1: Is the cause truly noble? If not, then we might be able to respect those who risk their lives for it, but we do not revere or praise them.
2: Do they fight honorably? If not, then they do not deserve respect (except maybe for the "dangerous animal" kind of respect I mentioned previously). Even if the cause is noble, those who fight for it only deserve respect if they fight honorably."
So an Englishman of the 18th century were to judge an American militiaman as a "dangerous animal" for (a) committing treason to his king to whom he had sworn an oath (b) bushwhacking officers from a forest without standing in straight lines, within gunshot range s in full view of the enemy,- thus fighting "dishonorably" as per the prevailing notions of "honor", he would be right?
Whether a cause is "noble" or not depends on who is doing the judgement. An Islamic fanatic who joins the Taliban can sincerely believe that he is fighting on the side of virtue and killing hellbound infidels who disobey God's word. To you his cause isn't noble. As for deliberately targeting citizens, that is precisely what bombing German cities, or Hanoi was.
Was dropping the Atom bomb or Hiroshima "honorable"?(Not saying Americans are particularly ignoble. Every army in history does what it takes to win and calls it "honorable", while the oppositions effective, uncounterable tactics often get called "dishonorable". )
What "fighting honorably" means, evolves over time and is almost always out of date. Knights called muskets dishonorable because a peasant could kill a knight from afar. Oh the horror. As did the Samurai. Hey Afghan insurgents think drones are dishonorable. American soldiers think IEDs and suicide bombers are dishonorable. Hmm.
English commanders complained that the American soldiers in the American War of Independence didn't fight "honorably" or 'like gentlemen'. Targeting officers was considered dishonorable and criminal. Wellington refused an artillery officer under his command permission to fire his battery at Napoleon because it was 'dishonorable'. Of course, Americans paid no heed because the tactic was effective. Sherman burned Georgia,and after the Civil War used the same tactics against the remnants of the American Indian tribes. These days, incinerating a city full of civilians from the air is "honorable". Poor Sherman was accused of barbarism for burning one city.
Coming to modern times, how is a drone attack blowing up a house full of civilians to target one insurgent commander "honorable"? You can argue it is effective. But honorable? You are fighting people with a technology they can't fight back against.
Should the Afghan insurgents fight F16s and Abrams with AK 47s while wearing distinctive uniforms so they can be picked off? That doesn't make any sense.
As a thought experiment, if you were an Afghan whose family were killed because drone operators half the world away mistook a wedding party for an insurgent group, would you be worried about conforming to the invaders notion of "honor"?
Martin Van Creveld has written a whole book, aptly titled "The Transformation of War" where he gives dozens of examples of practices that switched from "honorable" to dishonorable and vice versa with the passage of time.
(From Wikipedia).
The book's significance is attested to by the fact that until the middle of 2008, it was included on the list of required reading for United States Army officers, and (with Sun Tzu and Clausewitz) the third non-American entry on the list..
Well worth reading. Here is a sample of his writing. "Knowing Why Not To Bomb Iran Is Half the Battle" http://www.forward.com/articles/1254/ I don't always agree with Van Creveld but he makes me think.
I agree to a certain extent that the definition of "noble" is subject to a degree of interpretation. However, I reject the idea that it is completely subjective. You might make an argument either way that fighting to impose representative government is noble or not (or effective or not, etc.), but fighting to impose an oppressive regime is always evil.
In regards to fighting "honorably," you set up a huge strawman there. Note that I never said anything about ambushes or roadside bombs. I agree that particular tactics and weapons are, for the most part, orthogonal to the concept of "fighting honorably." When I talked about "dishonorable combat," I talked about the deliberate targeting of civilians. Other examples might include perfidy (e.g. wearing the enemy's uniforms), fighting without any sort of uniform or identifying insignia, using human shields, or fighting from a protected location (e.g. a sniper in a hospital or church/mosque). War should be fought between combatants, and acts that either deliberately target non-combatants, or which deliberately make it harder for your enemy to tell you apart from non-combatants are dishonorable.
As an aside, I doubt very highly if your notional American militiaman had sworn any oath to the King of England.
