Making an example out of them

It shouldn’t go unmentioned that the Friedman argument fails even on its own consequentialist terms. I’m not absolutely sure what he means by “bubble”, but it seems to be the case that even the US government, in its colour-selecting mode, thinks that terrorist attacks on Western interests are at least as likely after the invasion of Iraq as they were before.

So Friedman can write what he does only after i) cutting himself off from humane concerns ii) cutting himself off from real experience & persuading himself that terrorism is now, at least temporarily, “solved”. This is journalism?

I share in your opinion re: Friedman’s comments, but I must ask- What did you expect from a mind like his?

Aside from personal opinions of personal talents (mine of his or his of his own), you must realize that the state has been killing innocent people for “demonstrative purposes” for centuries… It’s called psychological warfare, and it’s something our military in the US has been studying (and doing) for much of the 20th century.

Vietnam provides several examples: Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia, Operation Rolling Thunder, the Phoenix Program (during which upwards of 20,000 Vietnamese civilians were “assassinated” by US SpFrcs and ARVN SpFrcs for allegedly- ALLEGEDLY- supporting the NLF and NVA)… In terms of US involvement in such atrocities, we can add El Salvador to the mix, and a host of other “low-intensity conflicts” over the past several decades as well… The killing of civilians to prove our “resolve,” while certainly not morally admirable and often not strategically advisable, is a rather common tactic used to frighten the “enemy” into surrender, essentially.

I mean- “shock and awe”- how many innocent (non-baathist, non-alqaeda,etc.) Iraqis died in the carpet bombing of Iraq in March and April (or the weekly bombings of the 1990s)? My guess is more than 5 or 6… And I would also suggest that wanton display of 21st century firepower produced a variety of psychological effects in a variety of Iraqis…

Regardless, in this latest chapter of great power politics and elite cronyism and profiteering run amok, we have to expect that opinions like Friedman’s will be aired and that these opinions will eventually be heeded by military planners on the “low-intensity” battlefield, unless of course every US soldier in Iraq learns fluent Arabic tomorrow, or we leave the country entirely the day after that…

So, while I don’t exactly want to defend Friedman, I have to say that his comments are a little underwhelmind in the “shock and awe” department, at least to me… This ought to be old news to us by now.

If you’ve been reading TF’s NYT editorials (and you probably shouldn’t be), you’d see this is not uncommon for him. Basically, he’s become completely unglued since we went to war with Iraq. He used to have a breathtakingly simplistic and smug worldview, but it was consistent. Since he supported the war, he has presented about 20 different theories about the “real” reason for the war. This is among the worst, but not as silly has his editorial about how the war was fought to implement the Arab Human Development Report. Reading Friedman on Iraq now almost feels creepy and voyeuristic–like gawking at a traffic accident. His desperate search for a rationale that fits with his view of the world really ought not be a public affair. It’s pretty gruesome.

I have to agree with bigmacattack. The reasons he gives may be invalid but they are not immoral if you accept a utilitarian premise. He does show a “complete disregard for the humanity and individuality of those who have died” but is he necessary immoral to do so?

I feel that he is being attacked simply because he operates within a different although very plausible moral framework.

Yeah – as soon as I read the phrase ‘some of them are clearly smarter or more honest than others’ I thought ‘Than Thomas Friedman at any rate.’ I have never understood his reputation. He’s all bounce and assertion and embarrassingly bad slang & jokes & rhetoric & other forms of attempted charm, all in aid of simple-minded bilge (at best – I hadn’t realized he’d gone so thuggish).

Paul Berman’s response is, in some respects, even more appalling than Friedman’s, if only because, unlike Friedman, he is not a fool. Berman takes the “I just feel in my bones that Saddam’s Iraq is somehow connected to September 11th, not in the sense that it helped plan the attacks, or provided material support for them, but in some weird aesthetic/metaphysical sense.” This is a common sentiment among the most ardent supporters of the war – as opposed to the “Yes, there was a compelling human rights justification” crowd – and, frankly, it just baffles me.

It seems that two things are perhaps going on:

The first is just the weirdly racist idea that because Saddam’s Iraq had a lot in common with Osama Bin Laden’s team – Moslem, Arab-speaking, really hates the U.S. – it’s “close enough.” I call this the “Iceberg/Goldberg” rationale, after the old joke about blaming the Jews for the sinking of the Titanic.

