REMEMBRANCE AND RECONCILIATION
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REMEMBRANCE AND RECONCILIATION
VIBS Volume 225 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Leonidas Donskis Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno George Allan Gerhold K. Becker Raymond Angelo Belliotti Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum Robert A. Delfino Rem B. Edwards Malcolm D. Evans Roland Faber Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Francesc Forn i Argimon Daniel B. Gallagher William C. Gay Dane R. Gordon J. Everet Green Heta Aleksandra Gylling Matti Häyry Brian G. Henning
Steven V. Hicks Richard T. Hull Michael Krausz Olli Loukola Mark Letteri Vincent L. Luizzi Adrianne McEvoy J.D. Mininger Peter A. Redpath Arleen L. F. Salles John R. Shook Eddy Souffrant Tuija Takala Emil Višňovský Anne Waters James R. Watson John R. Welch Thomas Woods
a volume in Philosophy of Peace POP William C. Gay, Editor
REMEMBRANCE AND RECONCILIATION
Edited by
Rob Gildert and Dennis Rothermel
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2011
Cover image: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park (photo: Dreamstime.com) Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3265-1 E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-3266-8 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2011 Printed in the Netherlands
Philosophy of Peace (POP) William C. Gay Editor
Other Titles in POP Laurence F. Bove and Laura Duhan Kaplan, eds. From the Eye of the Storm: Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace. 1995. VIBS 29 Laura Duhan Kaplan and Laurence F. Bove, eds. Philosophical Perspectives on Power and Domination: Theories and Practices. 1997. VIBS 49 HPP (Hennie) Lötter. Injustice, Violence, and Peace: The Case of South Africa. 1997. VIBS 56 Deane Curtin and Robert Litke, eds. Institutional Violence. 1999. VIBS 88 Judith Presler and Sally J. Scholz, eds. Peacemaking: Lessons from the Past, Visions for the Future. 2000. VIBS 105 Alison Bailey and Paula J. Smithka, eds. Community, Diversity, and Difference: Implications for Peace. 2002. VIBS 127 Nancy Nyquist Potter, ed. Putting Peace into Practice: Evaluating Policy on Local and Global Levels. 2004. VIBS 164 John Kultgen and Mary Lenzi, eds. Problems for Democracy. 2006. VIBS 181 David Boersema and Katy Gray Brown, eds. Spiritual and Political Dimensions of Nonviolence and Peace. 2006. VIBS 182 Gail Presbey, ed., Philosophical Perspectives on the “War on Terrorism. 2007. VIBS 188 Danielle Poe and Eddy Souffrant, eds., Parceling the Globe: Explorations in Globalization, Global Behavior, and Peace. 2008. VIBS 194 Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo and Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo, eds. A New Kind of Containment: “The War on Terror,” Race, and Sexuality. 2009. VIBS 201 Andrew FitzGibbon, ed. Positive Peace: Reflections on Peace Education, Nonviolence, and Social Change. 2009. VIBS 217 Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo and Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo. Containing (Un)American Bodies: Race, Sexuality, and Post-9/11 Constructions of Citizenship. 2010. VIBS 219
Assistant Editor of POP Danielle Poe
CONTENTS Preface DENNIS ROTHERMEL
ix Part One REMEMBRANCE
Introduction DENNIS ROTHERMEL
1 3
ONE
Remembering the Present DUANE L. CADY
TWO
Vulnerability and Beneficence: Remembering the Past for the Sake of Peace EDDY SOUFFRANT
13
Homeland Security, Fiduciary Care, and Duties to Foreign Nationals JOSEPH BETZ
25
THREE
FOUR
Forgetting and Not Reconciling Hiroshima JOSEPH C. KUNKEL Part Two: RECONCILIATION
7
41
55
Introduction DENNIS ROTHERMEL
57
FIVE
Compassion and Reconciliation ROBERT PAUL CHURCHILL
61
SIX
What’s Wrong with Victims’ Rights? DAVID BOERSEMA
71
SEVEN
Pedagogy and Punishment: A Unitarian Argument for Restorative Justice ROB GILDERT
81
EIGHT
NINE
Perpetual Violence? Mimesis and Anamnesis ANDREW FITZ-GIBBON Language and Reconciliation WILLIAM C. GAY
101 113
Works Cited
119
About the Authors
129
Index
133
PREFACE This collection of essays derives from presentations given at the 2005 National Conference of the Concerned Philosophers for Peace, which was held at California State University, Chico. Remembrance and reconciliation envision intentional pathways out of conflict and toward peace. Remembrance retraces the junctures in the past that determined what a nation has become. Probing accountability for past actions establishes accountability for what continues to happen. Revisiting what a nation has done, that its people have forgotten but which recur over its long history of interventions into other nations, brings the perspectives of the peoples of those nations into view. The most severe travesties of a nation’s past linger as the immutable measure of its need to recuperate its moral standing. Reconciliation instigates compassion. It defuses the demand for retribution. It plants harmony. It stills violence. It leads us to compose our thoughts and speech in terms appropriate to practicing peace. Remembrance might appear to be able to undermine reconciliation, but it is only by redressing past wrongs does it become possible to initiate healing transformation. In healing acknowledged wounds, the practical incentive to peace is solidified. These essays evince the scholarly methods and traditions of contemporary philosophy. In addition to the exemplary spokespersons of peace—the Dalai Lama, Mohandus Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.