Barth's Critique of Religion of "Good People"

In the midst of the carnage of the first world war in Germany, the great Protestant theologian argued that Christianity involves more than inner morality and being a ‘good person’

By Giles Frazer

It will be a century this coming summer that the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth began his revolutionary commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. A quiet and studious man of simple tastes, Barth was an unlikely revolutionary. He listened to Mozart, smoked his pipe and read the paper: “Theology is done with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other,” he said. But mostly he sat and wrote. His Church Dogmatics is more than six million words. And no, I haven’t read it all. But his considerably shorter Epistle to the Romans, written earlier, was the decisive turning point in 20th-century theology. It was a book that dropped a bomb on the comfortable assumptions of German liberal thought. And it’s a bomb that needs dropping again – but this time much closer to home.

Barth’s target was the sort of theology offered by his tutor, Adolf von Harnack. For the universally admired Harnack, Christianity was a religion of inner morality – of good people, in their local congregations, who sought nothing more than personal transformation. They respected the state and didn’t cause trouble. It was, to use the language familiar today, religion as a private matter, equally suspicious of outward forms of ritualism and popular superstition. Cultured and rational, it stayed out of party politics and set its mind on higher things. For Harnack, Christianity was fundamentally a religion of individual righteousness.

On the day war was declared between Britain and Germany, the Kaiser gave a speech to the assembled members of the Reichstag in which he made the moral case for Germany going to war. The speech was partly written by Harnack. Two months later, an open letter by 93 German intellectuals – 11 of whom, including the great theoretical physicist Max Planck, went on to be Nobel prize winners – made the same case. The war was a sacred mission. It was a question of survival for a superior culture that had given the world Goethe, Beethoven and Kant. Harnack’s name was among the 93 signatories.

And Barth's world was in tatters.

Read it all here.

Is religion the #1 cause of war?

Atheists and secular humanists consistently make the claim that religion is the #1 cause of violence and war throughout the history of mankind. One of hatetheism's key cheerleaders, Sam Harris, says in his book The End of Faith that faith and religion are “the most prolific source of violence in our history.”1

While there’s no denying that campaigns such as the Crusades and the Thirty Years’ War foundationally rested on religious ideology, it is simply incorrect to assert that religion has been the primary cause of war. Moreover, although there’s also no disagreement that radical Islam was the spirit behind 9/11, it is a fallacy to say that all faiths contribute equally where religiously-motivated violence and warfare are concerned.

An interesting source of truth on the matter is Philip and Axelrod’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars, which chronicles some 1,763 wars that have been waged over the course of human history. Of those wars, the authors categorize 123 as being religious in nature,2 which is an astonishingly low 6.98% of all wars. However, when one subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23%.

Read it all here.

 

Quote of the Week - Stanley Hauerwas

If I am right about the story that shapes the American self-understanding, I think we are in a position to better understand why after 11 September 2001 the self-proclaimed 'most powerful nation in the world' runs on fear. It does so because the fear of death is necessary to insure a level of cooperation between people who otherwise share nothing in common. That is, they share nothing in common other than the presumption that death is to be avoided at all costs.

That is why in America hospitals have become our cathedrals and physicians are our priests. Accordingly medical schools are much more serious about the moral formation of their students than divinity schools. They are so because Americans do not believe that an inadequately trained priest may damage their salvation, but they do believe an inadequately trained doctor can hurt them.--Dr. Stanley Hauerwas

From an intriguing essay titled "The End of American Protestantism"

Syrian Appeal to USA: Please stay away!

FROM HIS EMINENCE METROPOLITAN PHILIP Beloved Hierarchs, Clergy and Faithful of our God-Protected Archdiocese: Greetings to you and your families as we begin a new ecclesiastical year. I pray you had a pleasant summer. I write to you today as our president and United States Congress contemplate military action against Syria. As those of us with deep roots in that land already know, more bombs and destabilization of the country will only lead to further bloodshed and devastation. In my opinion, based on a lifetime of knowledge in that area of the world, it serves neither the interest of the United States, nor the Syrian people (or the people of the Middle East at large for that matter) to bomb and further destabilize the country. Extremists groups such as Al-Kaeda are waiting in the wings to prey on any weakness in the Syrian government and infrastructure. The results of such a bombing would be yet another step in the extermination of our Christian presence in the Middle East, a presence that dates to the dawn of Christianity. Our Church has already suffered greatly and has new martyrs waiting to be glorified –we do not need any more! Therefore, I urge all of you during the next few days to contact your respective senators and congress people to urge them to vote NO to any unilateral military action by the United States. Time is of the essence so please distribute this email to everyone you know as quickly as possible and share this message on your Facebook and other mass media sites. Wishing you all a peaceful new Church year, I remain, Your Father in Christ, Metropolitan Philip Archbishop of New York and Metropolitan of all North America

Pakistani Taliban Join Syria Conflict

ISLAMABAD/PESHAWAR: The Pakistani Taliban have set up camps and sent hundreds of men to Syria to fight alongside rebels opposed to President Bashar al Assad, militants said on Sunday, in a strategy aimed at cementing ties with Al Qaeda’s central leadership.

