JSCOPE 2006 Paper
Marcus O. Hedahl, Maj, USAF
Marc.Hedahl@nro.mil
Chief Architect, Mission Management, NRO/IMINT/IGO
M.A. Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2000
Assistant Professor and Instructor of Philosophy, USAFA
2000-2004
Soldiers, Citizens and
Unjust Wars: How the polis should
respond to military members engaged in immoral conflict
Somewhere
in the heart of America a family is rejoicing.
A small Wisconsin town welcomes home a soldier long overdue. As the band
plays “Proud to be an American”, the young man dances with his wife and their
four-year-old daughter. The young girl is wearing a white T-Shirt displaying an
American Flag encircled by the simple phase, “My Daddy, My Hero”. He is so recent a returnee that she cries
when he leaves for work the way she did when he left for Baghdad over a year
ago. She’s still not convinced that he will return in the evening.
American flags encircle the back
yard. There’s a banner that proclaims
“Your country is proud of you, Your family loves you”. There’s even a large and slighted faded flag
hung from the big weeping willow in the back yard that had been given to the
young man’s grandfather now long since passed when that veteran of three wars
finally and reluctantly retired.
I’m sure
many Americans have been to a homecoming like the one I just described, if not
in recent months then perhaps in recent wars. These moments can us make feel as
if we are inside a living, breathing, Rockwell painting. The interesting thing
about a painting, however, is that it is meant to capture a moment. It cannot always capture the context in which
that singularity in time is contained. In this case, it cannot capture the fact
that the soldier himself just expressed serious reservations about the war from
which he recently returned. It cannot
display the feelings of numerous family members in attendance that go far
behind mere reservations. For, as little
as a week ago, the young soldier’s mother-in-law could be seen wearing a button
that claimed simply, “This war is immoral.”
This scene
would be unthinkable for a generation and a war now more than thirty years
removed. This fact, however, should not
be surprising. For many believed at that time as Mario Savio eloquently claimed
in 1964, that "there's a time when
the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart,
that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part. And you've got to
put your bodies upon the gear and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all
the apparatus, and you've got to indicate to the people who own it that unless
you're free, the machines will be prevented from working at all."
It’s not surprising, therefore, that
that generation of anti-war protestors would be uncomfortable with such a
homecoming. After all, they viewed their protests as a moral imperative born
from a negative responsibility to stop an odious and unjust war. In the eyes of
1960s anti-war activists, soldiers not only failed to fight against an immoral
war, they were themselves the necessary agents for carrying out that larger
injustice. Therefore, it would be
nonsensical to celebrate any sacrifices they may have made in carrying out
their duties. The soldiers returning
from that war were spat upon, called baby killers, and worse. However, this attitude towards members of the
military is much less frequent in the today’s anti-war activists. Perhaps this fact is due to nothing more than
political expediency. It seems more likely, however, that numerous activists
have realized that it’s hard to blame young men willing to sacrifice and even
die for a war they may not have chosen.
I would contend that this change in our society is one we should
welcome. Nonetheless, there is also something unsettling about the love the
sinner, hate the sin attitude found in many of today’s anti-war activists. It is this discomfort that I’d like to
discuss today.
The
question it seems is whether citizen supporting for the military requires them
to support the war. The problem case, of
course, is when a citizen, Senator, or even soldier believes the current war is
an unjust war. How should a citizen that
believes that the current war is unjust regard the military men and women that
fight in it? The answer, it seems, is
closely aligned with the question of the moral responsibility soldiers have for
the crimes of Jus Ad Bellum. That is,
the question of what the proper attitude someone should have to members of the
military during an unjust war seems to rely heavily on the question of whether
or not the soldier can be held responsible for the war in which he or she is
fighting. If soldiers are solely
responsible for their jus in bello actions, then neither mother nor soldier
need to believe in the justness of the cause to see the nobility of the men and
women fighting in it. However, if private and president are equally culpable
for the sins of jus ad bellum, then anyone who reasonably believes the war is
unjust should rightfully regard the soldiers of that war with contempt.
After arguing that the proper response
of citizens for a military engaged in unjustified conflict depends upon how
morally culpable soldiers are for that war, I will examine the arguments of
negative and communal responsibility, and the traditional just war responses to
those arguments. In these examinations,
I hope to demonstrate that the concept of dirty hands provides the most
satisfactory response to the question of how responsible soldiers should be for
the wars in which they fight. While
soldiers should not be held legally responsible if they fight justly in an
unjust war because their actions are in a certain sense required of them, those
actions are nonetheless unjust and it would be immoral to praise them upon
their return.
