Some commenters seem to assent to the church's teaching as they struggle to understand it, but a great many seem to reject, outright, the idea that such moral niceties as avoiding intrinsic evils can bind anyone is it conflicts with "getting the job done," or, to put it more charitably, the state's obligation to protect citizens. Such commenters, implicitly or explicitly, consider such concerns to be so much naivete.

Or perhaps we just have disagreements with other men of good will as to the nature and intent of the Church's teaching in certain regards or how one is applying it in certain circumstances (for instance, detention is now synonymous with "kidnapping" in some quarters) and that our credulity to believing that they are right and we are wrong in such circumstances is not well served by a combination of defamation, demagoguing, bad arguments, straw men, self-righteous bloviating, or summary declarations that to hold to our position is simply irrational. The above is pretty much summarizes how most discussions about torture and a number of other topics (among them just about anything related to the war in Iraq, which I suspect is at the heart of a lot of this since I have my doubts that many of those who have engaged in such arguments with the exception of Chris Sullivan truly understand the kind of functional pacifism that they would be left with) have been conducted here.

That said, war does not mean that everything is licit and certain norms do have to be abided by. Among those are such things as wearing a uniform, not deliberating targeting civilians, or attempting to distinguish between yourself and the civilian population. In addition to the moral consequences, there are also legal consequences to such activities, among them being that you do not merit the rights of a POW under the Geneva Conventions, since to do so would be to effectively argue that there is no practical difference between a terrorist and that of an enemy soldier. Somehow though, I doubt that's what the author had in mind.

He says:

Thus, it is a deficit of faith -- faith that in God's providence doing what is morally right will ultimately prevail or at least achieve God's ends in the face of an enemy who will not observe moral norms.

Except that in order to have a deficit of faith one has to first believe that the arguments that have been proposed here are morally correct to begin with. Since that hasn't been demonstrated for the reasons noted above, it is not faith but rather a refusal to adopt trendy functional pacifist notions with all kinds of problems with what the Church actually teaches if taken to their logical conclusions. There are indeed limits to what is morally licit in war, but there is a difference between those limits and those who desire to invoke them for the purposes of moral preening.
Dan Darling | Homepage | 01.31.06 - 6:12 pm | #

detention is now synonymous with "kidnapping" in some quarters

Detention is synonymous with restricting freedom of movement. It is the reason for detention that may or may not make it kidnapping (as in detaining family memebers to pressure the intended target to give up).
c matt | 01.31.06 - 6:33 pm | #

At the beginning of his posting, Dan Darling, poses himself in opposition to "other men of good will". But, by the end of his torturously long (pun intended) first sentence, he has accused his opponents of defamation, demogoguery, and self righteousness.

It seems Mr. Darling has a very strange definition of "good will."
catholic | 01.31.06 - 8:03 pm | #

re comments of c matt,

There are other possible distinctions between kidnapping and arrest which has some bearing immediate on the one whose movement is restricted. Specifically, in the case of a (civilised) arrest it is clear under what circumstances the restricted person will be released; by contrast, a kidnapping has no forseeable outcome whatever the restricted person may do or have done.

Somewhat more remotely, in a civil arrest, the arresting authorities can be trusted to protect the restricted person as much as they do any other, and even more so; in a kidnapping, the kidnappers can maybe be trusted to, well... actually, no they can't. Maybe keep the restricted person alive as long as is not too inconvenient.

So, while the intent differs between detaintion and kidnapping, as the final intent of both kidnappers and arrestors is somewhat hidden, there are distinctions to be made between the immediately perceptible means which do (ought to) affect the restricted person in a more immediate way, which might be worth considering, and which if blurred may call into question the usefulness of distinction.
some guy on the street | 02.01.06 - 12:33 am | #

catholic:

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. I have repeatedly granted my opponents on these issues the benefit of good will, even when it was apparent that the reverse was not being granted in return. But they called the tune and now it's time to pay the piper.
Dan Darling | Homepage | 02.01.06 - 1:14 am | #

What's good for the goose is good for the gander

Choose your enemies wisely, for you will become like them.
catholic | 02.01.06 - 5:59 am | #

Unfortunately - while there have been commenters who've been making the argument Dan describes, and nothing more - there've also been some whose views have clearly included at least some significant admixture of "The moral law (as taught by the Church) can't prohibit action X, because then it'd be naive" - in other words, the position described in the reader email Mark has blogged.

