Post-Ethical Society

The Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, and the Moral Failure of the Secular

Douglas V. Porpora, Alexander G. Nikolaev, Julia Hagemann May, Alexander Jenkins

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780226062495
• eBook ISBN: 9780226062525
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

We've all seen the images from Abu Ghraib: stress positions, US soldiers kneeling on the heads of prisoners, and dehumanizing pyramids formed from black-hooded bodies. We have watched officials elected to our highest offices defend enhanced interrogation in terms of efficacy and justify drone strikes in terms of retribution and deterrence. But the mainstream secular media rarely addresses the morality of these choices, leaving us to ask individually: Is this right?

In this singular examination of the American discourse over war and torture, Douglas V. Porpora, Alexander Nikolaev, Julia Hagemann May, and Alexander Jenkins investigate the opinion pages of American newspapers, television commentary, and online discussion groups to offer the first empirical study of the national conversation about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib a year later. Post-Ethical Society is not just another shot fired in the ongoing culture war between conservatives and liberals, but a pensive and ethically engaged reflection of America's feelings about itself and our actions as a nation. And while many writers and commentators have opined about our moral place in the world, the vast amount of empirical data amassed in Post-Ethical Society sets it apart—and makes its findings that much more damning.

1

Prudential and Moral Argumentation about the Iraq War

“The wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Thus did Massachusetts senator John Kerry characterize the attack on Iraq.¹ At least he did so in 2004, when as the Democratic nominee he was running for president against George W. Bush. Kerry was echoing Omar Bradley’s famous riposte back in 1951 when the Korean War was carried into China.

“The wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.” It was a catchy phrase with which to bludgeon Bush. Of course, Bush was able to parry that Kerry was a “flip-flopper.” After all, just in 2002, Kerry had voted for the congressional act authorizing Bush to make such an attack.

What interests us, however, about Kerry’s phrase is the ambiguity of its register. If the war was wrong, in what way was it wrong? Was its wrongfulness moral or legal, or was it wrong merely in being counter to American interests? If moral or legal wrongfulness was meant, then the register of the charge was normative. Conversely, if the wrongfulness related solely to our interests, then the register was prudential, having to do rather with our own welfare.

In the abstract, to declare a war wrong suggests morality. When we get worked up about a war’s wrongfulness, it usually is because it somehow makes us feel indignant or outraged, and those emotions suggest the transgression of some normative principle.² A moral connotation seems all the more likely when the war in question was a preemptive one, waged in the absence of prior attack.

When it comes to war, moral reasoning seems fitting even when there has been a prior attack. Consider, for example, the preamble to the document What We’re Fighting For. Cosigned by some sixty prominent American intellectuals, the document explained why the signatories felt compelled to support President Bush’s declaration of the War on Terror: “At times it becomes necessary for a nation to defend itself through force of arms. Because war is a grave matter, involving the sacrifice and taking of precious human life, conscience demands that those who would wage the war state clearly the moral reasoning behind their actions, in order to make plain to one another, and to the world community, the principles they are defending.”³

The suggestion in this preamble is that it is the gravity of war and the ineluctable peril it creates for “precious human life” that demand moral reasoning of would-be war makers. Thus, talk of war making and particularly countercharges of its wrongfulness carry prima facie moral freight. That moral freight is part of what gives weight to a charge of a war’s wrongfulness, for, all things being equal, immorality is worse than imprudence.⁴

While Kerry’s phrase thus derived power from a moral connotation, the moral import remained only that: a connotation. As phrased, the wrongfulness of the war was not specified as distinctly moral. Rather, as phrased, it could have been also prudential or, for that matter, only prudential.

The ambiguity of the register here is another example of what in the introduction we called moral muting. In effect, we are suggesting, Kerry’s words traded on ambiguity to carry moral power without actually making any explicitly moral claim. While his slogan looked and sounded moral enough to convey moral power, it actually deferred a full embrace of the moral register so that it could also be interpreted in a completely nonmoral way. The moral dimension was thereby muted.

Again, if this instance is viewed in isolation, it might appear as if we are vastly overinterpreting Kerry’s slogan. It is only as examples accumulate that we begin to see a pattern that no longer appears inadvertent. The length of our analysis, moreover, is misleading. It actually takes much longer to spell out in words many cognitive determinations that we normally recognize tacitly in an instant. Thus, what we have seemingly belabored here is a subliminal message that we would normally register without notice. It is part of the job of rhetorical analysis to bring such tacit judgments to discursive consciousness.⁵

Our entire analysis of Kerry’s slogan itself trades heavily on the distinction between prudential and normative reasoning. In fact, all ethical judgment trades on this distinction, and, thus, so does most of this book. It is important, then, that we make this distinction clear. In the process, we can introduce some of the arguments found in the debate about the attack on Iraq.

