martasfic | Entries tagged with war

Over at FaceBook, a friend posted a meme (at right) to my wall and asked for my thoughts. If there was ever a topic where I could be long winded, issues related to guns is it. I seem incapable of answering it simply, and since FB won’t let you fix typos, I decided to do it here. Also, I hope some of you will find it interesting.

Unlike some American progressives, I don’t think guns are innately bad. I think they’re dangerous, and need to have their power respected, but I also think they’re capable of achieving good things in at least two areas: hunting and other practical uses, and as self-defense against a criminal threatening you.

Even here, though, talk about “rights” makes me uncomfortable. I recognize that in America we have a legal right to arm ourselves, but I think when people frame the discussion in those terms they focus on what’s good for them, not the very real danger that possessing a gun can have for other people. Or indeed for themselves. I’ve never served in the military themselves, but if the veterans I have known are any indication, having to carry a gun and being prepared to use it does change a person. A gun may be useful and necessary for these purposes, but it is not something you simply buy and put away in a drawer. You must learn how to use it, and more than that, you have to be prepared to use it.

There’s also the very real possibility that you will damage someone. Kids find their parents’ gun and play with it, and accidentally shoot themselves. The risk of mental illness turning into suicide or angry arguments into homicide goes up. And dumb mistakes just happen. You accidentally shoot some dumb, drunk teenager (as the WaPo recently reported) who breaks into your house in the middle of the night, and you have to live with that death. Based on the reports I’ve read of that last incident the kid was definitely drunk and coming home at 2:30 AM, and sounds like he was going into the wrong mistake by accident. As for the shooter, he sounds like a genuinely good man. When you own a gun and hear someone coming up the stairs in the middle of the night, it’s natural to reach for your gun and use it. If I was prepared to have a gun in my house at all, I think I would have done exactly what he did. But now this nice man has to live with the fact that he shot and killed an unarmed teenager.

Would it have been better for him to risk his family’s life to the possibility that a robber would break in and put his family at risk? Maybe not. But these are the kinds of things that at least need to be considered when deciding whether owning a gun for self-protection really is the best course of action.

This, really, is the reason why I don’t own a gun. I live in New York, in the Bronx, and while I am careful and don’t live in a particularly bad part of town, there’s still a small chance that I will someday be confronted by an armed robber or that someone will break into my apartment. It’s a small chance, but not nonexistent. And I’ve decided that the damage having and being prepared to use a gun would have on my soul outweighs any good it would do in the unlikely chance I need to use a gun.

Now, that’s my choice. Other people have decided owning a gun makes sense for them. I can respect that. They may live in more dangerous neighborhoods, or they may be less sensitive to violence than I am. I think most of them do a good job keeping their guns secured through safes, gun locks, and the like, which I definitely respect. Maybe they accepted police or military service or have spent a lifetime hunting, and so they’re already affected by being prepared to kill, in which case owning a gun now to protect their family may actually make sense. I am not privy to every situation, so I can’t judge whether a gun is appropriate for each person. But my rule of thumb is actually pretty simple: if you are basing your decision to own a gun on a rational appraisal of the risks and benefits, and if you take precautions to minimize those risks, that’s at least a good place to start when it comes to owning a gun.

(Also, it deserves saying: if it wasn’t just my own safety but someone else I was responsible for, like if I was a parent, I really might reconsider on this point. It’s one thing to be willing to risk your own life and quite another to risk another. This is one of those circumstances that might make gun ownership rational.)

Michelle’s meme focuses on the right to bear arms. While I think we do have a right, I don’t think this makes it right –or more properly, makes it good– to have a gun in the home. I really wish people considering owning a gun would move beyond their legal freedom to own a gun. I am not disputing that legal freedom; but I am questioning whether this gives us a good reason to accept the risks of having a gun in their house. I have a legal right to smoke tobacco but I have chosen not to because someone with my family history of asthma and personal susceptibility to lingering bronchitis needs a cigarette like I need a good kick in the shins. It’s just not good for me. And neither is having a pistol in my house. I would be a lot less critical of peoples’ decision to arm themselves if it came out of this kind of analysis, based in the facts of the situation, rather than out of a desire to assert a right or an unreasonable was based on the reality of their situation, and in point of fact I am much less critical and more respectful when this turns out to be the case.

