Unfinished Business: War 7

Judging War

Now I hope to take the closing steps of this long dance. I considered briefly many different ethical views which are often put forward with respect to war. I found them wanting, primarily because they allow of argument on both sides of each issue. In my limited abilities, I want criteria which simplify the choice: is a war right, or is it wrong?

I rejected those views which make all wars just or unjust. For example, there are those who believe all war unjust, but then allow excuses or pretexts for having one. For them, war is always just a lesser evil. Then there are those, mostly professional warriors, who believe war is a good thing. Some of them think it doesn't matter whether war is just; what matters is that it is wholesome, cleansing. And, there is the ancient view that war is a test of virtue ('might makes right') in the same way as walking the hot coals, so war indispensably decides what is virtuous (to the victor belongs the spoils).

I think my criteria allow a choice whether a war is just or unjust. Nonetheless, in thinking about the thousands of wars since the beginning of recorded history, it seems to me that very few wars were just. Almost all wars treat people as means only, and were conducted for illicit gain. Wars intended to grab someone's people, land, crops, or goods for the benefit of the aggressor cannot be right, because the perpetrators cannot generalize their principle of action to themselves. So, I must start out by making a presumption against any war being just. As a matter of experience, the case for just war has to be proven each time; otherwise, there is a presumption it is unjust.

This presumption is not unusual. Just war sanctions the killing and injury of people, and the destruction of their homes and workplaces. Modern war stretches that sanction to millions of people, possibly everyone, not just a few combatants. Although the settled doctrine of war is that non-combatants are not to be harmed - International law punishes war criminals - modern war is total war. Nuclear ICBMs wipe out the guilty and the innocent. The reality of modern combat is that there is always "collateral damage." Therefore, justifying a war takes more effort than it used to, because the scope of the judgement is larger, with consequences that are globally catastrophic. One cannot declare a war just without taking account of "collateral damage."

There are myths that democracies do not attack each other, and that they don't start wars. I think those beliefs mythical, because the plain evidence of history speaks otherwise. Great Britain and France were historical enemies for a lot of reasons, even after both became constitutional democracies. In the end, they became allies in the pre-World War I era, because they were both threatened by Germany ('the enemy of my enemy is my friend'), not because they were democracies. The doctrine here is: the interests of a people persist regardless of their government. Corollary: governments which do not pursue the interests of State (the people collectively) are removed, overthrown or defeated - they don't last.

Democracies start wars, just like the countries that aren't. A people can have ambitions which are detrimental to others, just as individuals may have designs on others. The majority of Brits approved the Empire until the very end after Word War II. The British government was not shy about its adventures in India, Egypt, Palestine, the Middle East generally, China, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. The French exploited Africa and Southeast Asia, and as many other places as they could lay on hands and hold. The American government is just as likely to be trigger happy; most recently, for example, in Iraq. The plain facts of history show there is nothing special about democracies with respect to war. (Of course, many Americans prefer to believe otherwise, which causes problems in formulating a realistic foreign policy.)

In any event, there are a lot of myths about war, every war; probably myths even older than the Iliad. For my purposes, I prefer to discuss a few recent wars which are still within the living memory of many people: World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and, now, Afghanistan and Iraq. I cannot write a history of those wars; that has already been done far better by others. I do want to discuss a few major points of concern about those wars, with respect to their justice or injustice. Before getting into the details, you should know my bias: I believe going to war against Hitler and Tojo, and later against North Korea, was initially just. I also believe the wars in Vietnam and Iraq were unjust from start to finish. Most of the other wars since World War II that I've heard about seem to me unwarranted and unjust. The problem almost always is the lack of proportionality between means and ends. That problem is rooted in the propaganda, distortions and unreasonable hatred of enemies that invariably accompanies wars. Wars happen between parties that have denigrated each other as beasts, unworthy of consideration as moral agents; hence their injustices.

Historical Overview

I do not doubt that Adolph Hitler started World War II (WWII). In that, he had lots of help. WWII was a continuation of the Great War, WWI. WWI was fundamentally a European war between the Great Powers, England, France, Germany and Russia and their dependents. The United States was drawn into this war in 1917, thereby making it a global affair. Coincidentally, the resurgence of Asia, starting in Japan, intensified the war by spreading it into Asia in the 1930s. The Japanese were influenced by the European model of worldly success, which was their justification for the invasion of Manchuria and the later horrors in China.

