Is Torture Always Bad?

Question: A terrorist has planted a nuclear device somewhere in New York City (or Washington, D.C.). The terrorist has been apprehended and interrogated but will say only that the device will go off in 12 hours. It will kill at least several million people and destroy the economic hub of the United States. He will not say where it is. Should he be forced by whatever means necessary, including torture, to divulge the information? The scenario is frighteningly plausible, and the question is urgent. Under the current Geneva Accords torture is explicitly prohibited as a means of extracting information no matter how desperate the circumstances:

"This convention bans torture under all circumstances... In particular, it declares that no state of emergency, other external threats, nor orders from a superior officer or authority may be invoked to justify torture."
(See Part I Article I of UN Convention Against Torture).

We need a national discussion on whether the rules proscribing torture, drawn up in 1949 for a world which knew nothing of suitcase nuclear bombs or biological weapons, should be revised, and we need it soon. Next year may be too late. We need also to reexamine the definition of torture itself. The Geneva Convention defines torture as:

"Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind..."

This definition seems to leave a lot of unanswered questions. Is the use of chemicals which cause no pain or suffering considered torture under this definition? What about sleep deprivation which, though it causes suffering, inflicts no permanent injury? Was what our soldiers did at Abu Ghraib torture? Should the army officer who threatened an Iraqi with his sidearm and then fired it beside his head to frighten him into revealing information about the location of roadside bombs have been dismissed from the service? His action saved the lives of his men and did no lasting injury to the prisoner. To be sure, it entailed some mental distress on the part of the terrorist suspect, but if imposing mental suffering constitutes torture shouldn't solitary confinement also be banned? Or, for that matter, why shouldn't forced confinement of any sort be proscribed? Surely such confinement causes serious mental anguish in many prisoners.

Of course torture should be prohibited as a means of punishment, as should any application of pain carried out for trivial reasons, but saving human life is orders of magnitude more serious than these. Exceptional cases require exceptions. The possibility for abuse is inherent in any exception, but the imperative of saving lives far outweighs, or should outweigh, the squeamishness we might feel at the prospect that someone might abuse those exceptions.

Alan Dershowitz, of all people, makes some important suggestions about the rules of warfare in general, and about torture in particular, in a column he wrote for the Baltimore Sun on May 28th. His key points:

First, democracies must be legally empowered to attack terrorists who hide among civilians, so long as proportional force is employed. Civilians who are killed while being used as human shields by terrorists must be deemed the victims of the terrorists who have chosen to hide among them, rather than those of the democracies who may have fired the fatal shot.

Second, a new category of prisoner should be recognized for captured terrorists and those who support them. They are not "prisoners of war," neither are they "ordinary criminals." They are suspected terrorists who operate outside the laws of war, and a new status should be designated for them - a status that affords them certain humanitarian rights, but does not treat them as traditional combatants.

Third, the law must come to realize that the traditional sharp line between combatants and civilians has been replaced by a continuum of civilian-ness. At the innocent end are those who do not support terrorism in any way. In the middle are those who applaud the terrorism, encourage it, but do not actively facilitate it. At the guilty end are those who help finance it, who make martyrs of the suicide bombers, who help the terrorists hide among them, and who fail to report imminent attacks of which they are aware. The law should recognize this continuum in dealing with those who are complicit, to some degree, in terrorism.

Fourth, the treaties against all forms of torture must begin to recognize differences in degree among varying forms of rough interrogation, ranging from trickery and humiliation, on the one hand, to lethal torture on the other. They must also recognize that any country faced with a ticking-time-bomb terrorist would resort to some forms of interrogation that are today prohibited by the treaty.

It's worth reading the whole thing.

Ronald Reagan: 1911 - 2004

A great man has passed. Not only was Ronald Reagan instrumental in reversing the tide of Marxist/Leninist totalitarianism in the twentieth century, but he, perhaps more than any other politician of the last sixty years, changed the course of political philosophy in the United States.

