The United States Government Exhibits an Increasingly Casual Disregard for Examining the Morality of War — Being Top Dog Seems to Have Come at the Price of Weakening Our Ethical Integrity

© 2011 Peter Free

 

01 July 2011

 

 

With Independence Day looming, it would be wise to reaffirm what the United States actually wants to stand for — casually killing people outside combat zones with missile-launching drones arguably shouldn’t be it

 

The United States’ recent history has combined two forces, both of which have diluted America’s perceived allegiance to moral integrity in its foreign affairs.

 

First, has been our perpetual war over-reaction to the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001.

 

Second, has been the understandable intrusion of robotic arms technology into these engagements, under conditions in which collateral damage from these antiseptic technological means causes increased hatred from those it attacks.

 

Take the case of America’s use of missile-launching drones to kill alleged terrorists (and whoever happens to be with them at the time) inside non-combatant nations.

 

Do we want to be the Bad Techno-Daddy who strikes impulsively, erratically, murderously and often mistakenly from the sky, even outside bona fide war zones?

 

 

Eugene Robinson’s concern

 

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist, is as concerned about this issue as I am.  He ticks of the moral bases for questioning what appears to be President Obama’s policy of overly wide drone use:

 

The Obama administration asserts that international law clearly permits the targeting of individuals who are planning attacks against the United States.

 

But this standard requires near-perfect intelligence — that we have identified the right target, that we are certain of the target’s nefarious intentions, that the target is inside the house or car that the drone has in its sights.

 

Mistakes are inevitable; accountability is doubtful at best.

 

Most troubling of all, perhaps, are the moral and philosophical questions. This is a program not of war but of assassination. Clearly, someone like Ayman al-Zawahiri — formerly Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command, now the leader of al-Qaeda — is a legitimate target.

 

But what about others such as the Somali “militants” who may wish to do us harm but have not actually done so?

 

Absent any overt act, is there a point at which antipathy toward the United States, even hatred, becomes a capital offense?

 

© 2011 Eugene Robinson, Assassination by robot: Are we justified?, Washington Post (30 June 2011) (paragraphs split)

 

 

I am not confident of the moral reasoning powers of the people in positions to push these buttons

 

People who are perennially outside combat zones, and those who have had no direct experience with deadly violence, are generally poor judges of the moral rectitude of death-dealing.

 

National security paranoia tends to cause overly quick judgments about our perceived adversaries’ hostile intentions toward us.

 

If you put the power to kill alleged foes into fearful and aggressive hands, those hands will use it.

 

As Eugene Robinson wonders, is preemptively assassinating people with poorly proven intentions and unknown strike capabilities a moral positive?

 

I think not.

 

 

Adequate ethical reasoning is often prompted only when the tables are turned, when we become recipients of the same bad policies that we had previously aimed at others

 

We humans tend to see moral imperatives clearly, only when we are forced into someone else’s shoes.

 

Here’s a hypothetical:

 

Pretend China is the world’s only superpower.

 

And assume that China has become a genuine democracy.

 

Imagine that China suddenly decided that drone attacks on U.S. soil were justified against Americans who had threatened to fight Chinese cultural and geopolitical dominance around the world.

 

How confident would you be that this new superpower was adequately screening its targets?

 

How certain could you be that it was killing only the murderous few its military and intelligence units were targeting?

 

How would you feel if the new superpower’s collateral damage extended to members of your own family because they had been inadvertently standing near someone whom you willingly admit was a proven (and terrible) American terrorist?

 

Note:

 

The answer that no one but Americans can be trusted to correctly assassinate people is too chauvinistic, and flies in the face of too much history, to be a morally reasonable one.

 

 

“I do it because I can” is not moral reasoning — a bullying superpower can extend its physical influence, but not its morality-based respect

 

I had always thought that we Americans prized being respected for our democratic values and the morality they are based on, rather than our ability to casually kill people far away.

 

Am I wrong, or have we changed?