Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns write in the New York Times:
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, drew a parallel on Wednesday between the Syrian government’s targeting of noncombatants in that nation’s civil war and the accidental bombing of civilians by United States-backed forces.
Attacking Hillary Clinton over what he criticized as her overly interventionist instincts, Mr. Johnson pointed to the hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians killed by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, as well as civilian deaths caused by the American-backed coalition, and said Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state, bore at least partial responsibility.
But when pressed four times on whether he saw a moral equivalence between deaths caused by the United States, directly or indirectly, and mass killings of civilians by Mr. Assad and his allies, Mr. Johnson made clear that he did.
“Well no, of course not — we’re so much better than all that,” Mr. Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, said sarcastically. “We’re so much better when in Afghanistan, we bomb the hospital and 60 people are killed in the hospital.”
The just-war tradition of thought rightly rules out the moral permissibility of ever designing a military action with the intent of causing civilian deaths. Under specified circumstances, however, it allows for taking actions that, while not designed to cause civilian deaths, will nonetheless foreseeably cause them. Bombing a military base may cause surrounding civilians to die; starting a military campaign will lead to deadly accidents. Military decisionmakers are subject to moral critique for causing civilian deaths even unintentionally, based on whether the circumstances that can justify actions that cause such deaths really apply. Are they doing what they reasonably can to minimize the risks to civilians? Is the death toll so high that the action will do more harm than good? But such military actions are categorically different from the deliberate killing of civilians.
Since Johnson views our actions and Assad’s as equivalent, either he believes that we are deliberately trying to kill patients in a hospital or he views intent as irrelevant. But if intent is irrelevant, then we can never make war justly. A war fought for the most compelling cause with the most scrupulous means will kill innocent people. If that’s just the same as murder, then we can’t fight any war, and Johnson has talked himself into pacifism.