Today I came across Joan Baez’s “funny defense” against the “What would you do if…?” critique of pacifism. It’s a fantastic short read, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s ever been pinned in a corner by hypothetical arguments about the necessity of violence in some situations (although Baez is wrong about Jesus’s teachings counseling passivity in the face of evil). It got me thinking of a caffeine-fueled evening on the Internet back in December when I engaged in a debate with Pete Kilner (who blogs at Thoughts of a Soldier-Ethicist). The discussion centered around Pete’s controversial thought experiment that attempted to use the story of the Good Samaritan as a way to think about the proper place (or lack thereof) of violence in a Christian’s life. Pete’s thought experiment goes like this:
What would the Good Samaritan–an exemplar given to us by Christ of a person who loves his neighbor–do if he had arrived at the scene earlier, while the robbers were assaulting the man?
1. Would the Good Samaritan walk on by?
2. Would the Good Samaritan stop and wait, allowing the beating to continue, and hope that the victim survived?
3. Would the Good Samaritan rush to find someone else to stop the beating?
4. Or, would the Good Samaritan risk his own safety to stop the attack and protect the victim, using violence as necessary?When we look at it this way, I think it’s pretty clear that the loving, decent, honorable, courageous, and Christian thing to do is to stop the attack.
After all, Jesus calls on us to love our neighbors as ourselves. I know that if I were ever being beaten mercilessly, I would fight back, and I would want any passerby to join in my defense. So, I will do the same for others.
I welcome and invite any feedback that focuses on the merits of the argument.
This thought experiment is really only concerned with one ethical question: should a Christian use violence if he comes upon an assault in progress?
To start, let’s grant one of the (false) premises of the setup: that the hypothetical has provided all the available options. Having done so, the logic of Kilner’s argument can be rendered as follows:
- The Samaritan is a legitimate “Christian” authority on loving your neighbor.
- The Samaritan would use violence in this situation because he loves his neighbor.
- Therefore, Christians who love their neighbor should use violence to defend others.
This is argument is a logical fallacy: Appeal to Authority. Pete is using the Samaritan as an authority on a subject which Jesus did not address in the story of the Good Samaritan: violence and/or non-violence. In other words, it’s not self-evident that the Good Samaritan is a legitimate authority on the topic in question. Rather, the story told by Christ is an example of social boundary-crossing, and he’s indicting the moral boundaries drawn around the Jewish nation in some first-century Jewish ideologies that leave others on the outside, defining neighbors only as those in the “in” group, which restricts the Jewish imperative to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It has nothing to do whatsoever with the question of violence, yet the thought experiment utilizes the trappings of one of Christ’s moral teachings to imbue Kilner’s preferred answer to the question with the moral gravitas of the Samaritan.
However, as stated, getting this far in the argument requires one to accept a hidden false premise: that the thought experiment contains the full range of options.
So, let’s make the implicit premises explicit:
- The Samaritan is a legitimate “Christian” authority on loving your neighbor.
- The Samaritan, as a person who loves their neighbor, must not be passive while their neighbor suffers.
- In this situation, you can only be passive or violent in response to your neighbor’s suffering:
- Walk on (passive).
- Stop and wait, allow the beating to continue, and hope that the victim survived (passive).
- Find someone else to stop the beating (”clean hands” passivity).
- Risk his own safety to stop the attack and protect the victim, using violence as necessary (active).
- Because 2 and 3 are true, the Good Samaritan would use violence to attempt to stop the attack by using violence.
- Because 1 and 4 are true, Christians should use violence to defend their neighbor.
This line of argument also contains a logical fallacy: the False Dilemma. It is not true that one must be violent or passive (#3). There is a third option: nonviolent resistance to injustice/evil. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“First, it must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight … while the nonviolent resister is passive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent, his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade his opponent that he is wrong. The method is passive physically, but strongly active spiritually. It is not passive nonresistance to evil, it is active nonviolent resistance to evil.
“A second basic fact that characterizes nonviolence is that it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that these are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent … The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.
“A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil … We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.
“A fourth point that characterizes nonviolent resistance is a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without striking back. ‘Rivers of blood may have to flow before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood,’ Gandhi said to his countrymen. The nonviolent resister … does not seek to dodge jail. If going to jail is necessary, he enters it ‘as a bridegroom enters the bride’s chamber…’
“A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love …
“A sixth basic fact about nonviolent resistance is that it is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation. For he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship …”
Beyond the problems with Pete’s specific thought experiments, however, is the broader issue of trying to do ethics in this manner. In the discussion in Pete’s comment section, I made a remark that I did not explain well:
this isn’t a legitimate way to do ethics
Pete’s response, though, is a perfect illustration of what I meant:
Can you say more about why this isn’t a “legitimate way to do ethics”?