After Reagan, conservatism emerged as a philosophy of vigorous ideas and tremendous appeal for many who had grown up under the influence of the liberal orthodoxies of the sixties and seventies. After Reagan, liberalism was exposed as a philosophical Wizard of Oz, full of promise and good feeling but hollow inside. Bereft of any ideas that hadn't been discredited by human experience, bereft of political appeal, the only chance a liberal national candidate had, and still has, of being elected to office was to camouflage his liberalism, which is what Clinton did in 1992, perhaps a major reason why he was able to defeat George H.W. Bush.

The amiable, polite Reagan stood in sharp contrast to many of his detractors who, with few good ideas to offer, often substituted insults, mendacity, and aspersions in their place. Indeed, this mode of political discourse has been amplified in the intellectually barren precincts of the leftward end of the political spectrum, until it is virtually the only form of expression one hears from some of the key contemporary spokesmen of the secular left.

Reagan showed us a better way, a way based on courtesy and respect for one's domestic opponents, and strength against one's foreign foes. He was supremely confident in himself, his principles, and his cause, and that confidence was contagious. He was a beacon on a hill for many in a generation that had come of age amidst the chaos of the sixties and seventies and who had grown disillusioned with the social and moral revolutions of that era and with the impotence America seemed to unnecessarily project in the face of deadly challenges from our enemies abroad. He will long be remembered. Perhaps there's still enough room on Mt. Rushmore.

Machiavelli's Disciples

Reading and listening to the Democrats as they've come increasingly undone in the last month or so has brought to mind Niccolo Machiavelli's little book The Prince, a classic essay on how to attain and keep political power. What, for example, are we to make of the ridiculous shrieking in speeches by Al Gore, Howard Dean, Teddy Kennedy and their left-wing allies attacking the Bush administration in recent weeks? Their irrational screeds remind one of an ignorant medieval mob, convinced they've caught themselves a witch and, having worked themselves into a frenzy of mindless excitement, are determined to commit her to the flames. Yet one can't help feel that with the Democrats the whole thing is a manipulation, a fraud, designed to work the faithful into the ever higher levels of political ecstasy needed to cement their irrational resolve to thrust Bush onto the pyre.

The pathetically phony hysteria, the hyper-strident outrage and ludicrous allegations of betrayal, extremism, lies, Nazism, and so on, ad nauseum, are all intended to accomplish exactly what? Do they really believe this rhetoric? Then they are fools or lunatics. Are they merely seeking political advantage? Then they are contemptible hypocrites, destroying a man in order to advance their own interests. In their mind, however, that's not necessarily a bad thing. To understand why, recall Machiavelli:

"In the actions of men, and especially of princes (i.e. Democrat politicians)...the end justifies the means. Let a prince aim at conquering and maintaining the state (i.e. acquiring political power), and the means will always be judged honorable and praised by everyone, for the vulgar is always taken by appearances...and the world consists only of the vulgar, and the few who are not vulgar are isolated when the many have a rallying point in the prince."

Like billionaire George Soros who is prepared to shed his fortune in order to unseat George Bush, Democrats like Gore, Dean, and others seem happy to shed their dignity for the same cause. After all, no price is too high to pay to regain the throne of power, certainly not the price of honor, nor of truth, and the "vulgar" masses on the left just eat the stuff up anyway. The more outrageous the allegations the more they howl for Bush's blood. Machiavelli again:

"It is necessary to be able to disguise this character (i.e. that of being deceitful) well, and to be a great feigner and dissembler; and men are so simple and so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."

Just for the sake of discussion imagine that GWB had, subsequent to 9/11, done what the Democrats are insisting he should have done, which is essentially nothing. Suppose Bush had perhaps rattled a few sabers with tough talk and rattled a few Iraqi aspirin factories with a cruise missile or two, but other than that had done nothing. What would the Democrats be doing right now? I can't say with complete certainty, of course, but I feel reasonably sure that they would be flaying Bush alive for putting the nation at risk by not taking decisive action to depose Saddam in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. John Kerry, who perhaps thinks he is following the apostle Paul's example of being all things to all men in order that he might save some, or at least win their votes, would, in his sonorous, somnolent, soporific way, be running as a war-hawk reminding us at every opportunity how he didn't pussy-foot around in Vietnam where he won a silver star for apparently killing a wounded and helpless Vietcong.

