The trolley problem at West Point
Philosophy for soldiers
David Edmonds at BBC News reports that all West Point cadets are now required to study moral philosophy and “the trolley problem.” He outlines the famous thought experiment nicely:
Imagine there is a runaway tram, known in America as a trolley, heading towards five people tied to the track.
You are a bystander.
If you do nothing, all five will die.
But you could hit a switch and divert it down a side track.
Unfortunately, on that spur is one person and if you turn this tram, this person will die.
What should you do? Turn the tram? Most people think you should.
Now imagine that same tram is again heading towards five people. This time you are watching from a footbridge.
There is a fat man leaning over this footbridge. If you push him over, he will land on the track and die, but his bulk will stop the tram.
So should you push the fat man? Almost no-one thinks you should.
Why might it be acceptable to turn the tram and kill the man on the track but not acceptable to push the fat man?
West Point philosophy professor Jeff McMahan explains to Edmonds the implications of this conundrum to warfare. He argues that it reveals the moral distinction (recognized in international law) between killing civilians intentionally, and knowing civilians will die as a foreseen consequence of military action, “between attacking a munitions factory aware that there will be, to use that euphemism, collateral damage, and aiming at civilians intentionally.”
It might be clearer to say that the trolley problem shows that soldiers should not use the death of civilians as a strategic tool. It’s different when civilians die as a consequence of some other, legitimate strategy. Of course, there are proportionality concerns when one knows that civilians will die (how important is the military action in question vs. how many civilians will die).
As to the more general importance of future military officers studying philosophy, Major Danny Crozier explains that while it leads to the possibility of insubordination, that concern is outweighed by the fact that soldiers must not obey unjust commands. I don’t know the law on this, but it seems dangerous to have soldiers consider the morality of every command, following only the ones they support. Maj. Crozier must mean that soldiers must not obey clearly unjust commands, the illegitimacy of which is not open to serious debate.
-Jake
Crimes against humanity: with oppression and injustice for most
For his role in 16,000 deaths during the Khmer Rouge, Kaing Guek Eav, alias “Duch,” was recently sentenced to 35 years in prison. That he may walk free in 19 years at the age of 86 due to time served has baffled and infuriated Cambodians. The worst tyrants of the last century mostly escaped formal justice (Hitler, Stalin, Mao); others did die in ignominious circumstances and were effectively the victims of mob violence (Mussolini, Ceausescu, arguably Saddam). Duch’s case and surprisingly light sentence brings to mind the perennial question of justice for politically-motivated atrocities.
We seem to know what crimes against humanity are when we see them. But the story is often more complicated in places like the most impoverished parts of the Third World, where politics is a life-or-death affair. Interest groups are divided along ethnic, class, or religious fault lines and power is a means to extract resources for the favored group at the expense of all others. An old Kenyan aphorism holds that to seize the machinery of the state means that “it is our turn to eat.” In these cases murder, rape and torture may become routine tools of political intimidation.
How do we evaluate crimes against humanity and the justice that should follow when the only clear distinction between victim and victimizer is that the latter is stronger than the other, and when it seems likely that the other side would behave just as monstrously if the circumstances permitted?
-Charles
Photo by Flickr user Sebr used under a Creative Commons Attribution license
I shall not tell a lie (unless I have to)
An interesting exchange between Adam Liptak of the New York Times and Andy McCarthy at the Corner:
Two other brief points should be made. First, Adam argues that the founding generation “thought secrecy in government one of the instruments of Old World tyranny and committed itself to the principle that a democracy cannot function unless the people are permitted to know what their government is up to.” That was hardly the blanket position of the Founders, particularly on matters of military consequence. George Washington himself said as the general in command of the first American forces, the “necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged… [U]pon Secrecy, Success depends in Most Enterprises…and for want of it, they are generally defeated.”
There may be some confusion of principle here. Washington is probably (and I’m speculating) of the mind that secrecy during the prosecution of war is crucial. But the issue in question is whether photos of prisoner abuse can be retrospectively released.
Here the concern would be that our future ability to wage effective war and procure quality intelligence would be threatened by transparency.
