Derek: 00:06

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are continuing our discussion on the incoherence of just war theory by taking a look at discrimination or otherwise known as civilian safety. Just a reminder that this episode may not be up to the audio quality that some of the other episodes were, so please excuse that and hopefully it sounds okay. Alright. So civilian safety is a is a very big deal for most people when it comes to just war.

Derek: 00:41

We do not want civilians targeted, and we want to make sure that we do what we can to preserve the life of innocence. But of course, as I hope you've seen in in the first three tenets of Just War Theory, civilian safety is going to fail just like the rest of them. In fact, I think it's it's one of the areas that is perhaps the most problematic for Just War. I think the first problem you run into is this the definition of who a non combatant or a civilian is. You know, who is a combatant?

Derek: 01:19

Are factory workers combatants? The what about the person who makes the missiles? Yeah. It seems like they they would count. Right?

Derek: 01:30

I can bomb the missile factory. But what about the the the factory that makes the chips for the missiles? Yeah, probably because that's the guidance system that would take them to where they need to go. But what about the factory that makes the plastic for the the chips and missiles? What about the mines that harvest the the metals for the chips and missiles?

Derek: 01:56

What about the farms that provide the food for the workers at the factories that provide the plastics or the chips or the missiles. Now you kind of get the point. A society is is very interconnected and so when you start to try to figure out who a noncombatant is, it sort of fails because if if you're just going to say, Who who is participating in the war machine? And that's going to be everybody. I mean, just about everybody.

Derek: 02:32

But then when you say who, if you wanna redefine it and say, no, only people who are actively carrying weapons who are going to shoot at me. Well, when you when you bomb a a base in in some place, you might kill some some combatants, but you're gonna kill a lot of secretaries and cooks and other sorts of people who really aren't aren't out to kill you. You might say, well, yeah, but they've, you know, they've been trained and they might, you know, if they were given the chance, if we invaded their base, they would shoot me if they had the chance. Okay, but so would a lot of the regular citizens, so would a lot of the citizens, at least in The United States, a lot of the citizens would do the same even if they're not soldiers. Now the factory workers or the miners who are who are getting the metals for the chips to make the missiles, and they've got guns in their home, and you come here and you're gonna get shot by quote civilians or quote non combatants.

Derek: 03:39

And there was a quote that just came to mind, and I I can't remember what it was, but I know I've seen it usually from from my conservative friends who who like this idea of being so armed because it it protects us. Something about, like, I think it was the Japanese who said, you know, invading The United States would be crazy because there's a gun behind every blade of grass. Something to that extent. The point was whoever said this about invading America or even if if it was just one of those fake Facebook things that pop up, everybody knows it's true that there's so many guns in The United States and so many people willing to use them that to invade would would be a high cost not simply because of our military but just because of our citizenry, our armed citizenry. So who's a combatant?

Derek: 04:29

It seems like everybody is pretty much a combatant, at least in The United States. Everybody pretty much is a combatant, where I would go in with that assumption. You know, white conservative evangelicals want to defend all of the police shootings with this idea that, well, you know, I can understand how the police officer thought that the guy might have had a gun. So, I mean, he he kinda thought he did, so he was justified in shooting him. If that's the case, then it seems like anybody who invades The United States would be justified in shooting pretty much everybody because there is a gun behind every blade of grass.

Derek: 05:08

There are tons of guns in The United States and the rhetoric here is that we're all or most of us willing to use them. Now if if we are against indiscriminate killing, then another thing that's really difficult for you to explain on on this tenet of Just War Theory is the idea of blockades and sanctions. I would say, you know, I could probably understand sanctions a little bit more, but blockades preventing a country from getting resources, particularly food. And this happened in World War I as there was a blockade against Germany and lots of people, lots of people starved to death and faced terrible agony. And the rationale is, hey, we can end the war more quickly if the people don't get their food, right?

Derek: 06:04

So we essentially created or facilitated a famine. And we could talk about well what rights do states have in trading with nations have in trading with each other and all of that stuff, but this wasn't even us choosing to trade or not trade with somebody, this was a prevention of a country getting goods from other countries. Now sure, I'm I I believe that Germany would have been receiving other materials that were important for the war, perhaps arms and ammunition, but how do you justify a blockade of food? That's that's indiscriminate killing. And okay, you might not be actively killing somebody per se, but your goal is to prevent people from eating so that they turn on their own government.

