Rational Philosophy

Senator Larry Craig today reversed his promise to resign from the senate if he couldn’t retract his guilty plea on charges of disorderly conduct (after he allegedly propositioned a plain clothes officer in an airport bathroom). As CNN reports: “On the House side, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, said Friday that elected officials have a responsibility “to exhibit behavior that upholds the dignity of the office.”"

In the wake of David McSwane’s four word column: “Taser this: F**k Bush,” Colorado State University’s Board of Communications decided to admonish the editor-in-chief of its newspaper for unethical and unprofessional behavior rather than fire him. College conservatives, who had sought the editor’s ouster and called for advertisers to pull their ads, were disappointed.

And in the midst of the new furore (see yesterday’s post) about the administration’s legal machinations to allow the CIA to continue with severe interrogation of detainees, President Bush again reiterates his claim that “we do not torture.” Leahy, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, comments: “I suspect that former Deputy Attorney General Comey will again prove to be right in his prediction that the Department of Justice will be ashamed when we learn more about all that they have done.”

Elected officials, those in positions of influence and responsibility, and those with ethical obligations have been doing bad things for as long as such positions have existed. Craig’s alleged behavior wouldn’t have even made it as a footnote in the history of the senators of ancient Rome. It may sometimes seem as though there’s far more wrongdoing now than ever before, but I expect it’s just that we get to know about more of it.

But while at first it seems to be resonant and solid, the phrase “to exhibit behavior that upholds the dignity of the office” becomes fuzzier and fuzzier the more I think about it.

Surely nobody can always exhibit dignified behavior, whenever any of us visits the bathroom, even if not propositioning for sex, we are not at our most dignified. And it the phrase refers more to upholding appearances, then is it really an important benchmark for an elected official? It seems more important that our elected officials and those in positions of responsibility think and act responsibly as they carry out their responsibilities. The CSU editor, for instance, perhaps should have weighed his words a little longer before going to print. And the current president, perhaps, should have weighed his motives a little longer before running for office.

Dignity is an odd concept. I found this quote from John Stuart Blackie - On Self-culture 1874 - quite helpful: “The real dignity of a man lies not in what he has, but in what he is.” The OED defines dignity as the quality of being worthy or honorable. Which of course presents us with a question about the concept of worthiness and honor.

Taking these two ideas together, dignity lies in doing that which one feels is right. Dignity is not in the office because the office may stink. If Craig feels it is right for him to continue to work in the senate, because he can continue to be effective, more effective than a replacement, as he says, then his actions have dignity.

Likewise, a fellow editor at CSU’s paper praised his boss’s handling of the situation and his general leadership. Some dignity then rests with him. But what about the college republicans who called for the newspaper’s sponsors to pull their ads?

And what of our fearless leader, Mr. Bush? Does dignity rest with him? All indications are that Bush is doing one thing and saying another. He hides his actions behind his words. He would claim that he does this because what he is doing is right. But perhaps he does it because he knows that others would feel he is wrong.

 

�

The New York Times article today on Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations is both appalling and fascinating in its thorough exposure of the administration’s dogged efforts to encourage and enable the CIA to use a wide range and combination of brutal interrogation techniques without having to worry about their legality. But beyond the pertinent questions of what constitutes torture and in what ways the administration blurred the line between branches of government, and, once again, abused its executive power, I was struck by the universal themes of courage and cowardice that sprang out of the circumstances of the story.

The Times reports on a White House meeting involving James Comey, deputy attorney general: “Mr. Comey stated that “no lawyer” would endorse Mr. Yoo’s justification for the N.S.A. program, Mr. Addington demurred, saying he was a lawyer and found it convincing. Mr. Comey shot back: “No good lawyer,” according to someone present.”

Sitting at home reading the newspaper or watching events on TV it’s easy to regard the administration as laughable and not worthy of respect. But to be in its midst, as Comey was, surrounded by powerful supporters of the White House, with your job on the line, his boldness took real courage.

The Times also reports that within the circle of unswervingly loyal Bush insiders “there was a sense that Comey was a wimp” on national security matters.

I’m reminded of Plato’s Socratic dialogues. In criticizing Comey’s moral stance, the administration defines a specific instance of “courage” as the ability to follow through on severe methods of interrogation in order to get valuable information. Socrates would never let them get away with that kind of rhetorical sleight of hand.

It’s notable that at no point in the several years that this story has been unfolding has the administration appeared to betray any compunction about using severe interrogation methods. This may be an extreme thing to say, but one gets the impression that the administration does not view the detainees as human or deserving of human rights, and, therefore, feels that torturing the detainees couldn’t possibly be inhuman.

And perhaps this is their true perspective. It would explain a great deal.

Let’s suppose for a moment that some within the administration don’t feel that the detainees retain any human rights; that any form of torture is justified if it achieves results. Is this a form of cowardice? Is it courageous?

Courage and cowardice are concepts. They have meaning only as formulated through mental processes. A tree is not courageous because it holds fast against the wind (unless it appears in a poem, at which point it becomes a conceptual tree).

The concept of courage is directly opposed to the concept of cowardice. And the concept of courage has as its root two other concepts — fear or an awareness of risk, and strength — holding one’s course despite the fear. Fear is a direct emotional response to a situation of real or perceived danger. Strength or resistence to fear is a result of our conscious faculty, holding back our natural urge to give in to the fear, the power of the conscious mind to control our more immediate fight or flight responses.

Cowardice, in contrast, arises from the concepts of fear and capitulation. We feel fear, we are aware that we do not want to or should not give in to the fear, yet we give in to it anyway.

Going back to my working premise that maybe some in the administration don’t view the detainees as deserving of human rights. If this is correct, then to condone and enable torture of the detainees requires no courage on their part. But neither is it, in itself, cowardly. (Since they are not, in holding this stance, capiltulating to any fear; they feel no fear of the consequences of this approach.)

However, at the risk of extending my conjecture too far, the perspective I’m presuming exists in Cheney and others itself rests on cowardice. — Whenever we decide on a course of action and act, we risk error. If we don’t recognize the possibility for error, it is because we are afraid we will have to admit our failure. Refusing to admit failure, of course, is a hallmark of the current administration. This then, is cowardice at a deeper level.

To build this logic back up: The White House chooses to pursue a policy of severe interrogation that denies the detainees their human rights. The White House refuses to accept that this premise and the course of action being followed may be wrong. In refusing to accept that it may be wrong, the White House acts out of cowardice.

Others in the story betray a more simple and obvious form of cowardice: Gonzalez and Yoo, for instance, who defend the administration’s tactics for their own ends, to please their masters, or just so they don’t have to say ‘no.’

