Savage Beatings in a Government's Toolkit: A Case of Pathology Writ Large

The psychology of someone acting on behalf of or in line with a government in beating another person who has not done or said anything personally against the beater is perplexing. The transmission of anger towards what a group stands for onto a particular human being who may be just walking has not been uncommon in human rights lore; even so, the component of strong emotion in the beating itself is bizarre; it may evince a pathology affecting some people when they think about, or engage in, the political domain. So considering violence against the nonviolent as a government tool that depends on the pathology is also problematic.

To attend the funeral in December, 2009 of Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was the 87 year-old spiritual leader of the Iranian reformist movement, and therefore a dissident leader to the Iranian Government, mourners poured out in thousands into the streets leading to the mosque. However, anti-riot police and plainclothes pro-government Basij militiamen had blocked the area. Parlemannews reported at the time that the Basij beat people, including women, and used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the crowds. One witness told a reporter,  ”Tens of thousands gathered outside for the memorial but were savagely attacked by security forces and the Basijis.” That witness also said baton-wielding riot police clubbed people on the head and shoulders, and kicked men and women alike, injuring dozens.  “I saw at least two people with blood pouring down their face after being beaten by the Basijis,” he said.[1]

Attending a rally by U.S. presidential candidate Don Trump in 2016, I was stunned while watching a muscular military man stomp on a protester even though she had done nothing to that man in particular, such as shout or spit at him. Why such anger in the stomping, I wondered at the time. It was as if the man's trigger had malfunctioned. To be mad at a message of protest is not in itself to be angry at other persons at an interpersonal level.  

While a government could be justified in responding to violence with violence, to use violence where there is none in opposition suggests that violence is a tool in the government’s toolkit for changing behavior or political positions. This tool depends on the existence of the pathology at an interpersonal level.  It depends on people who view other people as being less than human—even as a kin to dogs—on account of having different opinions and even principles.  

The philosopher Kant wrote in the eighteenth century that the rational nature is of such value that anyone (or anything) having it should not be treated as merely a means, but also as an end in itself. To reduce a rational nature to an object to be savagely attacked is therefore unethical. This applies both to governments (and the officials thereof) and to the individuals who attack other individuals on behalf of governments. 

Besides this Kantian ethical analysis, it strikes me as odd to classify “savage beating” at a governmental tool alongside fiscal policy, treaties, and monetary policy. This represents a category mistake concerning just what it is to be a government tool.  To be sure, any government is ultimately founded on the lethal use of force applied to individuals. Even so, the assumption that violence against nonviolent individuals or groups is a government tool can be questioned as faulty. Alternatively, it could be assumed that violence only fits against violence. 

1. Associated Press, "Iran Police in Fierce Clashes with Cleric Mourners," Foxnews.com, December 23, 2009. 

As U.S. President, Was Obama Really Anti-Israel?

In a poll in 2011, only 22% of Jewish voters in the U.S. said they approved of President Obama’s handling of Israel. Dan Senor pointed to the erosion of Obama’s Jewish fund-raising as another sign that the president was losing Jewish support in the United States. A poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that of Jewish donors who donated to Obama in 2008, only 64% had already donated or planned to donate to his re-election campaign of 2012. While a politician would undoubtedly try to placate and mollify the unsatisfied electorate, a statesman acting in the American interest might conclude that those voters were wrong in their assessment that the president’s policy was “anti-Israel.”

In February 2008, Barak Obama had said, “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel.” In July 2009, the president reportedly told Jewish leaders at the White House that he sought to put daylight between the U.S. and the state of Israel. In the same meeting, he said that Israel needed “to engage in serious self-reflection.” These comments were hardly anti-Israel, yet they were taken as such.

In fact, when the Palestinian foreign minister was insisting in 2011 that Palestine would apply for membership in the U.N., the American administration was threatening a veto should the application go through the Security Council. According to Ethan Bronner, “The United States has said it will use its veto there because it believes that the only way to Palestinian statehood is through direct negotiations with Israel.” The Palestinians could go through the General Assembly, but they would only get a nonmember state status. That would save the U.S. criticism from the Arab world after exercising the veto.

That the Obama administration would veto a Palestinian membership in the U.N. should have been sufficient indication to American pro-Israel voters that Obama was not “anti-Israel.” In fact, the veto threat told the world that the U.S. was still firmly in Israel’s corner, which, by the way, prevented the U.S. from being able to take on an “honest broker” role in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Given that Israel continued building settlements after the U.S. indicated that it did not support it, the American administration’s veto threat looked very pro-Israel. From an American perspective, the threat could even be viewed as too pro-Israel, hence Obama's desire to distinguish America's interest from that of Israel. This hardly connotes being anti-Israel.

