Moral Equivalence?

After (with my gratitude) reading my blog’s initial couple of entries, LGF reader Beagle remarked that he was worried by my Manichean tendencies. This has been bothering me since I read his comment; Beagle didn’t mean it unkindly, and I do respect him, as he actually knows what he means when he uses the word Manichean.

 However, I am not a Manichean.

 On its simplest level, and it is a gross over-simplification, to be a Manichean is to posit an exact equivalence between good and evil, dark and light. Dark started the conflict by invading the light. I do not believe any such thing; I am no believer, as I’ve said before. However, it is, in my not-so-humble view, literally insane to posit the notion that God (or Goddess, I am not apt to argue for a male Supreme Being) would create his equal and opposite.

 Further, it unnecessarily complicates theology and the cosmos to posit a Creator who creates equal and opposite delegates of his authority, then withdraws to watch it all play out. Think about that too long, and you will arrive at a point where you think rather badly of God.

 C. S. Lewis, in his introduction to The Screwtape Letters reminds us, rather tartly, that the Adversary’s proper equivalent in the heavenly hierarchy is the Archangel Michael, not God. Anyone with a proper grasp of theology knows that the Devil cannot act, he can only persuade; Satan is not referred to as the Great Deceiver for nothing. (Incidentally, and I won’t go into this unless I’m specifically asked, this was a terrible complication for those prosecuting the imaginary crime of witchcraft.) As beings with free will, we always have a choice between good and evil.

 Humans are not inherently evil; theologically speaking, that’s a nonsense statement. Human beings are, indeed, fallen, because we know the difference between good and evil, and sometimes, regrettably, choose evil. By the age of seven, children know the difference between right and wrong (as mediated by their parent culture), provided their parents have bothered to have a consistent system of rewards and punishments. Cultures can and have changed and evolved over time, and (gasp!) some are better than others. (That is a subject for another time, when I’m feeling extremely brave and ready to discuss the huge, unwieldy subject of civilization. Not tonight, though.)

 Since we know the difference, and can – should we choose to exercise our brains for half a second – distinguish degrees of good and evil, there is no excusing the current fashion for moral equivalence. A morning meal may be a physical requirement for people; various foods may be dictated by culture; but there is a distinct difference between your omelet and casually scarfing down the meat of a human being. No matter how some people will try to pretend otherwise, the difference is perfectly clear.

 On Tuesday, June 14, 2005, Senator Durbin of Illinois rose and, according to the Congressional Record, read in one paragraph from an FBI report on the treatment of illegal combatants under interrogation. This one paragraph, lifted without context or clear reference, read: 

On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. ..... On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

Since Senator Durbin failed to supply a proper reference, and an admittedly cursory search for the document from which this paragraph was taken has not revealed it, I am unclear on when this was written, and under what circumstances. This paragraph is not pleasant reading – but just as at Abu Ghraib, one cannot help but wonder if the abuses depicted have not already been addressed, and the perpetrator or perpetrators punished. Furthermore, without condoning the actions, I am not inclined to feel all that much sympathy, for these “detainees” were captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.

All right, so the treatment is not – as someone put it (and please don’t hesitate to take credit, as I can’t find the source) – a four-star suite at the Bellagio. But Durbin went on to say:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Take a breath. Count to ten. Now do it again. Try to calm down, because the rest of the discussion isn’t going to work if we don’t keep our heads.

 First of all, unlike the poor rabbits described in Gulag Archipelago, no one has been arrested for nothing at all, no one is being forced to confess to an imaginary crime, and no one is going to receive a bullet in the back of the neck at the end of their interrogation. There is no “conveyor”, there is no order to “beat and beat again”, the detainees will not be subjected to a sham trial, sent to a forced labor camp, or taken down to a basement and shot. Their bodies will not be dumped into secret, unmarked graves, their wives and friends will not follow them down the same road, and their children will not be shipped to “homes” where they will be treated as wild animals.

 Unlike Osip Mandelstam, not one of the men detained is being held for having written a satirical poem about George Bush. Or, for a more recent example, no detainee will be falsely imprisoned, force-fed and locked in solitary confinement as was Irina Ratushinskaya.

 Look at Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, or Harvest of Sorrow. Read, if you have the stomach and the heart, The Gulag Archipelago, and the many narratives of Soviet and other totalitarian victims and prisoners. Consult The Black Book of Communism. Then read the initial paragraph Senator Durbin read into the Congressional Record; you will search in vain for anything even vaguely resembling the wholesale, deliberate destruction of innocent human beings.

 The interrogators, American service people, have a chain of command and a code of conduct. If they behaved unacceptably, they will be prosecuted and punished for their actions. They will not evade proper accountability. In all likelihood, they have already been punished. If, as I think, this report is from 2002 or 2003, the relevance of Durbin’s outburst is even more suspect. When the whole story is dispassionately investigated – and that’s not what Senator Durbin intended with this speech – you will find neatly docketed consequences for any infractions of proper conduct.

 Bad behavior by American interrogators is not morally equivalent to the behavior of the Nazis, the Soviets, Pol Pot, or Saddam Hussein.

 Since Senator Durbin can make such a comparison, he does not belong in the United States Senate.