Two Voices on Utilitarian Ethics and War

Funny how this issue keeps coming back to haunt me. Second time in a week that it hits the news.

While I have long been aligned with the movement from an economic point of view, I have always found the Right's willingness to embrace utilitarian ethics in warfare, or loosely defined warfare, (WWII, "War on Terror") disturbing.

Bret Stephens, a fine and intelligent gentlemen, has written a piece in the Wall Street Journal defending the "limited use" of waterboarding torture; citing as analogous our somewhat morally extraordinary behavior in World War II. A related video link is below.

Contrast that with journalist Stephen Grey's contention, in his new book Ghost Plane, that horrific things have been done during "rendition" of terror suspects, and that there is serious professional opinion that there are other ways to get information beside waterboarding, etc. See the video link below.

My contention against the Right on this issue (and against situationists in general, Left or Right) has always been epistemological.

The claim to "know" what will happen, and thereby justify "extraordinary" actions, even when rooted most firmly in statistical projection, ignores the nature of moral responsibility, where the actions of war lie within human choices.

We can't "know" that a result will come in the same sense we can predict a chemical reaction - because the choice to carry on or not carry on is always there.

And even where we can predict an outcome, the prediction should not hold the same moral weight.

There is a certain degree of moral vanity and underlying self-interest (pace Oppenheimer, see my last post), I can't put my finger on it, in suggesting that a kind of moral uber-man must emerge to do terrible things in the name of goodness, at any time. (The great myth of the "disinterested" utilitarian.)

Is not this moral vanity at the heart of every repugnant "real-politik" politician and so-called "professional" amoral foreign policy operative we have ever heard of?

One is not responsible to single-handedly prevent evil that will come as the result of the choices and actions of others - so long as one does everything one humanely can to prevent those actions directly. That means against the aggressor. Not against those the aggressor knows or cares about.

And even against the aggressor, cruel and unusal behavior is inherently codependent.

I don't know how to "prove" this. Stephens will cite the "facts" of history to make his case. The War ended. But are those all the facts? As Hadley Arkes once noted in his text, "First Things" the effects of Caesar crossing the Rubicon are never all in. Perhaps the effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still inform the thinking of Osama bin Laden? Perhaps they still inform the thinking of our foreign policy establishment, creating new ripples of codependence and reaction.

While I have respect for the facts of math and science, I also know that "facts" are often selected with certain biases. Ethical moments are not over when the news cycle is over. Americans look upon the morality of World War II entirely too much through the haze of triumphalist newsreels, and ignore the potentially codependent after-effects.

In any event, have a look at these two videos. Intelligent cases made. But, one is wrong; the other right.