—the discussions invoke the contributions of contemporary philosophical discourse and from the history of major thinkers and movements. Thus, though this collection, as do the other titles in the VIBS series, has a focus on philosophy of peace, the thinking is far from eccentric. How well the treatment of peace studies can gain from energetic philosophizing will be central to how well the intentional work toward peace becomes foundational in scholarship, education, and the comportment of nations. This volume has come to fruition with the generous efforts of many individuals who have contributed assistance, guidance, and expertise well beyond the call of office: Elizabeth D. Boepple, David Boersema, Sylvia Burrow, Barry Gan, William Gay, Ron Hirschbein, Travis Hreno, Tom Imhoff, Richard Keshen, Dennis Klimchuk, Marie Knox, Katie Milo, Susan Place, Gail Presby, Marc Ramsay, Greg Tropea, Mark Vopat, and Joel Zimbelman. More than can be articulated, the members of the Concerned Philosophers for Peace, and all who knew him, mourn the untimely passing of the lead editor of this volume. His partner in that endeavor, I have followed Rob Gildert’s plan, aspiring to realize it as he would have. Dennis Rothermel Department of Philosophy California State University, Chico
Part One REMEMBRANCE
INTRODUCTION Dennis Rothermel This first part collects essays that explore the implications of remembrance. In recognizing the disparity between the present state of affairs and our proclaimed traditional values of justice and freedom, we remind ourselves of our obligation to realize those values in the present. When corporate entities take responsibility for past transgressions, they gain the opportunity to assume the moral stance that we expect of citizens. In recognizing the implications of imposing regime change in sovereign states, we come to terms with how that kind of international arrogance creates resentment that is remembered abroad long after one’s own nation has forgotten. Remembering the victims of the atomic explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki occasions the impetus for renouncing nuclear weapons. In “Remembering the Present,” Duane Cady examines how the moral vacuum of a nation’s government unrepresentative of its citizens’ moral sensibilities allows politics to become captivated by the competition for and acquisition of power. The United States fails to remember its past atrocities easily. Its present militarism abroad and unconcern for inequality at home is all the more elusive to the nation’s recognition. Multiple threads of specialization in philosophical research proliferated in the latter half of the twentieth century. The esoteric topics that now dominate academic philosophy in the United States have carried philosophical discourse far from the realm of national public debate. Philosophers’ abandonment of the exoteric national discourse thus contributes to the vacuum in which only the exigencies of power prevail. The more recently growing pluralism in contemporary philosophy has fostered critical perspectives on the limited relevance of the rigorously articulated but accordingly narrow issues that have occupied academic philosophy. Thus, philosophers of peace who aspire to stature as public intellectuals will see that their first task is to subject the traditions and methodologies that prevail within the discipline of academic philosophy to the self-examination that has marked the history of philosophy from the beginning. Eddy Souffrant, in “Vulnerability, Beneficence: Remembering the Past for Peace’s Sake,” tells how a corporate entity, despite popular expectations, can admit and assume responsibility for the global impact of its actions in the past, but without determining a fiscal amount to associate with that responsibility. Establishing a normative framework for making such determination will challenge modern distinctions between the individual and group, private and public. Privatization of governmental responsibilities transforms political structure into the interaction of government and corporation. It also divests government of its accountability to a citizen electorate. How corporations take on accountability
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will differ from how individuals assume responsibility. That disparity will hinder establishing clear guidelines for evaluating corporate responsibility. Including collective entities within the sphere of moral imperatives will expand the possibility of moral action, particularly with regard to global entities. A corporate entity’s acknowledgement of responsibility for actions in a prior century will entail compilation of a collected memory and record of those events, especially to identify descendants of those wronged and those who profited. This process can contribute to the civility of contemporary society by aligning peoples divided by current geography but connected by history into a shared moral realm. We all remember 11 September 2001. Another momentous event happened on 11 September 1973, in Chile. In “Homeland Security, Fiduciary Care, and Duties