On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Jeffrey Miller wrote: > That's what bothers me - I'm equating morality with legality, or at > least, I'm seeing our leaders doing that in other realms related to this > 'war' - "We're at war, so we have these legal powers" or "We're at war, > so we need these legal powers"
I agree that that's bothersome. I suspect we will see critics of the US making similar mistakes, though, by implying that certain conditional legal obligations are in fact absolute moral obligations which, if we don't follow them to the letter in all cases, means we've abondoned moral self-restraint altogether. > I'd like to see us (the US) have a consistent moral stand in this - what > possible reason could we have for not affording them the full rights of > POWs and human & sensitive treatment? The only one I can think of is the us vs. them reason. If they are knowledgable members of a groups sworn to murder members of our group at every opportunity, we have to balance their right to humane treatment against our own right to life and safety and our own need to acquire that knowledge in order to protect ourselves. Please bear in mind that I'm not saying "anything goes," but that we have obligations in two directions that may come into conflict. I'd rather see our better nature win in such a conflict, however. Personally, I'm convinced that the only entity that can destroy the US, or western civ in general, is the US and/or western civ in general. If we don't fuck up, people like AQ can bloody our noses but they haven't got a chance of destroying us, or even seriously slowing us down, in a million years. Alas, I'm not clairvoyant enough to know exactly what not fucking up entails, but I'm pretty sure one of the things it entails is not lowering ourselves to the level of our enemies. I'm also pretty sure it rules out treating them too gently, though. Still, obligation is a two-way street. If we have an absolute obligation to treat our prisoners humanely, our prisoners have just as great an obligation to help ensure our own citizens are treated humanely, i.e. not murdered by their fellow terrorists. The world is getting in line to censure the US if we're not sufficiently gentle, but it would be nice to see someone in the world talk about just what obligations AQ members bear towards everybody who happens not to share their beliefs and who therefore, in their eyes, deserve extermination. > Note that I'm not saying that humane treatment isn't the case, but > between the military tribunals, the questions surrounding the issue of > human treatment raised by watchdog groups (who admittedly are more than > a little rabid, for good reason) we need transparency, openess, and > compassion. Either we are morally correct in this or we're not - its > hard to say how just we're being if we're hiding those actions. Transparency and openness, absolutely. How nice we are to the prisoners is probably less important in the long run than the degree to which we let our decisions be seen and criticized on their merits. Perfect morality in a case like this may be impossible to achieve except through sainthood or martyrdom. > There seems to be a disconnect in the public presentation of this war. > We fought to bring down the Taliban not because they were horrid for > their state, people, and region, but because they wouldn't turn over our > number 1 suspect. It since has been turned into "The Taliban and AQ > were responsible for this act of war." Why wouldn't state sponsorship > of an act of war not make it an act of war? If we're doing the > "detainee vs POW" dance to get around a restriction put in place by the > GC that our (US) government finds politically or militarily difficult, I > find it just as difficult to excuse. Was the Taliban a state? Only according to Pakistan, IIRC. As I see it, we offered them a chance to behave like a state in good faith and they turned it down. I realize I may dancing around semantics, but does Taliban calling itself the state of Afghanistan make it so? > What about flipping it around? What if the Taliban/AQ/Forces of Evil > managed to shoot down a helicopter and took the pilot prisoner, and > didn't treat them as a POW as outlined in the GC? Wouldn't we be as mad > as a nest of hornets? Sure we would, but then we have no expectation of decency from Taliban or AQ in the first place, especially since 9/11. We wouldn't complain about them violating a treaty; we'd call them mass-murdering scum and set out to destroy them. Whether we treat our detainees sufficiently well is a matter of importance, I think. Whether "sufficiently well" in this context is absolutely determined by the GC might be a legitimate matter for debate, though. How's that for waffling? G. Trudeau would draw me with butter and syrup on top, I'm sure. :-) Marvin Long Austin, Texas