Obama may have not gone far enough; perhaps he was generally too pro-status quo from not being willing to seriously challenge the sacred cows, including the Israeli lobby and that of Wall Street, in spite of his campaign slogan of "Real Change." After Obama's presidency, very little discussion has taken place on whether Obama as president even proposed anything that could be reckoned as real change rather than incremental reform in the interests of the powers behind the throne (i.e., large political campaign donations). 
It could be that more tough love from the U.S. toward Israel rather than a veto-threat could have pushed the peace talks ahead because the rightful points of both sides would have been given validity. Also, rather than having done nothing as Israel continued its settlements’ construction, the Obama administration could have withheld aid pending a cease in the construction, or even a final peace agreement. Israel would have had a real incentive to negotiate even though from a position of strength relative to Palestine. The millions of dollars for Israel could even have been paid to the Palestinians until such time as a peace deal was concluded.

Taking up more of an impartial position, the E.U. was considering a pledge to support Palestinian statehood at the U.N. after one year’s time, assuming the Palestinians immediately resumed direct negotiations with Israel. The E.U. would support Palestinian statehood if no peace deal were achieved. However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would hardly have agreed with her E.U. counterpart, Catherine Ashton, on such a plan. Clinton could hardly be said to have been part of an anti-Israel administration. 

Even if President Obama was regarded as anti-Israel by some American Jews, he could have used his first term to run the end-game for peace by pressuring Israel rather than acquiescing in order to get re-elected by appeasing voters already mistaken on his stance being anti-Israel. Of course, ending the game with a peace deal—difficult if not impossible when holding to the status quo—would have done more for the president’s re-election bid than trying to appease skeptical American Jewish voters by threatening a veto at the U.N. The best means of re-election can be quite ironic, while the political path of least resistance can actually be the least successful politically.

Voters who thought they saw an “anti-Israel” policy in spite of the veto threat were, I submit, wrong; they were over-sensitive to any “daylight” and too used to getting everything they wanted, policy-wise. Appeasing such voters was not in America’s interest. Given the benefit to Israel from a peace deal, the appeasement was not in Israel’s interest either. So it can justifiably be asked whether those voters accusing Obama of being anti-Israel were actually anti-Israel in terms of long term consequences. 

Sources:

Dan Senor, “Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote,” The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2011. 

Ethan Bronner, “Palestinians Resist Appeals to Halt U.N. Statehood Bid,” The New York Times, September 16, 2011. 

Jay Solomon, “Palestinians Firm on State Vote,” Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2011. 

Increasing Rates of Acceleration of Ice-Melt: Difficult for Humans to Grasp

The findings of two studies published in January, 2019 indicate that Antarctic’s ice had been melting “at an alarming rate” since 1979.[1]  The rate of melting looked at precisely tells part of the story of why people in general were even in the year before 2020 still catching up in realizing the full extent to which climate change was going on. The key here is the concept of acceleration. The rate of ice loss has not been consistent in that ice disappeared faster in each successive decade.

Specifically, ice loss in Antarctica increased from 40 gigatons (a gigaton is one billion tons) per year from 1979-90 to 252 gigatons per year from 2009-17. That’s a six-fold increase in the rate of acceleration. In fact, the melt-rate accelerated most in the most latter decade. The last two decades saw a melt-rate up 280% compared to the first two decades. This change in the rate of change is extremely difficult to grasp; it is like trying to watch for changes in the rate of acceleration in your car. Paired with this greater difficulty is the fact that the problem is not getting worse at a constant rate; rather, the getting-worse is itself accelerating. The change occurring during the studies’ time-frame of four decades was also difficult to notice because it was being caused by deep relatively warm water hitting the bottom of the glaciers in east Antarctica; the ice-changed-to-water was going on below.[2]  

Whereas the Arctic’s ice is over water, the Antarctic’s ice is generally over land so the additional water raises sea levels more. Yet that won’t stop that water from raising the Atlantic Ocean off Miami in Florida, and sooner rather than later taking up about a third of the present peninsula. Given the very significant population in southeast Florida, that the land there would more likely be underwater sooner than anticipated increases the changes of emergency situations, such as mass relocations. In other words, the studies imply that we as a species could be caught off-guard both from not having kept up on the accelerating rates and the effects of those rates in bringing climate change sooner than would be the case had the rates been constant across the decades. A feedback-loop could develop whereby increasing rates trigger changes that in turn increase the rates even more than otherwise. The situation could at that point be out of humanity’s hands, yet the insufficient action while it can still make a difference has been caused in part because an increasing rate of change is difficult for humans to grasp, let alone see.

