This week in the Wall Street Journal, Thane Rosenbaum argued that Palestinian adults are, as a whole, legitimate targets of attack because they were involved in electing Hamas to power eight years ago. This, as Australians learned that a hospital had been targeted in the continuing devastation, missiles continue to be fired at Israel, and the ground invasion of Gaza continues to report casualties on both sides. There is no need for more blood or tears in Gaza, but there is a strong case to be made for higher ethical standards.
Earlier in this latest round of escalations, I suspected that proportionality would be the central ethical issue in this conflict, and though it has certainly been a factor, my suspicions were short-sighted. In fact, there is nary a military ethical issue that hasn't arisen in these rapidly-escalating hostilities.
Perhaps most telling, however, are two matters of frequent discussion in military ethical literature. First, the relation between the justice of a cause and those people fighting for the cause; and secondly, the extent — if any — to which military actions can justifiably cause harm to citizens.
Historically, the argument that the use of military force can sometimes, under strict conditions, be justifiable has been championed by what is known as the Just War Tradition. A watered-down, generalised form is frequently taught in introductory courses as 'Just War Theory'.
Despite great variance among thinkers, this school of thought traditionally held that ad bellum ethical questions — concerning whether war should be engaged in at all — should be treated separately to in bello questions regarding how military personnel should conduct themselves once they were at war.
Combatants, on this view, are responsible for how they conduct themselves on the ground (or at sea, in the air, or — increasingly — online), while political leaders and higher levels of military and intelligence leadership are usually responsible for whether a cause is just or not. So long as combatants adhere to the laws of war, target only enemy combatants, and avoid civilian causalities wherever possible, they can be said to have acted well.
However, in recent times, this has been challenged by philosophers aiming to revise the traditional view of just war to say that it is logically impossible for a soldier whose actions are advancing an unjust cause to be acting morally well. Instead, only soldiers fighting for a good cause and who obey the laws of war