The Politics of Humanity

possibility of “collateral damage”. As Michael Doyle puts it: “the necessarily ‘dirty
hands’ of violent means often become ‘dangerous hands’ in international
interventions.”^67 The presumption of the rescuer is scaled-up, and he is confronted
with an irresolvable equation with rescued victims on one side and innocent victims
of collateral damage on the other. So some of the violence involved will very likely
represent an important moral crime on the very terms of the declared
humanitarianism. In his seminal essay on dirty hands, Michael Walzer writes that in
the case of a politician who carries out, or orders a moral crime to be carried out:

he committed a moral crime and he accepted a moral burden. Now he is a

guilty man. His willingness to acknowledge and bear (and perhaps to repent

and do penance for) his guilt is evidence, and it is the only evidence he can

offer us, both that he is not too good for politics and that he is good enough.

Here is the moral politician: it is by his dirty hands that we know him. If he

were a moral man and nothing else, his hands would not be dirty; if he were

a politician and nothing else, he would pretend that they were clean.^68

His concept of the moral politician is particularly interesting in the context of our
politics of humanity. It is this kind of actor which might be tentatively situated
within humanitarianism (perhaps at the helm of a government or a military force) to
engage in acts of rescue. The moral politician is different from the high priest within
the “politics of humanity”, but they are both part of the same broad enterprise.
There are obvious problems here, such as the danger of state leaders co-opting
humanitarians as a “force multiplier”.^69 But this section’s aim has been merely to
suggest that while they should always be approached gingerly, there is at least the
possibility that violent means entirely be excluded from humanitarianism, broadly
understood, in some instances, to defend the idea of a common humanity and
human life, as well as particular human bodies.

67
Michael W. Doyle, "A Few Words on Mill, Walzer, and Nonintervention", Ethics &
International Affairs 68 23, no. 4 (2009): 354.
Michael Walzer, "Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands", in Thinking Politically:
Essays in Political Theory , ed. David Miller (New Haven & London: Yale University Press,
2007), 284. 69
de Torrente, "Humanitarian Action under Attack: Reflections on the Iraq War ": 9.