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1, Brandon Miller, “Antarctica Ice Melt Has Accelerated by 280% in the Last Four Decades,” cnn.com, January 14, 2109. On holes in a glacier in Antartica, see Sheena McKinsey, "Gigantic Hole Two-Thirds the Size of Manhattan Discovered in Antartic Glacier," CNN.com (accessed January 31, 2019).

2. Eric Rignot et al, “Four Decades of Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance from 1979-2017,” PNAS, January 14, 2019.

Hidden Warnings of Climate Change: A Paralyzed Species Looks On

Global warming has been so difficult to slow down through political means at least in part due to the fact that most of the action has been going on in the Arctic Ocean and the surrounding permafrost land (which, it turns out, is not so permanently frozen after all, so methane is leaving that ground for the atmosphere). All this is far from almost all of the world’s population, so social consciousness has not been changed nearly enough for demands by voters that governments act in enforceable ways, globally. In short, what has been occurring in that far Northern region has both dwarfed consciousness of the impact of human-released carbon/methane.  The proverbial canary in the coal mine has been hidden from view for all but a few (e.g., scientists). The implications are truly astonishing.
According to Alan Buis at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California in 2013, “Climate change is already happening in the Arctic, faster than its ecosystems can adapt. Looking at the Arctic is like looking at the canary in the coal mine for the entire Earth system.”[1] In general terms, if the pace of global warming outstrips the ability of the ecosystem sustaining the human race to adapt, the species can be expected to suffer with inadequate prior notice. The planet's climate may get warmer too fast to allow us to adjust, for instance, in terms of such essentials as food and water. Hotter summers may be just part of the challenge. Lest it be forgotten, the more complex the organism, the less adaptable it is to external change. In addition to the biology of complexity, the motive of greed makes us even less adaptive when the costs are up-front and the benefits totally or even mostly in the future. 
So what is it that was going on up North that had Alan Buis so concerned in 2013? In his article, he points out that over “hundreds of millennia [that’s a very long time], Arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon [because dead plants and animals do not decompose in the top soil]—an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams of it (a petagram is 2.2 trillion pounds, or 1 billion metric tons).”[2]  This amount of carbon is significant for two reasons. 
First, the carbon is in the soil that is likely to thaw. Once thawed, that soil, which has been warming even faster than the Arctic air, releases carbon into the atmosphere.  Second, the 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams dwarfs “the 350 petagrams of carbon that have been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities since 1850.”[3] If you are reading this essay while eating in a restaurant, this is when you flag down your server and calmly say, “Check please!” so you can get your affairs in order.
In the frozen soil that covers 9 million square miles, melting would also emit “massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere,” according to Terrell Johnson of weather.com.[4] He adds that methane is “much more potent as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, with more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO2 over a 100-year period.”[5] Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Erasmus University in the E.U. have predicted tremendous economic costs as a consequence of the expected release of a 50-gigatonne reservoir of methane in thawing permafrost under the East Siberian Sea.[6]. That is by no means all of the permafrost up North.
According to Buis, climate models at least as of June 2013 had not yet adequately incorporated the impact of carbon and methane that could be released into the atmosphere from the “permafrost” soils, which, by the way, had warmed as much as 2.7 to 4.5 degrees F (1.5 to 2.5 degrees C) in 30 years.[7] Regardless of the decade, we could have absolutely no idea where the Earth’s climate would be headed—and thus whether our species would even survive.
Although humans beings have not been holding blow-torches to the frozen tundra as if playing some sick joke on nature in the middle of the night, the vast majority—98 percent—of climatologists agreed in 2013 that the “human contribution” had been a significant factor in the carbon dioxide having reached the 400 ppm (parts per million) benchmark for what Johnson calls “a new danger zone."[8]
We as a species may have inadvertently helped light the fuse on a process even more significant than carbon in impacting global warming. To be sure, at the time, it was difficult to ascertain how much or even whether that methane-process would be mitigated or reduced in its extent should reducing our burning of fossil fuels mean that the Arctic air would not warm up quite so much as would otherwise be the case. Nevertheless, the sheer magnitude of the carbon and methane still caught in the frozen soil and the gigantic effect those gases would have if released into the atmosphere suggest that it is in our own best interest as a species to do what we can to reduce the amount of additional warming of the Arctic air as much as possible.
Making the matter more confusing, the warming at the Arctic has been more than at the equator. The slope between cold and warm air between the two areas fuels the Arctic jet-stream, or "the Polar Vortex." Less energy means the circling river of air around the Arctic is loosens and thus can belch Arctic air southward. Think of that high river of air as like a wobbly rubber-band. The wobbles send more Arctic air further south, the last week of January, 2019 being but one instance. Together, the instances give the false impression that global warming is not occurring. "We had a really cold winter last year," a man in Chicago, Illinois or Berlin, Germany, might say. He might conclude that global warming is a hoax, then he might vote. Hence Jefferson and Adams agreed that a viable republic (and we might generalize to world) requires an educated and virtuous citizenry. 