The 20^th century can be interpreted as the emergence of three new Great Powers: the United States, Japan and Germany. In the prior four centuries, all of the Great Powers were European. By 1800, Spain, Holland, England and France had explored the whole planet for the first time in recorded human history, and staked claims to as much of it as they could conquer. In the 19^th century, Russia caught the Imperialist fever and became a Great Power by conquering Northern and Eastern Europe, Siberia and everything in between. The former Soviet Union was comprised of those same territories that were the Tsarist Empire until the 1917 Revolution. Until the Japanese expansionism of the 1930s, the losers in this process were Africans and Asians.

The 19^th century saw the decline of Spain and Holland from their status as Great Powers. (In an unjust war, launched by a democracy, the United States finished off Spain in 1898.) In the 20^th century, England and France lost their claims as Great Powers on account of their wars with Germany. Germany gained and lost its Great Power status in less than a century. The 20^th century is also a story of the demise of Russia as a Great Power, since it lost most its 19^th century conquests except Siberia. (Nonetheless, Russia is still an important world power, as it lies between Europe and Asia.)

I predict the 21^st century will be the story of the decline of a Great Power, the United States, and the rise of two new Great Powers, China and India. Eventually, a united Europe and its associate, Russia, will become a Great Power, led by the (same) old Great Powers. In the face of China, Japan will only remain a Great Power with the assistance of the United States. I think power centers will shift: eventually the United States will be more closely tied to Japan and oriented to the East, not the West. The Europeans (plus Russia) will (again) become more independent, and a challenge to the United States. These reorientations will be necessitated by the unavoidable and otherwise uncontainable rise of the Asian powers, China and India. As of this writing, we are living in a dangerous interregnum, dangerous because both the Americans and the Chinese believe they are exclusively entitled to inherit the Earth.

Much of the story of the last three centuries can be told as a struggle to grab as much territory as possible. At first, it was easy because there was a vast New World inhabited by relatively few, backward peoples. Over time, less and less land was available, and what was available was defended. England was able to grab India, Australia and chunks of Africa and North America, but never had as much luck in China. Late comers to the Imperialist game, such as Germany and Japan, were left with more difficult and less rewarding prizes to conquer. Inevitably, the later comers had to confront and push out the early birds in order to have a "place in the sun." The United States and Russia benefited from the exhaustion of the early birds and their challengers, but only at great expense and near exhaustion of some of their resources.

Now that almost everything is "owned," new comers can only win the Great Power game by taking away from what others have. (Think of this as a Monopoly game.) So far, China has been most successful in doing that, mostly at the expense of England and France, but lately at the expense of the United States. The Japanese are hedging their bets by making better connections with their old enemy, China, just in case the United States cannot balance China.

The Arab and Indonesian Muslims are caught in the middle of these global changes, which they cannot control despite their ownership of most of the world's oil reserves. The Islamic world is on the periphery of territories controlled by the Great Powers. While Muslim countries probably can resist invasion and takeover (e.g., the Afghans defeated Russia), they do not have modern economies or any other means of expansion. The Arabs, particularly, are trapped between old Great Powers - China, India, Russia and Europe - which they cannot conquer or even long resist, as Arabs depend on those Great Powers for the means of their modern existence. Oil and suicide bombers are the only leverages available to Islam for the foreseeable future, both of which are declining resources.

The foregoing outline is my view of the "forces" driving world history. I think these forces go on regardless of anyone's foreign policy. They are rooted in the desires and ambitions of ordinary people everywhere in their struggle to survive. Governments, regardless of their political form (even the most dire tyrannies), ultimately represent the distilled will of the people. Hitler, Stalin, Tojo and Mao could not have done what they did without at least the tacit compliance of the people. (You cannot send everyone to the Gulag.) My historical theories are important as background in my discussion of the moral questions raised by recent wars.

