Thursday, September 17. 2009
Picture and Comment: Soldaten sind Mörder
In Berlin a couple of weeks ago, I took this photo:
Germany is not a perfect society by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's only marginally less calcified, unequal, and corrupt than the United States. But the spectrum of discourse and the acceptance of thought can seem at times to be miles away from what passes for "civic engagement" in the United States. Today, I bring you my own translation from the German Wikipedia of an article that doesn't have an English-language counterpart. It won't take you long to see why.
In fact, the idea is so insidious in its truth that the English Wikipedia, in its article on Kurt Tucholsky, doesn't mention the essay or the aphorism. Think of it: an article about Shakespeare that doesn't mention Hamlet. For all its might, the dehumanizing force of patriotism and militarism is awfully afraid.
SOLDIERS ARE MURDERERS
The phrase "soldiers are murderers" originally comes from an essay by Kurt Tucholsky called "The Guarded Spectacle of War" (Der bewachte Kriegsschauplatz), published in the magazine 'The World Stage' on August 4th, 1931. Using the pseudonym Ignaz Wrobel, Tucholsky wrote:
"For four years there were entire square miles of land upon which murder was obligatory, while half an hour away it was just as strictly prohibited. Did I say murder? Of course I did. Soldiers are murderers."
The editor of the magazine, Carl von Ossietzky, was prosecuted for "slandering the Reich's army" and acquitted, since the statement could not have been said to refer to any specific person and a 'non-specific entirety' could not be the object of an insult, at least for the purposes of criminal law. In the following years and decades, the phrase became a rallying cry of pacifists and opponents of the Nazi army and later of the German Federal Army (today's Bundeswehr), appearing again and again in many different contexts. More recent discussion of the phrase in Germany has focused on the fact that the armies on both sides of the Second World War committed multiple war crimes.
Development of the public discussion
Tucholsky, himself a soldier in the First World War and one of the co-founders, in 1919, of "War Veterans for Peace", directed his statement at what he called the "organized killing" in wartime. His objection was that out of purely national interests, able-bodied men were forced to kill by their governments: war was directed, collective murder. Tucholsky had defended this view publicly before the 1931 publication, but it wasn't until it appeared in The World Stage that the defence minister in the Weimar Republic, Wilhelm Groener, decided to pursue a prosecution. [...]
Since the 1980s, German federal courts have been confronted again and again with actions of which this phrase has been at the centre. For the most part, the position of the courts has been clear: the phrase as such is protected by the freedom of speech (Article 5 of the German constitution), but can give rise to liability at civil or criminal law if used against a specific person not under investigation for murder. The controversy reached a high point during the administration of Helmut Kohl (1982-1998), especially after the Frankfurt District Court acquitted a doctor in 1989 who had described soldiers as "potential murderers".
In 1995, the Bundeswehr celebrated its fortieth birthday. For the occasion, the Federal Ministry of Defence held a "Großer Zapfenstreich" -- the largest, most elaborate formal military parade complete with the swearing-in of new recruits -- at the same plaza in Berlin that had hosted the largest, most vocal demonstrations against the 1991 Gulf War. Opponents of the military parade saw this as a deliberate provocation, and large protests accompanied both the parade in Berlin and similar exercises in Bonn and Erfurt. In reaction to these protests, the Conservative-Libertarian governing coalition announced a proposal to formalize protection of the Bundeswehr against the word "murderer" in the criminal law. A new draft of Paragraph 109b of the Criminal Code was announced in March 1996:
"It is an offence to publicly, whether in a gathering of people or through the distribution of written material, make statements about members of the armed forces such as could lower the public opinion of them. This offence shall be punishable by a fine or by imprisonment for up to three years."
The proposal met with almost universal protest in Germany. Particular criticism was aimed at the government's attempt to curtail a constitutional right, free speech, to suppress minority criticism of an institution of the state. These criticisms were lent additional edge when it was pointed out that similar legislative drafts were laid out by the NSDAP (the Nazi party) in 1930. In ultimately killing the proposal, the Law Reform Committee of the Federal Assembly stated:
"The view of the majority of the House is that a particular criminal-law protection of the honour of the Bundeswehr is neither justified nor necessary, nor is it particularly desired by the armed forces themselves."
[...]
Similar statements and verdicts
On 6th October 1970, the District Court in Karlsruhe acquitted a defendant of slander who, at a protest, had carried a baby doll impaled on a stake with the sign "Join the Army, Learn to Slaughter". A court at Limburg similarly handed down an acquittal for the statement that "every soldier is a career-trained murderer, every instructor a conspirator to manslaughter, every Air Force pilot a professional bomb-thrower; every army is a terrorist group."
[...]
The theologian and senior protestant clergyman Martin Niemöller argued in a speech in Kassel in 1959 that the practice of being a soldier was generally sinful. The defence minister at the time, Franz Josef Strauß, sued him and lost. From Niemöller's speech:
"They know what they do. War goes against the will of God. That is a lot of talking without any action to back it up, it's true, but murder is also against the will of God. That I recognize this and don't do anything to stop it means I have also done nothing. And the training of soliders today is finishing school for career criminals. Mothers and fathers should know what they're doing, when they let their sons become soldiers. They're sending them off to become felons."
