Tainted Justice: War as a Moral Sewer

In my post on Kosovo I listed two reasons why justification of national aggression is unwarranted: 1) national aggression can never right a wrong; 2) 'good men' (in particular national leaders) are guilty of habitually committing incredible evil acts against humanity and are therefore incapable of pursuing a justice that is untainted by their own moral decay. In this post I will further develop this second reason.

MEN ARE NOT GOOD AND CONSEQUENTLY ARE UNABLE TO PURSUE MORALLY UNTAINTED JUSTICE (E.G.: JUSTICE THAT IS NOT BIASED TO ANY DEGREE BY GREED OR REVENGE).

Descarte has set us Westerners on a path which we cannot un-walk. Our path is one that wanders through a land where perceptions are lying critters seeking to deceive us all. Only in thinking straight can we set our lying perceptions straight. Unfortunately, we have ambled far enough down the twisted path to realize that even our thinking belies us. Consequently our perceptions are uncorrected and our grip on reality can easily be lost. Upon such a dizzying path justice may seem as a dart throw in the dark. In the following paragraphs I will discuss three ways in which justice is lost: 1) natural outcomes; 2) universal greed; 3) oppression. No human justice (or justice system) is immune from at least one of these causes; all fall short of justice.

1) JUSTICE IS LOST BECAUSE OF NATURAL OUTCOMES

There is no doubt that blind justice is employed to help uphold each person's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately for justice it is an impossibility for everyone to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. During conditions of famine not all will have access to food. During conditions of war not all will have life. During economic depression not all will have the freedom to choose a vocation. Hell, during Alaskan winters not all will be happy. In our world someone must always play the part of the subservient, the cripple, the starving, the poor, the indigent, the dying, the imprisoned, the soldier, the scape goat, the glum, the suffering. Even if justice is employed in the service of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it has more work than it can handle.

2) JUSTICE IS LOST BECAUSE OF UNIVERSAL GREED

Additionally, there is substantial doubt that an impartial justice can be employed to ensure that people have their rights upheld. Even those who seek power with pure motives can succumb to the comfort provided them by their position of power. Greed seeps into hearts insidiously and perverts powerful people into power mongers and wealth hoarders. The perverted heart becomes blind to certain people in need of justice. A deceptive web is woven via euphemisms, ethnocentric/geocentric views of global situations, emotional detachment, and rationalizations. This web serves to maintain comfort by preventing feelings of guilt or conviction which would motivate powerful people to give up their comfortable lives for the sake of bringing justice to those in need.

One good example of justice being subjugated for the sake of comfort can be found in the United States of America. Since September 11th the United States has been increasing national security at all costs. The lifestyle of America is at stake (see President Bush's comments encouraging people to go out and spend money in response to Sept 11th terrorist attacks). One cost had been our moral sense regarding torture. Before 9/11 the American government officially condemned the use of cruel treatment to obtain information. After 9/11 torture (although never referred to as 'torture') was used by government officials to obtain information. It was not until debates in Congress during 2006 that this practice was voted against. But even here the President was given the clearance to authorize this practices at his discretion.

Additionally, the United States of America has officially denied habeas corpus rights to detainees at Guantanamo. Habeas corpus is the right to compel the executive to justify itself when it imprisons people. Without this right the executive has unchecked power to imprison people for an indefinite period without evidence of maleficence. Justice is obscured.

One basic moral underpinning for international law is the law of moral universality–"what applies to you applies to me." This moral law is spelled out by the US government in the language of the State Department’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” (www.state.gov/g/drl/hr/60372.htm) If an innocent US citizen were captured in Iran and imprisoned INDEFINITELY by the Iranian government as an unlawful enemy combatant and the Iranian government would not allow the US citizen to contest his imprisonment, would the US Department of Justice object to the imprisonment? I dare say that they would contest with a great deal of power. (For a comparable situation we need look no further than the Iranian capture of British UN troops.) Iran commiting a crime like this would be headline material in America, and yet the US government has little to no qualms about employing this legal practice (or lack thereof) on its own 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If the detainee is accused of committing unlawful combat against the US, why is he not allowed to face the military tribunal and ask them to justly accuse him? In this situation American security is 'maintained' at the expense of justice. I believe this to be a case of greed (for power) subverting the cause of justice.

3) JUSTICE IS LOST BECAUSE OF OPPRESSION.

