wm: did "peek" at Junger,
which exceeds those I mentioned in a number of respects. I've not got into the WWI Germans very much (just Junger and Rommel). Sulzbach looks interesting and sounds a bit like Col. Blimp's German friend.
But, I have to embark on reading (studying ?) a pair of WWI vets in tandem: Collingwood (Idea, Principles) and Wittgenstein (Investigations) - they seem to go together. I can't promise they will occupy me enough to shut me up; but they seem a good start. :D
Regards
Mike
wm: a "mini-Lt. Calley" ?
from my post #57:
Quote:
Still, the Clint Lorance case was probably not as simple as the newspaper makes it (Lorance being painted as something of a mini-Lt. Calley). I did a bit of Googling and read other accounts of the events which paint quite a different picture. Of course, there may well have been two or more divergent factual accounts before the court members - not unusual in these cases where we have civilians and "civilians", combatants and "combatants".
That's why we have "jurors" (court members).
As to the real Lt. Calley, I thought he was a twit based on the media coverage - and the Peers Report; but I never met the man himself.
I did meet Ernest Medina, in a non-adversarial, strictly-business setting, when he worked for Enstrom Helicopter. From that meeting alone, I'd say he was a competent middle-level manager with a good personality. Of course, My Lai was not discussed; nor the fact that one of my early mentors (a person to be greatly respected) had signed off on the Peers Report which was damning to Medina, but who was acquitted in his court-martial.
All that is to illustrate that variant factual sets arise (here, three sets as to Ernest Medina: JMM personal meeting, the Peers Report and Medina's court members). As to Lorance, the two newspaper articles present the factual view that the court members apparently accepted - a mini-Lt. Calley. I'm not going to argue that apparent factual finding was not supported by evidence.
But, Lorance (like Snowden) is not the issue for what lessons might be learned from this and like incidents. Polarbear1605 has provided us with some examples of what is materially at issue.
IMO: These questions, asked as a consequence of My Lai (with the last one updated to Abu Graib), are still the material issues:
Quote:
1. Should we apply legal rules to incidents arising out of warfare? What is the purpose of developing and applying such rules? Have such rules changed the nature of warfare, or prevented more or worse wartime atrocities from occurring?
2. What should the rules of warfare be with respect to treatment of civilians? Who should be considered a civilian (or a non-combatant)? Should there be special rules governing the treatment of women or children?
3. What is the defense of superior orders? Why have such a defense? When should the defense be available? What should be done in the case of ambiguous orders or when oral commands contradict written directives? Must the belief that a superior order is lawful be reasonable? Should different standards apply to privates than to persons higher up the chain of command? What should a soldier do when he is given an order that he thinks is unlawful?
4. How do you explain what happened at My Lai? What can be done to prevent such tragedies from happening again? What does My Lai teach us about the nature of evil? Was Calley evil, or was he a more-or-less “normal person in abnormal circumstances”? Would Calley have acted differently had he received more training in the rules of warfare?
5. Was Calley simply following orders? What had he been told? What did he reasonably infer? Did he believe that his superiors were aware of his orders? Did he try to hide his actions from his superiors?
6. If Calley had been ordered to “waste” civilians, was he obligated to disobey such an order because it was clearly illegal?
7. When Medina said that he gave no order to kill the residents of My Lai, was he being completely truthful? Was Medina aware of what was happening at My Lai when there was still time to do something about it? Should sins of omission be treated the same as sins of commission?
8. Which was worse—the massacre or the cover-up?
9. What relevance was it that atrocities had been committed against U.S. servicemen in the area in the days immediately preceding the My Lai operation?
10. Were there any heroes at My Lai? What makes a hero able to act heroically? How can we make more people likely to act heroically?
11. Was justice done in the court martial of Calley? In the court martial of Captain Medina?
12. How much influence did politics and politicians have on the outcomes? Should we try harder to insulate courts martial from political influence?
