Robert Purdy and George Paine, Take Three
Another interesting (to me, at least) exchange of letters between George Paine of Warblogging.com and Robert Purdy, a US Army helicopter pilot recently returned from Iraq: More from the Third ID.
Warblogging.com is an antiwar site, so I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that most of the people who comment there are going to have a field day with someone like Purdy, who is unsurprisingly pro-war in his attitudes. But still, I find myself cringing at some of the snide comments people are making toward him. This guy is risking his life, okay? In defense of our collective life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Yeah, I happen to agree that the people who sent him in to fight this particular war were wrong to do so, but that’s not Purdy’s fault.
Maybe you believe we should build a world where he wouldn’t have to make those sacrifices. I happen to think so, too. But guess what? We haven’t built it yet. In the meantime, he’s putting himself on the line to stand between us and the bad guys. It’s not his fault if the people giving the orders are self-serving chooms. That’s our fault.
So show a little fucking respect. I’m not saying you have to agree with his political views. But acknowledge who he is, and the personal sacrifices he’s made on your behalf. You can at least be polite. Can’t you?
August 6th, 2003 at 4:21 pm
First off, I haven’t yet followed the link or read any of this correspondence. My comment here is aimed more generally at the idea of respect for soldiers, and how much the folly of their superiors is their fault.
I agree that the extremely high-level goals of people who join the military–things like “protect the innocent”–are ones with which I mostly agree. And that going out and making an effort to accomplish those goals is worth some respect.
But their goals and methods diverge from mine pretty quickly as soon as you leave the most abstract level (“protect the innocent by shooting anyone who may be slightly less innocent”). So while I’m willing to credit them a little for good intentions, it doesn’t vastly distinguish them from the default respect level for an average human.
Secondly, and more strongly, I think that actions they take in the service of their immoral superiors _are_ their responsibility. One hundred percent, precisely as much their responsibility as if they had undertaken them spontaneously and singlehandedly.
You cannot give away responsibility, no matter how loudly you claim to have done so. If you choose to accept and carry out the orders of another person, you are responsible for that choice and the actions you take.
And I absolutely disagree that I owe soldiers a debt of gratitude for “personal sacrifices they have made on my behalf.” Don’t do me any favors, buddy.
August 7th, 2003 at 7:47 am
You’re free to be ungrateful for what they’ve done, but the favor is on the books regardless. You live in a country that was created and has been maintained by the sacrifices of members of the armed forces. You enjoy the socioeconomic and personal-liberty benefits of being a US citizen.
Your personal philosophy is childish, in the sense that it sounds like the statement of a young child who proclaims that he owes nothing to his parents, despite their having fed, clothed, and housed him, merely because he didn’t ask for those things. And that argument has a certain validity, at least until the child has reached an age where he or she is capable of providing those things on his or her own. But when the child is pushing 30, and still sitting around the house eating his parents’ food and watching TV all day, the disclaimer of debt starts to ring a little hollow.
And while one can’t give responsibility away, one can, as you point out, choose to surrender one’s individual decision-making authority to a larger entity, as military folks do when they swear to carry out the lawful orders of your superior officers, including the president. Now, where it gets tricky is that the lawfulness of the president’s orders in this case might well be viewed as a matter of opinion, yet most folks in the military are disinclined by training and temperament to give that question a very close analysis. But again, as the individuals who possess that responsibility, it’s up to them to make that determination.
I’m not surprised by your assertion that you have no responsibility to respect the sacrifices made by members of the military; it’s completely consistent with your assertion that there is no reason why you should register and vote, since you are unable to perceive any benefits it might produce for you. Which, again, strikes me as childish. And there again, you let the troops down, since they are depending on you to use your vote to prevent the rise to power of the kind of civilian leaders who would misuse the military for inappropriate ends.
I’m not saying you don’t have the right to disprespect soldiers and to refuse to vote; you do. I know you have a carefully constructed logical framework that supports your decisions to do what is most convenient for you, while denying that you have any responsibility to inconvenience yourself on behalf of anyone else. I’m sure that logical framework is quite sturdy, and, given your disinclination to examine it too closely, serves your currently defined needs quite well.
I used to espouse a very similar philosophy. At a certain point in my life, though, my moral framework expanded to encompass a larger sphere of social interaction, in which I was responsible for things like the conduct of the armed forces for whom I paid with my taxes, and the decisions of politicians who came to power as a result of my votes (or lack thereof).
As I said above, I see that transition as analogous to the transition one makes in going from childhood to adulthood. And in the sense of your recognition of the larger social sphere that sustains your lifestyle, I don’t think you’ve made that transition yet.
Maybe you never will. When I was a child, I thought my moral framework was perfectly adequate. It was only when I was ready to make the change that I realized its shortcomings.
August 8th, 2003 at 2:17 pm
While it lacks a fancy latin name, I think that the conversational tactic of, “you’ll change your mind after x,” is, at best, reliably non-useful. If you can make a case for the change of heart, you should do so. If you can’t support or explain it, only assert broadly that it will happen, it’s not a terribly productive comment.
And when it’s tied to a positive trait, it just becomes a cheap and unsupported attack. “Well, of course you have all those arguments I’m not going to address, all fundamentally evil people think that way. But once you finally accept the Grace of my chosen religion, you’ll get over all that.”
I would now move on to addressing the actual points of your argument, but… you don’t seem to have made any.