Prudential Reasoning

Prudential reasoning is oriented toward actors’ own well-being. As such, prudential discourse is egocentric, instrumental, and oriented toward contingencies. Consider the major reasons considered for attacking Iraq. It is true that they were framed within an apocalyptic context of a war against terror, itself cast within a larger, moralistic framework of good versus evil.⁶ Within this scheme, Saddam was evil or demonic, clearly moral designations. The moralistic context aside, however, the reasoning for war was predominantly pragmatic. Given that Saddam was evil, he was potentially dangerous and therefore threatening to American well-being. Thus, among the principal arguments for war were the following:

• Saddam (illegally) possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that posed a grave danger to the United States and therefore needed to be disarmed.

• He putatively had ties to terrorists, to whom he could and likely would furnish WMDs that might be used against the United States.

• He violated UN resolutions.

• The inspection procedures being followed by the United Nations had failed to prevent Saddam from developing WMDs that could be used against the United States.

• Saddam was evil and in fact so irrationally evil that his use of WMDs would not be deterred by the counterthreat of our own WMDs.

The arguments listed above are hardly mutually exclusive. At one time or another, the Bush administration made all of them. Because they were the arguments most emphasized by the Bush administration, they were very widely rehearsed, mentioned frequently even by those opposed to war who nevertheless felt compelled to respond to them. The following passage by Richard Lessner comes from a piece in the conservative Weekly Standard and combines a number of these points: “The war skeptics who allege that Iraq is contained, that Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat to the United States, and that there is no evidence the butcher of Baghdad is willing to share his weapons of mass destruction with such terrorists as al-Qaeda, should be obliged to tell us something. Exactly which American city are they willing to bet that they’re right? . . . Reasons can always be found to justify inaction. . . . The cost is simply too great if it turns out the appeasers are wrong.”⁷

This passage is interesting in a number of regards. First, as was actually common in this debate, it mentions a number of the above points simultaneously. In casting doubt on the efficacy of containment, Lessner simultaneously challenges both deterrence and the arms inspections. He further speaks of Saddam’s possession of WMDs and of his connection with the terrorists. Finally, by calling Saddam “the butcher of Baghdad,” he reminds us of his intractable, virtually irrational malevolence.

In keeping with prudential argument, Lessner’s framework is egocentric. That is, it is the well-being of the United States specifically—not of the world in general—that his argument concerns. As here, the egocentricity of prudential discourse does not necessarily imply anything we would normally call selfish but only an appeal to actors’ own self-interest. Where, as here, the actor in question is the nation, it is to national self-interest that argument appeals.

The instrumental aspect of prudential discourse refers to what the sociologist Max Weber called Zweck rationality, the relation between means and ends.⁸ Specifically, instrumental discourse evaluates the effectiveness of different means to accomplish some end that is not itself in question. In Lessner’s argument, for example, it is taken for granted that US well-being is the end goal; it is not questioned. What is questioned is the best means to secure that end: action or inaction?

Among other things, instrumental reason involves comparing what each action (or inaction) will cost the actor against its likely benefits. It is this weighing of costs against benefits that orients prudential discourse around contingencies. Actions advised in prudential discourse are contingent on favorable ratios of benefits to costs.

We see these features in Lessner’s argument as well. His entire gambit is to confront the “skeptics” with the stark costs and benefits of inaction. Are they willing to bet an American city that they are right? If so, which one?

A particularly interesting feature of Lessner’s argument is the specific form it takes. In a way that turns out to be common in conservative commentary, Lessner argues less by direct assertion than by pugnacious questioning. The questions are then followed by a coda in which most of the reasoning is what rhetoricians call enthymematic—that is, missing or implicit as opposed to explicitly stated.⁹ In this example, Lessner ends by asserting that the cost of inaction is “simply too great” to risk. The premises that lead to that conclusion are left implicit. They reside instead only in the readers’ heads as they answer for themselves the questions posed.