13. What role did the media play in exposing the My Lai massacre and explaining its significance?
14. What was the public reaction to these courts martial? How do you explain this reaction?
15. What is the lasting significance of My Lai? Did it substantially change public attitudes toward the Viet Nam War? Has it changed how we prepare our soldiers for war?
16. What comparisons can you draw between My Lai and the prisoner torture and abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq? What are some of the key differences? Who was most responsible for what happened at Abu Ghraib? Does Abu Graib, as well as incidents involving the rape and killing of civilians in Iraq, suggest that we haven't learned well the lessons of My Lai? What needs to be done to prevent these gross affronts to human dignity during the stress of war?
Regards
Mike
Curm.. "I hesitantly offer.."
He who hesitates is lost. :D
Quote:
I define war as “deadly or potentially deadly organized violence committed by a subset of one group, whose actions are morally sanctioned by that group, against a discrete and identifiable other group with a specific objective or goal.”
As you say, a "we-they" thing, with which I have some agreement:
post #74
Quote:
More broadly, we have the concepts underlying "individual" and "collective" self-defense; as well as the concepts underlying "individual" and "collective" offense against what is perceived or defined as "evil". I'd argue that both Command Responsibility and Responsible Command are involved as soon as a "unit" (e.g., a 4-man fireteam) enters the picture.
but, as to which, wm raises a concern:
post #76
Quote:
I was trying to make a distinction between the individual (a natural person, by the way) and the collective (an artificial person). However, I do have some qualms about what to make of the status of that artificial person. I find it hard to cash out exactly what those qualms are and why they bother me, but for starters, I question the applicability of the analogy found in St. Augustine that takes the acceptability of personal self defense and maps it to national self defense. I think that much of my concern stems from two sources: the concept of a moral agent and the notion that praiseworthiness / blameworthiness requires some ability to act after deliberation. Artificial persons are not able to deliberate in my worldview and are not "really" moral agents as a result.
That concern is well-founded because there has been an on-going debate, cutting across cognitive science and philosophy, concerning "group selection" and its associated issues. This has primarily focused on religious groups as examples of "group moral psychology". But, the general concepts could apply to any well-defined subgroup - e.g., military forces, especially when at war. Generally, one could vulgarly speak of a "meme" (realizing some hucksterism associated with "memetics") - using the accepted genetic "deme" as an analogy (e.g., polarbears :)).
See generally, Group selection; Altruism and Group Selection; Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0; and Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark.
In any event, here are two persons who accept "group selection":
David Sloan Wilson, Professor in the Biology and Anthropology Departments at Binghamton University - video
Jonathan Haidt, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia - video 1, video 2
Jonathan Haidt (a secular liberal), in 2006, published When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize
Quote:
Conclusion
To summarize, we have argued for three main points: 1) Human morality consists of more than what is covered by the traditional Kohlberg/Gilligan domains of justice and care. 2) Liberal morality rests primarily on these two foundations (we call them reciprocity and harm), but conservative morality rests on five foundations, including ingroup, hierarchy, and purity concerns as well. 3) Recognizing these latter foundations as moral (instead of amoral, or immoral, or just plain stupid) can open up a door in the wall that separates liberals and conservatives when they try to discuss moral issues.
and one who doesn't (with 23 comments, many mini-articles, to Pinker's article):
Steven Pinker, The False Allure of Group Selection.
Jonathan Haidt, To See Group Selection, Look at Groupishness during Intergroup Competition, Not Altruism during Interpersonal Competition (a comment on Steven Pinker; first example by Haidt):
Quote:
One of the few social psychological studies that actually put real, ongoing groups into real and protracted conflict was the famous "summer camp" study carried out by Muzafar Sherif [1], who brought two groups of twelve-year-old boys to a summer camp in a state park in Oklahoma in 1954. At first, the two groups did not even know of each others' existence, yet even so, each group started marking territory and creating a tribal identify for itself. Both groups engaged in some mild tribal behaviors that would be useful if the group were to encounter a rival group that claimed the same territory. That is what happened on day 6 when the "Rattlers" discovered that the "Eagles" were playing baseball on what the Rattlers took to be "their" ball-field. The Rattlers then challenged the Eagles to a game, which initiated a weeklong series of competitions that Sherif had planned from the start.
