Friday, July 14, 2006
Naseous Anger
I am so angry today with the state of Israel, but it is not a "righteous indignation"; it is anger mixed with dread and an unsettling guilt. I cry for the Israeli dead and hate the violence backed by Hamas and Syria and Hezzbollah. I also weep for the dead in Gaza and Lebanon, and as I weep I see their blood on my hands. Our country has entwined itself with Israel in such a way that their sins cannot but fall on our heads. I feel this in my bones. The billions of dollars, the machines of war and death, our omnipotent veto that silences every censure from the United Nations all offer material support to our tacit approval of whatever Israel does-- no matter how unjust or immoral. But how could we do otherwise? Could we censure the Israeli government for collectively punishing civilian populations when we have murdered tens of thousands in our own "war against terror"? (Yes, "collateral damage" is nothing but a pretty word for murder.) But surely if given the choice between hypocrisy and murder we must choose to be hypocrites and then work to amend our own lives. But our President is silent; our ambassadors protect the "rights" of Israel to destroy Lebanon and Gaza; and we do nothing for those in Beirut who have died, are dying and will die tommorow. God save them, and God save us from their blood which cries out from the ground that soaks it up. In His mercy, let us hear the cry for justice. What twists the knife in my chest is knowing that the vast majority of evangelicals will line up in support of Israel as though that country were established by Divine fiat and not by proclamation of the Bristish empire. Apologizing in the name of God for war waged on civilians is a heresy if ever anything was heretical. I fear that we won't escape from wrath. Lord, have mercy.
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15 comments:
no, enlighten us please
Brett,
is this what you're talking about:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
The Associated Press yesterday reported that Israeli airstrikes and shelling on Tuesday killed 59 people in Lebanon, one of whom was a Hezzbollah militant. Even my under-developed math skills can work out that Israeli action killed 58 civilians in that one day. Last night, I listened to the second-in-command at our State Department follow up Bolton's earlier statement that the US will not pursue a cease fire between Israel and "terrorist groups like Hezzbollah who fire rockets into civilian populations." (Apparently attacking a civilian population doesn't count if you use an F-16.) I can fully understand saying that Hezzbollah started this current wave of violence and calling on them to stop rocket fire into Israel. But I cannot understand actively resisting an international attempt to stop a vicious military assault that is killing scores of civilians every day. Our executive branch keeps talking about "Israel's right to defend itself," but no one is questioning that right. This isn't a question of whether but of how the IDF should respond to Hezzbollah. (Once again the Bush administration is staying strictly "on-message" with a total red herring.) When our country is run according to a neo-con ideology that won't criticize an ally and refuses to sit down with an enemy, why do we even have diplomats?
Ahem. You know what is conducted in public? An apology for the murder of noncombatants (which is never ok. never.) and a racist disregard for the value of Arab lives. It's not alright to kill Arab civilians because Israeli civilians might die. There is no acceptable number of civilian deaths on any side, and the callousness with which the IDF and our State Department recuse themselves of responsibility is disgusting. [It's like the Bush administration's ex post facto rational for the war in Iraq that says it's better to "fight them over there than fight them at home." Besides the dubious strategic truth of this statement, to say that we prefer tens of thousands (possibly over 100,000) Iraqi civilian deaths to risking an attack in the US is racism pure and simple.] I do not accept the IDF's claim that Hezzbollah is solely responsible for civilian deaths because they set up shop in the midst of civilians. (I am enraged by the tacit claim in much of the US media that civilian deaths are somewhat excusable if the civilians are Hezzbollah supporters.) It's late. I'm going to bed.
States murder, whether or not they are "usually held liable" for it. Serbia in the 1990s, Germany in the 1940s, the US throughout the 19th century. Those are examples of states intentionally and directly killing innocent civilians, but willing and conscious disgregard for innocent life (something that well exceeds negligence) also constitutes murder. If I want to kill you and I shoot Aeijtzsche instead, then I've murdered your cousin (whether or not you want me dead). Yes, civilian deaths usually are part of war, which is one reason (among many, many damn good reasons) why we should avoid war whenever it is at all possible. Unfortunately there are rare occasions (much less common than the excuse is made) when even war is preferable to the alternative. In those cases, every possible effort should be made to safeguard the lives of noncombatants. This is not the case with the IDF's current assault on Lebanon. In fact it's rarely if ever the case with air war. I'm not apologizing for Hezzbollah. They target and kill civilians. They're terrorists and murderers. But a state, and especially a DEMOCRACY (as Grady pointed out), cannot show a callous disregard for civilian lives when goes after terrorists. Not only is that policy ineffective (if not flatly counterproductive), but it turns the state that terrorizes a civilian population into a terrorist state. It is exactly what democracies cannot allow. (Remember that state terror has been much more common over the past several centuries than attacks by terrorist organizations.)