If Bush were to plead in his defense that he didn't think it wise to act unilaterally in Iraq, but that the U.N. was dragging their feet, the Democrats would be roasting him for his timidity and for entrusting our security and our sovereignty to a corrupt United Nations. One may think this an ignoble, immoral way to do politics, but the left in general and Democrats in particular, though they may be ethical relativists and subjectivists in their personal lives, are in politics guided by a Machiavellian pragmatism. Whatever works is right, and it must work toward the end of the acquisition and maintenance of political power. Whatever Bush might have done, the Democrats would have attacked him for not doing the opposite. Their Machiavellian value system would have demanded it:

"A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case."*

In preempting Saddam, however, Bush also preempted the war-hawk prong of the Democrat strategy and enabled them instead to condemn Bush as a militaristic cowboy determined to go to war no matter what Saddam did, and to assert that what is called for in these parlous times is calm, reasoned negotiations with people like Saddam and bin Laden. In other words, to assert that what is called for is doing nothing.

The left has a long history of this sort of hypocrisy. In the early years of WWII when Hitler and Stalin had signed a non-aggression pact, the left bitterly opposed those who said we should get into the war to help Europe against the fascists. As soon as Hitler betrayed Stalin, however, by invading the Soviet Union, the left dropped all pretense of pacifism and demanded that we come to the aid of the "allies" against the axis powers.

The lesson here is that the left usually has a political motive for any position they take. They may cloak it in the language of morality in order to befuddle the "vulgar," but their positions are not based upon principles that most people would regard as moral or honorable. When we realize this we'll better understand why, when Bush sneezes, like chimps at the zoo, the whole cage goes berserk with screams, howls, and name-calling. When we understand this we'll also recognize this strident behavior for what it is: desperate acts of shameless men, arising not out of a principled opposition to the policy of the Bush administration, but out of a bitter resentment at having been deprived of the political power to which they feel they are entitled and for which they have an unbounded lust.

* To understand the modern secular left read Machiavelli's The Prince, to better understand George W. Bush read Terry Eastland's article in the Weekly Standard of March 1st entitled Bush's Gospel.

Iraqi Oil

Iraq The Model has a very interesting proposal from an American reader as to how the oil wealth of that country might be put to excellent use. I don't know what the liabilities of this plan would be, but the benefits of it, both for Iraq and for America's standing in the world, seem extraordinarily impressive.

More on Fallujah

Major David Bellon in Iraq has been sending regular e-mails to his father about the situation there. They make fascinating reading for anyone interested in what the military is accomplishing. Go to The Greenside to read his latest (June 2nd) on combat around Fallujah. Thanks to Hugh Hewitt for the tip.

Osama's Choice

The Belmont Club has the second part of the Memo to Osama up. It's a must read for anyone wishing to get inside the twisted minds of Islamofascist terrorists. If you haven't read the first one yet, begin with it before reading Part 2.

Speaking of the Belmont Club's Memo to Osama, it has been broadly bruited by the media and others that the Islamofascists will try to strike a severe, maybe even catastrophic, blow within the U.S. sometime between now and November. It also appears to be widely assumed that the chief purpose of such a strike would be to tilt the election in favor of Senator Kerry, in the manner of the Madrid train bombing. This should deeply trouble Kerry supporters, to the point, one might think, that the sensible ones among them would abandon his candidacy. After all, many of them are convinced that the terrorists are preparing an attempt to kill thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Americans in what would amount to one huge political endorsement for John Kerry. The Senator, it seems, is so much more to their liking than GWB that they are prepared to murder untold numbers of our children in hopes of getting him elected. Shouldn't it give pause to Kerry supporters to know that their guy is the candidate of choice of al Qaeda? One wonders how it can be that people of sound mind can continue to support the man who those who are trying to destroy our civilization believe is best suited for their purposes.

Accentuating the Positive

Andrew Sullivan gets it precisely right on Iraq:

"If someone had said in February 2003, that by June 2004, Saddam Hussein would have been removed from power and captured; that a diverse new government, including Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, would be installed; that elections would be scheduled for January 2005; and that the liberation of a devastated country of 25 million in which everyone owns an AK-47 had been accomplished with an army of around 140,000 with a total casualty rate (including accidents and friendly fire) of around 800; that no oil fields had been set aflame; no WMDs had been used; no mass refugee crises had emerged; and no civil war had broken out... well, I think you would come to the conclusion that the war had been an extraordinary success. And you'd be right. Yes, there are enormous challenges; and yes, so much more could have been achieved without incompetence, infighting and occasional inhumanity. But it's worth acknowledging that, with a little perspective, our current gloom is over-blown. Stocks in Iraq have been way over-sold. I even regret some minor sells myself. Now watch the media do all it can to accentuate the negative."