Once the competition began, it was as though a switch was flipped in each boy's head. As Sherif described it: "performance in all activities which might now become competitive (tent pitching, baseball, etc.) was entered into with more zest and also with more efficiency." Tribal behaviors increased dramatically. Both sides created flags and hung them in contested territories. They raided each others' bunks, called each other names, and even made weapons (socks filled with rocks.)
Were these acts altruistic? Technically yes, because each tribal behavior had some cost for the individual, and it benefitted the group's cohesiveness or effectiveness. But I think the opposite of selfishness in evolutionary terms should not always be altruism. For the purposes of the present debate, things get clearer if we contrast selfishness with groupishness. The hand of group-level selection is most vividly seen when we look at behaviors that impose some cost on the individual, but that do not transfer that cost as a benefit to one or several specific other group member (which would help the selfish individualists prosper in a multi-level analysis). Rather, mental mechanisms that encourage individuals to do things that help their team succeed, despite some cost to the self, are the most likely candidates for having come down to us by a path in which group-selection played a part.
...
[1] Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W., & Sherif, C. [1961/1954]. Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave experiment Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Institute of Group Relations.
...
In sum, most of our social psychology, and even most of our moral psychology, was shaped by individual-level selection. There has always been competition among individuals within groups, competing for status, mates, and the trust of potential partners for cooperation. But if you examine the psychological traits that motivate and enable cohesion, trust, and effective coordination, and if you do this during times of intergroup conflict, you will find many behaviors and mental mechanisms that are much harder to explain using only individual-level mechanisms. You will find yourself swimming among group-selected traits.
So, Haidt's theories are much along the lines that TheCurmudgeon wrote.
Regards
Mike
wm: my answer (probably too simplistic) re: artificial persons (military units, corporations, limited liability companies, etc.) and deliberation - moral agency, is that natural persons are appointed or elected to deliberate. Perhaps, some day, machines will take over as moral agents - the Universal Truth Machine - and those then living will see Kurt Godel disproved. So far, Godel has held up.
Pat Churchland and "we-they" conflicts
Patricia Smith Churchland, UC President's Professor of Philosophy, UC San Diego, hits "we-they" conflicts spot on in this panel from Panel: This is Your Brain on Morality - Beyond Belief 2008, starting at 15:45 (about 5 min. of Churchland). She concludes: "It's part of the package, as crappy as it is."
For more of Pat Churchland:
Patricia Churchland - Beyond Belief 2008 (16 min. short course; biochemistry and philosophy, "... choice, responsibility and the basis of moral norms in terms of brain function, evolution and brain-culture interactions ..." !!)
Lectures (about 1 hour+ each; ~ a week of her classes):
Patricia Churchland - Morality and the Mammalian Brain.
Patricia Churchland - Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality 01.
Patricia Churchland - Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality 02.
Decisions Responsibility and the Brain.
Getting to the meat of it (says the ancien biochemist ;)); it's indeed surprising what connections ensue from Collingwood's Principles of History (Human Nature and Human History :)).
Regards
Mike
Ah, Soldiers who kill an person - try another thread!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheCurmudgeon
One other point on us-and-them: categorizing people based on obvious characteristics seems to be something we (as humans) like. Think about the uniform. What purpose does it serve? It lets me know who is on my side and who is the enemy (an who is not in the fight). Take that away and we feel uncomfortable.
I am curious if Soldiers who kill an person who is not in uniform have a harder time dealing with that then a if they had killed the same person in a clearly identifiable enemy uniform.
But we are getting off topic.
Ah, don't worry that can be a SWC way of making progress:wry: There is a thread 'How Soldiers deal with the job of killing':http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=13523
There's also, now slightly off topic, a parallel one on how LE deals with killing.