Oh and, Grady, the paragraph following your invocation of the 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars shows why the comparison between those events and what is happening today does not hold water. This is not a case of "the Middle East vs Israel" (and even if it were, it would not excuse the excessive use of force in civilian population centers).
I'm not talking about legality, Grady. I'm talking about morality. I'm worried about us monitoring our own behavior and our allies (to whom we offer lavish financial and diplomatic support) monitoring their own.
Democracy DOES have a set of values engrained in its nature. Democracy as a political strategy follows from a ground of values and assumptions. One of those-- if not chief among them-- is an immense respect for the value of individual human lives. (That is why, in theory, every individual gets a vote. The foundational value which says that everyone inside the state is equally valuable-- male/female, rich/poor, black/white/other-- extends to individuals outside the state.) It's part of the founding mythology of democratic nation-states. It dictates a certain pattern of behavior. Democracy is not and cannot be reduced to mob rule.
And there is a difference between corporations and states. Corporations are evil essentially; states only incidentally.
"What is morality without law? Any answer to this question eventually comes out as some sort of utilitarianism, and i don't think that you are making that case."
Um, Grady, this is just wrong. Factually. Historically. Kant, Plato, Aristotle, Levinas and lots of other thinkers posit ethics apart from legality. Morality based on utility is simply power: whoever has power will do whatever they have the power to do. That may be what typically happens in the world, but that doesn't make it ethical ("is" is not "ought"). If anything, it would be the other way around: the concept of "law" is senseless without a preceeding concept of morality. There would be no need for laws to enforce what ought happen if there was no sentiment of what ought be done. (That doesn't altogether save ethics from being a facade for power, which it often is-- see "Religious Right" for an example.)
As I obsessively repeat on this blog, morality has to do with justice, and justice preceeds and exceeds the law (any law). We experience the drive (to use your term) for justice in the experience of responsibility towards the other person. Levinas describes responsibility as our originary position as human beings-- as our state of nature, if you will. (In the Christian tradition, we describe this as loving our neighbor-- both the Mosaic law and Christ's parables demand that we take care of our neighbor in need and the stranger we meet on the road.) Morality lies in trying to fulfill our original responsibility towards other human beings.
This is related to what distinguishes democracy from mob rule. Mob rule is simply power: whoever has power-- either in or over a large group-- will use that power to take what they want from the weak. There is nothing ethical about that arrangement. Democracy is not simply majority rule. Democracy is a political system with an ethical ground, and that ground is formed at least partially by the concept that weak individuals-- or individuals of weak groups-- have the same rights and deserve the same protections as powerful individuals. (That is why we do not recognize as democratic a system in which the majority votes that the minority doesn't get to vote anymore. Such a system would be oligarchy or apartheid, but it certainly would not be a democracy.) Democracies protect their weaker citizens by (at best and in theory) guaranteeing equal access to governmental power and by judging all citizens regardless of status equally under the law (democracy does not exist without rule of law-- ask any Iraqi). These are not results that follow from democracy; they are the groud that makes democracy possible. Respect for the value of individual human life is the condition necessary for the possibility of democracy. Because valuing human life and liberty is a conditioning ground and not a conditioned product of democratic rule, human rights belong to individuals as human beings before they are recognized as citizens. As such, democracy demands that governments recognize the value and dignity of all people and not merely the citizens of that land. Denying human rights to non-citizens denies the value of the individual human apart from the state and destroys the foundation on which a democratic state is built. At their best (that is, at their most democratic), democracies guarantee protection to aliens as well as citizens because all are human beings (that is, also, what Christ and Moses tell us to do).
The utilitarian rule of power (mob rule would be one example) is not democratic; it is capitalistic. That is why corporations, which are essentially capital driven centers of power, are necessarily evil while states, which have the chance of aspiring towards democracy, are only incidentally so.
We could link this discussion up with theocracy, but I think that might be sort of boring. Theocracy is only another name for power.
Is my position idealist? Yes, of course, but what would ethics look like without idealism? To the degree that ethics are prescriptive and not simply descriptive (and a purely descriptive ethics is nonsense) ethics is necessarily idealistic. It talks about what we should do, how we ought to live, and most of us aren't already living as we should. The only non-idealist position to take about the current conflict would be "Hey, you know the IDF should kill a bunch of civilians in air strikes."
