Wojtek
----Original Message Follows----
Subject: FW: Enterprise Ethics -- January 1, 2007 -- That doesn't make any sense Date: Mon, 01 Jan 2007 17:13:56 -0500
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Carlton Vogt's
ENTERPRISE ETHICS
Vol. 5 Number 1 January 1, 2007
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That doesn't make any sense
A lifelong habit of saying "What the ...?" continues
My academic career got off to a rather rocky start. It was first grade, and Sister Dolorosa Excruciata (not her real name) had just finished explaining for us five-year-olds some convoluted piece of diluted dogma. I must have semed perplexed, because she looked at me and asked "Do you have a problem, Master Vogt." (They really talked that way in those days.)
I replied, with all the earnestness that only a five-year-old can muster, "Sister, that doesn't make any sense." While that kind of talk may fly in a graduate philosophy seminar, it was a flop in the bunker mentality of Catholic education in the late 1940s. Sister was not amused. There was a furious rattle from the giant rosary beads hanging from sister's belt, and the crinkle of starched linen, just milliseconds before sister's open hand landed across the back of my head. I was immediately tagged as a troublemaker, a tag I wore more or less proudly for the rest of my long career there.
I've always had a low tolerance for things that don't seem to make any sense, and this low threshold has served me well in a career in journalism, where it leads to interesting questions on my part and even more interesting answers on someone else's part -- again, not always appreciated by the person being questioned.
It's probably what also led me into a secondary career excursion into the philosophy -- more specifically ethics -- racket where you are allowed or even encouraged to ask questions like that. One graduate adviser, however, did warn me that success in academia stems from giving back to your professors their own thoughts and ideas in new and interesting ways.
That low tolerance was tested again these past few days by two occurrences that seem to have dominated the news, at least locally, and I imagine nationally.
Gerald Ford, a decent man by all accounts, died this week, and as I write this, his body is lying in state just a few miles down the road from my house. I have managed to avoid the traffic snarl this has created in the area of the church, but I am constantly reminded of the event by the chop-chop-chop of the helicopters as they practically brush their landing gear against my rooftop, while they ferry military personnel and politicians to the scene. They start around 5 a.m.
The other event, as we all know by now, was the state-sponsored ritual killing (let's call it what it is) of Saddam Hussein, a really bad man by any account. I have managed to avoid most of the coverage of the killing, although, somewhat curiously, a great deal of my information comes from staunchly pro-life acquaintances, who are inexplicably giddy about the killing. They try to explain away their giddiness with convoluted reasoning that makes just about as much sense as Sister Dolorosa Excruciata's dogma.
The two events may seem to be unrelated, but I saw a connection. Ford was lauded, at least in what passes for the mainstream media, for his pardon of Richard Nixon. The explanation, which has now become part of our growing national mythology, was that it was designed to put the matter behind us and "allow the country to heal," or, some say, "to move forward."
At the same time, many of the people who dutifully recite the mantras of that mythology assured us that the killing of Saddam Hussein, sloppily pigeon-holed under the catalogue entry of "justice," would help Iraq move forward.
The part of my brain that recognizes such inconsistencies immediately snapped to attention. How is that in, one case, pardoning the individual -- in other words not holding him accountable for his crimes -- leads to greater justice, healing, and moving forward; while in the other case, a swift pre-dawn killing -- ostensibly holding him accountable for his crimes -- will lead to healing and moving forward. It brought back echoes of my fateful encounter in first grade. "That doesn_t make any sense."
So, I was perplexed, at least until I thought about it more. My conclusion is that in neither case was justice done. I've also concluded that in the Nixon-Ford case, the country "healed" only if you define healing as ignoring and glossing over the root causes of the problem. When you do that, you tend to bury the history. When history is buried, people cannot learn from it, and, as the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
In the case of Saddam and Iraq, it remains to be seen if there is real "healing" or whether the country indeed "moves forward," although in the sandstorm of sectarian and tribal strife that is Iraq, it's difficult to tell which way "forward" really is.
Some will argue that Saddam deserved to die and therefore his killing satisfied the demands of justice. The success of that argument depends on whether you see state-sponsored ritual killing as a tool of justice or merely a vestigial remnant of bloodlust revenge. My view tends toward the latter.
That argument also appeals to those who prefer sloganeering and bumper- sticker logic to a real examination of the situation. Both "deserve" and "justice" are highly packed terms that require a great deal of examination, especially when you try to put them together. Merely to say it doesn't make it true.
I've found that whenever you encounter something puzzling, if you just look hard enough, you will find a key to unlock it. In the Nixon-Ford case, the key was provided by Gerald Ford himself, who either didn't get the memo on the "healing the country" explanation or let it slip in an unguarded moment. He told an interviewer that his reason for the pardon was that Richard Nixon was his friend and he didn't want to see his friend's name tarnished with a criminal trial. That, while it doesn't really serve the ends of justice either, makes a lot more sense. That one I can buy.
