anyway i know that you would all prefer really be talking about the hijacking of our government so it's really great that you're actually coming to talk about war tonight talking about war as analyst task really because we live in a society in an air of perpetual war and the task before us is always try to understand understand how that war system works what kind of a culture supports it where the tensions are in that system where there are openings all these are critical questions then they take sustained effort  really and i feel as i magine all of you do even though you have been addressing this question probably most of your lives a perpetual beginner  it is a difficult one rudolph born famously said the first casualty of war is truth and he had reasons for saying that  because war is built on myth and there are myth is necessary because if the reasons of state the political reasons  state the economical reasons the state the geo political reasons as they were known to the public the reasons for going to war there would be questions about those motives so other reasons have to be proposed for going to war also if the consequences of war were known to people war would be  difficult to accept that is if the truth of war were to be no somehow witnessed experienced close up imagine from inside the victims of war both the soldier and the civilian is a powerful thing it involves myth is about ideas about the world that carry some kind of moral authority people believe in them and they authorize people to carry out certain actions myths are powerful they're symbolic they have deep roots in the culture so what i'm arguing in the first of all a premise argument you might say is that myth is essential for making it's essential for war being perceived and experienced as american culture i think which is the method of a strong military is the bedrock of national security that goes deep and it's a long discussion about that and there's a lot to say about it there's also the myth of noble sacrifice that is the idea that killing and became killed is somehow  act there's the myth about who we are as a nation and who we imagine our enemies to be in every war there are these kinds of myths about them and  of course there's the well known myth of american exceptionalism the ideal that america is represented represents in the world ideals of freedom keeping peace democracy and the like my focus tonight is really going to be on justifications for war and justifications are understood classically and international law and just war tradition and two kinds of justifications one is the justification for going to war that is moves out belum is the is the term and international law it is the justification scuse me the justification of humanity in war that is wars themselves are humane ochs that wars are legitimate and moral in the ways that they in the ways that they're carried out i want to talk about i want to talk about schism i've just noticed that i believe it or not have my mixed up what a professor is not supposed to do so i want to talk then about a core contradiction i believe that if we try to understand the war system as if exist that there are there is on the one side the every day reality of war which is brutal terrorizing and inhumane yet there exist in opposition to this widespread expectations widespread activations expectations of values institutionalize an international law about the humane limits to war that is specific acts of warfare cross a boundary and there seem to be unacceptable that international norms are violated that humane warfare then becomes critical for the legitimacy of fighting war so on the one side we have the every day reality of war and that is i'm suggesting inevitably inhumane and on the other side humane warfare i believe is essential for the legitimation of war if the every day reality of war is inhumane in fact specific events will occur events that will come to the public's attention or could come to the public's attention that would reveal or expose that inhumane reality and so this becomes a problem for war makers that potential of exposure or the every day or occasional reality of those exposures so therefore a core requirement of any nation at war i would suggest a core requirement is to manage that contradiction that i've just said the contradiction between the inhumane reality of war on the one side and the humane expectation of war on the other side unobstructed use of military power means i suggest that the reality of warfare must be hidden or when it is exposed it must be handled in the least damaging way is humane warfare becomes an essential myth of warfare the warfare state of any warfare state but it's also a vulnerable moment which i'll also want to talk about so let me just say before i get to the vulnerability of the myth let me just drop my argument a little bit about the inhumane reality of war this is not a fun topic to think about but i believe a necessary one i believe what drives war is what i would call a logical force it's a logic of pure  instrumentality it leads to a predisposition of combatant any combatants nation or non nation a predisposition to use all available means that are useful for achieving a political communication and that message is that resistance to superior military power is too costly and ultimately futile the objective in war is to inflict as much damage as possible on enemy forces and by extension on economic and political social resources that contribute to an enemy's ability or willingness to fight they must to kill terrorize incapacitate human beings either combatants or the civilians who support them entire societies become targets what i'm saying and proposing to you is that war knows no limits but i am merely going to qualify that it knows no limits as long as there are no damaging political costs to the exercise of that force also there are other kinds of limitations we could talk about the limitations that limit the response of yes you need to talk to me you can fix the mike so the that is normally unhinged from prevailing values and it is unhinged from prevailing or any attempts to limit or brutality t this is not to say that nations haven't adopted or observed limits to war they have primarily i would argue precisely because of universal condemnation or near universal condemnation of particular acts of war and that these become essential for legitimacy there is even a paradox that one can easily discover that nations promote humanitarian