Blog For Arizona

Justice Fallujah Style

A comment thread from my posting on the slaying of an unarmed prisoner in a Fallujah mosque garnered some interesting feedback.

::SNIP::
At 11/17/2004 04:14:20 PM, benway said...

The passive morality you advocate is that of a dog, whipped by its master, that still happily returns to wag its tail and beg for food. The problem with your morality is this: we are human beings, not dogs.

At 11/17/2004 05:30:33 PM, Tiny Montgomery said...

It is active, human and moral to recognize and punish acts of behavior that violate international law. No need to bring canines into this discussion.

At 11/18/2004 01:22:16 AM, Michael said...

I sure would like to know what the fuck Benway is on about. Passive morality? The only reference I can find to such an idea is the mindless following of a leader who purports to be morally good. This aligns closely to the concept of the banality of evil in which responsibility for monstrous crimes is compartmentalized so that no one needs to assume responsibility. It seems to me that the Bush Administration's policy's effect on the American people is a good model of such passive evil.

Evil doesn't come from choosing to condemn and to act against what is morally repugnant, rather, it comes from selfishness, short-sightedness, arrogance and other mental deficits where the individual ignores morality to pursue goals thought to be higher or superior to conventional morality. The war on terror is the means by which the Iraq conflict is lifted beyond the reach of conventional moral obligations. The assault on Fallujah and the attendant suffering of the civilian population fits squarely into the matrix of moral passivity leading to banal evil. If anyone is demonstrating the 'passive morality' of an animal, it is those who support this war no matter how monstrous the means by which is fought become.

At 11/18/2004 03:13:39 PM, benway said...

The morality of which I wrote is the one where it's somehow evil and wrong for a person to kill someone who is trying to kill him, or associated with a group who is trying to kill him.

The Marine who shot the Iraqi terrorist had a member of his unit killed by a boobie trapped body the day before the incident. His decision to shoot the terrorist was rational and moral, regardless of how you choose to interpret international law. But what you advocate is that he, like the dog in my example, ignore his rationality and prior experience and sacrifice his own life. Dogs apparently don't know better, but people do, but you would have him go against rationality and human nature, all in the name of international law.

I think you're letting your hatred for Bush poison your rational faculties. ::SNIP::

I find this conversation quite illustrative of how the left and right often fail to communicate. For one, my hatred of Bush, which I readily admit of, come from my rational faculties. It is not, as some would suggest, some vesceral reaction to his swaggering smirky macho cowboy schtick. I'm from Arizona for god-sake, some of the most liberal people I know act exactly like Bush every day. I hate Bush because of what he's doing to this nation, nothing more, nothing less. Hatred for an enemy is perfectly rational. Bush is my enemy, and that of every liberal minded American.

Secondly, Benway suggests that this soldier perceived this unarmed, prone, wounded Iraqi a mortal threat. Because a DEAD body had been booby trapped, this soldier was justified in shooting a LIVE Iraqi whom he said he thought might be playing dead? That is the most insane justification for the use of deadly force I've ever heard. Apparently military officials also find the idea rather a stretch as the soldier's actions are being investigated.

What seems appartent to me is that the Right advocates that there should be no restraint on the conduct of our soliders in the field. Only they are competent to judge the morality of the actions and international standards designed to prevent the worst crimes in the name of war are irrelevant to judging their actions. Much like the torture at Abu Ghraib, the object of the Right's ire is not the actions of the soldiers, but the publicity of those actions. The publication of the photos recieves the brunt of the Right's rage, not the actions depicted. The same is now true of the press in general and Kevin Sites, the journalist who shot the footage in particular. It is not the commission of war crimes that is condemned, it is the exposure of those crimes to the world, and the judging of the crimes by the standards of the international community.

The AntiWar Blog cataloged some of the expressions of outrage on FreeRepublic and LGFs directed at the incident in question. Their outrage is directed at the press, and Kevin Sites in particular, not at the military commanders, or the soldier who killed in such a seemingly unjustified manner, or even at the enemy. It seems important that so much hate is directed at those who work to allow American citizens to see and to judge for themselves the actions being taken in our name. In my mind, the only reason for this ire is that these people feel that our soldiers are not, and should not be, accountable for anything they do. Perhaps they think there can be no immorality in war. Perhaps they feel all things are justified in dealing with an enemy who wishes to kill you, and the judgment of civilians not facing that danger and the heat of combat have no right to judge those who do.

That road leads to hell. Without restraint, without standards by which we judge the actions, even of those in the thickest of combat, our soldiers, who are our brothers and sisters and our fellow citizens, stop being human and become the moral equivalent of animals. Centuries of the worst cruelty and crimes in times of war informs the laws of warfare; they are not quaint relicts of a more innocent age, they are the hard-won wisdom of a far less civilized time.

Maybe this soldier was justified by the totality of the circumstances, or maybe his culpability is mitigated by those circumstances, I don't know. But the reason we must abide the laws of war is to afford our own people the protection of those laws, and to save our soldiers from their worst selves during war. The JAG will resolve this matter, hopefully in accord with the law of war. I'm actually not too worried that some measure of justice will be done. What concerns me is that when political considerations intrude on justice, as they have in the case of prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib and other military prisons, those who are ultimately responsible will not be held to account. What concerns me is that the commanding officers responsible for the assualt of Fallujah may have allowed such killings to become routine and failed to take steps to protect the civilian population of Fallujah. What concerns me is that some substantial portion of our electorate has ceased to be concerned about such matters. Some portion of our population have become so frightened of a small pack of vicious faith-poisoned killers that they have thrown aside all vestiges of civilization and pretense of moral reasoning or moral standards, willfully descending to their enemies' level in order to combat a threat that has grown monstrous in their own minds beyond any relation to reality.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 11/18/2004 06:54:00 PM