In the happy after-glow of the return of the British sailors and marines, one might now ask how this unfortunate event happened.

There appear to have been some fairly egregious failures of seamanship and basic naval force protection doctrine.

During a hostile boarding operation, the small rigid-hull inflatable boat (RHIB) that carries the boarding party is expected to operate under the direct protection of both the “eyes” (the radar and other detection equipment) and the “muscle” (the mixture of small arms and larger weapons) of the principle ship. The boarding party commander (typically a Navy Lt ) leads a mixture of sailors and marines (SEALS if the boarding party is American).

The small RHIB always operates in a manner that keeps it in full view of the home vessel, allowing a clear field of fire for the shooters and maximum observe-ability for the radars and other electronic surveillance equipment. The commander of the boarding party is in continuous and instant radio communication with his/her shooters and the bridge of the home vessel is in continual and instant communication with the commander of the boarding party. If the situation is dicey, a helo from the home vessel flies cover.

The British boarding operation is reported to have failed to observe a critical number of these elementary force protection procedures. The target vessel was close inshore, in relatively shallow waters, so the home vessel stood off at a greater distance than is normal in a hostile boarding.

More significantly, the British RHIB is reported to have approached the target vessel from the side not visible from the home vessel – placing the target vessel in the line-of-sight between the RHIB and its home base shooters. All these mistakes in basic procedure appear to have transpired at a time when the Iranians were known to be setting traps for unwary coalition maritime operators.

The British Navy, while much smaller than our own, is usually characterized by a higher level of individual seamanship than the US Navy and the quality of command at sea is characteristically of the highest order.

We seem to have observed the results of a quite spectacular failure of British Naval leadership – a failure that would certainly have led to the ignominious and instantaneous loss of command in Nelson’s Navy.

JOHN STUART BLACKTON

We were required to keep this card on our person at all times.  To ensure that no local commander could countermand these instructions, the card was signed by the Commander in Chief, President Lyndon Baines Johnson.  

Did a card signed by the president work as perfect prophylaxis against abuse?  Certainly not.  

But it ensured that none of us could hide behind any ambiguity in American policy on torture and abuse.  Prisoner abuse occurred, and, for the most part, abusers were punished under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Perhaps it is time for all Americans to look into this mirror of our former selves.

Do we really believe that the world has changed so much that we do not want our young men and women in Iraq to abide by the principles on that card we all carried in an earlier American war?

Here is what it said on the front and back of that card signed by the Commander in Chief:

The Enemy In Your Hands

As a member of the U.S. Military Forces, you will comply with the Geneva Prisoner of War Conventions of 1949 to which your country adheres. Under these conventions:

You Can And You Will

     Disarm your prisoner

     Immediately search him thoroughly

     Require him to be silent

     Segregate him from other prisoners

     Guard him carefully

You Cannot And Must Not

Mistreat your prisoner

Humiliate or degrade him

Take any of his personal effects which do not have significant military value

Refuse him medical treatment if required and available

1. Handle Him Firmly, Promptly, but Humanely

The captive in your hands must be disarmed, searched, secured, and watched. But he must also be treated at all times as a human being. He must not be tortured, killed, mutilated, or degraded, even if he refuses to talk. If the captive is a woman, treat her with all respect due her sex.

2. Take The Captive Quickly To Security

As soon as possible evacuate the captive to a place of safety and interrogation designated by your commander. Military documents taken from the captive are also sent to the interrogators, but the captive will keep his personal equipment except weapons.

3. Mistreatment Of Any Captive Is A Criminal Offense.

Every Soldier Is Personally Responsible For The Enemy In His Hands

It is both dishonorable and foolish to mistreat a captive. It is also a punishable offense. Not even a beaten enemy will surrender if he knows his captors will torture or kill him. He will resist and make his capture more costly. Fair treatment of captives encourages the enemy to surrender.

4. Treat The Sick And Wounded Captive As Best You Can

The captive saved may be an intelligence source. In any case he is a human being and must be treated like one. The soldier who ignores the sick and wounded degrades his uniform.

5. All Persons In Your Hands, Whether Suspects, Civilians, Or Combat Captives, Must Be Protected Against Violence, Insults, Curiousity, and Reprisals Of Any Kind

Leave punishment to the courts and judges. The soldier shows his strength by his fairness, firmness, and humanity to the persons in his hands.



John Stuart Blackton

Matt Yglesias says of the tendency of internet alternatives (including blogs like TPM) to substitute for the formal reportage of traditional media that  "the downside, however, is that when you have big positive externalities associated with a particular service (in this case original reporting) the consequence is going to be underproduction of the service relative to what would be optimal."

I live in a world where "positive externalities" that "result in overproduction of services" because they are "public goods" are the core elements of the  vocabulary of morning chats around the water cooler.  I appreciate, however, that there are many sophisticated TPM readers who do not use the language of micro-economics to describe their moral universe.

Because Matt's point is so important, indulge me in being  a little didactic and amplifying the concept at the center of his post.  

First the definitions.

Externalities are side effects of production or consumption that impose costs on or provide benefits to third-parties who are not directly involved in the activity.  These can be either negative or positive.  Positive externalities are side-effects that provide benefits to one or more people beyond the producer, while negative externalities harm others.

Free or almost free access to the reporting of the New York Times, the Washpost, and the Daily Telegraph constitute public goods.  A public good is a good that is nonrival in consumption. This means that one person's consumption does not reduce the quantity or quality of the good available to other consumers.

The problem with public goods is that no individual has an incentive to pay for the good. Since it is inefficient, and not always feasible, to exclude people from consuming a public good, people can consume it even if they do not pay for it at all.