Fallujah

Ever wonder what happened in the battle for Fallujah? Me too. There hasn't been much in the news about it lately so we might surmise that things are going pretty well there, despite early media prognostications of terrible and imminent woe. To find out exactly how well things are progressing read Brad Miniter's outstanding column in the Wall Street Journal.

Moby Bush

A few days ago I wrote that regardless of whether or not you think we did the right thing in going into Iraq every American should be united in hoping for a successful establishment of a free and prosperous Iraq. To do otherwise, I wrote, is to implicitly hope for further bloodshed and is morally reprehensible. Yet there appear to be people so consumed by hatred for GWB that they really are yearning for failure in Iraq so that the President will be defeated in November. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, simply despicable. That anyone could actually wish that more Americans and more Iraqis lose their lives just so the Democrat party can regain political power and the object of their obsessions be banished from the White House is reprehensible beyond words. Nevertheless, No Left Turns has a piece taken from an article in the U.K. Spectator which is absolutely stunning for the moral poverty of the journalist it describes. The key passage:

In the column, Toby Harden relates an encounter he had with an American magazine journalist with impeccable credentials. Here is a key excerpt from their discussion: "Not only had she 'known' the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the 'evil' George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. 'Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.' Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing. She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry's poll numbers. 'Well, that's different - that would be Americans,' she said, haltingly, 'I guess I'm a bit of an isolationist.' That's one way of putting it."

I'm reminded of the scene in Herman Melville's Moby Dick where the whaling ship Rachel pulls along side the Pequod and the Rachel's captain pleads with Ahab to help them find his son who has been lost at sea. Ahab, consumed by his hatred for the great white whale, has no room in his heart for human compassion. Every human sentiment must be subordinated to the singular purpose of killing Moby Dick. Every moment must be dedicated to his pursuit. Every moral consideration is secondary to the insane lust for revenge which so perverts Ahab. No loss of human life is too great if it results in the consummation for which he will ultimately, and vainly, give his own life. Melville must have had some contemporary Democrats in mind when he sketched out the demented character of Captain Ahab.

Memo to Osama

Check out the Memo to Osama at the Belmont Club for excellent insight into what al Qaeda must be thinking right now.

Gay Marriage and Slippery Slopes

A Dahlia Lithwick article posted a couple of weeks ago on Slate was dismissive of the case against gay marriage based upon the metaphor of a "slippery slope". A slippery slope argument tries to show that, in some cases, once a concession is granted to one's opponent there is no logical basis for stopping with just that single concession. Consistency demands that the next point of contention also be conceded, and so on, until one finds oneself slipping helplessly toward an unacceptable endpoint, unable to gain a firm handhold anywhere along the way to stop the slide.

As regards the issue of gay marriage the slippery slope is invoked to argue that once marriage is no longer limited to a man and a woman we have no compelling reason to stop at restricting marriage to just two people of any gender. Pressure would doubtless arise to extend marriage rights to any combination of people who consent to be married, no matter the number, gender, or biological relationship of the intendeds, and the courts would have no basis for opposing the wishes of plaintiffs who would almost certainly challenge laws against such unions.

Lithwick is having none of this sort of reasoning, however. After spending much time ridiculing those who fear that redefining marriage may ultimately lead to state sanction of conjugal relationships between humans and their pets and other such perversities, she addresses the more immediate and plausible concern that marriage rights will eventually be extended to groups of people. Lithwick doesn't see this as a likely consequence of allowing gays to marry. Her reason is that there is a rational basis for states to ban polygamous and polyamorous marriages because historically these have resulted in imbalances of power, coercion (particularly of young girls), and an enormous financial burden to the state.

