Legal, Ethical, and Wise. Ethical?

I’m troubled.

“These strikes are legal, they are ethical and they are wise. The US government takes great care in deciding to pursue an Al Qaeda terrorist, to ensure precision and to avoid loss of innocent life.” Thus were the words of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney during a briefing in Washington. The response was about using the drone technology in the war on terror.

I am not an attorney or know enough about the law to have some sort of idea if this is legal or not. As for wise, maybe, maybe not. I’m thinking it is logically wiser to kill people remotely without putting American troops in harm’s way, but I’m also thinking that we are not going to be the only nation able to kill others by way of drones. Maybe I am naïve in thinking this, but it seems to me that we are inviting others to participate in this process.

President Obama is on the receiving end of a great deal of rhetoric about being weak in terror and unwilling or unable to be a good Commander in Chief because he is so weak. He was, after all, opposed to invading Iraq. Wise? I don’t know, but that’s not my topic of discussion.

Jay Carney, when you remove the other verbiage is saying that drone strikes are ethical. The United States, he is saying, has an ethical right to track down people we perceive to be dangerous to us. That ethical bearing comes on foreign lands, and people of any race or nationality. It is ethical for us to unilaterally kill people we perceive to be our enemies.

Is it ethical? I have my doubts. To be honest, I’m being mild when I say I have my doubts. I think Carney and the President are flat out wrong. Sadly, this is not the first time we have seen the word ‘ethics’ thrown around flippantly.

I’ve always thought Thomas Aquinas’ Just War Theory is a good foundational document as it does require serious reflection before making war. It went something like this:

Just cause

The reason for going to war needs to be just and cannot therefore be solely for recapturing things taken or punishing people who have done wrong; innocent life must be in imminent danger and intervention must be to protect life.

Comparative justice

While there may be rights and wrongs on all sides of a conflict, to overcome the presumption against the use of force, the injustice suffered by one party must significantly outweigh that suffered by the other.

Competent authority

Only duly constituted public authorities may wage war. "A just war must be initiated by a political authority within a political system that allows distinctions of justice.

Right intention

Force may be used only in a truly just cause and solely for that purpose—correcting a suffered wrong is considered a right intention, while material gain or maintaining economies is not.

Probability of success

Arms may not be used in a futile cause or in a case where disproportionate measures are required to achieve success;

Last resort

Force may be used only after all peaceful and viable alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted or are clearly not practical. It may be clear that the other side is using negotiations as a delaying tactic and will not make meaningful concessions.

Proportionality

The anticipated benefits of waging a war must be proportionate to its expected evils or harms.

In modern terms, just war is waged in terms of self-defense, or in defense of another (with sufficient evidence).

According to the American Constitution the Congress has the right to ‘declare war.’ The last declared war the United States has actually fought in was World War II. It seems to me that we have given virtually every American President the right to wage war as he sees fit, since the last time Congress actually declared a war. Everyone has claimed it to be ethical.

Our most recent wars have been in Afghanistan and Iraq. One can make a coherent and ethical argument for our original endeavor into Afghanistan. I believe the argument gets diluted in time and our continued efforts in that region have, at least in my mind, less than ethical. The war in Iraq, the second war, seems, from any ethical premise, to have been very much unethical. That is not a defense of Hussein, he was horrible. I just do not believe we had a right to unilaterally invade a nation under what proved to be false premises. Additionally, the United Nations inspectors were demonized for finding nothing----and they were proven to be right. They found nothing as there was nothing to find.

And now we have drone attacks.

At face value, there is something good about these. American troops are not in harm’s way. The drones are controlled from places far, far away from the action. This is even safer than high flying aircrafts or missiles fired from ships. Those have to be somewhat in the region----but the drones are controlled from far away.

In seeing how the drones work, I was struck by how much it seemed like a video game. There were pictures on a screen, a comfortable seat, a control stick, and then you shoot. The difference is, however, that in a video game one gets points. In a drone attack people die. The ‘killer’ never sees the faces of the victims, never sees the blood. He or she simply goes home and eats dinner, watches television. Another day at the office is completed.

These attacks are on people deemed to be threats to the United States. What happens if the intelligence is wrong? How are we different from the terrorists? I truly grapple with this.

It may be legal. It may or may not be wise. Decreeing something to be ethical does not make it so.

Ethics seems to have morphed into an election of sorts. Majority rules. If the majority of people say something is ethical, then it is ethical. Or, if a person in power decrees something to be ethical, it is ethical. Or, if a church decrees something to be ethical or unethical, then that church is right and that church’s opinion should be respected over everyone else. And, if one church is bigger than another church that disagrees, the bigger church is right.

This kind of logic consistently gets us in trouble. Ethical behavior is not about majority rule; it’s about finding and living with time honored principles. And, yes, sometimes those time honored principles are inconvenient or disagree with our political perspectives.

But if we want to call ourselves an ethical people, we should live it even when it is amazingly inconvenient.