In order to
make that argument, it is helpful to begin by considering the link between the
proper response to military members engaged in immoral conflict and the
responsibility those members have for that conflict. One could argue that
soldiers who fight in unjust wars should always be celebrated because soldiers
do not choose in which wars to fight, and the sacrifice of service to the
nation is in itself noble. It seems,
however, that such arguments are actually complex in nature and do not answer
the specific question at hand. They are,
in effect saying that because soldiers give up the free will to choose their
wars and sacrifice for the nation-state they are not morally culpable and
therefore should be celebrated. However,
if we break the argument apart and at this point assume statesmen and soldiers alike
are nonetheless collectively responsible for the wars in which they fight, then
these mitigating factors seems less and less important. Certainly, service of
the state itself has some inherent value and that service gains even more value
when soldiers volunteer to serve but do not choose their wars. Furthermore, if soldiers are responsible for
the unjust war their responsibility is nonetheless shared and each individual
soldier possess less culpability. And, while there are good pragmatic reasons
for not holding soldiers legally responsible for the crimes of jus ad bellum
even if there are morally responsible for these wars, it still seems that even
a partial responsibility for something as morally reprehensible as an unjust
war would dictate that we not only not praise the soldiers engaged in such a
conflict, but we morally shun them as well.
Even partial responsibility for an unjust war cannot be mitigated by the
inherent goodness of service. Service to the state is not a good enough reason
to forgive crimes of jus in bello for which individual soldiers are morally
responsible, so it seems that it would not be a good enough reason to pardon
soldiers if they are morally
responsible for the sins of jus ad bellum as well.
Others may
argue that regardless of the moral responsibility of soldiers, citizens should
not praise soldiers engaged in immoral conflict. Several reasons could be given: it would
continue support for an unjust war, it would encourage further enlistments, in
would be further the injustice of the war in some way. All of these arguments, however, are clearly
consequentialist in nature. They do not
say that there is something inherently wrong with praising the soldiers. After
all, if soldiers were completely devoid of responsibility for the wars in which
they fight, they would be as morally innocent as they would be if they were
responding to a natural disaster. While
we could make similar arguments in this parallel case, they would seem to be something
problematic about them. For example, we could argue that praising doctors that
volunteered to go to respond to Hurricane Katrina would detract from the
ability to improve the response to this disaster and future disasters by
focusing instead on the grave issues of mismanagement. However, this argument suffers several
typical failings of relying too heavily on consequentialist reasoning. First of
all, it is a bit of a false alternative to say that I should not praise the
doctors and point out the flaws of management, or praise the soldiers and argue
against the evil of the war in which
they fight. Secondly it overemphasizes
the certainty of the outcomes. While celebrating the doctors could help turn a
blind eye to improving future responsiveness to disasters, so too could
ignoring the work of such individuals.
It could discourage such acts of volunteerism in the future. Finally, it over emphasizes the importance of
the consequences of particular actions and underemphasizes the attention to the
consequences of more foundational rules. While I may argue that there is some
inherent value in public ally praising morally exemplary behavior, even more
utilitarian thinkers would have to accept that generally there are good
consequences to praising moral exemplars and any advantages gained by forgoing
such praise because of other potential consequences have to be weighed against
this more fundamental positive outcome.
If soldiers are completely devoid
of responsibility for their service in unjust wars, then it seems that it would
be acceptable should celebrate their service.
If they are not responsible for the unjust war, then we should regard
their service in that war with indifference or possibly worst as an unfortunate
accident. While we may regard the war
and the leaders who are responsible for it with contempt, contempt for those
“poor sods” that are forced to fight it would seem inappropriate. Furthermore, if their life of service to the
state itself had some inherent value regardless of the wars in which they
fight, then praising them for their life of service would seem
appropriate. Even if we believed some
other group deserved greater praise, inner city schoolteachers perhaps, there
would still seem no moral harm in celebrating the service and sacrifice of its
soldiers. For if our moral principles
dictated that we could only celebrate the supererogation of any party after we
first celebrated the moral sacrifice of those more deserving, we would very
likely spend more time ranking than celebrating. There would certainly be less harm to
celebrate such sacrifice of service of than there would be to celebrate the
NBA’s latest champion with a parade, for example. So while it may not be morally required to
celebrate the service of soldiers engaged in unjust wars, it would certainly
not be morally problematic either. The
proper response to soldiers engaged in unjust will depend upon how morally
culpable for those wars.
So, it now becomes important to
investigate just how culpable soldiers are the unjust wars in which they fight.
