www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Article from Sophia: Mixing Proportions

Mixing Proportions:

Is there a moral equivalence in the loss of innocent life in abortion versus
war?

A Response by Protodeacon Paul Weyrich and Subdeacon David K. Black

[From the March/April, 2004 issue of SOPHIA magazine]

Almost everything we do has consequences. Some are significant, others
trivial. Some are intended, others completely unwished for. The life of any
moral person is fraught with decisions that must take into account
proportionality. That is, one must assess and judge the tradeoffs associated
with our decisions. Doctors do this all the time. Whether prescribing
medicine or performing surgery, the decision to force the patient to endure
unpleasant side effects or the unintended consequences of surgery are
weighed against the value of the benefit to be derived.

Parents also make these decisions. Choices about jobs, schools, or family
relocations are all characterized by judgments around proportionality. When
the consequences of our decisions are uncertain, faithful Christians pray to
God for guidance. In fact, discovering God's will for our lives through the
fog of this uncertainty is part of being a Christian.

One comfort available to us in this matter is that of intention. Our Lord
knows our inmost thoughts and the deepest secrets of our hearts. He knows
that when we make important decisions, we do so in the context of
uncertainty. But if we seek to do His will, in things both great and small,
He knows this, too. "He searches out the abyss and the human heart; He
understands their innermost secrets...No thought escapes Him, and nothing is
hidden from Him" (Sirach 42:19). We may not always make the right decision,
or what appears to be the right decision to our clouded judgment, but if we
genuinely seek to fulfill His commandments and do His will, we can know
that, "those who act faithfully are his delight" (Proverbs 12:22).

In the matter of abortion, the issue of proportionality comes into sharp
focus. Every year in this country, over a million women abort a living child
for reasons that flagrantly fail the test of reasonable proportionality.
That anyone could kill an innocent life in the uterus because it is largely
an inconvenience shocks the conscience of every true Christian. Whatever
good is derived from such an act of brutality pales beside the horror of
taking an innocent life. As Mother Theresa of Calcutta said, "It is a
poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."

Proportionality is also a criterion in the context of one of man's most
momentous decisions: Whether or not to go to war. One of the Church's
conditions for a just war is that the damage inflicted and the costs
incurred must be proportionate to the good expected by taking up arms. It is
inevitable that innocent lives will be lost in war, but to use this as an
excuse to allow brutal tyranny to continue indefinitely, ultimately allows a
greater evil to perpetuate itself.

In the last issue of SOPHIA, the article "Abortion and War" compared the
loss of innocent life in these two contexts, and asserted that the
unintentional loss of unborn life as a side effect of military action was
morally equivalent to the deliberate taking of human life in a medical
abortion. We disagree.

First off, we think that the article misapprehends the nucleus of the
pro-abortion argument: Advocates of "choice" don't declare that it is better
to kill a human than to lose a job or endure some temporal hardship. Insofar
as they enter into a discussion of proportionality at all, they assert
implicitly that a certain segment of the population is outside the human
family. By referring to unborn children with circumlocutions like, "the
product of conception," pro-choicers seek to define the fetus as less than
human, so that every consideration of proportionality becomes a contest
between, a career, or reputation, or financial well-being, and a sub-human
aggregation of cells. Needless to say, it's a competition the unborn can
never win.

Second, the article misplaces the matter of intention. It states that we
necessarily intend to cause the harm that is a side effect of our decisions.
"A person cannot morally claim he or she does not intend abortions that are
certain to take place [as a side-effect of war], by claiming he or she only
intends to improve the mother's bodily health or the health of the body
politic." Unwind the double negative, and state this more generally, and we
get, "A person intends the side effects of his actions if he knows they are
certain to occur." Does a father intend emotional upheaval when he tells his
family they must move so they can have a better life? Does a doctor intend
to induce racking nausea in a patient to whom he prescribes the
chemotherapy? Certainly not. But both assert that the inconvenience and the
pain are worth enduring to achieve the greater good. This does not mean that
we are unaccountable for the consequences of our actions; it simply means
that they must be defensible in the context of proportionality.

Thirdly, the article makes unverifiable assumptions about the intentions of
the policy makers who made the decision to liberate Iraq. Unlike our Lord,
we are not privy to the innermost secrets of their hearts, but we do know
that if their goal was access to Iraqi oil resources, as the article
implies, it would have been far easier to end sanctions years ago, and just
let the oil flow into the world market.

We do know that their actions have eliminated a hideous menace from power,
and brought future generations of Iraqis the chance to secure the blessings
of liberty.