values and promote international humanitarian law and at the same time violate exactly what they're promoting the very interesting par my argument is also not to say that all warfare any kind of warfare is equally inhumane there is some or fair clearly that is more inhumane than other kinds i understand that some people might object to that proposition nonetheless my assertion is that the logic of force is prior to morality it is the default position of war and i would further suggest that the laws of war are made in recognition of this logic that the laws of war those who form the laws of wars recognize that the logic of force always pushes out the limits of restraint there's a recognition that there's always a will to power in war historians have coined the phrase total warfare to describe the wars that know no limits sectorial sectarian civil wars are good example race wars genocidal wars colonial wars against nationalist movements we know that history is full of brutal dictators with blood on their hands but i suggest that there is perhaps too much comfort too much comfort and blaming the inhumanity of wars on others too much of an exoneration is to focus solely on the brutality for example of america's enemies now i also recognize if we were to take this honest history of war and hold the mirror up to ourselves that many people and perhaps most people in america would have a very difficult time with that proposition that america to commit and humane acts and wars first of all nationalist right wing most veteran group veterans groups would be openly hostile to such efforts one only has to remember the effort of the smithsonian to show the exhibit on the you know  ago several years ago now actually when i was visiting my uncle who is a veteran of the pacific war and suddenly grabbed me by the shoulder and i didn't know what i said if i said anything but he said rob do you know that if we had not of the often said to be estimates of over two hundred thousand american casualties if the us required to do was required to invade japan was used by truman it was used by subsequent presidents and justifications of the dropping of the bomb so in august history then would have to cover a lot of ground ground that i can't cover in such a short presentation here would have to talk about world war two i war with extraordinary brutality on all sides german or policy extraordinarily brutal soviet war policy in response to germans extraordinarily brutal but so was the british and american war policy i give you the primary example of area bombing of cities the german and japanese cities and not just bombing but fire bombing designed to create fires that create fire storms caused human fatalities it was an early version of napalm that was actually used and these bombings occurred primarily by america in the pacific primarily by britain and europe and they caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and they were intended to of course and the pacific quotation in a secret nine hundred fifty four report to president eisenhower was the do little commission and i want to just quote a phrase from this and it was in reference  to the claim that the soviet union was seeking world domination quote it is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy who is about objective is world domination by whatever means and whatever costs there are no rules to such a game hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply if the us is to survive long standing american concepts of fair play must be reconsidered the nation must adopt tactics more ruthless than those employed by the enemy well the history of the cold war demonstrates that that was taken very seriously it started first with the area bombing of north korea where again if you know that history and by the way korea for most of us is a forgotten history  there was massive bombing of north korean cities again causing hundreds of thousands of civilians in fact the bombing of north korea in terms of the tonnage he dropped on north korea was greater than the pacific war this was followed by a in the vietnam war area bombing of north vietnam and cambodia as well and a large areas of south vietnam that indiscriminate by bombing of cities entire war zone we're talking about the b fifty two bombings the use of agent orange again the use of napalm a close examine examination of the vietnam war the indochina war other total war tactics would have to also be discussed we would have to talk about the pacification campaigns and what they really meant we'd have to talk about something called the phoenix program which involved the assassination and torture of the quote civilian infrastructure of the vehicle we'd have to talk about free fire zones use of airstrikes calling in nick turse has written a new book that you might i shouldn't say enjoy reading i doubt you would enjoy it but it's an important book is called kill anything that moves we'd have to talk about cold war counterinsurgency tactics that were used in covert warfare throughout the entire cold war period sasa nation overthrow support for dictatorships repression squads school of the americas training of military personnel and i would suggest that the evidence is strong that this paradigm has continued beyond the cold war the end of the cold war i have no time again here to review the tell some of the examples but starting with the goal for the iraq war one we should know about the highway of death the retreating iraqi soldiers we should know about general barry mccaffrey as malya reported by seymour hersh after a cease fire had been declared we should know about the civilian casualties of bombing iraq in the gulf war including the shelter with over four hundred people killed and thanks to bird saxes here tonight and many others we all also and many of you probably do know about the murderous us led un sanctions regime that resulted in the estimated death of over five hundred thousand children due to malnutrition induced disease and all this is before nine eleven now before you run from the hall i think i want to also tell you about the other side of this equation the other side of the contradiction and i'm serious in actually in terms of running from the hall because i really careful discussion of all this is depressing it's hard it's a difficult subject i know that in my at i torture w example talking about torture is something that a lot of people just don't want to talk about even though they know it