Saturday, January 20, 2007
Morality has nothing to do with it
"Isn't this sight enough for the world to stand with us?" An Iraqi blogger named Mohammed wrote these words after the bombing at the gates of al-Mustansiriya University, which killed 70 people, mostly students. He cited accounts by witnesses that cell phones were going off in the pockets of mangled bodies. The callers were their parents, wanting to know if they were OK.
"Who pays the price?" Senator Boxer asked Condoleeza Rice on the floor of the Senate. "I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price ... with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families."
Senator Boxer touched off a mini-tempest, with Tony Snow calling her remarks anti-feminist, but while she was arguably trying to poke Rice in her barren womb, she was also trying to do the same thing the Iraqi blogger tried to do: appeal to our sense of morality to sway opinion on the Iraq war. For the blogger, the murder of children at a university should convince nations like France that have stood on the sidelines to step in and save Iraq from fundamentalist Islamic violence. For Boxer, the fact that it is only the military and not the decision-makers which suffer the burden of sacrifice should weigh against a troop escalation.
With due respect to all those who have written seriously over the years about the morality of war, I think we would do best to leave questions of morality aside in looking at Iraq. We are not facing a moral problem in Iraq, but a practical one.
If our problem were a moral one, it would turn on a moral principle. For Mohammed, this would be, "Can we ignore the brutal infliction of violence on fellow human beings?" For Boxer, it might be, "Should we order someone else to make a sacrifice we ourselves will not share?" Since the supposed answers to both of these questions suggest conflicting actions were we to apply them, they might together yield a third moral quandary, "Is it worse to ignore the suffering of others or to attempt to quench it by ordering others to make a sacrifice we ourselves will not share?"
Who really thinks our problems in Iraq turn on answers to questions like these?
From the beginning, our problem in Iraq has been a practical one, not a moral one. There is certainly a moral dimension to the situation, but appreciating this moral dimension is of no real help in solving our problem. When I don't fear being manipulated into a foolish mistake, I'm as ready as anyone to agree that terrorism is bad, tyranny is evil, freedom is good, wars are sometimes justified. But these and other moral truisms, while seemingly of serious concern, are beside the point.
In the run-up to the war, I argued with a war supporter who said we had a moral duty to invade Iraq. He admitted that we didn't know how likely it was that Hussein would use his WMDs (sic) on us. But he said we couldn't afford to take chances, because if WMD's killed thousands, their blood would be on our hands. I told him I couldn't see how this was a moral problem, because the thousands killed might well include us.
It would only be a moral problem if only the lives of others were at stake, in which case he could argue that a moral principle required us to value those other lives as highly as our own. Since we were having the argument in Los Angeles, this was not an issue: we were as likely a target as any, so if I was willing to take the chance, I was taking it with my own life as well as with others' lives.
He then wanted to know why I was willing to take the chance with my own life. I replied that there were risks in invading Iraq as well, so there was no choice that did not involve risk. I chose continued weapons inspections as the best way to manage the risk. It was just a question of weighing one risk against another. Rather stubbornly, I think, he continued to argue for a moral dimension to the problem. Finally, I offered an analogy to firefighting. There are many ways to allocate firefighting money: prevention efforts, equipment, training, recruitment and retention, etc. If I were to argue in favor of more fire safety inspections, and he were to argue in favor of buying more sophisticated fire trucks, would we be having an argument that hinged on morality? After all, other people's lives are at stake!
We would not, because we have no argument about the value of the lives, only about the most practical way to protect them. In the same way, we, as Americans, are not facing a moral conflict in Iraq. We all agree it would be a good thing if Iraq was a decent place to live for its people and an ally to us. The problem is bringing that about.
We are now asking whether that is more likely with us or without us, and exploring the vital corollary questions of what to do if we stay or of how best to leave. It is a difficult discussion with no easy answers, but most everyone agrees it is a question of choosing the least worst option, whichever that is.