There even exists a substantial doubt that justice will always be employed in the service of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; justice does often do free lance work for murder, oppression and the pursuit of misery. Does anyone doubt this? Allow me to give examples from recent history. Murder: OJ Simpson. Oppression: Jim Crow laws. The pursuit of misery: tax hikes (so much for being a liberal:). These all sound fluffy or remote only because they mostly are. But the fact that justice does the work of oppression and misery is very real and very current. This has become vividly apparent to me as I have acquainted myself with the International Justice Mission (www.ijm.org). The Justice Mission intervenes in many cases of forced child prostitution. The process of rescuing a child from prostitution involves secretly recording evidence of pimping, contacting local police and working with the victims and their families. Even if the evidence is recorded and the local police officials are convinced to act, the case is far from over. Often times the pimps will find a way to threaten violence to the victims if they testify in court. At other times the families will deceive the children by convincing them that they were not going to be sold as prostitutes, but as laborers who would help the family earn desperately needed money. If the pimps prevail in wielding their influence, justice will be used to uphold the prostitution rings at trial. In situations such as this we find that ironically justice serves the purposes of injustice.

At this point let me emphasize that I am not making a case against justice. Rather I am making a case against the notion that human justice can be issued from a morally pure stand point. I am not expounding the idea that all behavior is equally acceptable or that all values are equally good. Justice does undoubtedly exist as does a definite good and a definite evil which are requisite for said justice. Murder must either be good or evil; it cannot be both good and evil. It might at sometimes be necessary (Hitler) and at other times be unnecessary (Able), but it is at all times only either good or evil. To make murder arbitrarily good or to make its moral nature (e.g.: good/evil) situationally relative is to turn justice into not-justice. If justice becomes relative, then a society cannot rely on it for vindication. For instance, when a baby's life is endangered in a society which decides that killing a child is morally ambivalent what recourse will that baby have to life?

I am also not asserting that justice should not be pursued. What sort of world would we experience if the weak were not defended or the poor were not aided? Such a world would be dominated by oppressors and would be a miserable hell. My point in this blog is to show the culpability of all people. When justice is pursued by humans it is never pursued from a morally pure position. All people are morally corrupt to one degree or another. When two people fight each other they both begin from a morally tarnished position (regardless of the circumstance that led to the fight). Justifying one of the two people is not possible. They are both wrong. We might say that one needed to fight (self protection) but we cannot say that this person was fighting with a pure heart or a history of pure motives. Undoubtedly the person we attempt to justify has some internal moral flaw (e.g.: rage, bitterness, etc.) which would motivate him to cause harm to the other person. Likewise, when one nation wars against another it is not correct to justify the one nation over the other. Both nations are culpable. Both nations would cause harm to the other for the purposes of selfish gain.

We like to think of an altruistic nation which intervenes for the sake of justice and which is willing to pursue justice even to its own detriment. Reality shows that victors in war always gain power over others in one way or another, be it economically or governmentally or in some other way. Even when justice is being pursued, power is gained by the victor. A power which, again, will insidiously pervert the motives of a nation such that it works to consolidate its hold on power at the expense of justice. If national aggression is to be embraced it will not be by justifying actions. People and nations are always morally culpable. Aggression is always morally evil, even if necessary. Aggression is one of the many moral sewers in which the world's depravity is incarnated in all of its vileness. This sewer serves as a dumping ground for the victorious nation's shit. A place far away from the public's consciousness where the excess depravity of its society can be discarded. The victor can sanitize its own waste as much as it wants to, however, this sanitizing does nothing to make the victor less full of shit.

On a scriptural note I would like to highlight the nation of Israel. Called out by God to be God's people, they were warned by the great YHWH not to stray from His commands (Deut 29). YHWH speaks to them and tells them that the punishment for straying would be invasion by other countries, an invasion that would result in dispersion. Later on (Deut 30) YHWH speaks in a manner which reveals that Israel's rebellion is not a maybe, but a definite. "So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the LORD your God has banished you..." When these people fail to love YHWH (a people who carry the authority of YHWH) they are punished. YHWH's chosen authorities are not perfect in their love of YHWH and are not immune to God's judgment.

As a Christian I am reminded that the love of my Heavenly Father is not possible without a demonstrative love for my earthly brother (I John 3:17). Likewise, I hold the nation which does not demonstratively love its brother via an accurate pursuit of justice to be guilty of not loving God. Since all nations are guilty of not loving their brothers this way, all nations are culpable before the great I Am. Justification is out of the equation.

Let us say, then, that national aggression is not justifiable. We may still decide that it is a necessary evil. I will discuss the idea of war as a necessary evil in my post regarding the current Darfur tragedy.