For all our amazing accomplishments technologically beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, the human race has shown itself to be remarkably blind concerning not only its own footprint, but also what might be unleashed in nature itself as a result of our thrashing about. In the film Avatar, Neytiri chastises Jake Sully, saying “You are like a baby. Making noise, don’t know what to do,” on account of his ignorance on how to conduct himself in the forest. The irony is astounding in that we humans have been able to get to the moon, and yet we are so ignorant—arrogant even—regarding how we are impacting our climate and ecosystems, both of which we rely on for our very survival as a species. In all likelihood, the sheer clumsiness in our corporate footprint and the astounding arrogance in our socialite swagger will be outstripped sooner than we suppose by the subtle yet enduring ways of nature. For all our power and money, for all our numbers across many lands, we are indeed a small species that presumes itself to be great.

[1] Alan Buis, “Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?” NASA News and Features, June 10, 2013. Accessed July 16, 2013.
[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Terrell Johnson, “Beneath the Arctic, a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirs,” weather.com, July 15, 2013.  Accessed July 16, 2013.
[5] Ibid.

[6] Nina Chestney, "Arctic Methane Release Due to Climate Change Could Cost Global Economy $60 Trillion, Study Reports," Reuters, July 24, 2013.

[7] Buis, “Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?”
[8] Terrell Johnson, “Beneath the Arctic, a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirs.” 

Oceans Arising on Edifices of Arrogance

A study published in late November 2012 in the journal Science estimates that the melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland had raised global sea levels by 11.1 millimeters (0.43 inch) since 1992. That represents one-fifth of the total sea-level rise increase in that period. Other contributors include the expansion of the sea water from warming, and the melting of glaciers, as for instance on mountains. In the 1990s, melting of the polar ice sheets in the Antarctica and Greenland was responsible for about 10 percent of the global sea-level rise, but by 2012 the effect had risen to 30 percent.[1] The study does not, however, uncover the underlying cause, or association, lying in a complexity in human nature itself. Our species has vaunted to the top of the food chain and leveraged a brain capable of engineering technological advances that would have seemed magical even just in the nineteenth century, and yet we seem hard-wired to accelerate our course to a self-destructive extinction. This lack of balance is reflected in the increasing extremes in the global climate. In this essay, I begin with the study and steadily work toward uncovering the underlying, subterranean culprit.

In Greenland, melted ice, or water, headed to the Atlantic Ocean. NYT

The study can be interpreted as essentially “firming up” what had been left to guesswork hitherto. “It allows us to make some firm conclusions,” Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds said. “It wasn’t clear if Antarctica was gaining or losing ice. Now we can say with confidence it is losing ice.”[2] This is significant because there are hundreds of feet of sea-level rise in the combined ice of Greenland and the Antarctica, and even that sort of rise could occur in even just two centuries. Unlike ice in the sea melting, water from land-ice is added to the sea and thus is particularly salient in the rise in sea-level.

Although correlation is not necessary causation, global emissions of carbon dioxide were at a record high in 2011, having jumped 3% from the previous year. The international goal of limiting the ultimate warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees (F) was all but disregarded at the time as unrealistic, according to researchers at the Global Carbon Project. Slowly falling emissions in some of the developed economies, including the U.S., were more than matched by continued growth in developing countries like China and India. Coal was growing fastest, with related emissions jumping more than 5 percent in 2011 from the previous year.[3]

Moreover, the level of carbon dioxide, the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, had increased 41% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Meanwhile, the temperature of the planet increased about 1.5 degrees (F) since 1850. The New York Times reports that scientists expected at the time of the release of the 2011 figures that further “increases in carbon dioxide” would “likely . . . have a profound effect on climate, . . . leading to higher seas and greater coastal flooding, more intense weather disasters like droughts and heat waves, and an extreme acidification of the ocean.”[4] The volume of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2013 was 396 parts per million, 2.9 ppm higher than in 2012; this represents the largest year-to-year increase since 1984, when reliable global records began.[5] As a result, "(c)oncentrations of nearly all the major greenhouse gases reached historic highs in 2013, reflecting ever-rising emissions from automobiles and smokestacks but also, scientists believe, a diminishing ability of the world's oceans and plant life to soak up the excess carbon put into the atmosphere by humans."[6] Accordingly, climatologists were predicting more accelerated ice-melt.