exists even though that they know that they're strongly opposed to it talking about it and talking about how how it came about how how it works is something that people are too uncomfortable with often to deal with and i understand that i'm not being critical but it's it's difficult difficult for me but let me talk a little bit about humanity humanitarian sensibilities what i call a humanitarian sensibility despite much evidence to the contrary i believe that any humanity and war troubles the human spirit i believe that there is a and and i think i can substantiate that there is a growing public sentiment globally about inhumane warfare and inhumane consequences of war i think this new humanism is a response in part at least one response to the unparalleled violence of the twentieth century which by one estimate is altered in two hundred and thirty one million civilian deaths either directly or indirectly i'm talking about the military violence of the twentieth century following world war two there was strong international support including support from the american government for the creation of a political and legal framework to l the nurnberg trials the nuremberg principles that came out of those trials the un charter the universal declaration of human rights the concept of work crimes the concept of crimes against humanity the conventions against torture edition of conventions the chemical weapons convention later in the one nine hundred ninety s the creation of the international criminal court tribunals for war crimes in former  yugoslavia in iran that these are have all been developments since world war two and these developments have been significant development in the one nine hundred eighty s and beyond there's been a virtual revolution in the consciousness about human rights what one author called a justice cascade demonstrating that human rights violators are being brought to court all over the world it took sometimes twenty years thirty years to do it but it's happening all source of this new humanism is the shocking any humanity of nuclear weapons which created in response a worldwide movement against the ultimate and humane warfare the wanton destruction of millions of people by nuclear weapons and the fall out from them humane proponents of international  for a new regime that would limit sovereignty and potentially transform contemporary war sadly it is an laws of war at best have been unevenly applied and they even have become instruments of power and accountability for war crimes is also an idea especially perfect for powerful nations it's legitimate to ask the question if the laws of war have actually limited or lessen the inhumanity of war or they have served to give it cover and besides the very category of inhumane warfare suggests that there's another category we can call humane warfare which is something to i and many others would  no government today seeking international recognition and respect can openly flaunt the international norms of humanitarian warfare no nation can openly do that not without widespread condemnation all nations in fact i believe claim to honor these moreover there's been a sexist i'm created of international national non governmental organizations that track report publicly condemn violations of human rights and international humanitarian law mandatory organizations international organizations many journalist human rights attorneys academics now pay increasing and attention to the violations of all that or alleged violations of humane ideals and laws related to war so for states that rely on war that use war as an instrument of policy which is what we mean when we talk about living in a warfare system for these states the reality is that i've just been talking about our problem that needs solving needs attention and if we're talking about the american government especially for the american government because the american government portrays itself as a leader in the world and terms of a series of values a whole series of values about humanity and human and humanitarian values that we protect humanitarian values and humanitarian law indeed since the one nine hundred ninety s humanitarian ideals have actually come to be employed to justify war so humanitarian intervention the subject that divides those of us who have humanitarian sensibilities about no one finds comfort being a bystander to atrocities others worry about hijacking humanitarian motives for geo political and but the point i'm making here is that an era said to be governed by international norms and international humanitarian law stat least attempt to make the case that they are conforming to those international norms failure to convince a significant public that the nation up holds international norms invites damaging criticism and that damage damaging criticism can mean a critical loss of support either globally or domestically for war if in reality of war fighting is any humane as i'm suggesting that it is maintaining legitimacy therefore requires presenting a war in a way as what is not present in war as what it is not it requires a myth of humane warfare has much to say and so little time about the cultural dynamics and the political dynamics that compromise or undermine the humanitarian sensibility which i believe is so profound and so widespread we would have to talk about justifications for civilian death including justifications that are difficult to acknowledge publicly such as retribution we would have to talk about the splitting which i believe is essential to a war that is the split in which describes the enemy as brutal without which it would be hard to fight many wars other races as brutal other ideologies as brutal and we would also have to talk about the of victims so that they become not a matter of concern so there's much to say about how the dynamics cultural dynamics compromise or undermine the humanitarian sensibility there's also i think much to say about how certain events or events break through the denials break through the cover ups and become public atrocities atrocities that one way to define what is an atrocity atrocity is something that shocks the conscience to use a phrase that's used in international law shocks the  conscience i would suggest by the way i've worked on as i said on the torture issue for several years now i would suggest that the torture issue has been the biggest challenge to the legitimacy of war in the united states that has existed ever in this  country