However, in both cases, justice, which is ultimately about restoring a balance, would have been served by a full explanation and a deeper investigation into where and how things went wrong. In both cases, the main actor, while doing reprehensible things, didn't act in a vacuum. There were others involved, and there were systemic failures.
In both cases, justice would have been better served by finding out what went wrong, so we could prevent it in the future. In Nixon's case, there was a deliberate attempt, on the part of Nixon and others in his camp, to polarize the country in a divide-and-conquer strategy. As one adviser told Nixon, "Find some way to tear the country into pieces, and we'll pick up the biggest piece."
The problem is that while Nixon went into his semi-retirement, the failure to look too deeply into the systemic failures meant that many of the other proponents of that strategy remained in place, plying their trade. Today, in a highly polarized political and social environment, we are seeing the fruits of their labor, all because that strategy and those behind it were shielded by an ill-considered truncation of justice.
In Saddam's case, he was killed for what may have been the least of his crimes. He was arguably guilty of many more heinous acts involving many more victims. Justice would have been served by exposing those acts and hearing the voices of the victims, or their family members whose lives were torn apart.
Justice doesn't come from simply killing the perpetrator. It comes from hearing the story and validating the suffering of the victims. I recently read one study showing that families of crime victims do not, in fact, find the ballyhooed "closure" that is supposed to come from the death of the offender. What people really want is for the world to know that they have suffered, what has happened to them, and how much they hurt. They want the offender, if not to answer for, at least to be confronted with his crimes.
What society should want is not merely to punish the offender, but to prevent whatever happened from happening again. If that isn't done, then the ritual killing just is bloodlust revenge.
Just as in Nixon's case, Saddam didn't act alone. There were individuals, corporations, and governments -- including our own -- who were complicit in his actions. None of them were apparently willing to see his sordid history laid bare for the world, and the Iraqi people to see.
As one commentator said, "Saddam Hussein was a former American puppet killed by current American puppets." And that should be a warning to American puppets everywhere.
So, at the end of the day, neither case was about justice, healing, or moving forward. Both were about getting things over with as quickly as possible, so that no one looked too deeply or shined too bright a light into what went wrong. And justice be damned. And that, while unsatisfying and frightening, unfortunately makes all the sense in the world.
And there, the similarity ends. Gerald Ford, a decent man by all accounts, was loved and will be missed by many.
Saddam Hussein, a bad man by any account, was feared more than loved, even by his closest associates. What good can you say of an autocrat who comes to power under dubious circumstances, invades foreign countries without provocation, sets up secret prisons for those who threaten his government, engages in torture and killing of those who dare to take up arms against him, and who allows his country's infrastructure to deteriorate, while he and his friends enrich themselves at public expense? Those are things that cry out for justice.
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By the time you receive this it will be the new year. So, I want to wish all of you a happy new year and wish you the best of everything.
I also want to announce major changes in Ethics Matters. I have moved to a new Web site, where it will no longer be necessary to log in to view columns and the archives.
It also means that I will no longer charge for Web site access, so you can feel free to refer people to it. And, I will no longer be accepting subscriptions for the emailed newsletter.
There are several reasons for this change, some of them financial and some of them from time pressure. As most of you have surely noticed and as some have mentioned, newsletter production seems to have slipped recently, and this comes from time pressures from both my employment and other projects on which I'm working. I do not want to charge for something whose timely delivery I can't guarantee. So, I will continue to write the column and post it for all to see. I will also send it by email to those already on the subscriber list. And I will do so as a hobby rather than a business.
The only drawback to the new Web site is that it doesn't allow for reader feedback. The old site allows that, but there weren't enough people using it on a regular basis to warrant the monthly cost.
I have several option. One is to create a space on this site where I can repost comments that are emailed to me. That has its drawbacks, but would be workable.
The other is to use a free blogger site where people can post directly, but that has numerous problems. One option at the site is to allow anyone who wants to -- in the whole world -- to post. I've seen other sites where that ends up with trolling and flame wars that makes the sites unappealing. Another option is to allow people to post if they sign in, but that would require people getting a Google account, and I'm not keen on forcing people to sign on to yet another service just to post replies. On the other hand, if people don't mind, then I could go that route.
A third option is to have moderated posts, where anyone could submit them, but they would have to be approved by me. I'm not sure I'm comfortable in the role of "approving" people's opinions. A hybrid option would be to allow unmediated posting by those who are willing to sign up for a Google account and moderated posting for those who aren't.
The fourth option would be just to do away with public posting altogether -- not that many people posted regularly anyway -- and just rely on email exchanges with those who have comments or questions.
If you have any ideas, please email me. And please not that my email address has changed. I am also going to the convention of not posting the email address openly to prevent the email harvesters from using it to spam me.