2004. International Journal of Applied Philosophy 18:2. ISSN 0738-098X. pp.

1125
To Fight or Not to Fight?
The Ethics of Military Desertion
William Patterson
ABSTRACT: Many controversial issues have come under discussion regard-
ing the recent war in Iraq. The justifications given for the war itself, the
way the war was prosecuted, and the handling of the post-war situation
have all been hotly contested matters. This paper focuses on an aspect
of the war that has not drawn much attentionthe decisions made by
members of the Iraqi military to either fight or not to fight. From the very
beginning of hostilities the United States made concerted efforts, through
such methods as e-mails and leaflets dropped from aircraft, to encourage
the desertion of Iraqi military personnel. Many Iraqi soldiers followed this
advice and surrendered to U.S. forces at the first opportunity; others con-
tinue to fight to this day. Were the soldiers that deserted the military or sur-
rendered without a fight morally justified in doing so? This article attempts
to answer that question through an examination of such related issues as
patriotism, political and moral duties, obligations arising from oaths and
promises, and political legitimacy. Though this analysis does not lead to
the development of iron-clad rules that definitively resolve the moral issues
underlying military desertion, it can help us to get a clearer understanding
of these issues and to develop guidelines by which to judge the morality
of specific instances of desertion.
I
n the weeks leading up to the most recent war in Iraq, various ofcials in the Bush
administration made repeated appeals to Iraqi soldiers to give up their weapons
and surrender. Gen. Richard Myers, for example, said that the United States had
only one message to Iraqi soldiers: stop ghting. Instead, he advised those
soldiers to focus on the future of your family and children and living in a free
Iraq.
1
Similarly, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated on CNN that the
leadership and the military in Iraq need to know that they should act with honor
and stop defending a regime that is shortly going to be history.
2
In addition to
these, and many similar statements, an intensive campaign of leaet dropping
was undertaken throughout the country to make sure that the message reached
as many Iraqi soldiers as possible and resulted in the largest degree of defection
within the ranks of the Iraqi army.
12 WILLIAM PATTERSON
The main question to be explored in this paper is not whether or not the
Bush administration was justied in utilizing such tactics. Clearly if those in the
administration believed that such an initiative would reduce armed opposition
and therefore save both Iraqi and American lives, it was a justied aspect of the
war. Instead, this paper will explore the validity of the American argument itself.
Was Secretary Rumsfeld correct when he declared that Iraqi soldiers would be
acting with honor if they threw down their weapons and deserted their mili-
tary? Certainly Mr. Rumsfeld would not accept the excuse from an American
soldier that abandoned his post that he was only doing what he thought was
honorable. Were the Iraqi soldiers that took the administrations advice and
abandoned Saddam Hussein acting morally, or were they betraying one of the
most vital duties incumbent upon the citizen of any country, that of acting in
the national defense?
Though ofcials from the Bush administration claimed that desertion was
the most honorable and moral course of action for the Iraqi soldier to take, they
never fully explained why they believed that to be true nor what considerations
were taken into account in reaching that conclusion. The main thrust of the
administrations argument was centered on the iniquity of the Hussein regime
and his consequent lack of legitimacy. Both of these issues, however, deserve
greater attention and neither is as straightforward as might rst appear. Ad-
ditionally, other considerations, such as the duties of patriotism, the obligations
imposed upon one by past promises or oaths, and the nature of moral dilemmas
require further elaboration. It is the purpose of this paper to elucidate these is-
sues and to more clearly demonstrate what role they play in the moral question
of military desertion.
MY COUNTRY, RIGHT OR WRONG
One of the rst issues to arise during any discussion of military desertion is that
of patriotism. For some, the obligations imposed upon individuals by their status
as citizens is powerful enough to override nearly all other moral obligations. For
others, patriotic emotions only obfuscate what should be a rational and disinter-
ested decision. These two views can roughly be categorized as representing the
positions of the extreme patriot on the one side and the anti-patriot on the other.
The position of the extreme patriot is that desertion is rarely, if ever, justied while
the view of the anti-patriot is that soldiers always retain the moral right to refuse
military service if they deem it the right thing to do. Both of these positions are
fraught with difculties, but each also brings to light several legitimate moral
points. By examining each of these extreme positions it may be possible to discover
what obligations can legitimately be considered to arise from patriotism. This
discovery will allow us to arrive at some middle point where patriotism cannot
be used as an excuse for disregarding other morally relevant facts but neither can
it be completely disregarded itself since it is one of those facts.
