Soccer Dad

Numbers as morality

Q and O wrote an excellent essay on (h/t Willow Tree) Just War: The principle of Double Effect. In a nutshell

When you review the actions of Israelis, given the battlefield on which Hezbollah has chosen to fight (and that's important to note - Hezbollah chose the ground, not Israel), the fact that Israel is using precision guided munitions, dropping leaflets and warning of attacks and doing only what is necessary to degrade their enemy (the Beirut airport is an example of that) speaks to their proper use of the principle of double effect. While the civilian deaths caused by the fighting are regrettable and tragic, they are not immoral under the doctrine of Just War.

It's interesting because the media don't make such calculations. In Cease-Fire Begins After a Day of Fierce Attacks The NY Times reported:

Mr. Olmert responded forcefully, and since July 12, nearly 1,150 Lebanese are estimated to have died, most of them civilians, and about 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Israel says 500 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, a figure Hezbollah disputes. In Gaza, nearly 200 Palestinians have died, many of them militants.

By portraying the casualty figures in this fashion, the reporter is conveying the message (intentionally or not) that Israel despite its claims of rightness and morality killed many more civilians than combatants. In contrast the group that Israel calls a terrorits group actually was more discriminating in killing a higher percentage of combatants than civilians.

(I'm not going to get into whether the figure of 1150 is correct or how many members of Hezbollah got classified as civilians. No one is going to do the necessary investigation to answer those questions properly.)

During the intifada in the late 80's, the media did the same thing. Progress in the intifada was marked by reporting how many Palestinians had been killed.

When I visited Israel in January 1989 the front page on Israeli newspaper had a picture of a burned out bus. The firebomb that had been thrown at it and ignited was the 1000th terror attack of the intifada. In other words for the past 13 months Israel had been subjected to almost 3 terror attacks a day. No they weren't all fatal. But the point was that Israel was under attack and the media largely ignored that. Their only concern was for the attackers.

Q and O gave an interesting hypothetical

For example, the munitions selection criteria we talked about earlier where he chose the 500 lb bomb over the 1,000 lb bomb. Naturally he could only make that selection if both were available and he knew that the 500 lb bomb would be sufficient to take out the launcher.

But what if he didn't have that choice? What if his only choice was to withhold attacking the target because of the increased risk of civilian death or let the rocket launcher continue to attack his troops (we're assuming here he has no other means to take out the launcher). By the principle of double effect, he would be morally justified in using 1,000 lb bomb because ""the evil effect [killing civilians] is not one of his ends, or is it a means to his ends". Knocking out the rocket launcher is his end and the only available munition is the means to his end.

It's interesting because Israel was faced with a similar dilemma. According to Gen. Amos Yadlin (now head of Israel's military intelligence)

The case of Salah Shehada, the head of the military arm of Hamas, is a prime example of ethical concerns in decision-making. Shehada planned terror attacks in Israel, including the attack on the Dolphinarium discotheque where twenty-one teenagers were killed, and he was in the process of planning a "mega-attack." We knew that if we hit him, the mega-terror process would stop because he was the mind behind it, the planner, the one who was really pushing the button. Shehada was always surrounded by innocent people until one night in July 2002 we found him almost alone, and we delivered a 2,000-pound bomb on his apartment and he was killed. Unfortunately, the intelligence about those in the surrounding buildings was wrong, and innocent people were killed. Yet when the decision was made, it was the right decision from an ethical point of view because the scale included a mega-attack threatening the lives of hundreds of Israelis, balanced against a terrorist with some collateral damage. But in this case the collateral damage was too high.

A month later, in August 2002, we had all the leadership of Hamas - Sheikh Yassin and all his military commanders, all his engineers, all the minds of terror - in one room in a three-story house and we knew we needed a 2,000-pound bomb to eliminate all of them - the whole leadership, 16 people, all the worst terrorists in the world. Think about having Osama bin Laden and all the top leadership of al-Qaeda in one house.

What did Israel do?

However, due to the criticism in Israeli society and in the media, and due to the consequences of innocent Palestinians being killed, a 2,000-pound bomb was not approved and we hit the building with a much smaller bomb. There was a lot of dust, a lot of noise, but they all got up and ran away and we missed the opportunity. So the ethical dilemmas are always there.

According to the laws of war as explained by Q and O Israel would have been justified in using the larger bomb. But they didn't and the terrorists were able to live and kill another day.

Part of the Israeli calculation was the public outcry.

The media's misplaced and simplistic focus on numbers can have negative outcomes that cost lives. I'm sure though, that reporters sleep well at nights knowing that they've stayed Israel's hand by pointing out its excesses. Regardless of the cost.

Note: I changed one paragraph. This is not exactly as originally posted.

UPDATE: And Elder of Ziyon has been keeping track of the number of Palestinians killed by their own since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. Incidents such as this (warning: disturbing photos) are largely ignored by the MSM.

UPDATE II: Simply Jews writes of Bibi's response to questions of numbers

Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children. Perhaps you have another question?"

Technorati tags: Just War, Media Bias.