Nearly two generations ago, on April 22, 1971 a young veteran named John Kerry made this statement to Congress –
We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we are trying to do that, and we are doing it with thousands of rationalizations ...
Harry Reid told the President this week that the Iraq was lost. More importantly he drew the comparison of Bush’s preemptive war of choice to the bitter immorality of Vietnam. These wars are immoral. But the Iraqi conflict is immoral for a host of reasons. I wish to focus on one immorality as it applies to our own society. If the President is right and the war in Iraq is justified then honor the troops by pledging to societal consequences for the war. The war can be ended by Congress – this too was understood by that young veteran.
We are asking here in Washington for some action, action from the Congress of the United States of America which as the power to raise and maintain armies, and which by the Constitution also has the power to declare war.
It took three more years from the date of John Kerry's statement of morality to end American military involvement in Vietnam. And during that time the societal consequences of the Vietnam War were drawn down. The draft suspended. And no taxes were adopted to pay for this war to protect democracy for South Vietnam. It was the beginning of American detachment from the military policy of our nation.
How many years will the United States be willing to engage in this immoral war in Iraq? Congress can end this war by defunding it or by insisting that President support the troops by calling for a societal sacrifice – Taxes to pay for the war – to train, equip and adequately protect and care for the troops and veterans. And yes a draft to staff, rest and adequately deploy sufficient troops for mutual protection troop protection. I oppose both of these steps but if the war is the moral choice than accept these bitter pills President Bush and call for their enactment today. I OPPOSE THIS WAR and will resist such a call by the President. What I am saying here though is that Bush's claims of morality associated with this immoral war do not pass the smell test.
The Presidents actual choice is to make the national sacrifice limited to "we feel your pain". We will never be called upon to give our lives or treasure unless by our own individual choice we choose to - and frankly let’s face it - we do not make that choice. The President rejects this alternative because in paraphrasing the words used in a rare moment of honesty of Vice President Cheney in the face of his evasion of the draft, we have other priorities.
President Bush fails the morality test of this war.
University of Oregon Professor of Philosophy, Cheney Ryan has identified the concept of the Principle of Personal Integrity. (PPI) Professor Ryan correctly raises the ethical and moral question of burden sharing in the pursuit of war. Professor Ryan asserts that if the cause of my nation makes it worthy for war and I support this war am I willing to die in that cause.
Professor Ryan's Morality Test:
My thinking was that if I did not deem that war worthy enough for me to die in it--tomorrow, say--then how in good conscience could I endorse policies that ask someone else to make this sacrifice? To do so would be a bit like saying: "I am all in favor of social policy X, a policy that will impose an enormous cost on a certain number of people-- but I am not willing to bear that cost myself. I support it, rather, in the full knowledge that I will not be asked to bear that cost." As an academic philosopher, I'm inclined to restate the thinking here in terms of a more general principle for thinking about personal responsibility and military action: You should only endorse those military actions of your country in which you yourself would be willing to give your life (tomorrow).
How many Americans are able to accept the consequences of this moral imperative? Not seemingly enough. But American detachment is thankfully waning. Polls show strong support for the Democratic Congress to end the American involvement in Iraq. And Congressional leadership appears to be gaining understanding that we are sacrificing our lives and treasure in a clearly immoral fashion for this war, so it must and needs to be ended.
Professor Ryan continues:
"I call it a principle of "integrity" because the reasoning behind it would seem to be this: when I endorse particular military actions of my country, then I, as a citizen of a democracy, am asking some of my fellow citizens to participate in that war and die in it. The issue of integrity is that if I ask a fellow citizen to do something, then I ought to be willing to do it myself. Standing behind the issue of integrity is the value of reciprocity, which political philosophers have recently identified as the heart of liberal thinking. To violate the PPI is to impose an unfair burden on others."
As we can see the moral way of thinking is not to impose the burden upon others that we ourselves would not carry. But there is no societal sacrifice in this war. There are examples of individual sacrifice but our society and particularly our President are distantly removed from the sacrifice. The President rushes to attend the memorial for the tragedy of VaTech but has not attended a single funeral of a fallen soldier from Iraq or Afghanistan. Or worse, our government censors the pictures of the returning coffins filled with the individual sacrifice of the few placing the sacrifice much further than arms length away from our reality as a society.
Most Americans, like the President can live our lives detached from the harsh realities of this horrible war and criminal occupation. We extend this wonderland of detachment in that we have no immediate economic consequences to change our blissful reality either. Instead our leaders let us as a nation rack up billions in debt, removing the economic reality to some other burden bearers of the distant future. Never mind, that these fiscal consequences will land squarely upon our children and grandchildren and wreck potential economic ruin upon our nation. But recognition is growing in our populace – recognition of the iniquity of this immoral war. I believe that we must make this a moral values based question because this war is immoral.
Professor Ryan also points out that paying others to fight and die for you is immoral as well:
That average persons should count on bearing the costs of wars was regarded as a requirement of personal morality (what I have called integrity). In fact, Kant maintains that paying men to kill or be killed violates their "rights of humanity." General citizen involvement in wars was also seen as contributing to a kind of democratic prudence. The Founding Fathers reasoned that if average citizens know that the costs of a war will be extracted from their purses or bodily persons, they will exercise much greater caution in endorsing that war. This point lies at the heart of what has come to be called the "democratic peace thesis"--the notion that democracies will be less inclined to go to war because they impose the costs of wars on the average citizens who, through their representatives, decide whether or not to go to war. Kant speaks of how they will weigh the "calamities" of war seriously because they can count on "doing the fighting themselves" and "paying the costs of war from their own resources."
So Congress, listen to the distant words of John Kerry and end this immoral war. You have the power and the moral authority to do so. The moral choices ought to be to call for broad national sacrifice if this is a moral war or to end it. The choice is simple, really. We as a nation, including our national (mis)leader are unwilling to call for a broad national sacrifice.
Conclusion – the WAR IS IMMORAL. End it now.