A Case for the Toleration Clause...

William McGurn, writing in today's WSJ, makes the case for that most unpopular aspect of cadet life, the toleration clause:

"Our military academies are not filled with moral paragons. Like their peers, their student bodies are populated with young Americans in their late teens. They are every bit as human, and an honor code has never been a guarantee against scandal. From the huge 1951 cheating scandal at West Point that saw more than 80 cadets expelled (including nearly half the football team) to more recent scandals at Navy and Air Force, the academies have had their share. The difference is they don't delegate to the NCAA the idea of right and wrong, and they take community seriously. On these campuses, no man is an island. The message is: You are all in it together."

Read the article here.

How to Read Plato

The Maze of Moral Relativism

"There is no half-way house called 'moral relativism,' in which we continue to use normative vocabulary with the stipulation that it is to be understood as relativized to particular moral codes. If there are no absolute facts about morality, 'right' and 'wrong' would have to join 'witch' in the dustbin of failed concepts."

Read the article here.

You Hack, We Shoot

"Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have delivered a stark warning to the Pentagon: its failure to address key questions surrounding how the United States military would respond to a cyberattack – and what precisely constitutes an act of war in cyberspace, for that matter – remains a “significant gap” in US national security policy."

Read the article here.

The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning

The ancient Greeks thought rationality, our ability to reason, was the distinguishing feature of humanity. It allowed humans to identify and search for higher truths, allowing us to move beyond the purely physical realm of the natural world. Now, cognitive and social scientists have developed the argumentative theory of reasoning, which suggests that reason evolved to win arguments. Rationality is a function of the evolutionary requirement to persuade.

Read the article here.

Coming Out; Opting-Out

Should service members be allowed to "opt out" of an enlistment if the military changes its values?

"Sir, we joined the Marine Corps because the Marine Corps has a set of standards and values that is better than that of the civilian sector. And we have gone and changed those values and repealed the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy," the sergeant told Gates during the question and answer session.

"We have not given the Marines a chance to decide whether they wish to continue serving under that. Is there going to be an option for those Marines that no longer wish to serve due to the fact their moral values have not changed?" he asked.

"No," Gates responded. "You'll have to complete your ... enlistment just like everybody else."

Read the article here.

Cyber Combat: Act of War

If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks...

Read the WSJ article here.

POTUS' Role in Cyber Defense

If the Internet is considered a vital U.S. asset, what powers does the president have in the event of a potentially catastrophic cyberattack?

Read the article here.

Make Out Online

A "kiss transmission device"  is being developed in Japan to enable simulated french kissing via the internet.

"If you take one device in your mouth and turn it with your tongue, the other device turns in the same way," says the device's inventor in a YouTube video. "If you turn it back the other way, then your partner's turns back the same way, so your partner's device turns whichever way your own device turns."

Read the article here.

From Guantanamo to Abbottabad

Emerging details about the investigation that culminated in the killing of Osama bin Laden have re-ignited debate over the practice and effectiveness of torture. John Yoo, former Justice Depaertment official in the Bush administration, cites the interrogation program he helped define as responsible for producing the actionable intelligence that led to bin Laden:

Sunday's success also vindicates the Bush administration, whose intelligence architecture marked the path to bin Laden's door. According to current and former administration officials, CIA interrogators gathered the initial information that ultimately led to bin Laden's death. The United States located al Qaeda's leader by learning the identity of a trusted courier from the tough interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, and his successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi.

In response, editors at the NYT claim the technique played a small role in finding bin Laden and cost the nation far more in terms of harming our reputation abroad:

There are many arguments against torture. It is immoral and illegal and counterproductive. The Bush administration’s abuses — and ends justify the means arguments — did huge damage to this country’s standing and gave its enemies succor and comfort. If that isn’t enough, there is also the pragmatic argument that most experienced interrogators think that the same information, or better, can be obtained through legal and humane means.

Read the editorials here: WSJ; NYT

‘Three Cups of Tea’ Author Defends Book

The CBS news program "60 Minutes" investigated and questioned events portrayed in Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea:

While the publishing industry waited to see whether it faced the embarrassment of yet another partly fabricated memoir, Greg Mortenson, the co-author of the best-selling “Three Cups of Tea,” a book popular with the Pentagon for its inspirational lessons on Afghanistan and Pakistan, forcefully countered a CBS News report on Sunday that questioned the facts of his book and the management of his charitable organization.