World War II

In repulsing the attacks of Hitler and Tojo, the United States and other countries were probably just. The justice involved was that of self-defense, which is negative. Self-defense is an excuse to undertake behavior that is otherwise unacceptable (as previously discussed). Normally, marauding and killing are forbidden, either because they are illegal or immoral. Self-defense does not automatically allow action; the occasion of self defense must be evident, and social approval is required. When such acts are sanctioned, it is customary to invoke a special procedure (e.g., declaration of war, finding of guilt, sentence of death, etc) which is commonly acknowledged to be sufficient for the purpose. The special procedure is social in nature, either to demonstrate that everyone agrees on the sanction or that duly constituted authority is unopposed in its decision. Sometimes the sanction will be preemptive in nature, as when certain defenses are allowed upon attack, or in the expectation of (imminent) attack, without further process. These cases are all conventional; i.e., what is done is justified by legitimate authority, thus, ultimately, by agreement (the social contract).

There is one appeal to higher principle that might be made, that of the respect due moral agents. Moral agents are to be treated as ends in themselves, not means only. When an attack violates that respect, it would seem the agent has a right to repel it. (Moral agents have a right to their autonomy.) Of course, the same principle of respect restricts what may be done in self-defense, for surely we are not entitled to violate the attacker's integrity. Then, what defense is justified against aggressors? This question arose several times during World War II (WWII).

Solutions to the Prisoner's Dilemma suggest that an optimum strategy is Tat for Tat. This means the defender should strike back in equal proportion to the attack, and then offer co-operation. It is never good to allow an attack to pass without response. While the best outcome occurs when prisoners co-operate, and never attack each other, an attacker can pile up significant, permanent advantages if there is no response. A player might become an attacker, if he thought the other player would not respond. The Biblical wisdom of an Eye for an Eye leads to a better solution than the Christian's turning the other cheek.

Hitler scoffed at the willingness of the decadent Allies, particularly the French, to go to war. He was right about that, so his aggressions were encouraged. The searing experience of Munich led to the post-war predilection with "preparedness" aimed at discouraging any would-be Hitlers. All this is according to the Prisoner's Dilemma, except that "preparedness" has turned into paranoia. (It should be recalled that the French were unprepared for the German flanking attack in 1940, as they did not think the Ardennes Forest penetrable. Had the German attack been repulsed, France might not have collapsed, and the course of WWII might have been shorter and very different. In 1940, French preparedness did not overcome French lack of foresight.)

In WWII, as in WWI, offers of co-operation were useless. The parties conceived their fights as fights to the death, in large measure because one's enemies were perceived as being dedicated to one's annihilation. It does not matter who started the downward spiral of distrust and enmity, it only matters that once it started it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thus, the Prisoner's Dilemma analogy suggests the maximum benefits would accrue to the side which strikes first and hardest. That is what Japan hoped to accomplish at Pearl Harbor, and what Germany thought it had accomplished in defeating, then humiliating, France. However, the game was not zero-sum, as premised in the Prisoner's Dilemma. The Allies were able to find new resources in both wars, and went on to defeat the Triple Entente and the Axis powers.

The question, whether the Allies were altogether just in WWII, would be considerably simplified, had the rules of Prisoner's Dilemma applied. In such a case, each side would have been constrained by the rules of the game. Prisoner's Dilemma, being a zero-sum game, does not envision unlimited damages and endless conflict. It does not envision liquidation of the combatants. So, it would be much easier to say the Allies were just in defending themselves against Axis attacks, because the defense is limited in scope to what was lost to the aggression. Such a solution honors a strict application of the rights of all moral agents.

But, what if the combatants are not limited, as was the case? What if the goal was the complete destruction of the enemies? Are the defenders entitled to punish the aggressors, even liquidate them, not merely set the score back to zero? Here we have a much harder problem, because we must justify punishment and other non-zero sum solutions to conflict. For the moment, and to try to delimit the problem, I think it worth considering some of the extreme punishments inflicted on combatants and civilians during WWII.

The debate about the use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki still rages on. This dramatic example stands for many other extraordinary injuries inflicted by all the parties during WWII. There was, for example, the destruction of Dresden, and the fire-bombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities. There was the Holocaust, which was not only genocide of the Jews, but also Gypsies, Communists, Slavs, homosexuals, the mentally ill and retarded, and anyone else that didn't suit the Nazis. It is often forgotten that Russians suffered the most during WWII: some 22-26 million people were killed, about half of all the wars' victims (45-50 million people). Not all Russian dead were casualties of the Nazis: an unknown number, but almost certainly several millions, were victims of Stalin's tyranny. Chinese people also suffered mightily at the hands of the Japanese: several million were killed, and millions more died of starvation and abuses. The Japanese themselves, thanks to the unforgiving Code of Bushido, had millions of casualties in WWII. While a lot of Europe was destroyed during WWII, mostly by the Allies, none of the European nations had casualties anywhere near those just described. The Holocaust is remarkable because the suffering of European Jews stands out in comparison to what other Europeans endured, and because a much larger fraction of the Jewish population was affected (more than any other).