But these seem to be tenuous grounds for resisting state approval of polygamous unions, since the first two are not necessarily inherent in those unions, and the third, despite Lithwick's denial in her article, would make polygamous unions no different than gay couplings (See here, for example). If the liabilities she mentions were removed or mitigated, what grounds would remain for states to proscribe such relationships? Lithwick's argument seems to entail that if these reasons were to be found unpersuasive by the courts then polygamy would indeed be legally inevitable.

She does mention one additional reason for pooh-poohing the slippery slope argument. She notes that the constitutional right to privacy, which some justices imagined they descried in the Griswold case of 1965 and upon which they based their Roe decision of 1973, is an intimate right, between two consenting partners.The desire of a group of seven people to marry simply does not intuitively fit into that binary sphere of intimacy.

In other words, extending marriage rights to two gays is just not the same as extending similar rights to multiple partners because the latter combination is not intuitively intimate whereas relationships between couples are. Courts may, then, on the basis of intuitive intimacy, refuse to polygamists what they grant to homosexuals. How does Lithwick propose, however, that courts assess the degree of potential intimacy residing in a particular group of would-be spouses? Would the criterion of intuitive intimacy, in the interest of equal treatment under the law, be extended to heterosexual couples who appear to some official to be insufficiently affectionate toward each other? Do we want judges and legislators making decisions about matters of law on the basis of their personal understanding of intimacy?

It seems pretty clear that, pace Lithwick, once gender is no longer relevant to marriage there will be no compelling reason to keep the number of people involved relevant either. Whether this would mean the end of marriage or not and what the long term social effects would be, who can say, but it would certainly be another body blow to an institution that has been severely rocked by liberalized divorce laws, liberalized views on cohabitation, and liberalized sexual mores over the last thirty five years.

Enemies of Moral Progress

Evidence that intellectual brilliance is no safeguard against appalling silliness:

"I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."
Bertrand Russell in Why I Am Not a Christian.

No doubt this was an effective applause line when the famous philosopher and mathematician gave the speech upon which his book is based in 1927, and variants of it are often heard still today. Nevertheless, it suffers the misfortune of being gratingly out of tune with the facts. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, not to mention other civilizations since, infanticide, child abandonment, abortion, suicide, slavery, human sacrifice, and death sports were all widely practiced and approved. Christian influence, derived from the conviction that human life was sacred, was instrumental in curtailing or ending each of these barbarisms.

Many ancient societies, and some contemporary ones, regarded women as property. Daughters were bought and sold, wives legally beaten, even put to death. Sexual double standards were accepted so that female infidelity could be severely punished, but male philandering was winked at. Female infanticide was common, as were suttee (burning a wife on her husbands funeral pyre) among Hindus, foot binding of girls in the orient, and genital mutilation in Muslim societies in Africa and the Middle East. Wherever Christianity exerted influence these practices were legally proscribed.

As a consequence of the Christianization of Europe mental asylums were created in the 4th century, as were homes for the sick. Poorhouses were started around the same time and homes for the aged and the blind were instituted a century later. Most hospitals of all types were, until modern times, begun by Christians as an expression of their belief that it was their moral duty to care for the sick and the poor. The same has been true of organizations of mercy like the Red Cross and Mother Teresa's ministry in India as well as charitable institutions like The Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity. If this is how enemies of moral progress behave, the world could do with a lot more such enemies.

I wonder if Russell would think this record of moral accomplishment inferior to that of the state atheisms of the twentieth century (i.e. Communism and National Socialism) which presided over the murders of hundreds of millions of people in the bloodiest one hundred year period in human history. I wonder if he would think the moral legacy of the Christian Church inferior to that of the vast Arab world for whom murder, war, and honor killings are what baseball and bowling are for Americans, mere sport and amusement. Indeed, I wonder if Russell was even thinking at all when he made the claim quoted above. How, for instance, can an atheist, especially a positivist like Russell, even speak in moral terms? But that's a question for another post.

For a much more detailed treatment of the impact of Christianity, both moral and otherwise, throughout the last two millennia see Alvin J. Schmidt's Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization. The book can be ordered through our friends at Hearts and Minds Bookstore.

Abu Ghraib

     If you haven't had it up to here with Abu Ghraib I recommend you read this piece by Joel Belz. Belz writes that although the soldiers who performed those perverse, sordid, and terribly stupid acts are not representative of the American military, there's a good chance that they will become more so in the not too distant future. The disgusting photos from Abu Ghraib, Belz suggests, are the predictable spawn of a pornographic culture.