some might say well what about me la well if you look at the history of me live massacre in the vietnam war it came to public understanding a couple years after it happened and ultimately was understood in terms or framed in terms of individual soldiers acting in a brutal way not as policy and successfully frame no other event that i know of other than no other than post world war two has revealed that and inhumane act of war torture a war crime after all was authorized at the highest levels of the u government by the president by the vice president by the secretary and that's extraordinary when you actually begin to think about the implications of that knowledge and how that knowledge has been reverberate around the world and what it did to the american policy for several years is extraordinary that's why i believe by the way that the challenge of that what i call a legitimacy crisis which started with abu ghraib by the way but really abu ghraib was relatively successfully handled by the government managed by abu ghraib sparked a whole series of revelations that built the torture crisis through two thousand and six seven eight and nine and that's why i believe by the way that president obama had to end torture whether or not he believed in the i can't i don't know was obama's mind but politically i argue that he had to and torture was illegitimate it was absolutely essential for the legitimacy of the united states in world affairs  s torture but it is also why president obama said we have to look forward not backward and did everything in his power successfully today to suppress any accountability for the commission of war crimes by those who authorized torture would have to ask also we're talking about all the things that how events come to shock the conscience and how those and how that shock to the extent that occurs transformed into some kind of political voice we also have to ask questions about our soldiers and how they deal with the moral pain of what they experience or witness in war and how that moral pain sometimes under what conditions can be expressed by giving voice political voice oppositional voice we would have to understand what we would have to know about many others who took courageous acts to oppose or to try to reveal acts that they witnessed or knew about either up through the chain of command or going outside as they often had to do outside the chain of command we would also have to recognize the role of military lawyers who actually many believe in fact dearly and stand up for the laws of war and attempt to uphold them against strong opposition from their superiors like alberto mora mora did the chief legal counsel at guantanamo against rumsfeld so there's much to say about how the conditions a possibility of how these events can shock the conscious and how that moral outrage can take political form and finally there's much to say about government and media strategies for managing the contradiction because the powers that be certainly know that that contradiction exist and there is a huge apparatus to control information to manage information and present information to the media to make or appear as if it is not in fact so we would have to talk about the control of information we would have to talk about things like control of access to war zones for journalists would have to talk about the is the intimidation that exists of independent journalists we have to of course talk about cover ups the devaluation of victims the arguments about bad apples the emphasis on situational atrocities that were is were individuals go preserve the denial of policy we have to especially talk in today's world about the ideology i call it an ideology of persuasion weapons the claim that weapons only kill combatants and minimally if at all kills civilians that they can zero so precisely into their target that the question of inhumanity of these acts and you're going to i guess break in the groups to do this and so i have you don't have to follow these question guides but i have three questions for you that i personally would like to hear your response to  and i want to hear response to everything i've said i have outraged you if i shocked your conscience i want to hear that but the three questions are this is it possible to build a politics for peace founded on the principle that war is inhumane is it possible that is that war constantly reveals itself and  the legitimacy of particular wars this is all the same question can the legitimacy of particular wars be brought into question around inhumane practices or war in general big question so if you run out of time on that one try this one why would secondly what would be the elements of such a politics what would be necessary to make a politics around inhumane warfare a viable politics what would have to go into that i have some ideas but i bet you two and three and this is a question that i struggle with and struggle with even tonight in thinking about how i would talk to you folks about this subject is how do we begin talking to others who perhaps are not as troubled as you or i might be about the end humanity how do we really start those conversations how do we listen to them and gauge in the kinds of conversation that rich was talking about for the common good caf because people are troubled by inhumanity of war and other people are not so troubled by it and that is a reality of the culture in which we live so thank you very much contribute to that deeper level of personal on cultural transformation that you're also talking about and when i say political of cars i probably am meeting cultural  ns engaging people on ideas it means talking about what happens and or talking about what happens to our soldiers and or civilians others soldiers about the very nature of  war and i imagine that you know the challenge those elements of peace making paradigms the logics if you will that are enough to challenge affectively or even begin to challenge the logic of war that there are many many dimensions of it and i would imagine that they would in some way feed each other so thoughts about that soldiers or civilians in the name of economic political goals a question of justice also  and it's human it's a question of the human consequences of what we do so that i'm not saying that to focus on the inhumanity of war fighting is sufficient and itself because we have to i mean that's just the one dimension that i focused on in my talk the claim the myth of humane you're