Many of these atrocities constituted the aggression against which the Allies defended, but the Allies committed atrocities every day as well. The Pacific War was particularly grisly in being seen as a war to the death by both sides. Very little mercy was shown. The Americans felt justified in using flame throwers and napalm against their Japanese enemies. There are apocryphal stories of captured Japanese soldiers being killed, and many more of American POWs being mistreated and killed. Each side portrayed the other as monstrous and evil, without any moral restraint, so treated enemies accordingly, as animals. The Japanese-American war (1941-1945) is not discussed a lot in the United States, perhaps because most Americans are Eurocentric. Nonetheless, for those who fought it, that war was intensely personal, close and bitter. It lacked the supposed high moral principles of the European war, possibly because it was felt to be a secondary war. The Japanese were thought to be merely imitating the example of their aggressive ally, Germany.

The war in the Pacific was the more bestial, because the combatants individually placed very little value on the lives of their enemies. Both sides were taught that their enemies were merciless, without honor, and to expect only torture and death if captured. In Europe, the Nazis proposed to be a transforming agency, purifying the Aryan race. The Nazis conducted the slaughter for high moral purposes, but they shared with the Japanese their disdain for other races, the weak and the beaten. The Russians had little mercy on their Nazi opponents, whether because that was a traditional Russian policy or the result of Stalinism. Millions of German soldiers disappeared into the Gulag Archipelago. The French hated their German enemies, and slaughtered them like pigs when they could.

In comparison, American and British behavior in Europe seemed virtuous, especially in the treatment of POWs. That virtue is diminished, however, by the fact that Anglo-American forces spent less time in combat than any of the other powers, and that they killed millions from the air. The Anglo-American-German war was less personal because it was more long distance and mechanized. The enemies bombarded each other with airplanes and rockets, so that it was impossible to tell who killed whom. For the air crews, war was a clean business until they were hit. The same was true for the Panzer and American tank divisions. Mechanized soldiers rode to the battle in armored vehicles. Death, when it came, was horrible but usually quick. The grueling trench warfare of WWI did not occur, for the most part, on the Western Front.

Films and written histories about WWII, even those made at the time, demonstrate one common feature of war: inexorably, high moral purposes degenerate into bestiality. The war becomes a matter of survival for the participants, none of which is willing to draw back from the grisly struggle. Once blood is drawn, the cry becomes 'support our troops' in revenge for those injured, maimed and killed in battle. Most people 'see red,' and all reason is lost. The war becomes an endless struggle of us against them for revenge upon revenge.

In the end, the victorious Allies were as tainted as the Axis powers, despite later protestations to the contrary. What this shows is that war should not be conducted by humans, who don't know when to quit or when justice is satisfied. Thus, my judgement is that the defense against the Axis began in justice, but ended in injustice. The Japanese people were not deserving of the fire bomb raids and nuclear bombings. The Chinese people were not deserving of the horrors visited upon them by the Japanese. The Russian people were not deserving of the brutality and slaughter practised on them by the Nazis and by their masters. The German people were not deserving of the devastation of their land by the Allies.

While I was alive during WWII, I was not of age. Retrospectively, I would have approved the initial going to war against the Axis. My main justification would have been that the Axis powers represented an evil philosophy perpetrated on innocents by unusually wicked people. I approve the idea of ridding the world of wicked people.

As the war progressed, I think I would have moved into the opposition. I don't think I could have approved the all-consuming ambition it became. I also think the United States government was too sympathetic to its British and French allies, who desired revenge and keeping their empires. This put the focus of the war squarely on Europe. Cynically, Churchill didn't want too much help going to the Bolsheviks because of his view that the Soviets would be the next enemy. That increased the suffering of the Russians, and was a major cause of the Cold War that Churchill invented. In the end, the British and French got revenge on the Germans, but lost their empires on account of American pressure. The new enemy, the USSR, didn't allow the Americans to waste time and effort on their Allies' behalf; instead, the Americans just took over those empires, becoming the Pax Americana. I would have moved into the opposition by the end of WWII, because the excesses of that war inevitably led to the subsequent Cold War which lasted 45 years. None of that was necessary. I would have prosecuted the war differently, not the way it happened.

