Help Beny with his homework

[Occasional Fan]

Originally Posted by Maranello

So are we really saying that immaturity, illiteracy and poverty are excuses for criminal conduct? That vile behaviour under the guise of "warfare" can be excused on the grounds of the combatant's educational qualifications?

Not at all. What I am saying is that the responsibility for the actions of Other Ranks should rest with the officer(s) commanding them, either solely or at least in part (and probably the latter). As you point out later in your post, "I was only following orders" is not a legitimate defence and hasn't been at least since Nuremburg (which tried some pretty big fish) and numerous other trials between, say, 1946 and 1963, which tried, convicted, imprisoned and executed lower ranking people who attempted to rely on that defence.

Originally Posted by Maranello

I think the approaches suggested by you two are sensible descriptions of how the world operates and conducts warfare.

But that wasn't really the point. Whether at war or at peace, it is the only way to run an army. Any other way leads, once the hot lead starts flying, to guys on your side stopping the stuff. That is the reason why soldiers at all levels are trained, almost as a matter of instinct, to follow orders. I can much more easily see the possibility of orders being discussed and questioned within the officer corps - often at a safe distance behind the front line - than in front line action where the squaddies are the ones doing the dying. Out there, a moment's hesitation or uncertainty can cost the life of the hesitant or querying squaddie and his comrades. Back in the officers' quarters, the immediate consequence of discussion may be less severe. My point above was that, in my view, one has to sympathise with the squaddie who is trained to follow orders if, at times when it suits them, the officers, defence secretaries, parliamentarians and general public turn to them and ask "Why did you follow that one?".

Originally Posted by Maranello

In any case, the sanctions facing such a soldier today are far fewer than those experienced by others in previous generations.

Undoubtedly true, but it still remains an offence to fail to execute a legal order, and in my view more onus should be placed on the officers to ensure the legality of their orders than on the Other Ranks. I'm sure you're right that a soldier convicted of failing to follow an order would succeed on appeal if the order were found to be illegal - but it still suggests to me that the wrong man was on the charge in the first place.

Last point: you say that "blindly following orders leads to concentration camps". That may be so, but I am always a bit nervous of that sort of argument, mainly because the immediate example which springs to peoples' minds is the concentration camps of the Nazi era (not that they were first, last, or only, of course). We should remember that the Nazi concentration camp system was largely administered and run by the SS. That organisation as a whole was declared to be illegal in the processes which followed World War II, military law was not applied to it and you will still find today in any country in Europe military people who will not stand any comparison between themselves and the SS. It was not an army, its members were not soldiers and they had and have no right to consider themselves as such in my opinion or the opinion of many (probably most, perhaps all) soldiers. That's not to say that there was no military involvement in the Nazi concentration camps - but I do try to distinguish even in that dark chapter of Europe's history between military activity which was the main business of soldiers, and the evils of the concentration camps which were largely the business of the SS.

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Beny

after Nurenburg some person came up with a theory called the banality of evil

That would be Hannah Arend in her work on the Eichmann Trial: notoriety came with her notion that "The deeds were monstrous, but the doer ... was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous". Damn fine starting point for any discussion along these lines.

Originally Posted by Maranello

Such moral relativism dressed as pontification might be useful in allowing us to understand why these things happen, but they should be used to 'explain away' or justify such acts.

There's a big difference between refusing the temptation to reduce complex matters to inadequate caricatures and embracing some sort of nihilistic, post-modern vacuousness: I can recognise, for example, the genuine inadequacy of the crude notion of "murder" in relation to some of the activities of the IRA without at the same time becoming an apologist for those who committed acts I'm prepared to deplore.

With regard to "following orders" what generally seem to me to be critical in most instances is the perception of a choice and the grasp of real alternatives: it's surely rare to prosecute a guy who knowingly goes along with a war crime, fully aware that he, himself, would accept the description of the acts as war crimes and recognising that he had a genuine, viable alternative that even he recognises he had no excuse for not taking.

[Maranello]

Originally Posted by Beny

Ethics and Morality fascinate me. It's a purely human thing, you must have a level of intelligence to percive it. So is a Lion who kills an animal for fun (I've seen it happen), evil? Assuming that a Human who does the same thing is.

If not then is a human who's concepts of right and wrong are different to ours, evil?

As I said above, concepts of right and wrong as understood by most humans vary across cultures, and have also changed over time to some extent. However, a few actions, eg murder, torture or rape, are now almost universally accepted as morally wrong, and more importantly, are also illegal under most legal frameworks in effect on our planet. To justify these vile actions using moral relativism or to excuse them citing ignorance would render the whole legal framework unworkable.