To be sure, distinguishing a causal connection from the sort of cycle that was responsible for Greenland being green in Mediaeval times has been the fulcrum of much controversy and debate; it is not as though scientists can treat one earth by increasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere while leaving another earth as a control-group and measure the differing climatic consequences. As the philosopher David Hume argued in the late eighteenth century, we actually know much less about cause and effect than we think we do. The human brain naturally that’s a strong positive correlation accompanied by a logical rationale as good enough to pronounce a causal relationship.

Regardless of whether our use of fossil fuels is a contributing factor in the melting of the ice-sheets, that the sea-level was rising even in 2011 and so much of humanity lives within fifty miles of a sea-coast suggests that major dislocations will undoubtedly be necessary within one or two hundred years, and perhaps even sooner given the record-high level of carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere in 2013. As much as a third of Florida could be underwater again—whether it eventuates as a result of a natural climatic cycle or carbon dioxide emissions, or both. That the acceleration in the ice-sheet melting reported in 2012 was five times that which scientists had supposed earlier suggests that the data in from the following year may result in even more dramatic headlines. That the C02 and methane (from leaks in wells and distribution as well as from permafrost melt) levels were not only increasing, but doing so at unprecedented rates, suggests that we humans have literally outdone ourselves. It seems a fantasy to expect prudent measures that would obviate beforehand even just some of the anticipated damage. Even in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Government could have given Louisiana a financial incentive to rebuild the city further inland, above sea-level. That would have been an easy decision compared with what to do about Manhattan, and yet the unquestioned, knee-jerk response was to rebuild on site.

Accordingly, even the study on ice-melt reported in late 2012 and the report in 2014 of the record increase in C02 in the atmosphere were unlikely to affect public policy significantly, at least in the United States. Enabling such negligence, Andrew Shepherd of Leeds said in 2012: “The signals suggest there is no immediate threat.”[7] Meanwhile, the carbon emissions were actually increasing from the previous year. This represents two degrees of separation from a reduction. The emissions targets in the UNFCCC agreement signed in 1992 had included stabilisations at 1990 levels for some countries and reductions for others by the year 2000.   In other words, we as a species seem pretty clueless, even as we promote ourselves being of the highest and most developed species. 

We are, it can be said, a species of today. The stock markets demonstrate this innate propensity clearly enough. For a complex organism not known for quick evolutionary adaption to a changing environment, it is dangerous to be so “hard-wired” for today when our artifacts collectively can shift a planetary equilibrium beyond its natural cycle. It is not a given that we will be able to rely on our prowess at technological development to make up for our convenient habit of looking on and even making a situation worse. I have personally felt this in momentary lapses of my new-found better diet when I eat one after another chocolate cookie after having fallen with one. My mind succumbs to the fallacy that in having lapsed, might as well open the flood-gates. The next morning, I make myself go running, as if the presumed cause-effect relation might prevent any future lapses. Nietzsche may have been right in suggesting that thoughts are really instinctual urges and reasoning is their tussling for dominance.

As Mark Twain observed, speaking through an angel in The Mysterious Stranger, “Man’s mind clumsily and tediously and laboriously patches little trivialities together and gets a result—such as it is.”[8] Yet so conceited is that mind, and in other matters too. In spite of having a moral sense, and perhaps because of our knowing right from wrong, our “paltry race [is] always lying, always claiming virtues which it hasn’t got.”[8] From an angel’s point of view, homo sapiens—arrogantly self-named here as the “wise man” species—can only be “dull and ignorant and trivial and conceited, and so diseased and rickety, and such a shabby, poor, worthless lot all around”[10] as to be met with utter indifference from the angelic perches so different—the pathos of distance being hollow rather than filled with empathy or even sympathy.[10] Twain’s angel does not mince words. Humans “have nothing in common with me—there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sign, and extinction.”[12] It is not merely the staying power of the moneyed commercial caste that moves us as a species to our own extinction; all of us are complicit.

We have built our mammoth edifices and modern conveniences on such a scale, and we use them as if we were junkies on a drug-fix that we have outstripped our own capacity as a species even to mop up after ourselves. This vulnerability becomes truly dangerous now that we are capable of having a significant impact on the planetary ecosystem, including its atmosphere. Even so, we continue to single our species out as “Made in the Image of God,” and as we preach our moral sense, ignorant of the probability that a more intentionally cruel and self-destructive race has never roamed on the land or swam in the sea. Our reckless conceit, it would seem to all outward appearances, is in such denial of its own existence that we naturally assume we cannot be wrong—that we affirm with such factuality, “I know what I know.” If only the ice on this towering edifice would melt from global warming; if only we could be so lucky.