Germany is not a perfect society by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's only marginally less calcified, unequal, and corrupt than the United States. But the spectrum of discourse and the acceptance of thought can seem at times to be miles away from what passes for "civic engagement" in the United States. Today, I bring you my own translation from the German Wikipedia of an article that doesn't have an English-language counterpart. It won't take you long to see why.
In fact, the idea is so insidious in its truth that the English Wikipedia, in its article on Kurt Tucholsky, doesn't mention the essay or the aphorism. Think of it: an article about Shakespeare that doesn't mention Hamlet. For all its might, the dehumanizing force of patriotism and militarism is awfully afraid.
SOLDIERS ARE MURDERERS
The phrase "soldiers are murderers" originally comes from an essay by Kurt Tucholsky called "The Guarded Spectacle of War" (Der bewachte Kriegsschauplatz), published in the magazine 'The World Stage' on August 4th, 1931. Using the pseudonym Ignaz Wrobel, Tucholsky wrote:
"For four years there were entire square miles of land upon which murder was obligatory, while half an hour away it was just as strictly prohibited. Did I say murder? Of course I did. Soldiers are murderers."
The editor of the magazine, Carl von Ossietzky, was prosecuted for "slandering the Reich's army" and acquitted, since the statement could not have been said to refer to any specific person and a 'non-specific entirety' could not be the object of an insult, at least for the purposes of criminal law. In the following years and decades, the phrase became a rallying cry of pacifists and opponents of the Nazi army and later of the German Federal Army (today's Bundeswehr), appearing again and again in many different contexts. More recent discussion of the phrase in Germany has focused on the fact that the armies on both sides of the Second World War committed multiple war crimes.
Development of the public discussion
Tucholsky, himself a soldier in the First World War and one of the co-founders, in 1919, of "War Veterans for Peace", directed his statement at what he called the "organized killing" in wartime. His objection was that out of purely national interests, able-bodied men were forced to kill by their governments: war was directed, collective murder. Tucholsky had defended this view publicly before the 1931 publication, but it wasn't until it appeared in The World Stage that the defence minister in the Weimar Republic, Wilhelm Groener, decided to pursue a prosecution. [...]
Since the 1980s, German federal courts have been confronted again and again with actions of which this phrase has been at the centre. For the most part, the position of the courts has been clear: the phrase as such is protected by the freedom of speech (Article 5 of the German constitution), but can give rise to liability at civil or criminal law if used against a specific person not under investigation for murder. The controversy reached a high point during the administration of Helmut Kohl (1982-1998), especially after the Frankfurt District Court acquitted a doctor in 1989 who had described soldiers as "potential murderers".
In 1995, the Bundeswehr celebrated its fortieth birthday. For the occasion, the Federal Ministry of Defence held a "Großer Zapfenstreich" -- the largest, most elaborate formal military parade complete with the swearing-in of new recruits -- at the same plaza in Berlin that had hosted the largest, most vocal demonstrations against the 1991 Gulf War. Opponents of the military parade saw this as a deliberate provocation, and large protests accompanied both the parade in Berlin and similar exercises in Bonn and Erfurt. In reaction to these protests, the Conservative-Libertarian governing coalition announced a proposal to formalize protection of the Bundeswehr against the word "murderer" in the criminal law. A new draft of Paragraph 109b of the Criminal Code was announced in March 1996:
"It is an offence to publicly, whether in a gathering of people or through the distribution of written material, make statements about members of the armed forces such as could lower the public opinion of them. This offence shall be punishable by a fine or by imprisonment for up to three years."
The proposal met with almost universal protest in Germany. Particular criticism was aimed at the government's attempt to curtail a constitutional right, free speech, to suppress minority criticism of an institution of the state. These criticisms were lent additional edge when it was pointed out that similar legislative drafts were laid out by the NSDAP (the Nazi party) in 1930. In ultimately killing the proposal, the Law Reform Committee of the Federal Assembly stated:
"The view of the majority of the House is that a particular criminal-law protection of the honour of the Bundeswehr is neither justified nor necessary, nor is it particularly desired by the armed forces themselves."
[...]
Similar statements and verdicts
On 6th October 1970, the District Court in Karlsruhe acquitted a defendant of slander who, at a protest, had carried a baby doll impaled on a stake with the sign "Join the Army, Learn to Slaughter". A court at Limburg similarly handed down an acquittal for the statement that "every soldier is a career-trained murderer, every instructor a conspirator to manslaughter, every Air Force pilot a professional bomb-thrower; every army is a terrorist group."
[...]
