FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT

Murray Sayle investigates the moral and biological

basis of military intervention in Iraq and the Balkans

IN THE winter of 416 BC, the historian Thucydides tells us, the good folk of Athens, Greece, decided that the time had come to liberate the island of Melos, whose citizens were persistently and unreasonably loyal to Athens's deadly rival, Sparta. The decision made, the Athenian assembly despatched two tough-talking generals, Cleomedes and Tisias, in a fleet of slave- powered longships to bring the good news to the stubborn islanders The Melians protested that they were Spartans (Melos had originally been a Spartan colony), needed no liberation and, if it came to it, would rather fight than switch. 'Would it not be in us, already free, a great baseness and cowardice, if we were not ready to face anything rather than be brought into bondage?'

Furthermore, they told the Athenians, `We believe that we shall be nothing inferi- or [in combat] as we have the gods on our side, because we stand innocent against men unjust.' Even if the gods left them in the lurch, they could still count on their brother and sister Spartans. 'They are of necessity obliged, if for no other cause than for consanguinity's sake, and for their own honour, to defend us.'

Justice, schmustice, replied the Athenian brass (I translate rather freely here), in the real world it's force that decides everything. Having done no harm to the Athenian peo- ple gave the Melians no right to be left alone. Neutral, Melos 'will be an argument for Athens's weakness, and hatred of our power among those we have to rule over'. Grow up, guys, they advised.

Life is a choice of conquer or be con- quered, they said, and those who can rule others do so, 'by a necessity of nature'. Even the gods rule where they can, and as for the Spartans, like all other realists they will look out for number one, 'accepting as honourable what pleases, and for justice what profits them'. The Melians politely but firmly disagreed. When the Athenians 'put them to it' by laying waste their island, they even tried to defend it.

The Athenians, of course, had the big ships, and the Spartans stayed at home. Outnumbered, and betrayed by some of

their own fellow citizens, the Melians `yielded themselves to the discretion of the Athenians, who slew all the men of military age, made slaves of the women and chil- dren, and inhabited the place with a colony sent thither of 500 men of their own'. Bye bye, Free Melos.

A grim little tale, we may think, showing that the military mind hasn't changed much in 2,453 years, but this is not why Thucy- dides tells us about this early example of ethnic cleansing, eastern Mediterranean- style. He was, after all, an Athens boy him- self, rightly proud of the towering intellectual achievements of his city. While undoubtedly he has the general attitude of the Athenian (or any other) soldiers right, he does not claim to have been an early

Robert Fisk, actually present when the Melians were being bullied. We may be sure that the real Generals Cleomedes and Tisias would have had their public relations officers run up a list of plausible reasons why Melos had to be brought to heel: they were threatening true democracy (Spartans were famous for running a disciplined, not to say spartan, society), they were trying to control the world price of (olive) oil, they were disconnecting babies from life-sup- port machines. Thucydides has the Athenian soldiers talk so bluntly and revealingly because he wants to issue a warning, one we might well ponder ourselves. Yes, he is saying, the bemedalled pair had been sent by the Athenians, the noble people who fought the Persians, at times alone, in defence of freedom, and who almost single-handed founded the democratic tradition of Greek thought. This did not mean that Athens was invariably in the right, or held some mysterious commission from the gods to lay down the law to lesser folk. Even more than other people, the Athenians could misuse their brains to disguise self-serving actions with 'fair pretences'. It was the same moral complacency, the same distaste for the hard work of weighing every case anew, Thucydides tells us, that led Athens a few months after the success of Operation Melos to undertake the disas- trous expedition against Syracuse that seemed such a splendid low-risk idea at the time. The humiliating Athenian defeat sapped morale at home and softened uP her fleet for final destruction by the unjolly tars of the Spartan admiral Lysander. His successful siege in 404 BC extinguished the light of Athens for ever, except, of course, as it flickers in the back pages of The Spec- tator. Look before you leap in, Thucydides warns, reflect before you bomb. An act or threat of violence may seem at first glance justified, or risk-free, better still both, but it may as easily be the first step down the road to catastrophe. Whether we call it a police action, separating the combatants or acting in conformity with a United Nations resolution, force is force and war, its natu- ral offspring, is war. Think, says ThucY-

dides, before you resort to either. Shall we take his advice?