The closest you get to actually addressing my statements about honor are your examples of collateral damage. One example (the wedding party) is easy to refute: it was not deliberate. The others all involve the destruction of civilian targets in concert with legitimate military targets. This has always happened, and will always happen, in war. Whether or not a particular instance is justified must be judged by the criterion of proportionality[1]. Interestingly, your examples show how, under this concept, acceptable levels of collateral damage of lowered with the improvement of technology in recent history: in WWII, it was sometimes necessary to destroy entire cities in order to achieve legitimate military goals. Today, precision weapons can take out individual structures.
"You might make an argument either way that fighting to impose representative government is noble or not (or effective or not, etc.), but fighting to impose an oppressive regime is always evil."
So the Americans are evil to impose Karzai's regime on Afghanistan and maintain it by winking at massive election fraud? ;). No elections were held in South Vietnam because it was widely known in the American Administration that Ho and co would have won hands down.
"I doubt very highly if your notional American militiaman had sworn any oath to the King of England."
It didn't matter. For a subject (and pre independence, the people who lived in America were the subjects of George 3) to take up arms against his sovereign was treason, by the laws in place at the time, and the notions of honor in place at the time. Kings had "God given" rights to rule as they pleased.
Of course,in practice, rebellions happned all the time, noble or not, legal or not and if you won, you weren't a traitor anymore. viz the Shakespearean quote about how treason never prospers because if you prosper in treason then you can redefine the meaning to make yourself a hero. The Americans won. So they are "freedom fighters". If they had lost they would be mutinous traitors.
"in WWII, it was sometimes necessary to destroy entire cities in order to achieve legitimate military goals. "
And it was sometimes necessary to destroy Vietnamese villages to save them. Or waterboard and torture people to get information. Or drop an atom bomb on civilians to avoid casualties to your own armies in "honorable" combat against uniform wearing (but stubborn) foes. Use napalm against unarmed villagers. etc etc. Rendition and torture innocents. Protect mercenaries from prosecution etc.
If the people who do the defining of what a "legitimate military goal" is , can break the "laws of war" at will (the Geneva Conventions, which you quote also ban torture for example. By a strict interpretation, everyone from GW Bush down is a war criminal), and quote "military necessity" then they have no meaning any more except as political fig leaves.
All your examples of "dishonourable" fighting serves to illustrate my point that tactics which are effective against the dominant powers of the day are 'dishonorable' and as soon as they are adopted by them they become "honorable."
However if it makes you uncomfortable not to think of the US Army as some kind of paragons of honor and virtue fighting the forces of evil, go right ahead. To each his illusions.
>So the Americans are evil to impose Karzai's regime on Afghanistan and maintain it by winking at massive election fraud?
That situation is actually much more morally and ethically complex than you seem to imply. Let's consider the alternatives:
1: If the Americans had forced Karzai to concede, or otherwise directly interfered in the election process, it would have destroyed the sovereignty of Afghanistan, and been no more democratic than the election fraud it would have displaced.
2: If the Americans had instead withdrawn support completely from Karzai and allowed his regime to collapse, it would not have been his electoral competitor who would have taken power, it would have been the Taliban. And then there would have been no more elections.
The situation there is far from perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was before, and there is at least a chance of a legitimate election in the future, which brings me to:
>No elections were held in South Vietnam because it was widely known in the American Administration that Ho and co would have won hands down.
After the American withdrawal, once the pressure of communist conquest was (temporarily) alleviated, the South had a legitimate election that rejected communism. Then we allowed them to be conquered by the communist NVA.
>It didn't matter.
Then why did you say it?
>And it was sometimes necessary to destroy Vietnamese villages to save them. Or waterboard and torture people to get information. Or drop an atom bomb on civilians to avoid casualties to your own armies in "honorable" combat against uniform wearing (but stubborn) foes. Use napalm against unarmed villagers. etc etc. Rendition and torture innocents. Protect mercenaries from prosecution etc.
You have mixed up a sampling of real war crimes, apocryphal incidents, and legitimate actions. The fact that war crimes are sometimes committed does not invalidate the principle of proportionality.
>By a strict interpretation, everyone from GW Bush down is a war criminal
Only if waterboarding is torture, a point over which there is considerable disagreement. In my profession, everyone must undergo training which includes being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques, up to and including waterboarding. This training is facilitated by individuals who have been subjected to acts that are indisputably torture. The general consensus among my peers is that waterboarding is not torture. YMMV
>All your examples of "dishonourable" fighting serves to illustrate my point that tactics which are effective against the dominant powers of the day are 'dishonorable' and as soon as they are adopted by them they become "honorable."
