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Certainly — here is an expanded version that integrates a history of Just War Theory, citations on states’ rights to go to war, and a critique of the libertarian reductionist view:
Countering Dave Smith: Just War Theory, State Morality, and the Ethics of War
1. Overview of Smith’s Argument
Dave Smith, following Rothbardian libertarianism, claims that:
- The state is a fiction and cannot have moral rights that individuals don’t have.
- If it’s murder for a person to kill civilians knowingly, it’s murder for a government too.
- Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute intentional mass murder because they knowingly bomb areas where civilians are present.
“If you knew women and children were going to die and you did it anyway, you did it intentionally. That’s murder.”
—Dave Smith
He argues there’s no such thing as “macro morality,” and rejects legal or governmental justifications for war.
2. Rebuttal from Just War Theory
A. Moral Authority of States in War
The idea that states have the right to go to war under certain moral conditions originates in classical Just War Theory. This theory distinguishes between jus ad bellum (justice in resorting to war) and jus in bello (justice in conduct during war).
Key thinkers:
- St. Augustine: Argued that war can be just if it’s to restore peace and punish wrongdoing. (City of God)
- Thomas Aquinas: Formulated criteria for just war: legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention (Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 40).
- Hugo Grotius: Provided a legal and moral foundation for international war conduct (De Jure Belli ac Pacis, 1625).
- Michael Walzer: In Just and Unjust Wars (1977), defended the idea that states can justly go to war if they meet moral criteria like self-defense and proportionality.
B. The State as a Moral Actor
Just War Theory presupposes that the state is not merely a group of individuals but an institution with moral duties:
- To protect its citizens (Walzer, 2006: 58)
- To preserve a political community (Walzer, 2006: 57)
- To uphold justice domestically and internationally
This contrasts with the libertarian view that the state has no moral standing.
📚 Source:
Walzer, M. (2006). Just and Unjust Wars. Basic Books.
3. Why Individual and State Morality Are Distinct
Smith argues there’s no difference between a state and an individual killing civilians. But this reductionism collapses when considering moral scale and responsibility.
Philosopher David Rodin critiques this reductionist move by showing that war is not reducible to domestic self-defense logic. His work, War and Self-Defense (2002), emphasizes:
- War involves collective responsibilities and threats.
- Individual self-defense does not account for sovereignty, territorial integrity, or the durability of peace.
Even revisionist thinkers like Jeff McMahan—who challenge traditional state authority—still recognize the practical necessity of institutions like the state to coordinate moral action in war.
1. Moral Permission Through Legitimate Authority
Argument:
Just War Theory traditionally holds that states do have moral rights that individuals do not, because states have legitimate authority to act on behalf of a political community.
- This isn’t about legal positivism (i.e., law is morality).
- Rather, the legitimate authority criterion argues that a properly constituted government represents the collective moral will of a people.
- Therefore, states can do things (like wage war) as a last resort, that individuals cannot.
Philosophers:
- Augustine and Aquinas established this idea.
- Michael Walzer (in Just and Unjust Wars) modernizes it: he defends the idea that political communities have a moral right of self-defense, even if that involves tragic consequences.
“If individuals may defend themselves against aggression, then communities may do so too—and with the organized force that political institutions make possible.” —Michael Walzer
4. States’ Right to War and Civilian Protection
According to traditional Just War Theory and international law (e.g., Geneva Conventions), states can go to war:
- In self-defense
- In defense of an ally
- To stop atrocities (“crimes that shock the conscience of mankind” — Walzer, 2006)
But these same frameworks place strict limits on civilian harm:
- Civilians must never be intentionally targeted (discrimination)
- Any collateral damage must be proportional and unintended (Doctrine of Double Effect)
Application to Israel:
- Israel’s use of leaflets, phone calls, text alerts, and evacuation routes demonstrate intention to preserve noncombatant immunity.
- Israel’s efforts to mitigate civilian harm, despite Hamas embedding itself in civilian areas, align with jus in bello requirements, not violate them.
📚 Sources:
- Geneva Conventions (1949)
- Orend, B. (2006). The Morality of War
- Benbaji & Sussmann (eds.), The Ethics of War (2016)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “War”: plato.stanford.edu/entries/war
2. The Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE)
Argument:
Not all killing of civilians is murder. If civilian deaths are foreseen but not intended, and the act meets certain conditions, the action may be morally permissible under the Doctrine of Double Effect.
Criteria for DDE:
- The act itself must be morally neutral or good.
- The bad effect (civilian death) must not be the means of achieving the good.
- The intention must be solely the good effect (e.g. stopping a terrorist group).
- The bad effect must be proportional to the good gained.
Example:
Bombing a weapons depot that is near civilians is not the same as deliberately targeting civilians. If the target is legitimate, the action is not morally identical to murder, even if civilians die.
