Back when I was in university there was something of battle going on between Professor Ronald Dworkin and Professor John Finnis. The former had something of the intellectual rock star about him. He had just published Law’s Empire to a satisfying mixture of acclaim and outrage and was delivering a series of lectures running through its basic thesis as if he were a singer touring a new album. In the flesh (of which there was plenty) he was an unengaging spectacle. He wore a green corduroy suit that may have fitted him in his teens but which now had appeared to be on the point of exploding at the seams (the possibility of which kept even the drowsiest students awake).
If Dworkin was pop music, Finnis was madrigals. He was slight man with a hearing aid and was as dry as the Atacama. He launched a parallel series of lectures which, had he not been an adviser to the Vatican, might have been called “Fuck You Dworkin”. Both lectures were wildly popular. Partly this was because there was something warming about watching two famous academic philosophers trying to dig their hush puppies into each others nads. Mainly, however, it was because we actually understood what they were talking about (not a common thing with jurisprudes). What they had been arguing about was whether there were any absolute rights and wrongs. Finnis, a so-called “natural lawyer” believed that there were. Dworkin, it had been thought did not. They approached the question indirectly via a connected but subtly different issue: Were there harms you could inflict on others that could not be justified? Locking people away in small rooms for years is bad – but if they are murderers convicted and sentenced we think it justified. Stabbing someone with a knife is bad, but if you are a surgeon operating on a patient it is good. But are there harms no context will justify? It is the question of our age. Take abortion: can terminating an embryo or foetus be justified? Some say it is always justified if that is what the woman wants. Others say it can never be justified. Still others (including the law in the UK) says it is justifiable in certain specific circumstances. Is pre-emptive invasion of another state never justified or does it depend on the circumstances? What about torture?
For Finnis, as we understood him, there are some things that are so bad that whatever the law, whatever your religion, race or upbringing, there is no justifying doing them. Dworkin, shocking many, had recently changed his position. He told us that he could now think of something that could never be justified: torturing babies. Finnis was jubilant and gushed bout “slippery slopes”, confident that he was close to a win.
Over our baked potatoes, we earnest students debated away. Some said Dworkin had given in too easily. What if the father of the baby was set to unleash a virus that would lead to global mass extinction? If torturing his baby made him stop would that not be a good thing to do? The formula was always the same: could one think of something that was so much worse than torturing he baby that if the torture averted it it could be justified? Disturbingly, many would have been torturing the child to avoid relatively trivial harms. After an hour we all went back to worrying about our acne and whether a member of the opposite sex could ever be persuaded to sleep with us.
Last Friday Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia were faced with a very troubling situation. There are markets in Baghdad in which you can buy live birds as pets. This is, apparently, haram, which means that it is forbidden on religious grounds. That is, if you are a member of Al Qaeda, a very bad thing. So bad that it justifies causing harm to others. So bad, in fact, it justifies killing others. So far, so depressingly familiar.
As you would expect, Al Qaeda determined to bomb the markets. They did so by strapping bombs to two women with Downs Syndrome, taking them to the market and then remotely detonating the bombs. The more I have thought about this the more I found myself, somewhat to my own surprise, coming to feel that there really are things that cannot be justified. Some things cannot be allowed to prevail whoever does them and for whatever reason. All else is anger and sadness.
That is very disturbing and awful. Probably you don’t want this to turn into a debate about the merits (or otherwise) of killing people with Down’s syndrome when they are foetuses as opposed to when they are adults and take other “innocent” people with them. But I’ve thought about this a faair bit over the last few months, especially after the “revelations” about the US involvement in torture, and I’ve come to the conclusion that torture simply isn’t justified, regardless of any supposed greater good that could come as a result. of course, if either of my children were, God forbid, being held and torturing someone could possibly potentially free them then I may well change my firmly-held views on this subject. And that I think is why having all these philosophical debates is so, well, pointless at the age of 18 – everything seems so much more black adn white at that age, everything is clear and one would never be swayed by pragmatism…. And then one gets older and a whole lot more cynical….
And the debates as framed in university were always from the position of perfect knowledge – i.e. that you know your actions would actually avert the harm or acheive the good you set out to do, whereas of course in real life it’s never that simple. Given that torture only might work (or equally might cause someone to give completely erroneous information to make it stop) can we ever justify using it?
Excuse the big chunks of quotation and rambling. I’ve not had incisive legal mind training.
The first thing that came into my mind when I heard this news story was, as your title suggests, Kurtz’s speech from ‘Apocalypse Now’
“…And I thought: My God … the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men … trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love … but they had the strength … the strength … to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral … and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling … without passion … without judgment … without judgment. Because it’s judgment that defeats us.”
And I’m afraid I had to admire the sheer evil genius of the person that came up with the plot. It’s the sort of thing that shows ‘The West’ what they’re up against. The sort of mindset that they’ve come into conflict with.
Discussing it with friends we wondered about the planning meeting for the attack. Do you think there were people around the table who said:
“No we can’t do that, it’s too much. Just plain wrong”
Or did they all say ‘aye’, and what a brilliant idea it was. When can we do it?
We also wondered what Islamic Law said about the status of Mentally handicapped people. I don’t know and I wouldn’t know where to start looking. Although someone suggested, from a position of ignorance, that they might be seen as expendable.
In News and comment articles. I’ve heard/seen Suicide bombers and the people that plant IEDs described as cowards. I’d suggest that they’re not. They’re realists that know they cannot win in a stand up fight against superior technology and firepower. So they fight using guerilla tactics, or asymetric warfare, as it’s now called. I wonder how British or American people would react to a force perceived as invaders in their homeland. I suspect that if it was the only tactic available against the invader we’d see British or American suicide bombers. Only they’d be called Martyrs for Freedom, rather than Religion.
The other thing that came to mind was the story of Keyser Soze from “The Usual Suspects.”
“There was a gang of Hungarians that wanted their own mob. They realized that to be in power, you didn’t need guns or money or even numbers. You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn’t…”
Al Qaeda seems to have shown, time and time again that they have the will to do what the other guy won’t.
Keyser Soze, then goes on to show that he’s willing to do more than the other guy. This doesn’t mean that ‘we’ should emulate them or use it as an excuse to show out own will, to commit ‘our’ own atrocities. Like Camp X-Ray, Extraordinary Rendition, or Enhanced Interrogation.
As Nietzsche said:
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.”
Kurtz finishes with. “…it’s judgment that defeats us.” I’m not sure it is. I have a feeling that it’s the thing that will help us to prevail.
Yes.
I could not agree with you more.
I am sorry you are in such pain. Human beings suck sometimes. In my life, I’ve seen the very worst of it all, experienced everything that is dished out, and….
It is my love and compassion that grew.
You have such a precious heart.
Good post, Moobs.
Can’t articulate my views on this without sounding like a over zealous mossad agent. I hope that the animals that did it get hunted just like mossad hunted war criminals.
I find it puzzling that any credo can consider it bad to buy live birds as pets, but acceptable to blow them up.
Excellent post, Moobs. I always know where to come when I’m in need of food for thought. I, too, feel that some things just aren’t justifiable, but I always have trouble with the “but how do we keep them from prevailing” part.
yes – to both Cha0tic and Moobs.
Great post; very thoughtful and thought-provoking. I had heard about this bombing, but not the motivation for it. It left me speechless before, so it’s impossible to describe how I feel now that I’ve learned more about it.
Great post – thought provoking as always.