…
If you’re going to say, “I’d put myself between the victim and the attackers,” then please provide a description of how that would likely play out. For example, would you really expect that the murderous rapists would see you coming to hug the victim and say, “Oh my gosh, someone is passively putting herself next to our victim! Let’s flee!”?
By “this,” I meant to engage people in recurring rounds of “What would you do if…?” where one person plays God in the scenario, limiting the information given in the scenario and adjusting the reality of the hypothetical as the argument progresses to to trap their debate opponent in an un-winnable situation. The violent “god” making the argument gets to referree based on their biases and experiences, deciding what would work and what would fail, adding new constraints as the debate progresses until any and all nonviolent solutions have been closed off. This form of argument is referred to as “moving the goalposts” or “raising the bar” and is an informal logical fallacy.
The mistake I made in that discussion was going any further than critiquing the logic of Pete’s argument, entering into the “what would you do if…?” debate. Anyone engaging in a debate with these ground rules automatically loses–you can’t win an argument with God, even a hypothetical God.
Christians–whether we are adherents of just war tradition or of Christian nonviolence–should not support U.S. policies that kill civilians indiscriminately. However, in the past six days, our government has intensified a policy that does exactly that.
The number of suspected U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have spiked dramatically since Friday, July 3, with four strikes having killed roughly 78 people. These weapons are notoriously indiscriminate: as of late May we used them to kill roughly 15 civilians for every one suspected militant.
All who consider themselves followers of Christ should demand that the U.S. immediately cease the use of drones in Pakistan, with which the U.S. government has killed hundreds of civilians in a nation with which we are not officially at war.
According to Anti-War.com:
- In the first attack [on July 8], drones fired six missiles at a mountaintop training camp, killing 10.
- Later more drones fired missiles at four vehicles 12 miles east, killing at least another 35. One official said the death toll could rise as high as 50 when all is said and done.
- Yesterday [July 7], the drones had attacked another compound, killing at least 16 and wounding around 30 others.
- On Friday [July 3], another strike killed 17.
So far there are no reports that any high profile militants have been killed in any of the strikes.
These drone strikes are outrageously dangerous for civilians for two reasons. First, the mechanical and physical distance involved makes it extremely easy psychologically for the drone operators to kill. From Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s book, On Killing:
Artillery crews, bomber crews, naval gunners, and missile crews–at sea and on the ground–are all protected by the same powerful combination of group absolution, mechanical distance, and, most pertinent to our current discussion, physical distance.
In years of research and reading on the subject of killing in combat I have not found one single instance of individuals who have refused to kill the enemy under these circumstances, nor have I found a single instance of psychiatric trauma associated with this type of killing.
Second, because we lack human intelligence on the ground (or even people who can speak the language on the ground), we rely on paid informants equipped with small infrared homing beacons. These spotters basically get paid commission on each bomb that falls, which encourages them to plant homing beacons in as many places as possible–including in the homes of non-combatants.
The pictures of the “chips with 9 volt batteries”…bear a sharp resemblance to the Phoenix and Pegasus models of infrared flashing beacons made by Cejay Engineering. The devices are used by the U.S. military…The gadgets use LEDs, powered by a 9 volt battery, to emit beacons of infrared light that are visible only through night vision equipment. …They can weigh as little as a half-ounce, are as small as an inch-and-a-quarter, and have a battery life of nearly 100 hours…
American Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft are both equipped with infrared cameras, making such beacons a natural drone signaling mechanism. And because the devices are relatively simple and cheap — less sophisticated models can be purchased online for as little as $25 each — they can be handed out to informants, without fear of compromising clandestine, sophisticated American technology.
…
In April, 19 year-old Habibur Rehman made a videotaped “confession” of planting such devices, just before he was executed by the Taliban as an American spy. “I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette paper at Al Qaeda and Taliban houses,” he said. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.”
But Rehman says he didn’t just tag jihadists with the devices. “The money was good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money,” he added. Which raises the possibility that the unmanned aircraft…may have been lead to the wrong targets.
While news reports relay intelligence officials’ characterizations of those killed by this week’s strikes as “militants” in “strongholds” and “training camps,” we may never know for sure just who died in these blasts. According to AP:
Independent verification of the casualties and the target was not possible because the region is remote, dangerous and largely inaccessible to journalists. U.S. officials do not publicly comment on the strikes.
