War and Moral Choice
Tom Kertes

The pain of war is so great that many in the United States want to comfort soldiers and their families by supporting a collective denial of the personal moral choice in war. War is a moral choice, and each soldier who participates in war makes either the choice to participate or not, to be part of a war or to be opposed to it. War is a moral choice, carried out by a collective of individuals. Without individual participation, illegal and immoral wars do not happen.

Wars are carried out not by the presidents or parliaments in power, but by those who follow commands - there would be no occupation of Iraq without the participation of soldiers. While war is constructed by those in power, it is executed by soldiers, by ordinary people with little power in the conduct of international conflicts and domestic politics. And while the law may say that it is okay to participate in war, the law does not determine what is moral. It is up to the soldier alone to decide what is moral. The soldier has a moral right and duty to act on what he or she believes to be just and moral, or to refuse participation in what he or she has deemed immoral and wrong.

If you believe that a specific war is moral, and the war has also been sanctioned by your government, then you are not only acting in accordance with the law but also within your own moral belief system when you participate in that war. You are doing what you believe to be right. While others may question your moral judgment, you are, according to what you believe, acting in a moral, just and legal way. What others believe should have no bearing on your own moral standing before yourself. But if you believe a war to be immoral, it is then that your participation in such a war is, by your own admission, immoral and wrong. It does not matter that war is legal - only that you believe the war is moral or not.

And the question of war, unlike some moral questions, requires an answer. If you participate in a war that you deem immoral you are doing something deeply wrong. The U.S. occupation of Iraq has cost as many as 650,000 Iraqi lives. Children have died in air bombings, burned to death in a sea of chemicals that melt skin. Cities, neighbourhoods, communities, families, schools and hospitals have been targeted and destroyed. Human rights have been violated, detainees tortured. Lies spread. Hundreds of thousands dead. If you choose to be directly involved in something of this scale, your moral certainty should be solid. Otherwise, you are a moral coward and a villain.

Let me be clear. I am not judging those who have made the moral choice to participate in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. I am merely asserting that U.S. soldiers make a moral choice, and are acting on that choice. It is it up to the solider, not to others, to judge if this choice is moral. And even though I believe the current war to be deeply immoral, I strongly assert that the soldiers involved should not be blamed or judged for conduct considered legal by the U.S. military and the U.S. government. The soldiers fighting this war face an individual, complicated and difficult moral choice. It is not a simple question, and is not one that I pretend to know.

I personally have trouble thinking of war in moral terms since in war there is so much evil, regardless of the justness in the minds of those fighting or leading the fight. It seems safest to reserve moral justness to but the fewest of wars. But in the real world of international competition and lawlessness, wars that meet certain criteria are deemed as not only moral and just, but as essential. In fact, some acts of war are deemed as not only moral, but as inherently moral and required to preserve the current moral ideal, such as wars directed at preventing genocide or to free an invaded country from an occupying force. Given this, I concede that a moral person can decide that their participation in war can be justified.

Soldiers - not generals, presidents, parliaments or pundits - are responsible for their own actions - and for determining if what they are doing is moral and just. Soldiers, alone, must decide if participation in a war is the right thing to do. And it is this reality, the reality of moral choice in war, that we are asked deny. The moral ramifications of participation in war are deemed by our pundits and the mainstream media as being too troubling to be brought up. Soldiers are, in the minds of most in the United States, free from personal responsibility because they are part of a collective. They are doing as ordered and are therefore exempt from moral considerations. Moreover, not only does the collective nature of military conduct exempt individual soldiers from moral culpability, but according to this same logic it also shields the entire military collective from moral judgement. To deem the military's conduct, as a whole, as immoral is to deem every soldier in that military as immoral. And this, in the minds of many, is an unfair burden to add to the already heavy burden placed on our soldiers. I reject this logic. I insist that each soldier retains personal moral responsibility for their individual conduct in war.

