Jim Rogers of Texas A&M takes some issue with my discussion of the justice of NATO bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  I’ll briefly take up Jim’s questions about human shields in another post.  Here’s Jim’s response:

[1][a] Yes, in general, but your post doesn’t really deal with the problem of the innocent shield (let alone the innocent aggressor). In this context in particular, many of those fighting the U.S. intentionally seek to surround themselves with the innocent, and to blend in with the innocent, precisely to protect themselves from justified attack. That, I believe, is a necessary part of “terrorism,” and serves as part of the conundrum.

The classic example, a bank robber hold an innocent person in front of him to shield him from police attack. He then begins shooting at police from behind the woman. Can the police (justly) shoot “through” the women to return fire in self defense or to protect other third parties? Can the police intentionally kill the woman to remove the shield and return fire upon the robber?

[b] So what’s your standard for proper responses with innocent shields? That they can never morally be injured? You’re the one judging, so you have the moral responsibility to tell those you would instruct what they need to do to avoid sinning.

[c] Why is the moral responsibility upon the U.S. military rather than upon those surrounding themselves with the innocent?

[2] You imply that the U.S. military has not exercised “due care” in avoiding noncombatant deaths simply because of the events that you recite. But people die in events even when no one is acting negligently, and their relatives feel bad about the deaths of their relatives even if they die when someone is exercising due care. So simply reciting the events and noting the regret of Afghans does not establish the absence of due care

[3] Your last paragraph concluding with “If the church is going to be a credible witness, both in the US and to the Muslim people of the Middle East, that charge must be put to rest.”

I don’t think that most of these events are mis-judgments of principle, but are fact-based judgments. Informational asymmetries will almost always (but not always) prevent the sort of week day quarterbacking that you’re suggest the church engage in. The church can establish principled parameters, but pastors are usually (but not always) ill-equipped to judge particular cases of when the line has been crossed, because that is a fact-based judgment rather than a policy judgment.

Jim adds, in a later note:

[1] Is it always wrong for Christians to prefer that someone else die rather than “our” own (a member of our family, church, region or country)? I.e., is it always wrong to prefer the death of an Afghan civilian rather than a U.S. infantry member?

[2] In choosing whether or not to drop the guided missile on a group that includes civilians, is the following sort of cost-benefit calculus inappropriate?

You send in the missile if the set of lives saved in an alternative engagement and/or in the future is equal to or greater than to the set of innocent lives lost to the missile. You do not send in the missile if the set of lives saved in an alternative engagement and/or in the future are less than the lives cost. The set of future lives saved must, of course, be sufficiently discounted for the uncertainty of the calculation. I.e., there is a preference for saving a life today with certainly relative to probabilistically saving a life tomorrow. (Indeed, there could be a flat preference for pushing costs into the future, because that would mean that one person leaves at least one more day.)

Also, to be sure, it would be an extremely dicey matter to calculate the net future lives saved or lost over the horizon of the entire war based on one tactical decision. But then those sorts of intermediate decisions always need to be made, so it’s also unavoidable, however dicey.