PETER SINGER: THE ETHICIST'S ESCAPADE FROM THE REALITY
OF THE WAR IN IRAQ
Con George-Kotzabasis
The following paper is an extract from my book Unveiling The War Against Terror. The paper was written in early May, 2004
Peter Singer is acclaimed for being an outstanding philosopher and an ethicist of unique dimensions. In his interview with Tony Jones on the ABC's Lateline on April 21, he gave a remarkable performance, like a trapeze artist performing his dazzling acts "upside-down", that must have left many of his spectators, including this writer, breathless. In this performance, the legerdemainist, the juggler, supplanted the philosopher. The cloudless sky of the philosopher of transcendental ethics, all of a sudden, rained down the ethics of relativism. In the muddy swamp that resulted from this relativist downpour, the philosopher of absolute ethics vanished in the "quickmud", and the juggler of relativist ethics sprang like a lily from the swamp.
The utilitarian ethics of professor Singer, who believes that not all lives are of equal value and who is a strong advocate of euthanasia for others, but not for members of his own family, like a "halo" encircled the ethics of President Bush and his reasons for going to war in Iraq. In his recent book, 'The President of Good and Evil', he attempts to prove, by a rigmarole of legalism and ethical utilitarianism, that the war in Iraq was morally completely unjustified. In his view, the costs of t he war in terms of lives lost and property destroyed, by far outweighed the benefits that accrued to Iraq at the end of the war and its aftermath. As an illustration of this, he said in his interview with Tony Jones, that during the war and the U.S. occupation that followed, eight to ten thousand combatants and civilians had been killed and maimed, whereas during the year preceding the war, Saddam Hussein had not killed as many. Thus, Professor Singer the “legalist” in this outburst of relativist ethics, which is no more than the 'marginalization of the ethical', to quote Iris Murdoch, does not make any distinction between premeditated and unpremeditated killing. The deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by Saddam is not legally and morally more culpable, than the accidental killing of civilians by the Coalition, in conditions of war. (Of course, he could argue that the war itself was criminal and therefore the killings that resulted from it were deliberate. But nowhere in his book does he claim that its leaders should be prosecuted as war criminals and hence he does not make use of such an argument). As long as the numbers of those killed accidentally are greater than those killed deliberately, the guilt falls on those who killed the greater number.
It is by such intellectual acrobatics, that professor Singer pushes the philosopher of ethics to his death and writes in memento mori of the latter on his epitaph, the "quantification" of ethics. Our utilitarian ethicist, while accepting and applying the Benthamite logic of the happiness of the greatest number, which refers not only to the material but also to the quality of man's life, nevertheless does not make any distinction between good and evil, except in the case of George Bush. In the hands of his mind, his master's 'general happiness of the greatest number', is transformed, in this case of the Iraq war, into the general guilt of the greatest number. Furthermore, he installs an "iron frame'' to the utilitarian consequences of the war in Iraq, as if the total results arising from the latter would materialise within such a short time-frame of one year. What would our utilitarian philosopher say, if the consequences of the war turn out to be more benign in few years time than his malign deductions of one year through the war? What would he have to say, if the war became pivotal to the defeat of global terror and of rogue states, such as the Libya capitulation foreshadowed, or if Iraq as a result of it would become a fledgling democracy with the potential of changing the geopolitical configuration and structure of the Middle East? Wouldn't these two goals, if they were achieved, contribute to the general happiness of the greatest number, and, thus too, to the individual happiness of our utilitarian ethicist? Only if our philosopher was also a modern Tiresias, indeed, a prophet of doom, who would foreordain the impossibility of achieving these two goals, could he sustain his present unsustainable position on the Iraq war.