From the viewpoint of the extreme patriot, desertion from the military is
rarely justied. Patriotism requires that one obey the laws and commands of
ones country, especially in times of war when the states survival and interests
TO FIGHT OR NOT TO FIGHT? THE ETHICS OF MILITARY DESERTION 13
are presumably in the greatest degree of peril. In his book Patriotism, Morality,
and Peace, Stephen Nathanson identies ve key tenets which characterize the
extreme patriotic position:
1. A belief in the superiority of ones country
2. A desire for dominance over other countries
3. An exclusive concern for ones own country
4. No constraints on the pursuit of ones countrys goals
5. Automatic support of ones countrys military policies.
3
This position can be succinctly summed up in the oft-quoted phrase my
country, right or wrong and it is easy to see how such a position could lead
one to discount other moral considerations as unimportant. It is also easy to see
how an acceptance of such beliefs would automatically lead to the labeling of
any attempt to forego ones military duties as a betrayal of ones country and,
therefore, deeply immoral.
Horried by what they see in the extreme patriots position as moral insensitiv-
ity, the anti-patriot takes on a position in almost dialectical opposition to it. The
anti-patriot argues that the willingness of the extreme patriot to glorify his own
country by whatever means necessary has been one of the primary reasons for
war throughout history and that it has lead to unconscionable acts of barbarity
and cruelty. The fact that a country is ones own country does not imbue it with
moral immunity, as the extreme patriot would seem to argue. Therefore, whether
one abides by the decisions of ones country, especially in regards to war, should
be a decision as completely unbiased and objective as if one were judging the
behavior of someone elses country. Nathanson points out that we must recog-
nize the possibility that a nation itself might be unworthy of support. It might be
so dedicated to immoral goals or ideals or so unconstrained in the pursuits of its
interests that no moral person could support that nation. The fact that a country
is my country does not mean that it is worthy of patriotic devotion.
4
Furthermore, extreme patriots suffer from the tendency to forget exactly what
it is they are supposedly loyal to. Extreme patriots, by lacking the courage to stand
up to moral corruptness within their country, may actually be undermining the
values that are at its very core rather than guarding its well-being. In Sebastian
Haffners memoir about his life under Nazi Germany, he argues that the extreme
nationalism that gave rise to the Nazis and Hitler did not glorify Germany, but
destroyed it. They [the Nazis] forget that it is no better for a nation than for a
single man to gain the whole world if it loses its soul; and they also forget that
they are sacricing not just themselves for their patriotism (or what they think is
patriotism) but also their country.
5
Perhaps somewhat paradoxically then, the
position of the anti-patriot can in some cases turn out to be a greater expression
of patriotism than that of the extreme patriot.
For these reasons, anti-patriots look upon patriotism as an evil. Patriotism,
they argue, leads to aggression, moral insensitivity, war, and death. To avoid these
results, patriotism must be eradicated. The anti-patriot wants to look beyond
14 WILLIAM PATTERSON
national borders. He refuses to be morally blindfolded by geography and holds
that all people and nations should be considered equally and that ones own
country should acquire no special considerations simply by virtue of its being
ones own country. Instead of each of us worrying about our own countries, we
should be equally concerned about all people, no matter what part of the globe
they happen to inhabit. According to this stance, there is no such thing as patriotic
duty and there can certainly be no political obligations to ght in wars.
Portions of the anti-patriots position seem tempting. It draws attention to
the possible defects of patriotic fanaticism and redirects our moral attention to
peoples outside of our own national boundaries. But it also has its downsides.
However much the anti-patriots wish to deny it, we often do have special ties with
our own countries. We have been affected by its history, grown up in its society,
learned its language, and adopted its culture. Ones country is not merely some
completely independent part of the world which can be accepted or rejected by the
individual at will, it is an inextricable part of that individual. Todd Gitlin writes
that patriotism afrms that who you are extends beyondfar beyondyourself.
You are not an isolate. Just as you have a given name and a family name, you also
have a national name. It gives you a past and a future. You are in solidarity with
strangers; their losses are your own.
6
Just as one owes special consideration to ones own family members over oth-
ers, so too does one owe special consideration to ones own country over others.
The disloyalty demonstrated by someone that does not look after his own family
may lead us to wonder if that person is capable of moral feelings at all. The same
applies, though to a lesser degree, to loyalty to ones country. Special relationships
result in the development of special obligations and duties that cannot morally
be dismissed out of hand as if they did not exist.
Both extreme patriotism and anti-patriotism suffer from serious moral draw-
backs. The extreme patriots position may be xenophobic and callous towards
the well-being of others and the anti-patriots position can be seen as disloyal
towards ones own countrymen.