The gun-owner’s last statement in Michelle’s meme –indeed, the only statement besides “I have a right to bear arms” is “as a last resort, to protect myself against tyranny.” I agree we have that right, and if we were really to the point of last resort I’d probably agree with Michelle that everyone should own a gun. Or if there was a real possibility that the government really was going to take away our ability to buy new guns, I’d agree with her that people had a duty to acquire guns sufficient to mount a serious resistance, and be prepared to use it (but not actually use it until they had to, and try to be as unaffected by owning that gun as they could). And I’m not blind to the seriously disturbing trends in how the government uses violent means, form perpetual war and drones to the militarization of police forces and the corporatization of the criminal justice system. These are important problems and they need to be fought.

Here’s the thing, though. We still have ways that we can fight these problems. Martin Luther King showed that a small group of people, joined by common purpose and a commitment to nonviolence and justice, radically turned around their society’s attitudes on race. Our biggest problem is probably apathy here, closely followed by our “boy who cried wolf”-style journalism and internet memery. But I do believe there’s hope for improvement on these issue through political activism and community organizing and generally people coming together and working together. And to me at least, guns send a message that makes it harder to do that. When I hear someone just bought a bunch of guns as a way to fight the government, that tells me they don’t think there’s hope that we can work together. It also tells me that if I tick them off enough they may come after me – that any alliance, any working relationship, is temporary and conditional.

And also, because I honestly don’t think it’s time to head back to the trees or think an assault rifle ban is the same as no guns allowed to anyone, I’ll probably question how clearly you’re seeing the situation. Meaning no offense, but if you’re arming yourself because you think you have to because of, you know, tyranny, I’m not sure how clearly you’re actually seeing the situation. It makes it hard to trust you as someone I want to work with.

The quote at the end points to a divergent moral standard between how we view Joe Citizen owning and using a gun and Mr. Policeman owning one. I think there is a difference here, because I think the state actually matters.This line of thought shouldn’t be foreign to conservatives in particular. I mean, I grew up hearing that capital punishment wasn’t murder because the state had the authority to end a life in those circumstances; and that war wasn’t murder even though it predictably ended thousands of lives (your own citizens and the other guy) even when your society wasn’t facing an existential threat because the state had a legal and moral right to protect society.

But even setting that point aside, we all choose to live in a society. Society is good, I’ll even say it’s essential to human flourishing, but it also requires a level of trust for people who really haven’t earned it. I know some of the people in my apartment but hardly all of them (in fact, I’d never gone to the other wing until our shower was busted for several days and I had to use an empty apartment’s). I certainly don’t know most of the people a few blocks over. Yet I trust them. I trust that when I give the cashier my credit card she will only charge me the amount I owe. I trust the corner laundry to wash my clothes and not take them home as their own. I trust my internet ISP to offer me a full month’s service when I pay them upfront, and I trust my roommate not to raid my emergency money. I’m able to do all this because we live under a system of laws that make getting caught so dangerous that most people wouldn’t risk it except in extreme situations. That requires policemen have to have the power to make people do things they wouldn’t do otherwise. It requires guns.

And part of living in a society means someone else has taken the responsibility for bringing order to the chaos. Policemen have an extra responsibility, extra training, and extra authority that I do not. They are different from me, and I am better for it. In fact, this is a big reason why I’m willing to accept restrictions on my liberty – because having someone else watching out for my basic security and ensuring that laws that make this kind of trust possible even in situations where it’s not warranted by how well I know the person.

I do think we need restrictions on how the government uses guns. This is why, not only am I not a gun-owner, I’m a practical pacifist: I think that war is so rarely justified, as a general rule we shouldn’t presume it’s ever justified. (The onus is on the person wanting to make war to show why this is an exception.) It’s why equal access to health care is so important to me, and why I am extremely bothered by capital punishment and police violence. And why, try though I might, I couldn’t cheer when Osama bin-Laden was assassinated. Police and the government generally need restrictions on how to use violence. They have some, though not enough. And I’m all for working with anyone who wants to push for more transparency regarding drones, more procedure when it comes to declaring war, less war generally, more inquests into police violence, more commitment to diplomacy and non-war solutions to international problems. You’ll really and truly get no argument from me on any of these topics.

And I don’t want to see the police taking away peoples’ guns. I honestly don’t see that threat. Saying you cannot buy certain models is not the same as banning all new purchases, much less demanding you turn over the one you already have. The only case where I can see the police trying to take away someone’s gun in America is if the gun is illegal or if the person is using the gun in a way that’s illegal. It’s also constitutional under the second amendment to deny gun licenses to people who have proved themselves incapable of being trusted with a gun (see Lewis v. U.S.), but this is rightfully very restricted.

Now, if you’re asked to turn over a gun in those circumstances, that seems reasonable. Because you chose to live in a society and because that choice gives the police certain rights to enforce the duly enacted laws. I would definitely be opposed to the police insisting everyone disarm, but I don’t see that or even the threat of that.