An unofficial reponse:

“We continue to believe in the logic of what Greg is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we know the powerful effects that education can have on eroding the root causes of extremism,” said a military official, who asked not to be named under ground rules imposed by the Pentagon.

As Mara Naselli observes:

The debate between truth and fact in personal essay and memoir is an old one, and the test of authenticity has rarely been, “Did it really happen that way?” Many argue that memory is just too slippery to be held to that kind of standard, and that the discernment of fact itself isn’t obvious.

The question, then, is whether the US military should use such slippery accounts as a staple in COIN training.

Read the NYT article here.

Ethics of Human Enhancement

The US National Science Foundation published a report on ethical considerations over using technology to enhance human capabilities beyond normal functioning.  

Corrective eyeglasses, for instance, would be considered therapy rather than en-hancement, since they serve to bring your vision back to normal; but strapping on a pair of night-vision binoculars would count as hu-man enhancement, because they give you sight beyond the range of any unassisted hu-man vision. As another example, using stero-ids to help muscular dystrophy patients regain lost strength is a case of therapy; but steroid use by otherwise-healthy athletes would give them new strength beyond what humans typ-ically have (thereby enabling them to set new performance records in sports). And growing or implanting webbing between one’s fingers and toes to enable better swimming changes the structure and function of those body parts, counting then as a case of human en-hancement and not therapy.

Read the report here.

(Thanks to C3C Dan Pickett for forwarding)

"Immaculate Intervention"

George Friedman offers a perspective of OOD as a casual war fraught with good intentions. The new doctrine of humanitarian intervention - "go in light, go in soft and stay there long" - still leaves open the question of what happens in the aftermath.

I call humanitarian wars immaculate intervention, because most advocates want to see the outcome limited to preventing war crimes, not extended to include regime change or the imposition of alien values. They want a war of immaculate intentions surgically limited to a singular end without other consequences. And this is where the doctrine of humanitarian war unravels.

Read more: "Immaculate Intervention: The Wars of Humanitarianism," republished with permission of STRATFOR.

(Thanks to Capt Ashley Anderson for forwarding)

"Flying Solo"

The Colorado Springs Independent carried a story on '93 USAFA grad Grant McKenzie, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, dishonorably discharged, and incarcerated at NAVCONBRIG Miramar. The story highlights gaps in the military mental health service and provides a valuable perspective for future commanders.

"McKenzie wrestled with bipolar disorder, diagnosed by the Air Force within months of that sunny graduation day but never properly treated. As McKenzie cycled down into the abysmal clutches of the illness and its accompanying addictive behaviors — pornography, in particular — he repeatedly told superiors what he was going through. But the Air Force apparently ignored its own policies for how to deal with such disorders."

Read the story here.

Justice for Hedgehogs

Ronald Dworkin believes there are absolute moral values, that when we make a moral or ethical judgment, we are interpreting, and that many of our interpretations have truth values: true or false, and therefore, right or wrong.

"Well, for example, if I say abortion is wrong, I believe what I say is true, not that it's one legitimate opinion among many. I hate it when people say: 'It's OK for gay people to get married but that's only my opinion.' You can't think it's just your opinion or you wouldn't hold it. Imagine a judge who's just sentenced a man to jail for life saying: 'Other judges might have found differently and they're entitled to their opinions.' Who could reasonably say such a thing?"

Read Stuart Jeffries' review of Dworkin's new book in The Guardian here. 

The Moral Case for OOD

Jerome Slater, a research scholar at the University at Buffalo, argues the moral justification for intervening in Libya:

A common fallacy among those who regard themselves as hardheaded “realists” is to dismiss the role of morality in foreign policy decisions and claim it is all about narrow interests, especially economic interests, and most especially, oil interests. Such cynicism, however, is itself a kind of naivete, a reductionism unequal to the complexity of war-and-peace issues.