Fortunately, there is a middle position. This position, which Nathanson calls
moderate patriotism, evades the major problems of the extreme patriot and
the anti-patriot and provides the possibility of limited, but still special, loyalty
to ones own country while at the same time recognizing the moral worth of
other countries. According to Nathanson, the moderate patriots position is
characterized by:
1. Special affection for ones country
2. A desire that ones country prosper and ourish
3. Special but not exclusive concern for ones own country
4. Support of morally constrained pursuit of national goals
5. Conditional support of ones countrys policies.
7
From the standpoint of this position, one should have a special regard for
ones own country and work for the advancement of its prosperity, but only
TO FIGHT OR NOT TO FIGHT? THE ETHICS OF MILITARY DESERTION 15
within limits. A moderate patriot will work to increase the economic health of
his country and support policies which he believes will achieve that goal, but
not if it requires the ruthless exploitation of peoples from other countries or the
unjustied waging of war. The moral judgments of a moderate patriot will be
biased by the love of his own country, but not enough to blind him to the needs
of others, to which he will pay considerable attention.
Where one ts on the scale of patriotism will have a signicant impact on ones
view of the military and of a citizens obligation to serve in it. An extreme patriot
will believe that citizens should unqualiedly support the military exploits of his
country and that moral questioning should be very limited. An extreme patriot
will view desertion from the military, for nearly any reason, to be the height of
dishonor. The anti-patriot, conversely, will very often consider all military action
to be immoral and will need a considerable amount of convincing to lend his
support to it. The anti-patriot will rarely condemn desertion except under the
most obvious cases of military necessity.
The moderate patriot will be somewhere in-between. The moderate patriot
will be very aware of his obligation to his country and will be hesitant to con-
done desertion. On the other hand, he will also recognize the possibility that his
country, or more precisely, its leaders, may make mistakes of moral judgment that
could lead it into unjustied war. Because the moderate patriots support of his
governments policies is conditional, he will weigh the circumstances at hand and
determine in his own mind whether the military action being undertaken by his
country is worthy of his support. To the moderate patriot, military desertion will
always be lamentable and never a rst resort; but it is not unthinkable.
Moderate patriots will differ as to the weight they grant to different moral
considerations when deciding whether or not desertion from military service is
justied in a particular instance. Some will give more importance to the concepts
of duty and loyalty while others will take a more dispassionate view of the situ-
ation. As long as there remains a balance between the two considerations, the
moderate patriot will avoid falling into the ethical traps which have ensnared
both the extreme patriot and the anti-patriot.
PROMISES AND DUTIES
The choice of the moderate patriot to desert from the military cannot be an ar-
bitrary one. Though moderate patriots deny that they have a moral obligation
to follow the orders of their government no matter what it does, they cannot
escape from political obligation altogether. The moderate patriot is still bound
by promises and duties. As D. Z. Philips rightly notes, moral demands should
not be at the mercy of our inclination. Our moral obligations cannot be made
to depend on the capricious fact of whether we feel inclined to fulll them on
any occasion.
8
Abrogating moral obligations, including the obligation to serve
ones country in the military, is a serious business and should only be done after
solemn reection. In order to better understand some of the issues at stake here,
an analysis of promises, duties, and the moral obligations that they produce is
in order.
16 WILLIAM PATTERSON
Many philosophers have placed the concept of duty at the very heart of eth-
ics. Immanuel Kant, for example, argues that only actions done out of a sense of
duty can have moral worth.
To be benecent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds
so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-
interest, they nd a pleasure in spreading joy around them and can take delight
in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in
such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be,
has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations, e.g.,
the inclination to honor, which, if happily directed to that which is in fact of public
utility and accordant with duty and consequently honorable, deserves praise and
encouragement but not esteem. For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely that
such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.
9

From Kants point of view, no action, no matter how benecent, is truly worthy
of moral esteem unless it is done for no other reason than out of a sense of duty.
Furthermore, these duties do not apply merely under certain contingent condi-
tions or with exceptions but with absolute necessity.
10
If something is a duty, it is
always a duty. If it is our duty to tell the truth, we may never lie. If it is our duty
to serve the military, we may never desert it.
This absolute conception of duty, however, immediately runs into problems.
For what happens when we have two duties, each of which is in conict with the
other? We have a duty to serve in the military, but we also have a duty to refrain
from unjustly killing others. How can both obligations be my duty, Philips asks,
if duty is what ought to be done, then how can I have two duties?
11
Philips ex-
plains that to express these differences, philosophers [whom he disagrees with]
have said that what clashes is not actual duties, but prima-facie duties. These
latter duties indicate what tend to be your duties, not what is actually your duty.
Your absolute duty is what you actually ought to do.