to Foreign Nationals,” Joseph Betz connects the recent event with the earlier one when a United States sponsored military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Betz explains how the legacy of American intervention in foreign nations, particularly in Latin America provided one among several motivations for the terrorist attacks upon the United States during 2001. During 1973, the United States was the attacker, and during 2001, it was attacked, inspiring fear and insecurity in the nation. Those fears inspired American citizens to forsake some liberties for the sake of greater security, and also to accept torture and inhumane treatment of possible terrorists. The United States formed the federal department of Homeland Security on the wave of those fears. Both words in that nomenclature resonated clearly with the most powerful fascist, totalitarian, and racist regimes of the twentieth century. The emphasis on policing security within the nation also evoked the anti-communism hysteria of the 1950s. This resonance with the rhetoric of dark epochs in the past has not deterred a perturbed populace from feeling reassured after formation of the new governmental agency so-named. The United States continuing to provide military training for repressive police states in Latin America coincides as foreign policy designers who supported those repressive regimes in prior decades have come to prominence in the George W. Bush administration. The present administration’s response to terrorism has intensified the international strategies that helped inspire the terrorist attack of 2001, as the most salient goal of suicidal terrorist actions have always been to eject foreign military occupation. The presence of United States military bases in Saudi Arabia was a primary instigation for the 2001 attacks on the World Trade towers. Moreover, this nation’s response has undermined security for other nations in the world. The United States’ anti-terrorist efforts have been based on broad definitions of terrorism that include the perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade towers and partisan insurgents celebrated as “freedom-fighters” by previous administrations. This latitude in meaning renders the term “terrorist” arbitrarily applicable. That same broad definition can also allow us to recognize terrorism by the United States as equally reprehensible as terrorism against the United
Introduction
5
States, even as terrorism perpetrated by the United States becomes its response to terrorism perpetrated against it. In his “Forgetting and Not Reconciling Hiroshima,” Joseph C. Kunkel explores how remembrance of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during 1945 simultaneously offers an opportunity for reconciliation with the victims of those bombings and others who were exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests. The refusal of the Unites States to countenance reconciliation with these victims precludes what could signal our intention not to employ these weapons again. That implication alone—not to declare abstaining from nuclear weapons— impedes reconciling with the international community to abolish or limit nuclear armaments. Instead, subsequent United States administrations have blamed the concluding nuclear attacks of World War II on the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that precipitated our entrance into the war. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan were targeted for city centers, thus assuring devastation of the non-military population. Targeting the civilian population was strongly opposed by senior military leadership and scientists who had worked on development of the bomb. Targeting civilians also violated just war principles that proscribe actions in defense of the nation that entail killing noncombatants. The genocidal actions of both Japan and Germany during World War II are condemnable based upon those same principles. The protracted international negotiations on nuclear arms control treaties— Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START I and II)—commenced during the presidency of George H. Walker Bush and continued until the conclusion of the William J. Clinton administration. Under the presidency of George W. Bush, the United States has derailed those efforts. Though it remains the sole superpower subsequent to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its bloc, the United States prepares a new generation of these weapons, and a dubious missile defense system. During the course of these five essays, we encounter insights into remembrance. Remembrance follows the obligation to remedy suffering. It forges bonds of family, community, and nation. It nurtures hope and overcomes fatalism. It refocuses attention upon transgressions and atrocities that too easily memory allows us to neglect. It contributes to the civility of society by aligning disparate peoples who have common needs. It brings attention to distant historical causes of present tribulation. It engenders perspective upon how a virulent response can become morally indistinguishable from the travesty that inspired it. Remembrance of the worst singular events of mass victimization provides the opportunity for global reconciliation in the resolve to curtail any future recurrence.