"Predisposed to see the world ..
in terms of us and them" is Pat Churchland's basic hypothesis - multi-disciplinary (see Churchland links in my post above). Her evolutionary path boils down to:
Quote:
Me
Me-Mine (kids)
Me-Mine-Kin
Me-Mine-Kin-Kith
As to "trusting" strangers, the quickest method is a trusted intermediary known to both parties. All of us probably know the non-intermediary method: put the trade goods on the beach; and wait for the other guy's trade goods offered in exchange. Recycle until someone picks up the last offered goods. That is a more time-consuming process.
Here is some more of Jon Haidt on a similar topic:
Johnathan Haidt, The Groupish Gene (2012) (short course, 17 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T64_El2s7FU
Johnathan Haidt, The Groupish Gene (2012) (long course, 1.5 hrs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ192d4c4S0
A lot of scientific weeds grow here, just as a lot of legal weeds grow elsewhere. The bottom line is that "we-they" is a human group given, but hypotheses differ on whether that given is caused by cultural selection, genetic selection, or both (in which case, how much from each); and, in both types of selection, the relative roles played by individuals and groups.
--------------------------------
I don't want to get down into the legal weeds - and simply won't; but this is a muddled mess:
Quote:
As to the distinction between Law of War and Rule of Law, I would assert that in the domain of "Legal Processes" the former is a subset of the latter. In other words, it really makes no sense to talk about the Law of War unless an environment exists in which some fair/objective process (or perhaps "due process" is a better word choice) exists to examine whether aspects of the Law of War have been followed or breached.
This last may seem to be at variance with your points about an absence of the rule of law, but I took your point to be that this absence is found in the area of operations, not in the organization conducting COIN. The deployed force has a goal (perhaps) of installing or restoring the rule of law to that place where the COIN mission is being conducted; that deployed force also operates internally under the Rule of Law. In the case at hand, the UCMJ/MCM is a significant part of the Rule of Law specification but is not the whole story.
Are you arguing something along the lines of Kevin Heller's hypothesis, 'One Hell of a Killing Machine': Signature Strikes and International Law (to be published) ?
Perhaps you could diagram your "Legal Domain", and how all these fit together.
Regards
Mike
My Legal Domains - part 1
After this post, everyone will want a drink. :D
It's the ultimate law review article: a title, one chart and the rest footnotes. ;)
Quote:
"Legal Domains"
I. Domestic Law (e.g., US)
A. Federal - to include: UCMJ and Extraterritorial Statutes
B. State
II. Regional Law (e.g., EU) - to include (in addition to formal regional entities, e,g., EU): various bi- and multi-lateral agreements, as well as much trade and commercial law, are more regional than global.
III. International Law
A. Laws of Peace
B. Laws of War & Neutrality
IV. Religious Laws
Notes:
(1) Generally, I take off the trottle and put on the brakes so far as natural law theories in my "Legal Domains" are concerned (to include the cottage industry of various "just war theories"). Just war theories are interesting to me, but not compelling.
If you are interested, pick a just war theorist you like (as an author), who writes about areas in which you have an interest. For me, that is Larry May. May has a number of books on topics material to this thread and the issues of killing in war (including very large killings).
He handles Hobbes and Grotius as follows:
Quote:
May,
A Hobbesian Approach to Cruelty and the Rules of War, Leiden Journal of International Law / Volume 26 / Issue 02 / June 2013, pp 293-313
Abstract
Contrary to the way Hobbes has been interpreted for centuries, I will argue that Hobbes laid the groundwork for contemporary international law and for a distinctly moral approach to the rules of war. The paper has the following structure. First, I will explain the role that the laws of nature play in Hobbes's understanding of the state of war. Second, I will explain Hobbes's views of self-preservation and inflicting cruelty. Third, I reconstruct Hobbes's important insight that rationality governs all human affairs, even those concerning war. Fourth, I explicate the idea of cruelty moving from what Hobbes says to a plausible Hobbesian position. Fifth, I address recent philosophical writing on how best to understand the rules of war. Sixth, I then turn to legal discussions of cruelty's place in debates about the laws of war, showing how my Hobbesian approach can ground these laws.