12
But what ought to be
done is precisely what is in question! Rather than make moral reasoning easier,
the conception of duty only serves to make things more complicated, indeed
paradoxical, when two supposed duties are in conict.
Situations involving conicting duties are especially characteristic of decisions
regarding military service in times of war. On the one hand, there may be a duty
to ght for ones country while, on the other hand, there may be the duty to ght
against, or at least avoid doing, what is wrong. If one believes that a war being
conducted by his country is unjustied or wrong, he may nd himself in a moral
dilemma of the rst magnitude.
Some would argue that there is not much of a moral dilemma here at all. If
a war is immoral, then one has a duty not to support it. It is obedience to the
state, when one has a duty to disobey, Michael Walzer says, that must be justi-
ed.
13
In the same vein, Nathanson writes that if a nation engages in terrible
acts or supports immoral institutions, then being loyal to it and giving it ones
support makes one an accomplice to those evils.
14
Furthermore, Nathanson
says that if a persons country enters a war unjustly or if, in the course of the
war, immoral forms of ghting will be required, then morality does not permit
participation in that war. Moreover, given the seriousness of the moral violations
TO FIGHT OR NOT TO FIGHT? THE ETHICS OF MILITARY DESERTION 17
involved in immoral killing and injuring, it would be a persons moral duty to
refuse military service.
15
This seemingly clear-cut rule, however, ends up being much simpler in theory
than in practice. While in some cases it may be very easy to denitively label a
military action as immoral or unjust (e.g., the Nazi invasion of Poland), in many
cases it will not. Take Vietnam, for example. Some Americans looked at the war as
being completely immoral and unjustied, while others saw it as a noble under-
taking to protect the innocent Vietnamese from the oppression of Communism.
Just as one might see Joseph Jastrows famous duck/rabbit picture as a duck and
someone else might see it as a rabbit, so might one person view the Vietnam War
as one fought for principle and righteousness while another sees it as having been
fought for purely political reasons and as an instance of cruelty and murder. Upon
the return of American soldiers to the U.S., many of them were spat upon by those
who saw their complicity in the war as evil. A few decades later, however, many
viewed the fact that President Bill Clinton had avoided participation in the war
as an instance of cowardice and a failure to fulll his duty to his country.
Look at Soviet Russia as another example. Clearly the Stalin regime was as
cruel as any other in history. He killed hundreds of thousands of people in the
so-called Purges and completely crushed the civil and human rights of his
citizens. Does this, then, lead to the conclusion that the millions of Soviet soldiers
who fought to thwart Hitlers invasion of their homeland during World War II
were morally wrong for having done so? Though some might say yes, I think a
far larger number would say no.
My point here is not that it is always morally right to ght for ones country
no matter the circumstances, but to demonstrate that different people will view
those circumstances differently and that it is not always possible to clearly and
objectively label one war as just and another unjust. As Philips points out, moral
reactions or moral considerations certainly follow from facts. But what we have
to remember is that such reactions and conclusions occur within certain moral
perspectives. When the moral perspectives are different, different reactions will
occur and different conclusions will be drawn.
16
The tension between the duty to
ght for ones country and the duty to resist immoral wars may not be so easily
resolvable as we would like to think.
Matters become even more complicated when the duty to serve in the military
has been heightened by ones previous oath or promise to do so. While every
member of a society may be seen as having some duty to ght for his/her country,
this obligation is greatly increased when that person has made an explicit promise
to ght by willfully joining the military. A promise extends ones duty to the point
where, some would say, it cannot be morally circumvented. Hannah Pitkin points
out that the noted philosopher John Searle has undertaken to show that the fact
of someones having said I promise under appropriate factual circumstances (he
is not quoting, joking, reciting, and so on) already is enough to show that he has
an obligation to perform. If he has promised, he has an obligation; that is what
promise means.
17
Is it plausible, however, to argue that once a promise has been made it can
never be broken? Did the German soldiers who had volunteered prior to Hitlers
18 WILLIAM PATTERSON
rise have a moral obligation to fulll their promise to military service once the
war began? Though promises should not be taken lightly, neither do they have
the power to overrule all other moral considerations. Thomas Scanlon argues
that while a promise binds one against reconsidering ones intention simply on
grounds of ones own convenience, it does not bind one to do the thing promised
whatever the cost to oneself and others.
18
Philips argues similarly about duties.
What they ask of us is necessary consideration, not necessary satisfaction, he says.
Thus in a moral dilemma we must consider all the moral considerations involved,
but obviously we cannot satisfy them all. Which ones we do satisfy is the result
of wise moral deliberation.