Much has been made of our inability to uncover a "smoking gun" cache of
biological or chemical weapons, since the US focused so heavily on this
aspect of Saddam Hussein's perfidy during the run-up to the US military
deployment. That we have yet to stumble on a hoard of canisters containing
toxins buried in the huge expanse of Iraqi desert does little to undermine
the well-established facts concerning Saddam Hussein and his intention to
expand his arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction. No credible authority,
including the UN, disputes his use of such weapons against the Kurdish
population in the North, or his ongoing efforts to enlarge his capabilities
in this arena. But even if no such cache is ever found, the liberation of
Iraq has uncovered dozens of mass gravesites and ended a regime that
perpetuated unspeakable atrocities. And often the victims of Saddam
Hussein's savagery were children.

"Perhaps saddest were two rooms, each hardly bigger than a normal bedroom,
reserved for children; they had been crammed with scores of kids from 12 to
16 years old, say the former inmates. Ali Nasr, 13 at the time, was caught
up in a sweep when Shiites throughout Iraq rioted after the murder of their
Grand Ayatollah...Ali spent six months as the juvenile wing of Unit Four,
sleeping on his feet when the cell was too crowded to lie down, or taking
turns on the floor with other prisoners. The boy was still too scared to
talk about it, even now." --Newsweek on line, April 8, 2003

[Captioned photograph: Remains found at mass gravesites, located near a farm
on the outskirts of Al Mahawil, Iraq, May 7, 2003. U.S. Marine Corps photo
by Lance Cpl. Christopher Graham.]

The world press accounts of Saddam Hussein's cruelties make for grim reading
indeed. The capriciousness and cruelty perpetuated against young brides on
their wedding days, or athletes who displeased Uday Hussein, the rape rooms,
the fiendish cruelties with acid and fire and electricity cannot be
recounted here. Suffice it to say that the varieties of torture, both
physical and emotional, make the antiseptic meticulousness of the Nazi gas
chambers seem almost tolerable in comparison.

In contrast, the world's press and web sites have been replete with examples
that demonstrate the relief and happiness that the Iraqi people have
experienced since the scourge of Saddam Hussein has been definitively
eradicated. Some samples:

"I cried with happiness. He was not a real human; he was some kind of
creature. He lived in that palace without any idea how real people had to
live. Now we must see him in a court...I want to tell you we are so grateful
for what the Americans have done."--Media Ali, a 19-year-old law student in
Iraq, _The Guardian_, December 15, 2003

"In the city of Baquba the Muslim cleric issuing a daily call to prayer
instead issued a call to celebrate. And even Iraqi journalists covering the
press conference which broke the news [of Saddam's capture] to the world
cheered, punched the air and shouted `Death to Saddam.' Some of the
pressmen--who had been tortured by the dictator's henchmen--burst into
tears. One former victim of Saddam, Ali AlBashiri, from Kirkuk, said, `This
is the joy of a lifetime. I am speaking on behalf of all the people that
suffered under the rule.'"--Tony Leonard, _Daily Star_, December 15, 2003

"I'm very happy for the Iraqi people. Life is going to be safer now. Now we
can start a new beginning,"--Yehya Hassan, a Baghdad resident, _The
Guardian_, December 15, 2003

In assessing the question of proportionality and the recent US action in
Iraq, honest people may disagree, but a compelling argument can be made that
our country's actions were proportional to the now eradicated evil. By
ending Saddam Hussein's tyranny, who knows how many lives have been spared
from his mass graves? We believe we are called to defend both the born and
unborn, not one to the exclusion of the other.

Protodeacon Paul Weyrich and Subdeacon David K. Black serve at Holy
Transfiguration Melkite Greek Catholic Church in McLean, Virginia.

SOPHIA is the Journal of the Eparchy of Newton for Melkite Greek Catholics
in the United States. The publisher's page notes: "The Publisher waives all
copyright to this issue. Contents may be distributed free and without
special permission in publications that are distributed free....The contents
of all articles, past, present and future, remains the expressed personal
opinion of the individual author and may not reflect, in its entirety, the
opinion of the Melkite Diocese of Newton."

The late Cardinal Ottaviani was never known for doctrinal relativism or lax morals, to put it mildly. But he was a man capable of worth-while thinking. During the nineteen-fifties he was struck by the moral difficulties presented by the weapons of mass killing which can be - and sometimes are - used in modern warfare. As a result, Cardinal Ottaviani developed the view that the just-war theory has been overtaken by weaponry which is incompatible with the practice of just warfare, and, therefore, that the Christian cannot morally participate in war because the death and suffering of large numbers of innocent non-combatants has become a near certainty.
I neither endorse nor denounce this view of Cardinal Ottaviani's - but I will go so far as to say that serious Christian thinkers should take it carefully into account.
Incognitus

An excellent article. I think that Protodeacon Weyrich and Subdeacon Black have made some excellent points. For 12 years America sat around and did nothing whilst hundreds of thousands of Iraqi�s were exterminated and the United Nations profited billions from the �Oil for Food� program.