As of late May, drone strikes in Pakistan killed “780 civilians and about 50 alleged terrorists”. If the past civilian-to-suspected-militant ratio held true for these most recent strikes, the drones would have killed roughly five suspected militants and 73 civilians.
Ground the drones, now.
U.S. military casualties since the launch of Operation Khanjar (July 2):
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- Derwin Williams, age 41
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- Tony Michael Randolph, age 22
- Aaron E. Fairbairn, age 20
- Justin A. Casillas, age 19
- Charles S. Sharp, age 20
Again, we lack reliable numbers for civilian deaths, although reports have surfaced in the American media of the death of a civilian woman killed by “ricocheting bullets.” (For more on the lack of coverage of civilian casualties by the U.S. media, see this excellent piece from TomDispatch.) However, according to a report from the Xinhua News Agency (the official news agency of the Chinese government–take it with a grain of salt, I suppose):
Air raids against suspected hideouts of Taliban militants in Ghazni province, south of Afghanistan, however, claimed the lives of eight civilians including two women, a member of the Provincial Council Abdul Nabi said Wednesday.
In talks with media, Nabi added that the raids took place at 3 a.m. local time (2330 GMT) in Gero district during which eight non-combatants were killed.
The victims, he added, include two women, two children and four men.
However, the U.S.-led Coalition forces admitted in a statement that “during this engagement, a ricocheting round killed a civilian female.”
It added that several armed enemy combatants were killed in the operation and Coalition forces found grenades and rifles in their hideout.
How many American troops and Afghan civilians have to die before Congress and the President end this war?
The New York Times again referenced the utility of drone strikes in Pakistan when they “avoid civilian casualties” while failing to mention that the overwhelming majority of people killed by U.S. drones in that country are civilians. Again, from a piece by Salman Masood with Pir Zubair Shah contributing:
Publicly, Pakistani officials have been critical of the drone strikes, calling them a breach of the country’s sovereignty. But privately, Pakistani officials acknowledge that the attacks are useful if they avoid civilian casualties and strike militants.
This is a copy-and-paste paragraph from yesterday’s story, which described a drone strike on a funeral in late June without mentioning that it killed 35 non-combatant local villagers, which included 10 children between the ages of 5 and 10 plus four local tribal elders.
Nowhere in this more recent story does Masood clarify that, copy-and-paste un-cited heresay notwithstanding, most people killed by U.S. drones in Pakistan are civilians: as of late May, drone strikes in Pakistan killed “780 civilians and about 50 alleged terrorists.”
I’ll repeat what I said yesterday: “news” stories that reference the utility of drone strikes that avoid civilian casualties–while failing to report that drones kill more than 15 civilians for every one suspected militant–are propaganda pieces. Times readers deserve better than this.
For more on the U.S. media’s inability to come to terms with the bloody costs of our country’s policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, see this excellent piece at TomDispatch.
The story in today’s New York Times by Salman Masood and Pir Zubair Shah on the latest drone strike in Pakistan whitewashes the killing of children and tribal elders in an earlier airstrike:
“The increased aerial strikes come as Pakistani military is gearing up for an ambitious offensive against Mr. Mehsud and his fighters, who number in the thousands. The mountainous region where they areentrenched is considered one of the most difficult terrains for conventional warfare.
“American drone strikes have recently focused on Mr. Mehsud, and he had a close call late last month when an aerial strike struck a village shortly after he had left a funeral.
“Publicly, Pakistani officials have been critical of the drone strikes, citing them as a breach of the country’s sovereignty. But privately, Pakistani officials acknowledge the utility of such attacks, especially when militants are targeted with few civilian casualties.”
This sloppy report’s characterization of the late-June drone strike on a funeral which targeted Meshud leaves out the fact that it killed 40 low-level militants, 35 local villagers, which included 10 children between the ages of 5 and 10 plus four local tribal elders. The omission is particularly glaring considering the next paragraph’s discussion of the attacks’ utility when they involve “few civilian casualties.”
The simple fact is that as of late May, drone strikes in Pakistan killed “780 civilians and about 50 alleged terrorists.”
Come on, New York Times. Get it together. Your readers need and expect news, not card-stacking propaganda.
UPDATE (7/7/09): Masood, Shah and the Times did it again today.
The “new” rules for the U.S. military in Afghanistan still allow the same kinds of airstrikes that cause most pro-Kabul-government-caused civilian deaths. AP reports the rules as follows:
- Airstrikes must be very limited and authorized but can be used in self-defense if troops’ lives are at risk.
