Challenges Just War Theory: Responds
Walzer, Michael
I AM ONLY one of the just war theorists whose work Laurie Calhoun criticizes, hut because I am the local one, it seems right that I respond in Dissent. She and I have an old disagreement, and I...
...How can she read the accounts published by survivors in the years since and not conclude that it was necessary to fight against the Khmer Rouge...
...At the same time, Saddam Hussein's propagandists also invoked that idea, as they could obviously invoke Calhoun's ideas, to defend the regime against attack, indeed, against any coercive response at all to its invasion of Kuwait...
...The dangers of international society are wholly different from those of domestic society, and there are no police to call in when danger looms...
...We don't have to give up on compassion because George W. Bush calls his conservatism "compassionate"— even though it's clearly true that the word can be used as he has used it...
...There is no global regime of justice, and one can't call such a regime into existence by wishing for it...
...How would she respond to domestic massacre and ethnic cleansing...
...MICHAEL WALZER is a co-editor of Dissent and a political philosopher...
...I will respond on three points, leaving the most familiar, and still the most important, point for last...
...I. Just war rhetoric Calhoun insists again and again that the language of just war theory can be used to justify or rationalize all sorts of behavior that we ought to condemn...
...She is right, of course, but this is true of all moral language, including her own...
...Indeed, it's hard to see how the bombing of infrastructural targets could be criticized without invoking the idea of noncombatant immunity...
...But she doesn't seem to live in a world where such necessities exist...
...But would she have allowed the killing to go on...
...She and I have an old disagreement, and I am not sure that she adds much to the argument, or that I can...
...Language is like that...
...The killing fields were shut down by the Vietnamese, who invaded Cambodia, overthrew Pol Pot, and occupied much of the country...
...but the argument is worth rehearsing, as it will never be definitively resolved...
...2. The domestic analogy Another theme of Calhoun's piece is that there is essentially no difference between international and domestic society...
...Just war theory provides criteria by which to judge each military action that injured civilians...
...I assume that 86 . DISSENT / Winter 2001 ARGUMENTS we would criticize some and defend others...
...In my own book, I write first about "the crime of war," and only after that do I argue for the relevance of justice to the decision to go to war, and then to all the further decisions about how to fight...
...The case is the same for just war...
...The fact that talk of friendship is often a mask for betrayal doesn't mean that friendship isn't a meaningful moral category...
...3. Pacifism Calhoun's argument about "collateral damage" is really an argument against war itself...
...But she doesn't go on to do what I think she has a moral obligation to do (and can still do in her reply to this comment): tell us how she would deal with criminal regimes...
...no just war theorist that I know of even pretends to overcome the injustices that are an intimate part of warfare itself...
...But surely the invasion itself was justified...
...The invasion required fighting, and I am certain that in the course of the fighting considerable "collateral damage" was inflicted...
...The critique is made explicitly in just war terms...
...I made a similar critique in the introduction to the second edition of Just and Unjust Wars...
...DISSENT / Winter 2001 n 87...
...Consider a particular case, which has been discussed enough over the years so that all of us know something about it: the killing fields of Cambodia, the policy of mass murder conceived and carried out by the Pol Pot regime...
...Just war theory is an effort to set limits on the injuries inflicted on innocent people...
...Words like justice and innocence do not have the same meaning in international society as they have in domestic law...
...She doesn't quite say that, but it is pretty clear, and she also doesn't deny it...
...In fact, it might be necessary to fight for it...
...She sets the moral standards for warfare so high that they can never be met...
...I was surprised to see Calhoun quoting with approval Paul Christopher's critique of American bombing policy in the Gulf War...
...Her last sentence suggests what she would do and all that she can justify doing: she would wait until we are all "fellow citizens of the world community...
...The bad guys use the same theoretical language as the good guys...
...She seems to believe that we can and should apply the legal standards of a liberal democracy across all political boundaries...
...Then she would dial 911...
...It isn't an entirely crazy idea: if soldiers don't do that, how can they avoid killing or injuring or frightening innocent people...
...Based on her argument here, however, Calhoun would have to deny the justification, given any "collateral damage" at all...
...How would she respond to military aggression...
...That's an argument for critical use, not for no use...
...Before a soldier can shoot his gun, he has to read all possible victims their Miranda rights...
...In fact, of course, they can't avoid doing that—sometimes...
Vol. 48 • January 2001 • No. 1