You want pragmatics? Here's pragmatics: how about trying broker a cease fire-- or at least not actively resisting one. How about telling our allies the Israeli's (who are the beneficiaries of billions of American dollars flowing into their economy and directly into their military) that targeting civilian infrastructure and recklesssly bombing residential neighborhoods are not acceptable military actions by countries who receive American aid (purse strings are remarkably effective practical motivators). How about encouraging our friends the Israelis not to turn themselves into a terrorist state. If the IDF were functioning ethically, it would not indiscriminately kill Lebanese civilians and do billions of dollars of damage to their civilian infrastructure because it would recognize, at the very least, their right to continue living.
[Kant: morality is a categorical truth imbeded in human nature in an analogous way to our perception of space and time.
Aristotle: morality is the pursuit of eudamaia (the good life/ecellent rational activity) which is defined by the final cause (telos) of the human being and pursued by following a middle road (similar to Bhuddism).
Plato: morality is the pursuit of The Good (which is, at the highest level, unified with the True and the Beautiful) and is discovered/remembered through practicing true dialectic.
Levinas: morality consists in our responsibility towards the other. This responsibility is the original position of human existence, and ethics, not epistemology or metaphysics, is first philosophy.
None of those ethical ideas derive their force or their content from the law. The law (or a law) is the codification of ethical/moral concerns, not the source of ethics. Placing the law before morality puts the cart before the horse and undercuts the ground of the law and lawfulness. I can love my neighbor without a legal code, but I don't have any reason to follow the law-- or really to make one up in the first place-- if I'm not concerned about how I interact with my neighbors.]
You're damn right I'm conflating state and personal ethics. I don't aknowledge that there ever was a distance between them. That should make clear the ethical standard to which I hold states. There is no ethical excuse for killing civilians. There is no excuse for terrorizing innocent people. That applies to a state like Israel; it applies to a non-state entity like Hezzbollah; it applies to you and me and Strauss and every other individual. A state has the obligation to protect its own citizens, but that does not recuse it from every other ethical consideration. Nationalism does not ensure peace. It does, however, lay the seeds of violence, repression and terror. We are human beings, all of us, before we are citizens, and national interest can never override our ethical responsibility for other people.
As far as the applicability to my own ethical sentiments goes, I have two answers. First, regarding the present situation in Lebanon and Israel, when I am discussing the actions of my own country and of a nation that receives continuous lavish support from my country, I don't find it unreasonable to apply the moral ideals that I received from my own culture and its various traditions. What other standard would we judge it by? I've never said that we shouldn't have laws. I only said that our laws are derrived from our morals and not the other way around (I don't see how the other way around is even possible).
In a larger frame of reference, and in answer to Grady's proposal that bombing civilians could be claimed as a moral action by someone whose opinion differs from mine, I defer to the words of Stanley Fish from a 10/15/2001 column that appeared in the NYT as part of their coverage of the WTC attacks. The full text is available here
, but here are the words I would like to borrow (with compliments to the author):
"The problem, according to the critics, is that since postmodernists deny the possibility of describing matters of fact objectively, they leave us with no firm basis for either condemning the terrorist attacks or fighting back.
Not so. Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one. The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies. Invoking the abstract notions of justice and truth to support our cause wouldn't be effective anyway because our adversaries lay claim to the same language. (No one declares himself to be an apostle of injustice.)
Instead, we can and should invoke the particular lived values that unite us and inform the institutions we cherish and wish to defend...
Is this the end of relativism? If by relativism one means a cast of mind that renders you unable to prefer your own convictions to those of your adversary, then relativism could hardly end because it never began. Our convictions are by definition preferred; that's what makes them our convictions. Relativizing them is neither an option nor a danger."
The reasons I'm angry with the Israelis in the present conflict in particular are in my original post. I see no need to restate them.
I don't understand why you're hung up on the morality of taxation? If you really want an explanation of why a state isn't immoral for taxing its citizens... if I told you that I'd pave your driveway, take away your trash and keep an eye on your property for security purposes, it might be reasonalbe to expect monetary compensation. Anyways, I'm not trying to draw an exact equivalence between a state and an individual person. I am saying that we do not suspend moral judgment on an action because it is performed by a state. If that were the case, then we could all get behind Japanese interment camps (yeah, they were great, man!), but that, of course, is absurd.
