Caused
Automatic warfare
January 7, 2009 20 comments
As a kind of footnote to Unintended, let us observe how it is sometimes possible to go one better and deny that the actor of whom one approves has any agency at all. George W. Bush is quoted by AP as having said yesterday:
The situation now taking place in Gaza was caused by Hamas.
This only makes any sense if one thinks of Israel’s planners as utterly incapable of choosing to do otherwise, void of volition, bereft of any intention whatsoever. ((It is also, by the way, why I don’t buy accounts of the Kosovo war that run something like: “Nato’s bombing actually caused an increase in Serbian atrocities.” The poor little Serb commanders, this implies, had no choice in the matter themselves. It follows too, of course, that any claim such as “Hamas’s firing rockets into Israel was caused by Israeli oppression etc” is equally nonsensical.)) Further, since Israel’s action is an effect of a cause, thus a necessary result having the force of natural law, it must also follow that it comes as an inevitable consequence of something that Hamas did first, ie by implication their alleged breaking of the ceasefire in November ((Although if they did break it, it was only after Israel struck first — but then we know that ceasefires are peculiarly asymmetrical in their robustness to action by one side or the other.)) — even though Israel’s leaders had already been planning the attack for months previously.
In exploiting this efficient dual-use parcel of Unspeak, however, note that one must be circumspect about characterizing what Bush carefully calls “the situation now taking place in Gaza”. If, for example, one were attempt to claim that “Israel’s blowing up of UN schools in Gaza was caused by Hamas”, the absurdity of it would be plainer. ((IDF spokesmen do say that they blew up the UN schools (in which civilians were sheltering) because Hamas fighters were or had been firing from them, but they do not claim they had no choice but to blow up the schools.)) So I think we can all congratulate Bush, one last time, on his verbal delicacy.
Interesting this, since I’ve also seen people deploy the same argument in defence of the Americans and ourselves in Iraq – “what do you mean, coalition forces “caused” thousands of deaths? Are you saying that the Iraqis have no agency and are impelled beyond their will to murder each other?”
Funnily enough, the people I’ve seen using that gem would probably agree with President Bush’s contention, above. I assume that some kind of mental training is required to avoid a horrible, Scanners-esque cranial explosion when these ideas are brought together… A bit like matter and anti-matter, except with bullshit and utter bullshit instead.
I dunno, I believe I could say that, for example, some blatant injustice perpetrated by a group A against group B led to (caused) radicalization of the group B.
Futhermore, even though every individual in the group B is (presumably) an agent with a free will, this (the aggregate behavior of the group A) makes it statistically more likely that an individual from the group B will, for example, commit an atrocity against some members of the group A. In any case, the aggregate behavior of the group B will certainly change, despite every individual in it being a ‘free agent’. We are not that free, humans are not angels.
In this sense I think it’s not necessary wrong to argue that, say, the Treaty of Versailles caused the Second World War, or something like that.
Rather, it becomes unspeak (and worse) when atrocities perpetrated by the powerful who really do have plenty of choice are blamed on the victims.
Well, I think it is reasonable (which eg the Lancet study tries to do) to separate the very many Iraqi deaths (including civilians) that the US obviously did and does cause (by bombing and shooting), from the deaths of Iraqis killed by other Iraqis. For the latter, someone might argue that the invasion was an enabling precondition but not a sufficient cause — or, of course, with David Aaronovitch, they might alternatively squeak: “Hey! Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later anyway!” But the US is certainly culpably negligent for some actions that failed to discourage what ensued, eg when they sacked the entire bloody army.
I know what you mean, but that’s exactly the (very) loose sense of “cause” that Bush is trying to exploit. I don’t think it helps to endorse one form of language for the powerful and a different one for the weak. (That is precisely the project of much Unspeak.)
I am surprised that everyone is struck by ’caused’ and not by the screaming ambiguity of ‘situation’. Which ‘situation’ in Gaza does the comment apply to? The traffic situation?
Here is the full transcript from the White House. Note that Bush’s quoted remark was not a complete sentence but made to look so by AP. What Bush really said was:
Bush’s remarks begin with this gem:
The VP of Sudan, a regime accused of genocide, is a friend of Bush. Well, at least he’s ‘dealing’ with the ‘situation’ in the Sudan!
(I’m sorry to get totally sidetracked, but WTF is this alarming and under-reported development in Darfur? Bush:
Say what?)
Back on the subject of Gaza, Bush had this to say:
So, Sudan is ‘dealing with’ its ‘situation’, and ‘all of us are going to have to deal with Hamas’? One meaning of ‘deal with’ is negotiate, but in Bush’s usage it also describes the actions of the government of Sudan in Darfur. Hmm. I wonder…
I commend to you the third paragraph of my post.