Quote:
May,
Grotius and Contingent Pacifism (Studies in the History of Ethics, Feb 2006)
Grotius’s great work, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, an 864-page work published in 1625, is still considered to be the single most important work in international legal theory. [3] Grotius is the great modern defender of the Just War tradition, but he is also a kind of pacifist. This is an uneasy alliance within the same thinker. But such is the history of the Just War tradition, where its adherents maintained the same dual ideas: that war was evil, but that it could be, indeed must be, justifiable in certain cases.
In this paper I will attempt to explain how Grotius reconciled the various elements of his political philosophy, and by building on his ideas I hope to provide the beginning of an account of a doctrine I will call “contingent pacifism.”[4] Contingent pacifism is opposed to war not on absolute grounds, but on contingent grounds, namely that war as we have known it has not been, and seemingly cannot be, waged in a way that is morally acceptable. As we will see,
contingent pacifism makes jus ad bellum dependent on jus in bello.
3 Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace) (1625), translated by Francis W. Kelsey, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925.
4 As far as I am aware, Jeff McMahan first coined this term, but employed it in another context. See Jeff McMahan and Robert McKim, “The Just War and the Gulf War,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 23, 1993, pp. 501-541.
Some just war theorists turn "jus ad bellum is dependent on jus in bello" on its head; that is "jus in bello is dependent on jus ad bellum". Thus, if as a combatant your state or group begins a war unjustly (jus ad bellum), you as a combatant are screwed - everything you do as a combatant (jus in bello) is illegal. In my "Legal Domains", jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum are determined separately - at least to the extent that biases, emotions and sentiments allow that to be done.
Thus, I don't think that the "rules of justice" are an illusion; but they are "fuzzy" because of the biases, emotions and sentiments involved. In this statement, Adam Smith missed the mark:
Quote:
Adam Smith,
The Theory of Moral Sentiments, III.I.123
The rules of justice may be compared to the rules of grammar; the rules of the other virtues, to the rules which critics lay down for the attainment of what is sublime and elegant in composition.
The one, are precise, accurate, and indispensable. The other, are loose, vague, and indeterminate, and present us rather with a general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at, than afford us any certain and infallible directions for acquiring it.
Truth be told, Smith started to back off in the next paragraph, in this "perhapsey" sentence: "A man may learn to write grammatically by rule, with the most absolute infallibility; and so, perhaps, he may be taught to act justly."
- notes cont. in next post -
My Legal Domains - part 2
(2) For a contrarian view of just war theory, look first to Noam Chomsky. A Just War? Hardly (by Noam Chomsky; Khaleej Times, May 9, 2006) (basic premise)
Quote:
In his highly praised reflections on just war, Michael Walzer describes the invasion of Afghanistan as "a triumph of just war theory," standing alongside Kosovo as a "just war." Unfortunately, in these two cases, as throughout, his arguments rely crucially on premises like "seems to me entirely justified," or "I believe" or "no doubt."
and Noam Chomsky: The Limitations and Problems with "Just War" Theory (USMA, 2006; 45 min.) (full course), looking to three sources of "just war theory" and Chomsky's conclusions:
1. literature (Walzer et al) - lacking in "rigour";
2. natural law (human nature) - promising research, but as yet no bananas;
3. positive law (UN Charter, Hague, Geneva) - some good rules (basically policy choices; no surprise that NC choices are somewhat different from JMM choices).
Point 2 starts at 12:25 through 18:00; cf. human language - "hard-wired" (genes) and/or "environmental" (memes)? John Mikhail of Georgetown (mentioned by Chomsky) was Chomsky's student.