In such a situation, each person has an incentive to be a "free rider" and to let others pay for the good. The consequence, therefore, of course, is that the public good will be either underproduced or not produced at all if the provision of such goods were left to the market.

So Matt is saying that with most of us free-riding on the real news reportage of the good gray New York Times, the long term trend will be for there to be less and less of that real reportage produced.

The clever ladies and gents who write blogs at TPM or the WashingtonNote do depend on this important public good.

In the long run, the forces that lead the production of good, real news to decline will also cause the factual quality of blogging to decline.

This is not something that any of us should see as a matter for rejoicing.  I know that many TPM readers enjoy taking potshots at the "MSM".  An even an old curmudgeon like me will concede that the MSM deserves to be taken to task.

But we still need it.  A smarter, more accountable MSM would be better than the one we have.  But allowing the inexorable laws of economics to drive the MSM out of the marketplace will not lead us to some sort of editorial and reportorial Nirvana.

A world of Blogs without professional reportage would be an intellectually sterile place.

I urge all TPM readers to reflect seriously on Matt's underlying point.

John Stuart Blackton

Martin D asked if he was right in his understanding that  Just War theory "was being formulated during the rise of a Christianity that was itself becoming imperial and should therefore be understood in that context as apologetics for and rationalization of attaining power by force.    

I will endeavor to answer Martin's question and to address,  more broadly, the explanation for how we came to undertake an unjust war  (by the standards of Christian Just War Theory) in the name of "Christianity".

To do so requires reviewing a bit of late classical history.  Bear with me.

The origins of Just War Theory lie in the writings of Augustine of Hippo.  Augustine was a Roman, but a colonial Roman.  He was born in what is now Algeria and spent most of his life in North Africa.

He was profoundly interested in the question of how one could reconcile the duties of being a Christian with those of being a Roman Citizen.  Much of his writing addresses the necessity for Christians to obey the secular law of the secular state so long as they don't directly compromise Christian doctrine.

As a North African who rose in the ranks of the Roman system (he eventually garnered the equivalency of a full professorship in Latin Rhetoric at the Roman university in Milan), he was impressed with the institutions of the Roman state.  But this was not a time of great Roman imperial expansion.

Quite the contrary.  When, at the beginning of the fifth century A.D. Rome was sacked, Augustine was at the height of his fame as the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa.

Confronted with the dissolution of the Roman Empire, he was constrained to construct a philosophical framework wherein his Church could survive the challenges facing both Rome and the Christians.   At the center of his argument, Augustine maintained that those subject to Roman rulers must obey them unless they commanded something against a Divine Law.

This is where Just War Theory emerges.  For Augustine war was limited by its purpose, its authority and its conduct.

The only reason for waging a war would be to defend the nation's peace against serious injury.   He wrote, "'A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.'"

The intention of the state in declaring war was crucial for Augustine. He maintained that "the passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, a hostile and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such things, all these are rightly condemned in war."

Augustine emphasized the idea of restoration of peace as the main motive of war.

He said "we do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace."

It may seem odd in 2005, when war-mongering seems to be associated with the "Christian Right" that the foundations of Just War doctrine are embedded in the history of the Church.

The seeming paradox becomes more understandable when one recognizes that all of the modern liturgical churches (Lutherans, Presbyterians, Catholics, Episcopalians, etc) actively apply Just War theory in their view of the world, and all of these liturgical churches officially found that invading Iraq did not meet the test.

It is the non-liturgical churches for whom two millennia of church history and theology have relatively little import when set against the literal interpretation of the Bible (the Evangelicals, the Pentecostals, the Charismatic)  who, in almost every instance ignored Just War theory and rushed to support President  Bush in his march to war.

The Blue/Red divide in America is not unrelated to the divide between the liturgical and non liturgical churches in America. And herein is  at least a part of the explanation for how a nation can make unjust war in the name of "Christianity".

John Stuart Blackton

In the interesting discussion I have had with TPM readers in the last few days about the White Phosporous question, there have been a number of reference to the criteria for Just War.  Just War Theory seems a fitting topic for discussion with friends and family on the day after holiday indulgence.

As most TPM readers no doubt know, the concept of Just War Theory  has its roots in 5th Century Christianity when the Church was finding ways to reconcile itself to the realities of the Roman Empire.

Although it moved gradually into the sphere of humanistic philosophy and ultimately into international law, the roots of Just War  are religious.

It is useful, therefore, to start with the religious formulation, because it has been with us for a millennium-and-a-half, and it is so deeply woven into the fabric of  notions of Western Civilization

The original Christian tests for going to war,  and for the conduct of a war justly entered into, can be simplified to these:

1. Right authority

War can only be waged by a legitimate authority.   At the time Augustine of Hippo first wrote  these principles he meant either a Prince a King.

2. Just cause

A just cause avenges a wrong. Or protects  the innocent.

3. Right intention

A right intention is to be held by those waging war.  (eg this might be read today  to mean Peace, not land or oil)  .  This links with the concept of Discrimination below.

4.  Last Resort

The genuine prospect of of imminent attack

If the decision go to war passes these tests,  the conduct of the war is just only if it adheres to these:

1.. Proportionality

War can only be fought by legitimate means. Means must be proportional.

2.. Discrimination

Respect for the immunity of the innocent and non-combatants.  And in keeping with the prior notion of Right Intention: Showing mercy in victory. Somber regret.

3.. Reasonable hope for success

The debate about the Administration's foundations for going to war, what the Church called Jus Ad Bellum , seems to be taking on new life in Washington.

The debate about our conduct of the war, what Church doctrine terms Jus Ad Bello,  is what has animated the discussion about the recent use of Whote Phosphorous in Fallujah.

Both dimensions of Just War Theory might be suitable grist for Post-Thanksgiving relection.

John Stuart Blackton