Tag: Bradley Strawser

In need of a moral compass (Drone warfare, Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

On War by Carl von ClausewitzAll our legal and moral strictures about ethics and laws in war presume that war is, in a Clausewitzian sense, a state to state activity. Both Scott Shane and Tom Junod do not fully come to grips with this reality.

What happens when a state, like the US, faces a non-state adversary, like al Qaeda? With whom are we “at war”? Where is what we might call a “war zone”? Who is a “soldier”‘ and thus liable to violent action?

The dilemma is one of our own making. The US has become so militarily powerful that few will try to challenge us in a conventional military way through conventional state actions.

Non-state actors like al Qaeda present threats less than conventional military force but well beyond the current capabilities of domestic police forces. Modern communications and technology have enabled such groups to be as deadly as smaller states once were. Perhaps even more so.

Identifying how to deal with  non-state actors who can do a country great harm is not a new dilemma. Even Carl von Clausewitz himself saw this with the Spanish guerrillas in the Napoleonic Wars. And he had no answer.

However, the time is now at hand to confront the issue before drone warfare is more widely available. We must learn how to preserve the security of a country’s people without undoing security altogether by the methods used.

These are uncharted waters and a moral compass is badly needed.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

New technologies, new moral questions (Drone warfare, Part 1)

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Dr. Mike Corgan

Since the first attempts to develop moral or legal standards for warfare and the consequent killing and destroying of war, technological developments have invariably come along.

Drone missile launched from aircraft carrier
Drone missile launched from aircraft carrier. Image in public domain.

These technologies confound painstakingly agreed-upon attempts to limit and contain the lethality of an essentially lethal activity.

Anomalies abound. Why is tear gas a chemical weapon in the laws of war but napalm is not? Who, exactly, is a lawful target of warfare?

These questions have arisen most recently and most strikingly in regard to missile-carrying drone aircraft.

A debate of sorts is now underway about the morality of drone attacks, especially as used by the Obama administration.  A New York Times July 15 op-ed piece cites the judgment of Bradley J. Strawser of the Naval Postgraduate School that there is a moral case for these kinds of attacks.

Essentially it is that the amount of collateral damage (to civilians) is far less than it has been for any other kind of attack. This principle conforms to both legal and moral norms of proportionality.

In a very long and detailed article in the August Esquire, “The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama,” Tom Junod argues that these attacks are definitely not moral, certainly not legal and have opened a Pandora’s box that invites havoc.

Junod accuses Obama and his aides of inventing moral distinctions rather than observing them in order to justify the attacks. These attacks:

  • Take place in many countries with which we are not at war
  • Kill American citizens without anything remotely resembling due process, and
  • Do indeed kill the innocent.

Case in point: American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted and killed while in Yemen on the sole authority of the President. In a later follow-on attack, his 16 year-old son was also among those killed.

This from a president Junod claims to have admired. What happens, he concludes, if a “cruel or bloodthirsty” president gets this capability? One might further ask, what happens when others bent on destruction acquire this capability, as they surely will?

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of International Relations, Boston University

Morally disengaging from drone warfare

Posted on by kathiemm

The headline of a Sunday New York Times article by national security reporter Scott Shane declares “The Moral Case for Drones.” A more appropriate title might well be “A Case Study in Moral Disengagement.”

The arguments in the article illustrate many of the principles of moral disengagement  previously discussed in this blog, including:

Drone launched off Navy ship
Drone launched off U.S. Navy ship. Image in public domain.

Shane begins by noting that critics of President Obama’s drone program focus on issues such as “collateral damage” (a favorite euphemism for killing children and other innocent civilians). He then comments that people may be surprised to learn that “some moral philosophers, political scientists and weapons specialists believe armed, unmanned aircraft offer marked moral advantages over almost any other tool of warfare.”

As an example of a moral philosopher, he cites Bradley Strawser, a former officer in the Air Force and assistant professor of philosophy in the Naval Postgraduate School who told him that using drones “to go after terrorists” was “not only ethically permissible but also might be ethically obligatory.”

Why? Drones are advantageous for “identifying targets and striking with precision.”  In making such a statement, Strawser is using euphemisms for murder (“striking targets”) while framing it in pseudo-moral language (“ethically obligatory”).

Strawser identifies “targets” as “terrorists” and “extremists who are indeed plotting violence against innocents” (demonization). He says drones are better than any other weapon in avoiding collateral damage (advantageous comparison), and suggests that drone operators can time their strikes so that innocents will not be nearby and can even divert a missile if a child happens to wander into the target area (misrepresentation of consequences).

Most historians seem to agree that one of the major causes of World War I was not the killing of an archduke, but the eagerness of weapons specialists in different countries to try out their great new weapons and prove how invincible they were.

One can argue that World War II ended up with the U.S. trying out its great new atomic weapon to prove how invincible it is—and thereby initiating an arms race that continues to threaten life on earth.

Might we make better moral choices than unleashing the favored weapon of the hour?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology