Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E64: The Morality of War w/ Dr. Robert George

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E64: The Morality of War w/ Dr. Robert George · The Lila Rose Show

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  Israel cannot make, as the object of its act, the revenge
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  of simply killing innocent people to make up for the
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  killing of their innocent people.
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  Hey guys, welcome back to the Lila Rose podcast.
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  Today we're going to be exploring some big questions.
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  Is war just? Is any war just?
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  What would make a war just or unjust?
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  What is a war crime if a civilian dies, an innocent
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  civilian dies in war, is that always a war crime?
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  What about the Israeli Gaza conflict?
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  What about the accusations coming from both sides that war
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  crimes are being committed? We're going to explore these
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  questions and more in this very important episode with Doctor
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  Robert George. Doctor Robert George is a
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  professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and has
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  been there for several decades. He's also an ethicist, A
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  bioethicist, and has served on the President's Council of
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  Bioethics. He has written multiple books
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  and has been a scholar that has traveled the world speaking on
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  moral issues. He's someone that I admire for a
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  lot of his work in the pro-life movement and he has worked
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  carefully on the just war issue, exploring how do we as
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  Christians think about war and how does any person of goodwill
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  and reason think about war, especially in this era of Modern
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  All right, well, I'm so delighted to have Doctor Robbie
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  George on the podcast today. And we're going to get into some
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  really important topics, including just war theory.
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  Doctor George, thanks for joining.
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  Oh, it's a pleasure, Lala. Always good to be with you.
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  So you have extensive background on moral philosophy and
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  theology. You are a McCormick Professor of
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  jurisprudence at Princeton and you've also served on the
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  President's Council of Bioethics.
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  You're an author. You've done so much work on on
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  these issues. So would love to 1st hear any
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  more background you have in your study of just war theory and
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  really the the morality around war.
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  Well, my areas of scholarship and teaching are philosophy of
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  law, moral and political philosophy, bioethics, and civil
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  liberties. So as you can see, Just War
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  theory touches all of those subjects in in one way or
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  another. I've been working on these
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  issues for my entire 39 years as an academic.
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  I started in the fall of 1985 at at at Princeton, and I've been
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  here ever since, and my teaching has been in precisely those
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  areas. Unfortunately, there are always
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  very pressing issues. I say unfortunately, because of
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  course they are life and death issues, and wouldn't it be
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  lovely if we didn't have to deal with life and death problems?
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  But we do. And their whole bodies of
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  thought bodies, bodies of scholarship, schools of thought
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  and philosophy dedicated to trying to think our way through
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  the ethics of of life and death, including life and death and
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  warfare. So let's start with just war
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  theory. What is it and where it
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  originated? It's a body of thought about two
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  things, really. What justifies going to war?
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  Where going to war is justified, if it ever can be justified?
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  And then how can even in a justified war, how can decent
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  people who are in charge of defending a population by force
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  of arms conduct themselves in the conduct of the war in a way
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  that is morally upright, in a way that is just?
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  So there's there are two real questions here. 1 is the justice
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  of going to war, what justifies that, if anything?
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  And then, second, what is justified and unjustified in
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  prosecuting a war? And what's the where did these?
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  Where did this theory first originate?
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  It of course they thought about justice generally, including
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  justice in the in the use of force goes all the way back into
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  antiquity, both the the the Greek and Roman thinkers, for
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  example. And also, of course there are
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  some reflections that are contained in the Hebrew
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  revelation and among Jewish thinkers.
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  So the two streams that have been the principal feeding
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  streams of of Western philosophy taken Athens, in Rome, on the
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  one side of Jerusalem on the other, have fed thought in this
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  area as well. Probably the most important
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  early Christian thinker, the most important thinker of
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  antiquity on these questions is Saint Augustine, who really
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  begins to wrestle in a serious way with the question of what is
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  justified and unjustified when it comes to going to war and
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  then in conducting a war. He he's really deeper in his
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  thought about these questions than anyone who went before.
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  And much of what has come to be known as Just War theory was
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  developed on the foundation of what what Augustine originally
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  put into place. So what contributions are
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  potentially unique contributions, would you say
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  that Christianity, you know, via Augustine initially made to the
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  the thought that had already been developed over the years in
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  antiquity? Well, I I wouldn't say
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  necessarily that Christianity makes a unique contribution.
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  It builds on and develops what comes before from those those
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  streams from, you know, Greece and Rome on the one side of
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  Jerusalem on the other side. But the basic idea here, which
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  Christianity profoundly affirms, is that human life has intrinsic
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  and not merely instrumental value, that each and every
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  member of the human family is the bearer of profound, inherent
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  and equal dignity. Everyone's life is precious, no
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  matter how weak, poor, dilapidated, no matter social
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  status, no matter race, no matter ethnicity, no matter sex.
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  Everyone's life is precious and equally precious.
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  And the roots of that, rather obviously are in the teaching of
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  the very first, very first chapter of the very first book
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  in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Genesis, where we're taught that
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  the human being, unlike the brewed animals, unlike anything
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  else in creation, the human being, though made from the mere
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  dust of the earth, is nevertheless fashion in the very
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  image and likeness of the divine creator and ruler of all that is
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  in the very image and likeness of of God.
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  And so Jewish thinkers and then Christian thinkers wrestle with
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  what that means. Lila, Well, how are we God like
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  if if that's the source of our fundamental dignity and our
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  equality, how are we God like? Well, it can't be that God has
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  five fingers on each of two hands and hair on his head and a
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  nose. God is immaterial.
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  So it's got to be something else.
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  Well, what is it? The great thinkers of these
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  traditions have settled on the idea that what is God like about
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  us are our powers of reason and freedom.
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  The things that really distinguish us from the brute
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  animals. Even the most intelligent of the
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  brute animals, dolphins and rhesus monkeys and and pigs,
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  which turned out actually to be quite intelligent creatures, but
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  they lack freedom of the will and rationality in the sense
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  that we find God exercising rationality from the very
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  beginning in the Bible, from Genesis 1.
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  And that is the ability, exercising the capacity to
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  envisage states of affairs that do not exist, to understand the
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  intelligible point, the value, the worth of bringing them into
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  existence. And then acting not on impulse
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  or instinct like a brewed animal, but rather freely on
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  reasons one has to bring states of affairs into existence, to
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  bring those states of affairs into existence.
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  At at each stage in the creation story, you'll recall, God looks
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  at what He creates and sees that it is good.
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  Now God's not surprised. Let me let you know a little
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  secret. God's not surprised to find out
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  that they are good. Actually, God created them
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  because He understood it would be good for them to exist,
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  whether it's the birds of the air or the fish of the sea or
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  the highest, the crown of His creation in here on earth.
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  And that is mankind made in His very image and and likeness.
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  So as image bearers, we all have profound, inherent and equal
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  dignity. All of our lives are precious.
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  So Just war theory begins from that herb principle, as I call
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  it of all sound ethics, the principle of the profound,
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  inherent and equal dignity of each and every member of the
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  human family. But sometimes we face situations
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  where acting for the sake of something important will, or at
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  least is likely to result in harm and even death to somebody.
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  Is that ever permissible? That's the question that of
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  course we've got to answer. And specifically for the topic
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  at hand today, is that ever permissible when it comes to
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  self-defense or defense of innocent third parties?
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  And here Saint Augustine and then building on Saint
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  Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas in the High Middle Ages and the
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  the, the great thinkers of the Christian tradition since the
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  the Papal Magisterium, the teaching of the Pope's have all
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  focused on developing this line of thought, trying to figure out
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  when the use of force is justified and unjustified and
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  what kind of force can be used legitimately in prosecuting a
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  just war. So the tradition is not
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  pacifistic strictly speaking. Now there are Christian sects
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  that are pacifistic. The Burderhoff for example.
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  I have great respect for them and in justifying their
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  pacifism, they would just point to the example of Jesus who says
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  turn the other cheek. If if someone slaps you on one
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  cheek, turn the other cheek. If someone takes your your
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  cloak, give them your robe as well.
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  They're not without an argument, our pacifist fellow Christians.
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  But the Catholic tradition has not opted for pacifism, strictly
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  speaking. It's rather held that when it
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  comes to war, and in some other areas, it is sometimes
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  permissible to perform an act that will foreseeably result in
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  harm or even death to another for the sake of a justifiable
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  end. Where death is outside the scope
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  of intention of the actor, Where your real goal here is not
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  getting a person dead, but where death is an unavoidable side
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  effect of the otherwise justifiable act.
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  This has been formalized in something that philosophers call
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  the principle of double effect, that sometimes the same act will
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  have two effects, the good one that is desired and the bad one
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  that is, is not desired. Whether or not you use the
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  language of double effect, what matters here is the intentional
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  structure of a choice. Self-defense has been justified
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  by Saint Augustine, by Saint Thomas Aquinas, by the papal
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  Magisterium, by the teachings of the Church, has been justified
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  on the ground that in defending ourselves against an unjust
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  attack or defending a third party against an unjust attack
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  on that third party, we're not, strictly speaking, seeking the
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  death of the assailant. We're trying to stop the attack.
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  We're trying to defend the innocent from the unjustified
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  attack. If we can do that without
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  killing the person, then our obligation is to do that.
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  If the only way we can do that is by performing an act which
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  foreseeable will result in his death, then we're justified in
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  doing that. Not because we're intending the
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  death. Again, strictly speaking, if we
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  closely analyze the intentional structure of the choice, but
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  because we're willing to accept the death as a side effect of an
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  otherwise justified act, everything in this domain
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  depends on the goodness of the will.
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  It depends on the intention. The basic idea can be captured
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  this way. You can never use another person
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  as a mere means. Persons are ends in themselves.
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  They're not mere means. And so, for example, even where
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  you're justified in stopping an assailant by the use of
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  potentially deadly force, let's say you shoot at someone
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  attacking an innocent third party.
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  Let's say you shoot at an Hamas terrorist who's attacking a baby
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  and you think you're going to kill him and you knock him down
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  and you disable him, but you don't kill him.
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  You can now capture him. So the question is, well, can I
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  finish him off? Can I kill him because he's a
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  bad guy because he was attacking this baby?
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  And here the tradition and the teaching of the church says no,
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  that is directly willing his death, and you can't do that.
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  So if you've disabled him, you've achieved everything that
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  you legitimately sought to achieve without actually killing
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  him. So you can't just finish him
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  off. You're not justified in killing
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  him. That's why the Catholic
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  tradition has always said that you can never embrace, even in
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  justified warfare, a take no prisoners philosophy that you're
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  just going to kill every, every, every enemy combatant.
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  Now there's another and related principle here, Lila, that it's
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  important for people to understand, to understand, and
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  that's the principle of noncombatant immunity.
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  Even again, where you're justified in using force against
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  an unjust aggressor, you cannot attack the aggressing side's
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  civilian population. Now here again, sometimes the
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  death deaths of innocent civilians or other harm to
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  innocent civilians short of death will be an unavoidable
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  side effect of an act or choice that has as its precise object
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  not the death of those non combatants, but rather stopping
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  the assailant. And those can be justified.
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  And we'll we'll talk in a minute about some considerations that
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  will bear on whether it's justified.
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  We're going to get into something called
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  proportionality. But lay that aside for a minute.
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  Right now, I'm just making the point that sometimes a justified
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  act to stop an aggressor will have bad consequences, including
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  sometimes lethal consequences for innocent third parties in
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  the aggressor's community. And that can sometimes be
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  justified because, again, you're not intending death, strictly
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  speaking. That is, you're not intending
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  death as an end, and you're not intending death as a means to an
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  end. You're in this third category of
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  volition, not intending as in not intending as means, but
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  accepting as a side effect of another was justified act.
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  Now, to some people that's going to sound like nitpicking and
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  like excuse making and, you know, fancy philosophical
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  justifications for using violence, which really should
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  never be used to to strict pacifists.
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  That's the way it sounds. But I myself think the church is
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  right about this. I think the tradition is right
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  about this. We're we're, we're right to
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  defend innocent people even by the force of arms.
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  But there are moral norms that bear on when and how we do that.
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  So to clarify the distinctions here, and I know you're going to
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  get to proportionality, you know it can't be for retribution.
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  So no, just wars fought for retribution.
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  Well, can we stop right there, Lisa Lila, just for a minute?
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  Well, this is a change in the tradition that is relatively
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  recent. So if we go back to the early
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  period of the development of the theory, to Augustine's time and
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  forward for many, many centuries, many leading
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  authorities believe that war could be justified in a
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  self-defense or defense of a third party and B, for punitive
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  purposes, to punish an unjust aggressor.
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  And now there were also norms about what you could do to
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  punish an unjust aggressor, but war was considered at least
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  potentially legitimate as a form of retribution in the sense of
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  punishment. And purely punishment, no
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  rehabilitation. Intended here purely punishment,
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  yeah. Bit of an eye for an eye
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  mentality with that, with that secondary potential
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  justification for for. Adjusting well, well,
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  retribution even in this period I'm talking about has to be
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  distinguished from revenge. So, so a a retributive war is
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  not a war of revenge. It's not an eye for an eye or a
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  tooth for a tooth. It's it's aim is not emotional
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  satisfaction. That's what revenge is all about
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  it's to restore an order of justice allegedly distorted by
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  the unjust aggressors act of of aggression.
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  That's that's the classic retributive justification for
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  criminal punishment and it's embraced by the church to this
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  day as the justification for for criminal criminal punishment.
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  And in earlier times it was thought to be a justification of
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  potentially legitimate justification for war.
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  But the 20th century Pope's have very strongly moved away from
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  that and have limited justified war to wars of self-defense or
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  defense of a third party. And it's no longer taught by the
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  Catholic Church that wars can be justified for punitive purposes
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  or retributive. And why is that why, why that
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  move away? I mean, even Pope Francis, he
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  had in the footnote in Fratelli Tutti, he says Saint Augustine
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  who forged a concept of just war that we no longer uphold in our
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  own day. So he's, you know, just kind of
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  staying there and passing. We don't uphold Saint
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  Augustine's just war theory as he as he spoke it.
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  And is he referring to the retribution retributive aspect
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  or what is what? Do you think he's referring to
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  there? That's exactly what he's
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  referring to. Yep, that's exactly what he's
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  referring to. And here there's no, no
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  innovation with Pope Francis. He's in line here with Pope
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  Benedict, Pope John Paul the Second, Pope Paul the 6th, Pope
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  Pius the 12th, Pope Pius the 11th, and so forth.
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  I think what's going on here is a deeper appreciation of the
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  sanctity of life principle and the priority of the sanctity of
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  life principle. That where life itself is not at
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  stake, then you can never resort to potential lethal force.
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  That even otherwise valid retributive purposes are not
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  sufficient given the priority of the sanctity of life.
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  And I think this is a very good example of how the churches
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  teaches, the teaching develops that is not by kind of radically
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  changing things or granting permissions where permissions
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  were previously not granted or anything like that, but by
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  deepening our appreciation of a principle that's at the core of
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  the church's teaching. If we read, of course, the great
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  19th, the greatest authority on the development of the church's
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  doctrine of the 19th century English theologian and later
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  Cardinal John Henry Newman, this is exactly the kind of thing
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  Newman has in mind when he discusses the way the church's
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  doctrine can legitimately, legitimately develop.
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  Now that's that sometimes misguided people seize on the
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  reality that the church's doctrine can develop to propose
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  that the church abandoned teachings that are firm and
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  constant and simply, you know, can't be, can't be revised
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  because their their teaching is authenticated as true,
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  guaranteed as as as true by the magisterium of the of the
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  church, where the charism of the church's man's magisterium has
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  been exercised in such a way that we can be confident that
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  that this is so. But.
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  Robbie, do you, do you think that the move from retribution
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  as a as justified, you know, by the, you know, by the church
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  really in the last century is in part because of the the sheer
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  carnage of World War One and World War 2?
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  Oh, I don't have any. Wanting it to be avoided.
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  I don't have any doubt about it that World War One in particular
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  is it in World War, in World War One.
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  At the time of World War One, the Catholic Church is still
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  largely a European institution, and the Europeans were focused
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  on the unprecedented violence and carnage unprecedented of the
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  First World War. No one had ever seen anything
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  like this before. And as Doctor Johnson famously
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  said of the prospect of a hanging in the morning, it
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  concentrates your mind. And I think it did concentrate
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  the mind of the Magisterium, of the church, of the the bishops
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  in communion with the Pope. It concentrated their minds on
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  this question of what does the principle of the sanctity of
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  human life demand of us? And I think it was out of that
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  reflection that they decided that, you know what?
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  Our, our doctrine here is not strict enough.
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  It's, it needs to be tightened. And that tightening excludes
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  going to war using lethal violence for any purpose that
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  does not really involve the protection of the sanctity of
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  That's seven weeks coffee.com and use the code Lila at
• 24:25
  checkout for 10% off your order. So you I know we're going to get
• 24:28
  to proportionality, but I want to maybe do the risky thing of
• 24:33
  getting very practical here and applying this to you know,
• 24:36
  everyone's mind is on the Israel Gaza war that's unfolding.
• 24:39
  Just horrific. Obviously the story is coming
• 24:42
  out from the region and a lot of passionate opinions on many
• 24:46
  sides about the conflict. It's been, of course, an ongoing
• 24:49
  conflict. So if we could dare to do this,
• 24:52
  can we get into maybe, you know, the events of the last 10 days
• 24:57
  going on two weeks here, you know, starting with the Hamas's,
• 25:00
  you know, unprecedented brutal attacks against Israeli
• 25:03
  citizens. They respond by saying we must
• 25:05
  crush Hamas. I mean, obviously in the heat of
• 25:07
  war, there's a lot of rhetoric and some, you know, I think
• 25:10
  there was some retributive focus.
• 25:13
  Let's just destroy them all. But certainly it's a
• 25:15
  self-defense measure at large because they want to protect
• 25:18
  their their people from this ever happening again.
• 25:20
  What can you, what can we learn looking at what's unfolding
• 25:23
  right now in the Israel Gaza war, about the proper
• 25:27
  application or the improper application of just war theory
• 25:31
  principles? Well, the attacks of October 7th
• 25:37
  were literally unprovoked attacks on innocent human
• 25:43
  beings, including children, babies, elderly people.
• 25:51
  Can you, I'm going to pause right there because I know many
• 25:53
  folks listening who are very sympathetic to the cause of, you
• 25:57
  know, quote UN quote, free Palestine will say they were not
• 25:59
  unprovoked. I mean, this is the argument
• 26:00
  coming from many people on the left and the right saying, well,
• 26:03
  Israel has, you know, taken the land.
• 26:05
  This is the accusation. And therefore this was, you
• 26:09
  know, it was a provoked, A provocation that's been ongoing
• 26:12
  from Israel. They've been, you know, tough
• 26:14
  and harsh on civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
• 26:17
  And therefore, yes, it wasn't right for terrorists to behead
• 26:20
  children, but it was also not unprovoked.
• 26:23
  I think that is an argument coming from everyone from, you
• 26:25
  know, heads of student associations at Harvard, as you
• 26:28
  yourself have called out on Twitter and then people on I've
• 26:32
  seen it on the right as well as the left.
• 26:35
  The babies that were butchered by Hamas did not provoke the
• 26:38
  attacks by Hamas. I say to those people, enough
• 26:42
  with these rationalizations. This is outrageous.
• 26:47
  Those babies were innocent. Those elderly people were
• 26:51
  innocent. Those young people at the music
• 26:55
  festival were innocent. Their lives were treated as mere
• 27:02
  objects. They were, they were treated
• 27:03
  worse than animals. They did not provoke this attack
• 27:08
  on them. They were not aggressors in any
• 27:11
  way, shape or form. So I have no patience, Lila,
• 27:15
  with this foolishness of saying this was a provoked attack.
• 27:18
  It was not a provoked attack. The people who they butchered
• 27:22
  were not provoking anybody. If if I'm angry at you and I
• 27:30
  decide I'm going to go and shoot your grandmother, that's not a
• 27:35
  provoked attack by your grandmother.
• 27:39
  That's just an outrageous act of terrorism by me.
• 27:43
  And I'm responsible for that. And no one should try to
• 27:48
  rationalize my doing it by saying, well, you know, Lila did
• 27:51
  some horrible thing to to this guy.
• 27:54
  No, no. So we have to be clear headed
• 27:56
  about this stuff and we can't put up with the nonsense.
• 27:59
  And I don't care whether the nonsense comes from some
• 28:02
  organization at Harvard or not. That's irrelevant to me.
• 28:05
  Nonsense is nonsense. Now, some of these same voices
• 28:09
  say, you know, what Hamas is, you know, responding to you.
• 28:13
  Those acts maybe were wrong. But Israel, you know, the IDF
• 28:17
  has targeted civilians. You know, there's a lot of
• 28:19
  accusations that really any warfare in Gaza is the targeting
• 28:23
  of civilians since it's 2 million people strong.
• 28:25
  They say a million of them are children.
• 28:28
  What is there? Is there any appropriate
• 28:30
  response militarily from Israel in any kind of invasion or
• 28:33
  strikes on Gaza when civilians are everywhere?
• 28:37
  Well, of course, Israel is, in my view, required to abide by
• 28:42
  the principles of just warfare. Now you know whether those
• 28:46
  responsible for decision making in Israel accept my version of
• 28:51
  justified warfare or not. I'm, I'm not sure, but I know
• 28:55
  what mine are and I'm going to judge them in the same way that
• 28:58
  I judge Hamas, by reference to what I think is true and when
• 29:02
  what I think is true is in line with what the Catholic Church
• 29:05
  says is true. Although I think that the
• 29:06
  principles that are proclaimed by the Catholic Church here are
• 29:09
  principles that are fully validated by reason, even apart
• 29:13
  from any question of revealed religion or ecclesiastical
• 29:18
  authority. So I would hope that as a as a
• 29:21
  matter of at least shared rationality, even if not shared
• 29:24
  religious faith, that everyone, Palestinian, Muslim, Israeli,
• 29:31
  Jewish, would subscribe to these principles because I think
• 29:34
  they're true. And those principles would say,
• 29:37
  do say that while a military response is justifiable to the
• 29:44
  kind of violence that was perpetrated against innocent
• 29:48
  Israeli Jews and others on October 7th, there are rules,
• 29:52
  there are moral norms constraining what Israel can
• 29:56
  legitimately do in response. They cannot target civilians.
• 30:03
  And what does that mean? I think that's that's the.
• 30:05
  Big debate, right? That means the target when you
• 30:08
  know, let's say a civilian is in the vicinity of where the strike
• 30:11
  will hit. And this could be because your
• 30:13
  opposition is using them as human Shields.
• 30:16
  There's no other way to maybe accomplish your military
• 30:19
  objective of destroying the munitions pile of the
• 30:21
  headquarters of your, you know, of your foe.
• 30:25
  And So what what do you do? What is the just action in the
• 30:28
  case of, you know, a warfare that's urban and warfare that
• 30:32
  involves human Shields? Yep.
• 30:34
  OK, so first let's just be clear, right?
• 30:37
  You know, to clear out the easy part.
• 30:40
  Israel cannot make, as the object of its act, the revenge
• 30:46
  of simply killing innocent people to make up for the
• 30:49
  killing of their innocent people.
• 30:51
  And by innocent we mean noncombatants, and that includes
• 30:55
  people who sympathize with Hamas and even people who sympathize
• 31:00
  with the violence. Sympathizing with the violence
• 31:03
  of Hamas does not make a Palestinian A combatant.
• 31:07
  Some people want to think that it does, but the truth is that
• 31:10
  it doesn't. And this whole tradition backs
• 31:12
  me up on this. It doesn't.
• 31:14
  So you cannot deliberately target noncombatants and you're
• 31:18
  not turned into a combatant simply by sympathizing with the
• 31:21
  bad guys, Israel says. And I see no reason to to doubt
• 31:27
  them. We'll have to look at the
• 31:27
  evidence as it comes in. But Israel says that it is not
• 31:31
  targeting non combatants. We we had a story just yesterday
• 31:36
  claiming that Israel attacked a hospital with with no
• 31:42
  justification in the sense that the hospital was being used as a
• 31:48
  place for human Shields. Well, it now seems that story is
• 31:51
  completely false and that the hospital was not attacked by the
• 31:55
  Israeli Defence Forces. It it was the victim of a bomb
• 32:02
  or some sort of an attack, some sort of a weapon that was used
• 32:06
  by Hamas militants themselves and happened to fall, I'm
• 32:10
  assuming inadvertently, on a, on a Christian hospital, a Baptist
• 32:16
  hospital. Or other Palestinian militants.
• 32:18
  They're saying it might not have been actually a.
• 32:19
  Hamas, Yeah. Another warring, A warring
• 32:22
  group. But it it begs the question, you
• 32:24
  know, what if there had been? You know what if Hamas's
• 32:28
  headquarters had been in that hospital?
• 32:30
  I'm with you it. Shows they asked them to
• 32:32
  evacuate, you know, and there were, you know, there's lots of
• 32:34
  obviously in the accounts of the last week Israel has repeatedly
• 32:38
  been asking the people of Gaza to evacuate.
• 32:41
  Of course, the humanitarian, you know, process, it can be very
• 32:45
  rough. I mean, there's a response from
• 32:46
  some in the global community saying how dare you ask them to
• 32:48
  evacuate? There's nowhere for them to go.
• 32:51
  So there's that, you know, question, very thorny.
• 32:53
  And then the question of the hospital, how can they evacuate
• 32:56
  all these people if they choose not to?
• 32:58
  Is it still justified to bomb the hospital knowing there's
• 33:02
  people in it? Yeah, it can be legitimate.
• 33:06
  It can be morally legitimate to bomb a place that you know has
• 33:12
  noncombatants, has civilians, has innocent people for in the
• 33:16
  sense that we're using the term innocent here as innocent
• 33:18
  people, indeed many of them. Where your object is a
• 33:23
  legitimate military object and where the act and the harm that
• 33:29
  you foresee being caused by the ACT is proportionate to the
• 33:34
  legitimate goal that you're seeking to achieve.
• 33:37
  That is stopping the assailant, that is disabling or disarming
• 33:43
  the, the unjust attacker, the the aggressor.
• 33:48
  But there are a couple of things here that you know are very fact
• 33:52
  specific, fact dependent. You, you, you can't abstractly
• 33:55
  resolve them. You need to know what the facts
• 33:57
  are. You need to know, in fact, has
• 34:01
  the justified party done everything it can legitimately,
• 34:06
  reasonably do to minimize civilian deaths?
• 34:11
  Has it notified the civilian population of the attack that's
• 34:15
  about to come? If it could do so without
• 34:18
  undermining its military objective?
• 34:20
  Has it done its best to enable those civilians to get out of
• 34:24
  the way? As you say here, it's very
• 34:26
  difficult in some cases to see exactly how innocent
• 34:28
  Palestinians, non combat Palestinians are going to get
• 34:31
  out of the territory where they're being used as human
• 34:34
  Shields. And Hamas is definitely using
• 34:36
  this tactic. They know the Israelis feel
• 34:40
  constrained to try to avoid civilian casualties.
• 34:43
  Hamas does not. They deliberately killed a whole
• 34:46
  bunch of innocent people on October 7th.
• 34:47
  That was not an avoidable, unavoidable tragedy.
• 34:53
  But they know the Israelis. Hamas knows the Israelis want to
• 34:56
  minimize civilian casualties, so they are incentivized and they
• 34:59
  act on the incentive to use their own people as human
• 35:03
  Shields. Palestinian deaths help Hamas.
• 35:07
  That's the key thing we got to keep in mind.
• 35:10
  The more Palestinian deaths, the better for Hamas because it
• 35:14
  makes the Israelis look like bad guys and it diminishes the
• 35:19
  authority of Israel or the standing in Israel in the eyes
• 35:23
  of the world, which will then put more and more pressure on
• 35:26
  Israel to stop in its defense of itself.
• 35:29
  But while I need to get to this point that you keep bringing me
• 35:31
  up to the bring me up to the verge of to the ledge of and
• 35:35
  that's proportionality. What does proportionality mean?
• 35:38
  I said a word about it at the moment a moment ago and now I
• 35:40
  need to fill in more details. Let's say the following.
• 35:46
  Let's say that the bad guys who are shelling your cities from
• 35:51
  mountains across the border in their territory place their
• 35:58
  rocket launchers or cannons in camps occupied by their own non
• 36:08
  combatant civilians. OK, If you on the behalf of the
• 36:14
  good guys, if the government of the good guys says, you know
• 36:18
  what, we're going to have to knock out those cannons or those
• 36:22
  rocket launchers, which means we're going to have to bomb
• 36:24
  those camps that have civilians in them.
• 36:27
  That can be legitimate if you do everything you can to minimize
• 36:32
  civilian deaths. If you try to give the civilians
• 36:36
  ways to get out of the camp, but sometimes you can't, there's
• 36:39
  just no way to do it. Let's say for example, the bad
• 36:42
  guys ring the camp with soldiers, with AK-40 sevens and
• 36:47
  shoot any civilians who try to leave the camp.
• 36:49
  So they're literally holding their own people hostage.
• 36:53
  In principle, you could bomb the camp not to kill the civilians.
• 36:56
  You're you're, you wish you didn't have to, you wish you
• 36:58
  couldn't. You wish that they could
• 37:00
  survive. But in order to knock out the
• 37:02
  military launcher. But proportionality here really
• 37:07
  does implicate numbers. So let's say that the that the
• 37:13
  rocket launchers from the camps shelling your cities are not
• 37:19
  actually killing anybody, but they are frightening people.
• 37:24
  They're keeping people up at night.
• 37:26
  They're causing great consternation.
• 37:28
  Consternation and anxiety. Well, that's not a good enough
• 37:31
  justification to bomb the camps. Even though your goal would be
• 37:36
  to knock out the rocket launchers and cut down the
• 37:39
  anxiety of your people and enable people to get some sleep
• 37:42
  at night and remove people from try to minimize the fear people
• 37:45
  are living in, it still wouldn't be justified because it's not
• 37:48
  proportionate. You, you can't weigh those
• 37:50
  considerations against the actual lives of the people who
• 37:53
  would be killed. Not not as directly intended
• 37:55
  deaths, but nevertheless would be killed.
• 37:58
  Who's who would be collateral damage, as they sometimes call
• 38:00
  it, sometimes call it. I don't really like that phrase.
• 38:02
  It's too bloodless when there's real blood, there's real flesh
• 38:06
  and blood of human beings here. But let's say that to change the
• 38:12
  the change the example. Now the hypothetical example,
• 38:15
  let's say that every few days a person is killed, OK, from the
• 38:22
  rocket launchers that are are in the enemy camps.
• 38:27
  Now, are you justified in in bombing the camps in order to
• 38:31
  knock out the rocket launchers even though you know you're
• 38:33
  going to kill the civilians? Well, here it depends on how
• 38:36
  many civilians do you think you're going to kill If in order
• 38:39
  to save six members of your own population, 6 innocent people of
• 38:44
  your own, you have to perform an act that you know foreseeably
• 38:48
  will result in 20,000 deaths of innocent people in the camps.
• 38:54
  No, that's not proportionate. It's not justified there.
• 38:57
  You have to absorb, morally speaking, you have to absorb
• 39:00
  those deaths on your side because there's not a morally
• 39:03
  justified way of avoiding it. But, but, but one, one way to
• 39:09
  test it and, and of course, what we could do with the
• 39:12
  hypothetical cases, you know, being being a philosopher, I
• 39:17
  spend a lot of my time with hypothetical cases.
• 39:20
  And what we would do, Lila, if you and I were, were sitting in
• 39:22
  a philosophy classroom is we'd start adjusting the numbers.
• 39:25
  So instead of six against 20,000, it's 600 against 15,000.
• 39:31
  And then it's, you know, 1200 against 2000.
• 39:36
  And pretty soon, you know, it's 15101 against 1400 and and 99.
• 39:44
  And at that point it's hard to make judgments.
• 39:46
  But here I think it's a good heuristic device.
• 39:50
  I think what we need to ask ourselves if we're the on the
• 39:54
  just side and the unjust aggressor is attacking us, I
• 39:57
  think we have to have to ask ourselves would we perform the
• 40:01
  ACT we're considering performing with its consequences in terms
• 40:06
  of so-called collateral damage if the people in the camps
• 40:10
  weren't foreigners. But we're rather our own
• 40:13
  prisoners of war. It's.
• 40:16
  A good a good a good question to ask to help.
• 40:19
  Really. Where are we doing our best
• 40:21
  here? Exactly right.
• 40:22
  And and that that does pay, that pays honor, a proper honor to
• 40:27
  the principle of the profound, inherent and equal dignity of
• 40:30
  each and every human being, which is where this whole
• 40:32
  analysis begins. We go right back to first
• 40:34
  principles. If we really believe in the
• 40:36
  profound inherent and equal dignity of each and every member
• 40:38
  of the human family, then in doing our calculations in terms
• 40:43
  of proportionality, it's going to, we're going to be
• 40:45
  indifferent. We have to hold ourselves as
• 40:48
  indifferent as to the nationality or ethnicity, race
• 40:52
  or what have you said of the people who will be the quote,
• 40:56
  collateral damage, UN quote. And it does go specifically, you
• 40:59
  know, back to the Israel Gaza war.
• 41:01
  Right now there are 200 hostages, most of them Israeli
• 41:05
  held likely in Gaza, you know, maybe in that hospital that you
• 41:09
  know, Israel was accused of bombing.
• 41:11
  It comes out now Israel didn't bomb it.
• 41:12
  But you know, in perhaps near the buildings or perhaps on top
• 41:16
  of the targets where Hamas is, you know, Hamas knows will be
• 41:20
  targets just to, you know, have the horror continue the terror
• 41:23
  continue of Israel inadvertently killing its own people by
• 41:27
  attacking Hamas. And so I think that is an
• 41:29
  important thing to remember in with Israel's aggressions at
• 41:32
  this point is that their people that are there too.
• 41:35
  It's not just with the Palestinian people right now in
• 41:37
  Gaza, so. Very, very good point, but.
• 41:41
  I do want to ask another question, you know, from again,
• 41:43
  the Palestinian perspective. And again, not all Palestinians
• 41:46
  are against even Israel's invasion of Gaza.
• 41:49
  You know, 20% of Israel is Palestinian.
• 41:51
  So there's many Palestinians who are very sympathetic to the IDF
• 41:54
  and and Israel. But of course, there are many
• 41:56
  who believe they're they've been greatly wronged here.
• 41:58
  And I did want to ask another question.
• 42:00
  And this is also connected to, you know, even the United States
• 42:03
  action in World War 2 with the bombing of Hiroshima and
• 42:06
  Nagasaki and Japan, you know, is there another option besides
• 42:11
  taking out the military? The, the, the, the missiles,
• 42:15
  the, you know, the headquarters of the enemy that is heavily
• 42:18
  focused instead on defense. So as an example for what just
• 42:22
  happened here in with the Israel Gaza war, that's that's
• 42:25
  escalating. What if Israel instead of
• 42:28
  invading Gaza? And this would be, of course, an
• 42:30
  argument from some on the opposition.
• 42:33
  Just short up their defenses, shored up their borders, made
• 42:37
  the Iron Dome even better, made those walls indestructible.
