Deathwatching

Now we have colour changes…I am not sure how that happened!

Last time I was teaching the Crimes against Humanity class I picked up three different books to read. I only finished one of them. I read most of another and I began the third. My secret fear is that I am someone who doesn’t finish things. I am so afraid of this that I am not even sure if it’s true or not.

But each time I leave my home office for the living room where most of my books are stored I step over the half finished book which has lain neglected since December: A.C. Grayling’s  Among the Dead Cities.

Since January I have been commuting an hour each way to work. This gives me an unprecedented opportunity for uninterrupted reading not enjoyed since my dissertation days ten years ago. I have to say it’s one of my favorite aspects of my new position!

Since I intend to read relevant content alongside my classes, I think I will aim to complete the reading assignment I set myself last September.

So where did I get to?

Grayling sets out to analyse the carpet bombing carried out by the allied forces in both Europe and Japan prior to the end of the Second World War. His central question is whether these acts could be justified as necessities of war, or whether they were crimes against humanity as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Article 5 defines the crimes which fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/icc/statute/part-a.htm#2)Article 7 describes Crimes against Humanity and Article 8 defines War Crimes.

Crimes against Humanity:
(a)     “Attack directed against any civilian population” means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts … against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack;
(h)     Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender …, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;

War Crimes include:

(iv)     Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;  

(v)     Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;

Grayling examines arguments that suggest that without the carpet bombing of Dresden, Cologne, Tokyo, and then Hiroshima and Nagasaki the war would have continued with massive loss of life and destruction to social and economic infrastructure from which it would have been very difficult to recover. Using Kant’s argument which states that it is never right to do wrong for the purposes of doing right, Grayling dismisses these presentations by saying, “the thought that extreme situations license extreme remedies is part of an outlook which says that moral rules are instrumental” (p.216).

Grayling’s book was published in 2006. While his own discussion (so far) is exclusively tied to his extensive research into British and American decisionmaking during the Second World War, and into the impact of those decisions on the unfortunate and doomed civilians in the towns and cities that were razed to the ground, the book jacket blurb and the reviewers all tie the significance of his conclusions to the conduct of the War on Terrorism and “how far governments can go in the name of national security” (jacket blurb).

The book is arranged such that a thorough examination of the historical facts is provided from both the bombers and the bombed’s perspectives. Then two chapters frame the defense and the prosecution cases respectively. I am midway through the case for the prosecution.

The longer I have been reading and thinking in this area of national and international conflict the stronger my own inner conflicts have become about “what must be done”. Sometimes the accounts of the egregious harms are so horrifying that at times I wish we could resort to decisive levels of violence that are just so overwhelming that defiance and opposition are simply wiped out. But that moment of triumph doesn’t even last a minute! That peaceful silence lasts mere seconds before the first baby’s wail for a lost mother can be heard echoing through the ruins.

So the wielding of this kind of power is the pursuit of a delusion: that we can rise above the rest and live, forever unmolested and unashamed, on the mountaintop.
Instead, we must descend to the plain and live hugger-mugger together. This is the human toil: to struggle for peace. To deal. To work with one another unceasingly to build peace which is not a destination but a journey we make side by side through life. We need leaders who are here with us too, and who understand this and help us keep our eyes on the ball. There is no “away”; we cannot throw each other away or ignore each other any longer. Yet, in the thick of the fray I can become confused. Who is right? Can I definitively say that my morals are correct, that this or that cultural tradition is better than another? I swing between moral certitude and relativism. When the time comes to be decisive I am not always - oscillating among various perspectives.
So, I am very relieved to read Grayling’s proposal for he models not only a decision, but a process by which he came to that position. His moral compass is unerring and I appreciate that when mine seems more faltering at times. He shows me how to engage with these very difficult questions and encourages me to make the effort to analyse and evaluate so I can fully participate as a citizen instead of shying away from what is too difficult to think about. Every time I take this risk I step into the task of peacemaking.
I want to be like Grayling when I grow up. Unafraid of the hard questions, trusting in my mind and the models that have gone before me. And confident in the capacity of a committed community to solve problems that seem intractable. This is, in large part, why I keep offering the Crimes against Humanity class. It’s a place to air our questions and attempt our solutions; to turn towards the really difficult stuff and step up.
Reference

Grayling, A.C. (2006) Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan. New York, NY: Walker & Co.