More than two years since the start of the anti-Assad rebellion, Syria has become a magnet for foreign Sunni fighters who have flocked to the Middle Eastern nation to join what they see as a holy war against Shia `oppressors’.

Operating alongside militant groups such as the Al Nusra Front, described by the United States as a branch of Al Qaeda, they mainly come from nearby countries such as Libya and Tunisia riven by similar conflict as a result of the Arab Spring.

On Sunday, Taliban commanders in Pakistan said they had also decided to join the cause, saying hundreds of fighters had gone to Syria to fight alongside their “Mujahideen friends”.
Read it all here.

Syria Peace Conference Unlikely

25 June 2013 – An international conference to find a political solution to the Syria crisis is not likely to be held in July, the Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the Arab League for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said today.

“Frankly now, I doubt whether the conference will take place in July,” Mr. Brahimi said ahead of talks in Geneva with Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mikhail Bogdanov and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Wendy Sherman.

This meeting, the first since the officials last met on 5 June, is due to pave the way for a potential conference aimed at finding a political settlement to the fighting between the Syrian army and opposition forces seeking to oust President Bashar Al-Assad, which since March 2011 has claimed more than 93,000 lives and sent some 1.5 million people fleeing to neighbouring countries for safety.

Read it all here.

Related reading: Morsi to Hezbollah: Get Out of Syria; Saudi Arabia: Iran and Hezbollah in Syria is Dangerous

Syria Willing to Talk

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich told a news conference in Moscow, "'We are pleased to announce that Damascus has expressed its readiness in principle to participate in the international conference [on Syria] in order for Syrians themselves to find a political path to a solution of a conflict that is so disastrous for the nation and the region."

The peace conference, dubbed 'Geneva 2' and expected to be held in June in the Swiss city, would be aimed at ending the raging Syrian civil war, which in two years has killed more than 80,000 people.

'Demands to immediately set a concrete date for convening the conference, with no clarity about who will speak on behalf of the opposition and what powers they will have, cannot not be taken seriously,' Lukashevich cautioned.

Read it all here.

100,000+ Syrians Seek Asylum

4 September 2012 – As heavy fighting continues throughout Syria, the United Nations refugee agency today reported that the number of those fleeing to neighbouring countries rose to over 100,000 in August – the highest monthly total to date.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 103,416 people sought asylum in countries neighbouring Syria in that month, bringing the total number of Syrian refugees registered or awaiting registration as of 2 September to 235,368 – mainly in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq.

Those figures include Iraqi refugees who had previously fled to Syria and are now returning to their homeland by the thousands, a UNHCR spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, told a news briefing in Geneva. According to the Iraqi Government, 35,000 people returned to Iraq in July and August alone.

“Most tell us they are leaving because of general insecurity, although some have reported direct threats,” Ms. Fleming said, noting reports that three Iraqi refugees were killed last week in Jaramana, located outside of the capital, Damascus, increasing fear among the refugee population there.

More than 18,000 people, mostly civilians, have died since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began some 18 months ago. There have been reports of an escalation in violence in recent weeks in many towns and villages, as well as the country's two biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo.

Ms. Fleming said UNHCR and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent continue to expand operations to support Syrians displaced both internally and abroad. Domestically, the UN agency has launched a programme of financial assistance, with 730 vulnerable families receiving cheques as part of a scheme to help some 35,000 families in the coming months.

In Iraq, authorities in the Kurdistan region had agreed to the establishment of a second refugee camp that will mainly accommodate Syrian Kurds, arrivals of whom had been increasing significantly in the past week, along with smaller numbers of other Syrians, Ms. Fleming said.

For returnees, the Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration is expediting the registration process to enable them to receive government assistance for their reintegration. Some 2,000 families were registered in July and August as part of that effort. UNHCR is also assisting Iraqi returnees with household items and will soon start a small cash assistance programme for the most vulnerable returnee families.

In Jordan, into which refugees continue to flow at a rate of about 1,000 a day, the Government, UNHCR and partners are preparing for an even larger influx, given reports of increasing numbers of displaced people in southern Syria.

