Tyrannical militarism, oil money and other issues in the medicalisation of war and politics: a response to Shahvisi.

Abstract

This article responds to Arianne Shahvisi's editorial, which calls for the examination of the war in Gaza with the lenses of distributive justice and scarcity of healthcare resources. We argue that Shahvisi's framing misrepresents the broader context of the conflict and ignores important methodological and moral considerations. While war is always devastating, and both sides must do their best to spare the sick, the wounded and their caregivers, the judgement of war merely by its short-term impact on the healthcare resources of the losing side is misleading. It is a moral failure too, because Shahvisi's invocation of the value of distributive justice by means of public health data distracts attention from the question of limits on asymmetric warfare, pre-empting two very different questions: whether blockade and other practices of war are moral, and whether the sides to the Gaza conflict fail the established standards of military ethics. This is especially true when one side to the war deliberately neglects its healthcare system and exposes it to destruction, both while gearing up for war and during a war whose only achievable strategic goals are terrorising the opponent and provoking international moral rage at the devastation.