After the brutal attack of September 11 and the imminent apocalyptic dark cloud of threats that hovered over America and the infidels of the West by Muslim fanaticism, what would be the 'rational duty'--which according to Immanuel Kant, joins the phenomenal world with the noumenal--of the government of a nation whose soil was directly attacked by an external and invisible enemy, what form, in concrete terms, would this duty take in the face of such a mortal foe? Appeal to International laws as are embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, and the search for a solution through a diplomatic demarche, that would involve a discordant group of nations with different economic, political and strategic interests, as professor Singer suggests? And what other options would such a nation have in the event that the UN, as the keeper and ultimate arbitrator of these International rules, lacked the will and fortitude to enforce them upon recalcitrant rogue states which flagrantly and blatantly violate these rules time and again? When the failure of diplomacy was so conspicuously clear, especially during the Clinton administration, under whose eyes the dragon's teeth of terrorism were sown, as a result of the Mogadishu syndrome and the weakness of the former president not to prevent the take-off of terrorism and its state sponsors by using decisive force against them? William Shawcross, in his book, 'Allies', eloquently and with unassailable logic demonstrates this failure of the UN and its major members, France, Germany,and Russia, to confront decisively the violation of the UN's resolutions by Saddam Hussein since 1991.
In the face of such unprecedented weakness by the UN and its Security Council, in proportion to the global dimensions of this terrorist threat, magnified by the more than probable conception of the nexus of terrorism with rogue states, such as the regime of Saddam, what should the United States have done as the sole superpower, or as the modern Leviathan, to adopt professor Singer's "adoption" of Thomas Hobbes? To take a moral stand and appeal to International laws against the immoral stand of outlaws, who lack the slightest inclination to abide by these laws? No law can be effective, unless people or nations are prepared to comply with it. And no law can be effective, unless it is backed by force. International law, the humane laws of a civilised world, can never replace 'the stern laws of necessity', to quote the great historian Edward Gibbon, especially when such a world faces a mortal foe.
The Bush administration, exercising its duties with historical responsibility, had no other option but to apply these stern laws of necessity with resolution and celerity, especially when, Western civilization was threatened by these fanatic barbarians with nuclear weapons. The art of statesmanship would not allow itself to indulge in the inutile and decadent luxury of involving itself in interminable diplomatic wrangles and deadlocks whilst this time bomb was ticking away. President Bush had to act with swiftness, decisiveness, and pre-emption against this apocalyptic snowballing threat.
Before such a threat the Bush administration had the unenviable task and historical burden to act beyond the saintly confines of professor Singer's morality and legalism and go to war against both the terrorists and the regime of Saddam Hussein, which had for years sponsored and supported terrorists and was the linchpin in this developing nexus of terrorism and rogue states. And only the American Leviathan, among all other nations, can prevent this lethal conception from occurring, and at the same time defeat terrorism on a global scale. To Professor Singer's amusing argument, that the U.S. cannot play the role of a modern Leviathan because it has not been democratically elected to this position, one can only tritely respond that the "elect" are never elected to their positions. As an example of the latter, is Professor Singer himself. Presently, he occupies the chair in Bioethics at Princeton University, not by reason of a democratic mandate, since he has not been elected to this position, but by the force of the power of his own intellect. Likewise, America holds the position of a "Leviathan", not by reason of the democratic consensus of nations, but as a result of the reality of power, as an outcome of its incontestable global dominance in economic, political, military, and knowledge power. One can only be nonplussed that professor Singer is not aware of this simple fact and becomes a fugitive from this reality. Moreover, professor Singer traduces his own firm beliefs and commits the intellectual "sin" of the fallacy of "decomposition". If he really believes that not all lives are equal, one would expect him also to believe that not all brains are equal either. As it is by the inequality of his own mind that he holds his eminent place in the academic world. From this reality, it would not have been difficult for anyone to come to the same conclusion, that economic, political, military, and knowledge power, is also unequal among nations. Therefore, the mantle of Leviathan falls on the shoulders of certain nations which posses this supreme power, by the mandate of the reality of power.
But despite the insuperable power that America possesses it can still lose the war in Iraq if it loses its mettle and resolve to fight the insurgents with all its military might. The war against global terror and its state sponsors is an existential war, a war of survival, which cannot be fought on humane grounds. In such a setting, the torture of prisoners is the tragic price (war brutalises even the good guys under its immense pressures and can break the strongest of wills, the best of disciplines) that statesmanship must pay. As well as a tragic boon to political shysters, such as Mark Latham, to sensationalist populist journalists, such as Kerry O'Brien and Fran Kelly, not to mention others, of the ABC, and to the weakling critics of the war in Iraq, all of whom are provided with a further flawed reason to raise the white flag before the "triumphant" terrorist myrmidons.