–Sam
Skirting the real question
David Broder writes out against individual accountability for potential Bush-era abuses. He’s not standing with those who defend the alleged practices, just worried the costs are too high:
In times like these, the understandable desire to enforce individual accountability must be weighed against the consequences. This country is facing so many huge challenges at home and abroad that the president cannot afford to be drawn into what would undoubtedly be a major, bitter partisan battle over prosecution of Bush-era officials. The cost to the country would simply be too great.
The problem with Broder’s reasoning is that’s it’s purely question begging. What, exactly, are the consequences? We didn’t drop the atomic bomb or intern Japanese-Americans during moments of leisure. Morally questionable actions usually take place because we’re facing challenges on multiple fronts.
That’s not to say Broder is wrong. The consequences of investigation and prosection of Bush-era authorizations may well outweigh the benefits. But that’s a conclusion, not a starting place.
–Sam
Do unto others
From Thomas Sowell’s syndicated column:
So many “rights” have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don’t meet the terms of the Geneva Conventions, then the Geneva Conventions don’t protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.
That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.
But getting other people killed so that you can feel puffed up about yourself is profoundly immoral. So is betraying the country you took an oath to protect.
This conclusion is not an inevitable conclusion. If morality is a contract, then those who willingly leave the contract may not earn its protections. But if we’re duty bound to observe certain prohibitions (which is generally the argument against, say, torture), then the decision of another to ignore his duties may not absolve us of the obligation to observe ours.
–Sam
Torture Photos
Blocking the release of the photos reflects an age old debate in international relations.
President Obama’s decision to try and block the release of torture photos has added a twist to the classic tension between democratic openness and national security.
The argument for withholding release of the photos is fairly straightforward: the images have the potential to incite anger and hostility in the Middle East, and potentially threaten security at home and the safety of troops abroad. The reasons for releasing the photos are more nuanced.
One line of reasoning is that the United States needs to illustrate a commitment to the value of governmental transparency. We must not run from our mistakes and instead hold ourselves fully accountable for our actions. Read more
Tired of torture yet?
How do we make hard decisions?
Former CIA and congressional counsel Vicki Divoll makes an intelligent interjection in the ongoing torture debates in today’s New York Times.
First, she points out that the CIA notifying only four Members of Congress when it commenced coercive interrogations in 2002 essentially subverts the Constitutional allocation of power to Congress:
The framers of the Constitution gave aggregate, not individual, powers to the legislative branch. For the Gang of Four to have waved their arms and yelled at mid-level C.I.A. briefers, or written harsh letters to the president and vice president, would have been useless. Four members do not have the ability, on their own, to bring the great weight of the constitutional authority of Congress to bear.
This is a significant, but often overlooked fact in today’s political environment. Read more
Linker, Sullivan, and torture (continued)
A quick follow-up on torture. Damon Linker had a thoughtful but, I thought, incomplete post on the nature of executive power in uncommon or emergency circumstances. I argued that, because it is in the polity’s best interest to create strong disincentives to unconventional and generally illegal actions on the part of the executive, the conversation needed to move away from punishment as retribution towards punishment of deterrence and, therefore, aggressive prosecution of the Bush torture regime is justified even if they could produce arguments for the prudence of their decision.
The debate continues. Andrew Sullivan replies here, arguing that Bush’s crime was to make the state of emergency a state of permanent transgression of the law.
Linker replies, arguing convincingly that Sullivan did not take a strong position on whether there could be a “ticking time bomb” scenario (although as Sullivan and many others have said before, such a scenario is a red herring). Linker’s conclusion seems to be that we should “treat our rejection of the Bush administration’s torture policies as a matter of prudence rather than principle.”
I am fully inclined to agree. Again I wish that Linker would move one step beyond the question of the morality of torture itself and more fully consider the implications of his argument for prudence. How will we judge that prudence has been successful? If a politician makes a good-faith effort in what s/he believes to be a case of grave danger, only for us to learn that his appraisal of the danger and thus his/her action was wrong, should we prosecute? I think Andrew would argue that we certainly should, although I think he would go a step further in making the case that the Bush regime did not in fact act in good faith.
-John
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