Ms. Fleming said that the first batch of 56 trucks carrying 13,000 tents and relief items, such as blankets, jerry cans and kitchen sets, for a total 150,000 people, arrived in Jordan from Dubai over the weekend to augment local supplies.

In Lebanon, there are now more than 59,000 Syrians registered or awaiting registration with the UN refugee agency, Ms. Fleming said, adding that this week the agency is opening a mobile registration centre in the eastern Bekaa Valley.

Host families and schools are increasingly stretched in their capacity to host refugees and UNHCR is appealing to authorities in Lebanon to approve alternative shelter options, she said, while the agency is also working to meeting the educational needs of the refugee children.

Turkey, meanwhile, now hosts some 80,410 Syrian refugees, according to the Government. Ms. Fleming said that there was still a backlog at the border, with reportedly around 8,000 people waiting to cross and receiving assistance, while being admitted at the rate of hundreds per day.

Ms. Fleming added that the Turkish Government continues to transfer Syrian refugees to the new camp in Karkamis, with over 4,000 people already transferred in recent days. Another new camp opened yesterday in Kahramanmaras.

The spokesperson noted that the Turkish Government continues to assure UNHCR that it will keep its borders open to Syrian refugees.


Source: Global Security.org

 

Syria's Chemical Weapons

Syria has admitted it has chemical weapons and in what might have been a veiled threat against Israel, said it will use them if attacked.

The regime promised it would not engage in chemical warfare against rebels, who by all accounts except for that of the government are pushing President Bashar Assad out of power.

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi “assured” the world that it has secured chemical weapons, which it previously has not admitted to be in its possession but never would be used "inside Syria."

Read it all here.

Russia to Stop Shipping Arms to Syria

Carla Babb

A senior Russian defense official said Moscow will no longer sell any weapons to Syria until the situation there calms down, as a Syrian activist group said the death toll from the Syrian conflict has surpassed 17,000.

Vyacheslav Dzirkaln, the deputy chief of the Russian military and technical cooperation agency, said Monday that Russia will not sign any more arms deals, deliver any more weapons or ship any spare parts for weapons delivered earlier.

The United States and other world leaders have pushed Russia to stop helping Damascus crackdown on the opposition there.

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin said the Syrian government and the opposition groups should be forced to enter negotiations.

"I am convinced that we must do everything possible to force the conflicting sides to find a peaceful political solution to all the disputed issues," Putin told a group of Russian and foreign diplomats in televised remarks.

His comments came hours after his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, met with a senior Syrian opposition leader, Michel Kilo, in Moscow.

Heavy toll of conflict

Russia's announcement that it will no longer send weapons to Syria comes as the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 17,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict since it began in March of last year.

Rami Abdelrahman said Monday that 31 died across Syria, including 11 Syrian army troops and 20 civilians and rebels.

He said there was heavy fighting and army shelling in the provinces of Homs, Idlib, Daraa and Deir Ezzor, and near Damascus.

"There is fighting everyday. It doesn't ever stop," Abdelrahman said.

Annan-Assad meeting

Meanwhile, the U.N.'s special envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Monday before traveling to Iran. The U.N. diplomat called the talks "constructive and candid."

"We discussed the need to end the violence and ways and means of doing so," Annan told reporters. "We agreed on an approach which I will share with the armed opposition."

Annan has been trying for months to implement a peace plan in Syria, but has admitted that the efforts have failed.

In an interview with German television broadcast Sunday, Syrian President Assad accused the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of hindering peace and supporting what he called "terrorists."

The United Nations wants independent investigators to probe Assad's charges that terrorists, and not the government, are responsible for the violence.

Some information for this report was provided by AP.

Source: Global Security.org

Related reading: UN and Russia Condemn Houla Massacre; Syria Violence Escalates

Assad Attacks on Syrian Civilians Must Stop

By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service



WASHINGTON, July 9, 2012 – Defense Department officials are closely monitoring events in Syria, including the military exercises that began yesterday, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said today.

Media reports characterize the exercises as large-scale and simulating responses to external attacks on the nation’s forces.

“I don’t know that this military exercise suggests anything new about the conflict, or if it may simply be visual bravado on the part of the [Bashar] Assad regime,” Little said, responding to reporters’ questions during a regularly scheduled media briefing. Assad has ruled Syria since his father, Hafez al-Assad, died in 2000. The elder Assad had ruled for 29 years.

Little strongly repeated the department’s position on Syria, where the military has used lethal force in an effort to crush popular uprisings that began in January 2011. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon estimates that as many as 17,000 people have been killed in the violence.