19
Furthermore, the fact that one has made a promise or taken an oath does not
mean that one can simply deny all responsibility for whatever takes place as a
consequence of it. A soldier is not absolved from making future moral judgments
regarding his actions during wartime simply because he has previously sworn
fealty to the military. An oath does not turn a soldier into a moral automaton or
puppet. As Michael Walzer puts it,
soldiers can never be transformed into mere instruments of war. The trigger is
always part of the gun, not part of the man. If they are not machines that can just
be turned off, they are also not machines that can just be turned on. Trained to obey
without hesitation, they remain nevertheless capable of hesitating.
20
Promises and duties, therefore, do not obligate us to fulll them no matter
what the circumstances. Instead, they force us to take full account of all moral
considerations and to accept the consequences of whatever choice is ultimately
decided upon. If it is decided that a promise must be broken in order to avoid an
even worse evil, than a part of that decision must involve the willingness to accept
the consequences of breaking the promise. For, however morally necessary it was
to break the promise, doing so still has moral consequences. Philips reminds us
that in life doing what we must do morally may still not free us from blame or
involvement with evil.
21
One important aspect of both promises and duties which we have not yet
examined is to whom or what the promise has been made or the duty is owed.
In the case of military service, duties and promises are usually made and owed
to the government of ones country. This brings into focus an element which is
central to any conversation about political obligation, that of legitimacy. We shall
look at this concept, and how it may impact the moral obligation to serve in the
military, in the following section.
LEGITIMACY, JUSTICE, AND POLITICAL OBLIGATION
Legitimacy is a crucial concept to consider during any discussion about the moral
commitment to military service. It would be difcult to claim that anyone could
be expected to honor such a commitment to an illegitimate ruler or government.
Following this line of reasoning Jean-Marc Coicaud argues that the governed
have to assume their duties towards the governors only to the extent that the latter
assume theirs.
22
If a government has behaved badly or has in some other way
lost its legitimacy to rule, then it has also lost its legitimacy to compel its citizens
TO FIGHT OR NOT TO FIGHT? THE ETHICS OF MILITARY DESERTION 19
into war. Sebastian Haffner, for example, felt no duty to ght for Hitler because
he did not accept him as the legitimate leader of Germany. The rst country to
be occupied by the Nazis, Haffner says, was not Austria or Czechoslovakia. It
was Germany.
23
There are many factors that may reinforce, or erode, the legitimacy of a
particular government or individual leader. Some argue that legality is the key
ingredient of legitimacy. If the government or ruler has attained power through
the appropriate legal means, then their governorship is legitimate. Others argue
that consent from the governed is political legitimacys most important element.
If, and only if, a leaders rule is consented to by the governed is that rule legiti-
mate. Others argue that a government is legitimate only in so far as it is just. To
these thinkers, the governments conformance to principles of justice is the most
important criterion of its legitimacy. Still others believe that all that is necessary
for legitimacy is power. If a government has the power to enforce its will, then
it is legitimate. Each one of these elements certainly plays an important role in
building and sustaining the legitimacy of a government or particular leader. But
none of them fully illuminates the concept of legitimacy and none are correct in
all circumstances. In order to better understand the role that they do play in a
governments legitimacy, we will examine each individually.
It cannot be doubted that legality is an important element of legitimacy. A
leader who has attained his position through legal means is much more likely to
be considered legitimate than one who has not. On the other hand, however, it is
difcult to conceive of legality having much importance unless the government
already holds a certain degree of legitimacy. Coicaud notes that belief in legality
presupposes the legitimacy of the legal order that lays down the law.
24

Furthermore, legal processes themselves are often awed. If the legal system
is itself unjust, it will hardly lend legitimacy to a leader that has gained power
through it. Raimond Gaita argues that our sense of the authority and dignity of
the law, by virtue of which we consent without servility to its jurisdiction over
us, depends on our seeing it as answerable to a conception of justice that tran-
scends and guides its practices and proscriptions.
25
George W. Bush may have
won the 2000 election legally, but his legitimacy was questioned by many well
into his administration.
Another problem with the argument that legality is of primary importance to
legitimacy is that it may be in conict with another element that is often consid-
ered signicant to legitimacy, that of consent. There are many instances, after all,
when a government may legally be in power but still not rule with the consent of
the people. Joseph Stalin and Deng Xiaoping may have become leaders in their
respective countries lawfully, but whether or not they maintained the full consent
of their citizens is dubious.
Some, like Coicaud, argue that consent is absolutely essential to the legitimacy
of a government.
Political institutions require active participation from the members of the commu-
nity. This contribution of cooperation pries individuals out of their immediate
zone of interest and can go as far as the sacrice of their lives, especially in
20 WILLIAM PATTERSON
time of war. This possibility of a radical limitation upon individual freedom,
which lies at the heart of political life, engendersa need for consent in order
to establish the right to govern.
