Gaza war: do ‘moral war’ requirements make the UN immoral?

In 1864, William Tecumseh Sherman, a Union General during the US Civil War, began what became known as the ‘March to the Sea,’ a scorched-earth military campaign through enemy territory. The campaign covered five weeks, during which time Sherman destroyed civilian industrial capacity, infrastructure and most civilian property he crossed. His troops burnt crops and killed livestock.

That March was controversial. But its brutality is said by some to have contributed to the end of that war.

Was Sherman’s March morally correct?

General Sherman is credited with coining the expression, ‘War is Hell.’ But today, war is more than ‘Hell;’  it is also an ethicist’s laboratory.

In the Middle East Arab-Israel conflict war is also an ethical battlefield, where morality becomes a political weapon for those who are cruel and immoral.

Man tries to make war ethical. Ethics in war seems counter-intuitive, but because war is so horrific, establishing rules of behaviour can in theory benefit both sides. The ethical challenge is, how to create rules that both sides accept.

Ethicists have learned that rules can work—for the most part—when you see your enemy as human--one with whom you share a moral identity--and with whom you know you will do business after war is over.

But when you see your enemy as less than human, war conventions are rarely applied (see “Just war theory [the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy],” Alexander Moseley,  Iep.utm.edu, 2009-02-10).

This is the problem with the Arab-Israel conflict. Arabs see Jews as less-than-human. Arab media, politicians and clergy publically dehumanize Jews. If the United Nations argues that such attitudes do not remove ethical responsibility from Israel, others can make the case that Arab behaviour in war—founded on the dehumanization of its enemy—actually changes the rules of war; for, as stated above, rules of war rarely apply when dehumanization of an enemy occurs.

Should dehumanization play a role in determining human rights enforcement during war? Or, if those who dehumanize their enemy refuse to act morally in a war against that enemy, what human rights protections do they deserve?

 Many ethicists--and virtually all human rights advocates--reject the dehumanization question to take an absolute stand: even as one side breaks the rules (and uses human shields, for example), the other side is still morally obligated to obey the rules.

Is that moral?

Absolute standards in such a situation do not promote moral behaviour in war (ibid); instead, they create a foundation for political rather than moral interests.

Is it moral for morality to be managed by political agendas?

Applying an inflexible moral standard to a war where only one side accepts that standard could be immoral. Discussions of moral behaviour in war depend upon the question of what is ‘just’. Giving one side in conflict an unjust advantage breaches the ethicists’ commitment to that sense of ‘just-ness’.

We must determine who is morally responsible for protecting civilians.  But we must not do that to the disadvantage of the side that upholds the rules.  

That would not be moral. It would not be ‘just’.

The UN, however, appears to work with a rigid moral standard for war rules, even in cases where one side refuses to accept that standard. Common sense suggests that if one side rejects all conventions and uses human shields and civilian casualties to promote its success at the expense of the enemy, the moral responsibility should lie with that side—because, for one thing, it is they who control those civilians.

In war, you should be morally responsible for what you control—not for what your enemy controls.

According to the accepted rules of war, Israel has a just cause for its 2012 attack against Gaza—self defense. But if Israel obeys the rules and refrains always from harming illegally placed human shields, avoids military targets because they have been deliberately established within civilian population centers and insists that it will kill only those who wear identifiable military uniforms, then Israel cannot win that war; she could hardly fire a shot for fear of killing civilians.

Worse for Israel, modern ethical rules are so exact that they deny a war’s morality if there is no chance for a beneficial outcome. If Israel initiates a war it cannot prosecute, it starts a war that does not have a potentially beneficial outcome; therefore, it could be starting an immoral war.

Rules that have been designed to mollify the horrors of war now prevent Israel from protecting her citizens which, according to those same rules, is a legitimate cause for war.

It’s an impossible moral catch-22. Israel loses if she doesn’t fight and she loses if she does fight.

Ethicists have created a monster. They intend to empower morality in war.  But they create the opposite effect: they empower the cruel and the immoral by denying a sovereign power the right to defend itself.