It is horrible that the innocent should die. But it would have been more horrible to leave Hussein in power. In this past year, the war has already saved the lives of numerous people who would have offended Hussein in some way and been executed for it.

America has done something good.

--

Incognitus raises some interesting points for discussion. Modern warfare has now advanced to the degree where innocent causalities can be minimized. Death and suffering of large numbers of innocent non-combatants is no longer a certainty and, in fact, can be avoided. It is now possible to destroy a single building (or vehicle) containing the enemy while leaving the building (or vehicle) next door intact. This, too, must be taken into account.

The Administrator notes that "It is now possible to destroy a single building (or vehicle) containing the enemy while leaving the building (or vehicle) next door intact." That is certainly claimed by the defense department and their supporters. But I remember what happened to the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade not so very long ago.
Incognitus

Incognitus is quite correct. This is where proper intelligence is vital. They destroyed the building they wanted to destroy. Unfortunately, the expected target had moved out and the Chinese embassy had moved in. CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged that their database was not current.

Sometimes one is faced with two unacceptable choices and is forced to choose one of them. In this case we could have chosen to allow the greater evil (that of allowing Hussein to continue to his murderous rampage that was approaching 700,000 people) or to take him out and risk killing a small number of innocents. I think that the dozens of sites we have discovered with mass graves gives us the answer.

A major difficulty with the point of Weyrich & Black is that we have little idea of the numbers required to measure proportionality. Our knowledge of the numbers killed by Saddam is limited; our knowledge of the numbers killed by us is deliberately limited.
Now that the rationale for war has been shifted away from the WMD, the necessity of an invasion rather than an assassination is less clear. With uncertain numbers and the ill-motivated tactics arguments about proportionality contain too much guess work to be considered compelling.

What makes you think that strike was inaccurate?

Why, because our government SAID so

Gaudior, shocked beyond BELIEF that ANYONE could SUGGEST such a thing, REALLY! :p

The number of people killed by Hussein is large. Mass graves uncovered in this past year indicate that the combined total for Kurds and Shi�ites could be as high as 300,000. Iraqis killed during the Iraq-Iran War are estimated to be approximately 200,000. Iranians killed in the same ware are estimated to be from 340,000 to 730,000, depending on which account you listen to.

I agree with djs that our knowledge of how many noncombatants we have killed is unknown (or at least difficult to uncover). I dare say it is certainly not in the neighborhood of the 700,000 figure deaths generally credited to Hussein. I hope that djs is not really attempting to place the morality of our action on the same plane as Saddam Hussein's executions and mass killings.

I�m sure that djs and others will remember my support for the removal of Hussein was not primarily because of the WMDs but more so because of the murderous dictator he was. WMDs may still be found. If they are not eventually found every country from the United States to France to Israel needs to reevaluate its intelligence because all were in agreement that Iraq had these WMDs. [Even Hussein�s own people are surprised they have not been found.]

The fact that WMDs are not being found does not diminish the righteous of the action. Hussein has been prevented from any more killing. The Iraqi people have the opportunity for freedom.

It is quite possible that the United States knew that the Chinese were the new tenants of that building and targeted it purposely. If that is the case then the argument presented by Incognitus that they were really innocent noncombatants in a war fails.

Gauidor rightly asks whether we could believe our government to tell the truth. He may be right. In this case I don�t see any evidence causing me to doubt the official account. It is certainly possible that they took advantage of the opportunity to take out a Chinese intelligence gathering location. If this is the case then these Chinese were certainly not noncombatants. That is the point I was trying to make regarding innocent causalities.

In the case of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, we do at least know that the bomb(s) blew the place up - because the Chinese were able to make the facts known and thereby compel the American government and their allies to acknowledge the fact. But I have little or no confidence either in the honesty of governments or in the reliability of military intelligence. So there is a question: how many other "inappropriate" targets did the American government and their allies bomb in that war (or conflict - I won't quibble about the word) in the former Yugoslavia?
Incognitus

Our knowledge of the casualities that we have inflicted is limited because our government has decided not to collect and/or disseminate that information. Without it, one is forced to rely on very gross estimates to argue proportionality. This reliance makes the arguments plausible at best, but by no means "compelling".

The Administrator puts out some interesting remarks related to proportionality.

Should deaths be counted or death-rates? Our year in Iraq is probably very similar to the average annnual rate under Saddam - certainly within an order of magnitude and very likely within a factor of pi. Presumably the future will be better.

Are motivations important in assessing proportionality? I am no expert in the theories of war-morality, but ISTM that the the idea of proportionality is incorporated in addition to just cause criteria: an otherwise just war would be immoral if its pursuit resulted in casualties disproportionate to the cause. In this assessment, I would hazard that a casualty is a casualty, whether inflicted with regret or not. I don't see how this scoring of proportionality to imply anything at all about "moral equivalence".
Aside from 1:1 what scoring ratio would you suggest in assessing proportionality?