Ethics and Morality on a Sliding Scale
Are ethics constant? Or are our ethics determined by our survival instinct, our belief in a cause, or simple ruthless pragmatism? In the spring and summer of 2004, I spent three months in Iraq working for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) – the American-led interim government of Iraq that existed until late 2004 when it was replaced by Iraqis. During my time in country, I really only encountered two situations that threatened to slide my own ethics scale.
In the first, our 3-vehicle convoy was ambushed on the highway between Ramadi and Fallujah. The suddenness of the attack, the speed we were traveling, and the amount of incoming fire we received in the trail vehicle precluded an immediate counterattack. By the time our three disabled vehicles had come to a stop, all we saw were two vehicles behind us. One had stopped and the other did a rapid u-turn before vanishing in the opposite direction (“A Bad Day”).
The four of us who had aimed our weapons tracked the u-turning vehicle through our sights but didn't shoot because we simply didn't see a clear threat. As the badly shaken - but unhurt - local driver of the second, stopped, vehicle began to get out, we fired two warning shots to keep him from approaching.
As we moved to a more defensible position, removed from our three disabled vehicles, we began to share our knowledge of the ambush while planning our next course of action. It quickly became apparent, as we put the story together, that the car behind us had been a part of the ambush. Later analysis of some of the bullet holes in my vehicle would confirm our thoughts. Our ethical standards, the degree of ingrained "threat identification" training we had all received at one time or another, and our understanding of the Rules of Engagement (ROE) we operated under had prevented us from engaging. We had made our first morally correct - but tactically questionable - decision of the day.
As the sun began to set and we surveyed our surroundings, still unsure when the military would be able to reach us, other questions came to mind. We debated taking Iraqi cars at gunpoint so we could continue our journey, debated moving the 500-1000 meters to the nearest residence and occupying that - regardless of whether or not it was already occupied by an Iraqi family, faced the internal shoot/no-shoot debate twice when Iraqi men on motorcycles passed close by our position.
In weighing all of these issues, we chose to take the most morally correct position. We did not "steal" a car, kick a family out of their home, or shoot the motorcyclists. We waited for the military to show up and hitched a ride back to Ramadi for the night. But what if the situation had been different? What if one of us had been seriously wounded? What if the ambushers had not cleared out of the area or we had not been able to find an easily defensible spot near our vehicles? How easily would ethics have been overwhelmed by survival instinct? In other words, how far would that scale have slid if our conditions had been more dire? Being practical thinkers, it's not something that entered our minds at the time. We simply followed the most logical course of action. In this case, that course of action was also the "most moral."
Fast forward three or so weeks. We were driving through Baghdad on our way from the Green Zone back to Baqubah, a troubled, ethnically divided city north of Baghdad. Six or seven of us in two unarmored late model SUVs. There were only so many good routes to travel in Baghdad...and we didn't spend enough time down there to have a good feel for which routes were the best - or how to transition between them if one turned bad.
Our journey through the center of the city happened to coincide with a massive pro-Sadr rally. The Blackwater contractors had been killed less than a week before in Fallujah. Sadr's newspaper had just been shut down. The following day, his militia would begin aggressively engaging American military patrols. And there we were, stuck in the middle of the rally, surrounded by tens of thousands of his followers ("Well hello").
As the press of bodies tightened around our vehicles, as individual Sadrists stepped forward to express their discontent with American policies in a most reasonable manner, and as we eyed possible ways out if things went bad, I do not believe that moral and ethical considerations weighed heavily on my mind. Instead, I was weighing how many people we'd
have to run over to get to open pavement - and whether the vehicles could handle it. I was judging who I would shoot first if the crowd attacked, and I was determining how difficult it would be to reach the nearest building if we were forced to create a makeshift defensive position. As the threat became more real, our decisions became weighted more by immediate tactical than moral issues. Yes, we did everything we could to prevent a violent incident. Yes,
we kept our guns out of sight when possible. Yes, we determined that drastic action would be taken be as a last resort rather than in a preemptive manner. But those decisions were based more on survival instinct and common sense than anything else. Or perhaps I'm mistaken. Maybe our decision to wait for events to unfold rather than force a violent conclusion indicates that an underlying sense of right and wrong helped guide those decisions. I don't know. But I do know that I felt a great deal of empathy for the Marine in Fallujah video-taped "executing" an Iraqi (West and Carter).