26

But the insistence that legitimacy requires the consent of the governed de-
es the empirical reality. There are innumerable instances throughout history of
governments or rulers coming to power without explicit consent from the people,
and sometimes in stark contravention to it. Yet these same governments and rul-
ers were widely considered to be politically legitimate. While popular election
may be important to a governors legitimacy in democratic societies, it is easy to
imagine that in a society which chooses its leaders by, for example, single combat
to the death, its citizens would remain unimpressed by the outcome of an elec-
tion.
27
Philips points out that,
if we think of various political traditions of sovereignty explicit consent plays
no part in them. For example, consider sovereignty by inheritance. Where is the
explicit consent by the people in that? People will recognize that someone is the
legitimate heir to the throne, but would be very puzzled if asked what role their
consent played in any of it. But, at various times in history, sovereignty has not
been by inheritance, but by conquest. It would, of course, be absurd to suggest that
consent played any part in that.
28
Hence the belief by many that legitimacy, far from having anything to do with
legality or consent, is merely created by raw power. Those rulers are legitimate
who have the power to seize the reins of government and maintain them. As long
as they have the power to rule, they are legitimate. Genghis Khan was not the
legitimate ruler of the Mongols because of having gone through some elaborate
legal process or even less yet by having been elected by his fellow citizens. Rather,
it might be claimed, his rule was legitimate because it was backed by power.
Problems arise, however, when the attempt is made to equate legitimacy with
power. It is difcult to picture how a ruler could force his people to recognize him
as legitimate. The best that could be done would be to force them to recognize
that he is powerful. As Peter Winch puts it, legitimacy . . . is something which
cannot itself be simply imposed by the exercise of power. Legitimacy is something
that needs to be acknowledged and this acknowledgement is an exercise of will on
the part of the acknowledger, something, like love, which if it is not freely given
is not what it claims to be at all, but something else.
29
The exercise of power can force people to obey the ruler, but it cannot morally
obligate them to do so. Whether we obey the sovereign out of prudence or neces-
sity, this is not the same as a sense of political obligation.
30
A leader or govern-
ment may rely on brute force to pass and enforce laws, but without legitimacy
those laws will have no moral weight and will not create any sense of obligation
amongst the people. In order for people to consider it their moral duty to obey
the laws and commandments of the government, they must rst believe those
laws to be backed by justice and not merely by power.
Legitimacy, Simone Weil tells us, is not a primitive notion. It is derived
from justice.
31
If there is one element that is central to the idea of legitimacy, it is
justice. All of its other elements rest on this one notion. Law will be ignored if it
TO FIGHT OR NOT TO FIGHT? THE ETHICS OF MILITARY DESERTION 21
is not just, elections or hereditary lines of monarchy will only be valid in societies
that deem them to be the most just method of acquiring positions of leadership,
and power used unjustly may create fear and obedience, but never legitimacy.
A major part of this sense of justice, at least in most cases, is the belief that the
ruling government or leader is acting for the benet of the citizenship. Power
that is exercised for strictly personal ends cannot be legitimate, Coicaud argues.
Indeed as soon as public ofce is privatizedthat is to say, as soon as it serves
exclusively private intereststhe right to govern is called into question.
32
A leader
that is solely concerned for his own welfare, whatever the cost to his people, can
never be considered as a legitimate leader but merely as a plunderer.
We should not be fooled, however, into believing that armed with the discovery
that justice is an important element of legitimacy, we now have a steadfast and
exact measurement by which to determine the legitimacy of individual govern-
ments or rulers. For the concept of justice itself varies across cultures, space, and
time. Though Gengis Khan may not seem to us to have been a just leader, his
people had a very different conception of justice than we do. To the Mongols,
cruelty may have been justied insofar as it strengthened their own society and
protected their own people from outside attack. And consider again the case of
Vietnam; was that a just or an unjust war? While many have extremely strong
points of view on that question, others will hold to the opposite view with equal
tenacity. Though today war is supposedly governed by the abstract laws of jus
ad bellum (the justice of war) and jus in bello (justice in war), these rules are rarely
applied in practice without controversy.
So, despite having found an important indicator of legitimacy, that of justice,
this indicator is imperfect and will not alone clear up all of our moral dilemmas
regarding legitimacy and the right to desert the military. Because the concept of
justice is a blurry one, however, does not make it useless. Consider this discussion
that Ludwig Wittgenstein has with an imaginary interlocutor:
W: If I tell someone Stand roughly heremay not this explanation work
perfectly? And cannot every other one fail too?
I: But isnt it an inexact explanation?