One REMEMBERING THE PRESENT Duane L. Cady Near the close of After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre tells us “modern politics is civil war carried on by other means” (1983, p. 253). He explains that wherever government does not express or represent the moral community of citizens, or worse, where a nation is morally impoverished, even teetering on the edge of moral bankruptcy, sheer will and raw power fill the void. MacIntyre wrote After Virtue a quarter-century ago. Also concerned with the moral health of our nation, Martin Luther King, Jr. said—nearly forty years ago, in 1967—that the United States was the leading purveyor of violence in the world. Today we remain the globe’s number one arms merchant, have the most troops and bases on foreign soil, and spend more on our military than our allies and enemies (actual and potential) combined. As civil rights and anti-war activist James Lawson has put it, we live in the belly of the beast. If you doubt it, consider Death, Etc. (2005), the collection of essays from British playwright Harold Pinter, recently recognized with the Nobel Prize for literature. In an open letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Pinter accuses the United States of supporting, subsidizing, and in a number of cases, engendering “every right-wing military dictatorship in the world since 1945,” referring to “Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, Greece, Uruguay, the Philippines, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, and El Salvador. . . . Hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered by these regimes, but the money, the resources, the equipment (of all kinds), the advice, the moral support, as it were, has come from successive U[nited] S[tates] administrations.” Concerning Iraq, Pinter says thousands upon thousands have been killed and thousands more mutilated. To Pinter, “Freedom, democracy, and liberation, as enunciated by [George W.] Bush and Blair, essentially mean death, destruction, and chaos” (“Nobel Winner Pinter’s Poems and prose of outrage,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, 19 October 2005). Regarding the moral fabric of the nation, our open-ended war on terror, brought United States President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard (Dick) Cheney, Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld all to be caught in lies in their attempts to justify the war and military occupation in Iraq. Prisoners suffered abuse at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base with no respect for their legal rights and no accountability among our government leadership. United States’ soldiers in Afghanistan have been accused of sacrilegious mutilation of dead enemies to taunt
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alleged Taliban fighters. Staggering deficits brought on by war replace federal spending surpluses while tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are made permanent. Meanwhile, working class families pay not only with their taxes but also with the limbs and lives of sons and daughters in the National Guard, and families of the poorest Americans pay the biggest price since their children disproportionately populate the so-called all volunteer military, chosen among very few options out of poverty. Ample evidence exists to suggest the moral health of the nation is at serious risk and already beginning to fail. Damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita fell disproportionately on poor people (in this country that means people of color), while the stumbling response of the federal government funnels reconstruction contracts without competitive bids and the toxic site that was New Orleans gets caught in a rush to rebuild ahead of environmental clean-up. No one should be surprised if infant mortality and cancer rates for the Gulf Coast jump up in the coming decades. I had planned to write for this session on our nation’s shameful legacy of slavery, on our national failure to face the continuing implications of having traded in human flesh, exploiting generations of Africans’ labor, destroying their families, uprooting them from their homes and cultures, and abandoning them and their children once emancipation came. Anti-racism work requires coming to grips with the roots of American racism in slavery. However, the more I thought about the importance of remembering our past to understand and address injustices of the present, the more I realized that in the United States of America, we do not even remember the present. Of course, remembering past transgressions is good for the transgressor. Historical consciousness, while atypical of Americans, engenders a sense of social justice that promises a more equitable future when the consciousness is collective. But how can we expect Americans to remember our nation’s past when we are collectively unaware of, or unconcerned with our nation’s present? How might philosophers, especially those interested in peace, explain this collective unawareness? What might philosophers concerned for peace try to do about it? Irony is inherent in looking to philosophy to explain the collective unawareness and corresponding moral decline of the nation. Academic philosophy appears to me to contribute to the problem. As Morton White observed nearly fifty years ago, “[A]s long as the custodians of philosophical technique develop axes with which to sharpen other axes, they risk developing a sense of weariness and emptiness in themselves and in those who read them.” (1955, p. 242). Philosophy is not what it used to be. For Aristotle more than 2000 years ago, a sense of wonder moved human beings to philosophize. By the midtwentieth century, philosophy, like most academic disciplines, had become highly specialized, technical, and increasingly distanced from the social and moral experiences of life. Whereas John Dewey was a genuine public intellectual caught up in and contributing to the important issues of his day, the practice of
