Michael Walzer (TNR, July 31) argues, “Selected infrastructural targets are easy enough to justify: bridges over which supplies are carried to the army in the field provide an obvious example. But power and water . . . are very much like food: they are necessary to the survival and everyday activity of soldiers, but they are equally necessary to everyone else. An attack here is an attack on civilian society . . . .[I]t is the military effects, if any, that are ‘collateral.’”
Food, power, and water and the delivery systems, in short, qualify as “fruit trees” in the sense of Deuteronomy 20:19: For is the power plant a man, that it should be besieged by you?
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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