Your example of a lion is totally irrelevant; surely you would agree that humans should have higher standards of morality and behaviour? Does the lion operate under any legal framework? Are these are any sanctions which can potentially be imposed on him to either punish him or deter other lions? The only instance where this somewhat daft analogy is relevant to human spheres of activity is when the human concerned is a child of three, or if adult, is mentally retarded to the age of a three year old. Are we arguing that all soldiers have the mental age of three?

[Occasional Fan]

Originally Posted by Maranello

I believe that there are some minimum absolute standards of right and wrong and these cannot be negated by any amount of moral relativism. To put it simply, some actions are universally accepted as being wrong, and to argue they were justified by certain circumstances, or by the peculiarities of a situation, demeans not only the legal framework of that society, but also the tenuous moral fabric uniting the human species. Such moral relativism dressed as pontification might be useful in allowing us to understand why these things happen, but they should be used to 'explain away' or justify such acts.

I'm not so sure that there are any actions which are universally accepted as being wrong. Maybe that is why these debates happen from time to time. There are loads of actions which, even though we barely know one another, I imagine you, Beny and I would agree are wrong as far as we are concerned. But I'd bet that we could find someone who would disagree with us, and we might even find some areas in which we disagree amongst ourselves.

For example - and I won't pursue my reasoning further on this: I am only using it as an example - I personally believe that there are no circumstances in which a court should sentence a convicted criminal to death, or corporal punishment, or mutilation. I know many people who disagree with me on the first of these sentences, a few who disagree on the second, and if I had been brought up in a different society from the one which has conditioned me over these past forty odd years, I might feel differently myself about all three of them. Elsewhere, Maranello, you make the point that you work in the context of 21st century Europe - and that, in a way, alludes to the same point which I make here. It is at least partly that context which makes me anti-hanging, anti-flogging and anti-amputation. If I were, for example, Singaporean, I might not have been bothered at all about the English guy who was caned for vandalism offences a few years ago; if I were American, I might be among the 60-odd per cent of people there who think capital punishment is a pretty neat idea; if I were Saudi Arabian, reading of the amputation of a thief's hand might not even cause me to think twice.

I think context is an essential component of determining whether an action is right or wrong - there is no universality. It is barely comprehensible to those of us who live in 21st century Europe - even those who do so who also lived in 1930s Germany - that the horrors of the Nazi era happened at all. But like it or not, there was a combination of circumstances which existed in Germany in the 1930s which meant that those horrors were not universally considered to be wrong. Greater minds than mine will debate for decades to come what those circumstances were and what proportion of people did not consider them wrong, but the fact is that there were some who undoubtedly felt that what they were doing was right. That's not to justify the actions, nor to "explain them away", but understanding the circumstances is a vital step to explaining (as opposed to explaining away) the actions and thus to preventing their recurrence.

[Maranello]

Originally Posted by Rachael

That would be Hannah Arend in her work on the Eichmann Trial: notoriety came with her notion that "The deeds were monstrous, but the doer ... was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous". Damn fine starting point for any discussion along these lines.

I quite appreciate that Rachael; however the ordinariness of the doer in other spheres of his actions does not in any way negate the extraordinary evil of these specific deeds committed by them. If one is to believe the various psychiatric case histories of murderers and serial-rapists, one could quite easily argue that the bulk of their existence was composed of banal ordinariness; however, whilst that may or may not explain their evil acts, it does not excuse them.

On a related point, I am somewhat confused about your employing the expression "evil" in certain instances but not in others:

Rachael on the current Labour government (link):

Originally Posted by Rachael #46797

Blunket, surely the most evil man to ever hold office

Rachael on the Nazis (link):

Originally Posted by Rachael #45665

As for the use of the word "evil"... my impression has long been that in different circumstances, either Hitler or Stalin could have become eminently respectable world leaders. That is not to excuse the atrocity of the acts committed.. but surely acts committed (not people) are "evil"..

[Rachael]

There's a lot to be said for bringing this discussion closer to home and asking why it is, right here and right now, that a spectacularly authoritarian mindset has emerged at the home office. One now witnesses a sense amongst ministers that government has ineluctable obligations to protect that justify (seemingly) serious consideration being given to pretty much ANY sort of measure.. to the point where someone recently commented that before long it will be as if we, the public, need to run our lives for THEIR convenience rather than they, the wso-called "public servants", having to dedicate their lives to OUR convenience.

