz's argument as intended to cover the casualties you are referring to.
Then it's very sloppily written for a law professor.
Dershowitz does not say:
" Among [t]hose who voluntarily remain behind are some who by actively aiding Hezbollah have become complicit."
He explicitly says that everyone who remains behind, with the specific exception of those who are unable to leave, is per se "complicit" and not "an innocent victim."
Granted, his next paragraph seems to imply that those who remain behind but do not actively aid Hezbollah still count as "civilians," and their deaths are tragic, though not very tragic; but if they're complicit and will not, in the event of their deaths, be innocent victims, why can't Israel properly target them?
Idealist, I've looked up and down this thread for the NYT article you keep referring to, and I can't find it. Help?
Infrastructure is a civilian casualtiy. The Israelis aren't trying to kill as many civilians as possible, but they're targeting civilians and civilian structures.
Isn't it a little more complicated than that? Attacking infrastructure and communication is pretty common, and given that Hizbollah isn't a military group with their own bases and roads and Pentagons, how would one distinguish between the two?
Leading the reader to assume--as I think some in this thread do assume--that all of the casualties were not Hezbollah, but rather were civilians who had no relationship to the fighting other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I'm not sure what the Times is supposed to say by way of avoiding that implication when they can't tell who is civilian and who is terrorist.
What is true, however, is that Israel has no way to distinguish "guy who just didn't want to flee after a warning" from "guy who supports Hezbollah". Warning people in the area and giving them time to leave is the best it can do if it is going to be able to launch a meaningful attack at all.
I think this is actually at the crux of the issue of Dershowitz's douchebaggery. I agree with AD that there are morally significant differences between non-fighters who actively support Hezbollah and true innocent bystanders. What I find objectionable is to draw the line of complicity in such a way as to include people who simply refused to leave in with the active supporters. What I find even more objectionable is the conflation of two very different claims: (a) some retaliatory actions are permissible though they involve true-civilian deaths and though those deaths are morally relevant to the question of permissibility, and (b) the practical and perhaps moral necessity of retaliation somehow renders the true civilians into co-conspirators.
Granting arguendo that warning is the best Israel can do, and granting even that the subsequent retaliation is morally permissible, it in no way follows that everyone killed afterwards is complicit.
I know that's not what you wrote, come on
Uh, then it might have been better not to say that it is what I was arguing. Nor do I think it is a reasonable implication of what I wrote. The press is not accusing the Israelis of killing people for no reason whatsoever. However, what is not reported, and the press is not explaining to us, is what these casualty numbers mean. By so doing, they create the strong impression--one adopted by some here--that all of the casualties are civilians who have no realation to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah than being caught in the cross-fire. Which is, of course, just what Hezbollah and its supports would want. Now, I do not imagine that most of the press is doing just what Hezbollah wants because of a strong desire to support their cause, but it is not unreasonable to make the point (hidden in the stupid points he also made) that Dershowitz makes that this is one effect of how they report things and that they should try to address it.
On, and on the NYT interactive: 100 Hezbollah fighters killed. If this is a highly guarded liberal secret, the NYT is sucking at it.
well, isn't it the point that Israel is attacking Lebanese communications and infrastructure, and not Hezbollah's. Hezbollah doesn't have its own power plants or water works, so Israel treats Lebanon's water works as Hezbollah's. By this method everything in Lebanon becomes a military target.
It keeps getting forgotten here that Israel is attacking all of Lebanon. A couple of winger bloggers with pro-American Lebanese friends are under attack by the other wingers now because they aren't cheering for Israel.
Idealist, I've looked up and down this thread for the NYT article you keep referring to, and I can't find it. Help?
Here (and my bad, the reference above was to an AP release that said pretty much the same thing and I confused the two). Sorry.
