Moral Relativism and War

If you are of liberal political leanings you will probably not like this piece as I am going to proceed to attempt to demolish several sacred cows of contemporary liberal thought.  I unreservedly admit that I am politically conservative and further admit that I am not trying to be unbiased in his piece.  I am essentially venting my spleen at the half-truths and outright lies I so often find in books that purport to be histories but that are in reality only thinly disguised attacks on historical actors.  I find it typically liberal that such attacks are often made on those that cannot defend themselves, such as historical figures long dead.  I personally find the practice repulsive and try very hard to avoid doing the same thing in my own historical writing.  Then again, if you are liberal and don’t like it, I do not particularly care either.

I am currently reading House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power by James Carroll.  The level of moral relativism within this book is unreal.  I figured it would be a leftist take on the Pentagon because there is a blurb of praise on the back cover from Howard Zinn, the ultimate leftist historian.  What I did not count on was the sheer level of Western hatred disguised as objectivity that I would find within the cover.  That being said, this is not a review of this book in particular but an examination of leftist historiography, particularly when it comes to military history, in General.

I have read many leftist histories over the years from Isabel Hull and Iris Chang to Thomas Fleming, Paul Fussell, Dave Grossman, and Howard Zinn.  One thing they all have in common from my perspective is a formless hatred of all things Western and a lack of a solid grasp on reality.  They don’t write history, so much as polemics designed to convince the reader that they know the big T truth and if you disagree with them then you are part of the problem. In short,  Leftist history is activist history.  It is the type of history that would have you believe that the best thing that could have ever happened to the world is if the population of Europe had been destroyed during the Black Death, if not even earlier, say perhaps before the Dorics moved into Greece during the second millennium B.C.

If you read leftist history everything not Western is great and everything that has the touch of the West on it is evil incarnate from the Greek settlement of southern Europe to the European colonization of the Americas and just about everything in between and since.  They would have you believe that Westerners deliberately introduced disease to the New World to decimate and subjugate the natives to deliberately keeping the peoples of Africa down since de-colonialization to economically exploit them some more.  That everything having to do with the Christian church is evil incarnate while Atheism is cool and Muslims are peaceful little sheepherders.  Every group out there with a grievance against the West is justified in not only having it but in doing whatever they can to attack the West and they are willing participants as they seek to undermine Western culture itself from the inside.

It is as if liberals truly believe that contemporary morals have a place in describing the actions of people in the past who ascribed to a wholly different moral code and that they are unable to make the distinction that while they personally find an action immoral, at the time it was made, the action may have been considered fully justified.  That is not moral relativism; that is reality.  Today we don’t think exposing unwanted children to die on a mountainside is morally justified but the ancient Spartans did and it is stupid in the extreme to condemn ancient practice on the basis of contemporary morality.

Let’s take just a few examples from popular Western history that have gained the currency of Truth in leftist circles.

1. Western Genocide against Indians – This one is so laughable I don’t even understand how the idea got so much currency.  Leftists would have us believe that Westerners deliberately introduced diseases such as smallpox into the New World during colonization to kill off the inhabitants and clam the land for themselves.  Of course that presuppose that 15 Century Spanish, Portuguese, and English explorers understand how diseases were transmitted.  That the Germ Theory of Disease did not gain wide scientific currency until the mid to late 19th century is conveniently ignored.  The most common invective hurled is that of the US Cavalry giving out smallpox covered blankets during the Indian Wars.  This claim was given credence by the now discredited Ward Churchill and has been pretty well destroyed by Thomas Brown in the Journal, Plagiary.Despite the subsequent disgrace of Churchill’s corpus of work the myth continues that the US Army deliberately triggered an epidemic of smallpox among native Americans to “get them out of the way.”  That claim is made elsewhere about Indians throughout the Americas.
While epidemics did occur, as Jared Diamond so persuasively argues in Guns, Germs, and Steel, it did not take deliberation for European diseases to decimate native populations.  All it took was one sick European infecting unknowing natives.  Widespread epidemics and subsequent population loss did occur in the Americas after the arrival of Europeans, that was the natural result of American populations being exposed to diseases for which they had absolutely no resistance, because heretofore these disease did not occur in the Americas.
The narrative that Europeans deliberately killed off huge populations of Indians suits the left though, so they will keep it alive and it is easy to do because so many people take the claim at face value and never bother to research it for themselves.