While I don't feel "empathy" per se, I also understand many of the tactics employed ("The Insurgency") by the insurgents in Iraq - at least in their methods for countering U.S. tactical advantages...certainly not for the wholesale killing of their own people in the name of fomenting terror.
The rigid code of conduct most organized - or at least most Western - militaries tend to operate under was designed around the notion of fighting another similarly trained and equipped force - a force that utilizes similar tactics - and operates by similar laws of war ("Laws of War"). For insurgents with less tactical skill, considerably fewer resources, and no formal system of authority to prevent or punish excesses, fighting under the rules of war observed by the United States would be fatal. Insurgents counter these disadvantages by exploiting the ROE, ethical code, and Americans' acceptance of the laws of war. Just as Americans attempt to counter Iraqi advantages of familiarity with terrain and the ability to move among and blend with the populace by fighting at night, striking from a 'safe' distance, or striking from an unexpected position.
Ethics and morality can be a slippery subject - especially when high-minded ideals meet the ugliness of the real world. When do we pass from prudent survival measures to defeat implacable foes to the “slippery slope” of justifying our means by exaggerating the ends - or the level of crisis?
Robert McNamara addresses this issue in some detail in "The Fog of War." For many die-hard Vietnam protesters, his admission that some of the actions he recommended during World War II could be 'defined' as war crimes comes as a point of victory...but that's the point at which many stop listening. In his elaboration, he discusses the issue of the sliding scale of ethics. If we really were fighting an implacable enemy, if driving him to utter destruction was the only way to secure victory and protect our own nation's absolutely vital interests, then those "crimes" become acceptable in the name of that goal. The survival instinct comes into play at the strategic level.
And now we reach the crux of the matter. Who defines the level of threat our nation is faced with? When one man, full of adrenaline, is faced with a life or death situation, there is little doubt in his mind that he is fighting for his existence. Perhaps those removed from the scene and unable to gauge that threat might think differently (as in the case with the Marine), but that is irrelevant to someone making split-second decisions intended to save his own life.
James Doolittle in 1954:
It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed object is world domination by whatever means and whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct no longer apply.... We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us.
James Woolsey in 2002:
But, I would say this. Both to the terrorists and to the pathological predators such as Saddam Hussein and to the autocrats as well, the barbarics, the Saudi royal family. They have to realize that now for the fourth time in 100 years, we’ve been awakened and this country is on the march. We didn’t choose this fight, but we’re in it. And being on the march, there’s only one way we’re going to be able to win it. It’s the way we won World War I fighting for Wilson’s 14 points. The way we won World War II fighting for Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s Atlantic Charter and the way we won World War III fighting for the noble ideas I think best expressed by President Reagan, but also very importantly at the beginning by President Truman, that this was not a war of us against them. It was not a war of countries. It was a war of freedom against tyranny.
This is the debate that we find ourselves in today - much as we found ourselves reevaluating the Cold War as it progressed. What is the level of threat we face? What is the appropriate response? How much must we sacrifice the spectator's ideals of morality and ethics to ensure our survival in the arena of the real world? How should our individual soldiers respond to an enemy that has no legal, ethical, or moral limits? How should our nation respond? And how do we codify this? Judging from past responses, the United States has tended to move aggressively to counter threats, often shoving aside basic freedoms routinely guaranteed to Americans. Then time, protest, investigation (Stout), and debate (“Foreign Intelligence”) have reestablished those freedoms ("Sedition Act"). Slowly, we see the most extreme measures of post-9/11 policies being exposed and rolled back - or at least vigorously debated. And so we enter the most difficult stage of this debate: reaching common ground on how serious a threat we are faced with and then debating how far we slide our ethics scale to combat it. As a nation, we must remember two points: human survival instinct will, at times, bypass morality as the strongest influence on our actions; more importantly however, that same survival instinct can and must be shaped by our ethical underpinnings - at both the individual and collective levels