The Pentagon's strategic planners must not be squeamish in using the appropriate decisive force against the insurgents in Iraq, i.e., by using the U.S.'s deadly arsenal against them that would result in their total surrender or annihilation. For this purpose, their military forces should set up a blockade of the towns of Fallujah, Kufa, and Karbala, where the Sunni and Shiite rebels are concentrated and after evacuating as many of the civilians as is possible from these towns, their commanders on the ground should declare an ultimatum to the insurgents, that unless they surrender within a specific time-frame, they will be totally annihilated by an "unthinkable" air and ground bombardment. The choice should be put starkly to the Mahdi army of Moqtada al Sadr, and to the insurgents in Fallujah. Once they either surrender or are killed en masse this will have a deadly psychological impact upon all other insurgents in Iraq, who in fear of their own lives, would more likely than not disarm and surrender. Alas, it is by such relentless exercise of its military power, that the American-led Coalition can subdue and quell the insurgency, and hence, win the war.
Of course, the liberal and leftist critics of the war can still be right in their belief about its wrongfulness as well as it being un-winnable, if President Bush proves to be all 'hat and no cattle', to use a Texan idiom - that is, that he is all rhetoric and no substance by being unwilling to pay the price of statesmanship and refusing to use lethal force against the insurgents, who, at this moment, are the avant garde of global terror. But tragically, they will be right at their own terminal cost. As they will all be morphed into modern Neros, and a la Professor Singer, they will "sing" the lyrics, and play the tune of their morality on their fiddles in a concert of their own death, while Western civilisation lies burning in the hellfire of the terrorist fanatics as “decreed by their Allah.” And history will have the ultimate revenge upon them. The banner of its morality will still be there, but there will be no one there to hold it.
OF THE WAR IN IRAQ
Con George-Kotzabasis
The following paper is an extract from my book Unveiling The War Against Terror. The paper was written in early May, 2004
Peter Singer is acclaimed for being an outstanding philosopher and an ethicist of unique dimensions. In his interview with Tony Jones on the ABC's Lateline on April 21, he gave a remarkable performance, like a trapeze artist performing his dazzling acts "upside-down", that must have left many of his spectators, including this writer, breathless. In this performance, the legerdemainist, the juggler, supplanted the philosopher. The cloudless sky of the philosopher of transcendental ethics, all of a sudden, rained down the ethics of relativism. In the muddy swamp that resulted from this relativist downpour, the philosopher of absolute ethics vanished in the "quickmud", and the juggler of relativist ethics sprang like a lily from the swamp.
The utilitarian ethics of professor Singer, who believes that not all lives are of equal value and who is a strong advocate of euthanasia for others, but not for members of his own family, like a "halo" encircled the ethics of President Bush and his reasons for going to war in Iraq. In his recent book, 'The President of Good and Evil', he attempts to prove, by a rigmarole of legalism and ethical utilitarianism, that the war in Iraq was morally completely unjustified. In his view, the costs of t he war in terms of lives lost and property destroyed, by far outweighed the benefits that accrued to Iraq at the end of the war and its aftermath. As an illustration of this, he said in his interview with Tony Jones, that during the war and the U.S. occupation that followed, eight to ten thousand combatants and civilians had been killed and maimed, whereas during the year preceding the war, Saddam Hussein had not killed as many. Thus, Professor Singer the “legalist” in this outburst of relativist ethics, which is no more than the 'marginalization of the ethical', to quote Iris Murdoch, does not make any distinction between premeditated and unpremeditated killing. The deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by Saddam is not legally and morally more culpable, than the accidental killing of civilians by the Coalition, in conditions of war. (Of course, he could argue that the war itself was criminal and therefore the killings that resulted from it were deliberate. But nowhere in his book does he claim that its leaders should be prosecuted as war criminals and hence he does not make use of such an argument). As long as the numbers of those killed accidentally are greater than those killed deliberately, the guilt falls on those who killed the greater number.