The U.S. has been at the forefront of history when it came to defining certain wars are illegal, and which could therefore be legally considered immoral and thus unactionable by ordinary soldiers. In international treaties advanced by the U.S., and adopted by the U.S. as the law of the land, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity exclude certain acts of war and warfare, and make criminal the conduct of such wars. Wars of aggression are always deemed illegal, as are acts in war that target civilians, that practice genocide, and that involve the use of chemical and biological weapons.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq is immoral, and for this reason I do not participate in it directly. I would like others to come to this same conclusion. I understand that those who are already in the military and who do not come my conclusion face a complex and difficult choice. Most don’t even realize that there is choice. Activists should love and support those who are exploited by the government to carry out an immoral and illegal occupation, but should do this without further advancing and supporting the collective denial of the moral duty that each soldier holds to determine if, on their own accord, participation in the this war is moral or not. No activist should further the lie that there is no choice in war.

The choice of participation in U.S. wars of aggression is complex, and especially so for those Americans who face poverty as the alternative to fighting in a war deemed both legal and moral by the society at large. The military has a role in the poverty and racism and muddies the waters of moral choice in immoral war. First, the military benefits from poverty because the choice between poverty and working for the military leads many to join the military. The military actively recruits working class youth through promises of education and job training benefits, spending billions of dollars each year to attract high achieving young Americans from poor families into the military. Despite the limited level of educational assistance actually provided, and despite the few job skills that can be transferred from the military to civilian work, the Army makes promises that it doesn’t deliver.

Almost 30% of the Army's soldiers in the first Gulf War were African American, despite the fact that 12% of Americans are African American. This is the result of aggressive recruitment and the lack of opportunities for many African Americans. The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico enlists four times more recruits per recruitment office than in offices in other locations. Puerto Rico also faces the highest unemployment in the United States, making the military one of the few options available. While the military may be a way out for young people facing dismal economic options, it comes at a huge risk. Rich Americans do not face these choices - and therefore have more freedom when it comes to joining the military.

It matters that the military fights wars not related to the defence of America when many of our soldiers must choose between poverty and fighting in immoral wars. It also matters that the military is not doing its job of defending America. The military could be an economic opportunity for Americans of colour and facing poverty. We see this in positive examples of the military as a force for affirmative action and integration - providing leadership opportunities for those shut of other parts of society. But when the role of the military is to fight wars of conquest, then those who serve in the military are being exploited for immoral ends. When the military exceeds its republican mandate of defending the democratic government, then no American should be offered the choice of poverty or participation in immoral and illegal war.

Currently the military takes advantage of the limited opportunities provided to many Americans. It takes advantage of the fact that for many Americans the military is their only option to earn a decent living. This is wrong, because we live in the richest country in the richest period of human history. American can be poverty-free. And in a poverty free America, the military would be choice for Americans.

The military does more than take advantage of the poor in the United States. It is used to exploit the world’s poor. The current role of the military is to carry out immoral and illegal invasions of other foreign countries. The U.S. overwhelms the military power of most other nations, and as such when the U.S. government invades another country hundreds of thousands of the world’s poorest perish. Already over 650,000 Iraqis have died from the current invasion and occupation of Iraq. The U.S. government turns the labour of its poor citizens into a fist against the world’s poor.

The moral choice in war is complicated and personal, involving many factors that intersect with many forms of oppression and exploitation. Many soldiers do not know that they have a choice in war. Many see no way out. And many face terrible conditions at home, in terms of poverty and hopelessness. The moral choice of war must be asserted in this context, and the individual soldier must alone make the determination as the whether a war is moral or not. Outsiders should not judge or blame soldiers, who have been ordered by their entire society to engage in war. The blame for war rests on those in power. But this fact does not negate the fact that each solider has a moral choice, and that if they choose to part of a war they are making a profound moral choice with implications that go far beyond the confines of that one person's life. War is complicated, but a choice nonetheless. Those opposed to war should assert the moral choices in war, since the immorality of a specific war matters in the debate that should surround war. And just as the moral choice of war should be asserted, so too should our absolute love for the victims of war, which includes those on both sides of any conflicted, exploited and tossed aside in the interests of those in power, without regard to human dignity or respect for the sanctity of human life.

by Tom Kertes 10/2006
(entered into the public domain)