Bayle Shanks's website: opinions-political-war

But basically, I think that when I look at wars of history, or the present-day wars of countries that you know nothing about, my first impression is usually, "these bloodthirsty idiots, why do they fight all the time?" Upon looking closer, you can find the incidents and reasons why each side thought it was compelled to fight, but I think the first impression is correct.

Upon looking closer, usually I think the wars are unnecessary for both sides, and often I think that they are unjust for both sides.

From looking at our mid-range history, I don't think our wars are any better. So, the question is, what is it about our decision process that is so flawed, and how do we fix it?

My conclusion is that, when deciding to go to war, people

(a) look at war as a giving them an automatic justification to kill people, rather than what I think is a better point of view, which is that you will often be murdering innocents, but that you think that may be justified for your policy objectives

(b) allow their leaders to tell them what is moral rather than taking personal responsibility (which is not in itself wrong, but it's been shown that in this arena the leaders seem to tend to going to war more than is necessary)

I think the military situation is very special, though, because it involves murder. Here's my reasoning:

When I think about all the wars going on in the present and the past, I wonder, why are all these people killing each other? Often I can look at the situation and see why each side thinks it needs to go to war. But usually an outsider concludes that one or both sides is being stupid and shouldn't have gone to war anyhow.

In general, looking at wars, I am surprised by how pointless the allegiences are. When there is a war among peoples I know, it all seems to make sense. But almost always when I have a true outsider's perspective, such as when I hear of a war in Africa between two small combatants that I don't know anything about, the first response is "oh, a bunch of people too stupid to realize that they should stop killing each other and try to fix their region". This is because to I the combatants seem the same, so it's like a bunch of people arbitrarily killing a bunch of other people who in my mind are "on the same team". After hearing about this a bit, I might get the impression that these folks are just a bloodthirsy, murderous bunch. I want to yell at them, "hey man, don't you know murder is a bad thing?" Of course, on closer examination I can find the usual reasons for war.

But I think that first feeling is right. In general, when there are wars, it is because people are too stupid to realize they are on the same team, and they think that somehow killing a bunch of people who were arbitrarily assigned to the other team will somehow reduce the amount of evil in the world. Most of our wars are the same and it is hard to see for lack of perspective.

The good thing about war is that, unlike some other problems, there is a fairly clear "right" side (murder is wrong). And, unlike some other problems, it is clearly and indisputably a problem created by humans; if humans didn't fight, there would be no wars. The problem is that humans in society have a way of thinking such that they often find bogus justifications for murdering and then they think it's right. This points the way to a solution; don't be so quick to murder.

Looking at combatants for whom you have an outside perspective, I often get mad at one or both sides for murdering without a truly just cause. I'll say, "oh, they attacked in retribution for this, but that wasn't the opposing government's fault", or "well yes this side attacked first but the other side was obviously provoking them by being on their land. So the other side didn't really have a right to revenge," or "well they attacked for this slight but that isn't severe enough to warrent murder" or "well this power-hungry leader lied to his people about stuff the other side didn't do, they should have questioned him more".

Well, I've found that most of my objections can usually be subsumed under a few principals. In summary, realize that if you had an outside perspective, you'd think most of your just wars are just murderous mistakes, and so don't go to war unless your cause is worth murder. In more detail:

When going to war, remember that most of the people on the other side are just citizens like you who may be nice people in the rest of life, who spend most of their time trying to get by just like you. They didn't set their government's policies any more than you set yours.
Hence, as much as you consider you and your friends innocent, you should consider them innocent to approximately the same amount. Even if your country is solidly in the right and their is solidly in the wrong, and even if there was a substantial contingent of citizens pushing their government to do evil deeds, most of the people you will kill on the battlefield will not be in this group and so will not be bad guys.
Hence, you should realize that if you fight a war you will be actively murdering innocent people most of the time.
Now, you should ask yourself if you believe your country's policy goals are sufficiently important that the good that will come of it morally justifies the murder of innocents. For clarity, you might imagine that someone from some other country had a magical quest such that if they kill a bunch of your friends and neighbors, magically your desired policy objective will be acheived. Now of course you would be somewhat sad and angry in this situation, but ask if you think that person should be imprisoned for their quest or if you think such a person is tough but good because the objective was absolutely necessary.
Having decided whether your war is just, decide whether to fight. Retain individual responsibility for anyone you kill. Do not say that you don't think that this innocent man should die, but that you yourself will kill him anyway because it is convenient for you (this is the logic of "I was drafted, so I'll fight"). Imagine what you would say to a poor person in a gang who put forth this logic at a trial.

Here is another metaphor for these situations; when you imagine a war, imagine that the opponent is a small group of people who are shielding themselves with a large group of innocent hostages. Going to war is like shooting through the hostages to kill the aggressors (I mean that the hostages are most of the opposing soldiers who didn't have a hand in their country's wrongs, but this is also quite literally true, in that war always involves thousands of civilian casualties). You should imagine that your friends and neighbors are among the hostages and gauge your reaction to shooting them to get at the bad guys (if you think you wouldn't be able to, that's irrelevant; imagine if you think you should or not) -- is your objective so worthwhile that you think that is the right thing to do (or the right thing to do for your country)?

My criteria doesn't say that no war could possibly be just. If some criminal breaks into your house with a gun and is about to kill or enslave your family, it is just to kill him, perhaps even if you have to kill a hostage to do so.

If some madman started murdering all the Jewish people on his block, it is just to kill him even if you are not directly threatened, perhaps even if you have to kill a bunch of hostages to do so.

However, most American wars do not meet these criteria to me. Even in WWII, it turned out that Hitler was gassing the Jews, but that wasn't crystal clear at the time that people went to war. Maybe it was clear that Germany was immorally expansionist, I don't know my history well enough. But I do think that most of the country was against going to war and that the president had to lie about something to get us in, so I bet there was some reason for that pacifism at the time.

....

Now, none of the above says that you can't decide to delegate these decisions to your elected leaders, just that you should know what you are doing if you do that. If you do so, be sure that you wouldn't fault someone fighting in the opposing army who killed your friends if afterwards they told you they weren't really sure if the war was just but that they thought their leaders knew. Also, you may wish to bear in mind that history shows that even in modern democracies the leaders of countries are usually later found by historians to have inflated the facts to goad their people into war.

....

Eh, I think you're probably still resposible for murder if you work for the murdering organization in most capacities. In the US, we send people to jail if they even operate a fax machine on behalf of a terrorist organization (personally, I think this is going too far -- operating a fax machine for the military's PR department is probably fine). But I do think that actively training or working in intelligence for an organization is bad. Once again, here's a good test; if someone did this job for Al Queda, do you think they are at fault? It is a tough job market, after all.

(as I said, I think it is not wrong to work for Al Queda in any capacity, say in their PR department, but I do think most of the jobs would be wrong, say being a secretary for bin Laden).