The second possibility is that otherwise intelligent people were so affected by September 11th that they are no longer bothering to distinguish between subjective psychological connections and objective causal ones. The Iraq war feels an awful lot like it is connected to September 11th because it reflects a post-September 11th commitment to changing our approach to the world. But that is the wrong kind of connection. If I were to respond to the murder of my wife by dedicating myself to the cause of prison reform in Turkey, that wouldn’t mean that what killed my wife is the prison system in Turkey. When soldiers in Iraq carry pictures of the World Trade Center, that’s all that’s going on.

At any rate, these are terrifying times to be an American. Smart people are saying and believing insane things.

Friedman does not say that the “real” reason we went to war was what he thought was the “right” reason. In fact, reading his entire response, he is at pains to set them apart. The following is his reason:

Therefore, the right reason for this war, as I argued before it started, was to oust Saddam’s regime and partner with the Iraqi people to try to implement the Arab Human Development report’s prescriptions in the heart of the Arab world. That report said the Arab world is falling off the globe because of a lack of freedom, women’s empowerment, and modern education. The right reason for this war was to partner with Arab moderates in a long-term strategy of dehumiliation and redignification.

Stu,

The non strawman version is

Immoral acts are ok when they are committed in self defense of you, your family, and your nation. Immoral acts are ok when the alternative is genocide.

Oh: if the problem with 2) is that it “thereby shows complete disregard for the humanity and individuality of those who have died,” how does 1) show proper regard “for the humanity…”?

I’m sorry, but when did Saddam’s Iraq become the ‘innocent child’ used as a shield against Islamist terrorists? Some analogies go a bit far.

Iraq was attacked after Afghanistan because it should have been the easiest attack to sell to the world (Saddam had defied the UN for 12 years, and had forced an attack on him which we should have finished in Gulf War I.) Saddam was additionally attacked because he had set himself up as THE symbol for Arab ability to fight the US and win. Furthermore, he supported terrorism in the region. Furthermore, he committed genocide of the killing variety (not just the broader dislocation variety). Furthermore, he had used banned weapons in a fairly recent war. Furthermore, he wasn’t fully cooperative with the UN even in late 2002 with US warships off his coast. There are probably a couple of other furthermore’s that I forgot. Basically he had a great confluence of factors which made him an excellent choice for removal. That confluence of factors wasn’t replicated anywhere else, including in the notoriously awful North Korean regime. Comparing him to an innocent bystander is both silly and takes an amazingly narrow view of the war. He was the perfect test case for UN resolve. And the institution failed.

Chris Bertram,

I wasn’t aware utilitarianism had been proven immoral.

The thing is, OBL agrees with Thomas Friedman. He specifically said in his CNN interview that he learned from Somalia that the U.S. lacks resolve and can thus be beaten with a single punishing blow. Now then, if bin Laden is telling the truth, and he came to the conclusion during the 1990’s that the United States lacked any kind of political will when it came to foreign policy, it stands to reason that the best way of discouraging such thinking in the future is for the United States to do something incredibly willful.

Now, though I can’t demonstrate such in terms of symbolic logic, I think that I can safely make the assertion that overthrowing an evil dictator is, in general, a positive development for most parties concerned. I’m sorry, but given that bin Laden himself has said the U.S. has shown itself to be weak, the best way to counter his beliefs is to show that such is not the case.

bigmac,

you are premising endorsement of the war on that quote. So I say again: how is it true that our options were (1) an immoral war or (2) genocide?

John Kozak,

Not necessarily, see I think the circumstances, the results, and goals are very important.

In an abstract vacuum I do not necessarily have a problem with what Bin Laden did.

The particulars. His odious goal. The likely effectiveness of his tactics. And so on are the reasons why I consider his actions immoral.

If I thought restoring some brutal primitive system was a worthy goal. If I thought the US was attacking and killing millions of Muslims. If I thought smashing a plane into the WTC would help stop those attacks and restore the Caliph well then I would have a very different view of the morality of the WTC attack.

ryan b,

Really? What color am I thinking of? No I am not basing my support for the war(what war?) on that quote. Do I support the war? Please let me know what I think.

As I have already stated I was responding to stu’s comments regarding the Totten link and the Benny Morris interview.

“What can’t be right, though, is to commit an act that involves the killing of innocents simply for the demonstration effect (as suggested by Friedman’s “real” reason for the war).”

As someone already pointed out, Friedman makes a distinction between the “real” and the “right” reasons. But apparently that distinction is too subtle for many.

