Liberal morality is very strange

Here's a quote from a NY Times Magazine article about Justice John Paul Stevens:

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago in 1941, Stevens enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 6, 1941, hours before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He later won a bronze star for his service as a cryptographer, after he helped break the code that informed American officials that Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese Navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, was about to travel to the front. Based on the code-breaking of Stevens and others, U.S. pilots, on Roosevelt’s orders, shot down Yamamoto’s plane in April 1943.

Stevens told me he was troubled by the fact that Yamamoto, a highly intelligent officer who had lived in the United States and become friends with American officers, was shot down with so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration. The experience, he said, raised questions in his mind about the fairness of the death penalty. “I was on the desk, on watch, when I got word that they had shot down Yamamoto in the Solomon Islands, and I remember thinking: This is a particular individual they went out to intercept,” he said. “There is a very different notion when you’re thinking about killing an individual, as opposed to killing a soldier in the line of fire.”

I don't understand Stevens' point at all. It's OK to kill conscripts who don't have any say in their country's political or military policies, but there's a moral problem with killing the guy who's the architect of the enemy battle plans?

Liberal morality is a very alien thing. I feel sorry for the poor Japanese schmucks we had to kill because their leaders, such as Isoroku Yamamoto, decided it was a good idea to go to war against us. But Yamamoto got what was coming to him.

Comments

Just more proof that contrary to anything they claim, liberals don't give a rat's rear about the common man.

[dearieme]

It sounds like class solidarity. Yamamoto was an intelligent and elite figure like me, not some ordinary bloke sent to die for his country. Quite the opposite of an aristocratic outlook, by the way.

[Ron Purewal]

When you're talking about 'soldiers in the line of fire,' it's very easy to forget that the enemy has a name, a face, a mother, and all the other jazz that goes with being, well, human. I think Stevens is saying that he doesn't rest as easily with killing a known human quantity, with a name and a face (that are familiar, at that), rather than mowing down some generic Unknown Soldier(s).

If Yamamoto's particular identity is taken into account, I agree that Stevens's reasoning is nothing short of absurd (for the exact reasons posited by HS) - but I think Stevens is just trying to say that his conscience is troubled by running an assassination mission against one (familiar) person, regardless of that person's identity. That it happened to be Yamamoto is incidental, except inasmuch as Yamamoto had played cards with the Yanks.

For some reason I'm reminded of a WWII movie I saw some years ago (can't remember the title), in which the camera angles depict none of the enemy faces at first, but more and more enemy faces are shown (usually right before they are killed) the longer the movie drags on.

[Gannon]

It's much more difficult to kill somebody you know, even if you only know him through indirect means. And let's not pretend the US was completely innocent. The US was actively trying to undermine Japanese interests since world war 1 in Asia, and the oil embargo was an act of agression.

[tommy]

Liberalism is mostly a game of self-promotion and status-seeking hiding behind a mask of humanitarianism and compassion. The average liberal elite feels for the common man in much the same way Bill Clinton feels your pain. Take Marxism, for example...

[Buckaroo]

Hey, I'm on board with the general dumping on liberal "compassion" and mawkish for-public-consumption pain-feeling but Ron Purewal brings up an interesting angle on the John Paul Stevens episode. Specifically, he mentions assassination and suggests that Stevens's reaction the the taking down Yamamoto can be viewed at least partly as disapproval of assassinations.

I would wager that a lot of people (not just limousine liberals) would instinctively condemn assassination as a state tactic, even in war. Hey, it's even officially illegal for the American executive branch to engage in it. This has some peculiar effects. For example, before Gulf War II we were pretty much presented with Saddam as the devil incarnate with the rest of the Iraqis (OK, minus a few dozen hard-core nut jobs) portrayed as innocent freedom-and-democracy-thirsting victims. It seemed like an ideal case for "kill the top guy and no one else gets hurt". And yet, it obviously could not even be considered.

Now, I see how, if you are the US President, you wouldn't want to go around knocking off random tin pot dictators because said dictators may get the idea that you were fair game too. But is there any coherent moral argument for banning assassination in cases where the alternative is full scale war with the target's country ?

[PG]

Er, I don't claim much knowledge of Yamamoto, but according to the Wikipedia entry, he was very opposed to Japan's hawkish actions and wasn't the death to America type you seem to be envisoning.

Justice Stevens may be saying that going after an individual in order to demoralize the enemy treats him as merely a means to an end, instead of as an individual human being. I don't think this is elitism; on the contrary, instead of being an "ism" lumping all people into one category (Jap = evil!), it considers the individual. Yamamoto wasn't setting Japan's policies; he simply carried them out as best he could.

I wouldn't call Yamamoto a particularly virtuous man, because he recognized that allying with Italy and Germany, and going to war with the U.S., were both wrong and unlikely to succeed, yet remained in the Japanese military instead of leaving it and taking the consequences (according to Wikipedia, he was targeted for assassination within Japan for his opposition to war).

However, this makes him no worse than Robert E. Lee: prizing loyalty to homeland over an independent assessment of right and wrong.

[bristlecone]

Stevens' view is silly. Yamamoto was a gifted naval strategist. Killing him was justified for the same reason sinking an enemy aircraft carrier or bombing an munitions factory was justified.

Maybe someone forget to tell Stevens that you know, there was a war going on. You are supposed to kill the other guy without "deliberation" or "humanitarian consideration." Yamamoto wasn't in the "line of fire?" The guy was out checking military installations and meeting with Japanese officers (or the enemy, as normal people would call them).
The idea that killing Yamamato was "assassination" is asinine. In any war, the enemy nation's military leaders are fair game(and so our ours for that matter, it goes with the territory), trying to kill them is a goddamn requirement. Only a liberal could tie themself into knots over something like this. With people like him around it is amazing we won WW2.

