I vote b).
B)
b)
B.
b.
B.
C.
Worst. Poll. Ever.
Well duh! B
C.
There is no C.
There is always a C.
Have you ever taken either asprin or heroin? Just answer yes or no. No explanations. Just yes or no.
The fallacy of the excluded middle at play.
How's about this:
a) Writing justifications for slaughtering prisoners is not evil.
b) Writing justifications for slaughtering prisoners is evil.
c = a,
therefore, b.
A = A
How about this:
D. Knowingly promoting justiifications for evil acts is evil.
The greatest problem with the original formulation is that it appears to presume the intent of the "writer".
B.
Without hesitation.
ab positive
Note: All answers except "b" will count as "a". (Except the funny ones). "C" and sarcasm will count as "a".
Please continue. And not CYA posts to cover previous answers or offer windy explanations. Just A or B.
Obviously b. I doubt you'll find many voting (except as tabulated under Mark's quirky rules) for a.
b.
True enough, Ed. Mark will likely tabulate my D as an A and he will be wrong to do so. I'll refrain from calling it evil, even though it would be a willful misrepresentation of my vote. I'm picky on his dichotomy, but sympathetic to the point he is struggling to make.
B.
Most definitely B.
b.
Mark,
Would β count as b or a?
Harry Potter is not "deep Catholic moral theology". Since there is no C., Harry Potter must be evil.
B.
Lee
B (my first post seems to have been lost in the mists... apologies if this is a repeat)
B.
I's amusing that Mr. Shea phrases matters as he does (after appropriately paraphrasing "for speakers of English") and then insists ... "Just a or b. All answers except 'b' will count as 'a'."
That is exactly why this discussion is fruitless. And why this is all just self-righteous posturing.
So yes, I would rather be "counted" as (a) than submit to a poll on such ridiculous terms.
What to do with enemy prisoners of war is of course a dilemma. In the real long ago days of old, our forefathers all over the world thought of a moral solution, and they invented the institution of slavery...
b2: writing justifications for slaughtering prisoners is materially evil. If the writer is invincibly ignorant of the evil of the act that he/she is trying to justify, however, this writing is not formally evil.
b.
What about promoting Numbers 31:15-17 (ASV)?
"And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
"Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against Jehovah in the matter of Peor, and so the plague was among the congregation of Jehovah.
"Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him."
Mark:
I submit "b".
God bless
Richard W. Comerford
SJH:
Thank you for your interesting post.
I guess that I would reply, if I were a unit leader and one of my guys wanted to X-out a POW and quoted Numbers 31:15-17 to me as justification, as follows
"Look knucklehead are you telling me that Almighty God just appeared to you and told you to shoot this prinsioner? Does he talk to you often? Have you been abducted by Aliens recently? No. Then stop bothering me and follow the 5 S's".
(In my day the 5 S's for POW handling were search, secure, segregate, safegurad and speed to the rear - more useless information.)
God bless
Richard W. Comerford
"this discussion is fruitless. And why this is all just self-righteous posturing."
Couldn't have said it better...
B.
To B, or not to B--*that* is the question? You gotta b kidding.
B.
B
_
b)
Congratulations, SJH!
You have hit upon the exact text, (Numbers 31:15-17) that the Al-Qaeda World Trade Center bombers used to justify their destruction of innocent civilian men, women, and children!
(Goes to show, once again, that one can pull an isolated piece of text from Sacred Scripture, and apart from Church teaching and tradition use the text to justify 'most anything they want to do. We can do this. Al Qaeda terrorists can do this. Heck, anyone can do this.)
B.
Re: Peor quote
God fairly obviously possesses judicial power, and therefore can justly order executions. _Justly_ ordered executions aren't slaughter, by definition. You will note that He doesn't do this on any regular basis, however, nor does He issue His judgements by way of any JAG or Congress or executive order I know of. So... kind of a Peor attempt at justification.
B
(I voted before, but it didn't show up in the comboxes...)
b) Writing justifications for slaughtering prisoners is evil.
Marion, Al-Qaida terrorists don't read the Bible, seeing it as the deliberately corrupted text of the Joooos. They read the "perfect" Koran, and find ample justification there. So I don't believe your anecdote.