It is by such intellectual acrobatics, that professor Singer pushes the philosopher of ethics to his death and writes in memento mori of the latter on his epitaph, the "quantification" of ethics. Our utilitarian ethicist, while accepting and applying the Benthamite logic of the happiness of the greatest number, which refers not only to the material but also to the quality of man's life, nevertheless does not make any distinction between good and evil, except in the case of George Bush. In the hands of his mind, his master's 'general happiness of the greatest number', is transformed, in this case of the Iraq war, into the general guilt of the greatest number. Furthermore, he installs an "iron frame'' to the utilitarian consequences of the war in Iraq, as if the total results arising from the latter would materialise within such a short time-frame of one year. What would our utilitarian philosopher say, if the consequences of the war turn out to be more benign in few years time than his malign deductions of one year through the war? What would he have to say, if the war became pivotal to the defeat of global terror and of rogue states, such as the Libya capitulation foreshadowed, or if Iraq as a result of it would become a fledgling democracy with the potential of changing the geopolitical configuration and structure of the Middle East? Wouldn't these two goals, if they were achieved, contribute to the general happiness of the greatest number, and, thus too, to the individual happiness of our utilitarian ethicist? Only if our philosopher was also a modern Tiresias, indeed, a prophet of doom, who would foreordain the impossibility of achieving these two goals, could he sustain his present unsustainable position on the Iraq war.
After the brutal attack of September 11 and the imminent apocalyptic dark cloud of threats that hovered over America and the infidels of the West by Muslim fanaticism, what would be the 'rational duty'--which according to Immanuel Kant, joins the phenomenal world with the noumenal--of the government of a nation whose soil was directly attacked by an external and invisible enemy, what form, in concrete terms, would this duty take in the face of such a mortal foe? Appeal to International laws as are embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, and the search for a solution through a diplomatic demarche, that would involve a discordant group of nations with different economic, political and strategic interests, as professor Singer suggests? And what other options would such a nation have in the event that the UN, as the keeper and ultimate arbitrator of these International rules, lacked the will and fortitude to enforce them upon recalcitrant rogue states which flagrantly and blatantly violate these rules time and again? When the failure of diplomacy was so conspicuously clear, especially during the Clinton administration, under whose eyes the dragon's teeth of terrorism were sown, as a result of the Mogadishu syndrome and the weakness of the former president not to prevent the take-off of terrorism and its state sponsors by using decisive force against them? William Shawcross, in his book, 'Allies', eloquently and with unassailable logic demonstrates this failure of the UN and its major members, France, Germany,and Russia, to confront decisively the violation of the UN's resolutions by Saddam Hussein since 1991.
In the face of such unprecedented weakness by the UN and its Security Council, in proportion to the global dimensions of this terrorist threat, magnified by the more than probable conception of the nexus of terrorism with rogue states, such as the regime of Saddam, what should the United States have done as the sole superpower, or as the modern Leviathan, to adopt professor Singer's "adoption" of Thomas Hobbes? To take a moral stand and appeal to International laws against the immoral stand of outlaws, who lack the slightest inclination to abide by these laws? No law can be effective, unless people or nations are prepared to comply with it. And no law can be effective, unless it is backed by force. International law, the humane laws of a civilised world, can never replace 'the stern laws of necessity', to quote the great historian Edward Gibbon, especially when such a world faces a mortal foe.
The Bush administration, exercising its duties with historical responsibility, had no other option but to apply these stern laws of necessity with resolution and celerity, especially when, Western civilization was threatened by these fanatic barbarians with nuclear weapons. The art of statesmanship would not allow itself to indulge in the inutile and decadent luxury of involving itself in interminable diplomatic wrangles and deadlocks whilst this time bomb was ticking away. President Bush had to act with swiftness, decisiveness, and pre-emption against this apocalyptic snowballing threat.
