Wrong Slogan

 In the long weeks when Trump was telegraphing his coming Iran war, I argued against the idea of bombing another country on moral grounds. I said: the United States has no right under international law or justice to invade a country without any plausible theory of self-defense from an imminent threat. Nor did our government have any right to undertake an action that was so obviously fraught with risks to human life on both sides. 

But what I didn't emphasize so much was the strategic or prudential case against going to war—largely because that's not the kind of thing I'm so good at thinking about. I didn't realize it would be such a disaster to the U.S. government from a purely self-interested standpoint too. I didn't realize it would play so terribly with Trump's own audience in opinion polling. I didn't realize that bombing Iran could upset the whole global economy. And so, now that all those things have come to pass, I feel I missed a chance to say "I told you so." 

But then again, we're still only in the early weeks of this war. And Trump is already plainly looking for a way to back out so long as he can claim a token victory. Improbable as it seems, maybe he will somehow TACO his way out of this yet again. Right-wing influencers will switch back to praising him. And the markets will reset like none of this happened. It seems hard to imagine that happening—given the carnage in oil prices and what experts are saying about lasting damage to the market; but who ever said the markets (or anything else in this universe) had to respond rationally to Trump? 

But even if markets smooth out and this murderous war turns out to cause barely a blip in the world's economic course—it would still be wrong. All the moral reasons not to go to war would still hold true. In just the first hours of the war, after all, the U.S. military appears to have flattened an Iranian school, killing 165 children. That's wrong for reasons that have nothing to do with oil prices. Let us recall item #5 on Wendell Berry's "Questionnaire": 

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,

     the energy sources, the kinds of security,

     for which you would kill a child.

     Name, please, the children whom

     you would be willing to kill. 

So that's the problem with making purely "economic" or self-interested arguments against war: they miss the point. And—given that they miss the point—they allow people to argue back from the opposite side of the question on false grounds. See, for instance, Bret Stephens's piece in the New York Times yesterday, in which he declares that "The War is Going Better Than You Think." The burden of it is: what's wrong with you crybabies? You can't handle a few weeks of elevated oil prices? Look at the sacrifices people had to bear in any prior war! What do you have to complain about?

And indeed, if this war had been somehow righteous or justified, then a little turmoil on the oil and stock markets would be a small price to pay. That would not in itself be a reason not to do it. The real reason not to start this war is that it was a murderous war of aggression that has already claimed thousands of lives. And Stephens doesn't even feel the need to mention these. Not a word is dropped for the 165 Iranian children killed in that school. And why should he say anything about them, if our only argument against the war was that it was bad for our bottom-line? 

The Chinese philosopher Mencius once advised against using self-interested or prudential arguments to oppose war, for precisely this reason: it enables people to dodge the main issue. It gets them focused on the wrong question—their own profit-motive—rather than the human and moral consequences of what they propose to undertake. Here's the relevant passage from the D.C. Lau translation: 

Sung K'eng was on his way to Ch'u. Mencius, meeting him at Shih Ch'iu, asked him, "Where are you going, sir?"

"I heard that hostilities had broken out between Ch'in and Ch'u. I am going to see the king of Ch'u and try to persuade him to bring an end to them. If I fail to find favour with the king of Ch'u I shall go to see the king of Ch'in and try to persuade him instead. I hope I shall have success with one or other of the two kings."

"I do not wish to know the details, but may I ask about the gist of your argument? How are you going to persuade the kings?"

"I shall explain to them the unprofitability of war."

"Your purpose is lofty indeed, but your slogan is wrong. If you place profit before the kings of Ch'in and Ch'u, and they call off their armies because they are drawn to profit, then it means that the soldiers in their armies retire because they are drawn to profit. If a subject, in serving his prince, cherished the profit motive, and a son, in serving his father, and a younger brother, in serving his elder brother, did likewise, then it would mean that in their mutual relations, prince and subject, father and son, elder brother and younger brother, all cherished the profit motive to the total exclusion of morality. The prince of such a state is sure to perish. If, on the other hand, you placed morality before the kings of Ch'in and Ch'u and they called off their armies because they were drawn to morality, then it would mean that the soldiers in their armies retired because they were drawn to morality. If a subject in serving his prince, cherished morality, and a son, in serving his father, and a younger brother, in serving his elder brother, did likewise, then it would mean that in their mutual relations, prince and subject, father and son, elder brother and younger brother, all cherished morality to the exclusion of profit. The prince of such a state is sure to become a true King. What is the point of mentioning the word 'profit'?"

Indeed, there is no point in mentioning the word "profit" when it comes to war. 

Of course, I still think it's true that this war will continue to be an economic disaster for the world and the United States. It will continue to prove to be bad on purely prudential grounds too, that is to say. It will continue to be a disaster from the standpoint of military strategy, chances of lasting victory or geopolitical advantage for the United States, and Trump's political success at home. 

But even if it doesn't—even if Trump today or tomorrow somehow cuts the "deal" he wants that he can take home and show around as a supposed victory, and the markets stir from their current daze and march right along—this war was still wrong. It was wrong for reasons having nothing to do with markets and energy and economics. It was wrong regardless of whether or not there was a sound military strategy behind it or whether it made Trump look good in the polls. It was wrong because it killed the innocent.

Take the current Israeli policy of ordering civilians out of certain areas in Lebanon to create, in effect, "free fire zones," where anyone left on the ground is fair game (much as they did in the early months of the Gaza war). 

That's a policy that's wrong for reasons having nothing to do with whether it "works" or not to achieve Israel's military goals. As the philosopher Brian Barry once wrote in a scathing book review, "The concept of a 'free fire zone,' [...] could appropriately be the subject of black comedy or bitter invective but not dispassionate analysis." 

Harold Pinter, asked in a 1966 Paris Review interview for his thoughts on politics and the Vietnam war, had this to say: "The other night I watched some politicians on television talking about Vietnam. I wanted very much to burst through the screen with a flamethrower and burn their eyes out and their balls off and then inquire from them how they would assess this action from a political point of view. " 

His point being that the "politics" of war—how it will fare at the polls, how it will affect gas prices—are really missing the point. Ask someone who's burned up with napalm what they think about gas prices. Ask an Iranian child crushed to death by falling debris in their own classroom what they think about how the war is going, and whether Trump will be able to get oil flowing again through the Strait of Hormuz. 

Our answer to Wendell Berry's questionnaire—quoted above—should of course be that oil prices, gas prices, opinion polling etc. should not be worth killing a child over. That—not the "unprofitability of war"—as Mencius's interlocutor put it—is the real reason we should oppose this war.