Oh, and (b), even if it's an idiotic poll.
I'm not commenting on whether it's right to kill prisoners, I'm just commenting on the a/b dichotimy.
Dear Craig, you wrote, "Marion, Al-Qaida terrorists don't read the Bible. . . So I don't believe your anecdote."
Quite right, Craig. It's a made up anecdote, and by it, I was hoping not to mislead anyone, but to make a point.
I apologize if you think you were being lied to. I see that I didn't make my point very well. So here goes:
Can we agree that the Al-Qaida terrorists could have obtained a copy of our own Bible, and read it, and found that passage and used it to justify their actions to us? (Say for ex., that Z. Moussawi individual who was recently sentenced to life in Alex. Va.)
And that leads to the larger point on which I hope we agree - that to take selective quotes from the Bible out of context, and apart from Church teaching, and to use them to justify my actions, is a dangerous and blameworthy thing to do.
si non è vero, è molto ben trovato
B. Unless you are arguing as devil's advocate, of course.
Tariq Azziz could have tipped off al-Qaeda concerning that passage: he's a Christian. Unlike our ally, Saudi Arabia, there are Christians in Iraq.
Or if you are explicating Machiavellian ethics without endorsing them, as I believe Michael Ledeen was doing in his book on Machiavelli. He said that the old devil was brilliant (perhaps), and that we may not like all the consequences of good actions, but he didn't say in his book that Machiavelli was right to believe in slaughtering prisoners.
For the current question, I'd go for A. (You can't say someone's evil for playing devil's advocate. That's just silly.)
A) obviously.
Lawyers will do what lawyers do.
It depends on what you mean by "justifications", what you mean by "slaughtering" and what you mean by "prisoners."
I think I know what you mean by writing, but that probably depends too.
Mayeb I should have been a lawyer. Or a President. Or maybe I've just read too much Graham Greene.
11
A or B? You may want to simplify that a bit more for our Florida voters. 
Richard Comerford,
My uncle, who fought in New Guinea in a unit that took 90% casualties ( much of it from tropical diseases ), told me that the guys on the ground routinely took no prisoners. He explained it by saying that they didn't want to share their sparse rations.
For one reason or another, in one way or another, it probably happens in all armies at war.
War is an evil, even if the people involved in it are simply caught up in a desperate situation. Evil things happen. That is not to justify evil as something good. But assigning moral blame to combatants is a bit difficult in time of war.
Nevertheless, they may very well be agents of an evil.
Breaches of discipline are another matter.
Note: I'm not a pacifist. I believe in self-defense, if absolutely unavoidable. I also believe that the killing of prisoners is not only morally indefensible, it's militarily moronic. No armed force that still retains its sanity and discipline would permit such a thing.
It's interesting that no one here seems to contemplate a situation in which they, themselves, are prisoners.
Would they say then: "Go ahead, slaughter me. I've got no quarrel with it"?
A combat force out of control? Some Russian paratroopers are notorious for it. You don't want to see what a unit of trained killers supercharged on hypos of methadrine/morphine can to to an unarmed Chechen village.
Or maybe some of us *would* like to see it.
I fear for a country that obtains its moral instruction from television scenarios and video games.
The Russian soliders I refer to are *kontraktniki.* Mercenaries. I believe.
Peace to the soul of Sasha Lebed.
B.
b.
b
(...and it is likewise wrong to make prisoners of b1 and b2 [obscure children's show reference] without sufficient justification.)
b. (although writing about something and doing the thing are very different)
When you slaughter prisoners, your enemy will stop surrendering and fight to the last man. That's why green troops in the Ardennes fought like tigers when word spread of the Germans machinegunning prisoners.
That was also one factor in why so few Japanese prisoners were taken in the PTO in WWII. They didn't surrender.
b.
B
But I'm REALLY not sure of it, because I don't know if playing devil's advocate is evil. I think there must be a missing component of INTENT, that by writing justifications for slaughter, you in fact intend the slaughter to happen eventually, or are aiding it. If it's merely a debate on logic or something like that, and the person doesn't intend it, then obviously it wouldn't be evil.
This question would appear to make C.S. Lewis a diabolical monster just for writing the Screwtape Letters.