The atrocity story appeared very long ago in human history, some of the more creative examples being popular with inter- national expeditions, possibly to overcome the suspicion natural among allies. Thus when three kings allied to King Chedor- laomer decided to lay waste the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and their plain near the Dead Sea, they accused the inhabitants, apparently an inoffensive and artistically inclined crowd, of practising unsafe sex and similar abominations, charges which echo down to our own day.

Similarly when the international expedi- tion got up to relieve the siege of Peking during the Boxer uprising of 1900 (Kaiser Bill urged the German contingent to 'make yourselves feared as the Huns of old') arrived at the undefended Chinese capital, they burned the Summer Palace, looted the Forbidden City, shot up the Tien An Men Gate and massacred every suspected rebel they got their hands on and many inno- cents as well, all in reprisal for the reported deaths of Chinese Christians who were, in turn, accused of selling out China to long- nosed foreign devils, and so on, and ... So universal is the connection between War and atrocity stories, and so suspiciously similar are the symbols they recycle murdered babies, ill-used prisoners, the slaughter of the innocent and the defence- less — that we might wonder whether they have a common source deep in human psy- chology. The New York public relations firm that came up with the premature Kuwaiti babies disconnected from their breathing apparatus, for instance, had the Belgian infants boiled down for German soap during the First World War as an out- standingly successful prototype. (We are all, of course, genetically programmed to defend the helpless, babies being particu- larly close to our inherited hearts.)

From the same school of atrocity-mon- gering we now have Serbian snipers getting £300 a head for every Bosnian they kill, small children being (illogically) preferred as easier targets, balanced against the 1,000 Serbs 'butchered', we were told, in the Bosnian town of Odzak whose bodies evap- orated before the photographers arrived. Properly misused, in fact, photographs can make the most persuasive of all propa- ganda, as witness the battered face of a shot-down RAF pilot and the tabloid head- line THE BASTARD IS TORTURING OUR BOYS during the Gulf war. Only later did we learn that Ministry of Defence officials had visited his wife the previous night, informing her that the pilot's injuries had been suffered when he ejected, but that she had best keep silent in the interests of national morale.

This last example may give us a hint as to Why people pass these stories on when, somewhere along the line, someone must

know they are wildly exaggerated, if not downright fabrications. Our species, we know, shares with the rest of the natural world a powerful reluctance to kill its own kind. `All's fair in love and war' (and busi- ness?), the old saw says, but a moment's reflection tells us that this is absurd.

The survival, it's-them-or-us argument inspires both the harsh, 'realistic' attitude of the Athenian generals and the old Viet- nam principle, 'Kill them all and let Jesus sort them out'. There is, however, good evolutionary reason for our instinctive recoil from this line of reasoning, and our calling it 'inhuman'.

In fact, humans have a lot more to gain from co-operation than from mutual exter- mination, which is simply the end of our line. This was always the case, even when hunter-gatherers reached tacit agreement to respect one another's territory and keep warfare down to the ritual minimum. Our four-footed colleagues, shrewder than we are, have long since agreed that one or the other will see reason from a paws-up posi- tion when the snarling and snapping finally has to stop.

Evolutionists agree. They hold that the survival value of war for our species gener- ally lies, paradoxically, only in the possibili- ty that it will increase human co-operation, by defending and enlarging the cohesion of some particular community. It is essential, therefore, for as many of the losers as pos- sible to survive, to be reconciled and add their genes to the winners' pool. To this end our clever ancestors evolved a style of warfare built on brisk movement, hostile display, threats and boasting, with as little actual combat as honour permitted. The aim was not to establish who was in the right, or who most closely adhered to the faith or the existing social code, but which side was the stronger, with all that followed from that reality — an aim, we might note, shared by the Olympics, the Football Asso- ciation and a British general election.