2. The sanctity of civilians in wartime – There is a persistent assertion among both leftist historians and the media that throughout history the lives, property, and persons of civilians has been sacrosanct in war and the large scale killing of non-combatants is a new phenomenon.  Nothing could be further from the truth, the difference in modern times is that it is easier for a few men to kill lots of civilians, not that civilians have never been a legitimate target. You will not hear a liberal admit that anytime soon though.
You will never hear a liberal acknowledge the Mongol policy of massacring entire cities that refused to surrender.  That the rule in medieval Europe was that a city that had to be taken by force was sacked for 72 hours, that for hundreds of years Muslim slave traders preyed on European shipping in the Mediterranean, or that the ancient Goths and others who preyed on the edges of the Roman Empire routinely slaughtered entire villages as a way of solidifying their control of areas by spreading terror.  There has never been an absolute prohibition on killing civilians in warfare and what protections civilians have had, especially in modern times, comes out of the Western, specifically, Roman and Christian traditions.

3. Dropping the Atomic Bomb on Japan – The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II is a topic that has come in for considerable debate.  I have even read people that claim America should apologize and perhaps pay reparations for the bombing.  I am flabbergasted by this.  I simply cannot understand how America should in any way apologize for ending the war that Japan started or the manner in which they did so.  This argument even goes back and claims that Japan was goaded into war by American policy.  That is the “West is at fault argument” taken to its absurd extreme.  What is even more ironic and silly is that many of the folks who make this claim condemn America and then turn around and condemn Japanese wartime conduct out the other side of their mouth.  These people would have you believe that America is in the wrong for civilian deaths at Saipan and Okinawa during the war and that any place with civilians nearby was not a legitimate target.
I hate to disappoint people, but people die in wars, sometimes the dead are even civilians.  Civilians are not normally targeted but they are legitimate targets as civilians are the lifeblood of any society and nothing can convince a people that they have lost than seeing that their military cannot defend them.  Targeting civilians is a legitimate act of warfare.  Unsavory yes, but still legitimate.  The arrow, bullet, or bomb that can always miss a civilian has not been invented and probably never will be.  It would be imprudent in the extreme for a military force to hamstring itself out of fear of causing a single civilian death.  If they do that they might as well surrender because the military is then of no use to the society that sponsors it and it is to the sponsoring society that the military must answer, not that of the enemy.

 Rant over.  Feel free to comment, I am more than happy to debate on this.  (the usual comment rules apply)

1. Brown Thomas. Did the U.S. Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? Fabrication and Falsification in Ward Churchill’s Genocide RhetoricPlagiary:  CrossDisciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification. Vol 1, 2006 pp. 100‐129

 

5 thoughts on “Moral Relativism and War”

  1. Patrick, 1) “liberal” and “leftist” are not the same thing, 2) there are lots of different kinds of liberals and leftists and they disagree passionately with each other, as well as conservatives. You might think about both of those things and how they apply to your analysis.

    Finally, this:

    You will never hear a liberal acknowledge the Mongol policy of massacring entire cities that refused to surrender

    Well, I’m a liberal and I acknowledge it. More, I don’t think that Westerners deliberately introduced disease to Native Americans (though, here again, your analysis breaks down. The discussion of “genocide” is not just about the purported biological warfare.) I’m perfectly aware that civilians have been targeted throughout history, and I think that the dropping of the atomic bombs was perfectly reasonable in the context.

    I should say that I’m not alone in this. I know plenty of liberal military historians who have much the same thoughts on those things you’ve raised. Forgive me if the following is a bit harsh, but this reads like an undergraduate historiography paper, who has read a few things on a particular area and thinks they stand in for the entire broad array of historical practice.

    • Actually, in contemporary political discourse Liberal and leftist are pretty much synonymous, just as are conservative and right-wing. You may not like that but that is the way it is.

      “Well, I’m a liberal and I acknowledge it.” The exception proves the rule you know.

      I don’t mind if you think it reads like an undergrad paper and it does not offend me that you think so. I was not writing this for a grade nor do I particularly care. Your casual dismissal of my point of view is part and parcel of the way “academics” treat people not in the academy. I deliberately chose to not continue my studies past the graduate level and pursue a career in the academy. Mainly because of the persistent patronizing attitude of most academics I have dealt with. There are a few academics who I admire, but they are few and far between. Most that I know hide behind the walls of the academy and pass judgment about things and people that they have very little experience of.