Honestly, Idealist, I'm not trying to be a pill here, but I don't see how "all that gets reported is that all Israel is killing is civilians" is substantively different than "Israel is willfully killing civilians for no reason." If all that's getting reported is, "Israel is killing civilians," then the implication, surely, is that that killing is willful and unmotivated, no? And I object to that, because I think that it's quite clear that the press is not reporting only that Israel is killing civilians. In fact, what I've seen in the major newspapers is a lot of stories about Israeli civilians being worried about Hezbollah's bombing, stories about westerners evacuating Beirut, and stories about Israel bombing Lebanon. I haven't seen a lot of stories focusing on interviews with Lebanese over their fears.
Which, for the record, I'm sure those stories are out there, and I've just missed them. But if Dershowitz's point is that the press is failing to report that there are quite a few people in Lebanon who sympathize with Hezbollah, then that's just wrong, because I've read those stories too.
100 Hezbollah fighters killed. If this is a highly guarded liberal secret, the NYT is sucking at it.
On the contrary, if they know, it means that the argument that the articles about casualties cannot discuss how many of the casualties are terrorists fails, because the press can make such a distinction--it just many times fails to.
I do not expect perfection from the press any more than I expect it from anyone else. It's just that there is a glaring failure to explain key facts here.
I'm not certain opinion isn't divided in Lebanon. Anecdotally, a Lebanese former student of mine dislikes Israel and blames it for the instability in the region. About two years ago, a Lebanese falafel restaurant owner, on the other hand, when he discovered from my friend's accent that he was Israeli, gave him extra hummus and us a whole plate of grape leaves for free. The Lebanese expats my boyfriend worked with in Alberta were ridiculously pro-Israel because 'Israel stopped the civil war when our government couldn't.'
I'm not sure Lebanon's government is in enough control to say 'these are all Lebanese roads'. It seems like it's only governing the northern half.
200--Thanks for the link. Actually, that was kind of an amazing article, in that there were practically no sentences that weren't sourced to somebody, anybody. "Lebanese security officials said"... "Israeli defense minister X said"... "according to witnesses"... If I had happened upon this article randomly, I would take it as a very rough first draft of history indeed.
the argument that the articles about casualties cannot discuss how many of the casualties are terrorists fails
Who is making that argument? Moreover, the fact that the NYT can *sometimes* identify Hezbollah doesn't mean it can *always* do so.
If all that's getting reported is, "Israel is killing civilians," then the implication, surely, is that that killing is willful and unmotivated, no?
No. Just one example is attacks on infrastructure. I think the Israelis are very much in the wrong here, but it still is not wanton and willful killing of civilians for no reasons. Killing civilians is an unintended (but perfectly predictable and unavoidable) consequence of the attack. But it was not the reason for the attack. And thus it is not a wonton and willful killing of civilians.
If the infrastructure attacks truly were warranted, the unintended, but completely predictable civilian deaths would be warranted (because part of what you would consider in deciding whether the infrastructure attack was warranted is the predicatble civilian casualties).
[I have to go back to lurking, I am at work struggling to finish something I was supposed to have finished when I was here yesterday. This argument is more interesting, but it's not doing much for our client]
Not really, Idealist. It seems the Times is very dependent on either the Israeli military (the 100 fighters figure) or Lebanese TV (the fleeing Taire minibus). Assuming that the 100 fighters is accurate would be nearly as much of a systemic bias as assuming that Hezbollah accurately reports its own troop deaths. Plus, the information's right there; should it be written in bold type just so no one misses it?
What are you asking for?
Actually, the real glaring error in the Times this morning was lauding Syria for coming to the table to ask for the Golan Heights, which really should have been explained as 'not really a serious offer.'
I'll go along with "killing civilians is a predictable and unavoidable consequence of [many, perhaps most] of Israel's attacks on Lebanon." But I can't go along with the idea that it's completely unintended, because it *is* so eminently predictable.
We all probably do need to read Schmitt's Theory of the Partisan as a way of helping think through this issue. For instance, Hezbollah is not made up of the uniformed soldiers of a recognized sovereign state -- so technically, Hezbollah are civilians.
