The Ethics of Letting Civilians Die in Afghanistan: The False Dichotomy between Hobbesian and Kantian Rescue Paradigms

DePaul Law Review, Oct 2014

By Samuel Vincent Jones, Published on 04/01/10

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The Ethics of Letting Civilians Die in Afghanistan: The False Dichotomy between Hobbesian and Kantian Rescue Paradigms

Recommended Citation Samuel V. Jones, Th e Ethics of Letting Civilians Die in Afghanistan: Th e False Dichotomy between Hobbesian and Kantian Rescue Paradigms The E thics of Letting Civilians Die in Afghanistan: The F alse Dichotomy between Hobbesian and Kantian Rescue Paradigms Samuel Vincent Jones 0 0 Thi s Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Law at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in DePaul Law Review by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information , please contact Samuel Vincent Jones* THE AFGHAN FARMER DILEMMA In Kabul, Afghanistan, Taliban elements are using a virtually impenetrable transmission cryptogram to activate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that are targeted at U.S. combatants.' Mahmud, an Afghan civilian, discovers the Taliban's encryption codes and informs the U.S. military. The information permits U.S. officials to reduce U.S. casualties by fifty percent in less than a month. U.S. intelligence operatives discover that the Taliban suspect that Mahmud sympathizes with U.S. forces, so they plan to assassinate Khan, a lone Afghan farmer, whom the Taliban mistakenly believe to be Mahmud. The United States has no relationship with Khan. U.S. intelligence reports indicate that Khan is innocent of any wrongdoing and lives a secluded life. The report also indicates that if the United States rescues Khan from his farm, the Taliban will assume that Khan is under U.S. protection and change their encryption codes before the U.S. military has deciphered the Taliban's encryption technology. As a result, the U.S. military would lose its intelligence advantage and IEDrelated casualties would likely double. Intelligence reports also indicate that if the Taliban assassinates Khan, the probability of the Taliban discovering its identification error is extremely low. * Associate Professor of Law, The John Marshall Law School, Chicago, Illinois. The author is a former scout/rifleman (Sergeant, USMC) and judge advocate (Major, USAR (Ret.)). The author sincerely thanks Professors R. Kent Greenawalt and Jonathan Bush of Columbia Law School; Professor Terry Smith of DePaul University College of Law; and Professors Walter Kendall, Kevin Hopkins, and Justin Schwartz of the John Marshall School of Law in Chicago for their helpful remarks on earlier drafts of this Article. The author thanks his research assistant, Amanda Morgenstern, and extends a special thanks to his family for their unwavering kindheartedness and support. The views expressed in this Article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any branch or agency of the United States government. 1. This hypothetical is based on one offered by C.E. Harris, Jr. in his discussion regarding the ethics of self-interest, which I have substantially revised and expanded for purposes of illustrating the circumstances as they relate to counterinsurgency operations in present-day Afghanistan. See C.E. HARRIS, JR., APPLYING MORAL THEORIES 93-94 (2d ed. 1992). The aforementioned hypothetical, which I term the "Afghan farmer dilemma," requires a U.S. military commander to weigh the fundamental military imperative of reducing the risk to U.S. combatants stemming from IEDs and the serious harm attendant upon the undertaking of a rescue mission, against the humanitarian imperative to rescue an Afghan civilian from imminent danger.2 What should the commander do? The hypothetical epitomizes the type of moral dilemma that arises pursuant to rescue operations that U.S. military commanders encounter because of the nature of combat operations in Afghanistan. This Article explains existing antinomies between Hobbesian and Kantian orientations for deciding the rectitude of rescue operations and questions whether they are truly antithetical. It demonstrates that although Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant held diametrically conflicting values regarding human dignity and self-interest, their frameworks for deciding rescue obligations during armed conflict can produce equivalent outcomes in rescue cases involving competing moral rules. It asserts that U.S. combatants have a duty to rescue endangered Afghan civilians by virtue of the special relationship between Afghan civilians and U.S. combatants. This Article attempts to take a first step in fashioning a decision-making paradigm for resolving rescue dilemmas that incorporates the moral imperative to respect human dignity without compromising the undeniable empiricism of necessity and self-preservation. I. INTRODUCTION Between March 2003 and July 2006, violence stemming from combat operations in Iraq caused the death of approximately 650,000 Iraqi civilians. 3 An estimated 4,000,000 Iraqis sought refuge in Jordan and Syria or were internally displaced. 4 As U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan intensify and expand, a legitimate concern is whether the calamity of war will reach levels similar to those experienced in Iraq. (...truncated)


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Samuel Vincent Jones. The Ethics of Letting Civilians Die in Afghanistan: The False Dichotomy between Hobbesian and Kantian Rescue Paradigms, DePaul Law Review, 2014, pp. 899, Volume 59, Issue 3,