Homework
I'll leave you with
one last piece. It's practically already in logical form, because that seems to
be the way Stephen Shalom writes. It's also from the NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia, a period where everyone had to reason very carefully.
On
June 17, 1999, the editors of the New York Times explained that the
"signs of mass killing and wanton destruction" throughout Kosovo
"ought to give pause to those who fault NATO for confronting Slobodan
Milosevic." "[I]t is not too soon to conclude." wrote the
editors, "that the air offensive was just."
But
why would further evidence of Serbian atrocities during the war strengthen the
pro-war case? Principled critics of the NATO war did not doubt that Milosevic's
forces had committed horrible atrocities before the bombing and even more
monstrous crimes once the bombing began. Indeed, a major argument raised by
these critics against the war was precisely that the bombing unleashed a
humanitarian catastrophe for the Kosovar Albanians on a scale far worse than
what was going on before the bombing. Inevitably and depressingly further
evidence of post-bombing Serbian atrocities will come to light. Such evidence,
however, will not weaken the anti-war case. On the contrary, it strengthens the
view that alternatives to the bombing should have been pursued -- as imperfect
as they may have been. It seems to me that the moral burden is on the
supporters of the war to show that NATO's resort to violence mitigated to some
degree the suffering of the ethnic Albanians. This is not a sufficient
condition for justifying the war -- for the war surely had other costs -- but
certainly it is a necessary one.
The
war's supporters have tried to meet this burden by making three different
arguments. First, they have argued that what was going on before the bombing
was not significantly different from what came later. Second, they have argued
that the accelerated ethnic cleansing began shortly before the bombing, so that
the bombing was a response to the ethnic cleansing, rather than a contributing
factor. And, third, they have argued that the post-bombing ethnic cleansing was
going to happen in any event so the bombing played no role in causing it. Each
one of these arguments is unconvincing. I will consider them in turn.