The problem is that international law is inter-national, when in much of the world the concept of a rational state with a monopoly on legitimate force is little more than a legal fiction -- in Lebanon, for instance. What do you do when a significant but not strictly delimitable portion of a country is run by the mafia?
This is all largely academic, however, because it is obvious that Israel's actions are grossly out of proportion to what any reasonable person could permit as retaliation for the kidnapping of two fucking soldiers! They're setting back the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon back 20, 30 years -- because two fucking soldiers were kidnapped! I mean, my GOD! Let's put it in context -- even if Dershowitz's morally bankrupt argument is totally right, this (viz., the kidnapping of two fucking soldiers) is the crime with which people are now complicit by virtue of not leaving. On what moral scale is such a thing punishable by death?
Do we have any reason to suspect the two soldiers are even alive?
What are you asking for?
I feel like I should at least answer this before going back to lurking.
I would hope that the press would at least say something like: The Lebanese government reports X civilian casualties. We are unable to determine how many of those casualties were Hezbollah fighters who were attacked as military targets and how many were simply caught in the cross-fire of the fighting between Hezbollah and Isreal. The IDF claims that it has killed X Hezbollah fighters.
I think everyone's missing the real issue here, which is that in naming his new concept Dershowitz chose not to use the obvious and easily-understandable term "civilianity" but rather coined the bizarre "civilianality," a neologism worthy of Chris Muir.
The problem with 212 is that it pretty clearly implies, as Dershowitz argues outright, that most Lebanese civilians are *really* Hezbollah sympathizers, and that those who aren't are just unlucky, rather than explicit targets.
Idealist, you're playing both sides. Now you say that if the press reports "Hezbollah militants killed" it proves that they were wrong when they reported, a different time, "Lebanese civilians killed". It looks to me as though the press is doing the best it can (and doing pretty well, too), and that the complaints about the press are just the same old right-wing tactics of intimidation, and that they won't stop until the press quits reporting any civilian casualties at all. I do NOT believe that what's being asked for is careful and accurate reporting.
Just a reminder that Lebanese deaths have been outnumbering Israeli deaths about 10-1 (if that's off, someone tell me the exact proportion). I don't think that we're seeing 10x as much reporting of Lebanese casualties.
And another reminder that the Israelis are attacking anti-Hezbollah areas of Lebanon.
Idealist, what you're asking for is just impractible. That NYT article, which is essentially an AP round-up of what various people, some anonymous, were saying, reports on some thirty discrete events, none of which the reporter was able to follow up on. Following your standard would have doubled the size of what was already a two-page article.
Every couple of days, most newspapers do a pull-out news analysis; that's where journalists challenge about definitions of "civilianality" or debate their sources' numbers. And then there are the Dershowitzian op-ed pages, where people can muse about strategic or moral questions to their hearts' contents.
(I don't pretend to know how many Hizbollah fighters or active supporters have been killed--and I don't expect to know much about the actual numbers until at least a month or so from now, if then. At this point, I simply presume that anybody who claims to know the exact number is lying. I don't know how the AP is supposed to deal with that problem in a wire dispatch, though.)
The Lebanese government reports X civilian casualties. We are unable to determine how many of those casualties were Hezbollah fighters who were attacked as military targets and how many were simply caught in the cross-fire of the fighting between Hezbollah and Isreal. The IDF claims that it has killed X Hezbollah fighters.
You've got to be kidding. Then Hezbollah will start saying that when it rains it rockets on Haifa, it's aiming for secret Israeli military labs. The NYT will check with Israel, and Israel will deny it. And then the NYT is supposed to report "there is some dispute about whether Hezbollah's targets are legitimate military targets"? Yeah, that'll make everything better.
I think that the word "civilianality" is the only good thing about the article.
I'm glad some anonymous person agrees with me.