None of these forms of warfare, mock or real, tells us which contestant has right on his side. Who is in the right will always be a matter for debate, as Thucydides' disciple, our own Thomas Hobbes, makes clear: Tor one calleth wisdom, what another cal- leth fear; and one cruelty what another jus- tice; and one prodigality what another magnanimity ... etc. And therefore such names can never be true grounds of any ratiocination.' However, a certain amount of social order is necessary for the debate to continue. The stronger side has the bet- ter chance of imposing it.

The role of the atrocity story is now clear. To get us to fight effectively, we must believe that our enemy, by his conduct, has put himself outside the human family. Our instinctive urge to defend the weak and defenceless, our own babies, prisoners and nursing mothers is then turned into hatred and aggression against those who, we are told, threaten them from outside our own group (the good guys). It is a primitive, powerful device but, if abused, a dangerous one. If we tell too many atrocity stories, or believe them, or make them up, then we make the essential reconciliation impossi- ble, and eventually we will wind up with ... well, something like the Balkans.

The fathers of the Catholic Church have given very much thought to the paradox of war, namely that we must engage in it, but at the same time we must limit its damage as much as we can, no doubt because the universal reach of Catholicism practically guarantees that there will be Catholics on both sides of any international conflict. From SS Augustine and Thomas Aquinas down to the pastoral letter of the US Catholic bishops in 1983, Catholic thinkers have evolved doctrines that permit the faithful to serve in war, while carefully set- ting the conditions under which they may do so.

St Augustine, one of the earliest, careful- ly distinguishes jus ad bellum — the cause we fight for, the justification for going to war — from jus in bello the rightness of what is done in a war once entered. A state of war, he argues, does not itself justify any kind of cruelty against an enemy, even a pagan one (the idea of Christian fighting Christian barely crossed his sainted mind). This distinction alone condemns the smart- Alec Athenian generals and the Vietnam principle, and much bellicose talk we have heard recently as well.

Later thinkers, particularly Aquinas, added further qualifications now universal- ly accepted by Catholics and most other Christians, at least in theory: violence in war must be in proportion to the military aim in view and the cause being defended, and it must be discriminate, that is, be directed, as far as humanly possible, only against those who caused the war, those who are waging it and those who can bring it to an end, and whose deaths will dearly advance that aim. (The saint did not bother to counsel Christian aggressors who, pre- sumably, do not value his advice.) The forbidden killing of non-combatants is thus to be distinguished from the permit- ted pursuit phase of battle, in which the winners have an excellent chance of cutting down the numbers of their fleeing oppo- nents — 'We had good execution of them five or six miles altogether', as Oliver Cromwell reported after his victory at Dun- bar. But Cromwell's massacre of combat- ants and non-combatants alike after the capture of Wexford and Drogheda — 'This night we slew 20,000 of them, barbarous wretches, and all the glory is to God' was totally impermissible under canon law. Predictably, his war crime was perpetrated in response to an atrocity story, the report- ed massacre of Protestants in the rebellion Oliver went to Ireland to suppress.

The same modern technology that brings our atrocity stories every morning to our breakfast tables and television screens has also given us what looks like the ideal instrument of retribution, the bomber. Great things were expected of these weapons, as their names indicate: Libera- tor, Phantom, Lightning, Avenger. Their performance, however, has been less than inspiring. The first bomb ever dropped in anger, in the Turkish-Italian War of 1911, fell on a military hospital. When Lawrence of Arabia, Lord Trenchard of the RAF and his subordinate wing-commander, the future 'Bomber' Harris, and Colonial Sec- retary Winston Churchill agreed that the most cost-effective way to deal with rebels

in Iraq was to bomb their villages with poi- son gas, the ever-treacherous Iraqis responded by kidnapping RAF men and staking them out in the village squares, giv- ing air-crew an atrocious moral dilemma.