- Troops must be accompanied by Afghan forces before they enter residences.
- Troops cannot go into or fire upon mosques or other religious sites. This is already U.S. policy.
Most civilians killed by U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan die when troops exchanging fire with enemy forces call for air support, as noted by Human Rights Watch in their report, Troops in Contact:
In our investigation, we found that civilian casualties rarely occur during planned airstrikes on suspected Taliban targets (one in each of 2006 and 2007). High civilian loss of life during airstrikes has almost always occurred during the fluid, rapid-response strikes, often carried out in support of ground troops after they came under insurgent attack. Such unplanned strikes included situations where US special forces units-normally small numbers of lightly armed personnel-came under insurgent attack; in US/NATO attacks in pursuit of insurgent forces that had retreated to populated villages; and in air attacks where US “anticipatory self-defense” rules of engagement applied.
These airstrikes make of the majority of airstrikes that kill civilians, which themselves comprise 67 percent of pro-Afghan-government-caused civilian casualties.
Presumably, these rules would have allowed the order to be given for the May 4 bombing in Bala Baluk that killed the most civilians of any airstrike by U.S. forces in Afghanistan to date. NPR’s Tom Bowman reported that the captain who ordered the strike said “had he not called in those airstrikes, he definitely would have lost Marines.” The military argues the reason civilians were killed in this instance was not a deficiency in the rules, per se, but the fact that their rules at the time were not followed. But that argument blatantly ignores the deficiency in a set of rules that allows dropping three-and-a-half tons of ordinance in a civilian-populated area. These new rules do not solve that deficiency, virtually guaranteeing that future mistakes like this one will kill masses of noncombatants. These measure also fail to include stricter guidelines to guarantee accountability when rules are broken.
An injured Afghan child from the Bala Baluk, district of Afghanistan, is seen on a bed at the hospital in Farah province of Afghanistan Tuesday, May 5, 2009. Abdul Basir Khan, a member of Farah's provincial council, said villagers brought some 30 bodies, including women and children, to Farah city to show the province's governor, that they had been killed by coalition airstrikes. (Photo: AP)
Restricting airstrikes to instances of self-defense without restricting their use among civilian-populated areas leaves the door open to more instances like Bala Baluk.
U.S. military casualties in Afghanistan since launch of new operation in Helmand:
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- NAME NOT RELEASED YET
- Aaron E. Fairbairn, Private 1st Class, age 20
- Justin A. Casillas, Private 1st Class, age 19
- Charles S. Sharp, Lance Corporal, age 20
I cannot find any confirmed civilian casualties in news reports regarding the operation. Let’s hope that’s because none yet exist.
War is not Christ’s way. Congress and President Obama: end this war.
The bumper sticker says, “Freedom isn’t free,” and it’s correct–just not in the way that the driver thinks. July 4, the day we severed consent to the Tyrant, was the day we became independent–not the day Cornwallis surrendered.
Remember: Freedom isn’t free; it requires people–all people–to be willing to risk everything to assert the rights they have by virtue of being human.
Also remember–one of the grievances that led the Founders to sever consent to the Tyrant’s rule:
“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.”
Don’t forget.
Having just seen The Hangover, I’m tempted to ask if the U.S. press corps has just taken a bunch of rohypnol before reporting on the Helmand operation. Every single report I’ve seen so far:
- emphasizes how absent we’ve been from the Helmand River Valley; and/or
- neglects to give any history about the actions of U.S. and other pro-Kabul forces in the region that may affect the U.S. military’s attempt to win the loyalty (or at least the submission) of the local population to the Afghan national government.
Despite this convenient amnesia, we are not starting from a clean slate in Helmand, regardless of media portrayals of this region as a pristine Taliban haven untouched by U.S. forces. Here’s one scene from Helmand, circa August 2007:
Last week I saw the damage being done in the battle for hearts and minds. In the British headquarters a girl was brought in by her family. She lay on the table, blood leaking from her tiny frame. Occasionally her body would convulse, her screams reverberating around the base. On either side, three of her siblings whimpered. They, too, had been lacerated by masonry after a US bomber strafed their home last Sunday morning while the Taliban were firing from the same compound.
Foreign troops continue to make mistakes that enrage whole sections of this deeply tribal society, like the killing of a tribal elder’s son and his wife as they were driving to their home in Helmand two months ago. Only their baby daughter survived. The tribal elder, Reis-e-Baghran, a former member of the Taliban who reconciled with the government, is one of the most influential figures in Helmand.
