Bad and Worse; moral ambiguity

A common attitude to the sadism of American troops in Abu Ghraib, understandable enough, was to note the aroused outrage's disproportionate quality when contemplated in light of the prosaic predations in state-run prisons across the Middle East.

That response had merit insofar as it didn't seek to exculpate the behavior, but rather rested on the commonplace that there's bad and there's worse. And it helped to magnify the selective anger - sc., hypocrisy - of many.

Something I thought at the time, and think of frequently when observing the scandalized reactions to every new alleged misdeed and misstep in the occupation of Iraq, is how it seems to be almost an article of faith that allied actions in World War II - "The Good War" - didn't involve any gross misconduct.

To deal adequately with such an enormous question would exceed the humble scope of a blog entry here. Aside from such deeply disturbing actions as firebombing cities (including, of course, the use of atomic bombs) and acceding to/facilitating the mass transfer of populations, even a Pyrrhic victory such as the D-Day landing at Normandy is not, alas, free from stain. As a recent article by Kevin Myers in the Torygraph notes (login required),

"Nor were casualties in any way confined to military personnel. At least 20,000 Norman civilians were killed and over 100,000 injured by Allied bombing. Thousands died in the course of a single night raid by the RAF on Le Havre, and thousands more in a comparable attack by the USAAF on St Lo during market day. About 120,000 buildings in Normandy, including vast numbers of precious medieval structures, were totally destroyed during the invasion, and many towns and villages rendered uninhabitable for years. War caused a vast army of refugees to flee across France, and when they returned, their homes were gone.

"Moreover, rape by Allied soldiers was rather more common than is comfortable to admit. Young men at war can be dangerous creatures, no matter how honourable their cause. So Normandy did not savour liberation so much as pay an almost unbearable price for it, one that left the region deeply traumatised for decades to come. Military acts of liberation invariably involve dreadful moral compromises, and can come at a terrible personal price for the liberated, as events in Iraq in the past year have testified."

My point isn't any simplistic "revisionist" one, arguing for some kind of (crude) moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis Powers; there's bad, and there's (far, far) worse. But it has to be acknowledged that a cause which was broadly "just" was besmirched by actions of, to say the least, very questionable moral character. Yet "we" still revere the war, and are rightly glad that our side prevailed.

What I mean to say is this: it's a basic principle of explanation that what is common to two things cannot explain what is different about one of them. If both an in-the-main just(ified) war, such as World War II, and a more controversial one such as the one at present in Iraq can exhibit shameful behavior by its participants, then - to the extent that there's an isomorphism between the misdeeds in both cases - that behavior cannot render one unjust yet not shake our esteem of the other. (Incessant argument might be set off here in comparing what was at stake in the two conflicts, and how the greater desperation of World War II counter-balanced its misdeeds in a way which is lacking in Iraq). To make the matter simpler, and more stark: that civilians have been killed in the recent war doesn't eo ipso entail that the war is unjust; because, regrettably, non-combatants have always been killed in war, the putatively just and unjust ones alike. Those who try to reason from such facts and behavior to the injustice of the war in/for Iraq are riding a bike with training wheels: they're making the task far too easy for themselves.

But still we're left, I'd say, with the troubling moral ambiguity of war and its conduct, even by the "good guys." The truth might be closer to Augustine's view in Civitas Dei, in which the gulf between the earthly city and its divine counterpart can never really be closed. Or, as a secular writer once put it, "war usually doesn't involve a clash of right with wrong, but of wrong with greater wrong." To my mind, this insight is the proverbial thin end of the wedge which undoes Chomsky-style Leftism - a creed which has no feel for the apparently tragic character of existence, in which even the most admirable moral agents can hardly avoid incurring guilt.