It will be helpful to first examine the implied pacifist arguments for a
negative and communal responsibility and attempt to demonstrate why holding all
military members fully culpable for the crimes of jus ad bellum is
problematic. The arguments for holding
soldiers fully responsible for the wars in which they fight come can deal with
issues of negative responsibility or communal responsibility. Mario Savio’s quote becomes helpful to
illustrate these arguments. Soldiers
are negatively responsible for the crimes of war because they fail to stop the
gears of the machine. Of course, all of
the citizens of a country would have a negative responsibility to stop the
injustice, not merely soldiers.
Therefore, the question quickly becomes one of how much does that responsibility
require us: Do we merely have to avoid
service? Can we simply vote for candidates that do not support the war? Do we
personally have to speak out against it?
How often? Etc. So it becomes
readily apparent that arguments of negative responsibility will not be a strong
foundation for arguing that soldiers are morally responsible for the wars in which they fight.
Of course soldiers do not merely
fail to fight against an immoral war, they are themselves the necessary agents
for carrying on that larger injustice.
It is this communal responsibility that is a stronger argument for
holding soldiers fully responsible for the unjust wars in which they
fight. While soldiers are often coerced
to serve, either by being drafting or by
not choosing the wars in which they fight, there is a difference between
coercion and coercion at the point of a gun.
In a free society, there are always other options, however unpleasant
they may be. Soldiers bear a communal
responsibility for the unjust wars because they are the necessary direct agents
of that injustice. (As opposed to
citizens and taxpayers who are indirect agents of the unjust wars Soldiers are
part of a chain of agency required for immoral acts of an unjustified war,
citizens are not.)
Perhaps the best way to
respond to such arguments is by investigating the traditional Just War
arguments, to include Michael Walzer’s, on why soldiers are not responsible for
the crimes of Jus Ad Bellum. These
include but are not limited to differences in knowledge between soldier and statesman,
differences in scope of agency between soldier and statesmen, and the
functional necessity to avoid selective coconscious objection. Walzer uses a quote from Shakespeare to make
his point “A prince is not often able nor can he be expected to explain his
actions in going to war.”
There are
actually several arguments contained within this quote, but it is helpful to
consider them one at a time. First,
there is a difference in knowledge between soldier and statesman. While some just war criteria (e.g.
Legitimate Authority) may be easy for the soldier to discern, others (e.g. Last
Resort) may be much more difficult for her to be able to make a reasoned
judgment without access to the type of data only available to the leaders of
the state (e.g. what has been offered at negotiations, what other alternatives
have been offered and rejected, etc.)
Furthermore, if we grant that it is possible for some preventative or
even preemptive to be morally justified, then it becomes even more difficult to
for soldiers to reasonably know if war is immanent or morally justified,
because they would very infrequently have access to the total intelligence
picture required for such a justification.
And, if the soldier does not have knowledge that the war is unjustified,
yet it is reasonable to believe that it could be, then it would be wrong to
holder him morally responsible for that war.
Second, there is a difference in
the scope of agency between soldier and statesmen. While the leasers of a state are the ultimate
agents for the beginning of the conflicts, soldiers are merely the proximate
agents. This distinction is often used
in other contexts for mitigating moral and legal responsibilities. Finally there are also practical reasons for
not holding soldiers legally or morally responsible for the wars in which they
fight. Walzer points out and others have done a much more thorough job that the
state cannot function if each soldier could pick the wars in which they had to
fight, and the state was required to convince them of the morality of the war
as well.
While these three arguments offer
excellent justification for not holding soldiers either legally or fully
morally responsible for an unjust war, they cannot completely resolve soldiers
from all moral responsibility for just acts within an unjust war. They are mitigating circumstances that
provide excellent justification but cannot completed mitigate the fact that the
active participation of common soldiers is required to carry out the unjust
war. While we may not punish such men
and women and may not even blame them, it seems odd to celebrate such necessary
and active agents of an injustice. Yet,
while particular individuals can avoid service, the collective individuals of
the state cannot. Morality appears to
require us to hold people minimally responsible (by either shunning or not
celebrating their actions. While the war may not be their crime, while they may
have even done all that they could do to avoid it, their souls are nonetheless morally
corrupted. In order to see why soldiers who participate in unjust wars but obey
the rules of jus in bello find themselves in such a situation it helps to
investigate Walzer’s discussion of Dirty Hands.