These awful, bloody blunders help explain the extreme hostility of the populace to coalition forces and their preference for the brutal-yet-predictable rule of the Taliban:
The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population. Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes…[T]hey preferred to be left alone under Taliban rule and complained about artillery fire and airstrikes by foreign forces…[M]istrust of the government remains so strong that even if the Taliban were defeated militarily, the government and the American-led coalition would find the population reluctant to cooperate…
Spencer Ackerman points out that this military assault is the largest Marine operation since Vietnam. He also points out that there are very meager civilian resources accompanying the assault forces, which probably isn’t great. But I’d point out that even if there were an equal number of civilians compared to military personnel, it wouldn’t matter much for the purposes of counterinsurgency because none of our people can speak the language. As of April 2009,
[A]ccording to an official at the State Department’s Bureau of Human Resources, the United States has turned out a total of only 18 Foreign Service officers who can speak Pashto, and only two of them are now serving in Afghanistan – both apparently in Kabul.
Noam Unger, commenting on Chandrasekaran’s article in the Post, summarizes the problem:
…As Chandrasekaran’s article on the Marines’ operation makes clear, the State Department and USAID are not yet capable of bringing their expertise to bear in Helmand through the deployment of personnel.
For all of President Obama’s rhetoric about the military power not being enough to turn things around, that’s what we’ve got and that’s what we’ll use in Helmand. We’re witnessing an almost totally military attempt to win the loyalty (or at least the submission) of the Afghan population to the Kabul government by killing the Taliban currently enforcing their own version of security in Helmand and then filling the hole with U.S. troops. But security means more than just safety from the Taliban–it also means safety from U.S. munitions. Let’s hope we manage to protect them from those as well.
Here’s a quick coda that gives me a sick feeling about the timing of this operation:
Helmand is a Taliban stronghold and the world’s largest opium poppy-producing area. The goal is to clear insurgents from the region before Afghanistan’s presidential election on August 20.
…Southern Afghanistan is a Taliban stronghold, but also a region where Afghan President Hamid Karzai is seeking votes from fellow Pashtun tribesmen.
Electioneering via the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade on behalf of the Rule of the Rapists…probably not what they signed up for.
Attempts to stop an escalation of U.S. military personnel and violence in Afghanistan officially failed this morning with reports of the “massive assault” under way on Helmand Province in Afghanistan.
Thousands of US Marines stormed into an Afghan river valley by helicopter and land early today, launching the first major military offensive of Barack Obama’s presidency with an assault deep into Taleban-held territory.
Operation Khanjar, which the Marines call simply “the decisive op”, is intended to seize virtually the entire lower Helmand River valley, a heartland of the Taleban insurgency and the world’s biggest heroin producing region.
It is the biggest operation launched by the US Marines Corps since the retaking of Fallujah in 2004 and seeks to break the grinding stalemate between Nato forces and the Taleban in the province.
US commanders stressed this morning their desire to move quickly and decisively with overwhelming force to seize the entire southern Helmand River valley from Taleban control ahead of the delayed Afghan Presidential elections on August 20.
“Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces,” Marine Corps Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marines in southern Afghanistan said in a statement.
He told his staff before the operation: “The intent is to go big, go strong and go fast, and by doing so we are going to save lives on both sides.”
A tentative prediction: things will be relatively quiet over the first several days as Taliban melt back into the population, observing the new state of play and waiting for U.S. troops to dig in. Then, all hell will break loose. This is the big banana for the Taliban–more than half of the world’s opium is grown in Helmand. They will not roll over without a screeching brawl.
These troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade also come with their own integrated air support. Note that air strikes in support of troops in contact with opposing fighters have accounted for the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties caused by pro-Afghan government forces (that’s the U.S., NATO and Afghan national government’s forces). Going “big,” “fast,” and “hard” with air support generally means dead civilians:
…[M]ost cases of civilian deaths from airstrikes occurred during the fluid, rapid-response strikes mostly carried out in support of “troops in contact” – ground troops who are under insurgent attack. Such unplanned strikes included situations where US special forces units – normally small in number and lightly armed – came under insurgent attack; in US/NATO attacks in pursuit of insurgent forces who had retreated to populated villages; and in air attacks where US “anticipatory self-defense” rules of engagement applied.
The U.S. forces have declared their intent is to protect the population. Let’s hold them to it. In the meantime, as Robert Greenwald’s Rethink Afghanistan Twitter feed points out, this escalation of the conflict will impact civilians, hard. Aside from pushing your lawmakers and media to remain focused on civilian casualties and well-being in Helmand, you can help by donating to the Afghan Women’s Mission to buy bare essentials for refugees of the fighting.