Really, Aragorn said it best:

I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight!

Nonviolently, of course.

Continuing on with the Hunger Game blogging, I wanted to take a step back from the actual reaping. The story begins the morning before Katniss is chosen to participate in the Games, when she goes hunting to support her family. This is technically illegal, but is one of those laws that they don't really enforce in Twelve.

And Katniss is quite good. She knows which animals are safe to eat and eventually is able to take down animals as well, which she either uses to feed her family or, more often, trades the animals on the black market to get other things her fmaily needs but can't afford. Her dad had died in a mining accident some years before, and for a while her mum was too depressed to work. That means the only real source of income the family has for a while is Katniss's tesserae, the monthly allotment of grain and oil. Eventually her mum starts selling medicinal remedies but it doesn't pay as much as a miner's salary would, and in any case families almost always need both incomes to keep everyone fed, because the salaries are so low. So since she was twelve Katniss has basically been the breadwinner. She's exceptionally good as a shooter.

After the Reaping, Gale points to this skill as her best hope for survival. He urges her to get to a bow, or make one, to use as a weapon against the other tributes.

"Katniss, it's just like hunting. You're the best hunter I know," says Gale.

"It's not just hunting. They're armed. They think," I say.

"So do you. And you've had more practice. Real practice," he says. "You know how to kill."

"Not people," I say.

"How different can it be, really?" says Gale grimly.

The awful thing is that if I can forget they're people, it will be no different at all.

There are two ways of interpreting a lot of these statements. The first is that killing humans involves a set of skills that Katniss simply doesn't have. As Katniss points out, they're armed with weapons every bit as deadly as hers. And more than that, they can think. It is one thing to kill a deer and another to kill a human, without even gettingo into the morality going on here. But I think that Katniss has a deeper point here: that the only way it would really be "no different" is if she didn't realize she was killing other humans.

This is a point that comes up time and again in the later books.
In Mockingjay,Gale helps design a series of traps to be used against fellow humans that are inspired by his experience hunting animals. In one of my favorite scenes, he likens an attack on a Capitol stronghold to the way you attack a news of wild dogs. And as the books go on, the idea of mutts continually twists this distinction between human and non-human.

It's an interesting point to think about, both in conjunction with animal rights and with the various ways we react to human-against-human violence like war, terrorism, and murder. I can see three basic positions here:

1. It's always wrong to kill things unless it's necessary for your survival. It's necessary to kill animals to survive, so that's okay for Katniss. In the arena, it's also okay to kill the other tributes - because this is just as necessary to your survival.

2. We should be more reluctant to kill humans than non-human animals for practical reasons - they're harder or more dangerous to kill, this creates more suffering, etc. So you need a better reason to kill humans than other animals, but it's still sometimes justified.

3. There's something implicitly wrong about killing humans. It's not just a matter of their being more of the same kind of consequences. When you kill a human there's something dehumanizin about this. Sometimes it's necessary for the greater good, perhaps. But still something very wrong, something worth mourning over.

Obviously there are huge implications to this difference here. So I find myself wondering: Which is the best way to approach violence done to humans? Is Gale right to say it's just like killing an animal?

What if this wasn't her only way to survive, like the later choice Gale faces between his own slavery and that of all the other District residents, or some deaths in a way? Even if you think the war is a good thing, is he a bit too cavalier here?

(My own opinion is yes on that last question. No matter what you think about the way, it's wrong not to think something is lost when we have to be violent. But then I'm a pragmatist.)

Rather than getting work done on schoolwork, I ended up spending a lot of tonight in a conversation on a friend's FB wall, inspired by this picture. As you can imagine, that made for some pretty spicy conversation. I thought some people might be interested in some of my comments. The post itself was only available to this particular person's friends, so I'm only sharing my words.

My initial reaction:

FWIW, just like the majority of Democrats would not support this sentiment, I don't think the vast majority of atheists would either. If they do they no longer deserve the "rationalist" label they're so proud of because it's basically relying on a might makes right mentality. I engage with a lot of atheists, including the more activist variety that are actively trying to make society more secular and convince people to give up their religion - and very few if any would advocate violence in the name of their cause. They actually believe in the power of human reason and words.

Doesn't change the fact that this image makes me sick to the stomach. Even aside from the Chhristianity aspect - violence and violent rhetoric is the last refuge of small minds.