The theologian and senior protestant clergyman Martin Niemöller argued in a speech in Kassel in 1959 that the practice of being a soldier was generally sinful. The defence minister at the time, Franz Josef Strauß, sued him and lost. From Niemöller's speech:
"They know what they do. War goes against the will of God. That is a lot of talking without any action to back it up, it's true, but murder is also against the will of God. That I recognize this and don't do anything to stop it means I have also done nothing. And the training of soliders today is finishing school for career criminals. Mothers and fathers should know what they're doing, when they let their sons become soldiers. They're sending them off to become felons."
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Interesting that Tucholsky would also use the phrase "forced to kill" to describe soldiers; murder implies culpability, while describing someone as being forced to kill another seems to partially or wholly remove culpability. If one is coerced--or conditioned--to kill, isn't the primary moral responsibility on the party responsible for coercion? Furthermore, if self-defense is still a valid moral defense, wouldn't Tucholsky's concept apply only to wars of aggression--would not soldiers in the employ of a nation-state defending its borders from unprovoked assault be absolved of the crime of murder?
Admittedly, it is a problem that nobody dares interrogate the moral culpability of the armed forces in the United States, or for that matter of patriotism and militarism as abstract ideas. Yet you cannot say "Soldaten sind mörder" and be done with it. It is a specious idea at best, and it conjures up in my mind images of draftees, some injured in battle in horrific ways, returning to the United States from Vietnam only to be called babykillers and monsters. And more frequently in this day and age, military service is motivated by a sense of duty and self-sacrifice to one's fellow countrymen and women; rarely is it caused by a latent bloodlust. Yes, war is terrible and evil, no more a "necessary evil" than any other wickedness mankind has made excuses for in the past, but I'm not at all comfortable with Tucholsky's idea.
Admittedly, it is a problem that nobody dares interrogate the moral culpability of the armed forces in the United States, or for that matter of patriotism and militarism as abstract ideas. Yet you cannot say "Soldaten sind mörder" and be done with it. It is a specious idea at best, and it conjures up in my mind images of draftees, some injured in battle in horrific ways, returning to the United States from Vietnam only to be called babykillers and monsters. And more frequently in this day and age, military service is motivated by a sense of duty and self-sacrifice to one's fellow countrymen and women; rarely is it caused by a latent bloodlust. Yes, war is terrible and evil, no more a "necessary evil" than any other wickedness mankind has made excuses for in the past, but I'm not at all comfortable with Tucholsky's idea.
It's possible, I agree, to be conditioned out of one's normal moral compunctions, but everyone, volunteer or draftee, agrees to fight. Even if you're drafted, you could still sit on the ground and refuse to cooperate or go to prison, and in that situation I believe that's what the right course of action would be. In that sense, it's inappropriate to absolve Vietnam draftees, because they exercised moral agency, whether at the moment they pulled the trigger, the moment they walked out onto the parade ground and agreed to be conditioned, or both.
Neither, of course is "a sense of duty and self-sacrifice to one's countrymen" any sort of justification: patriotism is a mild wrong, and insofar as it serves as an inducement to commit greater wrongs, it is all the more problematic. You don't have to be bloodthirsty to commit murder: you just have to be aware of the moral content of killing someone, which every adult of normal mental faculty is. The soldiers returning home from Vietnam were correctly labelled murders if they had themselves killed someone; as willing participants in militarism, they all had blood on their hands.
Neither, of course is "a sense of duty and self-sacrifice to one's countrymen" any sort of justification: patriotism is a mild wrong, and insofar as it serves as an inducement to commit greater wrongs, it is all the more problematic. You don't have to be bloodthirsty to commit murder: you just have to be aware of the moral content of killing someone, which every adult of normal mental faculty is. The soldiers returning home from Vietnam were correctly labelled murders if they had themselves killed someone; as willing participants in militarism, they all had blood on their hands.
"Willing participants in militarism": that's precisely what draftees *aren't*. Never is the coercive power of government clearer than in a military draft. It is the starkest of ultimatums: join the military or lose the rights of independent citizenship. What would the preferred course of action be--flee to a foreign country (still losing the rights of citizenship of one's homeland)? Furthermore, to verbally abuse those draftees who survived (many did not) when they returned, after suffering the horrors of jungle warfare, is to add insult to injury. You cannot tell me that is right.
Furthermore, you're making an assumption about a clarity of moral atmosphere that is, I believe, largely informed by a modern viewpoint. It was a widely-held notion at the time that 1) as Communism represented an unjust and tyrranical political system (arguably in its 20th century manifestations it did) and 2) as that political system sought to impose itself on independent nations and, eventually, the United States (again, arguable, although less likely than proposition #1), and 3) that became more likely should the U.S. fail to be victorious in the war in Vietnam, self-defense on a social, instead of personal scale, would (if one believes in the validity of the notion of killing in self-defense) justify enlisting in the military in order to defend a particular population from a greater evil (a systematically brutal and ideologically repressive Communist government).
These days, it is rather clearer than it was in the 60s and 70s that 'domino theory' was probably unlikely to have been correct, that the Vietnam war was not a grand battle of good against evil, and that it was used to justify horrible atrocities, none of which could be explained away by the idea of the defense of democracy. Nevertheless, individuals must make choices based on the information available to them; to hold them to a higher standard is unreasonable, if not patently ludicrous.