209 does indeed get it exactly right.
210: I heard an Israeli government official on the radio last week saying that Israeli intelligence believes that the two soldiers are alive.
187: If the Israelis wanted to focus on civilian casualties, they could and the results would be much more terrible than they already are.
The Israelis could indeed do much more damage than they are doing. But it does not follow from this that they are currently not deliberately targeting explicitly non-Hezbollah civilians and civilian infrastructure.
220: Aren't they worried they might blow up their own hidden soldiers with all the bombs?
If they think they know where the soldiers are, they're probably not bombing that area.
222: Clearly not. Unless they believe the soldiers have been spirited off to Iran or something. This really isn't about the soldiers anyway.
223: But then they should be going and getting the soldiers. I realize it's not really about the soldiers, but I'd like if everyone would quit pretending that it were. This would make a sucky-ass rescue mission.
It's quite possible that they think the soldiers are in Syria or Iran. But yes, it is of course not about the soldiers.
On a slight tangent, here's some debate on a new International Convention Against Blowing Little Girls' Faces Off.
On the inter-national nature of this conflict: if a great problem for Israel is the vast portions of neighboring states that are free of government or civilian infrastructure (i.e., conditions that breed terrorists), bombing the civilized portions of those states in such a way to bring them to the verge of collapse is entirely contrary to Israel's interests. What does Israel hope to achieve with bombing Beirut? It's entirely beyond me.
228: This is what utterly baffles me. Israel's counterterror policy, like that of the United States, seems bound to produce nothing but more failed states. How will this produce anything but more misery for everyone involved?
You know, if the Dershowitz piece is a liberal defense of the practice of killing civilians during wartime, I’d sure hate to see the reactionary defense. Which brings me to my next point:
John Emerson: proof that civility is just another word for patriarchy.
This reminds me of a story I heard some time ago. I was attending an anarchist conference on the west coast, during one of those times when Bob Black and Ward Churchill were in the middle of a big feud. The second round of morning workshops had just finished up (I think I attended the one on “Insurrectionary Veganism”) and I was standing in line with my used tofu container in hand, waiting to be doled out a two-day old bagel and some weak stew by the local Food Not Bombs collective.
There was a very old woman standing next to me, judging by her buttons she was clearly a veteran of every lefty cause since Sacco and Vanzetti were still hopeful about their eventual acquittal. I was grumbling about the long line and she piped up:
“Oh, this is nothing comrade, back in ’52 I sat on a cold gymnasium floor for six hours listening to Walter Reuther speak, and at the end of it some Party types had absconded with all the doughnuts.”
“So how’d you get interested in radicalism?” I asked, since at that time I thought of myself as a sort of apprentice anarchist who was going to learn from everyone else’s mistakes before committing myself to a definite course of action.
“Comrade,” she said, “it was when I was just a girl in New York City. I was horrified by the tremendous loss of life in the world war, and one blustery winter day I happened to walk into a radical bookstore. I spoke to the people there, to find out how we got into this mess and they told me I could either read “Capital” or speak to the Old Revolutionist.
“I asked how to find this Old Revolutionist, because I wasn’t much for reading over action in those days. They gave me an address and I set off.
“When I got to the address, it turned out to be a tiny garret perched on the corner of one of the city’s oldest tenements. I ascended the rickety back staircase and knocked on the door. A faint voice said ‘Come in.’
“When I entered I found myself in a room that was even tinier than I would have supposed from its outward appearance. A hunched and crabbed figure of indeterminate gender sat huddled next to a miniscule brazier, wrapped against the cold in dozens of blankets, quilts and shawls.
“ ‘Are you the Old Revolutionist?’” I asked. ‘Yes’ came the reply. ‘I have a question: How did we end up where we are today? What is the root of all this oppression and injustice?’