Thank you for providing the full version of Bush’s remark. I almost want to read Bush’s warning towards “those who threaten peace” as directed at those you, you know, threaten peace instead of agreeing to continue going along with his and his friends’ violence.
Edit: re Sudan, though, Foreign Policy seems to think that Kiir is the “least worst” person he could find to talk to.
Meanwhile I see that President-in-Waiting Obama has said:
— which says it all, doesn’t it?
Duh. I should have re-read your original item. Of course you would not have missed the situation with ‘the situation’.
So, by the way, are you compelled by your logic to insist that although NATO planners who foresaw that increased Serbian atrocities would be an “entirely predictable” consequence of the administration of a bombing campaign did not “cause” those atrocities, they nevertheless did “intend” for atrocities to increase?
Or do you see an out simply through “agency” — even if we think we can predict people’s responses to our extreme violence, they are still responsible; we’re only responsible for the purely mechanical outcomes as via shards, fragments, collapses and the like?
OK, I can see there’s probably something to be gained by reading the existing comments before posting my own.
Mea culpa.
W/r/t comment 3, what of those (I think not numerically insignificant) deaths caused by predictable degradation of infrastructure and social fabric — starvation, malnutrition, disease, reduced availability of medical care, etc? Did Lancet have or try to have a third category for these? Where do you place them in the spectra of causation and intention?
The VP of Sudan, a regime accused of genocide
Sudan has two Vice Presidents under the shaky constitutional arrangement that ended the first civil war. The one who’s meeting Bush is the representative of Southern Sudan and isn’t part of “the regime”; he’s more like the leader of the opposition than anything else. This one’s fair enough.
More generally, since this is apparently defend-Bush week for me, the use of causal language in describing actions is an area where everyone’s confused. I think we should retreat to talking about Granger-causation.
This is the concept defined by Clive Granger under which A Granger-causes B if and only if:
A precedes B in time, and
A provides information about B which is not available in any other way.
Granger won his Nobel (Sveriges Riksbank blah blah) Prize for proving, among other things, that if a linear combination of time series is stationary, there must be some flow of Granger-causation between them. He is also of the view that nobody in the last twenty years has ever been able to explain to them what is the magic element in “real” causation which gives it a superior ontological status from “mere” Granger-causation.
Re your footnote 1. The claim made for the bombing of Belgrade in 1999 was that it would prevent atrocities in Kosovo. I wouldn’t claim that the bombing of Belgrade caused the atrocities in Kosovo, but I think that it was wrong for those bombing Belgrade to claim that they were preventing atrocities. Similarly, I wouldn’t claim that the invasion of Iraq caused the bombings in London in July 2005 but I think that it was wrong of those in favour of the invasion to claim that invading Iraq would reduce the risk of terrorism.
To me the problem is that Bush was implying that Hamas has sole responsibility for the deaths in Gaza when they were not the direct actors in, for instance, the school massacre. I agree that by doing this he is in effect robbing Israel of agency.
If the same claim were made about Nato bombing Serbia then I would see the analogy. But the Fisk quotation to which you objected does not seem to have the same simplistic implication:
Nato’s bombing brought a kind of peace to Kosovo – but only after it had given the Serbs the opportunity to massacre or dispossess half the Albanian population of the province
The words you quote don’t place sole blame on Nato. In fact they are clear that Serbia was responsible for the massacres and dispossession. They simply point to Nato’s role in enabling this. The surrounding sentences are about Nato failing in its stated aims, not absolving Serbia. (For the record, I don’t have a problem with saying that Hamas gave Israel the opportunity to attack Gaza. Do you?)
Stuart, you’re absolutely right to separate Fisk’s exact quote from other versions of the claim that do use “caused”, though I still think there is something wrong with “gave the opportunity”, and for similar reasons. As I said in the other thread, I think it would be less obscurantist to say that the Serbs took advantage of the bombing to do more of what they wanted to do.
I expect we would resist saying that a woman walking alone through a dark alley gave an attacker the opportunity to assault her, even if she would not have been attacked had she not walked through that alley at that moment.
Their firing rockets at Israeli civilians is appalling: in this sense Hamas gave Israel an excuse. On the other hand, given the power relations that obtain, Israel doesn’t need to wait for an “opportunity” to do whatever it likes. (Cf.)
I am not entirely sure that I would wholly agree with this last comment.
It is possible, for example, to extend the analysis and consider that the ‘appalling rocket fire aimed at civilians’ is itself a conditonality of those same power relations [that obtain?].
I would suggest a more important word here to consider is ‘choice’.
It would be potentially more fruitful in this regard if Iran had armed the Gazans with a range of hi-tech weaponry ranging from F-16 equivalent fighter craft, drone spotters, the full spectrum of satellite and intelligence data, various precision guidance missile systems, heavy artillery, ship-based ordnance, and so on.