      This was a rant that I wrote in response to several books I have recently read and discussions I have had on internet boards and among people I know. It is more in the nature of a deep cathartic breath than anything else. I find it is easier to write and get it out than to let myself stew in irritation at the self-imposed and self-willed ignorance of others.

      Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

      That is all.

    • Actually, in contemporary political discourse Liberal and leftist are pretty much synonymous, just as are conservative and right-wing. You may not like that but that is the way it is.

      Contemporary political discourse also doesn’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shi’ites, where Ukraine is, and a host of other embarrassing bits of ignorance. I’m suggesting you do better than that. Ward Churchill, for example, is a leftist and loathes liberals. So, too, Noam Chomsky. If I wrote something that claimed that Ron Paul and George H.W. Bush were the same kind of right-wing politicians, you would (I would hope and rightly) take me to task for it.

      Well, I’m a liberal and I acknowledge it.” The exception proves the rule you know.

      Sure. But the counterexample also disproves the rule. For another example, Paul Fussell (who you slam in the post) wrote an essay called “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb.” Bill Astore, who’s quite far to the left, thinks Nagasaki was problematic, but that Hiroshima was perfectly justified. I can keep offering examples.

      You generalized in a way that simply is not backed up by the actual writings of numerous scholars who are on the left.

      Your casual dismissal of my point of view is part and parcel of the way “academics” treat people not in the academy.

      It’s not a casual dismissal. A casual dismissal would have been ignoring the post entirely. That I spent time responding to it indicates that I’m actually taking it seriously. You do book reviews I find valuable, and I wouldn’t engage otherwise.

      If it’s patronizing to critique a badly wrong analysis of the scholarship on a particular set of topics, then yes, I’m being patronizing and yes, you made the right decision to leave academia. You wouldn’t have done well going forward.

      This was a rant that I wrote in response to several books I have recently read and discussions I have had on internet boards and among people I know.

      I gathered that, but I would suggest that the boards you frequent and the people you know already have the same preconceived opinion about things. You’re talking in an echo chamber, and I’m trying to tell you that that’s not really what the world looks like outside that chamber.

    • Look, I am not interested in getting into a war over this. I think I made it perfectly clear both at the beginning and end of the post that it was a rant expressing my personal opinion. Nothing more.

      I am certainly not interested into getting into a game of tit for tat. I understand that you disagree with my position. I even respect it. That being said, You are probably not going to change my mind.

      I found this comment (“I gathered that, but I would suggest that the boards you frequent and the people you know already have the same preconceived opinion about things. You’re talking in an echo chamber, and I’m trying to tell you that that’s not really what the world looks like outside that chamber.”) to be a bridge too far. Other than the bio I put on this blog and the content of my writings, you have absolutely no idea who my friends are, what internet boards I frequent, or whether my favorite news site is Huffington Post or Drudge Report.

      As to taking me to task for my personal opinion. That is an exercise in futility. My wife used to try it all the time too, which is one of the reasons we don’t talk politics at home anymore.

      I am glad to hear that you like to read my book reviews. I try my best to keep them objective. I get pre-release books from Publishers and authors that I agree to review in exchange for free copies of the books ( I always preface that I got the book for free), and I review books that I either buy or get from my local library. My interests have diverged in the past year or so and I am not reading as much history as I used to. The book reviews will keep coming though. You know how I write if you read my reviews. Judge for yourself how objective and unbiased I am in my writing.

      Once again, Thanks for reading my blog and I hope you continue to come back.

    • As to taking me to task for my personal opinion. That is an exercise in futility

      You’re certainly entitled to make up your opinion. What you’re not entitled to is to make up the facts that underpin that opinion. If you want to assert that all left-wing historians are bad, that’s an opinion. If you want to assert that all left-wing historians think the dropping of the atomic bombs was immoral, that’s a statement of fact, and it’s a statement of fact that’s simply wrong. If you don’t want to change your mind when it’s pointed out that you’re wrong on the facts of something, that’s certainly your right. I’m not sure it’s something I’d be proud of, however.

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