ID cards and the assorted dubious bits of messing around with judicial rights might seem pretty trivial compared with genocide.. but the fact remains that perfectly ordinary people who might, until very recently, have been appalled at the very notion that they could be complicit in the development of an authoritarian police state... and now pretty much complicit in exactly that.

Thus far I trust that the process hasn't reached an extreme level.. but all of a sudden we seem to have entered a mindset in which public servants might feel rather unsure of their obligations if they came across evidence of a Guatanamo-bay type institution operating covertly on British soil... might feel unsure about refusng if asked to play some small bit-part in an MI5 operation that seemed to sail close to the wind with regard to the law... and so on.

I'm not some great conspiracy theorist suggesting any of these things is happening.. but I would suggest that there has been a climate change of quite astonishing proportions in quite a short time frame: escalate that many times over for the situation in 1930s Germany and the case for seeing these matters in black and white - to me at least - just evaporates.

ps. good point on the use of "evil", Maranello... and not one I'm going to go out of my way to justify: there's an element of me playing devil's advocate in both of those posts! That said... what Blunkett presided over at the home office did strike me (albeit from afar) as a drift in mindset that was positively dangerous in exactly the terms I outline above.

pps. Please don't confuse the banality of peoples lives with the notions expressed in the term "the banality of evil": Arendt's point was the thoughlessness of Eichmann. Essentially, the point is that under the right (wrong) conditions... seemingly evil deeds can completely lose their "extraordinaryness" - processing human beings can become as un-noteworthy as processing biros or pencils.

[Occasional Fan]

Indeed! Authoritarian home secretaries have been the vogue at least since Michael Howard had the job. But leaving personalities aside, like you I am extremely concerned at the tendency of the government nowadays to see itself as being in charge of everything. There is, as far as I can think, not a minister in the cabinet (and perhaps there is not even a civil servant anywhere) who understands that he is there to do my bidding and not the reverse.

(I might be having a bit of an extreme reaction to this point today, having just spent another several hours dealing with Czech bureaucrats: I specifically tried to make this point to one of them this morning, but it's like banging your head against the wall. And I don't think that is entirely a language issue! Actually, if there hadn't been three panes of glass between me and the bureaucrat in question, I might have banged her head against the wall. It wouldn't have achieved much, but at least I would have felt I'd got something back in recompense for my somewhat elevated blood pressure.)

I think, Rachael, from your posts that you are more a Telegraph sort of person than a Guardian sort, but here's a letter from this morning's Guardian which hits it on the head:

Originally Posted by Suzon Forscey-Moore in The Guardian

There are better things to spend money on than ID cards, but underlying the whole issue is the question of whether the people own the state or the state owns the people. If the latter is the case, a microchip in the back of the neck should do the trick.

Only tangentially related, but I also rather liked this one:

Originally Posted by Dave Forbes in The Guardian

So the police will have the right to stop me in the street to check my ID card. If I don't have the card, I may be required to present it at the station at a later date, as drivers may be required to present their documents. If I fail to comply, how can the police prove it was me they asked? If they can prove it was me, what's the point of the card?

[Maranello]

Originally Posted by Occasional Fan

I think, Rachael, from your posts that you are more a Telegraph sort of person than a Guardian sort,

Oh come on OF, that's below the belt! And certainly not the sort of thing one should say to a lady.

[Occasional Fan]

You're quite right, Maranello, and I stand duly chastised. I accept that there is no evidence for the assertion made in my previous post, which I therefore withdraw unreservedly. Furthermore, I wish to apologise to RDT for any offence or embarrassment that may have been caused, but I stop short of making the usual undisclosed charitable contribution.

But in any case: what about it, Rachael? True or false? Any other offences you wish to be taken into consideration?

[Rachael]

Originally Posted by Maranello

Oh come on OF, that's below the belt! And certainly not the sort of thing one should say to a lady.

If the comment had been that from my posts I might be identified as known to read the Torygraph that would be fair enough: {a} I reference cricket reports from the Telegraph periodically; and {b} I do actually read the damn thing. I do, however, refute entirely the allegation that I'm a "Telegraph sort of person"

Our weekly dose of Guardian perspective comes from the Observer each Sunday: when I switched to the Guardian on weekdays I found {a} too much self-righteous nonsense; {b} too many dubious public sector job advertisements; and {c} too little cricket.

I do think the standard of reporting (especially world-wide) is generally higher in the Telegraph... and by and large I find the editorials and leaders worth reading even if (as I usually do) I don't agree with them. Sadly, and George Monbiot excepted, I find too many of the Grauniad things just plain predictable.