Key quote: We've been building a culture that asserts its right to goof around playfully with the kinds of things that, when seen now in the context of the Iraqi jails, horrify us. The violence, the sexual slavery, the domination, the bizarreall these are the stock in trade of America's music industry, of cable TV, of video stores, of the internet, and of newsstands in grocery stores. We like to kid ourselves into thinking that we're just playing games with all this stuff. But then when a few young but morally rudderless Americans are transported halfway around the world, made to think they are on the side of virtue, and asked suddenly to act responsibly, we're surprised that they can't.

     You'll want to read the whole thing. Thanks to Byron Borger at Hearts and Minds Bookstore for the link.

Saved!

     Apparently the amazing success of The Passion of the Christ has triggered an epiphany of sorts in Hollywood film studios. Filmmakers and screen writers have perhaps been granted a vision of a land with long skeins of moviegoers eagerly queueing up outside theaters to see any film that might be even remotely Christian. What evidently hasn't been revealed to them, though, is that the films they market should portray Christianity and Christians honestly or else they'll likely play to empty houses.

     Hollywood, however, is not above preferring a wretched cinematic loser that makes religious believers look like characters out of American Beauty rather than proffering an honest portrayal of the truth about Christianity. So this month we're being served something called Saved!. According to reviewer Ted Baehr, Saved! sounds like another in a long list of execrable efforts at discrediting Christian belief and practice going back to Inherit the Wind (1960). Like others of the genre it appears to be filled with phony stereotypes, hypocritical believers, and anti-Christian heroes.

     This isn't exactly the formula Mel Gibson followed to pack 'em in, but an industry that insists upon churning out productions like Dogma believing that such awful fare might appeal to a Christian audience can't be expected to understand the convictions and sensibilities of those who went to see The Passion two or three times.

     Here's a news report on Baehr's review: Hollywood, Calif. - Ted Baehr, world-renowned media scholar and founder of the Christian Film & Television CommissionTM ministry, says the new Hollywood movie, SAVED!, to be released May 28 by MGM, is a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith. He urged other religious leaders, including Jewish and Moslem leaders, to warn their constituents about the "bigoted" movie, which stars Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin in a story about self-righteous Christian youths, set in an uptight Christian school. "SAVED! is a hateful, politically correct movie," Dr. Baehr declared. "The movie is being heavily marketed to the community it mocks to lead Christian youth astray and make them hate their faith." "The one character who tries to preach the Gospel in the movie," he noted, "is actually the villain in the movie. The heroine, Mary, played by Jena Malone, is told in a vision by Jesus to fornicate with the school hunk in order to save him from homosexuality." "At the end, Mary learns that her true friends are a rebellious Jewish girl who claims to have been a stripper and the villain's brother, who denies being a Christian and lusts after the so-called stripper." Dr. Baehr asks, "Imagine if this movie were set in a Jewish school with the faithful Jewish children cast as the villains and the Christian as the heroine who exposes their legalism. Or, what if it were set in an Islamic school, with the faithful Muslims cast as the villains and a Jewish girl as the heroine?" "The outcry in the press would be tremendous!"

The Elite Media: Malevolent, Wicked or Stupid?

     Whether or not we agree that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do, it surely goes without saying that every American should be fervently hoping that the post-war reconstruction effort there is a resounding success. We should be rejoicing in the stories of Iraqis living free and prospering, of Americans building schools, clinics, roads, and playgrounds, and we should be eager to hear such accounts. Why, then, does our media and the political left seem to wallow in doom, gloom, and despair? Why do we never hear them extolling the many wonderful things that are happening in that country?

     To hope for anything less than complete and total success in Iraq is morally inexcusable, and yet it seems that that is exactly what many are doing. They seem to be not only hoping for failure but actively doing all they can, whether intentionally or not, to bring it about. See the excellent piece on this by Mort Kondracke here.