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1. Gautam Naik, “Polar Ice Melt Is Accelerating,” The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2012.

2. Ibid.

3. Justin Gillis and John Broder, “With Carbon Dioxide Emissions at Record High, Worries on How to Slow Warming,” The New York Times, December 3, 2012.

4. Ibid.

5. Reuters, “Greenhouse Gas Levels in Atmosphere Surged to New High in 2013, World Meteorological Organization Reports,” The Huffington Post, September 9, 2014.

6. Joby Warrick, "CO2 Levels in Atmosphere Rising at Dramatically Faster Rate, U.N. Report Warns," The Washington Post, September 9, 2014.
7. Gillis and Broder, “Carbon Emissions at Record High.”

8. Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger in The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories (New American Library: New York, 1962), p. 212.

9. Ibid., p. 192.

10. Ibid., p. 172.

11. Ibid., p. 176.

12. Ibid., p. 211.

The Evolution of Just War in Roman Catholic Social Ethics: The Case of Libya

According to The Catholic Herald, there were originally only three conditions laid down by Thomas Aquinas for a just war:

1) “The war must be started and controlled by the due authority of state or ruler – in other words, it can’t be a civil war or a rebellion. This rules out the war being waged by the Libyan rebels, but not the military intervention of the Nato [sic] forces, since that was indeed started by the due authority, not of one nation, but of the United Nations itself.” Here we see what might be called Aquinas’ implicit Burkean political conservatism with respect to established regimes over what in modern terms we call rights of the people to protest and self-governance. Even under Aquinas’ criterion of due authority of state or ruler, the Libyan rebel movement, as distinct from the preceding unarmed protesting, could be rendered as just provided that there is a rebel authority rather than fractured units fighting on their own. Even by this interpretation, the armed rebels may fall short, at least as they were in March of 2011.  Rather than proscribing civil war or rebellion, Aquinas’ criterion could simply be oriented to preventing the unintended additional harm caused by an army in disarray without a clear line of command. In terms of the Libyan rebels, the “unfairness” in a lack of clear command could be interpreted as “unfairness” to the international coalition, whose efforts could be in vain should the rebels refuse to bind themselves under one command. As for the international coalition itself, neither NATO nor the U.N. is a ruler having the due authority of state, for those international alliances or organizations do not enjoy governmental sovereignty. To the extent that the international coalition is based on partners whose militaries are not subject to a common line of authority, the mission may fall short of Aquinas’ criterion. This objection could perhaps be qualified to the extent that the partners meet regularly in common council, whose decisions are adhered to in practice. Other than the objections of the Arab League (and of Turkey in NATO to that alliance taking command), the international coalition may in its conduct have satisfied the criterion. In short, even though both the Libyan rebels and the international coalition could in practice satisfy Aquinas’ criterion here, their qualification is on shaky ground. In both cases, this shortcoming could be overcome by themselves.

2) “There must be a just cause. This wouldn’t include, say, a war for territory, but it would include the protection of a civil population, self-defense and the prevention of a worse evil. The UN resolution emphatically fulfills that condition.” Prime facie, this criterion seems pellucid. However, to the extent that cause can be interpreted in terms of motive rather than outcome, it becomes problematic to assess a given case because it is notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to get into another person’s head. For example, if the Obama administration’s motive, or cause, is to reduce the market’s fears of future disruptions in the oil supply—fears because Libya itself only produces 2% of the global supply—then in terms of motive the cause is not just. However, even here, a “worse evil” could be interpreted as some consumers becoming unable to afford even the gasoline needed to get to work (and the rising cost of food transported to their grocery stores). Perhaps preventing mass poverty (and perhaps starvation and homelessness) could count as counting in obfuscating “a worse evil.” Even so, the protection of Libyan civilians, especially if at the point when they had been unarmed protesters, would be a more immediate prevention of a worse evil because such protection follows directly from Qaddafi’s violent betrayal of his own people. Alternatively, moreover, if the decisive element is outcome or consequence, the fact that hundreds of thousands of Libyan civilians have been spared as a result of the allied bombings would satisfy the criterion. In my view, the criterion applies to both motive and consequence. In the Libyan case, the fact that it took the Obama administration a month to respond militarily—after the protesters had given way to armed rebels and the price of oil had spiked on world markets—can legitimately be used to assess motive from the standpoint of just war theory.  Were Obama’s primary motive the protection of Libyan civilians, he would have intervened when Qaddafi violently turned on the protesters. As Obama himself said, Qaddafi had lost the legitimacy to rule.