(3) Then consider John Mikhail, Georgetown, Professor of Law, with a long list of publications: Elements of Moral Cognition: Rawls' Linguistic Analogy and the Cognitive Science of Moral and Legal Judgment (2011), and, in my opinion (despite my pain in having to credit MIT ;)), the best lecture concerning the brain, cognition and philosophy, Where Morals Come From (And Why it Matters) (2 hrs):
Quote:
Beatriz Luna, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Dept. of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh; John Mikhail, Associate Professor, Law Center and Philosophy Department, Georgetown University; Patrick Byrne, Professor of Philosophy, Boston College; Christopher Moore, PhD '98, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Whitehead Institute (moderator). Description: A neuroscientist, lawyer and philosopher together manage to wrap their arms around the centuries' old question of the origins of human morality.
Mikhail's research is not yet definitive (IMO); but, if well-validated, will establish a very man-made (brain-made) set of very basic legal rules. As such, it smacks much more of positive law than natural law.
Moreover, as Mikhail and others point out in various articles and lectures, the human brain has competence to make moral (and legal) rules, but that does not predict the brain's performance as to whether specific moral (and legal) rules will be made - or whether those actual rules will have cross-cultural consistency.
(4) Not surprisingly, one finds strong opinions against a genetic determinism inclining humans to war. The principal author of this viewpoint is John Horgan, The End of War (Amazon) and videos:
John Horgan: The End of War? (short course, 5.5 min.)
John Horgan: The End of War - Bioethics Seminar (longer course, 38 min.)
Authors: J Horgan, J Lears, D Swanson: "Wars and the Need to stop them!" (long course, 1.5 hrs)
Horgan, Hastings Talk Refutes Genetic Determinism of War (2012)
Quote:
Is war inevitable? Is it hardwired in human nature? Many believe that the answer to both questions is yes. But in his new book, The End of War, science journalist John Horgan reaches the opposite conclusion, making the case that “the end of war is possible, and even imminent.” Horgan discussed the research that led him to that optimistic view at The Hastings Center on April 26 as part of the Garrison Seminar series.
Horgan critically analyzes scientific claims that war is “in our genes,” including the supposed discovery of a “warrior gene” that promotes violence. Research has found minuscule difference in rates of aggression between carriers and noncarriers, he says. “My guess is that the warrior gene claim will eventually be discredited, because that’s the pattern with attempts to link complex behavioral traits to specific genes,” he writes in his book.
Horgan also debunks data cited in scientific literature that lethal group violence dates back to our common ancestors, chimpanzees. An example of such data is that the median annual death rate from intergroup aggression among chimpanzees is 140 per 100,000. In fact, Horgan says, as of 2004, researchers had directly witnessed only 12 deaths total from lethal intergroup aggression and that chimpanzee violence may be related to environmental factors such as population stress caused by human encroachment.
Horgan, director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., says his goal “is to start a conversation about why we fight and how we can stop."
In that respect ("... a conversation about why we fight and how we can stop..."), SWC is well in front of the pack.
(5) To conclude and summarize the Notes:
Except for Religious Laws (quite a separate topic, including internal matters in a religion, but also theocracies and theonomies), my Legal Domains do not recognize a "Brooding Omnipresence in the Sky". Yes, that comment and methodology is Holmesian; but, the times and experiences of Holmes and me differ - so, then, our "facts" and "laws" differ - as do our results.
Finally, I'll quote the part of Adam Smith's essay on Moral Sentiments (link in part 1) which I apply to the rules of justice in my Legal Domains, even though he intended his words to be applied to moral virtues:
Quote:
But there are no rules whose observance will infallibly lead us to the attainment of elegance or sublimity in writing; though there are some which may help us, in some measure, to correct and ascertain the vague ideas which we might otherwise have entertained of those perfections. And there are no rules by the knowledge of which we can infallibly be taught to act upon all occasions with prudence, with just magnanimity, or proper beneficence: though there are some which may enable us to correct and ascertain, in several respects, the imperfect ideas which we might otherwise have entertained of those virtues.
Not Q.E.D.; but not an illusion either.
Regards
Mike