So Friedman is *not* “advocating that a state kill people … for demonstrative purposes.”

He would, however, I think the following. Suppose there are two countries, A and B. The “right” reason to attack applies in both cases. The “real” reason applies only to A. Then you are more right to attack A than B.

Sebastian:

“Saddam was additionally attacked because he had set himself up as THE symbol for Arab ability to fight the US and win.”

Win?

Win?

What kind of alternate reality are you living in?

Name one time after the invasion of Kuwait (after Iraq very suddenly became not a US ally any more) when Iraq “won” against the US. Iraq the nation, that is, not Saddam the person.

“Furthermore, he supported terrorism in the region.”

Certain Saudi Arabian royals and Pakistan officials are believed to have been involved in funding the September 11 hijackers, but Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are apparently our allies. Certainly, irrespective of the truth of those particular allegations, funding terrorism was hardly unique to Saddam.

Removing terrorism funders from power must be a measured utilitarian response, and it can’t be a valid justification if more innocent people end up dead and maimed (several thousands, in fact) than were killed and maimed by the terrorists he supported in the first place. It wouldn’t be justified to carpet-bomb cities in the US where certain IRA funders reside, and it should no more be accepted as justification for the case of Iraq.

As for Saddam’s other commonly-cited crimes, the chemical gas attack at Halabja and the invasion of Kuwait, they were both committed with the US’s pre-approval (duplicitious pre-approval in the second case, of course). It is particularly perverse for the US to say that it is justified for them to kill thousands of innocents to get at one man (not the regime – they don’t mind the regime, see Milan Rai’s book “Regime Unchanged”) who they egged on, and who in the former case was their ally.

Our governments have funded terrorists, too. The US government employed ex-Nazi Klaus Barbie, who was wanted for war crimes in France, and who went on to commit more crimes against humanity in Bolivia.

If the US was actually interested in stopping terrorism in general, as opposed to certain terrorism directed at it and its interests, as Noam Chomsky points out, it would do two things: stop funding terrorism, and stop committing it. Of course, its actions are unlikely to reduce even attempts at terrorism directed against us in the long run, as many far-from-pinko-commie commentators have observed.

It would also pay more attention to real security (like it would have done a bit more than it did about security at nuke plants after 9/11) than PR-driven and porkbarrel-driven flaky security (e.g. facial recognition software that doesn’t work, or name matching software – gee, terrorists are going to use their real name, aren’t they?)

Chris: you seem to grant that the human rights argument has some strength. Yet you haven’t explained why directly promoting human rights by ousting the violators from power (in part by killing troops and civilians) shows proper regard “for the humanity and individuality of those who have died” while indirectly promoting human rights by sending a message (in part by killing troops and civilians) that the violators of human rights would heed would show “complete disregard…”

“The thing is, OBL agrees with Thomas Friedman. He specifically said in his CNN interview that he learned from Somalia that the U.S. lacks resolve and can thus be beaten with a single punishing blow. Now then, if bin Laden is telling the truth, and he came to the conclusion during the 1990’s that the United States lacked any kind of political will when it came to foreign policy, it stands to reason that the best way of discouraging such thinking in the future is for the United States to do something incredibly willful.”

That’s it? Your justification for the war is that we had to impress a crazed mass murderer by being even crazier and killing more people?

Good thing your lot weren’t in charge when Hitler and Stalin were around . . .

bigmacattack: I think we can safely assume than ObL does see the world much as you suggest (he’d use different terms, of course). My point is that a moral (meta-)principle that can’t spot the fault in the 9/11 attacks isn’t much use, really. For example, there’s the issue of proportionality: as stated your principle allows me to cause megadeaths to avoid a broken leg.

It should not go unmentioned that Friedman is a blabbering hack who changes his “real” reasons for supporting the war like most people change underwear.

Simon Kinahan says:
“So Friedman is saying that the answer to terrorism is, in fact, terrorism ? Marvelous.

What would be wrong with saying that though? The answer to war perpetrated by the Nazis was war.

Chris said:
“…Friedman is advocating that a state kill people (including innocent people) for demonstrative purposes. ”

As states often do. Most of the population of Hiroshima was “innocent” by any measure.

If it were true that the “terrorists” were agents of the states in question, encouraged, supported and funded by the states in question, Friedman would be saying nothing different from those who advocated bombing German cities in WWII. States *do* answer war with war – it’s definitive of them that they do.

