Follow the links to my online articles at MercatorNet, Eureka Street, and a couple more:
ABC Religion and Ethics
MercatorNet online magazine
- Will comparative religion save the world?
- Empty your cup
- Thus spake Jordan Peterson
- ‘Often in error, never in doubt’: How the internet is driving the fractionalisation of society
- Can we spot the wolves in sheep’s clothing?
- Is it time to consider the lily?
- 3 parenting tips from a low-energy father
- Books for the social media age II: An unlikely choice from the Beat Generation
- Why you should watch Cobra Kai instead of The Last Jedi
- Sackcloth and ashes on Valentine’s Day
- Cosmic Christmas symbolism in the sweltering Southern Hemisphere
- Same-sex marriage and the service-provider state
- God writes straight with crooked lines
- American mass shootings: are more guns the answer?
- Is Mark Zuckerberg the biggest dictator in the world?
- Halloween and other nightmares
- Are we too tolerant of sexual assault?
- Addiction and pornography: rediscovering virtue in the internet age
- How much should we hate our enemies?
- Love and doubt: the central truth of existence
- Vale Dr John Sarno: ‘America’s best doctor’
- Want answers? Learn to ask the right questions
- Why is losing weight so difficult?
- Sick of fake news? How about a junk-knowledge diet!
- Are fantasy stories worth telling?
- Everyday heroes: the real-world meaning of our most popular stories
- Drain the swamp: Trump and the mandate of heaven
- How we vote: the difference temperament makes
- Democracy and providence: does political participation trump religious faith?
- The ancient Greeks knew what makes Donald Trump tick
- Homophobia, masculinity, and violent young men
- The new normal of Aussie politics
- Racism and homophobia
- Not your grandfather’s transgenderism
- Who owns the horror?
- Why are humans more important than animals?
- T comes right after LGB
- Paypal’s gay picnic threat: a symbolic masterpiece in disguise
- Discerning the Donald
- We are all rich men now
- A new identity will not make you happy
- Cynical and amoral: the dark side of the mindfulness fad
- The burden of free speech
- The limitations of a lustful life
- Job insecurity
- How to remember Hiroshima
- Saturn devours his children
- Cognitive dissonance on a national scale
- Cultural dysphoria
- Life without indulgent eating
- Is there a way to execute humanely?
- The real price of cheap food
- Why ‘natural’ is not a meaningless word
- What’s work for you?
- Resurrecting old religions
- The ultimate safeguard
- How to win an internet argument
- When is a war crime not a war crime?
- The forgotten meaning of human nature
- Yoga without ethics: just empty posturing?
- Frozen berry health scare puts heat on Big Food
- The downward spiral of romance
- Islam and violence: how not to answer a question
- A murderous blame game
- Provocation is no defence for the Jihadi murderers
- New You Resolution
- Childhood 2.0 is a little buggy
- Your money, or your life?
- The awe-full truth of human dignity
- ‘White’ identity in a multicultural world
- An intellectual journey: dodging the culture wars, thinking for myself
- China’s virtuous president
- The critical challenge of gender equality
- iWant! iWant! iWant!
- Joan Rivers’ final act
- Vale, Robin Williams, Hollywood’s melancholy funnyman
- Finding a role for the foodie
- Is “conscious uncoupling” really such a loopy idea?
- Is it OK to be a bigot?
- Compassionate or confusing? The Dalai Lama on same-sex marriage
- Things you can learn from the zombie apocalypse
- The paradox of a conservative revolution
- No country for old homophobes
- Necessary excuses
- The genius of Chesterton
- The cycle of fallen heroes
- Misogyny for the politically disenchanted
- Homophobia: what does it really mean?
- Debunking the myth of the self-made man
- This is not an article
- The bald truth about p*rn
- Who dares attack my Chesterton?
- It’s only natural
- Is it time to euthanase those Nazi arguments?
- Playing the man, not the ball
- Who’s afraid of the slippery slope?
- The new anti-heroes: Dirty Harry, News of the World and Lila Rose
- God is dead! Can I have his stuff?
- 3 New Year’s resolutions (I’d like other people to follow)
- Sages, straw dogs, and same-sex marriage
- Who wants to live forever?
- Statistically significant angels
- The end of tolerance
- Cold comfort for penguin lovers
- Falling in love with love
- Britain’s deadbeatest Dad
- The religious atheist
- Asylum seekers: a considered proposal
- Was bin Laden a criminal, a soldier or a pirate?
- I plank, therefore I am
- Have we evolved to argue?
- A streetcar named moral confusion
- Crazy for Osama
- Was the tsunami the revenge of Gaia?
- Is “Yuck!” a good enough reason?
- “Why are you depressed?”
- Obesity and the ethicist’s diet
- Whom can you trust?
- Obama’s empathy problem
- Defending children against eroticised adult culture
- Reaping the whirlwind
- Truman was right
Eureka Street online magazine
- Making a difference in the age of high-speed politics
- Martin Place terror belies quiet progress in relations between cultures
- Tonti-Filippini’s intellectual quest undaunted by physical pain
- The unfolding logic of euthanasia
- Thinking beyond gender equality etiquette
- Pro-choice paradigm lacks compassion on Zoe’s Law
- Why Christians are obsessed with sex
- Worshipping Princes Romney and Obama
- Puncturing Australia’s cult of the mind
- Sympathy for the dodgy salesmen of Australian politics
- Cold showers for unprincipled Labor
- Once upon a time in multicultural Australia
- Myths of wartime good and evil
- Aborting abnormality
- Forgiving Japan
First Things website
ABC’s The Drum website
Hi, Zac,
In the era of total war the distinction between combatants and non-combatants no longer applies. This is a hard truth but true nonetheless. Previously armies , while centrally supplied in part, lived mainly off the land, commandeering their needs from the enemy civilian population.Preserving the enemy civilian population actually served the interest of the invading force. For a variety of reasons this approach to war gradually lost its rationale and was abandoned. With World War II it became crystal clear that unless the economy and the morale of
the enemy was destroyed by attacking its civilian population, the war would likely be lost or, at the very least, intolerably prolonged. All belligerents recognized this truth; all acted upon it. So the choice was between necessary evils: attack the enemy’s civilian population or risk losing the war. Rational, prudent men chose the former. Indeed, as a practical and yes, a moral matter, no other choice was possible.
Hi Frank,
We might have to agree to disagree.
Firstly, the USSBS argued soon after the war that bombing the railways and other transport infrastructure would have more efficiently strangled the Japanese economy than bombing cities and industry directly. While it is true that they say this with the benefit of hindsight, it is likewise only with benefit of hindsight that anyone can claim the bombing of civilians helped to shorten the war. Is it not said, after all, that the Blitz failed to break British morale?
Secondly, I do not think total war changes the Just War principle of distinction whatsoever. The principle of distinction has always allowed for the possibility of civilian casualties, such as when civilians are inadvertently killed and injured in the bombing of an arms factory. But there must at least be an effort and an intention to minimise civilian casualties. Unfortunately in WWII we see that nearly all the major powers on both sides took part in the direct killing of civilians for the sake – or even just the hope – of military expediency. They could not, after all, guarantee that their methods would shorten the war. In fact, German arms production increased during the bombings, thanks to the efforts of Albert Speer.