3) “The war must be for good, or against evil. Think what Gaddafi said when he thought his tanks were about to roll virtually unopposed into Benghazi: that he would go ‘from alley to alley, from house to house, from room to room’ and that he would show no mercy’. Thousands would have died. Without any doubt, the airstrikes have been against a very great evil indeed.” This criterion is closely related to the second—the criterion going from “just” to “good” (as opposed to evil). The shift here is from just war as under ethical auspices to a theological basis. The book of Job in Hebrew scripture attests to the vital difference between the two. Theoretically, God cannot be omnipotent if conditional on observing an ethical system. In other words, the “good” theologically cannot be held ransom for the “good” ethically. Divinity transcends mere human (i.e., finite) systems. Hence God is said to be wholly other even as it is immanent in the very existence of creation. In terms of the Libyan case, the question of motive and consequence is relevant here too. In terms of motive, is the protection of consumers to obviate an evil, or is it merely a matter of convenience and fairness (to the consumers being impacted by the speculators and fear in the market)? Regarding Qaddafi’s intended action, the sheer magnitude of it could point to it being evil even as a stated threat; it is certainly unethical. However, to treat such suffering itself as pointing to an evil action risks reducing theology to ethics (harm itself to the absence of God). In other words, evil cannot be merely unrequited and unjust suffering. Perhaps the question of evil goes to the intent of the agent of the deed involving treating himself as a god, with the suffering of others being an effect of the conflation of the creature with the Creator. As with the matter of motive more generally, the problem may be in judging another person to be evil. “Thou shalt not judge”. . . but the intensity of inflicting injury tends to speak for itself. Lest our finiteness as human beings render us impotent to prevent or stop evil, we adopt such surrogates as a matter of necessity. In terms of stopping Qaddafi from murdering on a large scale (though are more lives worth more than a few?), the reaction of most of the rest of the world can be read as a rejection of evil, for Qaddafi did seem to take on god-like aspirations in having such power over life and death.

According to The Catholic Herald, “The Church later added two more rules, though St Thomas usually gets the credit for them (and why not?). The first is that the conflict must be a last resort. In other words, every other option must be tried first. In this case they had been. Sanctions, diplomacy, phone calls from Tony Blair to his pal Muammar, freezing of assets, the lot. None of it had any effect. The UN military measures were not only a last resort, they were employed only at the last possible moment, just in the nick of time.” Significantly, “last resort” does not necessarily means “after due time.” The timing of the response, and thus the alternative options available, must surely be impacted by the nature of that which is to be prevented.  For example, if a ruler is violently turning on mass protests, waiting for the go-ahead from the Security Council may not be a justification for not acting immediately. The fact that the Council does not have governmental sovereignty (e.g. five permanent members have vetoes) means that the body is not equipped to act on short-notice. This fact mitigates the claim that a U.N. mandate is morally (or theologically) of value before an evil can be prevented or stopped in its tracks. If the purpose of the international coalition’s intervention in Libya was to protect civilians, a timely response was implied because of the nature of Qaddafi’s action against the protesters. Excessive delay could be interpreted as an implicit complicity in the evil if more immediate intervention was possible. In short, last resort does not necessarily imply delay.

The Catholic Herald describes the last criterion of Catholic just war theory as follows: “Lastly, the war must be fought proportionally. This means that more force than necessary must not be used, nor must the action kill more civilians than necessary. Enormous pains are being taken to fulfil this condition, too. The supposed “smart bombs” they talked about in the first Gulf war (which constantly missed their targets and killed large numbers of civilians) appear to have been in the last 20 years perfected in the most remarkable way, so that tanks can be taken out surgically even inside urban areas without damage to their surroundings (special missiles are used, with a considerably reduced explosive charge).” Here, the purpose of the international intervention is crucial. If the end is to remove Qaddafi because he has lost the right to rule by international consensus, then the no fly zone acts are not proportionate.  However, the actual agreed-upon objective of the coalition (as per the Security Council’s resolution) does not reach regime change. In terms of protecting civilians, that Qaddafi’s forces continued to beat and kill civilians after the imposition of the no fly zone strongly suggests that the coalition’s intervention was not proportional. Divisions within the coalition on this point could thus be interpreted as contrary to just war from the Catholic perspective.