Before such a threat the Bush administration had the unenviable task and historical burden to act beyond the saintly confines of professor Singer's morality and legalism and go to war against both the terrorists and the regime of Saddam Hussein, which had for years sponsored and supported terrorists and was the linchpin in this developing nexus of terrorism and rogue states. And only the American Leviathan, among all other nations, can prevent this lethal conception from occurring, and at the same time defeat terrorism on a global scale. To Professor Singer's amusing argument, that the U.S. cannot play the role of a modern Leviathan because it has not been democratically elected to this position, one can only tritely respond that the "elect" are never elected to their positions. As an example of the latter, is Professor Singer himself. Presently, he occupies the chair in Bioethics at Princeton University, not by reason of a democratic mandate, since he has not been elected to this position, but by the force of the power of his own intellect. Likewise, America holds the position of a "Leviathan", not by reason of the democratic consensus of nations, but as a result of the reality of power, as an outcome of its incontestable global dominance in economic, political, military, and knowledge power. One can only be nonplussed that professor Singer is not aware of this simple fact and becomes a fugitive from this reality. Moreover, professor Singer traduces his own firm beliefs and commits the intellectual "sin" of the fallacy of "decomposition". If he really believes that not all lives are equal, one would expect him also to believe that not all brains are equal either. As it is by the inequality of his own mind that he holds his eminent place in the academic world. From this reality, it would not have been difficult for anyone to come to the same conclusion, that economic, political, military, and knowledge power, is also unequal among nations. Therefore, the mantle of Leviathan falls on the shoulders of certain nations which posses this supreme power, by the mandate of the reality of power.
But despite the insuperable power that America possesses it can still lose the war in Iraq if it loses its mettle and resolve to fight the insurgents with all its military might. The war against global terror and its state sponsors is an existential war, a war of survival, which cannot be fought on humane grounds. In such a setting, the torture of prisoners is the tragic price (war brutalises even the good guys under its immense pressures and can break the strongest of wills, the best of disciplines) that statesmanship must pay. As well as a tragic boon to political shysters, such as Mark Latham, to sensationalist populist journalists, such as Kerry O'Brien and Fran Kelly, not to mention others, of the ABC, and to the weakling critics of the war in Iraq, all of whom are provided with a further flawed reason to raise the white flag before the "triumphant" terrorist myrmidons.
The Pentagon's strategic planners must not be squeamish in using the appropriate decisive force against the insurgents in Iraq, i.e., by using the U.S.'s deadly arsenal against them that would result in their total surrender or annihilation. For this purpose, their military forces should set up a blockade of the towns of Fallujah, Kufa, and Karbala, where the Sunni and Shiite rebels are concentrated and after evacuating as many of the civilians as is possible from these towns, their commanders on the ground should declare an ultimatum to the insurgents, that unless they surrender within a specific time-frame, they will be totally annihilated by an "unthinkable" air and ground bombardment. The choice should be put starkly to the Mahdi army of Moqtada al Sadr, and to the insurgents in Fallujah. Once they either surrender or are killed en masse this will have a deadly psychological impact upon all other insurgents in Iraq, who in fear of their own lives, would more likely than not disarm and surrender. Alas, it is by such relentless exercise of its military power, that the American-led Coalition can subdue and quell the insurgency, and hence, win the war.
Of course, the liberal and leftist critics of the war can still be right in their belief about its wrongfulness as well as it being un-winnable, if President Bush proves to be all 'hat and no cattle', to use a Texan idiom - that is, that he is all rhetoric and no substance by being unwilling to pay the price of statesmanship and refusing to use lethal force against the insurgents, who, at this moment, are the avant garde of global terror. But tragically, they will be right at their own terminal cost. As they will all be morphed into modern Neros, and a la Professor Singer, they will "sing" the lyrics, and play the tune of their morality on their fiddles in a concert of their own death, while Western civilisation lies burning in the hellfire of the terrorist fanatics as “decreed by their Allah.” And history will have the ultimate revenge upon them. The banner of its morality will still be there, but there will be no one there to hold it.
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