There is a further feature that makes Lessner’s argument interesting: like Kerry’s pronouncement, the register of this one as well is fuzzy. Even here, on the moralistic right wing of politics, we find a kind of moral muting. Lessner too conveys an aura of moral force without actually making an explicitly moral argument.

It is instructive to examine how Lessner accomplishes this same effect. His moral muting, as does Kerry’s, trades on ambiguity. It is an ambiguity, however, that takes a different form. To appreciate it, we must ask, in illocutionary terms, what speech acts are performed when prudential reasoning enters public discourse. The most characteristic or paradigmatic speech acts of prudential discourse are instruction or advice.¹⁰ Instruction helps people help themselves in cases where there is some codified procedure to follow, such as a recipe. Advice, by contrast, is provided where, as when one is trying to navigate one’s way through a bureaucracy, there is no precise algorithm to follow but at most only a wisdom that comes from experience.

In the case of instruction or advice, the tone of prudential discourse is dispassionate. As in Lessner’s case, however, even prudential discourse can become shrill in the face of impending disaster. Then it can become exhortation. In such cases, especially when accompanied, as here, by an implication of irrationality or dereliction of duty, prudential discourse merges with the normative. In the passage cited above, there are several features that connote moral negligence, such as the suggestion that the appeasers are trying to avoid responsible action. Of course, the very label appeasers connotes a failure to uphold principle.

Before moving on to normative discourse, however, we must first review the purely prudential arguments against going to war. Some of the most common of these were the following:

• Attacking Iraq would distract us from the War on Terror.

• We still had options other than war.

• Iraq was not a threat to us.

• Saddam Hussein’s dangerous behavior could be deterred by our greater force or by arms inspections.

• An attack on Iraq would foster anti-American sentiment or even terrorist attacks that would not otherwise occur.

• War would create instability in the Middle East and threaten our allies there.

• The Bush administration had not outlined effective postwar plans.

• War with Iraq would be another Vietnam (i.e., a quagmire).

• It would be better to secure international support.

Again, it was common in this debate to find a number of these arguments voiced together. Illustrative is a New York Times opinion piece, written by Nicholas Kristof just after President Bush’s September 11, 2002, address to the United Nations:

Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who has written a book about the missile crisis, noted that Kennedy had stipulated that the missiles absolutely had to be removed from Cuba. But Kennedy turned first to diplomacy and a blockade. . . . Why shouldn’t war be a last resort instead of the first tool that President Bush grabs off the shelf? . . . “The fundamental question is left unanswered: Why initiating war against Saddam is better than the next option, which is deterring and containing him,” Professor Allison said. “You could agree that this is an evil guy—he is evil—who defied the U.N. resolutions—he did—and still ask why he is not susceptible to the same treatment that was used against Stalin, who was also evil and dangerous and cheated.”¹¹

The main point raised in this passage is that the United States had options besides war to deploy against Saddam Hussein. In making that point, however, the passage also cites two more points against war—that Saddam could be deterred (by our greater force) and that he could be contained (by arms inspections and the like).

In addition to bringing together three arguments against war, the passage also mentions—in order to counter them—several arguments for war, namely, that Saddam was evil, that he had violated UN resolutions, and that he was liable to cheat. It was another feature common in the debate to see an entry mention arguments both for and against war. It is a sign that, even if indirectly, the various opinions were actually engaging each other or at least the arguments at issue in public space to which they individually contributed.

That Saddam was evil and that he had violated UN resolutions were, strictly speaking, normative characterizations. It is hard in fact to be more normative than to accuse the other side of evil. It represents a demonization of the enemy standard in conflict. Of course, in this case, the enemy may truly have approached the demonic. Thus, Saddam’s malevolence was one of the most frequently asserted arguments in the debate, common even in pieces opposed to war, where, as in the above passage, it was frequently introduced as a pro forma disclaimer.

Granted that they were normative characterizations accusing Saddam of evil or of violating UN resolutions, such allegations nevertheless functioned generally in the debate as prudential considerations. The point, in other words, was not simply to thwart evil in the abstract...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Do We Need Religion?
• 1. Prudential and Moral Argumentation about the Iraq War
• 2. Setting the Context: President Bush’s Prewar Rhetoric on Iraq
• 3. The Multiply Muted Opposition of the Press
• 4. Abu Ghraib and Torture: Whither Dostoyevsky?
• 5. How Television Debated the Attack on Iraq
• 6. The Online Debate about Iraq and Abu Ghraib
• 7. Congress: Gone Fishing
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index