• 42:41
  They were destroyed, of course, by Hamas fighters who piled over
• 42:43
  them, You know, 1500 of them. But what if they had succeeded
• 42:47
  in keeping out the terrorists? And what if, instead of invading
• 42:51
  Gaza, they just get better at their own defense to keep
• 42:54
  terrorists out? Well, obviously that would be a
• 42:58
  good thing to do, but it's not necessarily a morally required
• 43:02
  thing to do. It's a very complex situation.
• 43:07
  Judgements of fact need to be made that we're certainly not
• 43:11
  you and I sitting here and our other American fellow citizens
• 43:15
  are not in a position to make. And really, in a certain sense,
• 43:19
  nobody's in a permission, in a position to make because you're
• 43:21
  guessing and you just have to use your best.
• 43:26
  Giving you the hard, you know, the hard questions and
• 43:28
  accusations coming from the defenders of, you know,
• 43:31
  Palestinian resistance at this point.
• 43:33
  Yeah, I, I think that there are difficult prudential judgements
• 43:38
  that do need to be made. And by by definition, difficult
• 43:43
  prudential judgements can be gotten wrong.
• 43:46
  You know, we're not, we're not infallible.
• 43:50
  It's inevitable that we're going to make some mistakes and other
• 43:53
  people are just like us. Other other people of goodwill
• 43:55
  are going to be prone to mistakes just like we do.
• 43:58
  So we are, so you know, I don't want to dictate to Israeli
• 44:03
  decision makers given the circumstances of their own
• 44:07
  people, their own hostages being being held, their, their
• 44:11
  vulnerability to attack from so many sides, their history of
• 44:15
  being under attack so many times.
• 44:17
  I want to dictate, don't want to dictate to them what the correct
• 44:20
  strategy has to be. I do though, want to defend the,
• 44:23
  the norms, the, the moral norms of just war theory, which I
• 44:28
  think are as binding on them as they are on anyone else.
• 44:31
  And for the most part, Israeli spokesman say that they share
• 44:36
  those norms, they believe in those, those same norms.
• 44:39
  I, I doubt that there's a perfect agreement between their
• 44:42
  thinking and, and, and our thinking, but there's a very
• 44:45
  substantial agreement on it. Now there are factual questions
• 44:49
  is that are those officials telling the truth?
• 44:52
  Have there been circumstances in which civilians have actually
• 44:55
  been targeted? Not, not, not where it's
• 44:57
  collateral damage, but actually been targeted.
• 45:00
  Well, those allegations have been made.
• 45:01
  There have certainly been cases in which Israeli citizens or
• 45:05
  soldiers have engaged in terrorist acts against
• 45:08
  Palestinians. That's that everybody agrees
• 45:10
  that that has happened. But Israel has not celebrated
• 45:15
  those people. It has, where possible,
• 45:18
  disciplined or punished those those people.
• 45:21
  So I don't think there's a moral symmetry here, although, you
• 45:26
  know, Israel and Israelis are like America and Americans.
• 45:31
  You know, we not only do things make mistakes, sometimes we do
• 45:35
  things that are wrong and we can't justify it when Israel or
• 45:39
  America does things that are does things that are wrong.
• 45:43
  But I think you've done a wonderful job helping clear up
• 45:45
  some of the moral equivalence that has been made that is
• 45:50
  improper, you know, between Hamas fighters and obviously
• 45:54
  Israel's response right now. I know we, I know we have some
• 45:57
  time left here. I, I, I am really curious on
• 46:00
  your thoughts on the use of the atomic bomb in World War 2,
• 46:04
  because that's highly controversial.
• 46:05
  I know in Christian and non Christian circles, you know,
• 46:09
  should we have dropped that bomb?
• 46:10
  It killed many, many civilians. What?
• 46:13
  What's your take on that? I have to say that I think that
• 46:17
  the bombing not only of Nagasaki, but also of Hiroshima
• 46:21
  and the terror bombing of Dresden in Germany, I think
• 46:25
  those bombings were unjustified. That's a hard thing to say
• 46:29
  because at least in the case of the bombing, the first bombing
• 46:33
  in Japan, the bombing of Hiroshima, it did shorten the
• 46:36
  war. It and and it probably was the
• 46:40
  single most important thing that prevented the need for an
• 46:44
  American or Allied invasion and occupation of Japan, which would
• 46:48
  have been brutal with many lives lost.
• 46:51
  But at least those of us who are Catholic or who subscribe,
• 46:54
  whether we're Catholic or not, to the just war tradition, we
• 46:59
  strongly reject the philosophy of ethical decision making known
• 47:04
  as utilitarianism. That's the philosophy that says
• 47:09
  any act can be justified, no matter how horrific in itself,
• 47:13
  if the net consequences of doing it are better than the
• 47:19
  consequences of not doing it. You can perform the ACT, or
• 47:24
  should perform the ACT that overall and in the long run will
• 47:27
  produce the best net proportion of benefit to, to to harm.
• 47:30
  However, benefit and harm are are defined or in the in the in
• 47:34
  the less precise words of the founder of the utilitarian
• 47:37
  tradition, the British thinker Jeremy Bentham, you should do
• 47:41
  the ACT that will produce the greatest happiness and the
• 47:43
  greatest number. I can think of no theory other
• 47:47
  than utilitarianism under which the bombing of Nagasaki and
• 47:52
  Hiroshima and Dresden would be justified because the object of
• 47:56
  those bombings was to terrorize the population of Japan and
• 48:02
  Germany in such a way that it wood forest the leadership of
• 48:06
  those countries to relent and to surrender.
• 48:11
  We were on the right side in those fights, battling against
• 48:15
  the the Tojo and Hitler. We were on the right side.
• 48:18
  They were the bad guys. We were the we were the good
• 48:20
  guys. But that doesn't mean everything
• 48:24
  we did was justified. And I'm afraid that deliberately
• 48:28
  attacking civilians babies, unborn babies, grandmothers in
• 48:33
  Nagasaki and Hiroshima and Dresden was not justified.
• 48:37
  Now someone will respond, it could be someone in my own
• 48:41
  family that they might say, well Professor George, your your
• 48:45
  father who was serving at that time with the infantry in
• 48:50
  Normandy and Brittany in World War 2.
• 48:53
  Your father would have been shipped over to Japan and
• 48:55
  probably killed in in an invasion and occupation because
• 49:00
  many, many American soldiers would have been and brutally
• 49:05
  killed me. Yeah.
• 49:06
  I mean, if you look at the treatment of the of the Chinese
• 49:09
  and others by the Japanese armed forces, yes, absolutely
• 49:11
  brutally. But that doesn't change the
• 49:15
  moral equation. The fact that I wouldn't be here
• 49:17
  today or that my father would, you know, because my father
• 49:20
  would have been killed doesn't change the moral equation and it
• 49:24
  doesn't suddenly justify the unjustifiable moral theory known
• 49:29
  as utilitarianism. If there is a moral theory that
• 49:33
  is antithetical, absolutely antithetical to everything the
• 49:38
  Catholic Church teaches, the Catholic faith teaches it is
• 49:42
  utilitarianism. So the, and it's, it's basically
• 49:46
  captured in what your mom and my mom taught you and taught me.
• 49:50
  And that is even a very, very, very, very good end doesn't
• 49:56
  justify a bad means, even if it's only a little bit of a bad
• 49:59
  means, certainly not if it's a great bad means.
• 50:02
  But a good end doesn't justify a bad means.
• 50:05
  Both our end and the means we use to achieve that end must be
• 50:10
  morally good. That's what we as Catholics
• 50:13
  believe. Now, that that's a hard teaching
• 50:15
  for a lot of people to accept. A lot of people will say, well,
• 50:17
  look, if that's Catholic teaching that you can never do
• 50:20
  evil, even that good might come of it, then you know, I'm not
• 50:24
  going to be a Catholic or I can't sign up with the Catholic
• 50:27
  side on on these things. Because sometimes you just have
• 50:30
  to do things that are really bad because not doing them creates a
• 50:37
  situation or allows a situation to obtain that's really, really,
• 50:40
  really very much, very much worse.
• 50:43
  I can understand that. I've argued with people my
• 50:45
  entire career who were formally committed to utilitarianism,
• 50:48
  such as my colleague at Princeton, Peter Singer, who's
• 50:52
  the the world's most famous contemporary utilitarian.
• 50:55
  But honestly, I can't pro. It's pro abortion pro and
• 50:59
  fantasy. Justified on, justified on, on
• 51:03
  utilitarian grounds. But I'm, I'm, you know, I, I
• 51:07
  stand fast on, on this. I, I think the utilitarian
• 51:10
  theory is wrong. I can go into detail, Lila, if
• 51:12
  you want me to, on why I think the utilitarian theory is, is
• 51:15
  wrong, but I do think it is wrong.
• 51:17
  And we have to stick to the idea that there are certain things
• 51:21
  that we cannot do, we can never do even for the sake of really,
• 51:25
  really wonderful consequences or avoiding really, really dreadful
• 51:29
  consequences. And central among those things
• 51:32
  is the principle of no direct killing of innocent human
• 51:36
  beings. No killing of an innocent human
• 51:39
  being either is an end because you're angry at him or hostile
• 51:43
  to him, or as a means to an end because and to.
