That Bridge Explosion

 If there is one certainty in the war in Ukraine, it is that Vladimir Putin will always be sure to re-establish his role—should it be in doubt for even an instant—as premier villain of the piece. Any time the Ukrainian forces do something the least bit morally questionable, Putin will retaliate with terror bombing of civilian targets, thereby swiftly reestablishing the moral balance that has obtained throughout the war. 

Here I was over the weekend feeling somewhat uneasy about the conduct of the Kerch Strait Bridge attack, for instance (still not officially claimed by Ukrainian forces, but believed to be attributable to them); even more so about the flagrantly unlawful, strategically ill-advised, and morally bankrupt assassination of a civilian on Russian soil, which U.S. intelligence reportedly has attributed to Ukrainian forces; but before I could ready any prose on the subject, Putin was sending missiles into residential areas, damaging a kindergarten classroom, and destroying civilian infrastructure projects all over the country, making any alleged Ukrainian misdeeds pale in comparison. 

Still, no matter how repugnant Putin's actions—no matter how illegal, unprovoked, and aggressive his invasion—the people opposing him still have an obligation to obey the international laws of war and not to retaliate for his violence by themselves harming innocent civilians. And in this light, I can't quite welcome the bridge strike that occurred over the weekend. I'm not sure—as we'll come to—that it was ultimately unjustifiable. But I certainly don't have it in me to crow about it, the way many online proponents of the Ukrainian cause have been doing. While there may be a case that the bridge was a legitimate military target, according to the rules of the Geneva Convention, the strike nonetheless took the lives of three people who seem to have been innocent of any culpability for Putin's war.

First of all, was the attack a violation of humanitarian law? The bridge in question certainly served both civilian and military uses, but its strategic importance as a vital supply line for Putin's army likely pushes it into the category of being a military target—defined by Protocol I to the Geneva Convention as an object which, by its "nature, location, purpose or use make[s] an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage." The Kerch Strait Bridge—in context of the present war—seems to meet those criteria. 

Furthermore, this protocol does not absolutely proscribe as unlawful any military act that carries the risk of civilian death. The Convention recognizes that it may not be possible in every circumstance to ensure the safety of civilians who could be harmed incidentally to the destruction of a military target. Therefore, the protocol establishes a rule of proportionality. It prohibits those attacks "which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life [...] which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated." Given the vital importance of the bridge to Putin's war effort, and the relatively small number of casualties from the explosion, there is a plausible case to be made that it was a lawful strike. 

Still, though, the method by which the attack was carried out should make all of us queasy. It is known that the truck that carried the explosive material was not unmanned. The driver of the vehicle died in the blast. Did he volunteer for the task? Did he know he was transporting such a deadly payload? The New York Times reports that we do not yet know. Either possibility is distasteful. 

If he did know—and willingly signed up for the task—then this was a suicide bombing. We shouldn't be afraid to call it that, just because we are sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause. (Indeed, as Robert Pape has found through extensive empirical study, a suicide bombing in the name of national liberation and territorial autonomy would be fully in line with the usual motivation behind such attacks). And if the driver didn't know what he was doing or agree to be a part of it, then it was something even worse: a murder bombing. Nor was the driver the only person killed. At least two other people driving on the bridge that day—most likely civilians—were also killed in the blast. 

If the strike was probably a lawful one, therefore, that does not necessarily mean it was also a morally ideal one. And even—or especially—if we feel that it was a necessary or at least justifiable evil, then we should still have the dignity not to crow about it. We should not gloat over an act that took the lives of several innocent people. 

Some no doubt will feel that such concerns are mere squeamishness—the kind of liberal bellyaching that gets in the way of any military necessity. War is hell, they will say, even when waged on behalf of a just cause, and those who want it to be fought according to the utmost standards of decency and the protection of innocent life are simply misunderstanding the nature of the beast. As such, they are worse than useless to the struggle. 

Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry, for instance, explores this theme. As a bespectacled war correspondent plunged  into the midst of a conflict being fought primarily by illiterate Cossack horsemen, Babel's autobiographical narrator contends with his own feelings of inadequacy at being unable to contribute more directly to the war effort. He lacerates himself inwardly for what he perceives as his own physical cowardice and squeamishness about violence, while the proletarian warriors he idealizes reprove him outwardly for the same failing. As one of the them puts it: 

"You're a driveller and it's our bad luck to have to put up with you drivellers... The whole Party is wearing aprons that are smeared with blood and shit, we peel the shell from the kernel for you; after a little time has passed you will see that shelled kernel, and then you will take your finger out of your nose and will sing the glories of the new life in remarkable prose; but for the moment sit quiet, driveller, and don't whine in our way..." (McDuff translation). 

Many readers of Babel have emphasized the apparently conflicted nature of the protagonist's viewpoint. He longs to establish himself as a man of action—a worthy servant of the proletarian cause—but he is hindered by his intellectual and moral scruples. McDuff's introduction to the Penguin edition leans on this interpretation. Italo Calvino read Babel in this light as well. As he states in the preface to his own classic novel of wartime experience, The Path to the Spiders' Nests, he felt a sense of identification—as a young Italian partisan in the anti-fascist cause facing physical danger and conflict for the first time—with Babel's account of "an intellectual's encounter with revolutionary violence."

I have to say, though, that in reading Babel I find him to come across as less inwardly conflicted than these readings would suggest. He may quite genuinely feel the inadequacy of his own physical and moral capacity for violence—but by the same token, he seems to sincerely wish to overcome this barrier, and his desire in this respect comes across as wholly uncomplicated. If he does not find himself able to commit violence, in other words, he really wants to. 

His stories are full of morally one-dimensional revolutionary parables bearing little resemblance to life, and even fewer signs of genuine intellectual or moral qualms about the legitimacy of Bolshevik atrocities. He shows us idealized Cossacks, for instance, who bow their heads with rugged good sense to hear the speeches of Lenin read aloud from Pravda. He portrays women absconding with salt who are shot as traitors after being thrown off of trains, and Babel's attitude—as judged from the propagandizing speeches on the subject he puts in the mouths of his characters—is to whole-heartedly approve of such stern measures. 

With historical hindsight—including knowledge of what ultimately befell Babel himself under the Soviet regime he served, after Stalin took power—none of these revolutionary maxims has aged well. The justification from "necessity" of revolutionary violence seems especially unconvincing. See the proletarian's speech above about "drivellers" and bleeding hearts who want to enjoy the "kernel" without having to participate in the dirty work—i.e., the revolutionary violence—that it takes to pry it loose from the husk. This is all far less persuasive from the standpoint of our present historical position, when we can see that the brutality of the Cheka and the Red Army of the 1920s were not in fact preparing the way for any noble "new life" after all, were not in fact building anything that would last or come to any good. All that violence—we now know—was for nothing. 

And so, to those who resent intellectuals and moralizers for being of little use to a war effort, I reply with the same sentiment I expressed in the previous post: I would rather be useless than useful to an end that I'm not sure really deserves to triumph. Some of us—it may be true—simply can't bring ourselves, as Larry Slade puts it in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, to "wear blinders like a horse," to say that "this is all black, and that is all white." Instead, we are cursed to "see all sides of a question," to "look [...] with pity at the two sides of everything"—in short, to borrow Robert Lowell's phrase—to "pity the monsters." But is that worse than being pitiless? 

Such an attitude—such a capacity to be arrested by pity, to feel pity even for the enemy—is a terrible trait in a warrior. But I have no wish to be a warrior, and I will choose pity every time. No doubt it renders me useless for any armed struggle. But I would rather be useless than useful to the business of killing. I don't want any part of strikes that harm civilians, even if there is a case to be made that they were lawful. I'd rather be a "driveller," at last, than a murderer.