W: Yes; why shouldnt we call it inexact? Only let us understand what
inexact means. For it does not mean unusable.
33
Consider also his discussion about games. One might say that the concept
game is a concept with blurred edges.But is a blurred concept a concept at
all?Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an
advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isnt the indistinct one
often exactly what we need?
34
While the concepts of justice and legitimacy
may, like that of games, be quite blurry, they are not useless. These concepts
serve to give us points of reference about our political obligations and help us
ground our moral decisions regarding them.
Though the limits that justice imposes on legitimacy are indistinct, they
are still limits. Winch explains that limits are recognized to the exercise of
legitimate state power: limits the extent of which is itself a subject for political
22 WILLIAM PATTERSON
disagreement and discussion and undergoes historical change.
35
All of this is
not to say that the concepts of justice and legitimacy are completely amorphous
and that their meaning must be decided by each individual for himself. Not
every action, after all, will count as a just action and for the words justice and
legitimacy to mean anything at all, they must mean something in a shared
language, available to everyone.
MORAL DILEMMAS AND DISAGREEMENT
The most extreme cases of injustice are easily spotted and agreed upon by most.
If the Nazi concentration camps, for example, were not unjust, than nothing is.
According to Pitkin,
in a way, what claims we enter and what positions we take in a moral discussion
is up to each of us, a matter of individual choice; yet in a way it is not subjective at
all. You can take any position you want, but at the same time there are standards,
and your position denes you just as surely as your action itself.
36
Many cases, however, remain open to interpretation and disagreement. There
may never be a true consensus as to whether the Vietnam War was just or unjust.
Even if such a consensus were to develop, it would only come long after the actual
events occurred and after much heated disagreement. Justice then, can serve as a
useful benchmark of a leader or governments legitimacy and provide a valuable
starting point for working out questions of political morality, but, being a debat-
able concept itself, it cannot function as an ultimate measuring stick by which we
can resolve all of our moral problems.
In all hard cases, cases in which there are conicting loyalties, conicting
perspectives, and conicting duties, we must be able to recognize and accept that
there may be no easy answers that satisfy everyone. As Philips has written,
any philosophical theory that denies the possibility of unresolved moral disagree-
ment ies in the face of common moral experience. Such disagreement is not always
due to factual ignorance, lack of imagination, prejudice, stubbornness, self-decep-
tion, and so on, although this may be the case in specic instances. The differences
between people are sometimes real differences, not surface phenomena which cover
a deeper agreement obscured by circumstances. People care for different things,
give different moral weight to various possibilities or count as moral possibilities
for them alternatives which others rule out.
37
A mature and realistic view of complex moral questions requires us to rec-
ognize the real differences and disagreements that may legitimately exist. This
is especially true in the realm of politics, which by its very nature is marked by
disagreement and conict. What is important is that all moral possibilities be
considered and that whatever conclusions we eventually arrive at are the result
of serious moral reection. Morality is not a science and not all moral problems
have an objective solution. Moral argument is useful in that it elucidates the
points of view on all sides of the debate. It makes each position clear, or at
least clearer than otherwise might have been, and forces each participant in
the debate to consider the position of the other and to make sure that his own
position is sound.
TO FIGHT OR NOT TO FIGHT? THE ETHICS OF MILITARY DESERTION 23
CONCLUSION
So, what is the ultimate conclusion? Were the Iraqi soldiers who heeded the
Bush administrations advice to desert their military heroes or villains? The start-
ing point to answering this question is to take the perspective of the moderate
patriot. From this perspective we grant that the Iraqi soldiers in question may
legitimately place some degree of emphasis on the fact that Iraq is their country.
This perspective would also deny, however, that this consideration is paramount.
Other considerations, such as the obligations of duty and the overall moral nature
of the conict, must be given at least equal weight.
In the case of Iraq it is clear to most observers that Saddam Hussein engaged
in acts of cruelty far too despicable to be countenanced. He terrorized and mur-
dered his own people and ruled them with an iron st. Since justice is a primary
composite of the legitimacy to rule, such behavior surely undermined whatever
legitimacy Hussein may have once possessed. Furthermore, these injustices nul-
lied the patriotic duties that a moderate patriot might ordinarily be obligated
to fulll; Husseins cruelties were enough to dissolve the conditional support
that a moderate patriot would owe to him. Walzer makes a strong case when he
argues that
Saddams war is unjust, even though he didnt start the ghting. He is not defend-
ing his regime, which, given its record of aggression abroad and brutal repression
at home, has no moral legitimacy. . . . Admittedly, self-defense is the paradigmatic
case of just war, but the self in question is supposed to be a collective self, not a
single person or a tyrannical clique seeking desperately to hold onto power, at
whatever cost to ordinary people.
