War and Famine
CrowdSource 7.28.2025
Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: just war theorists and on-the-ground realities.
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Famine in Gaza
Since November 2023, NGOs have said that Israeli actions would cause food insecurity and famine in Gaza. This week, famine became undeniable, and pro-Israel outlets that long rejected such reports now concede the fact that Gazans are starving.
Some pro-Israel conservatives are questioning the morality of Israel’s conduct in the war against Hamas.
“How Israel’s War Became Unjust.” Conservative columnist
invokes the famine to make his case:
… there is no way to look at the rubble in Gaza and the death-toll estimates and offer a mathematical proof that Israel is failing to exercise adequate restraint. I just think it’s true. … Deaths from famine are a clearer matter, which is why the threat of starvation is leading even some of Israel’s strongest supporters to warn its government that something must be changed …
“Just War in Gaza?” First Things editor R. R. Reno broke with the generally pro-war tenor of his own magazine to publish his doubts in Compact: “… there are no easy answers. But observers … can reasonably fear that pursuing the goal of ‘eliminating’ Hamas is utopian. It will require unstinting military measures that will lead to unending civilian casualties.”
Critics of Israel have already made these arguments (and more):
Nota Bene. Novelist, veteran and Wisdom of Crowds friend Phil Klay back in March 2024: “Israel’s lack of concern for civilian casualties is clear from well-documented individual strikes.”
Israeli Genocide in Gaza. Here’s
’s argument from last May.
“No Food=Starvation.” Finally, a lament by
foreign policy analyst :
Just A War, In Theory
This conservative soul-searching comes in the wake of recent theoretical reflections about whether the tradition of just war theory needs to be updated or clarified.
“Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate.” After the recent Iran bombing
, a just war theory expert and, in the 2000s, a neoconservative Iraq War supporter, published three “reminders” about just war doctrine: that there is no ethical imperative to presume against war; preemptive strikes can be perfectly legitimate and good; and war does not need to be the last resort.“Is Just War Theory Still Relevant?” asks writer Richard Cassleman: “Can an ethic developed in the era of empires and overlapping political authorities — a pre-industrial ethic of war fought mainly with swords, spears, and horses — survive the post-industrial age of national sovereignty, precision strikes, and proxy wars?”
“Who Are You Calling a Terrorist?” Reflections on violence by English thinker Terry Eagleton: “The problem with violence is that it was there at the beginning, which is one reason why it’s so deep-seated.”
The Firebombing of Dresden As Moral Principle
Critics and supporters of Israel both often allude to World War II — in particular, the Allied bombings of civilians in Dresden and elsewhere.
Essentially, many arguments about Gaza become arguments about whether the firebombing of Dresden was justified.
We Don’t Want Another Dresden. Just war principles are, according to historian and former UK Supreme Court Judge Jonathan Sumption, “a major achievement of our world and marks a significant advance in the regulation of warfare, drawing on the catastrophic experiences of the Second World War.”
We Don’t Blame the Allies for Genocide, argues New York Times columnist
: “the fact that over a million German civilians died in World War II — thousands of them in appalling bombings of cities like Hamburg and Dresden — made them victims of war but not of genocide.”Some Weapons Should Be Laid Aside, claims
: “I do think that certain things America did in World War II were intrinsically immoral, including the firebombing of Dresden …”Israeli Leaders Signaled Genocidal Intent, argues
. “The legal definition of genocide has its origins in the personal efforts of a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin responding to the horrors of World War II-era mass killings in Europe, particularly the destruction of European Jewry.”Collective Punishment is Wrong, But Nations Have a Collective Destiny. “Decades after World War II, many Germans and Japanese feel a sense of guilt for the sins of their ancestors …” argues Shlomo M. Brody. While such “collective moral identification” doesn’t justify targeting non-combatants, “one [should] prioritize one’s own soldiers and citizens while worrying less about those who share another people’s destiny.”
“Apocalyptic.” An account of the Allied bombing of Dresden from the World War II museum in New Orleans.
“Barbarism of a Low Order”
Apropos Dresden, a 2006 comment about Winston Churchill by the late neoconservative intellectual and Iraq hawk, Richard John Neuhaus:
No one should doubt that Churchill was a great historical figure and that his cause was our cause and that cause was just. But the man was also possessed of a deeply shadowed side. In addition to condoning the reprisal killings of civilians, Churchill is also supposed to have said of the obliteration bombing of cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, “Bomb and bomb until you’re bouncing the rubble.” This is barbarism of a low order ...
From the Crowd
The comments were especially rich this week:
Predictable People.
responds to ’ piece about AI and free speech:
I think what worries me most isn’t just that AI learns from people, but that people becoming too “predictable” for AI. If people habitually take the expected “side” of an argument that splits down party lines, always like the post the algorithms could predict they’d like, always have a negative reaction to the post or person they’re expected to react that way to (based on what accounts each person follows), then they’re too easy to model, and too easy to manipulate.
Who’s To Blame?
is more critical of Santiago’s argument:
Taking the view that we should be careful what we write and say because AI may be copying our thoughts [without compensation btw], may be one of the silliest positions you have ever taken: “Cowen is correct to say that we should act responsibly given the new technological reality we live under.” Sorry, but the billionaires behind the code get the profits, and thus the blame. You steal other people’s intellectual property, it’s on you.
Read Santiago’s response to Walter here.
Other Stories. Professor and higher ed commentator
adds to our CrowdSource about Great Books:
Everyone seems to write about the same books and the same conversations when there are so many more out there. Here’s our Great Books/Great Science Books sequence at Utah, for example. And while the recording doesn’t seem to be available any more this was an awesome conversation about the Black Literary & Philosophic tradition.
To Guide and Illuminate. Poet, translator and former Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts
also comments on that CrowdSource:
Thomas Merton may not be the typical undergraduate, but I was glad to see his reminiscences about Mark Van Doren and the influential Columbia Western Civ program. They are just one example of how these programs guide and illuminate one’s life.
There are conspiracy theories and there are conspiracy theories. Some of them extrapolate recklessly from a suggestive fact or two. Some of them don’t even have that much support. As far as I can tell, Q-Anon specializes in this type of theory. … But Russiagate, which Matthew Walther dismisses as a “tedious and lurid spectacle” that turned up nothing much, is something else. …
See you next week!
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What greater proof of the fall do you need than this? From all accounts a preventable tragedy. Preventable using multiple vectors even! Reading the news about this reminds me of reading Dr. Zhivago, completely despairing.
No such thing as a just war.
Did Mark van Doren ever comment on his son Charles’ participation in the quiz show cheating scandal? Seems like a course in moral philosophy should have prevented that.