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Innocence and Responsibility in War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Lionel K. McPherson
Lionel K. McPherson*
Affiliation:
Tufts University, Medford, MA02155, USA
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Extract

Innocence is a notion that can prove controversial. Claims of innocence typically support not imposing burdens on the innocent when their conduct is relevantly unobjectionable. This paper examines innocence in the context of violent conflict between states or groups. Many thinkers about the morality of such violence want to establish a principle that would protect innocent civilians. Yet the common view in just war theory does not affirm the moral innocence of civilians. Similarly, the common view that soldiers have an equal right to kill does not affirm their equal moral culpability.

Talk of innocence usually Starts from the idea that a kind of moral appraisal makes sense. We assume that persons can be innocent or not by virtue largely of the choices they have made. I will accept this assumption and set aside metaphysical doubts about our capacity for freedom. There is, of course, no issue of moral innocence if in fact we cannot be morally responsible for our actions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , December 2004 , pp. 485 - 506
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2004

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References

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 McMahan, Jeff and McKim, Robert ‘The Just War and the Gulf War,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (1993), 502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Nagel, Thomas ‘War and Massacre,’ in International Ethics, Beitz, Charles R. et al., eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985), 56.Google Scholar He admits the possibility of extreme circumstances that compel, but do not justify, violating absolutist restrictions (ibid., 66-7).

4 Ibid., 69-70

5 Palmer-Fernandez, Gabriel ‘Innocence in War,’ International Journal of Applied Philosophy 14 (2000), 164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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 Walzer, Michael Just and Unjust Wars, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books 1977), 146Google Scholar

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; 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.

8 Anscombe, G.E.M. ‘War and Murder,’ in Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1981), 53Google Scholar

9 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.

10 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).

11 Anscombe, ‘War and Murder,’ 60Google Scholar

12 It has been argued that a fundamental difference lies in a distinction between an individual moral perspective and a collective moral perspective. See Zohar, Noam 'Collective War and Individualistic Ethics: Against the Conscription of “Self-Defense,’“ Political Theory 21 (1993) 606–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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.

13 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 39Google Scholar

14 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; and George Bush Presidential Library, ‘Letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate on United States Military Action in Panama,’ 21 December 1989, http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu.

15 See, e.g., Rawls, John The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1999), 91–2.Google Scholar

16 See McMahan and McKim, ‘The Just War,’ 501-2.

17 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 41Google Scholar

18 Ibid., 28

19 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]). He Claims that the willingness of soldiers to sacrifice their own lives must not be contingent upon their 'evaluation of the rightness or wrongness of their country's cause on some specific issue, measured by some Standard that is neutral and impartial relative to the interests of their own Community and the interests of other communities. And, that is to say, good soldiers may not be liberals and must indeed embody in their actions a good deal at least of the morality of patriotism’ (ibid., 17). I do not find this a compelling or morally plausible view of patriotism.

20 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 39Google Scholar

21 See, e.g., Hedges, Chris What Every Person Should Know about War (New York: Free Press 2003), 13.Google Scholar

22 McMahan, Jeff ‘Innocence, Self-Defense and Killing in War,’ The Journal of Political Philosophy 2 (1994), 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Ibid., 205

24 See, e.g., McMahan, ‘Self-Defense and the Problem of the Innocent Attacker,’ 264.Google Scholar

25 McMahan, ‘Innocence, Self-Defense and Killing in War,’ 201.Google Scholar 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., Ryan, Cheyney C. ‘Self-Defense, Pacifism, and the Possibility of Killing,’ Ethics 93 (1983) 508–24;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Teichman, Jenny Pacifism and the Just War (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1986).Google Scholar

26 McMahan, ‘Innocence, Self-Defense and Killing in War,’ 201Google Scholar

27 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. His revised (unpublished as yet) view is that because almost all unjust combatants are morally responsible agents, they are liable to some degree for the unjust threat they pose. McMahan does continue to hold that there is no justification for self-defense against ‘nonresponsible threats,’ i.e., persons who are in no way morally responsible for the threats they pose. But since he now accepts that unjust combatants will almost never count as nonresponsible threats, the difference in our views about this will not have much relevance in the context of war. For a general Statement of the problem of nonresponsible threats, see, e.g., McMahan, Jeff The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Murgins of Life (New York: Oxford University Press 2002), 411–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 39Google Scholar

29 Nozick, Robert Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974), 100Google Scholar

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 For a general account of moral responsibility that rejects the importance of desert, see Kelly, Erin ‘Doing without Desert,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2002) 180–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 See, e.g., Kelly, Erin ‘The Burdens of Collective Liability,’ in Ethics and Foreign Intervention, ed. Chatterjee, Deen K. and Scheid, Don E. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003).Google Scholar

34 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 40Google Scholar

35 McMahan, ‘Innocence, Self-Defense and Killing in War,’ 207.Google Scholar He notes that this problem is particularly acute for soldiers of countries, like the United States, that have an extensive and dubious record of the use of force abroad.

36 Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 100Google Scholar

37 Mavrodes, ‘Conventions and the Morality of War,’ 87.Google Scholar 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).

38 See, e.g., Mavrodes, ‘Conventions and the Morality of War,’ 85-7.

39 See my ‘Excessive Force in War: A “Golden Rule” Test/ Theoretical Inquiries in Law, forthcoming.

40 Courage to Refuse, ‘The Combatant's Letter,’ 2002, www.couragetorefuse.org.