Ethics and Morality
Andrey: The abuse of ethics/morality are are only necessary if they allow the actor to influence the CoG of the enemy. Otherwise as you state it can just be fuel to the fire. Issues such as Abu Graibe and Bread Basket etc are very counter to the allies in Iraq as the actor we are trying to influence are the general population of Iraq and we are losing the Info campaign there.
Rob: Fully agree, why does the West not adopt the same rules. I have been in lectures where it has been advocated that we apply the same ethics as AQ and the Western media show the same graphic images that can be seen on the various Islamic web sites. Is the West being constrained by our desire to do the 'right thing'
Sam: But if we go down that road, isn't that sort of a slippery slope, potentially inviting an even worse situation than we are currently snarled up in?
Rachel: The US would say that exceptional circumstances warrant exceptional measures. This is not quite like saying why should we act according to the rules, when the enemy doesn't, but is closer to the ticking bomb dilemma (you have a person in custody who you think knows where the bomb is, if it goes off there will be mass casualties, do you torture him to get him to tell you where it is, so you can defuse it?) Even if you don't think torture is acceptable, some might argue that it is tolerable under extreme circumstances. This has been a fascinating discussion so far. I'm particularly interested in the issues you raise about the conduct of war, ethics and morality. As I've said, we'll get back to this in unit 5, but I suspect it will recur as a theme before that. The blogs would be a good place to continue this particular debate.
Pip: I believe that unless you keep to the ‘rules’ (admittedly your own and not the ones the terrorists are playing to) you stand to completely undermine everything you stand for and also stand to lose in the long run. Look how far we (the Brits) went backwards in Northern Ireland in the early days when we were breaking a whole lot of rules i.e. internment, etc. Maybe if we had acted differently and more within the rules we would have had a resolution far earlier. What happens if you torture the wrong man? A little like the old justice debate about it being better to let 100 guilty men free rather than imprison 1 innocent man. I agree with Samantha.
Rob: Fully agree, why does the West not adopt the same rules. I have been in lectures where it has been advocated that we apply the same ethics as AQ and the Western media show the same graphic images that can be seen on the various Islamic web sites. Is the West being constrained by our desire to do the 'right thing'
Sam: But if we go down that road, isn't that sort of a slippery slope, potentially inviting an even worse situation than we are currently snarled up in?
Rachel: The US would say that exceptional circumstances warrant exceptional measures. This is not quite like saying why should we act according to the rules, when the enemy doesn't, but is closer to the ticking bomb dilemma (you have a person in custody who you think knows where the bomb is, if it goes off there will be mass casualties, do you torture him to get him to tell you where it is, so you can defuse it?) Even if you don't think torture is acceptable, some might argue that it is tolerable under extreme circumstances. This has been a fascinating discussion so far. I'm particularly interested in the issues you raise about the conduct of war, ethics and morality. As I've said, we'll get back to this in unit 5, but I suspect it will recur as a theme before that. The blogs would be a good place to continue this particular debate.
Pip: I believe that unless you keep to the ‘rules’ (admittedly your own and not the ones the terrorists are playing to) you stand to completely undermine everything you stand for and also stand to lose in the long run. Look how far we (the Brits) went backwards in Northern Ireland in the early days when we were breaking a whole lot of rules i.e. internment, etc. Maybe if we had acted differently and more within the rules we would have had a resolution far earlier. What happens if you torture the wrong man? A little like the old justice debate about it being better to let 100 guilty men free rather than imprison 1 innocent man. I agree with Samantha.
posted by Pip Leighton | 2:25 PM
2 Comments:
Thanks for taking this up, Pip. Back to realism, it could be considered in terms of absolute vs relative gains. If you play by the rules, you may not succeed in the short term (by finding and defusing the bomb, for example) but the long term advantages of sticking by the rules in terms of influencing norms and behaviour of others is an absolute gain. Or at least not playing by the rules would be an absolute loss because you would be undermining the very principles you say you are fighting for (human rights, democracy, freedom).
Rachel
And that to me is the crux and I could not have put it in better words myself!
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