By Augusto @Adobe Stock
One Death Is a Tragedy, a Million Deaths Is a Statistic
Who bears the moral responsibility for collateral damage?
Another question was asked of the authors: did they ever know anyone who lived in Gaza. Is the death of Palestinian civilians, contemplate Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro in the WSJ, the price that must be paid in a war that Hamas started and pursued with ruthless aggression?
As Messrs. Morson and Shapiro acknowledge, the question reminds us, when you know the victims of war, “it becomes difficult to write them off as regrettable losses.” For each of Joseph Stalin’s victims of the Great Purge, a universe was shattered. Only people you don’t know can be regarded statistically.
Russia’s great novelists opined about such questions. Unlike his peers, Levin, hero of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” opposes Russian intervention to prevent Turkish rulers from massacring their rebellious Bulgarian subjects. War involves killing, he reasons, and that must not be done lightly.
His brother Sergei Ivanovich asks what Levin would do if a Turk were about to murder a Bulgarian baby in front of his eyes—wouldn’t he kill the Turk to stop him? Levin replies that he doesn’t know; he would have to decide in the moment. The consequences of a wrong decision are too large, Levin concludes, and the contingencies of the situation too unpredictable, for any simple answer.
Moral Ambiguity
Fyodor Dostoevsky was incensed by this. Why does Levin admit the need for violence only when the atrocity is immediately present? “Does distance have an influence on love for humanity,” Dostoevsky asked. If so, “at what distance does love of humanity end?” According to most ethical doctrines, we owe the same moral obligation to everyone, not only to those nearby.
There is no easy way to resolve this or similar disputes, continue Morson and Shapiro.
Does it matter that Hamas uses Gazans as human shields? How much collateral damage is acceptable in a hostage rescue, like the one just completed? Is it worth considering that on Oct. 7 Hamas not only murdered civilians but also raped and mutilated them? Or that it has announced an intention to do the same whenever circumstances allow? If one refrains from the collateral damage needed to eliminate Hamas, is one responsible for the deaths likely to happen as a result?
Would Palestinians Reject Hamas
Doesn’t the killing of innocent civilians, even when necessary, brutalize a people? “To understand is to forgive,” the WSJ authors argue, is a proverb that gets it wrong:
“Sometimes getting to know people makes it less easy to sympathize with them.” Take for example, Nazi leaders or Khmer Rouge. Surely some of their followers were acting for the “greater good.
Such moral questions aren’t easy, simplifies the authors. The tragedy envelops the innocent, regardless of how necessary.
France now regards it as a mistake that it didn’t use violence to prevent the Rwandan genocide. Still, it is all too easy to excuse military intervention as inevitable. One needs to think seriously and judiciously when the lives of many hang in the balance.
Regardless of what policy one favors on a given occasion, it should be clear that the shouting of slogans, some of which call for indiscriminate killing, is itself an immoral approach to complex moral dilemmas.
Mr. Morson is a professor of Slavic literature at Northwestern University. Mr. Schapiro is a professor of economics and president emeritus at Northwestern.