The second thing I learned from the history of WWII is that one injustice leads to another.

Korea

The Korean war was a mistake from start to finish, as all but the North Koreans are now willing to admit. The North Korean dictator, not a particularly visionary or adept man, thought there was an opportunity to push his dictatorship farther south. This may have been a rush of enthusiasm following the victory of Mao Zedong's Communists over the Kuomintang in China. It almost happened.

Unfortunately for North Korean ambitions, the Americans were able to hold on to the Pusan perimeter. The Soviets mistakenly walked out of the UN Security Council. Consequently, the Americans were able to get UN approval for a "police action" in Korea. This resulted in MacArthur's famous, risky landing on the Incheon peninsula, which broke the North Korean invasion. So far, I would have agreed with what was done, because, again, it was a defense of the status quo.

At the time of the Korean war, we did not know what sort of person Kim Il Sung was, but we soon found out. He was another wicked dictator, to be followed in the 1990s by his perverse son, Kim Jong Il. What was established in North Korea, under Joseph Stalin's imprimatur, was not a Communist "dictatorship of the proletariat," but a tyrannical monarchy. The North Korean regime is worth undermining, not because it is a monarchy, but because it is a tyranny.

As with WWII, I would have approved the war at the start, but not its further progress. The Americans, following MacArthur's advice and desire, pushed to the border with China. That was unacceptable to Mao Zedong, so the People's Army struck back. This led to the back and forth war in Korea until 1953, when newly elected Pres Eisenhower ended it.

The critical mistake of the Korean War was allowing MacArthur to pursue to war too vigorously. That was the result of MacArthur's ambitions and his defiance of Truman's orders. Eventually, Truman fired MacArthur, but only after the damage had been done.

What the Korean War shows is how easy it is to start a war, and how difficult to stop it. Despite disastrous consequences, the participants become increasingly, emotionally, invested in the process. It's the folly of throwing good money after bad, hoping to recoup the entire bet. It's one of the things that drives addicted gamblers.

Vietnam

While the Korean War was winding down, serious American involvement in Indochina, in part reborn as Vietnam, began. The French had tried to hold on to their colonies after WWII, and maintained a presence in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The key French administrative centers were in Vietnam, particularly Hanoi and Saigon. Following WWII, Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam from Paris, and led a successful revolution against the French. The critical battle was the calamitous French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, which ended the French occupation of Hanoi and North Vietnam.

The status of Vietnam was settled in the Geneva Accords, 1954, which divided the country into North and South. In the North, Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh army ruled from Hanoi. In the South., a sort of constitutional monarchy was set up, headquartered in Saigon. Despite most South Vietnamese being Buddhist, the government was dominated by pro-Western Catholics - the same folks who ran the country for the French. The United States was involved and represented at that Geneva Conference, but, on orders from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, refused to witness or sign the Geneva Accords. The United States did issue its own parallel statement, say it would observe those Accords.

In fact, the United States assisted the French before their defeat at Dien Bien Phu, and assisted in their leaving. The United States sent money and assistance to South Vietnam as soon as it was formed. What the French left, the Americans assumed. This was not unnoticed in North and South Vietnam. The general feeling of the Vietnamese was they wanted the foreign devils out, whatever their supposed good intentions might be. Thus, the Viet Cong guerillas started fighting the South Vietnamese government sometime in the 1950s. By 1962, the situation had become serious enough for the United States government to send "military advisors" and more "foreign aid." This was the beginning of escalating American military involvement in Vietnam. The American presence in Vietnam was finally ended in 1975, when the last helicopter left from the roof of the embattled American embassy in Saigon. What had begun "innocently" as assistance to America's European Allies ended ignominiously in the abandonment of our Asian friends.

One of the root causes of American involvement in Vietnam was John Foster Dulles' Domino Theory. American governments and the American plutocracy after WWII lived in fear of Soviet Communism. It did seem Marx was right. Capitalism had brought about the Great Depression, and was limited by the New Deal. From 1945-1965, China was lost to the Communists, India supported Russia, and much of the Third World was in the Soviet orbit. It seemed like a last stand was near for the Americans. By whatever method history operates, the focal point of the Cold War moved to Vietnam. The United States had to stop the dominoes from falling.