And then later on I added:

Some people have said that the Dems are happy to win this election without God. Most nonreligious people tend to be liberal, that's true, but that's largely because they see conservatives as trying to force their religion on other people through policy. But in my experience the Democratic Party (and liberals more generally) are much bigger than atheism. Many minorities (ethnic minorities) gravitate toward the Democrat parties, and as a New Yorker I can say few people are as thoroughly religious as ethnic enclaves living far from their birth-culture. Being religious is often the easiest way to stay connected to people from a similar background. That means there are some very religious people in the Democratic Party; I suspect much more religious people than atheists.

The Democrats got into trouble by removing the reference to "God-given talents" from their platform a while ago, but this ignores the fact that there's a whole section on the importance of faith. They're actually taking knocks in the atheist community for that one! :-) (Not sure if it's a new section or just getting publicity because of the God-language thing.) Personally, I prefer my politicians not to use my faith as a tool to get votes. But to the question at hand: as a religious person I've always found that part of who I am and what's important to me was honored by the Dems.

Another commenter then pointed out that the DNC had removed "God" from their official platform and that this proved the current administration was anti-religion, to which I replied:

It's not quite that simple. I don't know why it was taken out, but they didn't take out whole sections on the importance of faith (with the implication that that faith must be *in* something!) and the importance of faith communities in making America great.

But even if what you say is true... so what? The Bible has strong words for people who call on God's name, claim it on themselves, but then behave in thoroughly ungodly ways. We are specifically ordered to care for the widow and the orphan, and to have fair courts to hold the rich accountable, which I believed American policies are failing at shamelessly. You may disagree, or think there are other problems with Obama that trump those concerns. I can respect that. But whatever your position on these things, if we truly want to do as the Bible says, I think we should all be less concerned on calling on God's name, and more with doing what God commands.

"He has shown to you, O man, what is good; and what does the lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Mic 6:8, NKJV)

Someone then said that if you were pro-abortion you couldn't really be Christian. As someone who is both pro-choice (which isn't the same as pro-abortion) and deeply Christian, I took issue. (She also questioned whether Obama was a Christian, and gave this as a reason not to vote for Obama.) I replied:

[on the idea that Christians couldn't be pro-abortion]

First of all, very few people if any are actually pro-abortion. Some people like me are pro-choice, but pray (and work!) for as few abortions as possible. But even if vast swaths of people were pro-abortion, I am simply baffled for where you get this idea that there's a simple litmus test test for who is a Christian and who is not (This is a question so unknowable we are told not to judge another person's salvation), let alone why you think this litmus test is our stance on abortion. I would have thought Christ or at least Paul would have focused more on it, but off the top of my head I can't remember any verses from either of them talking about abortion. Looking at what Jesus taught and rebuked people for, abortion simply doesn't come up.

But more to the point, even if abortion is the defining test for being Christian... so what? The Constitution explicitly says we're not to institute a religious test for who can be elected president. Surely being a good American means electing the best leader full stop and not imposing a standard the Constitution forbids?

Also: are you voting? I assume you're going to vote for the GOP nominee, who fully admits that he is not a Christian, Mitt Romney. I have no problem with Christians voting for non-Christians, but as you seem to, I'm curious with your connecting Obama's non-Christianness to needing to get him out of the White House.

[on whether Obama 2016 proved Obama wasn't Christian.]

I haven't [seen it], but I've seen clips and read reviews. I've also read the book it's based on, and found that book to be thoroughly unfounded propaganda (and of a pretty fringe variety). But even if the movie's true, I'm not sure what it proves about Obama's *religion*. It tries to show he's not a good American, that he's not really bought into the American dream. How in the world does that make him not a Christian

[I was asked whether Jesus would be okay with pushing abortion taking away religious freedoms]

I think Jesus would be more than a bit wary talking about "rights" the way you seem so comfortable doing here. He was faced with a government that was far more oppressive than anything Obama is charged with, and His response to that government was not to fight for general principles. Rather, he looked at the person in front of Him and dealt with that particular situation. Instead of lobbying for a law that made religious freedom absolute and inviolate, I think he would have sat down with the women who had to deal with unwanted pregnancies and make sure they had the options necessary to make good choices.

If someone thought that the poor should be denied health care so that the rich would not have to pay indirectly for something they personally disapproved of, I can well imagine how Jesus would respond. And I fully believe it would be more in line with how he reacted to Pharisees than the woman at the well.