“This regime continues to mount despicable attacks against Syrian civilians, and the violence that the regime is perpetrating must end,” Little said. Defense officials have not yet classed the exercise as “provocative,” he noted, but he added that judgment could change based on events.

“What we view as much more serious, at this stage, is the continued wanton murder of Syrian civilians,” he said.

Little responded to a question on reports that Russia will halt arms sales to Syria, saying he can’t confirm that information. “We welcome any move by any nation to stop supplying the Assad regime,” he said.

The press secretary noted defense officials also are closely monitoring events on the Turkish-Syrian border. Tensions between the two countries have escalated following Turkey’s June 22 report that Syrian forces shot down a Turkish F-4 fighter jet and its two-member crew.

“We hope that this terrible violence in Syria doesn’t spread,” Little said. “We understand Turkey’s concerns, and we’ll continue to work closely with our Turkish allies.”

Related reading:  Unprecedented Killing of Citizen Journalists; Syrian Journalists Arrested and Tortured; Security Council Addresses Assad's Brutality; Syria Seeks to Crush Reports of Brutality

SYRIA: Unprecedented Killing of Citizen Journalists

(RSF/IFEX) - 7 July 2012 - A total of 33 professional and citizen journalists have been killed since the start of the uprising in Syria in March 2001, Reporters Without Borders said today, after attending yesterday's meeting of the "Friends of Syria" in Paris as an observer.

The past few weeks have been particularly deadly, with around 10 citizen journalists killed since late May. Reporters Without Borders is also very disturbed to learn that freelance journalist Mohamed Sami Al-Kayyal was arrested in the coastal city of Tartus on 27 June. 

"'We firmly condemn the remorseless crackdown and accelerating cycle of violence in what is now a civil war," Reporters Without Borders said. "Freely and independently reported news and information are now an absolute necessity but they are unfortunately getting rarer and rarer. June saw the death of an unprecedented number of citizen journalists who have been sacrificing their lives to provide video footage of the uprising, the crackdown and now the military operations by armed groups fighting the ruthless Assad regime. 

"We would also like to stress the difficulty of verifying any information coming out of Syria. The regime has managed to impose a media blackout by posing many obstacles to visits by foreign journalists - who are exposed to great danger if they come - and by jailing Syrian professional journalists who refuse to relay government propaganda. As for the activists who try to report and document the regime's atrocities, they are hunted down relentlessly by the security services, which kill them or sometimes torture them to death." 

Following the war 

The latest victim is Wael Omar Bard, a citizen journalist who was killed in Jarjanaz, 40 km south of Idlib, on 26 June. Bard used to live in Saudi Arabia and it was there that he started supporting the Syrian uprising by posting information about it on social networks. Then he returned to his native Syria armed with just a video camera and started filming demonstrations and the regime's atrocities. 

According to the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, he was filming a clash between the regular army and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) when he was killed by a shot to the heart. Activists said that on the eve of his death he went back to the village where he was born, Teftanazz, 10 km northeast of Idlib. He went there to bury his brother, a doctor specializing in emergency cases who was murdered by intelligence officers. 

The citizen journalist Hamza Mahmoud Othman was fatally shot by a sniper in Homs on 21 June while filming the regular army's shelling of two of its districts, Jobar and Al-Sultaniyeh. He often posted videos online showing events in Homs, which has been the scene of violent fighting for many months. 

He was the brother of Ali "Al-Jedd" Othman, the citizen journalist who ran the Baba Amr press centre in Homs until it was destroyed in February and who was then captured by intelligence officers on 28 March. 

Bassim Darwish died on 15 June from the injuries he received two days earlier in an explosion while covering the bombing of Rastan, a town 30 km north of Homs, by two military aircraft. He was one of the founders of the Rastan press centre and had covered many demonstrations in the region as well as the regular army's operations. 

Ayham Youssef Al-Hariri, an anti-government activist since March 2011, was fatally injured by the blast from a shell in Deraa on 13 June. Another local activist told the Doha Centre for Media Freedom that Hariri had been filming the army's shelling of the Deraa district of Al-Sadd when he was hit by the explosion. 

Aged 35, married and the father of five children, Hariri had been imprisoned and tortured twice by intelligence officers. As well as gathering and distributing news, he organized demonstrations, delivered aid to the families of victims and helped smuggle government opponents across the nearby border into Jordan. 

Abdelhamid Idriss Matar, a 22-year-old student of agro-food engineering at Baath University in Homs, was fatally injured by a shot fired from a tank as he was filming an assault on Al-Qussair, a town 25 km south of Homs, on 31 May. He often filmed demonstrations and army operations, posting his videos on YouTube. 