Now, 40 years later, we know that Pres Lyndon Johnson didn't think the Vietnam war was winnable. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (and others) didn't believe the Domino Theory. Nonetheless, they felt unable to do anything other than what they were doing. So, they concocted the Gulf of Tonkin incident. They told stories (LIES) to justify what they were doing.

I was upset when JFK sent the "advisors" to Vietnam. I wasn't sure what it was all about. When Ngo Din Diem was assassinated, I wondered what was happening in Vietnam. I felt American policy was unjustified, and that we should pull back. My doubts about Vietnam were turned into verbal opposition early in 1965, and then into active protest during that Fall. I came to believe, and still believe, the Vietnam war was unjustified. A major reason for my opposition to that war was the obvious lies the government told. I believed then, and believe now, the war in Vietnam was founded on lies. I think history has borne out my view of the matter.

Once the Vietnam war got started, it was difficult to stop. People became vested in winning, because over 50,000 soldiers died there. Most Americans preferred to believe the propaganda handed out by the American government, rather than think through the truth of the matter. At most, only 20% of the voting population verbally or actively opposed the war, although another 15-20% were sympathetic to the opponents. The Vietnam war ended because the Americans lost it, but most Americans refuse to believe that. One of the most popular myths promulgated by Adolph Hitler in post-Versailles Germany was the "stab in the back." This myth is repeated today by many American ultra-conservatives, who still detest and revile the hippies, protestors and counter-culturists of the 1960s that they blame for America's defeat.

Currently, in the 2004 Presidential election, and 39 years after this Seminar Paper was due, we ar still fighting the Vietnam war in America. It never ended here, at least in the minds of neo-cons and ultra-conservatives. For them, a war is always a struggle to the death, regardless of consequences. I believe that is due to messianic ambitions, the desire for rule over others, and the inability to accept an ordinary place in the world.

For those and many other reasons, but first of all because it was founded on knowing lies, I believe America's war in Vietnam was unjustified, and plainly immoral. I believe, in the minds of many Americans, Vietnam was, and is, a seething cauldron of racism, missionary zeal, self-righteousness, desire for dominance and fear of being overthrown. There may have been other motives in the war, but I think the ones I just mentioned were dominant, if usually suppressed. It is the "baseness" of American motives in Vietnam that undermines any justification. For that reason, I believe those who advocated the war and those who supported it were immoral, while those who engaged in it committed immoral acts.

Of course, I was one of those who opposed the war, protested against it, and did what I could to stop it. I have suffered the anger and hatred of my opponents, and investigations by the Government. But, my judgement has not changed, nor is it likely to change. Vietnam does not pass the Generalization test. Worse, the United States government assumed the Vietnamese were expendable playthings in a struggle to achieve American purposes.

Vietnam was an unjust war, founded on injustices and untruths, carried out in an immoral and even illegal (e.g., My Lai) manner, and finally ended by the defeat of the American Imperialists. The United States should not have become involved in Vietnam, so there was no need for more than 50,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese to have died in that war. The worst part of Vietnam is that most Americans learned nothing from it.

Holy Wars

Within a decade following the American defeat in Vietnam, the United States government resumed its interventions in foreign countries, albeit on a reduced scale. The massacre of the Marines in Lebanon reminded Americans of their experience in Vietnam, so may have served to limit the military ambitions of the Reagan Administration. Until all of that was changed by the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union. Cold-warriors and conservatives declared the United States victorious in the long twilight struggle. They created Saint Reagan within a few years following his famous demand in Berlin, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!." It did not occur to most Americans that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not the same thing as the victory of the United States.

In 1990, the Baathist President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, ordered an invasion of Kuwait, which was quickly accomplished. In the following year, the American government of Pres George HW Bush formed a military coalition and drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait. This war had the tacit approval of the United Nations, and its conclusion and settlement was supervised by the Union Nations.

I approved the Gulf War, because I believe it was justified to drive the aggressors out of Iraq. Moreover, I approved George HW Bush's decision to stop the war when that objective had been achieved. For once, I believe that war was not only just, but remained just. It did devolve into a case of overreach. The settlement put Saddam Hussein under supervision, and effectively contained Iraqi ambitions until the Conquest of Iraq in 2003.