I don't trust systems that seek stability as their highest good. They tend to be apologies for the status quo-- in other words, ways of securing the power of those who are currently on top. And if morality is a set of ideals (which I think is largely the case) then preserving the status quo tends to work against ethical action. Pursuing an ideal world might destabilize society and lead to a worse state of affairs than we have right now (so the story goes). I don't buy it. I don't buy it because the way the world is now is unacceptable. Their is very little equality in the world; even less justice. The status quo can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned.
The argument often gets pictured as a balance between suffering and stability: we have to suffer a little to ensure a greater stability. But it is never the same people who suffer who reap the rewards of that suffering. The weak suffer to secure the position of the strong. That is not a comprimise; it's oppression.
That's not natural law; it's observation. I don't buy natural law. Read the Fish piece: it is short and offers a vision much closer to what I think than any natural law theory.
Grady, it is painfully evident to me at this moment that you haven't understood a thing I've tried to say. That may very well be my fault; I've tried restating, rewording and rephrasing everything several times, but the communication just isn't getting through. I'm going to try one more time to clarify a few points that are the most important to me, but we might finally have to leave it at non-communication if this doesn't work.
1) We as human beings do not escape from our ethical responsibility to other people by hiding our actions inside the construct of nation-state. Thus, the state does not have a free hand to murder civilians. We, its citizens, bear responsibility for our nation's murders. This is especially true in democracies, and both we and our ally Israel are democratic states.
1.A) Democracies have a necessary commitment to human rights (I already argued at length why this is so). The state of Israel's American-supported disregard for human rights is unacceptable.
2) The reality of the war in Lebanon is NOT (not not not!) a choice between sitting back and watching Hezbollah rocket Israeli civilians or recklessly and callously bombing civilian populations and civilian infrastructure. That is a false dillema and, as the Southern Baptists would say, a lie from teh pit of hell. For instance, two days ago, the IDF fired an air-to-ground missile at two well-marked Red Cross ambulances transering wounded civilians to a treatment center in Beirut. Both ambulance crews and the already wounded patients were killed or severly wounded. Was that necessary to protect Haifa from rocket attacks? How about refusing to give international aid caravans safe passage through Lebanon-- and this after destroying infrastructure (like electricity and water treatment) and overburdening the health care resources of the country by bombing civilian neighborhoods-- is that a proportionate response necessary to protect Israeli citizens? Since I don't trust the clarity of communications between us, I'll answer my own rhetorical questions: NO! These are immoral, tyrannous, murderous, wretched, nauseating offences. And it is unacceptable for our State Department to defend these actions and actively resist a cease fire.
3) It's awfully convenient for you to say that these wars are only the uncomfortable birth pains of history working itself out dialectically. I'm tempted to say that you can only say that because you are being sheltered by a superpower. Hold your dying child in Beirut and be thankful that your pains are securing the dialctical peace of the United States.
4) The point Fish makes in his piece is this: accepting that there is no universally accepted perspective through which I can make my enemies agree with my view does not mean that I cannot support my own perspective on an issue. It is not (not not not) an endorsement of cultural relativism. It does not say, "Hey, there are a lot of views and they'll work themselves out." It says, "I have a right to argue the value of my perspective even if I can't convince everyone that they should agree with me."
5) The essence of Bush's foreign policy is securing American interests through military intervention. That might be a minor change from the way things have been done for the past few years before his administration, but that does not mean that I am arguing in support of Bush's policy because I want a change from the warped imbalance of power. I might as well say that you like stability and Hitler wanted a thousand-year Reich, so you pretty much hold the same views. I should also point out that Bush's ultimate goal, as evidenced from his domestic policy and the speeches he's given in times of crisis, is to maintain the status quo of American hyper-consumerism ("Don't let the terroists win! Go shopping as usual-- it's your patriotic duty!")
I'm fine if you disagree with me. What makes me fear that we are not understanding each other is that your responses to my points often do not respond to what I've said but to some other issue entirely. Such is the case with your response to my point #2: my point was entirely about proportionality and choice of targets, but your response addresses neither of those issues. That is why I am beginning to find this both frustrating and exhausting. Thank you for taking an interest and sharing a conversation, but at this point I'm going to let what I've already said stand for what I want to say.
GOOD GRIEF! I didn't know you guys were talking here. Talk about ships passing in the night.
07/30/06
By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer
"QANA, Lebanon - Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern Lebanon village as people slept Sunday, killing at least 56, most of them children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting."
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