Editor: Tonight Lizzy Ratner will be speaking about Gaza on a panel we’re doing in New York. Still some tickets available–click on the Culture Project ad in right column.
Did you see this Michael Walzer interview in Haaretz? It’s interesting, revealing — and utterly problematic, particularly all the “asymmetrical warfare” talk.
What did you think of the article by Judge Richard Goldstone in The Washington Post expressing regret for some of the claims of his commission investigating Operation Cast Lead?“There’s a crucial mistake for which Goldstone didn’t apologize. That is his committee’s refusal to take into account the difficulties involved in asymmetric warfare and to discuss them seriously. How do you deal with an enemy who uses a civilian population as a human shield? The Goldstone Report didn’t discuss that at all, and that is its great failure. The members of the commission write like lawyers, not like people who are trying to analyze the reality.”
Do you think there’s a need for a fundamental change in the rules of warfare in order to suit them to fighting terror?“The basic principles of a just war must apply even in such a situation. In targeted killing it is still important that the target be legitimate and that the collateral damage be reduced to the absolute minimum. The basic principles are similar: It is necessary to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants and to act so as to minimize the death and injury of noncombatants (‘collateral damage’ ). The tough question is whether civilians who are being used as human shields must be treated differently. But the term ‘human shield’ tells only half the story. The terrorists also use civilians in order to expose them – because they believe (and they are right ) that civilian deaths caused by the opposing army will help the struggle of the terror organization. So that’s a good reason to shield the shields as best you can.”
This argument gets me every time. I mean, isn’t the real cause of asymmetrical warfare the fact of a technologically omnipotent death force that can deploy the most sophisticated military hardware ever created against an ill-equiped, impoverished, and captive population? Aren’t countries like Israel and the US — the US which pioneered the use of nuclear weapons for crying out loud! — the real perpetrators of asymmetry? What an obscene trick of language!
Some other interesting points in the Walzer:
–He says the US committed the same crimes as Israel — intentionally targeting the civilian infrastructure — during Iraq War 1, and he adds that this is not a “legitimiate” military tactic, in the process validating one of the key claims of the Goldstone Report, a report he claims to disagree with. This raises a second important question: if the US has committed the same crimes as Israel, and these crimes are war crimes, as the Goldstone Report charges, where’s the UN investigation into our military conduct?
–He says that students at military colleges feel a real sympathy for Israel because they see Israel as being engaged in the same kind of warfare the US is engaged in in Afghanistan, undergirding my belief that at least part of the reason for the US condemnation of the Goldstone Report is the fear that someday our government will be held similarly accountable.
–Finally, he says that political leaders who are also military leaders are fair game for targeted assassination. Does this mean that the US president, who as we all know is the nation’s Commander in Chief, is also a legitimate target for assassination by other countries? I think we’d all find that thought pretty outrageous and horrifying. I wonder what he’d say.