Reporters Without Borders already reported the deaths of two other citizen journalists last month - Ahmed Hamada in Homs on 16 June and Khaled Al-Bakir in Al-Qussair on 10 June. 

The Coordinating Committee in Tel Rifaat, a town 20 km north of Aleppo, said Mohamed Hamdo Hallaq was killed by a shell while filming the army's bombardment of the nearby town of Azaz on 2 July. The Doha Centre for Media Freedom said a citizen journalist identified as Samer Khalil Al-Sataleh was killed during the shelling of Douma, a town on the western outskirts of Damascus, on 28 June. And the Syrian Journalists League said Ghias Khaled Al-Hmouria was killed while filming an FSA operation in Douma on 25 June. 

Nonetheless, due to the difficulty of obtaining information from Syria, Reporters Without Borders has not yet managed to independently confirm the deaths of the three people named in the previous paragraph or the fact that they were citizen journalists. 

Reporters Without Borders has confirmed that, as of yesterday, a total of 33 Syrian citizens and professional journalists have been killed in 
connection with their journalistic activities since the start of the uprising in March 2011. 

(. . .) 

Read the full report 

For more information:

Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
47, rue Vivienne 
75002 Paris 
France 
rsf (@) rsf.org 
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org
@rsf_rwb

Game of Drones

Matt Hardy

With boots on the ground being costly politically, economically and diplomatically, it seems that week after week, drones are the most important front line weapon against Washington’s opponents in the War on Terror.

In a recent column I looked at the evolution of autonomous aircraft and their current status as the long arm of American foreign policy. The strike carried out last week by a US drone on Libyan-born al-Qaeda depyty Abu Yahya al-Libi in northern Pakistan is a case in point. The action was, according to America’s Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “about our sovereignty”.

By that, Panetta means that popping a Hellfire missile into the mouth of a cave inWaziristan is a means of safe-guarding American interests back in Cleveland. Well, assuming you get the right guy and the act doesn’t alienate so many more locals that you create a never-ending stream of new recruits.

But is it fair enough if one country is flying a robot plane through the airspace of another country and using it to deliberately kill a citizen of a third state? The morality and legality of targeted killings I will leave to those more experienced in the laws of sovereignty and ethics. I would, though, like to know two things:

1) Who decides who is guilty enough to make it on to a death warrant for Obama to sign?

2) How many “number twos” can one organisation have? It seems that we’re always nailing another “al-Qaeda number two” or “trusted lieutenant”. That’s one flat organisational chart.

Warfare on the cheap

Aside from those questions it is worth examining the phenomenon of drones (or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) in terms of why they are used, and what bonuses and costs they have politically. For using drones as a weapon of choice against terrorist cells is at the same time a precision tool and a blunt instrument.

The big tactical attraction with the robot aircraft is, in football terms, their “hang time”. A Predator UAV can stay aloft for up to 24 hours. They don’t sleep, don’t eat, don’t get stressed out, can see in the dark and after that 24 hour stint they’ll be ready to do another shift straight as soon as the fuel tank is topped up. And if something goes wrong and they end up as a pile of debris scattered over an acre of Afghan hillside, nobody needs to send them home in a flag-draped coffin. At just $4 million a pop, Predators are huge value for money.

Given the nature of the terrain where America is hunting terrorists, drones are an easy solution compared to inserting troops and much more cost efficient than using conventional fighter-bomber aircraft. You can have a drone circling a patch of turf day and night, just waiting for a target of opportunity or a particular individual to pop their head up.

Then it’s up to the controllers back at base to give the nod and fire the missile and … BANG! Instant job opportunity for a new al-Qaeda number two.

Strategic killing

In strategic terms, drones are a good way of continuing a war while everybody can pretend it’s not happening. Having a few battalions of Marines sitting in Pakistan or Yemen would be politically difficult, both for America and the “host” country.

And it’s bad for the Marines too when they keep getting their legs blown off by IEDs whilst fruitlessly chasing shepherds around the mountainsides.

Drones mean that politicians can say, “We’ve brought the boys back home,” while still making sure there are some positive bad-guy killing stories in tomorrow’s Washington Post. President Obama has been a bigger user of drones than his predecessor for precisely this reason.

Collateral damage

But this robotic presence is still a presence. And it’s here we find the drawback of this arms-length warfare: drones kill people. Sometimes, not the right people either. Naturally, figures vary, but drone strikes in Pakistan alone have been linked to up to 800 civilian deaths. Sadly that sort of figure is just a drop in the ocean considering the body counts that occur monthly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but one has the sense that using a drone to carry out these sort of killings makes it all the more remote from our minds.