In my opinion, the American Conquest of Iraq last year was neither just nor necessary. Pres George W Bush and his neo-con advisors are trying to excuse the war after the fact, but that is not the same as justifying it. I take it as true that Saddam Hussein is a wicked man, but removing him from office and punishing his wickedness was not an original, stated purpose of the Conquest. None of the stated purposes of invading Iraq were accomplished, partly because the claims put forward as casus belli were false. The United States government apparently concocted the case against Iraq in order to justify the invasion; i.e., making war was based upon pretexts.

By 2002, it was apparent to me that whatever threat Iraq posed had been contained for several years. It was also apparent to me that Administration claims were probably false. Therefore, I opposed the Conquest of Iraq. I do not think American aggression was justified, and it cannot be justified in retrospect. It is true we got rid of a wicked tyrant, Saddam Hussein. It is also true that we now have a country in ruins, so, now, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis suffer everyday from the disorderly and dangerous conditions there.

The critical ethical issue involved in the Conquest of Iraq is this: is aggression justified by George W Bush's doctrine of unilateral pre-emption? Bush claimed that some sort of attack upon the United States by Iraq was imminent. The supposed imminent attack justified his decision to invade Iraq under the pretext of self-defense. But, none of those claims were true, so we are left with the more naked question: is one State, in its sole discretion, entitled to attack another State?

I think not, because if the Bush doctrine holds, there would be no reason to condemn Hitler or Tojo. The fact is, Bush's National Security Strategy is little more than the Law of the Jungle dressed in official clothes.

Conclusions

I spent a lot of time thinking about war - some 39 years. I am giving up on this paper about one year after re-entering the project. Whatever grade you assign to the paper, I believe I have discharged my student assignment. I hope some of my 1966 Berkeley colleagues who did sit through the Ethics seminar in a timely manner will eventually stumble upon this work.

I had hoped there was some principle I could discover that justifies war. I wanted to make sense of what I persist in seeing as senseless. I have not discovered that principle. In the end, I believe war is just the jungle extended to human beings. It is what happens when civilization breaks down.

People give false justifications for war. These claims are just pretexts. That is all there is - pretexts. War is not a reasonable thing, it is an emotional thing. Some people, usually alpha males and their lieutenants, get an inclination to have a war. The object of war is dominance over the enemy. It is the trial by fire in which might makes right. All the sounds uttered by warriors are just sounds intended to line up support, and frighten the enemy. They don't mean anything.

It is ethical to excuse war when it is self-defense. That is why self-defense is one of the most popular causes of war, even if it is self-defense against some enemy who has not yet attacked. The immediate causal incident of WWII, at the Polish border, was claimed by Hitler to be an attack on Germany. Germany went to war in self-defense. So did the United States in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and Iraq. It is always claimed to be self-defense, because that is the one reason almost everyone accepts, whatever their moral code.

Oddly enough, in our time, the Persian Gulf War is probably one of the most justified. It was a clear defense against attack. It was limited to driving out the aggressors. The follow-up containment was under international supervision, and limited to generally accepted interventions. I would use the Persian Gulf War as an example of a just war., if there are any.

Otherwise, war and justice seem to have little to do with each other. I don't think there any good wars, or that much good comes out of war. I think the advocates of war are everywhere perverse people, who should be removed from power wherever possible. Once a war gets started, we should make every effort to stop it as quickly as possible.

I do think, however. we are justified in getting rid of wicked people - Hitler, Stalin - when we can. In doing that, we must weigh the harm done in destroying them. We should not hasten to war as the means of their destruction, if lesser activities will do. War should be our last resort.

Because there is no ethical principle that supports war, or at least I know of none, war is never right. Even if a war is not exactly wrong - immoral and unethical - it is not right. For this reason, no one has a duty to support war in any form. We are not bound to "support our troops." We don't have to respond to any call to arms. Going to war is not just a social decision, it is also a personal one (until war is totally automated). For individuals called to serve (conscripted), there is never a positive duty to obey. But there can be positive duties to disobey, when the war is unjust or those conscripted are asked to do unjust (immoral) things.

So, war is asymmetrical. It is not good and bad, but only bad. What varies is the extent of wrongs, not its rightness. If there are any duties in a war, it is the duty to avoid and refuse service. I wish more people would see it this way.