This brings me to a comment on the phrase "...aware of the moral content of killing osmeone, which every adult of normal mental faculty is." The moral content of killing is not the same in every case. If a cold-blooded serial killer (to use a deliberately absurd example) is in the attempting to kill you so he can make a suit of clothes out of your skin, it is less immoral to kill that person in self-defense than it is to kill someone so you can make a suit of clothes out of their skin. While more realistic examples are obviously less cut-and-dried, if it is possible that the morality of killing is not so immediately black and white, you cannot be so quick to label all acts of killing equal to murder. Furthermore, you ignore the role of propaganda in conditioning a populace before any action to draft or enlist is made, or legitimate targets of military force. Aren't genocidal dictatorships such? Or those (like Saddam Hussein did to Kuwait) who invade neighboring countries without provocation?
And setting aside the label "patriotism," what about the virtues of duty and self-sacrifice alone? If not to one's *country*-men, what about to one's neighbors? Family? Friends?
My essential point is, it is not useful to call soldiers murderers. Particularly in modern liberal democracies, the military is usually culpable to and directed by a civilian administration. If you seek to eliminate war, you affect those responsible for the use of the tools, not the tools themselves. You may argue that that does not absolve soldiers of their moral responsibility, but I do not contemplate politics in order to moralize and to declare others sinful, I do it to think about how a better world might be practically realized. If you would seek to do the former, your proper field is philosophy, or more likely still, the Church.
Furthermore, you're making an assumption about a clarity of moral atmosphere that is, I believe, largely informed by a modern viewpoint. It was a widely-held notion at the time that 1) as Communism represented an unjust and tyrranical political system (arguably in its 20th century manifestations it did) and 2) as that political system sought to impose itself on independent nations and, eventually, the United States (again, arguable, although less likely than proposition #1), and 3) that became more likely should the U.S. fail to be victorious in the war in Vietnam, self-defense on a social, instead of personal scale, would (if one believes in the validity of the notion of killing in self-defense) justify enlisting in the military in order to defend a particular population from a greater evil (a systematically brutal and ideologically repressive Communist government).
These days, it is rather clearer than it was in the 60s and 70s that 'domino theory' was probably unlikely to have been correct, that the Vietnam war was not a grand battle of good against evil, and that it was used to justify horrible atrocities, none of which could be explained away by the idea of the defense of democracy. Nevertheless, individuals must make choices based on the information available to them; to hold them to a higher standard is unreasonable, if not patently ludicrous.
This brings me to a comment on the phrase "...aware of the moral content of killing osmeone, which every adult of normal mental faculty is." The moral content of killing is not the same in every case. If a cold-blooded serial killer (to use a deliberately absurd example) is in the attempting to kill you so he can make a suit of clothes out of your skin, it is less immoral to kill that person in self-defense than it is to kill someone so you can make a suit of clothes out of their skin. While more realistic examples are obviously less cut-and-dried, if it is possible that the morality of killing is not so immediately black and white, you cannot be so quick to label all acts of killing equal to murder. Furthermore, you ignore the role of propaganda in conditioning a populace before any action to draft or enlist is made, or legitimate targets of military force. Aren't genocidal dictatorships such? Or those (like Saddam Hussein did to Kuwait) who invade neighboring countries without provocation?
And setting aside the label "patriotism," what about the virtues of duty and self-sacrifice alone? If not to one's *country*-men, what about to one's neighbors? Family? Friends?
My essential point is, it is not useful to call soldiers murderers. Particularly in modern liberal democracies, the military is usually culpable to and directed by a civilian administration. If you seek to eliminate war, you affect those responsible for the use of the tools, not the tools themselves. You may argue that that does not absolve soldiers of their moral responsibility, but I do not contemplate politics in order to moralize and to declare others sinful, I do it to think about how a better world might be practically realized. If you would seek to do the former, your proper field is philosophy, or more likely still, the Church.
While I agree that there are nuances to the argument "Soldat sind Mörder", I would have to disagree with you. As a tool of argument, it is explicitly useful to call soldiers murderers because it assigns a level of culpability so far deemed anathema to what the military represents. Is it completely correct? Maybe not, but it begins moving the heavy gears of thought and discussion.
Also, I don't disagree that individuals are subject to forces that affect their moral computers, and the dehumanization processes of basic training and everything that follows are potent ones. However, it's impossible to argue that propaganda, etc. even mostly accounts for compromising one's aversion to killing. Just ask Hugh Thompson (a trot over to the wikipedia article on the My Lai massacre might help you here).
As for your "essential point", assigning sin and contemplating morality are not the same, and neither is the former irrelevant to practically realizing a better world. As for equivocating it with religion, I think that even should be to you evidently ridiculous.
Also, I don't disagree that individuals are subject to forces that affect their moral computers, and the dehumanization processes of basic training and everything that follows are potent ones. However, it's impossible to argue that propaganda, etc. even mostly accounts for compromising one's aversion to killing. Just ask Hugh Thompson (a trot over to the wikipedia article on the My Lai massacre might help you here).