Chris says:
“It is a peculiar way to demonstrate the impermissibility of the very acts he deplores.”

This ignores that he deplores them because they are perpetrated against us, not because they are wrong in some abstract sense.

Yes, I think my point was not that I thought Friedman was right to suggest it, but that he was by no means alone. It’s often true that states ignore the individuality of those who have died by their actions, but the state is usually broadly supported in doing it. So I think my suggestion there was that Friedman ought not to be harshly treated for his view, since he is simply parrotting a commonplace.

What was more interesting was your last sentence. You surely wouldn’t expect him to be Kantian about it? He’d reply to you that he is much more permissive with his own people than with others. He might even claim that more should be permitted for those fighting for a “free and open society” or whatever he calls it exactly.

“Luke Weiger: If terrorists take some hostages and are torturing some and killing others and we burst in, knowing that we are likely to kill some but save others, then I think we show appropriate regard for the humanity even of those we kill. If we try to impress the hostage-takers of our willingness to act by killing an innocent civilian in front of them (thereby sending a message) we clearly treat that person as a means only and show no regard to their human dignity.”

Maybe. It might be hard to argue that you’re treating the civilian(s) you’re sure to kill in the first hypothetical as tools (or “mere” means)–at the moment, I certainly can’t see how such an argument would go.

However, I think it might be interesting to take a rational contractor approach. Suppose that you’re faced with the following dilemma behind the Rawlsian veil: you know that you’ll be one of the hostages. The police have two options. They can directly assault the hostage takers, in which case they’ll end up killing some of the hostages as well. Let’s suppose you know your odds of dying would be 1/20 if the police use this strategy. Or the police can somehow nab a single hostage (without harming anyone else), proceed to kill him, and successfully send a message to the hostage keepers that will induce them to release the hostages. Let’s suppose you know your odds of dying would be 1/100 if the police use this strategy. What strategy would you want the police to use?

Chris, you wrote: “It isn’t at all a matter of a narcissistic concern with one’s one moral purity: rather one of approaching questions of war and peace and the conduct of war with the moral seriousness they demand, rather than helping oneself lazily to mantras of “self defence” and “anything goes”.”

But what about those cases in which killing innocents is a matter of self defence? My point is that much dicussion of morality in wartime avoids the seriousness you call for. Yes, it’s all too easy to take moral short cuts under the guise of “self defense”. But it’s also easy to avoid action under the guise of sticking to the moral high road. Both are equally serious evasions of responsibility.

I’m willing to accept that Rawls was deeply serious in his opposition to the Hiroshima bomb. But what if John Rawls and Harry Truman had switched places in 1945? How easy would it have been for Rawls to oppose using the Hiroshima bomb if it were not merely a matter of being willing to accept grave personal danger, but of calling upon others to accept personal danger from an enemy whom they did not choose to fight?

Rawls’ position may be an admirable example of personal integrity, but it doesn’t provide much help to those who are charged with responsibility for those, such as children, who are incapable of appreciating or accepting the consequences of such a position.

In any case, when discussing the morality of self defense, why only Rawls? Why not the example of one, like Truman, who struggles with the morally distasteful necessity of killing innocents in order to protect other innocents? I can’t help but think we prefer Rawls because we can more easily imagine ourselves as Rawls. After all, in war time most of us are more likely to be the drones than the queens. More importantly, it simply makes us feel better to imagine ourselves as Rawls than as Truman.

“clearly we are reading different articles: “smash[ing] something – to let everyone know …” is not about self-defence, but about sending a message.” We’re not reading different articles but we’re certainly reading the same article differently. The smashing and message sending IS the self defense. Male gorillas do the same thing. In order to avoid a more serious confrontation, they beat their breast to signal that they will defend themselves if rival gorillas come any closer. They order these matters better in Gorilla land. Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of beating our breast.

It’s debatable if America’s Iraq strategy is a strategically effective self defence. It’s also debatable if it’s morally acceptable. But I accept that it is in fact a self defence. That’s where we differ in our reading of Friedman’s article, I think.

As a data point regarding whether “it’s ok to wage war to send a deterrent signal” is a commonly held view I can offer the following anecdote: a few weeks after Sept. 11, 2001 we drove from New York City to Great Neck to celebrate Rosh Hashana with my brother-in-law’s family. One of the guests argued quite vociferously that the US should have retaliated against Afghanistan in the days immediately following the attack. She made it quite explicit that she wanted to see the country and people of Afghanistan laid waste.