However this sort of collateral damage is not remote from the considerations of Pakistanis. The apparent impunity with which America operates its unmanned aircraft over their skies has incensed the government in Islamabad. Especially when Leon Panetta tells them to shut the hell up because this is all about American sovereignty. The Pakistanis also see the drone attacks as counterproductive, creating opposition and resentment that plays into the hands of the terrorist groups.

Kill the bad guy, save his family

We know that these criticisms of the drone campaign must have some grounds because even the CIA is getting squeamish. This has seen the development of a “Lite n'Easy” model Hellfire missile – one with a smaller warhead. The idea is that firing one into the Hilux the bad guy is riding in won’t wipe out the whole of the wedding convoy he’s travelling with. Going to the trouble of inventing this solution is an indication that targeted killing from unmanned aircraft is considered a long-term plan.

Whatever the outcome of the American elections this year it’s a fairly safe bet that drones won’t be voted out. And as long as al-Qaeda keeps that sprawling hierarchy there will be plenty more targets for these graphically-named birds of prey to pursue.

Mat Hardy is a Lecturer in Middle East Studies for Deakin University, in Geelong, Australia. Mat Hardy does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.

Pakistan: No Arms to Afghanistan and No Drones

WASHINGTON, April 12: The United States reacted cautiously on Thursday to Pakistani parliament’s guidelines for rebuilding relations with the United States, as the State Department confined itself to noting “the seriousness” of the parliamentary process.

Officials at the State Department and the office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan immediately began consultations after a parliamentary session in Islamabad announced the recommendations.

The guidelines, approved by lawmakers, include a call for an immediate end to US drone attacks and no further use of Pakistan as a transportation route for weapons into Afghanistan.

“We have seen that the joint session of the Pakistani parliament has approved the final recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security,” said State Department official Laura Lucas, when asked for comments.

“We respect the seriousness with which this review has been conducted. We look forward to discussing these policy recommendations with the government of Pakistan,” she added.

Ms Lucas, however, said that State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland might issue a statement later, which would detail Washington’s reactions to the recommendations announced in Islamabad.

Beth Gosselin, another official at the spokesperson’s office, however, sent Dawn excerpts from Ms Nuland’s recent statements on parliamentary recommendations, which cover various subjects raised in the guidelines.

On the recommendation that Pakistan’s relationship with the United States should be based on mutual respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of each other, Ms Nuland noted that the United States had always respected the “territorial integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan”.

The United States, she said, also had “expressed its respect for the parliamentary review”.

The United States had conveyed its “desire for consultations” after the review “because we have many shared interests to work together,” she said.

Ms Nuland noted that during a recent meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari in Dushanbe, US Special Representative Marc Grossman discussed with him “counter-terrorism
cooperation against insurgents that could harm Pakistanis, Afghans and the United States”.

The US official and the Pakistani leader also talked about “regional integration, expanding trade and economic cooperation”, Ms Nuland noted.


Source: Pakistan Dawn

Psychological Effects of Combat

Ethics students who wish to write their final papers on war or the psychological effects of combat should read this excellent paper.

New Take on Qaddafi's Death

The Associated Press reports that Mustafa Abdul-Jalil told a news conference in Begnhazi that the National Transitional Council has formed a committee to further investigate Qaddafi's death amid conflicting reports about how he may have died after being taken into custody by the revolutionaries.

Still, the interim leader stressed that the government's initial findings support the story that Qaddafi was killed in in the crossfire during a clash between the revolutionaries and his security detail. But, as the AP notes, he also suggested a new possibility: that Qaddafi was intentionally killed by his own supporters to prevent him from implicating them for past actions under his regime.

"Let us question who has the interest in the fact that Qaddafi will not be tried. Libyans want to try him for what he did to them, with executions, imprisonment and corruption," Abdul-Jalil said. "Free Libyans wanted to keep Qaddafi in prison and humiliate him as long as possible. Those who wanted him killed were those who were loyal to him or had played a role under him, his death was in their benefit."

Read more here.

What Constitutes Just War?