We need clarity to sort this question out. We won't get clarity by pumping up our rhetoric with irrelevent talk of morality. We all agree on the relevent points of morality: the problem is that nothing moral can be accomplished by a failed policy. The only important question now is how to limit the extent of our failure, and that is a practical question, not a moral one.
"Who pays the price?" Senator Boxer asked Condoleeza Rice on the floor of the Senate. "I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price ... with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families."
Senator Boxer touched off a mini-tempest, with Tony Snow calling her remarks anti-feminist, but while she was arguably trying to poke Rice in her barren womb, she was also trying to do the same thing the Iraqi blogger tried to do: appeal to our sense of morality to sway opinion on the Iraq war. For the blogger, the murder of children at a university should convince nations like France that have stood on the sidelines to step in and save Iraq from fundamentalist Islamic violence. For Boxer, the fact that it is only the military and not the decision-makers which suffer the burden of sacrifice should weigh against a troop escalation.
With due respect to all those who have written seriously over the years about the morality of war, I think we would do best to leave questions of morality aside in looking at Iraq. We are not facing a moral problem in Iraq, but a practical one.
If our problem were a moral one, it would turn on a moral principle. For Mohammed, this would be, "Can we ignore the brutal infliction of violence on fellow human beings?" For Boxer, it might be, "Should we order someone else to make a sacrifice we ourselves will not share?" Since the supposed answers to both of these questions suggest conflicting actions were we to apply them, they might together yield a third moral quandary, "Is it worse to ignore the suffering of others or to attempt to quench it by ordering others to make a sacrifice we ourselves will not share?"
Who really thinks our problems in Iraq turn on answers to questions like these?
From the beginning, our problem in Iraq has been a practical one, not a moral one. There is certainly a moral dimension to the situation, but appreciating this moral dimension is of no real help in solving our problem. When I don't fear being manipulated into a foolish mistake, I'm as ready as anyone to agree that terrorism is bad, tyranny is evil, freedom is good, wars are sometimes justified. But these and other moral truisms, while seemingly of serious concern, are beside the point.
In the run-up to the war, I argued with a war supporter who said we had a moral duty to invade Iraq. He admitted that we didn't know how likely it was that Hussein would use his WMDs (sic) on us. But he said we couldn't afford to take chances, because if WMD's killed thousands, their blood would be on our hands. I told him I couldn't see how this was a moral problem, because the thousands killed might well include us.
It would only be a moral problem if only the lives of others were at stake, in which case he could argue that a moral principle required us to value those other lives as highly as our own. Since we were having the argument in Los Angeles, this was not an issue: we were as likely a target as any, so if I was willing to take the chance, I was taking it with my own life as well as with others' lives.
He then wanted to know why I was willing to take the chance with my own life. I replied that there were risks in invading Iraq as well, so there was no choice that did not involve risk. I chose continued weapons inspections as the best way to manage the risk. It was just a question of weighing one risk against another. Rather stubbornly, I think, he continued to argue for a moral dimension to the problem. Finally, I offered an analogy to firefighting. There are many ways to allocate firefighting money: prevention efforts, equipment, training, recruitment and retention, etc. If I were to argue in favor of more fire safety inspections, and he were to argue in favor of buying more sophisticated fire trucks, would we be having an argument that hinged on morality? After all, other people's lives are at stake!
We would not, because we have no argument about the value of the lives, only about the most practical way to protect them. In the same way, we, as Americans, are not facing a moral conflict in Iraq. We all agree it would be a good thing if Iraq was a decent place to live for its people and an ally to us. The problem is bringing that about.
We are now asking whether that is more likely with us or without us, and exploring the vital corollary questions of what to do if we stay or of how best to leave. It is a difficult discussion with no easy answers, but most everyone agrees it is a question of choosing the least worst option, whichever that is.
We need clarity to sort this question out. We won't get clarity by pumping up our rhetoric with irrelevent talk of morality. We all agree on the relevent points of morality: the problem is that nothing moral can be accomplished by a failed policy. The only important question now is how to limit the extent of our failure, and that is a practical question, not a moral one.
Labels: Foreign policy, Morality
¶ 8:11 AM