Critique of Smith’s View: Just War theorists would say Dave Smith’s claim—“knowing = intentional”—collapses an important moral distinction between intending harm and foreseeing harm.
Philosophers:
- Thomas Aquinas (originated the DDE)
- Elizabeth Anscombe (defended intentionality distinctions in wartime ethics)
4. Realism & Necessity in War
Argument:
Sometimes war entails tragic choices. But Just War theory allows for tragic moral responsibility, where no option is clean, but inaction may be worse (e.g., genocide prevention, hostage retrieval).
Even if a government knows civilians will die, it may be morally compelled to act if the alternative is worse. The idea that “inaction = moral purity” is, for Just War theorists, naïve.
5. The Libertarian Double Standard
Smith claims governments are fictions and cannot have moral standing, yet implies:
- Palestinians do have a legitimate right to a state.
- Only one side (Israel) is held to libertarian morality; the other (Hamas) is not held accountable for using civilians as shields.
This asymmetry is intellectually dishonest. If state authority is illegitimate, then both Hamas and Israel are equally invalid. But if you accept collective self-defense as legitimate (e.g. against tyranny or terrorism), you must allow some role for collective institutions.
Just War Philosophers’ Response to Rothbardian Libertarianism
They would say:
- Over-moralizing war (as Rothbardians do) makes effective self-defense impossible.
- Equating every civilian death with murder ignores complexity, intention, and context.
- Denying governments any unique authority leads to anarchism, not peace.
- Governments do not operate as rogue gangs—they are (ideally) bound by institutional checks and representative legitimacy.
🔹 Michael Walzer (Just and Unjust Wars):
“If individuals have a right to life and liberty, then groups of individuals also have a right to survive and self-determination. That is what states are for. To deny states the moral right to self-defense is to leave their citizens defenseless.”
“There is a deep difference between criminal violence and war. Criminals cannot be deterred or punished by shooting into crowds. But wars are fought between groups, and the only way to stop an army is to fight back.”
“War is a response to aggression. It is collective self-help, which is not immoral if the purpose is to stop a greater harm.”
🔹 Jeff McMahan (Killing in War):
“A blanket moral equivalence between killing in war and killing in private life fails to grasp the structure of political responsibility. Soldiers do not merely act as individuals—they act on behalf of political communities under threat.”
“To collapse the moral universe of war into individual ethics is to deny the legitimacy of defensive force even when the consequences of inaction are catastrophic.”
🔹 Elizabeth Anscombe (War and Murder):
“The use of force by public authority is not equivalent to private violence. To say otherwise is to empty justice of its structure and leave the innocent without recourse.”
“Pacifism is not merely wrong; it is incoherent in the face of political reality. The refusal to use force when it is necessary to protect the innocent is itself a form of complicity.”
🔹 John Rawls (The Law of Peoples):
“Well-ordered societies are justified in defending themselves against unjust aggression, not to preserve power, but to protect the political liberties and basic rights of their citizens.”
“The moral duty of a liberal people extends to the maintenance of peace and security. In some cases, this requires war—not for dominance, but for the defense of human rights.”
🔹 Fernando Tesón (A Philosophy of International Law):
“Libertarians often confuse the categories of private and public morality. A government is not merely a group of people with guns—it is a moral agent with obligations to protect its citizens.”
“If states lacked the right to use lethal force in defense, they would be morally barred from stopping genocide or terrorist attacks. That is not morality—it is paralysis.”
🔹 David Rodin (War and Self-Defense):
“While we may rightly be skeptical of state violence, rejecting the possibility of just war collapses any meaningful account of collective self-defense. In some cases, it is immoral not to use force.”
✳️ Summary of the Philosophical Counterpoints
These thinkers argue:
- Governments do have moral authority when they act to protect citizens from external aggression.
- Rothbardian equivalency (treating all state violence as gang violence) erases the distinct ethical role of legitimate institutions.
- Refusal to use force, even when it could prevent widespread injustice or genocide, is not morally neutral—it’s morally culpable.
- Self-defense is a communal right, not just an individual one.
6. Conclusion
Dave Smith’s argument rests on two unsustainable claims:
- That states have no legitimate moral standing.
- That war cannot ever meet moral standards.
Just War Theory, developed over 1,600 years, shows that states can act morally in war—if constrained by principles like proportionality, necessity, and discrimination. Israel’s extensive precautions to avoid civilian deaths are not perfect, but they reflect a serious commitment to these principles.
To accept Smith’s logic is to accept a world where evil can hide behind civilians and never be stopped—because any action to stop it would be immoral. That is not a moral world. It is a nihilistic one.
Final
Countering Rothbardian War Ethics: Why States Can Wage Just Wars
“A blanket moral equivalence between killing in war and killing in private life fails to grasp the structure of political responsibility.”