We talked a bit more about abortion, and she also suggested if I read my Bible I would agree with her. I said:

I've never had an abortion and to my knowledge don't know anyone who has, so I'm in no position to speak on that [how painful abortion is to the mother]. But you're being a bit sloppy on some other points:

1. Does *banning* abortions minimize them more than supporting contraceptive availability, sex ed, etc. does?
2. Does the Bible say abortion's not only wrong, but the CENTRAL wrong - so if you get this right you're a Christian, and if you don't, you're not one?
3. Does the fact that a president isn't wanting to make abortion illegal enough of a wrong that it defines him as a bad president?
4. If you believe Obama's not being Christian makes him a bad president, how do you square that with voting for another non-Christian candidate?

As for the baby having its own DNA - that seems like a bad standard, since *any*thing that's alive has its own DNA. Abortion is a complicated issue, much more complicated than many people. If you're really interested, you might read my recent blog post on abortion: http://fidesquaerens.livejournal.com/111574.html

As for whether I've studied the Bible... I'm a lifelong Methodist, and I've heard it preached on growing up. I also read it regularly on my own and have read it through several times as an adult. I'm also a philosophy grad student in philosophy of religion, meaning I work pretty much constantly with a lot of Biblical claims and see whether they run into logical problems or not. That's not devotional reading, but I think it's pretty save to say I'm thoroughly immersed in the Bible and the different traditions of how to read it. (Can't say I've sat in Chris's bible study since I'm not local, though I'm sure it's a blast.) I'm pretty insulted that you think that since I don't agree with you I must not be touched by the Bible, since my religion is so central to who I am, so close to my heart. But I'll pray for the grace to not get upset over that, and will truly try to think of you as a sister in Christ - I think you are one, even though we disagree here!

Finally, we got to talking about Obama's handling of the embassy attack, and in particular the fact that he was campaigning. My response:

the man has a cell phone, and he has aides and advisers around the world gathering information for him. He does not have to be physically in Washington to respond to the news of the day.

Frankly, I was much more upset with Gov. Romney taking the news and using this tragedy in such an obviously political way. I also kind of support the fact that Pres. Obama took the time to gather the facts he needed before making a statement with national security implications, rather than rushing into it. Speaking as the friend of a dead Marine who died in Iraq, I have a special admiration for presidents who understand the situation they're interacting with before making statements that could lead to Americans being put in harm's way.

But just to be clear, I'm not a diehard Obama fan. One can question attacks on his religion and the implication this disqualifies him as a president, without thinking the man can do no wrong.

I'm not asking people to agree with me; that's impossible since you only have my side of the conversation. But my blog posts are often so long and formal. I thought some people might enjoy seeing how my thoughts unrolled tonight. If you have thoughts or reactions to what I was saying (so far as you can tell!), or just general impressions, feel free to leave me a comment.

Sometimes the comics are more about profound truth than humor.

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The cool thing about taking pictures is I notice things I just walk by otherwise. Case in point:

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This is a little pole, about shoulder-high on me. On one side it says "May peace prevail on earth." And then it says it again - in Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, and Spanish. It has a lovely multicultural look to it, but the inclusion of the Spanish really made me sit up and notice because that's a different type of peace than most people think about. Not peace from war, but peace from economic injustice, peace from being named a not-legal person, and peace from split families and bad stereotypes. Sometimes my school does multiculturalism okay after all.

Not so sure about the inclusion of Hebrew. What exactly does it bring to the table that isn't covered by Aramaic and the English? Perhaps I'm being a dunderhead, but its inclusion just struck me as... odd. Almost like it was pandering. Ah, well, it's a lovely thought-provoking monument in any case.

A few days ago, I posted about the topic of God and goodness. Dan Fincke replied with lots of good points that need to be addressed (and I hope to get around to a few of them as time permits – unfortunately it's tight these days), but one in particular jumped out. Dan said he didn't see much about what I thought re: God's moral goodness. So I want to address that first.

I don't believe in a God that is morally good. In my previous post I drew a distinction between what I called moral goodness and ontological goodness, and I do think God is ontologically good but not morally good. So perhaps some definitions are in order. I defined moral goodness as the kind of thing we should praise. Having thought about it some more, I think I prefer a formulation more along the lines of Jaime in Dan's dialogue: effectiveness relationships in the natural world, with the proviso that they are effective toward achieving the kind of things humans ought to do (that lead us to become good humans, that complement and enable our human nature, etc.) Ontological goodness, on the other hand has to do with perfection and completeness. A car with a dent in the bumper is less ontologically good than a car without a dented bumper, for example.

I'm sure this will be controversial. So maybe I should explain more carefully what I mean. In my original post I said that I hadn't thought a lot about the story of the massacre of the Canaanites, which Dan had described as "intellectually responsible." I'd put it more in terms of being psychologically realistic. I have thought a great deal about the problem of pain (or theodicy) but not about the problem of how God could have done bad things in the past. There are issues there, technical philosophical issues that I don't think I can really address, and so I was trying to acknowledge that.