• 51:46
  Clarify when when you say no direct.
• 51:49
  Of course, you know in the case of a missile strike that
• 51:52
  directly one of its direct effects is the killing of a
• 51:55
  civilian that was used as a human shield by your your
• 51:57
  opponent. But by direct you mean the
• 52:00
  intention of the ACT was not to kill the civilian, it was to
• 52:04
  destroy the enemy headquarters or whatever you know that object
• 52:07
  was. Yeah.
• 52:08
  So direct or indirect here refers to the intentional
• 52:12
  structure of the choice. It it it doesn't it, it doesn't
• 52:17
  refer to what's going on strictly speaking, in the
• 52:20
  external world, the world external to the actor.
• 52:23
  It's about what you are setting your will to do, because it's
• 52:27
  precisely in setting our will one way or another with respect
• 52:31
  to the human goods that are in play, like the good of human
• 52:34
  life. When it comes to decision making
• 52:36
  that we form our character, that we either strengthen ourselves
• 52:39
  as people of good character or damage ourselves as people as
• 52:43
  bad character, we integrate into our character, into our very
• 52:48
  selves, the principles of our action.
• 52:51
  And that's why intention is is of such critical importance
• 52:55
  here. But we have to be careful not to
• 52:57
  misunderstand intention in a way that would cause us to slip into
• 53:01
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  Every life.com is America's pro-life diaper company.
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  So that means they give back part of their revenue to the
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  pro-life cause to pregnancy resource centers and to groups
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• 53:25
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  friend or for your own family. They have a great subscription
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  companies that you're going to find at Target or Walmart.
• 53:36
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• 53:43
  That's everylife.com and use the code Lila tenant check out for
• 53:46
  10% off your order. And, and back to, you know, it's
• 53:49
  such a great distinction you're making between utilitarianism
• 53:52
  and the, the many, you know, the, the, the great work that's
• 53:56
  put into properly weighing proportionality when it comes to
• 54:00
  just or unjust actions taken during war.
• 54:03
  And of course, the war itself has to be just.
• 54:05
  And then the actions in that war in addition need to be just due
• 54:09
  to the best of the prudential decision making that, you know,
• 54:12
  the, the, the participants can do.
• 54:16
  But, you know, back to the example of using the atomic bomb
• 54:19
  in Japan, if theoretically, you know, the only way to cripple
• 54:24
  physical military targets, you know, for whatever reason, And
• 54:28
  again, this theoretical might we throw out right away because,
• 54:31
  you know, it doesn't work was but let's just say that all of
• 54:34
  their military progress was put in, you know, Nagasaki.
• 54:38
  And to destroy those targets, you know, it needed the level of
• 54:43
  an atomic bomb. We warned civilians to leave,
• 54:46
  you know, if possible. And at the end of the day, we
• 54:49
  still dropped that bomb. But there was that specific
• 54:52
  intention and goal, you know, could it have been?
• 54:54
  Is it possible for dropping an atomic bomb on a city to be
• 54:58
  just? Yeah, yes, it would.
• 55:01
  I mean, there's nothing special about the type of armament or
• 55:08
  ordinance. That it's conventional rather
• 55:11
  than nuclear isn't what matters. Dresden was not nuclear, but it
• 55:15
  suffered from the same. The bombing of the terror
• 55:17
  bombing of the people of Dresden, noncombatants, babies,
• 55:21
  unborn babies, grandmothers, you know, was just as bad as the
• 55:26
  bombing of Hiroshima, despite the fact that the weapons used
• 55:30
  were ordinary ordinance and not, not nuclear, nuclear weapons.
• 55:34
  So it's not the question of the the determining factor is not
• 55:37
  whether it's nuclear or or not nuclear.
• 55:40
  It's all about whether you're setting your will on the
• 55:44
  destruction of the life of that innocent human being.
• 55:49
  That's really what it comes down to.
• 55:51
  It's the same question that we have when it comes to abortion,
• 55:55
  euthanasia, infanticide. What's wrong with those things?
• 56:00
  Even if good consequences can come of them, what's wrong with
• 56:04
  them is that they violate the principle of no direct killing
• 56:10
  of innocent human beings. They treat a precious human life
• 56:13
  as it's as if it's a mere instrument, a mere object to
• 56:16
  somebody else's ends. That's not what human beings
• 56:20
  are. Human beings have inherent value
• 56:23
  from the very earliest moment of their existence through to the
• 56:27
  end of their lives. So in vying for this principle
• 56:33
  of non combatant immunity, in rejecting utilitarianism, I'm
• 56:38
  arguing for the thing that gives us the teaching we uphold, not
• 56:43
  only unjust war, but when it comes to any form of killing,
• 56:47
  when it comes to euthanasia, when it comes to abortion, when
• 56:50
  it comes to embryo destructive research, when it comes to
• 56:53
  infanticide, especially infanticide, which, you know, I,
• 56:56
  I, I worry about increasingly people willing, being willing to
• 56:59
  justify of, of so-called defective infants, cognitively
• 57:04
  disabled people. We, we need to stand by this
• 57:09
  principle. There really is a consistent
• 57:10
  ethic of life. That's really true.
• 57:11
  I mean, sometimes that concept has been abused, A seamless
• 57:14
  garment of life, a consistent ethic of life.
• 57:17
  But the correct understanding of that and the understanding of
• 57:20
  under which it is a correct principle is, is this you can't
• 57:25
  do something. You can live morally,
• 57:26
  legitimately cannot do something if it involves directly setting
• 57:30
  your will against the life of this human being.
• 57:33
  Unborn baby embryo in a in a in a vitro in vitro newborn baby.
• 57:41
  Cognitively disabled. Newborn baby.
• 57:43
  Elderly person with Alzheimer's disease or in a coma.
• 57:47
  Non combatant. Whether that non combatant is a
• 57:49
  Japanese grandmother, a a Palestinian baby a a German non
• 57:57
  combatant, it doesn't matter. All lives are equal and all
• 58:03
  lives are precious and inherently so, and you can't do
• 58:07
  a calculation about that. Now, Lila, I should, I should
• 58:11
  just make sure everyone is clear on one thing that people
• 58:14
  sometimes misunderstand. Sometimes people misunderstand
• 58:18
  proportionality as being a utilitarian calculation.
• 58:22
  It's not here. It's important to see that
• 58:26
  before we even get to the question of proportionality,
• 58:30
  there is a threshold question. The threshold question is this.
• 58:35
  Does the ACT amount to a direct attack on an innocent human
• 58:41
  life? Does it amount to treating the
• 58:44
  life of the human being in question as a mere means?
• 58:50
  Does it amount to willing the death of that person, whether
• 58:54
  it's an end in itself or as a means to some other end, as
• 58:57
  opposed to accepting the death of that person is a side effect,
• 59:01
  that third form of of volition? And it's only when you've
• 59:05
  established that the act in question is not an act of direct
• 59:10
  killing that the death, if it comes, would be a side effect
• 59:14
  that you even then reach the next question of, well, is it
• 59:19
  proportionate? And then we've got the question
• 59:23
  of fundamental fairness and heuristic devices like the one I
• 59:27
  suggested to you, considering whether we would do the same
• 59:30
  thing if the civilians whose lives are in jeopardy were our
• 59:34
  own PO WS rather than people of another ethnicity or
• 59:39
  nationality. That then that that kind of
• 59:41
  consideration becomes becomes relevant.
• 59:44
  I can see the rationalization, Robbie, from people who would
• 59:48
  defend, you know, the firebombing of Dresden or
• 59:51
  defend, you know, the use of the atomic bomb in Japan by saying,
• 59:55
  well, the direct goal wasn't to terrorize or harm those
• 59:58
  civilians. We just wanted to get the
• 59:59
  military's to to, to give up, to surrender.
• 1:00:02
  What would you say to that defense of what you've, I think
• 1:00:06
  you know, rightly called utilitarian and unjust war
• 1:00:09
  crimes? There, you just do the following
• 1:00:13
  thought experiment. How is it that you get the
• 1:00:17
  leadership of the country to relent or surrender?
• 1:00:22
  It's precisely by getting the civilians dead.
• 1:00:25
  If you don't get the civilians dead, you haven't achieved your
• 1:00:29
  goal. That's different from let's say
• 1:00:33
  bombing an enemy camp where you've got civilians in the
• 1:00:38
  camp, but the rocket launcher or the cannon is also in the camp
• 1:00:43
  there. Let's say you anticipate, you
• 1:00:47
  suppose that we'll look, if we bomb the camp, we're going to
• 1:00:50
  kill 500 civilians. We don't, we don't want to kill
• 1:00:54
  them. We would, we hope that they
• 1:00:55
  wouldn't die. But our best guess is when we
• 1:00:58
  bomb that camp, 500 people are going to die.
• 1:01:01
  But we got to do it in order to knock out the rocket launcher.