     Why would anyone want to see the U.S. fail in Iraq? One reason, of course, might be that if Iraq turns out to be a great success George Bush will get a tremendous amount of credit, and there are no doubt many people who would rather see America abandon its efforts in that tragic land, see the Iraqi people thrust into chaos and civil war, and see America discredited around the world, than to see George Bush get credit for rescuing the Iraqis from tyranny and creating a free and secure democracy in the Middle East. How else can we explain the relentless negativism of the press and network news programs? Every particle of bad news is magnified, examined, scrutinized for weeks and months to wring out of it every possible drop of political advantage for Bush's opponents. Good news from Iraq and Afghanistan, of which there is an abundance (See here, for instance), is either not reported at all or is buried on page 10.

     When some troops act abominably in Abu Ghraib the average American is given to believe that it constitutes the greatest war crime since the holocaust. Abu Ghraib undermines our claim to moral superiority, we are told. Surely the media knows the demoralizing effect this sort of thing has on people here at home, and surely it has crossed their minds that a demoralized, dispirited electorate is more likely to vote the incumbent out. So Abu Ghraib is seared into our consciousness. Yet the far more searing videos of Nicholas Berg's murder and of Saddam's tortures of Iraqi prisoners are scarcely mentioned in the press or the evening news, let alone shown to the American public. Is it a stretch to think that this is because these would doubtless encourage people to believe that our cause in Iraq is just?

     Underplaying the atrocities of the enemy is either a deliberate attempt to minimize one of the main justifications of the war, i.e. the barbarism and savagery of the Baathists, or it is conduct which has the same effect. Overplaying the depravities of a few American troops is either a deliberate attempt to demoralize Americans and weaken support for what Bush is trying to do in Iraq, or it is conduct which has the same effect. Either way it is incredibly irresponsible.

     To the extent that our elite media are deliberately attempting to undermine efforts to create an economically strong, politically stable Iraq and to create pressure to abandon our efforts there, they are malevolent. To the extent that they are also deliberately attempting to weaken the current administration so that the political party of their favor can be returned to power, they are wicked. To the extent that they are achieving these same ends inadvertantly, they are, at best, stupid.

     There simply is, nor can be, any moral justification for subordinating the welfare of the Iraqi people or the war on terror to political ambitions and animosities.

Question of the Day

Am I the only (fairly) conservative guy out here who has trouble listening to Sean Hannity?

E-Mail of the Day

"I was just reading an article on www.congress.org concerning the draft. Click here.

I'm just wondering what you think about it (after reading through the article, of course). I don't think you'd like to see your young philosophy students going off and dying for something they don't support.

Anyway, I'm a little bit nervous and scared of this measure. I really do not want to go off to war, even though I know I wouldn't necessarily have to serve in combat. It's violating my civil rights. Where in the Constitution does it say that I have to put my life on the line for my country? It's ridiculous. And especially for a cause I don't support. It's really no different than if Congress/Bush/whoever forced me to fight a war for Christianity. I absolutely refuse. And college can't even get me out of it! Postponing my education--and my life--to go fight for a war that I don't care about at all? Sure, I'll just make my life secondary to my country. A draft will escalate the war on terrorism (I'm sorry, I meant war for money, power, and to save face), and will alleviate funds from alternative energy sources. Instead of putting billions of dollars into trying to win oil fields, we need funding for alternative energy! But I digress... Canada and Europe are looking better and better to me with every passing day.

I'd like it if you would give your response on your website for all to see. It's a pressing issue and ought to be addressed."

     I agree it ought to be addressed, but I'm not convinced it's a pressing issue. I could easily be mistaken, but I think most politicians would view reviving the draft to be a form of political suicide, and there is no group of people more horrified by suicide than politicians. I also don't know that there is a need for the draft at this time since recruitment levels in all branches of the military are above the goals the services had set.

     Even so, as I understood the article linked to in this e-mail, the draft envisioned by the bills would not be solely a military draft but would require some form of public service which could be either military or non-military. I would suppose that, in the unlikely event such a bill was passed into law, those who have strong objections to military service could opt for an alternative.

     All of this is secondary, however, to what I think are the larger questions raised by this e-mail: What obligation do we have to our country? Are we obliged to fight and perhaps die for a cause in which we do not personally believe? These are very good questions, indeed, and rather than ramble on about them myself, I'd like to know what other readers think. Please send your thoughts via the Speak Up button and they'll be posted on the Feedback page.