— Jeff McMahan, Killing in War
Libertarian commentator Dave Smith has recently argued that Israel’s military operations in Gaza amount to mass murder. His view, grounded in Rothbardian libertarianism, hinges on two provocative claims:
- The state is a fiction and has no moral rights that individuals don’t.
- Therefore, if it’s murder for an individual to knowingly kill civilians, it’s murder when a state does so—even in war.
Smith rejects the concept of “macro morality” entirely, denying any special moral status to governments or their wartime conduct. But his position, while emotionally compelling, collapses under ethical, philosophical, and historical scrutiny.
Just War Theory and State Moral Authority
Smith’s view stands in direct opposition to centuries of thought in the Just War tradition. From St. Augustine to Aquinas, from Grotius to Walzer, moral philosophers have argued that war can be just—if it meets strict moral criteria.
This tradition distinguishes between:
- Jus ad bellum: When is it morally permissible to go to war?
- Jus in bello: What rules must be followed during war?
The foundational idea is that states can act as moral agents—not despite their power, but because of the responsibilities they bear for their citizens. Unlike individuals, states have obligations to defend their people, preserve order, and deter aggression.
As Michael Walzer writes:
“If individuals may defend themselves against aggression, then communities may do so too—and with the organized force that political institutions make possible.”
The State as a Moral Actor
States are not merely clusters of individuals. They are institutions with responsibilities, shaped by sovereignty, legal legitimacy, and collective moral authority.
Philosopher David Rodin explains that war, unlike self-defense in everyday life, involves:
- Collective threats
- Durable peace as a goal
- The safeguarding of sovereignty and territorial integrity
Even thinkers like Jeff McMahan, who are critical of traditional just war theory, admit that morality in war cannot be reduced to private ethics. Political communities and their representatives act not only for themselves, but on behalf of those they govern.
Intention vs. Foreseeability: The Doctrine of Double Effect
Smith collapses knowing harm with intending harm—but this ignores a vital moral distinction.
The Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) clarifies this:
- Not all foreseen civilian deaths in war are murder.
- If the intention is to strike a legitimate military target, and civilian deaths are unintended and proportional, the act may still be morally justified.
This is not an excuse for recklessness—it is an effort to preserve moral reasoning in morally fraught situations.
For example:
Bombing a weapons depot embedded in a civilian area, with efforts made to warn or evacuate civilians, is not the same as deliberately bombing civilians to sow terror. The intention matters. The means matter. The efforts to avoid harm matter.
Civilian Protection in Practice
Just War Theory demands not only a just cause but also humane conduct in war. Civilians:
- Must never be targeted
- Must be protected from foreseeable harm as much as possible
- Must not be used as human shields—by any side
Israel, while imperfect, often takes extraordinary steps to avoid civilian harm:
- Text alerts
- Leaflets
- Evacuation routes
These reflect serious engagement with jus in bello principles—not indifference to them.
Smith’s binary framing (“knowing civilians will die = murder”) erases the moral difference between warfare under constraint and wanton slaughter. The first seeks to prevent injustice; the second is injustice.
Libertarian Reductionism: Morally and Practically Incoherent
Smith’s argument suffers from a glaring double standard:
- He denies Israel the right to defend itself because states are “fictional.”
- Yet he implicitly grants the Palestinian cause moral legitimacy as a collective struggle.
- He holds Israel to individualist moral rules, while letting Hamas off the hook as a non-state actor.
This inconsistency reveals the flaw in Rothbardian logic: If no collective authority is legitimate, then no party in war can act morally. But this leads not to peace—but to anarchy, paralysis, and the triumph of the most ruthless.
As Fernando Tesón notes:
“If states lacked the right to use lethal force in defense, they would be morally barred from stopping genocide or terrorist attacks. That is not morality—it is paralysis.”
War, Tragedy, and Necessary Action
War is never clean. But sometimes, it is the least immoral option.
Just War Theory acknowledges tragic dilemmas. But it does not retreat into moral nihilism. Instead, it asks:
- What is the intent?
- What are the alternatives?
- What harm is prevented?
- What steps are taken to protect the innocent?
As Elizabeth Anscombe argued:
“The refusal to use force when it is necessary to protect the innocent is itself a form of complicity.”
And as Michael Walzer reminded us:
“To deny states the moral right to self-defense is to leave their citizens defenseless.”
Conclusion: The Cost of Moral Clarity
Dave Smith’s view, while emotionally satisfying in its moral simplicity, collapses under the weight of real-world complexity. His philosophy offers no room for:
- Defense against genocidal regimes
- Resistance to terrorism that hides behind civilians
- The tragic, necessary actions of legitimate states under fire
Just War Theory is not a license to kill. It is a centuries-old framework built to limit war’s cruelty, preserve human dignity, and protect the innocent when force must be used.
To accept Smith’s logic is to accept a world where evil can never be opposed, because civilians might die. That is not moral clarity. It is moral surrender.