But the reason I haven't thought them through is simply because I don't think we have to turn to the past to find situations that everyone should agree were morally repugnant if they were done by a human. Once you see a dying child who has a cancer not because of something he's done to contract it but just because, you don't need to go much further for evidence that God can't be morally good. And then there's the larger scale. Droughts that take out entire regions. A human psyche that allows for things like "corrective rape" and extreme "disciplining" that leads to children's deaths. These things shock me, so much that I cannot think of anyone who would allow them as morally good.

But I have philosophical reasons as well. Probably the biggest one comes from the definition of "good" Dan proposed in his dialogue. Dan had Jaime define goodness as effectiveness relationships in the natural world. It is good to give to charity because this is a good way of eliminating suffering, something that is essential not just for our comfort but also if we're to become the best humans we can. (As the Jewish proverb goes, where there is no bread, there is no Torah.) I understand those effectiveness-relationships to be important because we need them. If we were entirely self-sufficient and perfectly good there would be no need to be in any kind of relationship with anything else that was an effective way to reach any goal.

It's also worth pointing out that even if there was some goal that God needed an effective way to reach, it wouldn't be the kind of good that a human needs to reach. I take this to mean that the ends that are good for humans would not be good for God, and so God would not be any less good for not acting in a way that would be good for humans to do. (I don't think this boils down to a kind of relativism or subjectivism, by the way. It is still an objective feature of the world that human flourishing is best-served through community and the social obligations that carries along with it (including the obligation to give to charity). Our brains are hard-wired to do well under those circumstances. But it is an objective fact about the world that is not actually effective to helping God be the best God He can be. First of all, because that implies some kind of change is necessary (or even possible); and second, because if such a need did exist, it would be a very different kind of need than our own needs as humans.

There's also the fact that I'm all too aware of the problem of language when describing God. Think of what we mean when we say, for example, "blue." The two most common accounts are that language is innate (in which case it's something we grasp in our minds even before we see the first blue thing), or else it's something we learn through the process of abstraction. Basically, you see several blue things, hear people make that sound of blue, and you look for a similarity between the objects to connect that sound to. Then in the future when you see an object with that same trait you can label it as blue. The problem is that most people who believe in God would say He isn't made of components the things we used to get our concepts from are made from, so any quality our words pick out aren't the kind of thing you'd expect to find in God. Now, God's not blue because He doesn't have a material body. But He's also not powerful, in the same way an A-Bomb or an earthquake is. Because the concept we derive from those experiences simply isn't the kind of thing that applies to God. It's a category mistake to ask whether God is good or evil.

That does leave some pretty big questions, I know. For one, it doesn't really match up with the claims the Gospel presents of a loving God, no need to fear for tomorrow, etc. And even if God has no obligation to be good, we certainly are entitled to say "this action You did is wrong," meaning it gets in the way rather than promoting those effectiveness relationships Jaime was talking about. The only way this is a problem, though, is if you suggest God has a special duty to promote human well-being as opposed to astral well-being or oak tree well-being or whatever. Expecting that seems to put some serious limitations on what God can and cannot do, which conflicts the standard picture of God. All of which makes me think that a world where God directly obeyed human standards of morality wouldn't be a God at all.

It's a grim picture, I'll admit, but it's honestly the only way I can see for the kind of God Christians claim they believe in to exist. I actually do think there's room for a healthy kind of love on this picture, the kind that doesn't ask me to destrioy who I am for your sake or for the sake of the relationship. If it is truly impossible for God to follow human morality without ceasing to be God, then I don't see a problem in saying a loving God would not change reality for our point but would support us as we have to live through it.

This is a topic that can't be answered fully in a blog post, I don't think. (It's a topic we've been struggling with since Epicurus.) I'll keep pegging at it as time allows since it is important, and I may well change my position as I continue to think about things. But, as for right now, those are my thoughts on God and moral goodness.

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As an aside, the title comes from Epicurus's famous statement of the problem of evil (as laid out by Hume): Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

The Atlantic has a piece up looking at the difference between policing and soldiering. The basic case is that soldiers (and I used that word as shorthand for all military forces) shouldn't be expected to do the kind of work that Counter-Insurgency strategies require. They've been trained to use lethal support in defense of American interests, and so asking them to play the world's policemen is work they're just not prepared for. Arguably, it's the kind of work you can't be parepared for - asking for both regular killing and measured judgment may be too much for the human spirit to bear up under.