In summary, even though my analysis of the Catholic Church’s just war criteria is generally consistent with the judgment expressed in The Catholic Herald article, my particular stress is on the extent of nuances and  how they qualify the judgment. Moreover, the nuances raise theoretical questions that transcend the matter of just war. Among such matters is that of the relationship between human judgment (and ethical systems) and the divine. Just war theory can be viewed as presumptuous to the extent that it presumes a judgment on matters that transcend the boundaries of human cognition and perception. Even so, as human beings living in human societies, we are as though instinctively drawn to stop what seems to us to be evil to us even if we cannot be sure of our judgments. As is the case more generally on matters where theology meets the ground, we are in the condition of “already, not yet.” Accordingly, a good supply of humility is called for even when we are convinced that we are fighting evil rather than perpetuating it.

On changing theological takes on greed in relation to money and business, see God's Gold, available at Amazon.

Source: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2011/03/28/the-air-strikes-over-libya-undoubtedly-meet-st-thomas%e2%80%99s-conditions-for-a-just-war/

Lawbreakers at the Mexico-California Border: Appealing to Law

At the Tijuana-San Diego border between Mexico and California on November 25, 2018, a “peaceful march by Central American migrants veered out of control . . . as hundreds of people tried to evade a Mexican police blockade and run toward a giant border crossing.”[1] In response, the U.S. Government shut down the border crossing in both directions and fired tear gas to push back migrants from the border fence. The American media made much of the use of tear gas, with convenient stories from migrants of their kids having been affected. To be sure, the suffering of innocent children is horrible, so at the very least the use of gas is debatable. Yet this focus came at the expense of another on the mentality and conduct of the adult migrants, including parents, largely from Honduras.

Migrants trying to evade a police blockade were not interested in respecting Mexican law. Additionally, an Associated Press reporter saw U.S. agents use tear gas after “some migrants attempted to penetrate several points along the border. Mexico’s Milenio TV showed images of migrants climbing over fences and peeling back metal sheeting to enter [California].”[2] A migrant from Honduras reported seeing “migrants opening a small hole in concertia wire at a gap on the Mexican side of a levee, at which point U.S. agents fired tear gas at them.”[3] Missed in defining the main question as whether the use of gas was necessary or appropriate is the point that a significant number of migrants felt free to evade laws of other countries, and yet while appealing for lawful asylum. Whereas the Mexican government had enabled to law-breaking at Mexico’s southern border, the U.S. Government said no and meant it. Like enabled alcoholics used to manipulating people, running up against the wall of unmanipulatable people can trigger frustration and anger such that even outright force is used. To force oneself into another country over its objections indicates an attitude that presumes that law does not apply to the person.

Living in Phoenix at the time, I witnessed a lot of citizens and legal residents ignoring the law so blatantly that I had the sense that the underlying mentality is one of not being subject to the law. Watching people cross the light-rail tracks even to climb on the train platforms and even climb over moving freight-train cars to cross railroad tracks, not to mention crossing streets between intersections even in traffic, I could discern an arrogance in presuming to be above the law. Interestingly, though police and security guards go too far in trying to intimidate even law-abiding people, rarely had I seen a person committing a blatant act be stopped and held accountable. Once while approaching a light-rain platform, I saw a man run through traffic and cross the tracks to reach the platform in time to catch the oncoming light-rail train. On the train, I mentioned this to one of the several security guards in the car what I had witnessed and who the man is. “The street is not our property,” a guard told me, “so we can’t do anything.” Such convenient impotence! “But he crossed your tracks,” I retorted. Even though the guard had seen even that himself, he did not answer me. What an interesting stance for a security guard to have, especially as the guards presume to be entitled to cluster so much on a car as to intimidate paid customers.

So I contend that the main issue concerning the 3,000 migrants who had been unrestrained by Mexico to be able to reach the border with California is one of attitude toward the law—even valuing the law, even of another country. Considering the size of Mexico, moreover, it is interesting that so many migrants were able to make it to the California border so quickly. Perhaps there is not as much respect for law in the state of Mexico as there are in the U.S. states. Indeed, what unifies diverse populations in the U.S. is in large part an agreement to respect the law. For migrants who have demonstrated in action a mentality (or set of values) that is antithetical to what the U.S. stands for, barring entry (except for legitimate asylum) is arguably prudent as well as ethical. For as I witnessed especially in Arizona, the U.S. at the time had more than enough people without respect for the law. Would it be prudent to add even more? Eventually, the cultures of the states would change, with new default attitudes of law resulting.  

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[1]Maya Averbuch and Elisabeth Markin, “Migrants in Tijuana Run to U.S. Border, but Fall Back in Face of Tear Gas,” The New York Times, November 26, 2018, italics added.

[2] Christopher Sherman, “U.S. Border Patrol Launches Tear Gas At Migrants Over Attempt To Breach Fence,” The Associated Press, November 26, 2018.

[3] Ibid.