Berkeley vs. The USMC

Hmmm... looks like the People's Republic of Berkeley is taking on the Corp. Good thing this is just a war of words...

How the heck should we think about this?

My first reaction to such things is usually annoyance with the lefties. I don't know what it is, but even when I am generally sympathetic with their cause, these folks have a freakish ability to irritate me. So let me just get that little bit of psychology out on the table.

This reminds me, unsurprisingly, of the moves to chase the CIA off of campuses back in the day. I wasn't sure how to think about that, either.

Some relevant facts:

1. Yes, as Berkeley's (note: I am not making this up) Peace and Justice Commission notes, the U.S. has a history of launching "illegal, immoral and unprovoked wars of aggression." (Um, do we really need 'aggression' in there? Can anybody think of an illegal, immoral and unprovoked war that was not a war of aggression?). To deny this would be to betray a truly prodigious degree of historical ignorance.

2. Yes, the Iraq war is likely an immoral war, though the issue isn't entirely clear. At the very least, it seems to violate the last resort condition on just wars that, e.g., both Aquinas and Grotius agree on. It's not clearly illegal, however, given Saddam's violation of 1441. Though, as I understand it, 1441 did not authorize war without a further Security Council vote...so it may have been illegal, too. This is, of course, something I should know, or at least have the gumption to look up. But I don't.

Now, given 1 and 2, it seems clear that opposition to the Iraq invasion was at least permissible and probably obligatory. And this is not even to mention the overriding prudential reasons against invading. But, the pooch already having been screwed, these are not the questions that face us. The question that faces us is more like: now that we've replaced Saddam's mess with our own mess, what are our obligations?

We should be able to agree that we have a fairly strong obligation to fix a fair bit of the mess we made even though there was another, rather different kind of mess there to start with. Now, lefties of the Code Pink variety seem to think that violence is never justified, and this is, of course, as false as anything can be. But even if that's what they think, their actions might still be permissible on other grounds.

We can probably all agree that it is reasonable (though probably not maximally reasonable) to think that it would be best for us to leave right now. Now, if one can believe that without being epistemically irresponsible, the question then becomes: if one did believe that, would it be permissible to interfere with military recruiting efforts in order to achieve the goal?

I think it's clear that if we were engaged in a genuine war of aggression, then it would be permissible to so interfere. So it's at least sometimes permissible. But this war--mistaken though it may be--is not exactly a war of aggression. (So, um...I guess some illegal, immoral wars are not wars of aggression after all! Some are just mistakes. Interesting...)

So, one might think like so: it's sometimes permissible to interfere with recruiting in order to stop a war. This war ought to be stopped. So it's permissible to interfere with recruiting.

But this reasoning is at least not deductively valid (as you can tell by a quick inspection). It's not exactly abductively valid, either, as it stands. Anyway: just because it's permissible to do x in order to stop some wars doesn't mean that it's permissible to do x to stop any war that ought to be stopped. So the argument, as stated, fails.

(Sidebar: of course no one is suggesting that interference with recruiting should be illegal under the prevailing conditions. Everybody, including (and, to their great credit, perhaps especially) the USMC recognizes that it should be legal. We are asking whether it's morally right.)

Although one can reasonably think that we (and by 'we' I, of course, mean they) should get out right away, one can also reasonably think that we should stay, e.g. until there's some measure of political progress. So both positions are reasonable in this case. So we might ought to re-frame the question like so: when the government is pursuing a reasonable military policy, is it permissible to try to impede the policy by interfering with recruiting? If the policy were obviously in error, interference would be permissible. But when it is not obviously in error, I have some inclination to think that we ought to let the normal mechanisms (e.g. recruiting) function as they are supposed to. Though I don't know what principle--if any--is driving me there.

So having gotten this far, I think my tentative conclusion is: no, Berkeley should not be opposing the war in this way. Although I have sympathy with the conclusion that we need to start heading for the door in Iraq, I suppose I am inclined to think that action of this kind is only permissible when the military policy in question is fairly clearly wrong...and I don't think our current policy is clearly wrong.

(I suppose I'm also inclined to think that this sort of thing is as much a piece of street theater as it is a serious political statement. That, too, is annoying...but I could, of course, be wrong about it. Lefties seem to have a real weakness for street theater. Witness the various anti-globalization circuses. I've often thought that, if these folks were really interested in effecting change, they'd cut their hair, put down their puppets, and put on suits. Of course I don't have a suit...but then I'm not the one here trying to get people to take me seriously.)

Now, one might respond that any person who is convinced that the war is mistaken has a right--in fact, a duty--to try to stop people from signing up to engage in it. That's a reasonable point. So perhaps the real argument here is that the city of Berkeley should not be doing so. Or perhaps I'm just wrong.

More thought required.