• 1:01:04
  Now, let's say that that they do it and they knock out the rocket
• 1:01:07
  launcher, but their calculations were off, and as a matter of
• 1:01:11
  fact, they don't kill anybody. Have they accomplished
• 1:01:15
  everything they set out to accomplish, or do they say, oh,
• 1:01:17
  darn, nobody died? No, they've accomplished
• 1:01:19
  absolutely everything they set out to accomplish.
• 1:01:22
  But if you're trying to terrorize a civilian population
• 1:01:25
  in order to bring the leadership of the country to surrender,
• 1:01:29
  you've got to get people dead. If you drop the bomb and it
• 1:01:31
  doesn't go off and nobody dies, or you drop the bomb and it goes
• 1:01:35
  off and miraculously nobody dies, you haven't achieved your
• 1:01:38
  goal. It's that simple.
• 1:01:41
  It's a great, a great distinction and I think so
• 1:01:43
  important because in the in these days of war we are in, you
• 1:01:47
  know, facing there's a new war obviously in Israel and Gaza.
• 1:01:50
  But the idea of collateral damage can mean two things.
• 1:01:54
  You know, the utilitarian can talk about collateral damage and
• 1:01:57
  the just war actor can talk about collateral damage.
• 1:02:00
  And in one case the damage was unintended and, you know, not,
• 1:02:03
  not because of the direct action of the military.
• 1:02:05
  In another case it was. And one is totally wrong and the
• 1:02:08
  other can be justified. Very good.
• 1:02:13
  I, I, I made it through class. Robbie made it through class.
• 1:02:16
  This is you're a star. Student Lyla, you're a star.
• 1:02:18
  Student it's been so excellent we we I know our our audience
• 1:02:23
  really appreciates that and you know we are this is something
• 1:02:26
  that we've begun to talk about more in the podcast and now more
• 1:02:28
  than ever of these moral distinctions are important.
• 1:02:31
  Any final words, I mean, particularly on Israel, Gaza,
• 1:02:34
  for the proper way to think about all of the horrible, you
• 1:02:38
  know, news stories coming our way of deaths on the Palestinian
• 1:02:43
  side, of harm to the Israelis. You know any other advice that
• 1:02:46
  you have to caution prudent thinking as we face these, you
• 1:02:51
  know, this horrible conflict? OK, Yes, certainly.
• 1:02:54
  Lila, first, we should be clear about our principles because we
• 1:02:58
  can be clear about our principles.
• 1:03:01
  No one, just no direct killing. I'm sorry, no direct killing of
• 1:03:04
  innocent human beings. The principle of
• 1:03:08
  proportionality. Now, when when applying it, it's
• 1:03:10
  not clear, but at least the principle itself is clear.
• 1:03:13
  We know that's a sound and necessary principle.
• 1:03:16
  So let's be clear about the things we can be clear about.
• 1:03:19
  There are going to be other things that we're not going to
• 1:03:21
  be able to be very clear about. We're just going to be able to
• 1:03:23
  do the best we can. And those are really factual and
• 1:03:26
  prudential judgments. None of us is on the ground.
• 1:03:29
  None of us over here, thank God, are on the ground in Israel and
• 1:03:33
  Palestine. And even people who are on the
• 1:03:36
  ground in Israel and Palestine are to a very considerable
• 1:03:39
  extent dependent on the media and on reports and even doing
• 1:03:45
  the best it can. And of course, our media doesn't
• 1:03:47
  do the best it can. Our media is so biased in so
• 1:03:49
  many ways, but even a media doing the best it can, it's
• 1:03:52
  going to get a lot of stuff wrong in what's called the fog
• 1:03:54
  of war. You've heard of the fog of war?
• 1:03:56
  Well, we got the fog of war big time right now.
• 1:03:58
  So, you know, we we shouldn't believe everything we see.
• 1:04:01
  We shouldn't be impulsive. You know, when we, when we hear
• 1:04:04
  something, let's let's not just jump to a conclusion that it's
• 1:04:08
  that it's correct. If facts are reported to us, or
• 1:04:10
  alleged facts are reported to us, Let's make sure we have
• 1:04:13
  multiple sources of information. Should we be?
• 1:04:17
  Should we be particularly skeptical of anything coming
• 1:04:19
  from Hamas because they're the ones?
• 1:04:21
  Oh, you know. They're part of their creed is
• 1:04:24
  unjust war, you know, and they're they're the ones
• 1:04:26
  announcing their casualties. They're claiming that Israel hit
• 1:04:29
  the hospital. Israel killed 500 words come
• 1:04:31
  out. Wasn't Israel.
• 1:04:32
  It's unclear how many people died, but it certainly wasn't
• 1:04:34
  500. So I think that's, I've watched
• 1:04:37
  that in the Western media, you know, they're, they're pouncing
• 1:04:40
  on anything, the Ministry of War or the Ministry of Health,
• 1:04:42
  excuse me, and Gaza says, which is a Hamas arm and they report
• 1:04:46
  it and it's headline news for the whole country to now become
• 1:04:49
  enraged about or confused about. Don't believe a word Hamas says.
• 1:04:54
  It's a terrorist organization, You know, it, it, it, it does
• 1:04:57
  not have the interest of the Palestinian people at heart.
• 1:05:00
  And in in fact, as I said earlier in our conversation, the
• 1:05:04
  more they want more, not less Palestinian deaths, more
• 1:05:06
  Palestinian deaths helps their cause.
• 1:05:09
  So don't believe Hamas, but don't just implicitly or
• 1:05:14
  immediately believe anything you hear from anybody the the US
• 1:05:18
  government, the Israeli government, the New York Times,
• 1:05:20
  Fox News, even if they were doing their best and they're not
• 1:05:25
  always doing their best. You know, politicians sometimes
• 1:05:27
  spin and sometimes worse than spin media or often biased, more
• 1:05:32
  often than not biased these days.
• 1:05:34
  So, you know, make sure you have multiple sources of information.
• 1:05:37
  Don't just listen to one source or one side.
• 1:05:43
  Don't jump to conclusions. Don't assume as soon as you hear
• 1:05:46
  a report that it's that it's true.
• 1:05:49
  Try to, you know, maintain some distance there and some critical
• 1:05:53
  perspective. That's really the best we can,
• 1:05:56
  we can do. Just try to be thoughtful about
• 1:05:58
  these things. And then, of course, for those
• 1:06:00
  of us who are believers, whether we're Catholics or Protestants
• 1:06:04
  or Jews or Muslims, whatever our faith, we, we need to be praying
• 1:06:09
  for the peace of Jerusalem. We need to be praying for
• 1:06:11
  everybody involved over here, over there, there.
• 1:06:14
  There are decent people on all sides who are caught up in this
• 1:06:22
  it. It is a complete nightmare,
• 1:06:24
  something most of us have never even remotely experienced and
• 1:06:28
  can't even can't even imagine. So the one thing we can all do
• 1:06:32
  is pray. And I think we really need to be
• 1:06:35
  about the business of of prayer. This is what we regard as the
• 1:06:39
  Holy Land, the land where Jesus himself, when he was on earth
• 1:06:44
  with us in physical form, walked.
• 1:06:47
  This is, as it happens, is the homeland of my own ancestors.
• 1:06:51
  My father's people come from that area, from Syria and
• 1:06:54
  Lebanon. I feel I've had sort of a little
• 1:06:58
  bit of a personal stake in all this as well.
• 1:07:01
  But all of us are spiritually invested in that place Where,
• 1:07:11
  where, where where Jesus walked, where the revelation of the
• 1:07:14
  Hebrew scripture was first given to the Jewish people, where
• 1:07:18
  Abraham, Abraham became Abraham, where where you know, Saint Paul
• 1:07:25
  was born and where he began his his his own work, Where our
• 1:07:31
  Blessed Mother Mary was born and lived her entire life and from
• 1:07:35
  which he was assumed into heaven as we Catholics believe.
• 1:07:40
  This is a very special place. And look at it torn apart like
• 1:07:44
  this. Look at the suffering in the
• 1:07:47
  evil being perpetrated over there.
• 1:07:49
  So, you know, let's think hard about things like just war
• 1:07:53
  theory. I, I, I do it all the time.
• 1:07:55
  I do it professionally. We all now, even if we're not
• 1:07:57
  professional philosophers, have to be doing it so that we can be
• 1:08:00
  good citizens. But it's even more important
• 1:08:03
  that we pray. Last question, if I may.
• 1:08:06
  What do you think is the appropriate response militarily
• 1:08:12
  of the United States from a just war perspective in assisting the
• 1:08:17
  war of an ally? And this is obviously very
• 1:08:19
  controversial right now on the left and the right.
• 1:08:22
  You know, should we militarily aid Israel?
• 1:08:24
  To what degree should we get involved?
• 1:08:26
  And many people do not want us to get involved at all.
• 1:08:29
  War is just something no one wants to even in any way
• 1:08:34
  tolerate. What do you, what is your what
• 1:08:36
  is your take on that? Well just war theory is not
• 1:08:38
  going to give you a straight out answer on that one Lila.