And when those who're disagreeing with Mark et al. are willing to admit that at least some of those on their side have that utilitarian streak, then their own complaints of "preening" and the like will perhaps be taken more seriously.
Kevin Miller | Homepage | 02.01.06 - 6:08 am | #

...since I have my doubts that many of those who have engaged in such arguments with the exception of Chris Sullivan truly understand the kind of functional pacifism that they would be left with...

Whatever else I may be guilty of, functionally pacifist I am not, since I believe the decision to go after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan post 9-11 was a just decision.

As for good faith, I am pretty convinced that most everyone (including Dan, and even the bombastic Victor) believes his own position to be the right one, and thus is arguing in good faith. I just think that Dan is wrong, and that as an objective matter his arguments provide support to an evil realpolitick project that functionally rejects Church teaching and the natural law. That isn't the same thing as accusing him of arguing in bad faith, as if he didn't really believe what he was saying but was only saying it to advance some hidden agenda.

I do suspect that Dan's intuition is that the initiation of the Iraq war was morally just, and he views a conclusion that it was unjust as a reductio ad absurdam of the argument which concludes that it was unjust. But his counterassertion that those who argue that it was unjust are functional pacifists is badly mistaken.
Zippy | Homepage | 02.01.06 - 8:52 am | #

In addition to the moral consequences, there are also legal consequences to such activities, among them being that you do not merit the rights of a POW under the Geneva Conventions, since to do so would be to effectively argue that there is no practical difference between a terrorist and that of an enemy soldier.

It is, however, still wrong to do evil - any kind of evil whatsoever, because it is always wrong to do evil, period - to the putative "you". To the extent that the Geneva Convention merely formalizes not doing evil to captives it most certainly applies; to the extent the Geneva Convention does not formalize treatment due to all human beings as such it of course would not necessarily apply.

It is simply wrong to say that we don't have to do what the Geneva Convention says because a terrorist is not a uniformed combatant: we may not have to do it on its own legal authority, but that doesn't mean we are licensed to do otherwise morally.
Zippy | Homepage | 02.01.06 - 9:40 am | #

detention is now synonymous with "kidnapping" in some quarters

I would have thought that detention, without lawful justification or excuse, was what we *mean* when we speak of kidnapping, just as killing without lawful justification or excuse is what we *mean* when we talk about murder (or, depending on the circumstances, manslaughter).
Seamus | 02.01.06 - 4:05 pm | #

I realize that I should have been more precise. Merely detaining someone without lawful justification or excuse, without moving the victim, is not kidnapping strictly speaking, but rather false imprisonment. Only if you move the victim does it become kidnapping. Of course, it's a moot point here, because the example we're talking about is one where the family members of a suspect were in fact moved away from their homes. Whether or not there was justification or excuse for that carrying away is the relevant question in determining if the detention should be characterized as kidnapping.
Seamus | 02.01.06 - 4:16 pm | #

Whether or not there was justification or excuse for that carrying away is the relevant question in determining if the detention should be characterized as kidnapping.

Which, based upon the articles linked, was not clear at this point. The following argument that ensued was not so much about the actual facts of that situtation (which were not clear) but whether the excuse for carrying away of "we want to pressure her husband into turning himself in" would then characterize the detention as kidnapping. I would say it does.

If they want to detain her for questioning on her husband's whereabouts, her own activities, etc., that's a different matter.
c matt | 02.02.06 - 9:53 am | #