As for your "essential point", assigning sin and contemplating morality are not the same, and neither is the former irrelevant to practically realizing a better world. As for equivocating it with religion, I think that even should be to you evidently ridiculous.
The My Lai massacre is arguably an extraordinary example, and thus not representative of any general trend. And on the contrary, beyond even propoganda, the social conditioning one is subject to as one matures (viewpoint of the family, of community, and percieved viewpoint of the national culture) is a huge influence on one's concept of morality as an adult. It cannot be neglected. The Army produces plenty of soldiers who do not perpetrate massacres.
It is not the role of government to designate what is moral and what is immoral. Or rather, it ought not be in any pluralistic society. That is a core tenent of liberal democracy, and the reason the Constitution has amendments that attempt to guarantee freedom of worship (religion being a major factor in one's moral worldview) and freedom of speech (and by extension, thought). The role of government is to ensure the good function of society. If it were to mediate a moral code, adultery (being almost universally agreed to be something immoral) would remain criminal, and lying, envy, and other things universally agreed to be "wrong" would become crimes as well, even in a society that respected freedom of religious belief (never mind in a society that did not--in that instance, it would be perfectly rational for government to outlaw anything else it deemed wrong, like homosexuality, masturbation, and birth control. To be sure, many people would like to see government act as a regulator of morality, and it has taken much work in the 20th and 21st century to combat this tendency). Rather, the role of democratic government is to reconcile the right for and desire of freedom of each individual with the same right and desire of others. Therefore it is legal to lie ("I did not sleep with your sister") but not to commit fraud ("I did not embezzle the retirement fund"); it is legal to sin (Fantasize about killing someone) but not to murder (Murder deprives them of an inalienable right, that to life). I use "sin" in all contexts to refer to moral culpability; to say "Soldiers are murderers" is to assign moral culpability to soldiers, having assumed complete free moral agency and responsibility on their part for the acts they commit.
Therefore, I submit, to moralize is to assign sin, and morality is the province of religion and philosophy, not political thought. To be sure, there is an overlap between politically wrong and morally wrong, but while I would morally condemn Bill Clinton for banging the intern, I would not do so politically--yet I would politically condemn Bush for his actions, as well as morally (in the same vein, I would politically, but not necessarily morally, condemn Obama if he siezed power to become dictator tomorrow and established a liberal Utopia). However, because politics affects all citizens of a nation no matter their beliefs, and philosophical and religious belief are, as they say, "to each his own," it is useful to think about a politically perfect world, and not useful to think about a morally perfect one. We will never excise the human capacity for evil; that is the nature of free will, and, on the excellent quality of that attribute, I am in agreement with the theologians.
To clarify my own stance on the subject, I am, as ever, a strict pacifist; I do not accept that self-defense is any sort of justification for killing, even if it is the only alternative to one's own death. It is morally preferable to me that I should die rather than deprive another of life, no matter their beliefs or actions. I believe no wrong is ever justifiable; even if it prevents further wrongs being commited, it is still an immoral action. I also, however, believe that true evil does not exist in the world; that we all live with compromised moral agency, and we commit evil acts mostly due to insanity and/or ignorance; thus, in the end, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, we are all as innocent as newborn babes.
And you meant "equate with religion" not "equivocate." Equivocate means using ambiguous language to conceal the truth.
It is not the role of government to designate what is moral and what is immoral. Or rather, it ought not be in any pluralistic society. That is a core tenent of liberal democracy, and the reason the Constitution has amendments that attempt to guarantee freedom of worship (religion being a major factor in one's moral worldview) and freedom of speech (and by extension, thought). The role of government is to ensure the good function of society. If it were to mediate a moral code, adultery (being almost universally agreed to be something immoral) would remain criminal, and lying, envy, and other things universally agreed to be "wrong" would become crimes as well, even in a society that respected freedom of religious belief (never mind in a society that did not--in that instance, it would be perfectly rational for government to outlaw anything else it deemed wrong, like homosexuality, masturbation, and birth control. To be sure, many people would like to see government act as a regulator of morality, and it has taken much work in the 20th and 21st century to combat this tendency). Rather, the role of democratic government is to reconcile the right for and desire of freedom of each individual with the same right and desire of others. Therefore it is legal to lie ("I did not sleep with your sister") but not to commit fraud ("I did not embezzle the retirement fund"); it is legal to sin (Fantasize about killing someone) but not to murder (Murder deprives them of an inalienable right, that to life). I use "sin" in all contexts to refer to moral culpability; to say "Soldiers are murderers" is to assign moral culpability to soldiers, having assumed complete free moral agency and responsibility on their part for the acts they commit.