In the Libyan case, the argument that it’s all about oil is particularly unpersuasive. First, only a very small amount of our imported oil comes from Libya, and in any case for many years Gadhafi has been a reliable supplier, both to us and to our NATO allies. Moreover, in recent years, he has played a valuable intelligence-gathering role in the war against terrorism, especially al-Qaida. So if narrow self-interests really explained the U. S. intervention, we should be fighting to save Gadhafi, not to overthrow him.

In short, there is every reason to believe that genuine moral concerns were an important component — probably the most important component — in explaining the administration’s decision to intervene in Libya.

Read the column in the Buffalo New here.

Europe After the War; JPB on the Ground

Ben Shephard's The Long Road Home documents  jus post bellum issues arising in the efforts to manage mass migrations of displaced persons after WWII:

One heart-rending chapter deals with the efforts to reunite children with their mothers and fathers. On the face of it, this sounds like an incontrovertibly good thing, in particular for those infants who had been stolen from their families by the Nazis on account of their “Aryan” looks and reassigned to German foster parents. Yet was it right to wrench children away from their new families against their will, especially in cases when it was not clear that the true parents could be found or that they wanted their children back? U.N. Relief and Rehabilitation Administration staffers divided on the issue, some feeling that the effort had to be made by way of atonement for the original wrong, and others skeptical that returning children to their birth countries was necessarily in their best interests.

Read the NYT review here.

R2P: the Latest JAB Criteria

Covering the change in U.S. position regarding use of force in Libya, Foreign Policy magazine reports on the Responsibility to Protect, a principle cited by diplomats in the U.N. to justify the use of broad military force:

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also said on Thursday that the justification for the use of force was based on humanitarian grounds, and referred to the principle known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P), "a new international security and human rights norm to address the international community's failure to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity."

"Resolution 1973 affirms, clearly and unequivocally, the international community's determination to fulfill its responsibility to protect civilians from violence perpetrated upon them by their own government," he said. 

Read the article here.

For more on R2P, visit the INTERNATIONAL COALITION FOR THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT website here.

Moral Arguments

When making arguments about moral acts, can you build premises around objective moral facts? Or, are all our moral claims a construct of  opinion and/or cultural constructions? Discover Magazine posted the following debate between bloggers:

You can’t use logic to derive moral commandments solely from facts about the world, even if those facts include human desires. Of course, you can derive moral commandments if you sneak in some moral premise; all I’m trying to say here is that we should be upfront about what those moral premises are, and not try to hide them underneath a pile of unobjectionable-sounding statements. 

As a warm-up, here is an example of logic in action:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The first two statements are the premises, the last one is the conclusion. (Obviously there are logical forms other than syllogisms, but this is a good paradigmatic example.) Notice the crucial feature: all of the important terms in the conclusion (“Socrates,” “mortal”) actually appeared somewhere in the premises. That’s why you can’t derive “ought” from “is” — you can’t reach a conclusion containing the word “ought” if that word (or something equivalent) doesn’t appear in your premises.

This doesn’t stop people from trying. Carrier uses the following example (slightly, but not unfairly, paraphrased):

Your car is running low on oil.

If your car runs out of oil, the engine will seize up.

You don’t want your car’s engine to seize up.

Therefore, you ought to change the oil in your car.

At the level of everyday practical reasoning, there’s nothing wrong with this. But if we’re trying to set up a careful foundation for moral philosophy, we should be honest and admit that the logic here is obviously incomplete. There is a missing premise, which should be spelled out explicitly:

We ought to do that which would bring about what we want.

Crucially, this is a different kind of premise than the other three in this argument; they are facts about the world that could in principle be tested experimentally, while this new one is not.

Read the entry here, the counterpoint here.

New Humanism

NYT columnmist David Brooks argues that many of our failures in the realm of public policy can be traced back to our overly simplistic view of the world. Citing research in cognitive science, Brooks writes:

We have a prevailing view in our society -- not only in the policy world, but in many spheres -- that we are divided creatures. Reason, which is trustworthy, is separate from the emotions, which are suspect. Society progresses to the extent that reason can suppress the passions.

This has created a distortion in our culture. We emphasize things that are rational and conscious and are inarticulate about the processes down below.

Read the column here. Brooks' new humanism is outlined in his new book, "The Social Animal." Thomas Nagel's review (and critque of Brooks' theory) is here.

(Thanks to C2C Grant Meyer for forwarding)