JOURNAL: WEEK SIX

The Warrior's Code
War is an ugly, nasty, hellish thing. It involves extreme forms of behavior that under most any other circumstance would be considered unconscionable. Yet, perfectly rational, moral, upstanding individuals are frequently engaged in it and are lauded for their sacrifices to the cause. How can this be so? After all, war involves all manner of barbarism, destruction and deception. No matter what the end, its means are, by definition, immoral. No one can avoid the basic fact that war involves planning, assaulting and killing other human beings.

Yet, somehow, it is not murder. It has been suggested that there is an ethical transition that occurs in battle, one that permits soldiers to follow orders (even immoral ones) and to kill the enemy with impunity, in short to do what the situation absolutely requires. Some soldiers and commentators have even described it as a form of madness that takes one out of the box of conventional morals and ethical standards of behavior and into a moral no man's zone. In that space, rationality is redirected to irrational purposes--to mayhem and the contemplation of it. It is a directed form of entropy, directed by communal purposes and driven by a shared-sense of tribalism, commraderie and hierarchy. Those purposes transform the actions of soldiers into acts of patriotism. As individual acts, they would be considered immoral. Taken together as part of a collective cause in the name of whatever, they transcend their essence to become socially acceptable, even heroic. The soldiers act in proxy to a larger social order that would be impotent without their agentic shift, sacrificing their own individuality for the sake of the collective. It is violence by proxy.

So how does one ascertain when a soldier crosses that line which divides authorized violence by proxy from unauthorized individual mayhem? This is often one of the toughest distinctions in battle for officers and soldiers to recognize and maintain. After all, many such acts are highly situational and often ambiguous in terms of criminal intent. Accordingly, there are rules of engagement and standards of behavior to which soldiers must adhere--a method to the madness if you will. This is the so-called Code of War. Soldiers are steeped in it as a kind of internal control (the last resort is self-control.) External controls include such means as orders, regulations, laws and treaty provisions, such as the Geneva Conventions. Where these fail the test of morality, the soldier's own conscience must be his or her guide to evaluating situations to determine if these external controls meet personal ethical standards for civilized behavior. If they do, the action is judged to be worthwhile and appropriate to the situation.

What happens, however, when the soldier faces an immoral order such as to fire on his own men (as in Paths of Glory) or to use torture, which is strictly prohibited by other forms of external control? Often, war puts soldiers into situations where they must choose between the lesser of two evils. When internal and external forms of control conflict, soldiers face some of the highest stake ethical dilemmas possible. There are three possible combinations that comprise such
dilemmas:

1. Internal Controls vs. Internal Controls
2. Internal Controls vs. External Controls
3. External Controls vs. External Controls

Internal vs. Internal
These type of conflict involves strong ambivalence on the part of the soldier. On the one hand, a soldier feel the need to protect his compatriots. They are his friends of whom he is naturally protective. He is suddenly faced with the need to return fire. On the other hand,to do so he must fire indiscriminately into an occupied village, knowing full-well that noncombatants are present. That sort of conflict between loyalty and aversion to risk of killing noncombatants is common in war. Such decisions may be made in a flash of awareness, after a long period of anticipation and self-reflection. When personal codes of conduct conflict suddenly, the soldier must often act first and judge later. Thereafter, they may spend a lifetime attempting to reconcile their actions (or failure to act) with their own expectations. This leaves what has been described as an "ethical hangover" for which there is no easy bromide. Expectations and personal views of events may also clash between soldiers so that conflict erupts over ethical choices made on the spur of the moment or regarding a pattern of behavior. This type of internal vs. internal conflict is particularly prevalent between equals, but may also occur between subordinate and superior when it is on a personal level.

Internal vs. External
These type of conflict is most common between subordinates and superiors. When confronted with an immoral order, the soldier must find some way to follow her own moral compass, reject the order and risk reprisal. Along these lines, the soldier may seek a compromise with the superior. The other two alternatives are to either to find some way to follow the order that mitigates its offensiveness or to follow the order exactly as given and then find some way to personally reconcile her action. Through agentic shift (deflecting blame), cognitive dissonance (buying in) or simply through some strategy of avoidance, the soldier must find some way to process the choice and accept the consequences. No matter what the choice, when faced with such a dilemma (trilemma?) the stress can be debilitating. Another internal vs. external choice can arise when soldiers face their obligation to follow laws, regulations or treaty terms in ways that do not conflict with their personal views of the situation. This usually requires varying degrees of professional detachment, especially when the external controls are immoral, unrealistic or vague. The Code of War states unequivocally that soldiers are to not target noncombatants when possible and to take steps to minimize noncombatant casualties. Yet, our soldiers routinely design and maintain arsenals that target civilian areas and even whole populations with destruction. When such activities become routine, that is prima facie evidence that the moral high ground has been lost and that the Code is no longer relevant. At any rate, it seems impossible to reconcile such conflicts without a healthy dose of compromise.

External vs. External
Sometimes competing orders from superiors may lead to a conflict of obligations for soldiers. Then the choice becomes to opt in: to choose whichever order is most compatible with or least offensive to the soldier's point of view. Sometimes, a false dichotomy develops in that the soldier sees no other possible alternatives than the two conflicting orders. In the heat of battle, the choices may become so unattractive that the only rational choice is to choose to opt out in some fashion, whether through defiance, bargaining, appeal to authority or evasion. Another scenario develops when the choice is between an immoral order and the some other external control such as the law. Then the soldier has an obligation to choose the law over the order, even if that ensures reprisals. However, peer pressure can enter into the situation, as can other forms of enticement (extortion, threats, bribery and so on). Finally, there are plenty of examples where laws, regulations or other de jure controls conflict with one another. A sailor by treaty must not violate the sovereignty of a vessel under a noncombatant foreign flag, for example, but he must also board foreign vessels in cases where there is reasonable cause to suspect the vessel actually belongs to enemy powers. Sometimes, when there is little cause and the stakes are high, the sailor may choose to board the vessel in spite of the potential for negative consequences. Then he must exert the authority granted to him by choosing one control over another. Taking that example one step further, seizure or destruction of the suspected vessel may rise to the level of piracy, even though the Code of War compelled the action.

Prescription
Understanding the nature of the soldier's dilemma--how to be moral in an amoral situation--may very well require the courage to take a stand against ones peers or superiors. This is, obviously, not an easy thing to do. It entails a moral imagination, decisiveness, integrity, and, most of all, commitment to higher cause. Obviously, there is no small amount of risk implied in such actions. Being able to rise above the limitations of dichotomous thinking (right versus wrong, bad versus worse) requires being able to prioritize values, imagine alternatives and consider consequences--all leading to being able to exercise moral autonomy. A consistent pattern of such decision making leads to integrity and to an even stronger sense of values on which to base ethical choices. These ultimately contribute to more personal responsibility for one's actions when dilemmas occur. Making decisions in keeping with the requirements of the situation means using the appropriate level of decisiveness. Integrity and values provide a place to stand when all else shifts under one's feet. Finally, all would be willful were there no commitment, some greater reason to take a risk in the first place. Ultimately, we cannot exert control over others when we are not in control of ourselves. The value of internal controls, when they are properly instilled and reinforced, is not lost on the battlefield. It is there, right when soldiers need it most.