The Continuum of Civilianality

Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon has so far killed 380 civilians, and wounded nearly a thousand more. Half a million Lebanese have been displaced. At first glance, this would seem to be a criminal, monstrous act. But Alan Dershowitz has taken it upon himself to explain to us why it’s actually probably ok:

We need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare. A new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the Middle East: “the continuum of civilianality.” Though cumbersome, this concept aptly captures the reality and nuance of warfare today and provides a more fair way to describe those who are killed, wounded and punished.

What follows is a lot of careful parsing of the word “civilian” that explains why people who let terrorists live among them are closer to the “deserve to die” end of the spectrum of civilianility than, say, a couple of five-year old boys who just happened to be playing soccer when the bombs started dropping.

But children don’t get a free pass:

Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks.

Dershowitz doesn’t make an effort to define the various points of his continuum, but we imagine that it would look something like this:

1. Innocent Civilians
2. Innocent But Slighty Tainted Civilians
3. Not Very Innocent At All Civilians
4. Not Innocent Civilians
5. Very Bad Civilians
6. Osama-Loving Civilians
7. Indistinguishable From Filthy Terrorists Civilians

So the five-year old boys would probably be Innocent Civilians, unless, of course, a terrorist strolls by when they’re playing soccer, and they don’t notify the nearest American authorities: then they’d become Innocent But Slighty Tainted Civilians. If they actually talk to the terrorist, they’re immediately demoted to Not Very Innocent At All Civilians. If they let the terrorist join their soccer game, then they are Not Innocent Civilians, at which point they become eligible for murder by bombs.

That’s the thing with the continuum. It’s slippery. There you are, one morning, watching TV with your family, secure in your Innocent Civilianism, when — suddenly and without warning — a message from Osama Bin Laden comes on. You don’t change the station, unfortunately, and by the end of his spiel you look up to discover that you’re an Osama-Loving Civilian, and so really have nothing to complain about when your house is flattened by that four-thousand-pound bunker buster.

The other issue that Dershowitz doesn’t address is the punishments that one should mete out as civilians slide up and down the scale. Indistinguishable From Filthy Terrorists Civilians must die, of course, and, really, you can probably kill indiscriminately all the way down to Not Innocent Civilians. But what about Not Very Innocent At All Civilians? Probably you shouldn’t kill them, but perhaps a maiming is in order: a shot across the bow of their mortality, as it were.

The Innocent But Slightly Tainted Civilians are a harder problem: probably the rule of thumb here is that you shouldn’t hurt them physically, but you can turn them out of their homes and send them scurrying into overcrowded cities, where they’ll vie with a million other civilians for whatever scant resources you’re letting into the country.

A tough thing, this continuum of civilianality. I applaud Mr Dershowitz for taking it on. The world we live in is really too complex for simple-minded, black and white demarcations between which civilians should die, and which shouldn’t.