I began reading this book on July 21, 2009, having borrowed it from my son’s girlfriend; now, on October 14, 2009, I have completed my reading of this book. It was not that I didn’t like the book that took me so long to read it; my problem was that it was a good book that also took concentrated effort to read, and concentrated effort to read was something that was in rather short supply for the past few months. But, I have completed my reading of the book; and, since I got a brand-new copy to return to my son’s girlfriend (the reading copy I borrowed from her is rather beat-up), I am glad to have my own copy of this work, as it was a book I liked, and liked very much.
The work is divided into Four Parts and an Afterword. Part One deals with The Moral Reality of War, dealing with topics like The Crime of War (taking General Sherman and the Burning of Atlanta as an illustration of his points) and The Rules of War. Part Two is The Theory of Aggression, with such items as Law and Order in International Society, and Interventions (as in the American War in Vietnam). Part Three, The War Convention, concerns topics such as Noncombatant Immunity and Military Necessity, Guerrilla War, Terrorism, and Reprisals. Part Four concerns itself with Dilemmas of War: Aggression and Neutrality, Supreme Emergency, and Nuclear Deterrence. Part Five deals with The Question of Responsibility, as in The Crime of Aggression: Political Leaders and Citizens, and War Crimes: Soldiers and Their Officers (the My Lai Massacre). Finally, the Afterward covers the topic Nonviolence and the Theory of War.
I find is well nigh impossible to summarize the author’s writings in this book. Part of the problem is that I spent such a long time reading this book that it is difficult to recall what impressed me in the earlier chapters; and part of it is that the whole question of Just and Unjust Wars, with all their moral problems, is a huge territory to cover.
War is pretty much a given in our world; and war works under different rules than ordinary life. (If I take a gun and kill someone, meaning to kill him, it is murder of some kind – but if I am a soldier and kill an enemy combatant, then it is not murder.) All military systems train soldiers to obey orders without question – except that one is not supposed to obey an order that is immoral. In many ways, immorality in war, either in why it is being waged in a particular instance, or how it is being waged in a particular instance, is a judgement call – which is why war crimes trials of various kinds are so controversial. (The Allies won in World War II, so the Allies got to have War Crimes Trials on German and Japanese military and government figures; if the Axis had won, surely they would have War Crimes Trials on Allied military and government figures.)
This is a book with applicability in both the consideration of past wars (those who forget the past are indeed compelled to repeat it) and for current and future wars; for as we are not in a perfect world, there will be future wars, and one would hope that if we must be in wars, that we will be in them for the right reasons, and behave morally in those wars.
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