Theories of Just War

Michael Tain


The question of what makes a just war is one that philosophers, statesmen, generals, and even common citizens have examined and debated throughout human history, but in order to examine this question fully and completely, war itself must be defined. A general definition would include that war is the actual, intentional, and widespread armed conflict between political communities; and that those political communities can be further defined as entities which are either existing states or ones that intend to become states. This definition would also make allowances for civil wars, while including terrorist organizations, which often aspire to statehood or certainly wish to influence the development of statehood in a particular population or geographic area. Additional understanding to the meaning of the term war can be gained through the works of the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz who stated that war is both “the continuation of policy by other means,” and “an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.” War can thus be described as an intentional widespread act of violence by one group, political community, or state upon another with the intention of gaining the opponent’s acquiescence or cooperation in an issue of territory, law, or governance.

One of the earliest, and more influential, philosophers to examine the question of what makes a just war was Saint Augustine. Augustine’s views on war were intimately tied to his statements and beliefs about mankind and its relationship to God and creation. In these he professed the belief that creation is the handiwork of a God of goodness; and that any evil that exists, or as he would put it an absence of good, is due to humans choosing to remove God from their lives, and thereby committing evil or good-absent acts. On the issue of war itself he clarified that carrying out war was an appropriate act by the leaders of a nation or state, likening it to their justification and right in punishing wrongdoers within their realm, except in this case punishing those who had committed wrong outside their borders. However, within this authorization or justification of war Augustine was very clear that it was only extended to monarchs or leaders of a city or state; and even then should only be used to support and attain the common good of the state and its people, for the natural order is “the peace of mankind.”

The theory of just war was further developed and examined throughout the medieval period with important input and refinement from such religious and philosophical luminaries as Thomas Aquinas and Saint Anselm. Two basic, yet intrinsically related, ideas were the end result: jus in bello and jus ad bellum. Both are related to the justness of war, but jus in bello examines what may be justly done during war, while jus ad bellum examines what justifies going to war. Jus in bello, what may justly be done in war, included such issues as the war should be one of proper intentions, it should be in proportion to the goal sought, and it should not involve the killing of innocents or civilian non-combatants. Jus ad bellum, the justification for making war, include that the war must be waged by a legitimate authority, it must be carried out for a just cause, it must be a last resort, there must be a formal declaration of war, and there must be a reasonable prospect of success. Although “rules” for war, an inherently chaotic, violent, and brutish enterprise by definition, may seem nonsensical to the modern observer, the reality was and is that attempts to put rules or codes of behavior on just such activities is part of the nature of mankind to strive to act justly, or as Saint Augustine would have said to act with God in their lives.

Later religious and philosophical leaders such as Erasmus and Martin Luther also examined the question of just war, although not always with the clarity of thought shown by previous thinkers. As an example Luther used Saint Augustine’s rationale about rightful authority for war when criticizing a peasant’s revolt, stating that the peasant’s actions were in violation of the authority vested in the rulers by God. Yet he also encouraged the German nobility and people to revolt against, or make war on, the Roman Catholic Church, by almost any definition the accepted rightful religious and often secular ruler of the time period. While Luther’s thoughts and encouragement were most probably correct given the corruption and venality of the Church he was encouraging war against, it would be difficult to justify them within the strict framework of jus ad bellum.

One philosopher who examined the question of just war extremely closely was Hugo Grotius; and he examined it through a number of prisms including the law of nature, the law of nations, and divine law. It was Grotius’ belief that God, or divine law, wished humans to protect themselves, have the needed requirements of life, and punish those who transgress. It was also his belief that if God wished those things or ends for mankind, divine law would also wish or mandate the means to achieve those ends. Thus if both the ends and the means to achieve them are wished by God, war and its results are not only sometimes necessary, but by definition just, as God’s will or divine law is always just. Grotius also thought that war could not only be justly undertaken for wrongs already committed, but also for wrongs not yet carried out, in short an early version of a pre-emptive strike. Once one sorts through the many exhaustive definitions that Grotius gives for just war and just actions in war, a general summation of his beliefs might be that war is justified when it is on the side of right, yet the side of right can be one not easily discerned by fallible humans.

Although the question of what makes a just war may be fairly easily answered through some of the frameworks and ethical systems developed by the few great thinkers listed here, mankind must always examine war very closely and truly. War can certainly be described or delineated as just or unjust, but neither definition or ethical debate changes the fact that lives are lost in war, never to be regained, their divine spark snuffed out through the actions of man; and the larger question, at least to me as one who has served in the military, has to be how the divinity that inspired and created that spark views its loss at the hands of man.


Michael Tain is a student of Ethics at Midway College in Kentucky.  He works in the Medical field.

Related reading:  Ethics of War; Why War is Never Really Rational; Kissinger on Afghanistan War: Is There a Strategy?;

Pro-Gadhafi Forces Driven Back

Edward Yeranian October 09, 2011


Fighters loyal to Libya's National Transitional Council captured some strategic places inside the Gadhafi stronghold of Sirte Sunday.

