thedrifter
07-12-07, 02:49 PM
Ethics at the point of a gun
By: JOHN VAN DOORN - Staff Writer
Marines are fighting awful battles in Iraq and at Camp Pendleton. One struggle is the war, and the other -- that about which we are better informed because the arena is local -- is a struggle as old as all war itself: How to determine when killing becomes murder.
At the beginning of all wars, Iraq included, instruction in ethics is not high on the to-do list.
There is so much else to think about: teaching the citizenry (a) that the "enemy" is truly evil; (b) that it is better to fight on foreign soil than on one's own; (c) that patriots believe the cause is just, no matter what; and (d) that killing is the manly way to resolve disputes.
It's only later that ethics come up. Somebody gets killed who is not strictly a combatant, or, to put it another way, is a civilian. Or a prisoner. Or a band member. Or a mom. He or she may have been killed by, say, a Marine -- as is charged in cases, several at Pendleton, now before the military courts -- and the issue is joined. The ethics of death.
At Pendleton on Monday, our Mark Walker reports, a Marine corporal named Trent Thomas was described as "a murderer" in an opening statement by the prosecution at his trial in the slaying of a civilian in Hamdania in 2006.
Thomas is not alone as an accused killer. He is one of eight charged in the case. Five pleaded guilty. A sergeant, Lawrence Hutchins III, has a trial coming up. It has been charged that as platoon leader he gave his men the orders to kill.
In war or peace, Marines are known for better things. They have written legends through the dark of U.S. wars. Bravery and honor have been the watchwords. Generals such as the late Chesty Puller and North County's Ray Murray became storybook figures, if only for the miracle they performed at the Chosin Reservoir. But for much else, too.
Ethical lapses down the decades? Of course. Killing on a large scale threatens and sometimes overcomes the human impulse -- if such there is -- to do the right thing.
But the contrast cuts in as a laser into steel. As the prosecutor said to the jury on Monday: "Gentlemen, it's not an easy thing to sit on a murder case occurring in the middle of a war. But this case is not about the rules of engagement -- this is a case about an old-fashioned, premeditated conspiracy to kill."
Perhaps it isn't about rules of engagement. We take the good prosecutor at his word. But he brought it up, no one else.
Perhaps it is an old-fashioned conspiracy straight out of Chicago in the 1930s. We cannot judge so far. But it is not a crystal-clear proceeding, and the prosecutor has made that apparent in insisting that it is. He knows that "murder" somehow loses its hellish mantle when it's mixed up, then entangled with, death in every roadside.
A Marine pulls a trigger once, under any circumstances, and hits his target, then ethics and morality and the entire point of being human rush in. Perhaps for just a moment, but maybe for a lifetime.
Meanwhile, back at the war, killing goes on, and probably some of the "cases" there will eventually turn up murky, too. What is very clear to date is that 3,606 U.S. service men and women have been killed in Iraq (an Associated Press figure as of Monday).
Iraqi civilian deaths? The estimates are grotesque if only for their wide differences: some as low as 9,000, some an unspeakable 600,000.
Most profoundly sad is that none of the estimators knows for sure. They're guessing on the figures for the dead, or they're trying without much confidence to count them up. Door-to-door does not work very well in that sort of inquiry; often there are no doors left, or houses to hang them on.
-- Contact columnist John Van Doorn at (760) 739-6647 or jvandoorn@nctimes.com.
Ellie
By: JOHN VAN DOORN - Staff Writer
Marines are fighting awful battles in Iraq and at Camp Pendleton. One struggle is the war, and the other -- that about which we are better informed because the arena is local -- is a struggle as old as all war itself: How to determine when killing becomes murder.
At the beginning of all wars, Iraq included, instruction in ethics is not high on the to-do list.
There is so much else to think about: teaching the citizenry (a) that the "enemy" is truly evil; (b) that it is better to fight on foreign soil than on one's own; (c) that patriots believe the cause is just, no matter what; and (d) that killing is the manly way to resolve disputes.
It's only later that ethics come up. Somebody gets killed who is not strictly a combatant, or, to put it another way, is a civilian. Or a prisoner. Or a band member. Or a mom. He or she may have been killed by, say, a Marine -- as is charged in cases, several at Pendleton, now before the military courts -- and the issue is joined. The ethics of death.
At Pendleton on Monday, our Mark Walker reports, a Marine corporal named Trent Thomas was described as "a murderer" in an opening statement by the prosecution at his trial in the slaying of a civilian in Hamdania in 2006.
Thomas is not alone as an accused killer. He is one of eight charged in the case. Five pleaded guilty. A sergeant, Lawrence Hutchins III, has a trial coming up. It has been charged that as platoon leader he gave his men the orders to kill.
In war or peace, Marines are known for better things. They have written legends through the dark of U.S. wars. Bravery and honor have been the watchwords. Generals such as the late Chesty Puller and North County's Ray Murray became storybook figures, if only for the miracle they performed at the Chosin Reservoir. But for much else, too.
Ethical lapses down the decades? Of course. Killing on a large scale threatens and sometimes overcomes the human impulse -- if such there is -- to do the right thing.
But the contrast cuts in as a laser into steel. As the prosecutor said to the jury on Monday: "Gentlemen, it's not an easy thing to sit on a murder case occurring in the middle of a war. But this case is not about the rules of engagement -- this is a case about an old-fashioned, premeditated conspiracy to kill."
Perhaps it isn't about rules of engagement. We take the good prosecutor at his word. But he brought it up, no one else.
Perhaps it is an old-fashioned conspiracy straight out of Chicago in the 1930s. We cannot judge so far. But it is not a crystal-clear proceeding, and the prosecutor has made that apparent in insisting that it is. He knows that "murder" somehow loses its hellish mantle when it's mixed up, then entangled with, death in every roadside.
A Marine pulls a trigger once, under any circumstances, and hits his target, then ethics and morality and the entire point of being human rush in. Perhaps for just a moment, but maybe for a lifetime.
Meanwhile, back at the war, killing goes on, and probably some of the "cases" there will eventually turn up murky, too. What is very clear to date is that 3,606 U.S. service men and women have been killed in Iraq (an Associated Press figure as of Monday).
Iraqi civilian deaths? The estimates are grotesque if only for their wide differences: some as low as 9,000, some an unspeakable 600,000.
Most profoundly sad is that none of the estimators knows for sure. They're guessing on the figures for the dead, or they're trying without much confidence to count them up. Door-to-door does not work very well in that sort of inquiry; often there are no doors left, or houses to hang them on.
-- Contact columnist John Van Doorn at (760) 739-6647 or jvandoorn@nctimes.com.
Ellie