Recently we discussed the matter of Just War as it relates to the current conflict in Gaza. During the course of those discussions we had some things to say about the difficulties inherent in applying the principle of proportionality to this, or any, war. Critics of Israel frequently, and glibly, allege that the Israeli response to the Hamas rocket attacks has been "disproportionate" without giving us any indication how they know this or what metric they're using to determine it.
Now Michael Walzer at The New Republic weighs in with a fine essay on the matter of the difficulties inherent in assessing what constitutes a proportionate response. Here's part of his column:
Consider the example of an American air raid on a German tank factory in World War Two that kills a number of civilians living nearby. The justification goes like this: The number of civilians killed is "not disproportionate to" the damage those tanks would do in days and months to come if they continued to roll off the assembly line. That is a good argument, and it does indeed justify some number of the unintended civilian deaths. But what number? How do you set an upper limit, given that there could be many tanks and much damage?
Because proportionality arguments are forward-looking, and because we don't have positive, but only speculative, knowledge about the future, we need to be very cautious in using this justification. The commentators and critics using it today, however, are not being cautious at all; they are not making any kind of measured judgment, not even a speculative kind. "Disproportionate" violence for them is simply violence they don't like, or it is violence committed by people they don't like.
So Israel's Gaza war was called "disproportionate" on day one, before anyone knew very much about how many people had been killed or who they were.
Walzer concludes that because of the difficulty in assessing it, proportionality is perhaps among the least important of the Just War principles. Anyone interested in the ethics of the application of force should read his contribution.
Thanks to Byron for passing it along.
RLC
