Moral equivalence

Moral equivalence is a term used in political debate, usually to characterize in a negative way the claim that there can be no moral or ethical hierarchy decided between two sides in a conflict, nor in the actions or tactics of the two sides.

The term has some limited currency in polemic debates about the Cold War, and more currently, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Moral equivalence" arose as a polemic term-of-retort to "moral relativism," which had been gaining use as an indictment against political foreign policy that appeared to use only a situation-based application of widely-held ethical standards.

Cold War

In the Cold War context, the term was and is most commonly used by political conservatives, as an implied accusation of logical fallacy, for liberal criticisms of United States foreign policy and military conduct. Some liberals contend that US power in the Cold War was used only to pursue an economically-driven agenda. They claim that the underlying economic motivation erodes any claims of moral superiority, leaving the hostile acts (Korea, Hungary, Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Nicaragua) to stand on their own in justifying the human lives the conflicts had destroyed. The typical conservative counter is the claim that there was in fact, a moral difference between the Soviet Union and the United States, and that policy arising in defense of the "moral superiority" of the US could not and can not be "immoral." Hence an argument, according to conservatives, which claimed that the two parties could be viewed as "equally" culpable in a struggle for supremacy, would be advocating "moral equivalence." Leftist critics like Noam Chomsky who claim the US was the expanding power during the cold war (guilty of more acts of aggression than the USSR and therefore arguably more immoral) have argued that the internal freedom of the US has no relation with its external behavior, because freedoms in the US were won from "below" (e.g. civil rights movement, feminist movement, labor movement etc) and those who conduct US foreign policy are government and economic elites who follow "monstruous" institutional imperatives, while deluding themselves into thinking their behavior is moral.

An early popularizer of the expression was Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was United States ambassador to the United Nations in the Reagan administration. She published an article called The Myth of Moral Equivalence in 1986. She sharply criticized those who she alleged were claiming that there was "no moral difference" between the Soviet Union and democratic states. In fact, very few critics of United States policies in the Cold War era argued that there was a moral equivalence between the two sides. Communists argued that the Soviet Union was morally superior to its adversaries, because it didn't exploits its satellites as much, invade as many countries nor killed as many foreigners as the US. Non-Communist critics usually argued that the United States itself risked creating a "moral equivalence" when some of its actions (such as supporting the violent overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government of Chile in 1973), or Reagan's Contra insurgency against the democratically elected Sandanista government in Nicaragua, put it at least on the same level of immorality as the Soviet Union.

Noam Chomsky has been critical of the term "moral equivalence" for example in this BBC interview:

JEREMY PAXMAN: You seem to be suggesting or implying, perhaps I'm being unfair to you, but you seem to be implying there is some moral equivalence between democratically elected heads of state like George Bush or Prime Ministers like Tony Blair and regimes in places like Iraq.

NOAM CHOMSKY: The term moral equivalence is an interesting one, it was invented I think by Jeane Kirkpatrick as a method of trying to prevent criticism of foreign policy and state decisions. It has a meaningless notion, there is no moral equivalence whatsoever.

Arab-Israeli conflict

In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the term is commonly used by defenders of Israel. They accuse of moral equivalence those who describe acts of Palestinian terrorism, such as suicide bombing against civilians, on one hand, and the retaliatory acts of the Israeli Defense Forces, on the other, as equally reprehensible.

Others claim that since the number of Palestinians killed is much higher, and Israel was created in the former Palestine in a manner reminiscent of the United States vis a vis Native Americans, Palestinians are entitled to the same moral standing Native Americans have gained over the years, in spite Native American's many terrorist acts against white settlers. These Pro-Palestinians claim that many now perceive moral equivalence the same way US president Thomas Jefferson did in 1813 when he said that "...the cruel massacres they [the native Americans] have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach"

Joel Mowbrey, a pro-Israeli writer, expresses his view of the coverage of the events:

"The coverage of the [recent] 'violence' has largely read like the equivalent of a chess match. Hamas refuses to halt suicide bombs. Israel targets a top Hamas leader. Suicide bombing in Jerusalem kills 16. Israel 'retaliates' with a strike in Gaza. What's at work is probably not anti-semitism, but a misguided attempt at objectivity. But reporting 'facts' in a moral vacuum is not objectivity; it is, in fact, just the opposite. Absent proper context, the situation can seem as if it is two equally justifiable sides making moves and countermoves, nothing more."

In recent years many commentators have called the fact that Israel is in posession of 87% of the former Palestine (as compared to the 56% assigned to Israel in the 1948 UN partition plan) and the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as "morally reprehensible" and as being the "root cause of Palestinian terrorism." This is not necessarily the same thing as arguing that there is no moral difference between terrorist bombings which kill Israeli civilians and the Israeli retaliation to those bombings, but Israelis frequently see such critics as taking this view. Many critics, however, say that assumptions of moral superiority on the part of Israelis are what lead people to believe Israeli actions are "retaliation" and not terrorism to which the Palestinians retaliate.

Aron Trauring, an Israeli peace activist, argues that Israeli air-strikes against the homes of Hamas leaders makes Israel no better than Hamas:

"Civilians were directly targeted for death as part of an act of revenge on the part of the Israeli government. This is exactly the justification Hamas et al use for their military actions against Israeli civilians. They say the adults killed in their activities are people who perpetrate the "murderous occupation" against the Palestinians. They say these Israelis deserve to die just like Hamas leader Salah Shehada. If innocent dies as well, its just collateral damage. In essence we have reached moral equivalency."

The Israeli writer Yaacov Lozowick explains Israel's moral dilemmas:

"Restricting the freedom of movement of entire communities is immoral. Refraining from these restrictions when there is unequivocal proof that this will lead to the murder of innocents is worse, because movement restricted can later be granted, while dead will never live again. Demolishing the homes of civilians merely because a family member has committed a crime is immoral. If, however,... potential suicide murderers... will refrain from killing out of fear that their mothers will become homeless, it would be immoral to leave the Palestinian mothers untouched in their homes while Israeli children die on their school buses. Accidentally killing noncombatants in the cross fire of battles being fought in the middle of cities is immoral, unless... refraining from fighting in the Palestinian cities inevitably means the Palestinians will use the safe havens of their cities to plan, prepare and launch ever more murderous attacks on Jewish noncombatants. These concrete examples and others like them demonstrate the moral considerations that Israelis... have been dealing with since the Palestinans proudly decided to use suicide murder as their primary weapon." ("Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars", p.260)

WWII atrocities

Implying a moral equivalence between a number of massacres carried out by the Allies during the Second World War and the deeds of the Nazis, especially the Final Solution is a common strategy employed by apologists for the Nazis in Germany, such as politicians of the National Democratic Party of Germany.

Other more respected figures, however, have argued that a rape or a murder by an American soldier is not any less reprehensible than that of a German soldier.

Relevant in this context are Justice Jackson’s eloquent words at the Nuremberg Trials:

"If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us...We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well."

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