Therefore, I submit, to moralize is to assign sin, and morality is the province of religion and philosophy, not political thought. To be sure, there is an overlap between politically wrong and morally wrong, but while I would morally condemn Bill Clinton for banging the intern, I would not do so politically--yet I would politically condemn Bush for his actions, as well as morally (in the same vein, I would politically, but not necessarily morally, condemn Obama if he siezed power to become dictator tomorrow and established a liberal Utopia). However, because politics affects all citizens of a nation no matter their beliefs, and philosophical and religious belief are, as they say, "to each his own," it is useful to think about a politically perfect world, and not useful to think about a morally perfect one. We will never excise the human capacity for evil; that is the nature of free will, and, on the excellent quality of that attribute, I am in agreement with the theologians.
To clarify my own stance on the subject, I am, as ever, a strict pacifist; I do not accept that self-defense is any sort of justification for killing, even if it is the only alternative to one's own death. It is morally preferable to me that I should die rather than deprive another of life, no matter their beliefs or actions. I believe no wrong is ever justifiable; even if it prevents further wrongs being commited, it is still an immoral action. I also, however, believe that true evil does not exist in the world; that we all live with compromised moral agency, and we commit evil acts mostly due to insanity and/or ignorance; thus, in the end, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, we are all as innocent as newborn babes.
And you meant "equate with religion" not "equivocate." Equivocate means using ambiguous language to conceal the truth.
Just to refute one of your many points (and probably the only one that isn't arguable), there was nothing exceptional, extraordinary, or atypical about My Lai except possibly the utter efficiency with which, in that particular incident, the objectives of military training were practically realized. It was, if you like, the perfect military operation.
My Lai happened before My Lai (Sobibor, Dachau, Dresden, etc.) and it has happened many times since My Lai (Srebrenica, Darfur, last week in Afghanistan at the hands of the German air force). One cannot, with an adequately broad view of history, claim that it was any sort of special case. Despite that, my point -- and Tucholsky and Niemöller's -- is not that every single soldier is an actual murderer. If you go back and read the sections of the article which describe the way the phrase has been interpreted in the courts, the judges -- expert interpreters of the meaning of language -- are aware that this isn't what it means.
What it does mean is that every soldier is a potential murderer: that training in soldiery is training in murder, and that militarism is a force which, chiefly and above all other things (and thus, morally, to the exclusion of the consideration of those other things) facilitates and perpetuates the slaughter of people by other people. If "incomplete information" complicated the moral content of the actions of soliders in World War II or in Vietnam, it certainly doesn't anymore, and anyone who's flown to Afghanistan or Iraq with a U.S. flag on his shoulder and killed someone is... well... a murderer. The rest of the army, the ones who haven't, just wish they were.
My Lai happened before My Lai (Sobibor, Dachau, Dresden, etc.) and it has happened many times since My Lai (Srebrenica, Darfur, last week in Afghanistan at the hands of the German air force). One cannot, with an adequately broad view of history, claim that it was any sort of special case. Despite that, my point -- and Tucholsky and Niemöller's -- is not that every single soldier is an actual murderer. If you go back and read the sections of the article which describe the way the phrase has been interpreted in the courts, the judges -- expert interpreters of the meaning of language -- are aware that this isn't what it means.
What it does mean is that every soldier is a potential murderer: that training in soldiery is training in murder, and that militarism is a force which, chiefly and above all other things (and thus, morally, to the exclusion of the consideration of those other things) facilitates and perpetuates the slaughter of people by other people. If "incomplete information" complicated the moral content of the actions of soliders in World War II or in Vietnam, it certainly doesn't anymore, and anyone who's flown to Afghanistan or Iraq with a U.S. flag on his shoulder and killed someone is... well... a murderer. The rest of the army, the ones who haven't, just wish they were.
The morality of conservative religion is not the only morality that exists. If one imagines the community as the invisible guiding force of morality in society, rather than, say, Jerry Falwell, then it's easy to see that murder is outlawed in a sense because it is morally wrong, wrong to murder someone in a community that depends on members to survive. That's where the condemnation of the phrase in question falls.
Oh, and as for "It is morally preferable to me that I should die... .", that just makes you, in a certain sense, a fool. The hypothetical crazy man in the alley obviates his own right to continuing personal experience by jeopardizing yours.
I secede your point on the word "equivocate".
Oh, and as for "It is morally preferable to me that I should die... .", that just makes you, in a certain sense, a fool. The hypothetical crazy man in the alley obviates his own right to continuing personal experience by jeopardizing yours.
I secede your point on the word "equivocate".
You "concede" my point; you do not secede it unless you are forming a breakaway nation-state.
My argument vis á vis the preferability of dying rather than taking a life (under any circumstance) is a moral one, not a political one, therefore I don't begin to suggest it is an idea that others ought to adopt. It's simply my own personal belief. My justification, however (if I need one), is founded on the same philosophy that underlies notions of nonviolent political resistance. We cannot control the actions of others, only how we respond to them, and therefore if we wish to see a reduction in violence in the world, the place we must begin is with ourselves. Therefore, I refuse to kill even in self-defense (or to be more practical, I hold it immoral to kill in self-defense; never having been put in a situation where another person has threatened my life, I can't say for certain how I would react) or under any circumstance, because that is the only way I can ensure at least one less person in the world will ever commit murder. In broader terms, violence tends only to beget violence. The genius of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi was that violent resistance to the oppression they sought to combat would have brought down even more violent retribution that what they experienced in their lifetimes. Because they refrained from violence even where it would have been "justified" (for, say, self-defense), it made it all the more difficult for the power systems that felt threatened by them to use propaganda to turn public opinion against them. That is the insight that people like, for example, Islamic militants lack--if one's cause is so overwhelmingly just, one need not shed another's blood to support it.
