Berl Falbaum
How do you inject an element of morality into a human activity that is inherently immoral, inhumane, cruel, and barbaric?
The answer: You don’t; you can’t.
The question came to mind given the controversy created by the decision of the Biden administration to send cluster bombs to the Ukraine. The use of cluster bombs has been banned by more than 100 countries because undetonated bombs can create civilian deaths years after their use.
On the face of the issue, the critics have a point but it raises the bottom-line question: Is there a way to slaughter humans morally? We have hundreds of different kinds of weapons that create unwanted casualties, and many are unavoidable.
I have debated this problem in my head over the years. I have read the conventions covering what is allowed and banned in warfare. This is the first time I put thoughts on paper. The more I studied, the more confused I became by efforts to create a moral climate to warfare when the ultimate objective is to kill the enemy —- by any means possible. A soldier in a foxhole doesn’t argue about morality in efforts to stay alive.
Let’s look at a just a few war tactics which have caused massive human misery and are “accepted” under the “rules of war.”
In World War II, the Allies leveled several German cities, specifically targeting civilians to pressure Hitler to surrender. The cities included were Dresden, Munich, Nuremberg, and several others. They were literally reduced to piles of rubble as were other cities in Europe as well as Japan.
What about “Little Boy” and “Fat Man,” the two A-bombs that wiped some 250,000 people, mostly civilians, off the face of the Earth in a few seconds in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The casualties included children, women, churchgoers, hospital patients, ordinary citizens.
The debate over their use still continues to this day with scholars and historians questioning the morality of dropping the bombs and if it really was militarily necessary.
A personal example: During World War II, my family was among some 20,000 Jews who escaped from Nazi Germany to Shanghai, which was occupied by the Japanese. The Allies bombed the Japanese causing thousands of civilian casualties. On July 17, 1945, nearly 40 refugees were killed in one bombing and became what we now label “collateral damage.”
In Vietnam, the U.S. dropped tons of napalm, which literally burned the skin off civilians and caused ugly wounds that are even difficult to contemplate. Anyone who saw the news photo of the naked “Napalm Girl” fleeing a napalm attack will have that image burned into their memories forever.
Along with cluster bombs, some anti-war activists want landmines to be banned as well given the damage they cause in the loss of limbs. But it is acceptable to use flamethrowers to burn the enemy alive and it also is within the rules to run a tank over a trench, crushing those hiding within it.
While chemical weapons are outlawed, they were used in World War I and most recently by Syria.
While Allies have castigated Biden for the cluster bomb decision, they have basically been silent as Russian targeted hospitals, schools, apartment complexes, and shopping centers with ballistic missiles.
The major point: All military operations affect civilian populations in terms of shortages of food, fuel, clean water, energy, medical supplies not to mention the psychological scars caused by war.
The rules of war are delineated in the International Humanitarian Law (and some supporting conventions). The objective is to “maintain some humanity in armed conflicts.”
But just using such words as “humanitarian” when discussing war is a contradiction. It is impossible to wage a “humane” war. Those on the front lines will do what needs to be done to save their own lives and pursue the cause of victory, and those objectives, at times, will cause civilian casualties.
In the history of mankind and warfare, there, unfortunately, is no shortage of cruelty. Thousands of books and films tell the story of mankind’s inhumanity to man.
Debating the use of cluster bombs may be a satisfying intellectual exercise but, regardless of whether they are banned or not, the inhumanity of war will continue on different levels.
A more useful discussion over weapons would be to launch an international campaign that would ban the use of nuclear weapons, which now total 10,000 worldwide. Only then would we demonstrate our seriousness to rid the world of the most destructive weapons of all.
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Berl Falbaum is a veteran political columnist and author of 12 books.
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