In stage magic they call this "a magician's force". It's a choice that is no choice at all, and has been deliberately designed to produce a foreordained result.
"Slaughter" is the term used for killing animals (which is exactly why it's the translation term of choice for how Muslim terrorists describe their beheadings of hostages). By definition, slaughtering humans is unjustifiable because it's treating humans like animals. So asking people to vote on whether they consider trying to justify it "evil" is a trick -- the very phrasing of the question makes any answer but "b" meaningless, like asking someone: "A) 2+2 = 5; B) 2+2 = 4. How do you vote?"
A fairer question might be: Is it evil to write justifications for executing prisoners?
Perhaps it's semantics, but it seems to me that if we recognize a distinction between "kill" and "murder" (as we do, and as even the original Hebrew of the Ten Commandments did), we must recognize distinctions elsewhere as well.
Stephen:
I didn't use the term. My reader did. *He* said that slaughtering prisoners was sometimes justifiable (as "reciprocity", doncha know).
As the 'a guy' in the poll above, I'd like to thank Mark Shea for explaining my point so succinctly which was *not* about justifying slaughtering prisoners but rather about how reducing complex situations down to over simplistic rules can sometimes lead to stupid results that increase evil.
When you're a small army and have taken too large a number of prisoners to hold and fear being overwhelmed (Agincourt is a real life example) prisoner slaughters have been ordered rather than wait for them rearm from loose weapons on the field of battle. Just because somebody has surrendered doesn't mean that they are secure and will stay prisoners. The prisoner revolt in Bagram airbase where prisoners took over the facility is a relatively recent case in point of how dangerous accepting too many prisoners can become.
But talking about that would be C and in Mark Shea's view, there is no C just the cartoonish A or B. Dealing with the moral challenges of warfare for real requires, first of all, a willingness to listen and weigh the situation as it actually exists.
So when your prisoners outnumber you 6-1 and you don't have the physical ability to keep them captive safely, your only moral course is to wait for battle shock to wear off and for them to properly plan how to overwhelm you. How noble, how moral, how absolutely idiotic, how careless with the lives you are entrusted to keep safe.
But remember, there is no (c) and if there once was, there never could be again in this new, modern age where our military is 10 feet tall and can always pull another rabbit out from their helmets. Special forces are never behind the lines and unable to free captives safely without sacrificing their mission and their lives, small armies never take huge numbers of prisoners that they can't actually control. Reciprocity is never something that demands a temporary downshift in behavior, only a welcome ratchet upward in wartime behavior.
The stuff I'm talking about is rare, really rare, better than 999 times out of a thousand it won't come up in the real world. But the rule, to be moral, should never be about covering the bulk of situations and screw the exceptions but rather about handling them all in all their variety.
I can read the results. I know that this isn't a very popular position around here. I just can't reconcile a just God with the idea of "sucks to be you, your exceptional situation is too rare to be handled individually". I'm sort of shocked that so many people can. God looks at my soul, my actions, my thoughts and judges them just as he does for every individual. The Church and its children should too. But that seems to be a minority opinion locally.
I can't wait to see how you all are going to handle the upcoming Haditha reports and probable trials. Are you in John Murtha's camp having already condemned these men? Or do you want to wait for the actual evidence to be presented in court before forming an opinion. I'm in the latter category myself.
From what I can tell, their defense is that a team of enemy was firing out of a civilian home and they just did the drill to clear it which was to go through every room and grenade it and shoot down all that they found. That's the drill. It sounds horrible. It *is* horrible. It's also why Baghdad does not look like Grozny and why there are many thousands of civilians alive in Iraq today because that horrible drill and its bloody brothers lets us not take cities the old fashioned way, by flattening them.
So, moral or no? If you believe, as Zippy has said, that individual actions are all that matter and "changing world states" means nothing, the moral thing to do upon approaching a city like Baghdad would be to replicate the Russian approach, but with better execution. That tens of thousands more would die and hundreds of thousands would be reduced to homelessness is just the price of staying on the right side of God. Is this really Catholic morality? I disagree.
This all is not to say that the Haditha incident soldiers aren't guilty and shouldn't hang for it. As I said, I think it's too early yet. Others do not. Those others would no doubt all vote B.