The morality of conservative religion isn't the only morality, of course, but it's a useful example, for the very extremity of its nature. As repellent as you and I find people like Jerry Falwell, there are those out there who find our own moral opinions just as repellent--just as there are those whose moral opinions we mostly agree with, but with whom we are not in full accord. Community is a guiding force of morality, but a society is composed of many communities, and is heterogenous. The conservative Christian, like the liberal humanist, radical Anarchist, or libertarian freethinking community all exist with in a single pluralist society. To try to create a single moral code, through selection or compromise, will create a moral code that will forbid some from doing what is moral to them and force others to do what is amoral to them. Nobody should have their morality dictated to them. I don't care if the guy living next door to me thinks being gay is evil as long as he doesn't try to tell me who I can and cannot marry. Therefore we must adhere to a political code that embraces pluralism and allows freedom, without thought as to whether or not that freedom is moral or not. Thus murder can never be legal, because it deprives one of freedom, but a living will that provides for euthanasia ought to be allowable.
If Tucholsky meant that "every soldier is a potential murderer... and that militarism is a force which... facilitates and perpetuates the slaughter of people by other people," etc., etc., then he should have said that. I don't have patience for lazy generalizations like "Soldaten sind mörder;" there's a reason sloganeering isn't the same as philosophy. Generalizations might be useful on Fox News, but make for sloppy consideration of ideas.
My argument vis á vis the preferability of dying rather than taking a life (under any circumstance) is a moral one, not a political one, therefore I don't begin to suggest it is an idea that others ought to adopt. It's simply my own personal belief. My justification, however (if I need one), is founded on the same philosophy that underlies notions of nonviolent political resistance. We cannot control the actions of others, only how we respond to them, and therefore if we wish to see a reduction in violence in the world, the place we must begin is with ourselves. Therefore, I refuse to kill even in self-defense (or to be more practical, I hold it immoral to kill in self-defense; never having been put in a situation where another person has threatened my life, I can't say for certain how I would react) or under any circumstance, because that is the only way I can ensure at least one less person in the world will ever commit murder. In broader terms, violence tends only to beget violence. The genius of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi was that violent resistance to the oppression they sought to combat would have brought down even more violent retribution that what they experienced in their lifetimes. Because they refrained from violence even where it would have been "justified" (for, say, self-defense), it made it all the more difficult for the power systems that felt threatened by them to use propaganda to turn public opinion against them. That is the insight that people like, for example, Islamic militants lack--if one's cause is so overwhelmingly just, one need not shed another's blood to support it.
The morality of conservative religion isn't the only morality, of course, but it's a useful example, for the very extremity of its nature. As repellent as you and I find people like Jerry Falwell, there are those out there who find our own moral opinions just as repellent--just as there are those whose moral opinions we mostly agree with, but with whom we are not in full accord. Community is a guiding force of morality, but a society is composed of many communities, and is heterogenous. The conservative Christian, like the liberal humanist, radical Anarchist, or libertarian freethinking community all exist with in a single pluralist society. To try to create a single moral code, through selection or compromise, will create a moral code that will forbid some from doing what is moral to them and force others to do what is amoral to them. Nobody should have their morality dictated to them. I don't care if the guy living next door to me thinks being gay is evil as long as he doesn't try to tell me who I can and cannot marry. Therefore we must adhere to a political code that embraces pluralism and allows freedom, without thought as to whether or not that freedom is moral or not. Thus murder can never be legal, because it deprives one of freedom, but a living will that provides for euthanasia ought to be allowable.
If Tucholsky meant that "every soldier is a potential murderer... and that militarism is a force which... facilitates and perpetuates the slaughter of people by other people," etc., etc., then he should have said that. I don't have patience for lazy generalizations like "Soldaten sind mörder;" there's a reason sloganeering isn't the same as philosophy. Generalizations might be useful on Fox News, but make for sloppy consideration of ideas.
I troll successfully with "secede".
Ghandi believed that nonviolent resistance would eventually bring the oppressor to an understanding of the savagery of his actions, which of course only works if the oppressor is a moral agent. Plenty of killers aren't cognizant in that way, and so someone like Ghandi would merely most often expose himself to more butchery.
If you kill in self defense, then, as if you stood by and allowed your own death, only one murder occurs. It might as well be the aggressor's.
Conservative religion isn't what government is built with or emerges from; it is a tool of power that some governments use. The political code you mention that embraces pluralism and allows freedom has already made a moral choice, since there are many governments and systems of laws that consider those things harmful or useless in organizing a body of people. Indeed, such a political code is one that could result from the thing I mentioned: a government that uses a community-driven moral computation in composing a system of laws.
