An interesting set of articles and letters in The Age concerning the issue of whether or not Israel fought a ‘just war’. On Thursday Professor Tony Coady argued that Israel breached several principles of the concept of just war. Three letters on Friday challenged him and today Professor Gregory Rose refutes him.
I believe Coady revealed a typical anti-Western bias. He focused mainly on Israel and ignored Hezbollah. Even though he did say that Hezbollah were equally guilty he actually went on to gloss over its actions. Rose’s refutation is based on what Coady chose to pointedly ignore – that a just war can only be fought if both sides fight justly.
The principles of a just war are a Western idea, given particular prominence in the Geneva convention. Hezbollah refutes all Western ideas and bases its ideology only on Islamic law.
Rose argues that under the Western idea of a just war using civilians as cover is considered a particular evil and is called a ‘perfidy’. Under Islamic law there is no real distinction between combatants and civilians. Hezbollah is not a conventional Western army. It is both a social movement, political party and army. Many of its combatants are civilians. There was the story today of 17 year-old Zahra Fadallah who died with her mother in an Israeli bombing. An innocent civilian death? It would have been recorded as such. But in reality she was a collaborator. Her two brothers were Hezbollah fighters and she knew this. She chose to stay and feed the fighters by baking bread. So she was part of the Hezbollah military and political infrastructure.
We will never know how many Lebanese were truly innocent civilians and how many were active members of Hezbollah.
Did Israel win? I believe so. The Lebanese army, with UN support, has now been forced to enter Hezbollah territory. Hezbollah can no longer operate with impunity. The combined Lebanese/UN peacekeeping force must act to disarm Hezbollah, as it was meant to do in the first place. I believe that this is what Israel wanted to do (as well as destroy as much of Hezbollah as it could). There is a larger, nastier game in which this is just an initial chess move, and that is Iran. Iran must never be allowed to build a bomb for the simple reason that I it will use it against Israel.
I understand the hypocrisy argument. The West has nuclear weapons so why can’t Iran? Well, the West has only used nuclear weapons on two occasions and I believe with full justification. I believe their use on Japan actually saved lives. Japan had put into place a suicidal plan to resist a US invasion. This is all a matter of history. Even after the first bomb had been dropped (and the fire bombing of Tokyo) the fanatical leadership resisted surrender. It took a internal coup to shift the balance of power. The West has always understood that nuclear weapons are a terrible option and have shown considerable restraint in using them. There have been several wars in which they could have been used as a knock-out blow but they weren’t. I don’t believe Iran will show a similar restraint.
I would rather there were no nuclear weapons and I believe they should all be decommissioned. But I fear Iran getting a weapon. Hezbollah was an instrument of Iran, same ideology, same aims.
So how do we fight an enemy whose combatants are civilians? How do we fight an enemy that believes martyrdom is a virtue? The Japanese plan involved training school children to carry bombs in their knapsacks and to roll under approaching tanks. One US soldier told of an elderly Japanese woman pulling a hand grenade from beneath her kimono and blowing up a US soldier. How do you fight a just war when the civilians, old women and children, are also a potential threat? We may call such actions perfidy but so what?
The principles of a just war only apply when both sides honour those principles.
Rose goes on to point out that Israel did show constraint. Hezbollah had been provoking Israel for months prior to the war and Israel also dropped leaflets warning civilians. The West has developed precision munitions precisely to try and avoid collateral damage. Hezbollah gave no warnings and fired missiles indiscriminantly. Whilst I think Israel could have been more constrained I also think Hezbollah deliberately put them in a difficult position. The blame I believe, lies squarely on Hezbollah’s shoulders.
Now let’s see how this ceasefire works and who will be the first to defy it. Is Hezbollah being disarmed?
Hi Ray could you add the hyperlinks to Tony Coady piece?
“Did Israel win? I believe so.”
You’re one of the very few, Ray. Most observers, including many in the Israeli government and military, I’m sure, feel that Hezbollah won simply because they held their own. They’ may have been weakened somewhat, but they’re still there. Not to mention the propaganda war, the sight of Israel bombing major Lebanese cities, killing people who are not combatants.
