Volume 24, Number 20 · December 8, 1977
Morality and War
By J.M. Cameron
Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
by Michael Walzer
Basic Books, 361 pp., $15.00
There are two doctrines about war which often look like two sides of the same doctrine: absolute pacifism; and the doctrine represented in the American Civil War by General Sherman, that war is absolutely hellish and cannot be refined, and that therefore in the fighting of wars that are justly engaged in there are theoretically no limits beyond which the righteous side may not go. Absolute pacifists similarly argue that war is hellish and that to fight it in any way is the moral equivalent of fighting it in every way; killing a soldier is not in the end morally distinguishable from killing a civilian, bombing an arms factory (or trying hard to be accurate in doing so) is not really different from bombing a residential neighborhood. In for a penny, in for a pound, if stealing a lamb will get one hanged one may as well steal a flock of sheep: proverbial wisdom is used to suggest that if one abandons the position of absolute pacifism, distinguishing among different kinds of killing is a piece of moral imbecility.
Review, 6132 words
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