referring to about the injustice that motivates war and the in the consequence of war so i would i was suggest that ultimately the end humanity a practice of war is related to the question of the unjust causes of war and that the two have to be equally question i mean for example some might feel that there is actually just cause for some or i mean the whole syrian intervention the idea of a humane intervention you might you might some people have argued some people have argued that that there are just causes for the use of military force and syria might have been while bosnia might have been won rwanda might have been won i mean that these that that some people talk about world war two terms of you know just war in that sense but these are for just cause and i think we have to at the same time question whether in fact there are just causes we have to debate that but at the same time as even if we acknowledge that we might disagree on just cause we might be able to come together and agree on unjust consequences of war which is the focus of what i've been trying to draw toward i suspect that elements of what a viable peacemaking politics might include what it requires for example i think of things like independent journalism you know  very small question but a very big question really journalists who are free from the constraints of the media magnet because ultimately one of the essential ingredients of an effective politics is knowledge about what goes on in war we have to we have to get to the truth of war somehow and so i believe that that means alternative means of journalism it means first amendment rights for journalist and also for protestors by the way if anybody listened to democracy now this morning unfettered access to war zones you know the control government over the over the prosecution of war is extraordinary and and there's mind control going on when they do that and so i mean i understand what you're saying about basic spiritual transformations one on one but there's also politics and i mean who would have who would have guessed that and i know i go back to vietnam but who would have guessed that such a powerful anti war movement would have been created who would have who would have thought it and then something that came to be labeled the vietnam syndrome that is extraordinary a lot of americans to go to war in far off places because of what vietnam represented to them who would have predicted that a million people would have showed up in new york in what was in one thousand nine hundred two to protest nuclear weapons and that there was a global movement against nuclear  weapons i mean these things don't stop war but they're extraordinarily important and moving a culture to understand war in a different way who would have predicted i mean even very small things like the church can i mean the small things but not so small fought who would have guessed that congress congress and the american congress would have stayed active on the question of war and passed something called the boleyn the men in the one nine hundred eighty s that restricted reagan from using congressional funds to fund the war nicaragua and then when the government went around the ball out of the memmott to investigate the government who would have guessed that the congress in one nine hundred ninety eight fell just ten votes short of closing down the school there i mean these things happen they happen over time and we now look at the senate select committee on intelligence which has issued a report cia torture it's still secret will it make a difference well maybe maybe not but these things i believe at a much more practical level i understand and limited and  maybe getting to the core issues that many of you are talking about i understand those core issues those transformations but nonetheless my question is do these things contribute in some meaningful way wow when he declared that there should be a military response to any foreign power intervening in the middle east america american national interest right and eventually american troops you know being in the middle east and bases were being built already by reg so the war was building up before real wars you know the gulf war and then iraq war two and afghanistan happened arguably going back long before nine hundred seventy nine and the move to control middle eastern oil right after world war two by the americans the british before that so  yeah history is not determining but it's certainly carries a weight sometimes it's hard to slow down that moment great question i don't know exactly what to think about the price i have fears about that i think we all do that my take nucular exchange between india and pakistan for example relatively minor nuclear war between india and pakistan would create a nuclear winter well take the shock this country out of its complacency about war it's not only is complacency but it's deep investment and war it's  i've always believed that we have come to believe even stronger that we live in a war culture i mean a culture that embraces war as not only is an instrumental means for achieving sacrifice that renew the nation spiritually somehow and that's scary to think about that if that if that's true we know we know how  deeply the media is committed to images of war and reporting war and celebrating war and that gets reproduced in the education system so i don't know what it takes when i when i was talking about those small measures i wasn't thinking about them as anyway as solutions but just small little movements that might lead to greater things but one thing i do believe is is  that we can't predict history we can't predict the future and things happen that surprise and then they become opportunities for us to for people who oppose war to speak to war and these things keep coming up i mean i know it's true for me the torture issue the torture issue just won't go away things keep happening that bring it back  and you know the syria issue brings brings up the whole issue of chemical warfare and the history of us in chemical warfare in ways that was just below the surface before the syrian crisis  so now people are talking about well what about giving the iraqis intelligence when they knew they were engaged in chemical warfare against the iranians and they had provided the travesty in vietnam today so when these events occur we don't know when they better damn well be prepared when they do to be ready to engage those issues i think that's true for