The Only Question

There really is only one question voters need to ask themselves before entering the voting booth in November: Who do you think Osama wants to see win the presidential election? Every other question is either secondary or irrelevant.

The Media and the War On Terror

     This is an interesting piece about how the Western media distorts the news coming out of Gaza to the disadvantage of the Israelis. Meir-Levi points out that journalists seem quick to report civilian casualties resulting from Israeli military operations but rarely explain how those casualties came about or why the operations were necessary in the first place.

     It seems that the recent casualties in Rafah resulted from Palestinian gunmen using women and children as human shields. The operation that led to the fight was necessitated by the need to interdict the smuggling of ground to air missiles capable of knocking airliners out of the sky as they landed at Ben-Gurion airport. Evidently none of this made it in to Western news accounts of the fighting.

     A similar report of the tactic of shooting from behind civilians, which seems to be ubiquitous in the Arab world, is related by a Marine in Iraq. The Marine was part of the convoy which Thomas Hammill was taken from in an ambush. His account is worth reading for several reasons, not the least of which is his reaction to being shot by children. It's a considerably different portrait of the American soldier than the one the left often paints. To read it go here and scroll down to Wedding Party 2. The Marine's story begins about halfway to the end, but you might want to read the whole analysis of the wedding party attack in western Iraq while you're there. The Belmont Club is an outstanding source of analysis of what is going on in that tragic country.

Consequences of a Naturalistic Religion

     Greg Graffin is the lead singer for the punk rock band Bad Religion. He's also the owner of a Ph.D in Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University and is currently working on a study of the philosophical beliefs of prominent evolutionists. Graffin believes that philosophical naturalism is a highly satisfying substitute religion. He writes:

     The most important feature of evolutionary biology is its integrated view of humankind's place in nature that easily lends itself to a deeply satisfying metaphysics based entirely on materialist principles. This provision, coupled with the observation that theology has lost so much of its appeal to the average citizen, leads to the controversial conclusion that, in the modern world, Naturalism is a substitute for, and provides all the benefits of, traditional religion. If the naturalists have their day, theism is effectively dead.

     He is surely right that naturalism is a religion, but he is just as surely wrong that it is as metaphysically satisfying as traditional belief, and his claim that it provides all the benefits of traditional religion is incomprehensible. Here's why. If naturalism is true, i.e. God either doesn't exist or is irrelevant to the cosmos, then death is almost certainly the end of personal existence. If that is so, then there can be no ultimate meaning or significance to our lives, there can be no non-arbitrary ground for moral judgment, there can be no basis for human dignity or human rights, there can be no hope that true justice exists, there can be no reason to think that love is anything more than a biochemical epiphenomena, and there can be no answers to life's biggest questions, except that "life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." We live for a moment and then we're gone, and nothing we do will have mattered in any truly significant way. Naturalism, in other words, is the overture to nihilism.

     Graffin states that: Theists do not appreciate hearing the vulgar truth of evolutionary theory, that mankind is no fallen angel, has no immortal soul, nor free will, and was not specially created. This may be the truth, and it is certainly vulgar, but one strives in vain to see the "benefit" in it. If it is true then it is a truth which brings us to the brink of the abyss of absurdity. It inspires nothing but despair. It sucks away all meaningful hope out of the life of anyone who bothers to reflect upon it for more than a few minutes.

     Graffin continues by claiming that: By polling evolutionary biologists on these issues, the project will yield very satisfying results. It will tell us the degree to which evolutionary biologists believe in naturalism, and whether evolutionary biology can form the basis for an ethical system that is devoid of supernatural reasoning. This is a very odd sentence. After having categorically denied that we have free will he seeks an ethical system where ethics is impossible. There is no morally binding ethic to be found in natural selection. Mindless material forces cannot impose an ethic, and neither humans nor animals can be moral agents if their behavior is determined by their genes and their evolutionary history. If we have no free will our moral sense is an illusion, and the attempt to ground an ethics in evolution is a chimera. It inevitably reduces to an egoistic "might makes right" and can give no answer to the question why I should not harm my neighbor if doing so is in my self-interest.

     It will be interesting to see the results of Graffin's study.