----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Mensah" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 1:34 PM
Subject: [unioNews] George Orwell and deaths of the innocents


Monday, January 19, 2004
<H3>George Orwell and deaths of the innocents</H3>
By Ray Cassin

<B><i>The author's reputation overpowers the dubiousnature of his
views.</i></B>

It is not known how many Iraqis have been killed, by either coalition
forces or resistance movements, since the US-led coalition invaded
Iraq. No one has bothered to keep a tally. But it is certain, because
of the "shock and awe" tactics employed by the coalition in the war's
initial weeks, that there will have been a substantial number of
civilian casualties.

This raises moral questions about the conduct of the war that are
distinct from the question usually debated, i.e. whether the
coalition had just cause for going to war.

Civil populations have always been at risk in time of war, but an
increasing proportion of civilian casualties has become almost an
identifying characteristic of modern warfare.

At the beginning of the 20th century the estimated ratio of civilian
to military deaths in war was one to eight, but by the end of the
century the ratio had reversed and is now eight to one.

The increased vulnerability of civilians has not primarily been a
consequence of acts of terror by non-state movements, which by
definition do not recognise and spare the innocent. The so-called war
on terrorism has focused attention on that kind of political
violence, but the direct targeting of civilians, on a much greater
scale than anything experienced in recent acts of terror, has most
notably been a part of wars between nation states.

The German blitz of London and other cities in Britain during the
Second World War, and the Allied bombing of Germany and Japan all
involved the intentional targeting of civilians. And in the case of
Britain's night-time aerial offensive against German cities, this
goal was explicit.

The RAF's chief of bomber command, Arthur Harris, said the bombing
campaign was waged primarily to destroy the German people's will to
fight; shorn of euphemism, this amounts to saying that it was an
extended act of terror.

As the Melbourne philosopher Tony Coady has argued, if we condemn an
Osama bin Laden or a Hambali because they prescribe the intentional
killing of the innocent, then Harris and his political masters stand
equally condemned. And if we try to get Harris and co. off the hook
by arguing that the civilians slaughtered in Dresden and the other
devastated German cities were not innocent because they were enemy
civilians, we thereby excuse the bin Ladens of the world, too.

The notion that killing an innocent person - broadly defined as
anyone not making a direct contribution to an enemy's war effort - is
worse than killing an enemy combatant now strikes some people as
naive, or even hypocritical. How, they ask, given the enormous
destructive power of modern military technology, can such a
distinction be taken seriously?

Perhaps the most famous proponent of this view was George Orwell, a
man who is commonly hailed as a sort of secular saint. The year that
has just ended marked the centenary of Orwell's birth, and during it
the world's opinion pages were awash with discussions of his
writings. These mostly focused on his critique of totalitarianism,
but, as sometimes happens when saints are praised, more dubious
aspects of his legacy were largely ignored.

Debate about the morality of bombing German cities began, in Britain
at least, almost from the time that the RAF started doing it, and
Orwell used his Tribune column "As I Please" to attack wartime
critics of the bombing campaign. His argument rested on a kind of
perverse egalitarianism: the technology that had made it possible to
bomb entire cities, he said, thereby made everyone a potential
target, which was surely a good thing. This spreading of the risk, he
said, not only meant that war's victims were no longer overwhelmingly
young men in the front line, but that bloated capitalists and
apparatchiks could no longer find a place to hide.

This argument is dressed up in moralising rhetoric, but its effect is
to license a strictly instrumental view of the ethics of killing. The
man who lashed the Stalinist left because they held that any atrocity
might be justified in building a socialist society appeared to see no
difficulty in also arguing that, when it comes to war, the end now
justifies the means.

Orwell's inflated reputation as a moralist has prevented many people
from recognising that his attack on the critics of the bombing
campaign was facile and pernicious.

If we repudiate the distinction, derived from traditional just-war
theory, between combatants and the innocent, the moral outrage we
feel at acts of terror - whether by soldiers serving nation states or
by those who are commonly called "terrorists" - becomes pointless.
That is hardly moral progress but, lamentably, it is part of Orwell's
legacy.

***
Ray Cassin is a staff writer.
<i>eMail: [log in to unmask]</i>

Copyright  © 2004. The Age Company Ltd




lllll
QUOTATION:

"All of us may not live to see the higher accomplishments of an African
empire, so strong and powerful as to compel the respect of mankind, but we
in our lifetime can so work and act as to make the dream a possibility
within another generation"
-<html><A HREF="http://members.aol.com/GhanaUnion/afrohero.html">Ancestor
Marcus Mosiah Garvey <i>(1887 - 1940)</i></A></html>

llllllllll
 *  //\\//\\ unioNews Newsgroup //\\//\\   *
 * http://members.aol.com/GhanaUnion *
 *          We're One People         *
 *          Join the Chorus          *
 -    African Union Shall Succeed    -
 =====================================
A luta Continua!

To subscribe to this group, send an eMail to:
[log in to unmask]

Yahoo! Groups Links

To visit your group on the web, go to:
 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unioNews/

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
 [log in to unmask]

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
 http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~