“ ‘It is just so,’ said the Old Revolutionist: ‘Before the current crisis, there was the rise of the nation state. Before the nation state, there was the vanity of kings. Before the kings was the crushing weight of religious dogma. Before dogma there was hatred for the outsider. Before that was the domination of one group over another. Before that domination, there was oppression within the family. And before the family, there was a patriarch.’”
“ ‘That’s it then!’ I exclaimed, ‘The first patriarch was the one to blame!’”
“ ‘No, no,’ said the Old Revolutionist, ‘you misunderstand. After that, it’s patriarchies all the way down.’”
“ ‘If that’s the case,’ I replied, ‘then fuck you, clown.’”
No one's said that the only number of acceptable civilian casualties is zero.
Uh, see 95, the comment which I read Gaijin Biker as addressing. I read it as making exactly that claim.
I'm responding to some stuff way up a thread that I haven't read all of yet, but I feel the need to add that I too think that the only acceptable number of civilian casualities is zero. I am well aware that this makes all war unacceptable.
Just when I thought I had a handle on your theoretical apparatus, Rob...
I too think that the only acceptable number of civilian casualities is zero.
How do you figure?
I'm only guessing, but maybe 'cause it's bad to kill people?
I agree with Rob, actually. I figure it as a simple matter of fact: it's unacceptable to kill civilians. It happens, and I accept that as a fact, but that doesn't mean I think it's an acceptable outcome.
We may differ on what we mean by 'acceptable.' I don't think it's great to kill civilians, mind, but I think that in even the most careful of wars it's inevitable, and the fact that it is inevitable that some civilians will be killed isn't a sufficient reason to refrain from warring in all cases. I'd call that 'accepting' civilian casualties, and I think anyone who isn't a straight-out pacifist has to, too.
Sigh. Leave for the day and the mood turns snippy.
GB is not a troll, by any definition of the term with which I am familiar. He's been here a long time, he engages in both political and non-political threads, he doesn't call anybody names, he doesn't deliberately aim to stir shit. In my experience both here and at my site (but mostly at mine), he doesn't argue in bad faith. We disagree about a lot of things—more things than not, perhaps—but I've never felt those were anything but honest disagreements.
That said, 229 gets it exactly right. If Israel's goal is to get Lebanon to rein in Hezbollah, systematically destroying the Lebanese government's ability to provide even the barest of governmental services is one ass-backwards way of going about it. It would almost lead one to believe that perhaps that isn't the real goal. Especially since Hezbollah is more or less a direct result of the exact same approach Israel used against the PLO. Hamas too, for that matter.
I'm sure most people think that (a) every effort should be made to minimize civilian casualties, and that (b) there is a number or percentage of unavoidable civilian casualties that should scuttle an attack. So all that's left is to argue about whether every effort has been made, and what the number or percentage is. I don't have any opinion on those issues beyond saying that I find offensive the effort to reclassify civilians as something else in order to (I assume) get around an upper limit. That's grotesque.
This bombing of Lebanon is so stupid, immoral and counterproductive that it makes no sense to me, either. And with the US speeding up arms shipments to Israel, I'm starting to believe that the point of all of this is to hasten the rapture.
I find it helpful to shift from a discussion of whether killing innocent people is bad — since we all are in general agreement that it is — to a discussion of who has the responsibility for keeping innocent civilians safe from an attack.
If we say that the attacker always does, then we are in effect demanding that Israel allow its enemies to keep operating. There's no way it can destroy Hezbollah without incurring some level of civilian casualties. We are also giving terror groups an incentive to stay in civilian areas, and removing any incentive for civilians and official governments to kick them out.
It makes more sense to say that the state or group that provokes an attack is responsible for its consequences.
If you tolerate or fail to dismantle terror groups in your country who kidnap Israeli soldiers (yes, even "just" two of them) and launch rockets at Israeli civilian targets, you cannot complain when Israel fights back on its own terms. Yes, some of your civilians will be killed. The responsibility for protecting them remains yours.
And before anyone brings up 9-11, plese recognize the difference between civilians dying as an unavoidable consequence of attacks on Hezbollah, and civilians dying as the deliberate targets of a pointless terror attack.
Why does responsibility toward civilians have to be on only one party? (Or, to avoid the rhetorical question -- Responsibility toward civilians is not on only one party.)
Yes, of course, absolutely, Hezbollah knows they're putting civilians at risk by hiding among them, and the government of Lebanon has failed to root Hezbollah out. Both parties have either endangered or failed to protect civilians, and are responsible for their suffering because of it. Israel is still responsible for (at least) minimizing death and suffering among civilians to the absolute minimum compatible with protecting itself.
Placing the responsibility on Hezbollah doesn't lift all, or really any, responsibility from Israel -- you can't say "It's Hezbollah's fault, so Israel can do absolutely anything."
If you tolerate or fail to dismantle terror groups in your country who kidnap Israeli soldiers (yes, even "just" two of them) and launch rockets at Israeli civilian targets, you cannot complain when Israel fights back on its own terms.
Is that like, "If you don't point out and testify against the the criminals in your neighborhood, you can't complain when the police decide to hammer the bejesus out of everyone in your neighborhood"? The Israelis don't get a green light to do whatever they want, any more than 9/11 gave us a green light to nuke Afghanistan (though I remain convinced we could have gotten away with it).
This is more or less why no Red should ever have his hands on the levers of government.
GB: But what if the attackers simply don't care about civilian casualties on "their" side (scare quotes because Hezbollah != Lebanese people)? There isn't some absolute antagonistic relationship here (or shouldn't be, at least), where if the countries involved don't militarily defend their people adequately, the people will be killed. Of course Israel has an obligation to protect Lebanese civilians, they don't lose their human rights simply beacuse they live across a border. At root, you have to realize that there isn't a single actor here--there are many distinct groups and individuals involved, spanning the complete range of complicty (or lack thereof). Don't lump them all together.
If you tolerate or fail to dismantle terror groups in your country who kidnap Israeli soldiers (yes, even "just" two of them) and launch rockets at Israeli civilian targets, you cannot complain when Israel fights back on its own terms. Yes, some of your civilians will be killed. The responsibility for protecting them remains yours.
The Lebanese government just barely gained control of part of the country in the last year or so when Syria left. They have never controlled the south, because they are not militarily strong enough to do so. As far as that goes, the Israeli occupation was barely able to control the south, and they certainly couldn't root out Hamas.
Your arguments are only good for shifting blame where you want it shifted. As far as a constructive contribution to understanding the situation, they aren't that, even from an Israeli point of view. I expect the Israelis to end up worse off from this, and I also expect them to come begging the US to bail them out, which Dubya will be glad to do.
And GB: My apologies that you were called a troll. We're all a little hairtrigger because there have been a bunch around lately.
Everyone: A troll is someone who's just trying to stir shit, whether as comedy or out of hostility. Someone like GB, who's honestly trying to engage and persuade, isn't a troll whatever you think of his arguments.
Awww... *sniff* I love you guys!
As usual, I agree with Cala, specifically 236.
I'm only guessing, but maybe 'cause it's bad to kill people?
Golly.
I'm interested in Rob's reply in particular because he's more favorably disposed than I am to versions of utilitarianism that would seem to rule out pacifism under any realistic empirical assumptions.
If we say that the attacker always does, then we are in effect demanding that Israel allow its enemies to keep operating.
There's a lot of room between 'Israel always bears some moral responsibility for the deaths of civilians' and 'Israel's enemies must be allowed to roam free.' Surely some critique and expectation of proportional response is possible.
If you tolerate or fail to dismantle terror groups in your country who kidnap Israeli soldiers (yes, even "just" two of them) and launch rockets at Israeli civilian targets, you cannot complain when Israel fights back on its own terms
I could be wrong; but the rocket attacks into Haifa started after Israel moved in, not before. We can expand Israel's casus belli if we want -- it's pretty clear this isn't just in response to a kidnapping -- but the timeline is still relevant.