Derek: 06:57

And that seems to be difficult to explain how such a thing is is justified. That's Indiscriminate Killing. Like I said, sanctions essentially do the same thing. I mean, of the reason North Korea is where it is, is sure, the dictatorship is just absolutely evil and selfish and all that, but sanctions also don't help the situation. Now we could argue whether if if there weren't sanctions, would the goods still get to the people or would they just be hoarded by the elite?

Derek: 07:31

Yeah, I don't know the answer to that But and that's why I'm not really gonna be a stickler on sanctions as much. But I think it is something that we need to think about. Another thing is that it seems like there is a double standard on this idea of civilian safety or discrimination because now my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, I just last year saw a document about their stance on nuclear weapons and they while they don't like them in one sense, they think that they're legitimate and and should be, an option on the table. And from what I gathered, the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are approved by my own denomination and by by most conservative Christians. That to me seems to be a a huge problem.

Derek: 08:27

You know, how do you how do you say that the atomic bomb that we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed mostly civilians, if there is such a thing as civilians, but then in the Vietnam War or, when we have these massacres of women and children, that that that really is worse, even though in the one you killed tens of thousands of civilians and on the other there were only 30 or 40. In both cases, you know that you are going in with the intention of killing lots of civilians. And perhaps in the one, okay, you kill military people too, but the people in Vietnam thought with all of the guerrilla warfare that they probably were killing some guerrillas as well. Some, like spies or or, NVA that were hidden in the village. As long as there's a chance that somebody is a combatant in any loose sense of the word, when you massacre people that are likely civilians, how are you not justified in doing that?

Derek: 09:33

And even if you're wrong, even if you do kill only civilians, even if there aren't any secret actors in that group who are combatants. How do you how do you avoid saying that such a thing is good? Because if you go slaughter a bunch of civilians like we did with the a bomb, isn't that possible that it'll end the war more quickly with our shock and awe campaign there, just slaughtering civilians. And if you're willing to do blockades to starve a whole population of people, isn't going in and slaughtering small groups really not that big of a deal? And if your justification for going to war is based on God's permissiveness towards war in the Old Testament, then once again we come back to this issue of how do you not justify the killing of men, women, children, animals, and taking rape victims for wives and and slaves and all of that stuff?

Derek: 10:31

How do you how do you bring one component of the Old Testament war with you but not the other? Not the others. If the New Testament does not limit violence and war, then certainly it doesn't limit those other things because the only place you really get violence and warfare is in in Romans 13 which we've talked about in in season one, and why that's a problem to accept that as something for Christians. But nowhere nowhere does the does the New Testament prohibit any of these these other actions that are extremely problematic for Christians today who would who would never accept such things, and they recognize them as wrong. Know, for me, who says, hey, look, the New Testament, even if you think God allowed and commanded violence in the Old Testament, he very clearly, very explicitly says in the New Testament that that's not for us today.

Derek: 11:33

He says it through Jesus, both his words and Jesus' example in life, and he says it through through Peter and first Peter specifically. He says it through Paul in Romans and other places. So I can say those are not things that should be accepted today. If they were ever good things, they were they were good in the sense that God knew what he was doing and allowed those things or or even commanded some of those things because God has the right to life. Now I could say that, but for you to say today that God's continuation of violence is here and you can't point out how any of these other atrocious things are prohibited today, then I have a hard time understanding your biblical theological rationale for for your puritanical idea of how we should conduct war today because it seems like war should be a lot more bloody and violent and winner takes all if we're gonna draw from the Old Testament.

Derek: 12:45

Another problem, and this is this is more specific to most modern wars, and that is are we really able to identify non state actors in modern era? This probably started with, you know, largely with Vietnam for us, at least for The United States. But when you go to a place, it's it really isn't clear who combatants are and who civilians or non combatants are. It just isn't clear because it's not like you're going to war with people who have two different uniforms, you're going to war with gorillas and and those who are hiding and secretive and dressing like non combatants. So is it really possible to to have a a high degree of of non combatant safety today?

