Catch-22: The Ethics of War

Global hotspots are the new black.

Though it typically isn't the sort of flashy news peg to get much attention, it is true that the U.S. Army understands the power of non-violent opposition. Sounds silly, I know. I mean, it's an army -- and shouldn't that intrinsically imply the use of force? Well, yes. But, I guess the lesson is that force isn't always violent.

To wit: understanding the complexities of local socio-cultural nuances and mores will go a long way to better enable soldiers operating in that environment. Therefore, sometimes government contractors, such as social scientists and specialists, are imbedded with combat units to help develop non-violent options for stabilizing chaotic areas.

In 2008, an incident happened in the southern Afghanistan village of Chehel Gazni, about 40 miles from Kandahar. I read about it months later.

A couple of Human Terrain Team contractors (Don Ayala and Paula Loyd) were on a foot patrol when one of them, a female (Lloyd), approached a local, Abdul Salam.

[This is the part of the story where I pause to remind you that these contractors are culturally knowledgeable and specifically tasked with seeking non-violent ways to help quell local disorder.]

Ms. Loyd was suddenly doused with a fuel jug Salam was carrying. And Salam set her on fire.

Loyd's fellow contractor, Ayala, apprehended Salam and detained him. But, when a soldier arrived on the scene a few minutes later and reported that Loyd was badly burned, according to an Army Criminal Investigation Division affidavit: "Ayala pushed his pistol against Salam's head and shot Salam, killing him instantly."

Loyd later died from her wounds. Ayala was taken into custody and charged with second degree murder in the shooting of Salam.

That is an intense situation. If you try and imagine being embedded in a combat unit in a war zone of a hostile region, seeing your friend doused with fuel and burned, it doesn't seem too far outside the likely human response to dispatch the guilty party. War tends to involve moments of killing.

I realize there are complexities here that prevent this from being a simple black-and-white issue. And, I can't say for sure what I would have done in a similar situation -- which is to say I could have very well done what Ayala did in a reactionary rage. It seems it isn't too far of a stretch to imagine that, in that moment, he was so emotionally overwrought as to be unstable, and, one might say, temporarily insane…and to consider that Salam bears some responsibility for inciting the incident via the heinous attack on Ayala's coworker (which resulted in the coworker's death).

Rules of engagement (ROE) can plague any person operating in a hostile zone. Someone removed from the front lines can easily determine, on some academic technicality, that a given incident qualifies as murder, whereas another event is justified as a "part of war."

It all furrows my brow.  It seems we put our military personnel in circumstances where the expected course of action is to become a casualty.

An Assumption of Soundness

Sometime between the April 1994 death of my father and the April 1995 death of my mother, I made a discovery that entwined a combination of poignant triggers. It was like wading into an emotional estuary with competing currents of love and loss.

I found a letter in the back bedroom of my childhood home that Dad had begun writing me while I was overseas. He never finished it.

I don't know if the missive was being composed near the day of his death from congestive heart failure, or if it had already waited weeks or months for him to return and conclude it before his life had its own conclusion.

His typically bold and forthright penmanship appeared shaken and uncertain. Descenders and ascenders belied his unsteady hand.

It seems that somewhere along the path of my own life, I discovered my parents had grown old. Their old age often startled me when I arrived for a visit, an undeniable reminder that the world had moved on from the simpler times of my childhood.

Dad's letter talked about golf and the golf balls he fished out of the creek along the fairway on the first hole. His letter insisted that I be careful while abroad and return to them safely.

I was pleased to have that correspondence. But, since the intervening months between its composition and my receipt of it brought my father's death, it held more metaphysical weight than it would otherwise.

Both my father and his father died when their own hearts turned on them after decades and decades of dedicated and faithful duty -- the daily thrumming and pumping in their chests. It occasionally makes me curious about my own heart and its unknown intentions.



After a while I found myself becoming nostalgic
for the way I thought I remembered it being
between my heart and me, a kind of continuum
of body and mind, an assumption of soundness,
that sense you have as a child of being in such a
full, weighty recline within yourself that things
like sitting on a porch or swinging in a hammock
seem unsettling redundancies.   -- Charles Siebert, A Man After His Own Heart

The Ocean of Our Unknowing

I first heard of Don Miller while on a business trip in Waco.  He wasn’t there.  But, I visited the University Baptist Church, and the pastor mentioned his book, Blue Like Jazz, and read this from the frontmatter.

I never like jazz music, because jazz

music doesn’t resolve.  But, I was

outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland

one night  when I saw a man playing

the saxophone.  I stood there for fifteen

minutes and he never opened his eyes.

After that, I liked jazz.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love

something before you can love it yourself.

It is as if they are showing you the way.

I like that.  The sentiment and the way he packaged it.

So, I’ve since become a full-on follower of Don Miller and his spiritual exploration, his presentation of questions and observations and theological ruminations.  I like the way he refuses to find contentment in the merry acceptance of the doctrine bequeathed by elderly men.

And I follow his blog, too – enjoying posts like THIS ONE and THIS ONE (from the time his dog, Lucy, took over blogging duties).

His recent book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is now available in paperback.

What story are you telling? from Rhetorik Creative on Vimeo.

This Miller quote has stuck with me from Through Painted Deserts: “It turns out the droplet of our knowledge is a bit lost in the ocean of our unknowing.”

This & That

In 2009, I listened to a Slate Audio Book Club podcast about Nicholson Baker's most recent book, The Anthologist. I followed that up by hunting down and reading a review in the New York Times.

Sounded appealing. I figured I'd one day buy it or pick up a copy from the library.

Around that same time, I'd begun mulling over e-readers, not quite convinced I wanted one. But, I was curious. And, like my plan to read The Anthologist, I figured I'd do it one day -- I'd take the plunge and get an e-reader. Not soon, mind you, but eventually.

In my curiosity, I poked around online to see what assessments there were about Amazon's Kindle. Somewhere, I encountered a reference to a Nicholson Baker article for The New Yorker about his experience evaluating the Kindle. Kismet, I figured. I'd already learned that some people were reading electronic books on their iPhones -- and that topic also surfaced in the Baker article.  Plus, there was general hubbub in those days about something called an iPad (which I have since bought for my wife).

So, I read the article, which was the "cause" that begat a few "effects." It reinforced my notion that I'd be waiting to see which direction e-readers veer. It also made me seriously consider that an iPhone (or iPod Touch) could supplant an e-reader-specific device with added functionalities. But, it also thoroughly encouraged my interest in Michael Connelly's The Lincoln Lawyer (which Baker discusses reading electronically).

Thus, when I spied an audio book of The Lincoln Lawyer on a shelf at the library near my office, I promptly seized it. And I found it an outstanding companion on my daily commute.

Now, there's a movie of The Lincoln Lawyer about to hit theaters.  And it looks good.  I know all the plot acrobatics, but I still expect to enjoy the movie.

I still haven't read The Anthologist, thought I have enjoyed several other Connelly novels.  And, though my wife has an iPad, all the collective murmurings of the masses these days is about the iPad 2.