Awakening Warrior: Revolution in the Ethics of Warfare

Description

Challans offers a thoughtful perspective regarding the state of military ethics and how we train warriors to be moral. He traces various levels of moral reasoning, or lack thereof, through to those who are fully engaged in the moral self-awareness of warfare. He calls not for change or modification, but for "revolution" in how and what we teach to create an ethical military.
Challans in the end lays all at the bar of reason and philosophical instruction in Kantian ethics as the way forward. He begins with examining how we got here through leaders being militarily and culturally unreflective. Challans charges that the U.S. military, under the influence of the previous administration, lost sight of its most basic commitments and betraying constitutional values. We are where we are in the world because of unquestioned fealty to faulty leaders. In "Pseudo-Reflective Life," Challans directly accuses the military of becoming a mere instrument of power abusing politicians and of allowing religion to have an undue sway in moral decision-making, especially with the use of Chaplains teaching ethics. Challans has no tolerance for faith in a government environment. Effects Based Operations gets a good philosophical screening in the "Quasi-Reflective Life." If we imagine the ends, then we can determine the course to get there. However this is fallacious and asserts an imagined outcome which cannot justify the means used to get there.
Challans also has a bias against faith. He seems ignorant of the history of the laws of war, even beyond the Just War Tradition, which he has no countenance for. The laws of war, and even Kant himself, are steeped in the Judeo-Christian ethic and in the Christian faith in particular. Challans is either ignorant of or ignores this link entirely. This presupposition against faith is manifest in his call to remove Chaplains from ethical instruction, "Chaplains should get out of the ethics business in the military" (43). The author assumes the worst that Chaplains have no capacity to engage the instruction of ethics apart from denominationalism. He believes the application of separation of church from state should keep Chaplains from doing more than religious services. Morality to Challans is for public reason, not private faith.
Chaplains are very thoroughly grounded in pluralistic sensitivity at their Officers Basic Course. Many hours of instruction and several graded written assignments are required so as to ensure that particularism or denominationalism does not occur from Chaplains. We are trained to work with any and all faiths, and those of no faith. Challans assumes the worst of Chaplains, as if they are incapable of supporting or training Soldiers in any capacity outside the Chaplain's faith tradition. This is egregiously ignorant of the training Chaplains receive and completely undermines his premise. In fact, the type of three-level training he proposes is the type of education Chaplains who teach ethics have received. Chaplains are best equipped to educate warriors, because they own the context for the development of the laws of war, and unlike any other officers they enter the Army with a graduate degree in a philosophical discipline (religion). Even Chaplains who instruct in ethics have the very type of advanced degree Challans calls for. One can only assume that Challans is ignorant of these facts, because at worst he has ignored them if known in order to support his anti-faith stance.
Challans' greatest fault lies in his dependence upon his oft-repeated "bar of reason." This is troubling at several levels. Firstly, it assumes that anything else other than his stance does not pass the bar of reason. This is fallacious at best, assuming the end then proving it. But his greatest argument for reason is actually that upon which his argument ultimately fails. Reason has been tried and failed, as MacIntyre well shows in "After Virtue." And the Reason of the Enlightenment project has left western civilization morally bankrupt. We cannot fix bankruptcy by spending more of the same.