There Is No Such Thing as a ‘Humane’ War

Francis R. Sempa
Real Clear Defense, Dec. 11, 2023

“You’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.”
 
Writing in Responsible Statecraft, the online journal of the Quincy Institute, David C. Hendrickson argues that Israel’s proclaimed war aim of destroying Hamas should be reconsidered because there is no way to “humanely” destroy Hamas. Hendrickson, from his comfortable perch at Colorado College, lectures Israel on the “just war” theory and condemns Israel for not fighting with “restraint,” not rejecting “indiscriminate bombing and shelling,” and not respecting “enemy civilians.” Israel, he writes, is “pursuing . . . a moral enormity” and risks committing “wickedness on a titanic scale in order to achieve total victory.”

His recommendation to Israeli leaders is to “accept limited war and seek the containment of the enemy, not his obliteration.” In other words, Israel should conduct the war in a way that entails the greatest risk to the lives of its warriors and that will leave Hamas’ forces in position to terrorize, rape, and massacre Israeli citizens another day. That is somehow “just.”  

Hendrickson’s position is consistent with the Biden administration’s approach to America’s longtime ally in the Middle East. Hendrickson quotes Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who stated on November 30^th: “Israel has one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. It is capable of neutralizing the threat posed by Hamas while minimizing harm to innocent civilians. And it has an obligation to do so.”

This is also the position of Jo-Ann Mort and Michael Walzer in a piece in the New Republic that Hendrickson discusses. Walzer, a longtime critic of “unjust wars” (in 1977, in the wake of our defeat in Vietnam, Walzer, who condemned America’s involvement in that war, wrote Just and Unjust Wars), argues in the New Republic piece that Israel can achieve its war aim–the destruction of Hamas–in a humane war. Hendrickson doesn’t buy it. And he’s right because there is no such thing as a “humane” war. … [To read the full article, click here]