Derek: 13:33

And I I don't think it is. A final question and this is this is definitely going to be one that that is more of a legitimate question rather than a pointed question because I don't necessarily know the answer to it. But my question is does war really protect more civilian lives overall? And take into consideration here, you know, even not only during the war but also after the war. I mean, after World War one, World War two, there were all sorts of famines that that were experienced by various countries due to logistics of goods and the the decimation of war and the up turning of of lives of people who had to stop farming and just just all kinds of things.

Derek: 14:24

So we've got famines that are results of war, we've got unexploded ordinances and mines, I mean all all kinds of things diseases, people wounded, people with mental mental issues, psychosis coming out of the wars because of the things that they experience, both soldiers who survive without maybe even any any physical wounds, but as well as citizens who endure bombings and and other horrors. In fact, we know that in I don't know exactly, I don't know all wars, but all of the major ones that I've looked into, the civilian casualty rate compared to the combatant casualty rate is just grossly, grossly higher. I want to say in World War II, without the stats here right in front of me at the moment, it was at least fifty percent non combatant casualty rate, and I wanna say something like three quarters of people killed. It might have even been been worse than that. I don't, know exactly.

Derek: 15:27

But I do know it's not an insignificant number. You've got lots and lots and lots of non combatants who are killed. And of course, we can ask the question, well, does does war ultimately protect more noncombatant lives? Does it does it ultimately protect more lives? And that's difficult to tell because because it's a hypothetical.

Derek: 15:51

Now in World War two, had we, The United States, not gone to war, what would the landscape look like? Certainly, Hitler would have continued the concentration camps and he would have done terrible things and killed quite a number of people. It might be that Russia and Germany would have fought and they would have kind of decimated each other and that would have been a lot of lives there. And then but then maybe we wouldn't have had communism and the spread of communism because of Russia and Germany would have just duked it out with each other. Maybe we would have had more maybe we would have had a movement like we see if you listen to the podcast series City of Refuge in this this small French village where they saved 5,000 lives, and we see other great acts of courage of noncombatants in Denmark and Bulgaria and these other places that just resisted nonviolently.

Derek: 16:58

Would would there have been a a turning point where those sorts of resistance movements, especially if Russia and Germany would have duked it out and Germany would have started to lose power, would those resistance movements have taken on and and spread further? Because we know at least in some countries like Denmark, it was impacting some of the higher up Germans there. What would it have been like if instead of putting our money into war, The United States would have accepted Jewish immigrants and other immigrants rather than turning so many away? How many lives could we have saved by by putting our war money towards humanitarian aid rather than than killing other people? And you know, I I really don't know the numbers game and I don't even know that the numbers overall matter because I don't think it's all about numbers and result, it's more about how you act.

Derek: 18:06

And I think Denmark is is maybe one of the prime examples here because the way that they acted influenced people to change in in the Nazi regime, it influenced people. And what would our world look like had Germany and and Russia duked it out, had communism not spread, had The United States taken in many many refugees and spent so much money on humanitarian aid rather than on building up a war machine? And what would our world look like when that was our philosophy of resisting and loving and accepting and helping even at great sacrifice to ourselves? I don't know. But there wouldn't have been a Dresden.

Derek: 18:52

There wouldn't have been a Nagasaki and Hiroshima. There may not have been a Vietnam War without communism. There may not have been a Korean War. There may not have been a nuclear arms race. There may not have been a Cold War.

Derek: 19:07

We may not have had all the proxy wars that we've had using third world or developing countries as as our battlegrounds and using their lives. I just don't know. But I think it's a good question to ask and I think it would be interesting if somebody would want to pursue this kind of research and you can definitely research how many lives were killed as a result of famines, what were some of the chain reactions of World War two because it doesn't just end in 1945. We have famines, unexploded ordinances, We have the perpetuation of communism through through Russia, and I'm sure there were other factors besides what happened in Russia. But yeah.

Derek: 19:51

It's just it's so much more complicated than, well, if we didn't go to war, Hitler would have just killed everybody. You know, it's way more complicated than that. There's so many other factors and it's it's just interesting to think about if war really protects more people as most people just assume it does. And I think that's an assumption that may sometimes be true, but I think oftentimes it's more complicated than that and it probably isn't true. I think you can just take a look at, Why Civil Resistance Works as well as some of, some of the other books by like Gene Sharp which talks about the lasting effects of war that perpetuate violence and why nonviolence tends to solve things with more finality.

Derek: 20:44

Well, that's all for now. So peace. And because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.