[Dan Morgan]

"I don't understand Stevens' point at all."

Yes, and this makes you wonder what sorts of contorted thinking must be going on in his work on the bench.

[Dave]

John Paul Stevens? Little intelligent thought ever originated with this dude. You wonder who's side guys like this are on. Certainly not ours.

The US was actively trying to undermine Japanese interests since world war 1 in Asia, and the oil embargo was an act of agression.

Which interests was the U.S. trying to undermine? The Japanese interest in raping every woman in China? Or the Japanese interest in controlling every other Asian race with an iron fist?

America wasn't armed or agressive enough before WWII. And we nearly lost everything for the mistake.

[Gil]

Oh well. Fox News has plenty of right-wing nutjobs for counter-balance (and then some).

[tmm]

Anothing thing I have never undestood is why it is ok to kill soldiers but not civilians. After all, if there is draft, then soldiers are just civilians forced to participate in war.

[Buckaroo]

tmm:
There are probably half a dozen good reasons why killing soldiers is viewed differently from killing civilians but here's the big, obvious one: soldiers, by definition, can shoot back. It's generally (although certainly not always) considered unsporting to kill defenseless people.

And let me take this opportunity to ask again my previous question: why is assassination of a foreign dictator considered beyond the pale, while bombing his helpless and unwilling, by our own description, subjects just dandy ?

[Ned]

As General Sherman said, "War is hell." In wartime, all enemy combatants, from the lowliest grunt private in the trenches to the admirals, generals and maximum leader himself, are fair game. If it's OK to hang Tojo, what's wrong with killing Yamamoto in a combat situation? Actually, Yamamoto, if he had had time to think about it, probably would have admired the operation that resulted in his death. The ambush was based on decrypted intelligence, and the P-38's that pulled it off were operating at the extreme limit of their range, so precise timing was essential. I respect Yamamoto greatly - he was one of Japan's very best military leaders. He had served in the US and spoke English fluently. Also, he was probably alone among the senior Japanese leadership to realize how the enormous military potential of the United States would inevitably lead to Japan's destruction. He would have had no problem with the operation that lead to his death.

[JewishAtheist]

Holy crap, HS. Are you trying to beat liberals by just making our heads explode? You don't even attempt to show that Stevens's bizarre feelings about Yamamoto are part of "liberal morality."

I'm a liberal. I'm 100% for assassinating heads of state, generals, admirals, whatever of any country that we are at war with. They deserve it much more than the poor shlubs they conscripted.

[JewishAtheist]

He's also not even a liberal. Conservatives don't like some of his rulings, so they've considered him one, but he calls himself a conservative, was appointed by Ford, etc. etc.

Fucked-up liberal "thinking" like the above idiocy from Stevens is why we are not as successful as we should be in this current war.

[Gamma Man]

Sigma, so if your Commander -in-chief was shot by the ennemy, you´d be fine with that? I´m talking about Bush and the rest of the architects of neocon war.

[bbartlog]

JewishAtheist beat me to it I see. Your lumping together of liberals is crude. There is definitely a school of liberal thought that moots the idea that the real reason people in high places don't assassinate each other all the time is that they have something of a gentlemen's agreement not to. They prefer to spill the blood of proxies. By this reasoning, the world would be a better place if assassination were more widely used in war, since it would spread the costs all the way to the top.

[SFG]

Yeah, see, I'm a liberal, and this is why I think assassination is a great idea. Yeah, they might decide to knock off our president too, but it'd be nice to make our leaders put their asses on the line instead of just poor shlubs from Alabama (or Baghdad). This is why it will never happen, too.

Really, HS. Comparing rank-and-file liberals to the chardonnay-sipping hypocrites at the top of our ladder is like saying Joe Sixpack in Alabama is a money-grubbing bastard who sits safe in his financial tower and sends other people's children to war. Um, no. Our elites are scum but we like them better than yours.

Heck, HS is conservative, more or less. As long as we're conflating everyone on the same side of the aisle, I propose to JewishAtheist, Spungen, and David Alexander, that every time HS takes some elite jerk as representative of all liberals, that we ask him, as a conservative, why he doesn't believe in evolution.

[SFG]

Or why he thinks a man can be resurrected from the dead and a woman can have children without a man. Hey, he's a conservative, and they believe that, right? ;)

More liberal idiocy here and a smear job:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070925/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_snipers

Can you believe it? Snipers were (gasp) shooting the enemy! What next?

[nathaniel]

Reservations against assassinating officers probably goes all the way back to the Middle Ages, when nobility normally weren't killed in battle but rather captured for ransom. In other words, Stevens is demonstrating a very conservative morality here, not a liberal one.

And it was FDR who ordered the assassination of Yamamoto. Wasn't he a liberal?

[Randy]

I wouldn't call Yamamoto a particularly virtuous man, because he recognized that allying with Italy and Germany, and going to war with the U.S., were both wrong and unlikely to succeed, yet remained in the Japanese military instead of leaving it and taking the consequences (according to Wikipedia, he was targeted for assassination within Japan for his opposition to war).

However, this makes him no worse than Robert E. Lee: prizing loyalty to homeland over an independent assessment of right and wrong.

There are many who still prize patriotism as virtue. Real patriotism, that is, not the "please don't call me unpatriotic, I support the troops and my country, just not what they're doing; just 'cause I secretly wish for my country to lose doesn't mean I'm not a patriot" kind of patriotism.

BTW, I thought it was August 6?