GB: But what if the attackers simply don't care about civilian casualties on "their" side
I have no illusions that Hezbollah is motivated by a desire to ensure the safety of Lebanese civilians. They clearly do not.
What I am saying is that the lack of any demonstrable concern for Lebanese civilians by state and terror-group actors in Lebanon, as gauged by efforts to stop terrorist attacks, does not impose such a concern on Israel in responding to those attacks.
I'm reminded of a sign you see in some people's office cubicles: "Your failure to plan is not my emergency". That could be revised here to "Your failure to stop terror groups is not my duty to avoid civilian casualties".
rob's consistent if he thinks that all war is bad and there are no acceptable civilian casualities. But I, too, am interested in the argument that all war is bad from a utilitarian perspective; I can get all the way to 'don't start wars of choice', but not all the way to 'never war.' (This may be because I'm not a utilitarian.)
That could be revised here to "Your failure to stop terror groups is not my duty to avoid civilian casualties".
So there you go: no principle of proportionality. It's nice when your the biggest guy in the room, I guess.
Your failure to stop terror groups is not my duty to avoid civilian casualties
Yes, it is. Or it's at least your duty to attempt to do so. By saying things like "they didn't adequately deal with the terrorists", you're trying to shift blame onto the civilians and make them less innocent. If there's an actual group of innocent civilians, the bombing of whom is wrong, the existence of non-innocents (i.e. terrorists) nearby does not suddenly make it ok to bomb them.
The point here is that israel doesn't get a free pass to bomb anywhere they please just because they met some technical requirement and lebanon isn't stepping up, or something. What israel does depends on what lebanon does, they are not independant of each other,
That could be revised here to "Your failure to stop terror groups is not my duty to avoid civilian casualties"
Fair enough, but this pretty principle much justifies whatever you want it to. Genocide, nukes, whatever. Brutal retaliations on Israelis. It also tosses out all of just war theory; which you might not want anyway. But this isn't a non-radical position.
Lebanon has not been able to control its south for years.
I just wanted to link to the really good Hilzoy post on more than one party being morally responsible for a particular bad outcome. The whole post is good, but I'm talking specifically about the part which beings, "Is morality zero-sum?"
Re: utilitarianism and consequentialism.
My utilitarianism operates only at a high level of abstraction. I specifically count myself as a virtue utilitarian, meaning I try to cultivate the character traits that I believe will maximize happiness for the maximum number of people (where happiness is understood in a eudaimonistic fashion.) This means that I am not actually really concerned with rules like "never war" so much as I am with purging myself of the militaristic tendencies that infect our species. For a neat treatment of virtue utilitarianism see Dale Jamieson, "When utilitarians should be virtue theorists"
But maxims are good heuristics for guiding trait formation, so I do periodically endorse rules, and I think "never war" is a good place to start. I am actually more confident in that maxim than I am in utilitarianism. I've been basically a pacifist all my life, but only recently, as a matter of professional study, came to endorse utilitarianism.
So why "never war"? It is largely a matter of finding effective means for just ends. My experience says that the more just a cause, the more likely it is to effectively be pursued by nonviolence. Violence is only really effective if your goal is to maintain empire.
Another important part of my reasoning is that I don't give a rats ass for the fate of nation states per se. If someone were to ask me "how should Israel defend itself without an army?", I am inclined to say "I don't care if *Israel* can defend itself." Israel is another dirty flag. Jews living in that part of the world can best defend themselves against oppression by the Muslim majority nonviolently, just as Palistianians could best end the occupation by turning to nonviolence.
That's about as far as I can get reconciling pacifism and utilitarianism. They are actually very different parts of my brain. The former is an old, emotional, and unacademic commitment. The latter is the opposite of all of those.
