Innocence and responsibility in war

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 34, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 485-506

  McPherson, Lionel K ^a  

^a TUFTS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33747708895     PISSN: 00455091     EISSN: 19110820     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00455091.2004.10716576     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. I owe much to Erin Kelly for our many discussions on just war theory and for her help in thinking about this paper. I also would like to thank Jeff McMahan for his incisive comments; the Harvard University Center for Ethics and the Professions for its generous fellowship support and for stimulating discussion with the Center's fellows, especially Alon Harel and Michelle Mason; the National Endowment for the Humanities for a summer grant to complete a draft of this paper; Whitley Kaufman for his cautionary criticism; and the referees of this journal for their helpful suggestions.
2. This distinction between a 'just cause' and a 'just aim' follows Jeff McMahan and Robert McKim, 'The Just War and the Gulf War,' Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (1993), 502.
3. Thomas Nagel, 'War and Massacre,' in International Ethics, Charles R. Beitz et al., eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985), 56.
4. Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, 'Innocence in War,' International Journal of Applied Philosophy 14 (2000), 164.
5. A similar point about the moral arbitrariness of the combatant- noncombatant distinction is made by George I. Mavrodes, 'Conventions and the Morality of War,' in Beitz, International Ethics.
6. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books 1977), 146
7. Other writers, like Walzer, also do not recognize this limit on the legitimacy of self-defense. Some of them cite an unrestricted 'principle of self-defense' that would allow any persons to defend themselves against serious threats, regardless of the moral innocence of the attackers or the unjust cause that the defenders serve. See, e.g., Robert K. Fullinwider, 'War and Innocence,' in Beitz, International Ethics;
8. and Lawrence A. Alexander, 'Self-Defense and the Killing of Noncombatants: A Reply to Fullinwider,' in Beitz, International Ethics. Against Fullinwider, Alexander argues that the principle of self-defense does not necessarily prohibit the killing of noncombatants. Both Fullinwider and Alexander, however, basically take it for granted that an unrestricted principle of self-defense derives from a right to self-defense.
9. G.E.M. Anscombe, 'War and Murder,' in Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1981), 53
10. I have been assuming that what Anscombe regards as objectively unjust can be distinguished from what the rules of war as grounded in convention and international law specify as unjust. For criticism of the conventionalist grounding of the rules of war, see my 'The Limits of the War Convention,' Philosophy & Social Criticism, forthcoming.
11. Jeff McMahan disagrees, claiming that Anscombe is committed to the position that morally innocent civilians would not be permitted to defend themselves against a just combatant in such a case ('Self-Defense and the Problem of the Innocent Attacker,' Ethics 104 [1994], 274-5).
12. Anscombe, 'War and Murder,' 60
13. It has been argued that a fundamental difference lies in a distinction between an individual moral perspective and a collective moral perspective. See Noam Zohar, 'Collective War and Individualistic Ethics: Against the Conscription of "Self-Defense,'" Political Theory 21 (1993) 606-22. According to Zohar, 'Analogies that proceed directly from relations among individuals to the realm of relations among states, without emphasizing the two disparate perspectives involved, produce more confusion than illumination' (619). While I share some of his skepticism about the applicability of a refined account of individual self-defense to the case of war, I do not find plausible his account of 'the dual character of our moral vision' (619). My reason, in short, is that I do not think collectivities are essentially so different from the individuals who comprise them - at least, not so different as to entail two different kinds of morality.
14. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 39
15. The 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, code named 'Operation Just Cause,' lacked any serious pretext of just cause. President George H.W. Bush claimed the following, among other reasons, as justification: Panamanian dictator General Manuel A. Noriega had declared a state of war with the United States; forces under Noriega's command killed a U.S. serviceman, wounded a U.S. officer, and unlawfully detained and abused the officer's wife; Noriega publicly threatened Americans in Panama, creating an 'imminent danger' to their lives; these and other actions put the integrity of the Panama Canal Treaties in jeopardy; and attempts to resolve the overall situation through diplomacy and negotiations had failed. See George Bush Presidential Library, 'Address to the Nation Announcing United States Military Action in Panama,' 19 December 1989, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu;
16. See, e.g., John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1999), 91-2.
17. See McMahan and McKim, 'The Just War,' 501-2.
18. Alasdair MacIntyre rejects the idea that patriotism should rely on the presumption that one's country has a just cause for war ('Is Patriotism a Virtue?' The Lindley Lecture [University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 26 March 1984]).
19. See, e.g., Chris Hedges, What Every Person Should Know about War (New York: Free Press 2003), 13.
20. Jeff McMahan, 'Innocence, Self-Defense and Killing in War,' The Journal of Political Philosophy 2 (1994), 201
21. See, e.g., McMahan, 'Self-Defense and the Problem of the Innocent Attacker,' 264.
22. McMahan, 'Innocence, Self-Defense and Killing in War,' 201.
23. Pacifists, along with many just war theorists, take the problem of the unjust combatant qua innocent attacker to be central. For pacifists, this represents a general challenge to the permissibility of war. See, e.g., Cheyney C. Ryan, 'Self-Defense, Pacifism, and the Possibility of Killing,' Ethics 93 (1983) 508-24;
24. and Jenny Teichman, Pacifism and the Just War (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1986).
25. McMahan has retracted his view that innocent, unjust combatants are immune to defensive violence and therefore could be justified in attacking just combatants in self-defense.
26. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974), 100
27. For a general account of moral responsibility that rejects the importance of desert, see Erin Kelly, 'Doing without Desert,' Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2002) 180-205.
28. See, e.g., Erin Kelly, 'The Burdens of Collective Liability,' in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, ed. Deen K. Chatterjee and Don E. Scheid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003).
29. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 100
30. Mavrodes, 'Conventions and the Morality of War,' 87.
31. See also McMahan, who argues that 'if attacking guilty civilians would be equally effective in promoting the just cause as attacking morally innocent soldiers would be, then one has as an additional reason for attacking the civilians that this would help to free the innocent soldiers from the dangerous and morally repugnant predicament in which they have been unjustly placed' ('Innocence, Self-Defense and Killing in War,' 203).
32. See, e.g., Mavrodes, 'Conventions and the Morality of War,' 85-7.
33. See my 'Excessive Force in War: A "Golden Rule" Test,' Theoretical Inquiries in Law, forthcoming.
34. Courage to Refuse, 'The Combatant's Letter,' 2002, www.couragetorefuse. org.