Hi Andy,
There is no doubt that Hezbollah won the propaganda war, especially on the Arab street. But if Israeli’s aims were to get Lebanon and the international community to finally disarm Hezbollah then they won. The fundamental problem was that Hezbollah was given free reign to control southern Lebanon, they no longer have that freedom. What Israel was facing was a heavily armed militia dedicated to its destruction acting with impunity on its northern border. That situation seems to have been contained. But only time will tell. Hezbollah could never have been wiped out because it is an ideology.
Re the Tony Coady piece – just do a search The Age, Melbourne, Tony Coady – I haven’t worked out how to do links yet, besides, I’d have to do the search as well to get the link coz I read the actual newspaper old style.
I’ve been away for five weeks and so haven’t participated in Open Integral, despite my best intentions. But I must voice my disappoint that it is being used to justify the Israeli war machine. I would suggest that such topics be moved to Ray’s personal blog, or that he create one. This forum should be reserved to the discussion of integral movements and an instrument for peace.
In my view, this siding with the unilateral invasion, the destruction of Lebanon, and the killing of so many innocent civilians, really discredits this forum.
I’m not more happy with Ray’s essentializing of the Muslims and his early postings on the sexual age of consent.
Michel, I think I see two separable issues in your post. One, what is appropriate subject matter for this forum? Two, is there a well-defined integral position on political or social issues?
Wrt the first, it seems to me that however we define integral, it can and should be applied to any issue. It isn’t just theory, of course, or isn’t supposed to be, but is supposed to offer some guide or at least insight into how we live. World affairs are surely highly relevant, all the more so because Wilber has not said that much about them, and what he has said, IMO, has been even weaker, less substantial or defensible, than his application of integral notions elsewhere. Like it or not, the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict is a major part of our lives. Even if we believe we have very different ideas about how nations should conduct their affairs–if we imagine ourselves trying to build a world very different from the one both Israel and Hezbollah inhabit–we are all part of a nation that is complicit in some way in what is going on, and we all are affected by what is going on.
The only possible objection I can see to this is that you understand this forum as being one in which we devote all our energies to building an integral movement, with no time to consider what’s going on in the world around us. While of course world affairs are important, they aren’t directly, immediately relevant to the task at hand. But even if you are mainly interested in building a movement, the way a movement of any kind attracts followers is by addressing issues of interest to them, and surely this war qualifies. People come to the integral fold because they’re dissatisfied with the way certain issues, ideas, etc., are customarily handled by their families, employers, communities, nations, and so on. They look for another approach.
In the case of Ray’s postings on the age of sexual consent, this probably does not have the wide relevance that the war does. This is more of a personalized, specialized issue. On the other hand, those to whom it is relevant, parents, may become even more passionate about it than over a very critical war. And even personal, specialized issues can be the root of more general ideas. For example, during the discussion of sexual consent, the very interesting (to me, anyway) idea was raised of whether developmental stages in humans are more or less fixed, or whether they may change over history.
The second issue you seem to be raising is whether there are or should be well-defined integral positions on issues which can’t easily be resolved by facts (e.g., scientific questions). Even if we accept the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict as important and relevant, are there certain ways of viewing it which we regard as not integral? As I become more and more familiar with integral-related movements in cyberspace, I have become very impressed (in a neutral sense of the word) by the fact that people who consider themselves integral or at least sympathetic to the notion may hold very diverse views on political and social issues. There are integral types who expouse views on the left and on the right. There are people opposed to Bush in general, and the war in Iraq in particular, and people who are highly supportive of both. The same with Israel vs. Arabs. Or with liberal vs. conservative views of the economy. As someone who holds fairly strong political views, this is frequently frustrating, but to deny it would be to avoid reality.
We might like to believe that integral means transcending these conflicts, but it’s the nature of such conflicts that they frequently demand an either/or stance. We may blame both Israel and Hezbollah for what is happening in the mid East, but at the end of the day any possible solution we might propose is going to favor one or the other in certain ways. It’s very easy to say that violence is wrong, but espousing that view, particularly while failing to explore deeply why people resort to violence, will not necessarily lead to less violence. Surely we must all be aware by now that there are no simple solutions to any world problems–simple in practice, that is. (I would say meditation is the simplest thing in the world in theory, but the most difficult in practice).