You obviously missed this point:
>War should be fought between combatants, and acts that either deliberately target non-combatants, or which deliberately make it harder for your enemy to tell you apart from non-combatants are dishonorable.
So I'll elaborate a little bit more: there is a clear and precise factor that distinguishes what I am calling "honorable" from what I call "dishonorable:" whether or not civilians are respected as illegitimate targets. This is completely independent of who happens to be dominant at the time.
>However if it makes you uncomfortable not to think of the US Army as some kind of paragons of honor and virtue fighting the forces of evil, go right ahead.
I have no such illusions. Even the best-run fighting forces include at least a small but significant minority of individuals who do illegal and/or dishonorable things, both on and off the battlefield. This does not mean that we shouldn't honor and respect the overwhelming majority who serve with professionalism and honor. As I said elsewhere:
>[Your] statement also seems to imply that we should judge the merits of military service on the basis of our political views about the particular wars fought, and on the degree of success achieved. In reality, we judge the merits of military service on the basis that these individuals volunteered to make tremendous sacrifices in service to a noble ideal: our Constitution, and the concept it embodies (a self-governed people).
The fact that some individuals fail to uphold these ideals, or that even some entire wars arguably do not serve them, does not change the fact that all members of our military are sworn to uphold them and that the overwhelming majority do so honorably.
1: Is the cause truly noble? If not, then we might be able to respect those who risk their lives for it, but we do not revere or praise them.
2: Do they fight honorably? If not, then they do not deserve respect (except maybe for the "dangerous animal" kind of respect I mentioned previously). Even if the cause is noble, those who fight for it only deserve respect if they fight honorably."
So an Englishman of the 18th century were to judge an American militiaman as a "dangerous animal" for (a) committing treason to his king to whom he had sworn an oath (b) bushwhacking officers from a forest without standing in straight lines, within gunshot range s in full view of the enemy,- thus fighting "dishonorably" as per the prevailing notions of "honor", he would be right?
Whether a cause is "noble" or not depends on who is doing the judgement. An Islamic fanatic who joins the Taliban can sincerely believe that he is fighting on the side of virtue and killing hellbound infidels who disobey God's word. To you his cause isn't noble. As for deliberately targeting citizens, that is precisely what bombing German cities, or Hanoi was.
Was dropping the Atom bomb or Hiroshima "honorable"?(Not saying Americans are particularly ignoble. Every army in history does what it takes to win and calls it "honorable", while the oppositions effective, uncounterable tactics often get called "dishonorable". )
What "fighting honorably" means, evolves over time and is almost always out of date. Knights called muskets dishonorable because a peasant could kill a knight from afar. Oh the horror. As did the Samurai. Hey Afghan insurgents think drones are dishonorable. American soldiers think IEDs and suicide bombers are dishonorable. Hmm.
English commanders complained that the American soldiers in the American War of Independence didn't fight "honorably" or 'like gentlemen'. Targeting officers was considered dishonorable and criminal. Wellington refused an artillery officer under his command permission to fire his battery at Napoleon because it was 'dishonorable'. Of course, Americans paid no heed because the tactic was effective. Sherman burned Georgia,and after the Civil War used the same tactics against the remnants of the American Indian tribes. These days, incinerating a city full of civilians from the air is "honorable". Poor Sherman was accused of barbarism for burning one city.
Coming to modern times, how is a drone attack blowing up a house full of civilians to target one insurgent commander "honorable"? You can argue it is effective. But honorable? You are fighting people with a technology they can't fight back against.
Should the Afghan insurgents fight F16s and Abrams with AK 47s while wearing distinctive uniforms so they can be picked off? That doesn't make any sense.
As a thought experiment, if you were an Afghan whose family were killed because drone operators half the world away mistook a wedding party for an insurgent group, would you be worried about conforming to the invaders notion of "honor"?
Martin Van Creveld has written a whole book, aptly titled "The Transformation of War" where he gives dozens of examples of practices that switched from "honorable" to dishonorable and vice versa with the passage of time.
(From Wikipedia).
The book's significance is attested to by the fact that until the middle of 2008, it was included on the list of required reading for United States Army officers, and (with Sun Tzu and Clausewitz) the third non-American entry on the list..
Well worth reading. Here is a sample of his writing. "Knowing Why Not To Bomb Iran Is Half the Battle" http://www.forward.com/articles/1254/ I don't always agree with Van Creveld but he makes me think.