The Thirties were lived under the shad- ow of the bomber, the fear that the same might be done to London and Berlin. Both the RAF and the Luftwaffe engaged in the area attacks on cities in 1939-1943, lacking the technical means for anything more pre- cise, and substituting saturation bombing by huge bomber fleets in the hope of hit- ting something of importance. When the late Leonard Cheshire, VC, demonstrated the possibility of greater precision by dar- ing low-level marking with coloured flares, his discovery was used (not by him) to wreck whole cities, Berlin, Hamburg, Dres- den. That the bombing of cities has ever achieved anything beyond the industrial- scale deaths of civilians remains a matter of bitter controversy, even in the much-touted cases of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the non- nuclear war in the Gulf.

Like atrocity stories, the claims made for bombing follow a dismal pattern: first boasts of surgical precision (who can forget the films of 'smart' bombs tracking their targets through Baghdad like high-tech bloodhounds?) followed by the admission that only a small percentage were 'smart', and then only as smart as the fallible intel- ligence they followed, and finally the dis- closure, not altogether unexpected, that many missed their targets altogether and fell on civilians living inconveniently near- by. Once again the bomber lived up to its reputation, as the only weapon ever devised by man that has managed to kill more non-combatants than the soldiers 'What a cheap trick — and not a little disgusting!' whose business is meant to be war.

`Surgical' bombing of Serbian supply lines — as many are now advocating would no doubt produce the same unsurgr- cal results. Those who argue for full inter- vention on the ground might like to adopt the 17th-century practice of raising their own troops =Lady Thatcher's Own', for example.

Should we in the English-speaking world bomb anyone in Iraq, Serbia, Bosnia, Croa- tia, or less pronounceable places nearby? Only if we are reasonably sure that our bombs will discriminate between those responsible for the trouble, those who can end it, and those who wish they would all go away and fight somewhere else. Oh, and that the damage, collateral and otherwise, we are bound to cause is proportionate to the good we hope to achieve. In short, that we have jus in bello going for us. Even shorter, no.

Should we try to force a settlement on the delegates from the one-time Yugoslavia, meeting in London this week? Do we hold the jus ad bellum, the right to intervene? It is, in truth, painful to watch people killing each other, especially through the eyes of their PR men. It would be pleasing if everyone could live wherever they liked, but in our imperfect world an exchange of populations is, as a last resort, not inherently wrong.

One of the nastier small wars of the cen- tury, between Greece and Turkey, ended with dictators Eleutherios Venizelos and Kemal Atatiirk sitting down privately in Lausanne in 1923 with a bottle of raki and a map and haggling: this island for me, that island for you. On only one eastern Mediterranean island were they unable to do a deal, because neither controlled it at the time: Cyprus. Venizelos lost his job when he got home, while Ataturk silenced his domestic critics with what he called `mobile justice squads', a gallows on the back of a truck. Brutal methods, but, with one exception, the islands, once the scene of daily ethnic conflicts, have been quiet (some might say, as the grave) ever since. This settlement, however, was reached between the peoples concerned, one of the rare durable results achieved by dictators. To survive, the other Balkan peoples will have to do something similar, by democrat- ic means if possible (not, given the ancient hatreds aroused, a hopeful prospect), by dictators if necessary. The atmosphere has now been so systematically poisoned by atrocity stories that we outsiders have no hope of deciding who is in the right, even if Hobbes is wrong and such a decision Is ever possible.

Above all, we should not rush in because of our greater experience, from Gettysburg to Belfast, in settling conflicts. We should not give ourselves moral airs, or be over- impressed by our overwhelming power, especially in the air. We should not, in short, behave like ancient (or modern) Athenians.