If we are going to grapple with these issues, I think we have to wade in and get dirty. It would be nice to claim a position that is above and beyond it all, that is superior to other positions that have been proposed before, but the fact that most people quite obviously don’t see such a position as existing shows very clearly that the position is not yet manifest. It’s still being developed. And that developing process, I hope, is what can happen here.
Thanks for that Andy. I must say I was surprised and disappointed with Michel Bauwen’s criticism primarily because it smacked of political correctness and contains a clear but unowned bias. “Israeli war machine”, “unilateral invasion”, “the destruction of Lebanon”, “the killing of so many innocent civilians” and of course the classic “essentializing of the Muslims”. Why no mention of the Hezbollah/Iranian war machine, the aggression of Hezbollah, of innocent Israeli deaths and of the essentializing of Jews, Israelis and the West? Michel, doesn’t the use of the terms ‘unilateral’ and ‘Israeli war machine’ suggest that you are guilty of essentializing the Israelis? Oh, and please, don’t cite the next line about ‘blaming the victims’. I know all about Edward Said and you need to know that he is not without fault. Ever heard of ‘Occidentalism’? It’s the argument that the Arabs essentialize the Jews and the West just as much as the West essentializes Muslims and Arabs. Hezbollah is responsible for some of the worst anti-Jewish (anti-Semitic) propaganda in the ME. Vile stuff.
Hmmm, methinks – are there any integral Jews out there who’d care to comment?
The thing is that I believe I try and explain how my views reflect integral theory. The very least Michel could have done was explain why these posts do not. I don’t expect people to agree but I at least expect a good ‘integral’ reason for the disagreement.
In regard to the age of consent issue. It is very much related to integral theory and especially to developmental theory. I said very clearly (I thought) that any age of consent law is arbitrary and that the developmental evidence shows that the cognitive and moral reasoning ability needed to consent was not age dependent. I suppose Michel that you believe that an adolescent achieves the required wisdom to consent miraculously on the event of their birthday (whether that is 14, 15, 16 or 18) depending on the country? What I was arguing for was that the law recognize the variations in development and not set a fixed age, whatever that may be.
Ken has made a brief statement on the war in Iraq at the following link: http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/misc/iraq.cfm. In it he noted that legitimate reasons for or against the war can be made from a 2nd-tier perspective. That is, 2nd tier is not necessarily or completely anti-war. In that I agree with him. So it goes for the war on terror, etc. This does NOT mean I agree with how the war in Iraq or the war on terror are being conducted. Just that I consider valid reasons for both of them.
And assuming I’m coming from a 2nd-tier perspective. But according to Ken, if you’re “green” you won’t support war in any form. If that is so then I can’t be green. But since I completely disagee with the “if you find my rant disturbing you’re not 2nd-tier” then I must be lower than green. Interesting. Anyway…
In that link Ken made the point that law must be enacted from the highest deveolpmental level available. This presumes that our leaders come from this level, not all of which do. Not even the majority at present. But I agree with him on that point.
In prevous posts there was argument that the “west” with its democratic governance was better than religious leaders leading followers off to jihad. And I agree. Yet I think we’ll need to go a step further beyond democratic governance, as it has allowed the religious right to take over the US government. I.e. a lower developmental level has opportunity to do this within democracy where anyone from any level can and do vote, or course being manipulated by a multi-billion dollar advertising campaign designed by spiral-dynamics trained gurus.
What is the next step in governance beyond democracy that can derail this and insure the highest level law and leaders in the land? I don’t know, which is why I am investigating this thing called holacracy. That might or might not be the answer, but I think its time to move beyond democracy, at least in the “west.”
Hi Edward,
Interesting term, holacracy. Could you explain what you mean by that in this context?
The real world problem is that groups expressing ethnocentric values use violence to achieve their aims. So even if you are a pacifist ‘MGM’ (a term I have difficulty with as you know) it won’t stop them using violence against you. It’s easy to take a pacifist moral high ground from a safe distance.
Marko Rinck Says: Interesting term, holacracy. Could you explain what you mean by that in this context?
http://www.holacracy.org