So far, I agree with that. I've said it before that if you want nation-building you shouldn't send people that are recruited and trained to do something radically different.

But that's about where Dr. Rizer loses me. He quotes several military proverbs, such as the one that's the subject of this post and also the "One shot, one kill" mantra that drill sergeants yell during training. Soldiers, Dr. Rizer argues, have it literally drilled into them that they must shoot the enemy and shoot them dead. they are therefore unprepared to make the kind of judgments we expect of police officers.

The problem is, "one shoot, one kill" requires a level of certainty that you just don't have in today's conflicts. Maybe when we were fighting in trenches or shooting at lines of soldiers in bright-colored uniforms. But today, when you have either terrorist groups or internal civil wars (like the situations in Egypt, Syria, and Libya), that level of certainty just doesn't exist. How do you know for certain whether someone is Taliban, an Afghani soldier fighting the Taliban, or just some ordinary guy who saw soldiers with guns sweeping through his town and decided to run so he wouldn't be nearby? How do you do it quickly, when the guy is running away and may soon have slipped through your fingers if you don't act, as the story in this article tells us?

The article I linked to above tells the story of a US soldier who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter because he fatally shot an Iraqi man. That was during a sweep of a town where they were trying to find terrorists, and the Iraqi man fled the town. They got the Iraqi man into handcuffs (with no small amount of resistance), and the American soldier who was convicted had been told by his CO to shoot him if he tried anything more. Then the Iraqi man tripped (which apparently was read at the time like jumping at one of the U.S. soldiers), and so they shot him.

I have some sympathy for the U.S. soldier who has to live with killing this man, and who now has a three-year prison term and a dishonorable discharge and all the rest. I have even more pity for a man who - whether he was a terrorist or not, whether he was leaping to kill a soldier or not - had already been detained, was in restraints and (one assumes) had been searched for weapons, and was still shot dead. But I have no sympathy for a military that trained people to shoot first, ask questions later, and that told them to shoot to kill - then put them in a situation where judgment was needed. This isn't my grandfather's war (if any war ever was), and this sort of indiscriminate killing is just too damned risky for the situation.

Dr. Rizer says that disasters happen because you expect kids to play policemen when they've been trained to kill. I agree. But those situations where judgment is necessary aren't going away any time soon. The solution isn't to give the soldier carte blanche to fire away; it's to make sure they actually have the skills they need to deal with the situations they're likely to face.

Over at his blog, my friend Dan Fincke posted a link to an editorial by the inimitable Ta-Nehisi Coates. I agree with Dan: the whole editorial is a must-read for people wo like thinking about these things.

Short version of the Coates piece: many people discussing the Civil War consider the war itself a tragedy because of the loss of life; Mr. Coates wonders whether we shouldn't be celebrating it along the same lines of the Revolutionary War or World War II: a lot of suffering that was necessary for some greater good. As Dan frames it in the title of his post, "Should We Celebrate The Civil War With Hot Dogs and Fireworks?"

I feel quite strongly that we shouldn't. Of course, I've always felt pretty strongly that we shouldn't be celebrating any war (and, as Dan's commenter James Sweet rightly points out, we celebrate the Declaration of Independence rather than the Revolutionary War). But I think there's a deeper point to be made here, too. Even if the Civil War was necessary for a greater good, we should still not be celebratory. The thought of thousands dying beneath Antietam's sun should invoke a kind of horror.

Over the holidays I saw a Law and Order: SVU episode, "Harm," for the first time. The reviews online are pretty low, and I'll grant that it has almost nothing to do with sex and at times came off as being propagandish. But the plot did make me think. In it, there's this medical doctor who was engaged as a scientist to devise "torture light" - pressure poses, psychological tactics, and other things that would make people easier to break during interrogation. An ex-detainee had been murdered by a military contractor gone rogue, but said contractor had fled the jurisdiction. The doctor he worked with was left behind, and they wanted to try the doctor for setting in motion the torture that led to a detainee's death.

The doctor was more than a bit mystified by how what she had done could be considered murder, or even immoral. She was saving lives, she wasn't torturing them or even aiding anything as extreme as what the Taliban was probably doing to Americans. And she wasn't the detainees' doctor, she was a consulting scientist. But she was using her knowledge of the human body - gained so she could alleviate suffering - to cause pain and bodily harm. She knew just how much stress a person could go through in a certain position so they wouldn't be able to choose what to say any more, and she taught men with guns how to do it.

By the end of the episode, I was a bit horrified at the good doctor. Not because of what she had done but because she had no remorse. I'm thinking about something David Hume wrote - that reasons guide our emotions but that our emotions are what actually drives us to act or not to act in a certain way. We should be horrified when we have to kill someone or harm them in other ways. Even if that harm ends up being for the greater good. Because without the revulsion we won't think things through and we'll do evil too easily. War should be hard.