• 1:08:42
  I mean, it can only answer certain questions.
• 1:08:44
  And here we are in the area of prudence.
• 1:08:47
  So assuming that all the criteria have been met for, for,
• 1:08:50
  for, for just wars, I believe in this case they they have.
• 1:08:54
  And assuming then that that Israel as the aggressed against
• 1:08:59
  party here is conducting itself in a, in a way that's consistent
• 1:09:05
  with just war principles. And and if they're not, it's our
• 1:09:08
  job to try to hold them as our allies to it.
• 1:09:11
  We also have to be good allies to them.
• 1:09:15
  They have not requested U.S. military involvement, boots on
• 1:09:19
  the ground soldiers. I don't think they will request
• 1:09:21
  them. If they did request them, that
• 1:09:23
  would be a very profound, difficult prudential judgement
• 1:09:26
  that our own leadership would have to make, that our own
• 1:09:28
  public would either support or not or not support.
• 1:09:32
  But they will need other forms of support for both in terms of
• 1:09:37
  armament and strategic assistance and also in the
• 1:09:43
  battle at the level of publicity and ideas.
• 1:09:48
  Because in no small measure, because of the prevalence and
• 1:09:52
  widespread nature of anti-Semitism, Israel is always
• 1:09:57
  vilified. The Jewish people are always
• 1:10:00
  vilified. And they're attacked in in media
• 1:10:04
  all over the world. Lies are told about them.
• 1:10:08
  The infamous blood libels continue to this to this day.
• 1:10:13
  Efforts are made in international institutions to
• 1:10:16
  isolate them and to undermine their efforts and to damage
• 1:10:19
  them. And here the USI think needs to
• 1:10:21
  do its role as a good ally in, in stepping up there in
• 1:10:25
  solidarity with Israel and, and in and in helping it.
• 1:10:29
  And I think, you know, with respect to our own friends, and
• 1:10:34
  this would extend to our friends in the Palestinian and other
• 1:10:36
  Arab communities here in the United States, as well as to our
• 1:10:38
  Jewish friends, we have to be good friends.
• 1:10:41
  Now, that doesn't mean that we have to be neutral as to, you
• 1:10:44
  know, who's been aggressed against here and who is the
• 1:10:47
  aggressor. Hamas is the aggressor here.
• 1:10:49
  Israel has been aggressed against.
• 1:10:51
  But I think we have to be good friends to our, to our people,
• 1:10:57
  to the people of different faiths, different ethnicities
• 1:11:01
  and, and traditions. But that always means, you know,
• 1:11:04
  being truthful. You're, you're not, you're not a
• 1:11:06
  good friend when you're not truthful to people.
• 1:11:09
  And so I think we need to be truthful about who's being
• 1:11:11
  aggressed against and who's being aggressed.
• 1:11:13
  And we have to be truthful when we, when we condemn Hamas.
• 1:11:17
  And we have to be truthful if and when we think Israel has
• 1:11:20
  stepped out of line or done something that's incorrect or
• 1:11:24
  improper. There's there's no guarantee
• 1:11:26
  that we're going to agree even when it comes at least to some
• 1:11:30
  of the details of just war principles with the Israeli
• 1:11:32
  government or that the American Jewish community is going to
• 1:11:35
  agree with everything that the Israeli government government
• 1:11:39
  does. But we just have to be honest.
• 1:11:41
  And people of people of goodwill, I do think we need to
• 1:11:45
  bear in mind the history here and there is a terrible,
• 1:11:50
  dreadful history of animus and hatred for, for which Christians
• 1:11:56
  are in no small measure, you know themselves responsible
• 1:11:59
  Catholics among other Christians of, of hatred of Jews.
• 1:12:04
  And let's not let that infect our community again or in any
• 1:12:12
  way diminish our sense of what our responsibility is when it
• 1:12:19
  comes to standing in solidarity with the people that the late
• 1:12:23
  John Paul, St. John Paul the 2nd called our
• 1:12:26
  elder brothers in faith, the people of the, as John Paul put
• 1:12:29
  it, the original covenant, our kindred nation, John Paul said
• 1:12:33
  of the of the original covenant. Now, that doesn't mean that you
• 1:12:36
  know that we should be biased in favor of Jews and against
• 1:12:41
  Palestinians. But I think it is worth keeping
• 1:12:43
  in mind that anti-Semitism has a long history, including among
• 1:12:48
  us, and we don't want that playing any role in Catholic
• 1:12:52
  thinking or responses to this, to this situation.
• 1:12:56
  Let's be clear headed as we can. Let's try to make the best
• 1:12:59
  prudential assessments that we can.
• 1:13:02
  And above all, Lila, let's be in prayer.
• 1:13:04
  It's such a good point, Dr. George, thank you.
• 1:13:07
  And and also to remember there's over 30 countries that Islam is
• 1:13:10
  their state religion. I think there's a dozen that's
• 1:13:13
  it's Christianity. There's only one in the whole on
• 1:13:15
  the whole planet where it's Judaism.
• 1:13:18
  And that's the the newer nation of Israel with obviously it's
• 1:13:20
  it's ancient roots. And you know that they have been
• 1:13:23
  a long, a long attacked people. So I I thank you for recalling
• 1:13:27
  us to that context, because I think many people are quick to
• 1:13:29
  forget it. In the long run there does need
• 1:13:33
  to be a solution, and I hope the long run won't be that long, but
• 1:13:36
  it seems to be getting worse and worse.
• 1:13:38
  It seems to be pushing further, being pushed further and further
• 1:13:41
  over the horizon. But in the long run there has to
• 1:13:43
  be a solution to this that both Jews and Palestinians or other
• 1:13:48
  Arabs can live with. Both sides have lots of claims
• 1:13:54
  against the other, grievances against the the other, but the
• 1:13:56
  reality is that they are there together and they're either
• 1:14:00
  going to spend the rest of the, the, the, their time of
• 1:14:04
  existence killing each other or we're going to come up with some
• 1:14:07
  sort of some sort of rapprochement.
• 1:14:11
  I, I myself would love to see a 2 state solution.
• 1:14:14
  I know it's considered now to be almost like almost utopian to
• 1:14:20
  suppose there can be a 2 state solution, but I don't see
• 1:14:25
  anything short of that that doesn't just end up in perpetual
• 1:14:29
  bloodshed. You know, Israel cannot govern
• 1:14:33
  majority Palestinian areas. That's just not going to happen
• 1:14:37
  over the long run. And you know, the, the, it seems
• 1:14:41
  to me that even the strongest supporters of Palestinian claims
• 1:14:47
  should not imagine that they're going to get rid of Israel
• 1:14:50
  because they're not. So I would like as a matter of
• 1:14:54
  justice and also as a matter of peace, to have a situation where
• 1:15:01
  you've got a flourishing, vibrant Palestinian state and a
• 1:15:06
  flourishing, vibrant Israel, living in peace with each other,
• 1:15:11
  trading with each other, having cultural as well as economic
• 1:15:18
  interaction and exchange. With so much bitterness,
• 1:15:22
  especially based on so much bloodshed over the last 75
• 1:15:26
  years, it's hard to envision that.
• 1:15:28
  And I can see why people think I'm crazy and I'm a utopian and
• 1:15:31
  I'm a loony visionary and so forth and so on.
• 1:15:34
  But I'm not going to give that vision or that hope up, Lila,
• 1:15:37
  because the, the, the alternative is just too
• 1:15:39
  unthinkable. Perpetual bloodshed, perpetual
• 1:15:43
  October the 7th, perpetual sieges of Palestine, perpetual
• 1:15:48
  bloodshed and evil. We've just got to do better.
• 1:15:53
  I'm with you, I'm with you and let's all pray together for the
• 1:15:57
  solution that brings peace and the justice to both the people
• 1:16:01
  of Israel and the people of Palestine.
• 1:16:04
  Thank you so much, Doctor George, for your time today.
• 1:16:06
  And it's it's was wonderful. And thank you for your work,
• 1:16:10
  your, your incredible work on fighting for life in this
• 1:16:13
  country and, and outside of it. Well, I appreciate that, Lila,
• 1:16:17
  especially coming from the person I consider the
• 1:16:19
  valedictorian of the pro-life movement.
• 1:16:22
  So thank you. Thank you.
• 1:16:24
  Thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening to
• 1:16:26
  this episode of the Lila Rose Podcast on Just War Theory with
• 1:16:31
  Doctor Robert George. I hope it was helpful for those
• 1:16:34
  listening and enlightening. As usual, I love your comments
• 1:16:38
  and your feedback. I read every e-mail and I try to
• 1:16:41
  read every comment. You can e-mail me at
• 1:16:43
  lila@gtbmedia.com and as always, we love your support.
• 1:16:48
  We have a Patreon and you can become a Patreon at any amount
• 1:16:52
  to access special updates and content at the link in the bio.
• 1:16:57
  Thank you all so much and we'll see you next time.