"Your failure to plan is not my emergency".
For GB Israel and the US are "us" and Lebanon and the Hezbollah are "them". For me, Lebanon and Israel are the same, and neither one of them is "us" for me. The Hezbollah are definitely Other, but they're not Lebanon.
For most Americans Israel is still "us", but at some point that could stop being true. Seemingly, as long as they get a blank check, they'll keep cashing it until they're cut loose entirely.
I am aware that Israel has total support from our legally elected President.
Either the grey lady reads Unfogged, or some of this 'the Times isn't fair' Derschowitz-inspired hand-wringing is overwrought.
From this evening's update:
The deaths brought the toll to at least 380, Lebanese authorities said. Lebanon does not differentiate between civilian and Hezbollah deaths. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 100 Hezbollah fighters. The military also said that Hezbollah had fired nearly 100 rockets on northern Israel on Sunday.
as gauged by efforts to stop terrorist attacks
The Lebanese government is, what, a year old? After how many years of foreign occupation and civil war? This is much like when Israel kept calling on Arafat to stop terrorist attacks, despite the fact that they had him effectively embargoed in his Ramallah compound.
The analogy with the situation in Northern Ireland is a good one.
Analogous behaviour by the British would have involved the following:
Add in some inflationary rhetoric about the role of the US in funding the terrorists with possible MI6/SAS hit squads travelling into New York to 'take out' prominent Irish Americans. Perhaps the occasional guided missile.
All of the above to be justified with rhetoric about how, since the Irish government didn't prevent cross-border smuggling of weapons and launching of attacks by the PIRA, this made the Irish government complicit and it was the right of the UK to defend itself against Irish agression in any way it saw fit.
261: "overwrought" s/b "grade-A bullshit"
While I hate to argue against my own side in a debate, the degree to which the current Lebanese gummint could be said to be all-new and all-different is limited. I mean, the current PM, Siniora, was only Finance Minister for about 8 years in the '90s, and among the heads of the major parties in the current governing coalition, one of them (Walid Jumblatt) was actually a major force in Lebanese government throughout the '90s, and another (Saad Hariri) is the son of the man who was prime minister for most of those years. (The third, Samir Geagea, was admittedly in prison for most of those years, which gives him a bit of an out).
The Lebanese government is new in the sense that it's only just reestablishing its authority after a considerable period of puppetry and powerlessness.
Well, sort of. (In that it was neither all that puppet-y before, nor all that independent after.)
264: "grade A bullshit" s/b "grade A bullshit with a moustache AND a sombrero."
re: 268
Thank you for that well reasoned critique of my comments.
Does "moustache" still mean "opposite of"? Maybe we do need a glossary -- Becks-style, moustache, Who wants to sex Motumbo... the jargon is building up.
261 is the well-reasoned critque (Well. If 'A' is your comment and my critique is '~A nuh-uh', and that's well reasoned.)
268 is me putting sombreros on apo's comments for maximum teh funny.
I thought the argument that victims of mass war attacks were responsible for their fate had long ago gone the way of "But she PROVOKED that rape with that short dress so it's HER fault."
But I guess I was wrong.
If you START from the supposition that whatever Israel does is justified then, of course, you'll reach this conclusion. But the slippery slope here is simply this -- just how far back do you go to justify? Why stop at the capture of the Israeli soldiers? Why not go back a little further -- to acts of Israeli aggression? Why not go back to the earlier incursion into Lebanon, which created much anger that wasn't there before?
Why not go back to 1948?
Well, if you start from the proposition that Israel is right, then you wouldn't want to go there.
(And, believe me, I don't start from the proposition that the Hizbollah site is right either. It's not that easy.)
The only sensible course for me would be to look at what individual acts of war do. Then you can open a discussion by asking whether EVERY horror is justifiable, or whether there are some things that should never EVER be justifiable.
Or is that too simplistic for some people?