If in these adjusted circumstances the Gazans confined their targeting to Israeli civic buildings and authorities, members of the police force, military personnel and installations, Government buildings, and members of the Government itself, with attendant collateral damage of course, then presumably we would be better placed in this new environment of equivalent power relations to pass a moral judgment upon the actions of the principal agents in this conflict.
Is this not a reasonable line of argument?
I’d want to know more about the sense of “conditionality” there. I trust it is not a roundabout attempt to say that attacking civilians is justified given the power relations. Any other implication that this is somehow the only course of action available to Hamas is of course also false.
Anyway, from CNN, here is an explicit Israeli disclaimer of volition:
Not just an explicit disclaimer but the standard disclaimer wouldn’t you say?
Does such statements warrent credibility if subsequent actions regularly contradict them?
When the Israelis refer to the ‘current hostilities’ they are using this perhaps in its more narrow sense: that is excluding Israeli incursions, targeted killings, and a general economic blockade that restricts food, fuel, medicines, and even cash (which led to several major bank closures in Gaza in early December ’08).
My concern remains with your general deployment of language that implies mild criticism of Israeli action whilst reserving language reflective of moral outrage to describe the actions of the Gazans. It is not possible to say that the Gazans have ‘no choice’ in the way they respond but they certainly have far fewer choices open to them than the Israelis do. Furthermore we do not know how the Israelis would respond were the roles reversed – that is to say were they holding on to a remnant of Israel besieged by a greater, and more powerful, and openly expansionist Palestine whose intent, from their point of view at least, might be seen as their eventual destruction.
The power relation is conditional in determining the availability of choices open to both sides and, therefore, is an instrumental factor in shaping what choices they both eventually make. It is not an equal contest as the glaring differences between destruction and loss of life between the two sides amply demonstrates.
I would also much prefer it if the media would refer to ‘Gazan rocket fire’ and not, as they routinely do, of ‘Hamas rocket fire’. Just a small technical point but an important one I think.
I’m sorry if it has been possible to think that I don’t regard the blowing up of schools and the intentional killing of civilians with bombs etc as appalling as well, and am happy to confirm that I do.
I didn’t want to make a mess of this thread by responding to #4 (“I don’t think it helps to endorse one form of language for the powerful and a different one for the weak“), but since David Owen seems to be doing it now, I’ll just note that I’m squarely on his side. As far as I’m concerned, in this case the tremendous asymmetry in power (not to mention rightfulness of the cause) virtually screams for different form of language for different sides.
I’ll shut up now.
I dunno. We obviously move in different circles, but what seems more typical to me is the attitude that Israel caused the situation in Gaza, even that Israel ’caused’ Hamas command to take the decision to lob Qassams over the border with nary a pause for the best part of three years. I mean, put your self in Hamas’s shoes pre invasion — what range of possible outcomes do you see? What strategy does this fit into?
As I said in the other thread, I think it would be less obscurantist to say that the Serbs took advantage of the bombing to do more of what they wanted to do.
It might be less obscurantist if one’s aim is to assign blame for the dispossessions and deaths caused by Serbian forces. But as I said, Fisk was talking about Nato’s stated aims and the results of the actions it said it took to further those aims. As I understand it, the Chomsky/Fisk case is that Nato was not primarily motivated by its stated aims. To make this case they make the point you quoted. I don’t see that this gets Serbia off the hook. It just means that Nato’s actions were taken in bad faith. If there are other less cautious wordings that assign direct blame for Serbian killings to Nato then I would agree they are vulnerable to your criticism.
I expect we would resist saying that a woman walking alone through a dark alley gave an attacker the opportunity to assault her, even if she would not have been attacked had she not walked through that alley at that moment.
I agree that one might resist saying that, but I’m not sure that’s because it wouldn’t be true. While it might be an inappropriate thing to say in the immediate aftermath, I don’t think it would necessarily imply culpability on her part. In some contexts — for instance a talk on women’s personal safety — I think it would be a reasonable point to make. If one is attempting to analyse what caused an event, rather than making a political intervention as a world leader, then I think the criteria are somewhat different. In any case, as discussed, Bush’s language is far more clearly assigning blame to the earlier and less direct factor.
Their firing rockets at Israeli civilians is appalling: in this sense Hamas gave Israel an excuse. On the other hand, given the power relations that obtain, Israel doesn’t need to wait for an “opportunity” to do whatever it likes. (Cf.)
I don’t know. Israel needs something to point to if it is to launch a serious attack on Gaza, and while it might have found something else, this seems to work very well for Melanie Phillips (sorry, “Melanie Phillips”) and other defenders of the attack. As Israel has repeatedly demonstrated, it has the military means and the US backing to launch an attack pretty much whenever convenient, but the PR operation surely requires something.