Gunbattles between fighters for Libya's National Transitional Council and forces loyal to ousted leader Moammar Gadhafi continued across parts of Sirte Sunday, with the loyalists losing large chunks of territory, including the city's university and international convention center.

One rebel commander claimed that Gadhafi loyalists were being driven back into an increasingly smaller pocket of territory inside Sirte.

He said the Gadhafi forces are surrounded from the east and west in a shrinking perimeter that now measures about seven square kilometers. He added the rebels are attacking from all sides.

Al Arabiya TV showed NTC fighters controlling Sirte's Ouagadougou Center, which had been a command and control post for Gadhafi forces. The center, which hosted the 2010 Arab and African Union summits, appeared to have pocked walls and shattered windows from shell-fire and shoot-outs.
There were conflicting reports about which side controlled Sirte's main Avicenna Hospital. Several witnesses indicated that pro-Gadhafi snipers were still operating in the city center, near the hospital.
Dr. Mohammed Tantoun told Al Hurra TV that wounded fighters continue to pour in.

He said the wounds he has been treating vary from serious to medium, but that in the last several hours most of the injuries were more serious, mostly to the head and chest.

Another former center of resistance, known as Housing Block 700, also fell to NTC fighters. Some cinder block walls appeared to have collapsed and most windows were shattered in the once gleaming residential block.

Elsewhere, south of Sirte, pro-Gadhafi fighters continued to hold most of the desert town of Bani Walid, but NTC combatants were reported to have taken its airport.

Omar Ashour, who teaches political science at the University of Exeter in Britain, says it is still possible that Moammar Gadhafi could fight a low-level insurgency even after NTC forces gain control of Sirte and Bani Walid.

“There is still the Bani Walid front and there are still several pockets in the south, because what happens is that, as we saw in Sirte, some of the militias and the armed groups with Gadhafi, they move around. So, if they are able to disperse and move to several of the southern pockets, this may lead to a low-level insurgency that can last for a while.”

However, Ashour believes that Gadhafi is running out of financial resources to buy the loyalty of his supporters. He says that if the ousted leader is denied resources, especially from places like Niger, Algeria and elsewhere, he will have less and less support in the south of Libya.

From here.

Steven H. Miles on the New Military Medicine

An important look at military medicine by Steven H. Miles

THE NEW MILITARY MEDICAL ETHICS: LEGACIES OF THE GULF WARS AND THE WAR ON TERROR

ABSTRACT

United States military medical ethics evolved during its involvement in two recent wars, Gulf War I (1990–1991) and the War on Terror (2001–). Norms of conduct for military clinicians with regard to the treatment of prisoners of war and the administration of non-therapeutic bioactive agents to soldiers were set aside because of the sense of being in a ‘new kind of war’. Concurrently, the use of radioactive metal in weaponry and the ability to measure the health consequences of trade embargos on vulnerable civilians occasioned new concerns about the health effects of war on soldiers, their offspring, and civilians living on battlefields. Civilian medical societies and medical ethicists fitfully engaged the evolving nature of the medical ethics issues and policy changes during these wars.


Read the full report here.

Sequel to Spain's Stolen Children

A painful chapter of Spain's 1936-39 Civil War - the removal of children from mothers who were political opponents to be adopted out or even sold - has an even more painful sequel. As many as 30,000 children may have been removed from women identified with the politics of the losing side under the regime of Francisco Franco.

The surprise for Spaniards has been that the practice of removing and even selling babies continued into the mid 1990s. "A great many Spaniards" had been affected by the scandal, which took place "over a prolonged period of time," Attorney-general Candido Conde-Pumpido told the media. Activists claim that of the 2 million adoptions in Spain between 1940 and 1980, 10%, or 200,000 involved false documentation. In June Conde-Pumpido announced that prosecutors are investigating 849 cases of stolen children; 162 cases have been referred for trial and only 38 have been dropped for lack of evidence.

Anadir, a lobby group for people searching for lost children or parents, says that baby-snatching began as a punishment for Republican women but became an underground money-spinner even after Spain became a democracy in 1978. The founder, 41-year-old Antonio Barroso, discovered only three years ago that he had been purchased for 200,000 pesetas (the Spanish currency that preceded the euro). Other tragic stories have emerged from recent investigations. Mothers who brought flowers to their baby's grave for 30 years discovered empty coffins when the child was exhumed. Hospital paperwork about "deceased" twins has turned out to be fraudulent. The investigations are just beginning. ~ AP, June 17