"Disgrace:" Confirmed

Last week Elan Journo penned an op/ed for the Ayn Rand Institute titled: The Real Disgrace: Washington's Battlefield 'Ethics.' Journo argued that the current rules-of-engagement under which the U.S. military operates has tied the hands of American warriors and made it impossible for them to achieve victory:

Consider the waking nightmare of being a U.S. combat troop in Iraq: imagine that you are thrust into a battlefield—but purposely hamstrung by absurd restrictions. Iraqis throw Molotov cocktails (i.e., gasoline-filled bottles) at your vehicle—but you are prohibited from responding with force. Iraqis, to quote the study, "drop large chunks of concrete blocks from second story buildings or overpasses" as you drive by—but you are not allowed to respond. "Every group of Soldiers and Marines interviewed," the Pentagon study summarizes, "reported that they felt the existing ROE [rules of engagement] tied their hands, preventing them from doing what needed to be done to win the war."

The fact that President Bush and the military brass have elected to fight a "political correct" was is no secret. The question is why? Because as the old saying goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. "Good" being defined according to a theory of ethics based on altruism. What is important here is understanding that for the altruist end results do not matter. If American troops are be killed under the current ROEs that also guarantee defeat, so what? The only important thing is that the war is conducted in a self-sacrificial manner. Those who apply altruism to military action to create Just War Theory (JWT) are explicit in this regard. Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars is the leading text on JWT. As he states:

For the rules of encounter take no cognizance whatever of the relative guilt of governments and armies…The limits it imposes are imposed equally and indifferently on aggressors and their adversaries. (pp. 123-4, emphasis added)

One, of course, can ask rhetorically who is going to "equally" impose the laws of civilized war upon the terrorists and Jihadis in Iraq and around the world. Given JWT's avowed indifference to victory for civilization, the answer is the current state of affairs in Iraq.

Under the heading "Warrior Wisdom" General David H. Petraeus has written an article "Beyond the Cloister" defending the practice of serving officers going to civilian graduate schools. The article is in July-August 2007 issue of The American Interest. Some of the general's points are well taken, however the costs of such education may out way the benefits. Gen. Petraeus gives six reasons for this education program. In the context of Journo's op/ed the fifth reason is the most interesting and revealing:

Fifth and very much related, graduate school inevitably helps U.S. military officers improve their critical thinking skills...

In my own experience, I found the most valuable situations to be those in which exceedingly bright senior professors held views substantially different from my own. I developed a particular friendship with one such professor at Princeton, one of the country’s leading international legal scholars at the time—even though we truly saw the world through different lenses. In the end, we decided that we never disagreed on anything but substance.

I happened to be taking a course with him when the United States invaded the island of Grenada in 1983. Now, some of you will remember that the legal underpinnings nor that action were not the most robust to have ever justified an American military operation. Indeed, it later turned out that U.S. officials had actually written the request for American intervention that the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States submitted back to the United States to get us to intervene against one of their own member states. Nor was the action anchored in the most rock solid of ground when it came to traditional norms associated with the just war concept. Nonetheless, I wrote a paper for that professor entitled, “The Invasion of Grenada: Illegal, Immoral, and the Right Thing to Do.” It was great fun to write, and decent enough to earn an “A” despite a conclusion I know the professor did not share. [Emphasis added]

How can an action be both "immoral" and yet the "right thing to do?" For an altruist that is easy: the results were good but the intentions were tainted by American national self-interest. And any type of self-interest is bad or at least non-good by definition. Clearly, there is much of substance that Gen. Patraeus is in agreement with his old Princeton professor. And it is American troops in Iraq and American security in general that is going to pay the price for their agreement on fundamentals.

Crossposted at The Dougout