Eject! Eject! Eject!

Sanctuary:

Bill Whittle has a new essay out. It is long and winding, as they always are, but quite rewarding, as they always are.

The early part of the essay takes on the question of the abuses of the laws of war, and who is responsible for them. Mr. Whittle maintains that the refusal of the enemy to wear uniforms -- their attempt to take cover among civilians, which then requires the military to set aside some part of the protections for civilians -- makes the enemy at fault for all such abuses. That is the correct explanation as a matter of the laws of war, and the essay examines the reasons for that carefully.

However...

I often wonder what options there are for fighters in the current period. "Fourth Generation" warfare isn't something we control: the wearing away of the clear lines between civilian and combatant aren't to our advantage, and in fact the American military could not be better served than by having clear lines. Responding to the challenges posed by these enemy shifts is probably the single greatest problem facing the American military.

But, by the same token, our enemy doesn't control the shift from Third to Fourth Generation warfare either. It's easy to forget that. The fact is that, to a large degree, the enemy is fighting us this way because there is nothing left. They cannot do what the Minutemen did -- compose an army of farmers, stand in a line, and slug it out with British regulars. Stand in a line now, and you'll get a JDAM dropped on your head.

Some of these unlawful acts are indeed atrocities, and they should be condemned even by the very radicals who oppose us. Car bombings or other attacks directed against civilians; the use of atrocities against the innocent, such as beheading civilian hostages, to inspire terror; the use of the mentally retarded as suicide bombers; pretending to surrender and then detonating yourself: these things are crimes, not just against the UCMJ or the "Laws of War," but against the higher and prior laws that underlie those things. Those are truly evil acts, which ought to be abhorred by all people equally.

But the fact of fighting without uniforms is not among those things. It is morally problematic, for the reasons Whittle cites: it undermines the protection of civilians. Yet, how else can they fight us? If not by assassination, sniping, hiding, bombing military targets -- how?

I think Mr. Whittle's answer -- again, the correct answer -- is that they should not be fighting us. We are in the right. We are upholding civilization, the 'society of miracles' that he holds forth on later in the essay. These savages, who behead unarmed civilians in order to inspire terror, are simply wrong and should lay down arms.

Yet it isn't necessary that this should be the case. Consider the question from this angle: What if some future administration were actually doing the things that Democratic Underground charges Bush II with doing?

Let us say that you became convinced, correctly, that this theoretical administration was undermining the Republic and the Constitution, and actually seeking to install itself as a dictatorship -- either openly, or through perversion of the law to make elections a mere show. The elections of 2008 and 2010, say, were illegitimate elections that used outright fraud to install not just a President, but a legislature that would be pliant to him. The military was being used, not just to batter other nations into line and steal their resources, but also against our own people in accord with the administration's interests. The nation's police forces were being fielded to suppress dissent, and to terrorize innocent people who might be a problem. The administration was arresting people without charges, and holding them without trial. It was secretly endorsing the use of torture and murder: not only letting its servants get away with it, but secretly encouraging it from the very top down. Good-hearted people in the military, who try to object, are being driven out, imprisoned, or having their careers ruined. Only officers who agreed with the government were left, or were being installed where they hadn't been, and they were moving to use their units in accord with its goals.

So it's 2011. You honestly believe -- as apparently many of the subjects of Mr. Whittle's essay do -- that new Nazis have taken over the government. Many of you have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution against enemies, foriegn and domestic. Others have not, but feel as strongly about doing so. What do you do?

Pondering this, of course, demonstrates the fundamental unseriousness of the current opposition. What they actually do is hold no-account protests that do nothing but disrupt the workings of people's lives. They sit at home, in comfort, writing screeds. They go to Meet-Up meetings and talk angrily among themselves, over expensive coffee that they can easily afford.

That wouldn't do, though, if these were real Nazis.

Frankly, I think the theoretical example is and can only be that -- I do not believe that the military would enforce those sorts of illegal orders. I think they would stand true to their duty to disobey illegal orders, and would do whatever it took to restore the Republic. The military remains a strong hindrance to abuse of power by any US government. In order for the theory to ever become practice, then, the government would have to engage us in a war -- not like Iraq, but with a genuine threat like nuclear China -- that so involved the military with an actual external threat that its members could not attend to, nor consider resigning from their posts in order to address, serious Constitutional violations at home.

I think, then, that the military would have to be otherwise engaged.

On the other hand, we have seen a real example of a Federal police agency -- the very largest, BATFE -- that has been perfectly willing to be transformed in improper ways. Most of BATFE's activities are against people guilty of procedural violations, and according to a Congressional investigation, seventy-five percent of BATFE prosecutions are constitutionally improper. (See a lengthy debate on the topic, with links, at InstaPundit).

These figures should be humbling, causing the bureau to insist on going about its business more carefully and with a great deal of concern for the proprieties. Yet, instead, BATFE has simply chosen to ignore them and pretend that the facts aren't what they are. One bureau is not an uncorrectable problem, nor even several major agencies if the electoral system continues to function -- but what if it did become broken? What if we did find ourselves in an "illegal war" being used as cover by an administration attempting to engage us in a dictatorship?

It is not utterly impossible that we could find ourselves obligated, by oath and duty, to take up arms at some point in the future, against some administration yet to be conceived. Thomas Jefferson thought it likely. Any American must remember the roots of our nation in Revolution, and remember that revolution may someday again be required of us.

I mention all of this only to demonstrate that some of these guerrilla tactics might very well have to be employed -- that employing them, however distasteful, might be preferable to doing nothing. Bombing a city, even with precision munitions, is distasteful. Indeed, it is horrifying. But there are times when it is better, morally as well as in terms of practical reality, than the alternatives.

If our Islamist enemies believe that they are in such a position, then they have to fight us. Indeed, if the radical Left were serious, it should be fighting us.

We have every right to punish atrocities and terrorism. We should, however, be careful to consider which of their tactics are truly evil, and which are simply necessary. That will allow us to separate the terrorists from the honorable enemies with whom we can negotiate. The ones who behead the weak and innocent in order to inspire terror are evil. The ones who fight our military with rifles, though they do not wear uniforms -- they may not be evil men. They may simply not trust us, and be unwilling to conceed control of their nation to foreigners with rifles and bombs.

With the first sort of foe there can be no quarter. With the second, there can be a genuine peace. It is in our enemy's interest to blur those lines, just as it is in his interest to blur the line between combatant and noncombatant. We must try to keep the lines clear, as much as we can.