Can Rational Debate Resolve Disputes over War?
A few weeks ago, in a preview discussion about my essay “The Moral Language of the Israel-Gaza Conflict and the Path to Public Reason,” I talked with my writer and editor Mark Sussman about the ideas undergirding the essay, and why they are necessary if we’re to replace virtue signaling and mere self interest in public discourse with reason and dispassionate analysis. Our conversation went beyond the strict bounds of the essay, expanding from a consideration of the Israel-Gaza conflict to our war with Iran, and to the stumbling blocks that impede public reason.
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“The Moral Language of the Israel-Gaza Conflict” provides a kind of balls-and-strikes account of the use of the terms “genocide,” “apartheid,” “collective punishment,” and “ethnic cleansing” in debates over Gaza. My goal was not to argue for one side or the other but to weigh whether the evidence warrants the usage. By prioritizing evidence over the rhetorical force of morally loaded terminology, I wanted to take a step toward rationalizing a debate that is usually driven by passion, ideology, and side-taking. Of course, given the intensity of the events—Hamas’s October 7th attacks and the IDF’s military response—emotions will inevitably surface. But my hope is, by disciplining our use of the most potentially inflammatory terms, we can begin to come to a shared public understanding of what is actually going on in Gaza and how we should talk about it.
That is an admittedly idealistic goal. While we can and should outline the optimal conditions for reasoned debate, things get far messier when they actually play out in public. Though participants may try their best to occupy an unbiased debating position, most people have an emotional response to events like war. Some feel it more deeply than others, some are better at suppressing it than others, and some are more interested in suppressing it than others. When it comes to war, passion is inevitable. Eradicating it is probably not possible, nor would it be desirable.
This week, the European Union and United Nations released their final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, putting the cost of recovery at more than $71 billion over the next decade and sketching a timeline that stretches far beyond the current ceasefire politics. The report warns that the conflict has effectively pushed back human development in the Gaza Strip by 77 years. It also emphasizes that reconstruction must be Palestinian-led, with both the United Nations and European Union rebuking earlier suggestions from U.S. President Donald Trump that Gaza could be cleared and rebuilt as a resort.
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And even when emotion is not the prime roadblock to reason, there are often rooting interests at play. As Mark and I discuss in this clip, it is all well and good to say, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.” Yet some of the most vocal partisans of one position or another will inevitably claim (and probably believe) that their facts—that is, the facts that best serve their position—are the facts. Even just wars claim victims unjustly, killing ordinary people guilty of nothing more than being born in the wrong place or living in the wrong town. Even a rationally applied moral language cannot neutralize the irrationality and immorality of a child’s shrapnel-pierced body. No debate can change that.
That does not mean we should not strive to discipline the form and language of public reason. Indeed, I think it is necessary to do so, if only to prevent the bad from getting worse. And as bad as things may seem—with war begetting war and aggression escalating aggression—they can always get worse. Sufficiently robust public debate can force leaders to consider diplomacy more carefully before picking up arms, which is why it is crucial, in light of the consequences, to consider our own language more carefully, too.