Walzer, of
course uses the issue of Dirty Hands to investigate not soldiers following the
principles of jus in bello within an unjustifiable war, but for those extremely
rare morally acceptable exceptions to the rules of jus in bello within a just
war. He uses the example of Sir Head of
Walter Harris, the Head of England’s Bomber Command in WWII. While the potential consequence to the rights
of noncombatants and nation-states required the breaking of the rules in this
extreme circumstance, in order for us to demonstrate how important those rules
are nonetheless, we cannot celebrate those who broke them. They did what was truly required, since there
was no other alternative. To restore the
moral order, however, we cannot celebrate these men.
It is not a stretch, however, to apply this
line of reasoning to the opposite situation where soldiers follow the
principles of jus in bello within an unjust war. Any exception to the principles of jus in
bello, even ones as restrictive as Walzer’s Supreme Emergency exposes the
cracks in any the complete and total distinction between jus ad bellum and jus
in bello, because those exceptions will only be dictated by some great and
monumental utility and will therefore be morally acceptable only for those
fighting a just war. Walzer himself uses
the fact that the Right Intention criterion was not met for the end of WWII to
argue as an argument against the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being
justified. Furthermore, there are
numerous relevant similarities. In the
case of Supreme Emergency have situations where soldiers are forced to take an
action that would normally be unjust. In the case of supreme emergency the
consequences to the rights of non-combatants puts soldiers in a position where
they willing target non- combatants. In
the case of unjust conflict, functional necessity requires soldiers to serve,
even though they know they may be ordered to serve in an unjust war. Both situations require decisive action when
epistemic certainty is not possible.
Finally, both have soldiers as the proximate and not ultimate causes for
the injustice. It seems, moreover, that
this level of group responsibility aligns with our intuitions in other areas as
well. We do not hold the medical engineer
morally responsible for any potential misuse of his advancements, but do
question those who work for an endeavor that is clearly intended for immoral
aims. Nonetheless, we would not believe
it proper to honor the medical engineer, regardless of his noble intention,
inherent integrity or countless sacrifice if his inventions were put to some
unjustified end.
Imagining a celebration of Nazi
soldiers at the end of WWII or of Russian Soldiers at the end of the 1980’s
Afghan war should trouble our moral sensibilities. If we are not simply harsh
realists, then these troubling images should bother us not merely because those
nations lost. These possibilities should
bother us because we recognize that if our brother and sisters, sons and
daughters are unfortunate enough to find themselves engaged in an immoral war,
while their obligation may be noble their sacrifice cannot be. While we can
always celebrate their safe return, we cannot justly celebrate their service.
Of course
the obvious consequence of this conclusion is an argument against celebrating
or praising soldiers who fight in unjust wars.
There is another indirect consequence as well: that soldiers who care
about justice need to be wary not only of their actions, but of the decision of
the state they serve as well. And, if
those decisions create a pattern of injustice, then their service itself may be
ignoble. Now there is obvious considering a state to have a morally good or bad
character in the Aristotle sense of the term.
States can both radically and moderately alter their character in short
periods of time much more easily than individuals, states can not even always
be considered fully conscious of all of their actions, and it is much more
difficult for states to form the type of habits so central to a virtue
theoretic concept of character. Yet a
morally good state, if we can use such terminology at all, like a morally good
agent is no more than the total of its actions. Of course, one action does not
a habit or even a pattern make. Ulysses
S. Grant served in a war he believed to be clearly unjust before serving in a
war necessary for a noble and righteous cause.
Nonetheless, young men and women
and older ones as well cannot simply assure themselves that they are joining a noble
profession. That nobility is not
sacrosanct, it will not protect them from all that may come.
As Walzer reminds us war is actually worse than hell, because in the
theological hell only those deserving of punishment are caught in the fire, but
in war the innocent suffer as well. But,
there is another reason as well. In most
traditional depictions of hell, the damned are merely the inhabitants. In war, unfortunate, we are hell’s architects
and hell’s creators as well. And
professional soldiers engaged in immoral wars unleash the hounds of hell where
neither utility nor previous action requires it.
So, if our hands can become dirty for crimes of jus ad bellum, then we
have to view our professions one with the potential to be noble not one with
inherent nobility.
References
Hackett,
Sir John Winthrop, "The Military in the Service of the State," in War
Morality, and the Military
Profession, 2d Ed, ed
Murphy, Jefferie. “The
Killing of the Innocent.” Moral Dimensions Of The
Military Profession. New
York: American Heritage Custom Publishing, 1997. 179-187.
Wakin, Malham
M. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986), 119. ; Malham M. Wakin, "The Ethics
of Leadership: I," and "The Ethics of Leadership: II" in War
Morality, and the Military Profession,
Walzer,
Michael. Just and Unjust Wars. New York: Harper
Collins, 1992.