The human brain is limited and often likes basic ideas that it can then expand and develop. "Soldiers are murderers" is useful because the meanings it contains go beyond "every person in the armed forces has and will needlessly kill someone", yet it efficiently contains the mental seeds for those more complex ideas. I find a remark that equates all short phrases as "generalizations" of the sort of outright falsehoods that Fox slops around to be, once more, outright foolish. It seems clear to me, at least: "Soldaten sind mörder" makes it easy to begin to consider the ideas that whatshisface expands on in his essay, especially given how radical those ideas are.
Ghandi believed that nonviolent resistance would eventually bring the oppressor to an understanding of the savagery of his actions, which of course only works if the oppressor is a moral agent. Plenty of killers aren't cognizant in that way, and so someone like Ghandi would merely most often expose himself to more butchery.
If you kill in self defense, then, as if you stood by and allowed your own death, only one murder occurs. It might as well be the aggressor's.
Conservative religion isn't what government is built with or emerges from; it is a tool of power that some governments use. The political code you mention that embraces pluralism and allows freedom has already made a moral choice, since there are many governments and systems of laws that consider those things harmful or useless in organizing a body of people. Indeed, such a political code is one that could result from the thing I mentioned: a government that uses a community-driven moral computation in composing a system of laws.
The human brain is limited and often likes basic ideas that it can then expand and develop. "Soldiers are murderers" is useful because the meanings it contains go beyond "every person in the armed forces has and will needlessly kill someone", yet it efficiently contains the mental seeds for those more complex ideas. I find a remark that equates all short phrases as "generalizations" of the sort of outright falsehoods that Fox slops around to be, once more, outright foolish. It seems clear to me, at least: "Soldaten sind mörder" makes it easy to begin to consider the ideas that whatshisface expands on in his essay, especially given how radical those ideas are.
To add my two cents: first of all, I find it interesting that this is the topic that provokes more discussion than dissent has seen in years.
Second, the problem of the statement of 'Soldaten sind Mörder' is partly it's pithiness. I generally shrink back rapidly from three-word wide-sweeping sloagans of any content, much less political content (even when I agree). The other problem, though is that it's utterly correct. To paraphrase Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, 'we kill people. That's our job.' That is the military's only job, in fact. Wrap it up however you like, 'defense,' 'liberation,' whatever, it all amounts to people killing people (or people controlling machines that kill people). There are complexities of agency and coercion, of socioeconomic pressure and propoganda (I reccomend to all of you Annie Proloux's 'Tits up in a Ditch'), but I think far more important that the question of the individual culpability of soldiers is the idea of soldiery as an organized force: the military itself, the notion of a nation having a military, is as wrong as the notion of a nation killing it's domestic prisoners. In fact, having a military may be worse than having the death penalty, depending on the dead-people math.
Do I belive that if tommorow the opressive Canadian dictatorship with it's huge army of mounties wanted to invade and subjugate the United States that all Americans should lay down and submit to their new Canadian overlords? No. Do I believe that a state training its citizenry for such a contingency is wrong? Well, not necessarily, so long as they don't get to keep the guns at the end of the day. But hiring, training, and paying a standing army is an act of building a war machine that needs to consume human lives to survive (military-indistrial complex, check!). Whether or not a particular soldier is a murderer, soldiery itself is murder. So okay, maybe not 'Soldaten sind Mörder,' but at the very least, 'Militär ist Mord.'
Second, the problem of the statement of 'Soldaten sind Mörder' is partly it's pithiness. I generally shrink back rapidly from three-word wide-sweeping sloagans of any content, much less political content (even when I agree). The other problem, though is that it's utterly correct. To paraphrase Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, 'we kill people. That's our job.' That is the military's only job, in fact. Wrap it up however you like, 'defense,' 'liberation,' whatever, it all amounts to people killing people (or people controlling machines that kill people). There are complexities of agency and coercion, of socioeconomic pressure and propoganda (I reccomend to all of you Annie Proloux's 'Tits up in a Ditch'), but I think far more important that the question of the individual culpability of soldiers is the idea of soldiery as an organized force: the military itself, the notion of a nation having a military, is as wrong as the notion of a nation killing it's domestic prisoners. In fact, having a military may be worse than having the death penalty, depending on the dead-people math.
Do I belive that if tommorow the opressive Canadian dictatorship with it's huge army of mounties wanted to invade and subjugate the United States that all Americans should lay down and submit to their new Canadian overlords? No. Do I believe that a state training its citizenry for such a contingency is wrong? Well, not necessarily, so long as they don't get to keep the guns at the end of the day. But hiring, training, and paying a standing army is an act of building a war machine that needs to consume human lives to survive (military-indistrial complex, check!). Whether or not a particular soldier is a murderer, soldiery itself is murder. So okay, maybe not 'Soldaten sind Mörder,' but at the very least, 'Militär ist Mord.'
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