Especially in light of the mainstream media and the radical left’s constant denials that moral absolutes exist, it has been astounding for me to watch their absolutist moral judgments of America, the President, and our military related to alleged abuse of and denial of habeas corpus for captured terrorist combatants. It seems that absolutism is verboten except when it comes to the U.S. military and the security of the free world.

This is not only sheer intellectual and moral absurdity, but furthermore is the suicidal ranting of autovorous, self-masticating, Western elites living in a psychological Utopian Oz totally unrelated to the real world. Such a Never-Never Land fantasy (or delusion?) has nothing to do with morality, for morality essentially has to do with ethical dilemmas that face real people in real life struggles in the real world.

First, in the real world, choices must be made between good and evil. For the sake of the secularists out there, let’s define "good" simply as "doing things that respect and preserve innocent persons’ rights to life, liberty, or property"; and let’s define "evil" simply as "doing things that rob innocent persons’ of those rights."

Second, in the real world, the use of physical force is amoral—the use of force is inherently neither moral nor immoral. Rather, the morality of force depends on whether it is used to do good or to do evil. To use force to respect or preserve innocent persons' rights is not only morally permissible, but in circumstances in which force is the only way to preserve innocent persons’ rights, force may be a moral necessity. On the other hand, to use force to do evil, to eviscerate an innocent person’s rights, is evil.

Third, in the real world, because of the perversity of evil and evil-doers, reality is that there are times when there is no good option available for good people. At times, the evil done by evil persons can limit the options available to good persons to only those that cause the loss of the rights to life, liberty, or property of some person(s).

One example is that of Nazi officers in WW II who were separating people to be loaded either into cars for concentration camps or cars for the ovens; and they would make a Jewish, Polish, or other unfavored woman choose from among her children one who would live while the others would die. If a woman refused to make the choice, all the children would be killed before her eyes.

So, the mother with indescribable horror of soul, picked her child that she thought had the best chance of surviving the camps as the one who should live. She did so with wretched horror, knowing that the moral choice—when there was no good choice available—was to make the least evil choice available was to allow at least one of her children to have life rather than having all of them killed.

Another example is our soldiers in wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere who are confronted with a child on whom terrorists have strapped a bomb and then have made the child approach the soldiers’ position where the terrorists will explode the bomb, killing the child, the troops, and any innocent civilians near the troops. So, do our soldiers shoot the child before she gets to their position?

A decent soldier (or a non-combatant facing this situation) has no good choice. All he has are horrific alternatives all of which lead to some innocent(s) dying. So, in the real world, as unimaginable and soul-wrenching as it is to all of us who are protected from such choices by our soldiers, the soldier must make a moral decision that the least evil thing be done—either that the innocent child must die or that the child plus a number of other innocents die (by his bullet, but not by his hand—it is the barbarian who created this evil situation specifically to use the decency of our soldiers as a psychological weapon against them.

The problem is most of us in our society cannot fathom this kind of evil, but it is a reality in the real world. There are real people who are so evil that they use the decency of good people as a weapon to defeat them, to defeat us. When they do so, all we as decent people can do is to choose the lesser evil. To refuse to choose is to make a choice.

This is why police exist and have weapons. This is why we have the second ammendment. This is why our Declaration of Independence was written. It is why we we have an armed military, fight wars, and have nuclear weapons. All these things acknowledge the reality that at times we can only choose the least evil alternative from among a number of evil options.

With this reality in mind, let’s return to our original questions about United Flight 93 on 9/11.

Scenario 1 — What if a Special Forces or CIA officer had been on that flight and had been ordered by the President to kill the perpetrators and rescue the passengers? Would the President or the agent be tried for war crimes? If not, why not?

Scenario 2 — What if a government agent had learned of the plot ahead of time, captured one of the perpetrators and learned of the plan, but the captive has refused to give the flight numbers? Would it be a war crime for the agent to abuse the captive or for the President to approve the agent doing so?

For clarity concerning these questions, let’s use these three definitions of terms:

(1) harassment is engaging in acts (the sole purpose of which is to obtain information that would enable good people to stop a current or imminent attack against innocent civilians or combatants who are defending innocent civilians) that may cause the victim emotional or physical discomfort, but which cause the victim neither severe pain nor any physical injuries.

(2) Abuse is engaging in activities (the sole purpose of which is to obtain information that would enable good people to stop a current or imminent attack against innocent civilians or combatants who are defending innocent civilians), which activities result in the victim receiving only temporary pain (the painful activity ends at least as soon as the immediate threat has concluded AND the pain does not endure beyond 15 minutes after the cessation of the activity) and/or only superficial injuries.

(3) torture is to engage in activities that cause prolonged pain or injuries that persist significantly beyond the conclusion of the known imminent threat OR a pattern of repeated abusive activities occurring over an extended period of time unrelated to any known, specific threat.

Based on these definitions, in Scenario 2, would it be a war crime for the agent to engage in harassment or abuse (but not torture) to gain the information required to save the lives of 40 innocent passengers? Whether or not it is a crime, should the agent do so anyway?

Scenario 3 – Suppose it is not just passengers on Flight 93 that are threatened, but a large cruise ship with hundreds of passengers controlled by terrorists and a large dirty bomb or nuclear weapon on board. The agent has learned from the captive terrorist that the ship is going to enter New York City’s harbor and then detonate the bomb. Would it be moral for our agent to harass and abuse (not torture) one or more captives in order to discover what ship will carry the terrorists into the port of our greatest city and annihilate so many innocents that it would make 9/11 seem trivial in comparison? If it is moral for the agent to do so (or even monstrously immoral to refuse to do so), should it be a crime? And if so, why would it not be a crime to shoot down a flight with 40 innocents on board as the lesser evil, but it would be a crime to torture rather than kill the evil perpetrators?

Scenario 4 – This is the same as scenario 3, with two exceptions. First, you are the agent involved. Second, your wife, children, entire extended family, and most of your friends live in the New York City area. You know that if you don’t get the necessary information in the next 24 hours, many of them will die immediately—along with 100’s of thousands of others—with several times as many dying slow, excruciatingly painful deaths.

What would you do? What is moral for you to do? If you do that, should you be a criminal under federal or international law? Should you be a hero whose action saved millions of lives and yet, for the same decision, be legally charged for horrific crimes against humanity?

If your answers concerning the morality of the decision differ from your answers about what the laws should be related to this decision, then you are in the curious position of saying that those who risk their lives to protect the rest of us and who face the psychological burden of making such horrific choices should have the additional burden placed upon them of having to choose between doing what is right and humane or doing the the thing that keeps them out of criminal trouble. I ask you, "Is it just possibly immoral for us to put those who lay down their lives in order to do good, i.e., to fight to protect the lives, liberty, and property of innocents from evil aggressors, in the position of having to make such an untenable choice?"

I believe such unrealistic condemnation of all harassment and abuse as being war crimes is not merely incredibly naive, but is delusional to the point of psychosis, is despicably evil, and most importantly, is flagrantly dangerous for free peoples when we are at war for our survival against monstrously barbarous totalitarian fascists. Rather than attacking and interrogating our soldiers and security forces, we the people need to begin interrogating our politicians, prosecutors, judges who take these positions and annulling the powers that we the people bestowed upon them for the principle purpose of protecting our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

don – 7/17/08