I have no problem with people celebrating the Declaration of Independence, or for that matter the emancipation of slavery. But there's something repugnant about thinking someone would want to celebrate Antietam. When that kind of thing happens, I think we've really started lose perspective.

In case you haven't seen the news yet, Osama bin-Laden is dead. I wanted to write about it last night but chose not to, as I had an important exam today and thought I needed to focus on that. And since the internet moves at warp-speed it is in many senses already old news. But I want to do more than just report on the death. I want to reflect on it. I am actually having a very hard time seeing how I should react to it. It feels almost unpatriotic not to be happy today, to be celebrating Osama's death, yeah?

The problem is that as a Christian I am supposed to love my enemy. I am supposed to not take pleasure in anyone's death. And as a pacifist I am not supposed to relish the use of violence, full stop. But I am glad he's dead. NYC is my adopted city, and I very much feel a connection to the events of 9/11. That kind of reckless hate makes me angry. Terrorism, whatever the form (and yes you can see terrorism among other circles, too), is always - always wrong.

And speaking more generally, as an American I should be repulsed by today's events. I grew up loving my country precisely because it was supposed to be a land where ideas gained influence on their merits - not because the powerful had chosen to force us to go one way rather than another. There's a reason we don't have royalty or even nobility on this side of the pond. And violence is in that sense an admission of failure. It is the necessity we see when some side is no longer able to be reasoned with.

How is that an occasion for celebration?

Don't get me wrong, Osama was a truly nasty piece of work. The world is a better place now that he is no longer a part of it. And this particular military action was well-focused - much better focused than *cough* certain gulf wars we have fought in the past, and much more successful. But violence is in its essence dehumanizing. When I act violently toward you, I am saying you no longer have the right to make a rational decision. Your opinion no longer matters. That hurts me, too, because I'm essentially saying that my argument wins, not because it's actually better, but because I'm stronger than you. I in essence take away my own ability to act rationally (or at least throw out an opportunity to do that) at the same time.

And the violence doesn't stop. This is evidenced by our reaction to yesterday's events: we're concerned about counter-attacks. No mistake; this is precisely what we should be concerned about right now. (West Wing fans, think about the reactions people had when Jed Bartlett assassinated a foreign national in Posse Commitatus, eventually leading to Zoey's kidnapping.) But the very fact that we are concerned about protecting ourselves shows me that this current way of doing things is no good. It divides the world into us-vs-them - the kind of thing that MLK identified as the very epitome of an immoral law. There is no law here (which is a whole other issue!) but I think his analysis of the general situation is basically sound.

So I will not be celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden. I will be mourning it, and mourning as well the position he has put my country in. And the events Americans and others took in the past that made him hate us so much, for that matter. We should never have needed to kill him, and I think a bit of Americana died yesterday as well. Certainly the way I view my country has been radically changed, and not just for the good.

I think that's patriotic, in its own way. I love my country so much, I hate to see it torn to shreds. But to paraphrase Rob Bell, love wins. I have to love Osama because he's a human, and that's something worth loving no matter how distorted the humanity is. So I can't relish seeing it destroyed. It's just not in me, and no matter how hard I work not to hate him, I still can't help noticing that when we destroyed him that was not a good thing.

By the way: I tend to keep this journal fanfic free, but I recently wrote two stories on the futility of war. They both feature on Elrond and his reaction to Isildur's choice not to destroy Sauron's ring at the end of the Second Age. (Gil-Galad and Maglor also feature in.) Those of you familiar with Tolkien's books might enjoy them as a meditation on yesterday's events.

"Jus Ad Bellum" (PDF / HTML)
"Jus in Bello" (PDF / HTML)

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gun issues revisited
The Hunger Games: Get to a Bow
various thoughts on religion + politics, abortion, and Obama's religion
jus in bello
Marta365: Peace Sign of a different sort
Whence Cometh Evil?
"It is better to be judged by twelve than carried by six"
Thus Victory is Shorn of Gladness
thoughts on Osama's death

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Marta's Mathoms

because not all who wander are lost

Entries tagged with war

gun issues revisited

The Hunger Games: Get to a Bow

various thoughts on religion + politics, abortion, and Obama's religion

jus in bello

Marta365: Peace Sign of a different sort

Whence Cometh Evil?

"It is better to be judged by twelve than carried by six"

Thus Victory is Shorn of Gladness

thoughts on Osama's death