38
My tendency is to agree with Walzer. I believe that those who refused to ght
for the Hussein regime took the moral high ground. They recognized the evil of
his regime and refused to be a part of it. The Bush administration was right; in
the case of Iraq there was honor in desertion.
On the other hand, however, I cannot condemn those who made the opposite
decision. While Saddam Hussein may have lacked legitimacy, was George W.
Bushs any greater from the perspective of an Iraqi? However one might despise
the ruler of his country, it is difcult to stand by and watch it invaded by others,
especially by others who have a different culture, religion, and values. Even a
moderate patriot may come to the conclusion that when faced with the decision
of either defending a tyrannical domestic ruler or allowing the occupation of
ones country by an outside force, patriotic duty necessitates the former. Iraq
had not, after all, attacked another sovereign state, as it had in the rst Gulf
War, but was itself the country being assaulted (or, depending on your point of
view, liberated).
While the Bush administration was, from one perspective, right in saying
that Iraqi soldiers would be morally justied in deserting their military, from
another, those soldiers would be equally justied in not doing so. Like so many
other questions that have sprung from the second war in Iraq, the answer to this
one remains a matter of perspectiveit is one of those instances of legitimate
moral disagreement. Though this paper has not provided a denitive and abso-
24 WILLIAM PATTERSON
lute answer to the moral question of military desertion in Iraq, it will have been
successful if it has managed to bring to light some of the key elements involved
in the controversy so that each person can weigh the circumstances and reach
his/her own conclusions. In a situation of such moral dilemma, perhaps that is
all that can be reasonably expected.
Endnotes
1. Gen. Richard Myers, quoted in Without the Best: Could Saddams Elite Troops
Abandon Him at His Critical Hour? ABCNews.com, March 21, 2003.
2. Donald Rumsfeld, quoted in Rumsfeld: Despite Difculties, Liberation of Iraq
is Certain. United States Embassy Tokyo, Japan. http://usembassy.state.gov/tokyo/
wwwh20030331a1.html.
3. Stephen Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and
Littleeld Publishers, 1993), 29.
4. Ibid, p. 48.
5. Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir (New York: Picador, 2003), 222.
6. Todd Gitlin, Patriotism is Sticky. The American Scholar. Vol. 72, No. 3 (Summer
2003): 160.
7. Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace, 34.
8. D. Z. Philips, Introducing Philosophy: The Challenge of Scepticism (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers, 1996), 89.
9. Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals. Great Books
of the Western World: Kant. Vol. 39, ed. Mortimer J. Adler (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica,
Inc., 1990), 258.
10. Ibid., 263.
11. Philips, Introducing Philosophy, 1089.
12. Ibid.
13. Michael Walzer, The Obligation to Disobey. Ethics, vol. 77, no. 3 (Apr, 1967): 163175,
171.
14. Nathanson, Patriotism, Morality, and Peace, 119.
15. Ibid., 140.
16. Philips, Introducing Philosophy, 104.
17. Hannah Fenichel Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice: On the Signicance of Ludwig Witt-
genstein for Social and Political Thought (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972),
226.
18. Thomas Scanlon, Promises and Practices. Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 19, No.
3, (Summer, 1990): 199226, 214.
19. Philips, Introducing Philosophy, 109.
20. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations,
3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 311.
21. Ibid., 111.
22. Jean-Marc Coicaud, Legitimacy and Politics: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right
and Political Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), 39.
23. Haffner, Defying Hitler, 225.
24. Coicaud, Legitimacy and Politics, 23.
TO FIGHT OR NOT TO FIGHT? THE ETHICS OF MILITARY DESERTION 25
25. Raimond Gaita, A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice (New
York: Routledge, Oct. 2000), 76.
26. Coicaud, Legitimacy and Politics, 12.
27. This idea is borrowed from Philips, Introducing Philosophy, 121.
28. Philips, Introducing Philosophy, 120.
29. Peter Winch, Authority and Rationality, The Human World. vol. 8, no. 19 (1972):
15.
30. Philips, Introducing Philosophy, 118.
31. Simone Weil, The Legitimacy of the Provisional Government, Philosophical Inves-
tigations. vol. 10, no. 2 (April 1987): 94.
32. Coicaud, Legitimacy and Politics, 32.
33. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations 3rd edition (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice Hall, 1958) section 88, 41.
34. Ibid, section 71, 34.
35. Winch, Authority and Rationalitym 18.
36. Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice, 154.
37. Philips, Introducing Philosophy, 107.
38. Walzer, Michael. Arguing about War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004).
160.