"No long-winded attempts to explain why you are voting"
thanks for sticking to the rules ...y'all
No entiendo. ¿Por qué me persigues? ¿Por qué te perjudican?
انا لا افهم. لماذا تضطهد انت لي؟ لماذا انت متحامل؟
From the National Review, which claims to align itself with catholic teaching:
"Moreover, the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant to Hamdan’s case. He is a terrorist combatant who fails to meet the conventions’ definition of a prisoner of war; consequently, he is not entitled to the conventions’ POW protections."
Appalling.
""Moreover, the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant to Hamdan’s case. He is a terrorist combatant who fails to meet the conventions’ definition of a prisoner of war; consequently, he is not entitled to the conventions’ POW protections."
Appalling."
No completely accurate. The Geneva Conventions clearly do not apply to terrorists, and the Supreme Court majority was wrong on this point, as they were wrong on all other points.
From the National Review, which claims to align itself with catholic teaching:
Really? Not since "Mater, si; magistra, no."
"Moreover, the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant to Hamdan’s case. He is a terrorist combatant who fails to meet the conventions’ definition of a prisoner of war; consequently, he is not entitled to the conventions’ POW protections."
In their defense, I'd point out that NR was making a point about the positive law, not about the moral law, whether as taught by the Catholic Church or anyone else.
However, to the extent that "the conventions' POW protections" are mandated by the moral law, and to the extent that NR would deny those protections to Hamdam or anyone else, yes that would be appalling.
Yes, I am sure there was a part of the Catechism that dealt with proper legal interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, I just don't remember where it was... Perhaps in a penumbra?
I will bore everyone by reminding them that under the law of war, the majority of people in Guantanamo could have been shot at point of capture.
And under Hamdan I fear that more of the people like them will be.
Please stick to the poll. Is it or is it not evil to try to justify the slaughter of prisoners.
A or B.
For the record,
C
B.
Hey Mark- why are comments disappearing? Who's deleting them?
Oh, never mind- I saw the post up above and so I guess you are deleting them. I'll have few comments up above.
b)
Pavel Chichikov:
Thank you for your kind reply. I enjoyed it very much.
Soldiers are recruited, normally, from the society they serve. If a society fosters a culture of death then we should not be surprised if the military also embraces said ethos. Our young guys are performing, generally, nobly on the field of battle. This is all the more impressive in that they grew up as prisoners in a vicious culture of death.
It is always morally reprehensible to mistreat prisoners. It is also stupid from a military point of view. If your side does not take prisoners the other side will fight to the death causing far more casualties. That said, we should allow for the reality of mental illness caused by the shock of war. Otherwise fine young men may commit an atrocity due to temporary mental illness brought on by severe stress. Said atrocity is always, objectively speaking, morally wrong; but the guilty soldier may be subjectively innocent; and he may need mental health rehabilitation rather than prison time.
God bless
Richard W. Comerford
Hello, Mr. Comerford,
Thanks for your ethically incisive post. I'm so glad to see you're still contributing here. Someone said you'd reenlisted and been sent to Iraq, and I see now they were joshing.
I too am impressed with the courage, discipline, and character of the majority of the young men serving in the armed forces. Part of the reason must be their families of origin which, in many cases, seem to have been less impacted by the culture of death than families in the upper middle class income levels. Someone should do a class based study on attitudes toward abortion.
I hope Mark will generate some threads dealing with the recent Supreme Court decision, especially in connection with the debate on the applicability of the Geneva Accords and courts martial and civilian tribunals versus President Bush's military commissions. I was fascinated to see a Navy officer in uniform arguing against the administration and for the applicability of the Geneva Convention, Article 3.
I'm deeply troubled by the extension of presidential powers as commander in chief to cover the elimination of basic rights widely appreciated throughout the world. I'm more worried about the precedent (where does this end?) than about Mr. Bush personally.
B
May I vote again?
TM Lutas:
The "cartoonish A and B" have a logicly excluded middle according to the bi-valued mutually exclusive (western) logic system. If you hold to that logic, it is given that there is no C.
For the record, on the information presented, I choose:
B
Belated, but unabashedly B.
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