Since it is impossible to count on enough moral goodwill among those who possess irresponsible power to sacrifice it for the good of the whole, it must be destroyed by coercive methods and these will always run the peril of introducing new forms of injustice in place of those abolished. -- Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man in an Immoral Society
I worry. I also have an expertise at feeling guilty. I suspect that I'm somehow to blame for "American Idol" and clamshell packaging. I used to be outraged all the time (even when I was asleep, as I could snore with an expression of horror and angst), but now I'm filled with dread. The good have taken up the tools of the wicked.
Tom Junod has an inescapable article at Esquire Politics. I recommend it highly, but bring an oxygen mask, because he leaves the reader a bit abraded and breathless. I do not want to tread the same ground that he does, but I suppose we need to pick up the cudgels anyway.
Junod uses the phrase "the lethal presidency" to refer to the executive who commands drones and, in a black mirror of Santa Claus, looks over a list and checks it twice. However, Junod was looking from the point of view of legal and political theory. Fire Dog Lake looked from a political point of view. The questions there are fearful. I want to ask, instead, about our silence.
I noted, first, on the day after we heard about the shooting of Osama bin Laden, and I ask again: how unearthly quiet is our moral philosophy! How dead is our religious dialog! I am no great matter, but I'll explain why I think this quietism is not just a twee little fit after our cross-tie of dedication.
I assume that each of us feels as strongly today that any president of the United States must honor the FISA laws as we did when Dunce the Second gleefully campaigned on flaunting security regulations. (Remember that Karl Rove was delighted to "use" the warrantless wiretapping revealed in The New York Times as a sign of how safe Dunce II had kept America?) The fact that we do not speak of our alarm, I am sure, is not because it's our miner combing data, but rather because we understand, have examined, and truly believe that President Obama has established alegal theory and framework for packet sniffing and transit bugging.
The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! -- William Pitt the Elder, 1763
The Niebuhr quote I have at my head is a reference to the simple fact that
Cincinnatus is a myth. We know that genuinely good people who pick up powerful tools find themselves bending beneath the weight as the tools become weapons. No matter how placid and wise they are, they become the warrior whom the armor fits.
During the years of Ronnie Raygun, we pursued a ridiculous fantasy as a nation. We devoted over $1,200,000,000 to the Strategic Defense Initiative -- a system of x-ray lasers orbiting the earth that were meant to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles during their brief passage through space. We added to S.D.I. anti-missile missiles. Then we added "killer satellite defense." The Soviet Union flipped out, and Americans couldn't understand why. After all, Reagan promised that, once we had developed and deployed the "nuclear umbrella," we'd share the technology with them.
I remember thinking, "An x-ray laser is stupid." In fact, war game groups demonstrated that defending against S.D.I. cost in the neighborhood of hundreds of dollars a missile, but S.D.I. itself was expending at a rate of $1.1 trillion with nothing defended against. So, then I thought, "A laser using a fusion explosion to generate an x-ray pulse would not catch an ICBM, but, if there were clear skies and good cameras, it could sure fry up a target on the ground." Then I realized that every nation had figured out the same thing. As a defensive system, SDI made no sense, but as a weapon it looked really cool.
We never talked about that, though. The United States never discussed x-ray lasers and the potential to select a single car or person and then have that person or place erased. No, we broke into "two sides: those who believe the president, and those who do not." Then there was a Wim Wenders movie that addressed the issue obliquely. (If you're Jonesing for "whatever happened to Star Wars," you needn't worry. It's in good health, and you can learn about all sorts of things you've been buying with your payroll taxes here.)
Now, even though the x-ray lasers are not floating up there (so far as I know), we have achieved the same basic proposition: the erasure of a specific fifty foot radius. What's more, we can do it as an act of cool emotion. From the point of view of war, this is an unquestionable good. From the point of view of good, though, or peace, it's not.
What is the difference between a killing and a murder? Is it the grim joke: "We kill, but they murder." Is it a killing if it is military and a murder if it is non-defensive and off a battlefield?
The luxury of the bomber pilot was the disconnect from the carnage he caused, and that luxury became a neurosis and mortal wound to the mind for some pilots and bombardiers. Humans by nature do not kill, inflict pain, or destroy homes or the labors of our fellow humans. The people who pilot drone aircraft report psychological issues as well.
If an Air Force pilot or a president stares through a high resolution camera beneath an RPA ("Reaper") and sees people walking around a car, and then hits the switch to fire a Hellfire missile, then 1) The person killing is in no danger of being harmed at all, 2) the person killing has seconds to watch another human react to the sound of the missile, 3) must see what is left after the strike to offer confirmation. It is as close to murder as war can get. Thus, it is no surprise that the comforts and normality of life surrounding the Predator and Reaper pilots makes their stress worse rather than better. It increases the distance between killing and reacting. It makes them into predators of persons. No matter how well they know the story of the target's crimes, the human morality arguing with the mission.
What, though, does this do to the soul of the state?
Can we say that a nation is defended by a targeted killing? Can we argue, even in fantasy, that there is existential "self-defense" in destroying a person residing in a sovereign foreign nation who wishes to do us harm? The intent, and even conspiracy, is transferring to the level of act -- "terror" as a war opponent is being matched by "evil doer" as "enemy combatant." In fact, it places the president not merely in the position of killer, but of God.
Suppose our greatest personal enemy alive. Such a one could wish us ill, but he would need to plan (conspire). So long as he was in a sovereign nation, he is a problem for it. To achieve the "evil," his conspiracy needs planning and execution. The execution of the act is, in normal circumstances, the crime. After having committed a crime, the person may indeed be wanted, may be tried in absentia, but for a crime rather than an intent. When we are able to kill people remotely for their plans, for their desires, then we are weighing their souls on our scales, pronouncing sentence by an executive, and then killing for the crime of intent. What moral stance does this give us?
I am not saying, incidentally, that the current president has killed for intent alone, although it appears so in one case, but I am saying that all of us are tainted by silence as much as by assent. The invisible plane that may now be over your own head is a heavy, heavy tool -- as heavy as an atomic bomb in its moral consequence -- and we are allowing emotion, exigency, and party to determine our response.
(Oh, and if you want to call me some name, file this under "making better Democrats.")