Remembering the Present
9
our discipline has become so abstract and esoteric that many philosophers, even and perhaps especially those with PhDs, cannot follow much of what is published in our field unless it falls within our particular area of specialization. Our students struggle with the complex technicalities of the discipline while the public simply ignores philosophy (when it is not laughing at the stereotypical jokes about the field. We philosophers enjoy lawyer jokes but pay little attention to the jokes directed at us). Little on a usual program for American Philosophical Association (APA) meetings would be of any use to any but those caught-up in dazzling intellectual exercises. (I proudly note the exceptions of Concerned Philosophers for Peace and a few other society sessions.) How did we come to this state of affairs, especially since after World War II, American universities opened more than ever to working class students, women, and people of color, many who have established careers in the academy? I suspect the drift to more technical and highly specialized work began during the Enlightenment, when philosophy increasingly modeled itself after the most successful intellectual enterprise going, natural science. Philosophers aspired to narrower and more precise notions of reason, focusing on compelling argumentation, necessary and sufficient conditions, decisive empirical evidence, algorithmic proof, and precision criteria. Earlier and broader understandings of reason, richer, perhaps more metaphorical, aesthetic, or reflective of life experience have nearly disappeared from mainstream academic philosophy. Allegorical passages from Plato’s dialogues are good examples of the sort of thing now somehow inappropriate to philosophy, along with any imagery not easily reduced to first order predicate calculus. No doubt the McCarthy era—the witch-hunt for Communists and their “sympathizers”—contributed to the academic retreat into esoteric abstraction, safely removing academic philosophers from the political risks of a more engaged, more pragmatic, more Dewey/William James/W. E. B. Du Bois practice of philosophy. More recently, especially since the end of the Cold War, contemporary critiques of the narrower, more “scientific” understanding of reason have emerged from feminist, anti-racist, aesthetic, post-modern, and other perspectives, provoking a pluralistic conversation about the nature of philosophy. I am interested in this pluralistic discussion, especially in contributions to moral thought often left out of the mainstream and more technical accounts. Science has not enjoyed much success in understanding values. Great philosophic contributions to ethics and social and political philosophy are more likely to be ancient, medieval, or modern than contemporary. In the Western intellectual tradition, an emphasis on argument, abstract theory, formal reasoning, and secure foundation principles has characterized philosophical ethics. All of these have been largely distinct from emotional, aesthetic, narrative, and historical considerations, opening the door to the pluralist critiques. Kantian deontology and John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism continues to dominate contemporary philosophical ethics, perhaps with an occasional nod to
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ancient virtue ethics. Martha Nussbaum’s experience at Harvard during the 1970s, where Immanuel Kant and Mill “were taken to divide the field more or less exhaustively” (1990, pp. 13–14), is a reminder of graduate school to many of us. This is not to denigrate the remarkable contributions of Kant and Mill but to wonder why ethical theory has changed so little since the mid-nineteenth century. Collapsing moral thought into Kant and Mill appears to be problematic for a variety of reasons. Most ordinary people do not limit themselves exclusively to either deontology or consequentialism when making moral decisions; much less do they apply the categorical imperative or principle of utility. Most folks make moral decisions differently under different circumstances, sometimes after a period of reflection, but more often almost spontaneously, out of habit, compassion, a sense of following rules, of trying to be generous or kind, or inspired by role models. Sometimes they consider likely results but at other times, they respond to a sense of duty. Often, they are merely being themselves. Moral behavior comprises more than only following a criterion. Past experience, influential individuals, and impressions—all the influences of what makes us who we are— play into our morality. Another problem with collapsing moral thought into Kant and Mill, and perhaps a little virtue ethics (as do so many ethics textbooks), is that we thereby ignore the last 150 years of moral history: the women’s suffrage movement, the labor movement, Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent direct action for Indian home rule, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the civil rights and anti-war movements in the United States, the anti-imperialism struggles throughout the so-called third world, domestic and global feminism, people of color liberation work, environmentalism, lesbian and gay rights, and more. Yes, academics can (and have) retrospectively interpreted and applied Kant and Mill to accommodate these issues, but these are not all-purpose solvents for any possible moral question. Paul Gilroy asks us to set aside categories of dominant culture, of modernity, because people of color and the poor have been largely invisible to the modern world. Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic presents a rethinking of modernity through the experiences of the African diaspora in the Western hemisphere. Gilroy argues that the modern tradition: lost its exclusive claim to rationality partly through the way that slavery became internal to Western civilization and through the obvious complicity which both plantation slavery and colonial regimes revealed between rationality and the practice of racial terror. (1993, pp. 38–39) Sadly, traditional ethical theory does not acknowledge such complicity; some things remain invisible. The universal claims of Enlightenment-inspired rational progress contrast markedly with history. Rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” turn
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11
out to be universal only for land-holding whites, and only the men. “The politics of fulfillment practiced by the descendents of slaves demands . . . that bourgeois civil society live up to the promises of its own rhetoric” (ibid., p. 37). Somehow, philosophy, the discipline committed to self-examination, heightened awareness, to looking beneath, behind, and beyond the immediate, manages—all too often and along with dominant culture—to overlook the obvious. The best minds take our discipline to ever more abstract and distant technical levels, increasingly far removed from the stuff of moral thinking and the events and issues of our own time. Is it any wonder Americans do not remember the present when our best thinkers are preoccupied with more important matters? What are philosophers concerned for peace to do, given this account of the situation? I cannot pretend to solve what has been, for me, the primary problem of making a career for myself in this profession. I was in graduate school at Brown University during the late 1960s and early 1970s, toward the end of the civil rights era and in the middle of our nation’s most active anti-war movement. I was an activist myself, and I thought a dissertation on morality and war would be interesting. Doing preliminary research, I came to understand that perhaps twenty times as many books and articles in my field dedicated to problems in philosophy of language were published between World War II and the Vietnam War than on morality and war. I quickly understood why my graduate professors were so cool to my interest in nonviolence. Most thought it “too political,” some thought it “crackpot,” and virtually all thought it “an unwise career direction” to take. After earning my PhD and beginning a teaching career, I discovered W. E. B. Du Bois— accidentally, while rummaging in the university library stacks for something else. I could not believe that I could be educated through the PhD in philosophy and become a professor without ever having learned of a thinker, a philosopher, of this magnitude. When I began using Martin Luther King, Jr. in my ethics class (as one of half-a-dozen original texts), and DuBois in my Introduction to Philosophy class, a senior colleague opined that King and DuBois were not philosophers. I have known for nearly forty years the challenge we are facing. I was fortunate to get involved with philosophers at the margins of the profession early in my career; they have provided a refuge for me. I could not have done much of my work without the encouragement and criticism of renegade colleagues I met at conferences and APA sidebar sessions. Understanding our tenuous status within the wider profession, all I have thought to do has been to continue the conversation, submit the work to journals and presses, and encourage others to do the same. Perhaps talking with Concerned Philosophers for Peace (CPP) is preaching to the choir; philosophers attending CPP meetings are aware of the problem. My goal is to shine a light on it, press the conversation, and encourage our steppingup the challenge to our students, colleagues, and professional peers.
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DUANE L. CADY
If we want to understand why Americans are so inclined to forget the present, to ignore the outrages of our nation and culture—violence, misinformation, manipulation, greed, theft, and cover-up, day by day, all around us—we need to look to ourselves, our work, our profession, our colleagues, and our courses. We need to speak truth to power and to demand that others speak truth to us. In short, we need to get back to the self-examination traditionally at the heart of philosophy. We need to bring people and perspectives currently marginalized by our society and profession from the edges to the center of our work. I am grateful for the professional associations I have had, for not only tolerating but also encouraging me when I think and say such things.
Two VULNERABILITY AND BENEFICENCE: REMEMBERING THE PAST FOR THE SAKE OF PEACE Eddy Souffrant 1. Collective Actions Recent accounts in the news, most notably those of a few years ago, have lent support to the view that in a meaningful way, corporation can act as a collective agent. As actors, they are also positioned to assume responsibility, corporate responsibility. On 2 June 2005, Binyamin Applebaum reported that Wachovia Bank had admitted responsibility for profiteering from the enterprise of slavery (“Wachovia Details Past Ties to Slavery—Report on Predecessor Banks’ Direct, Indirect Profits Includes Apology” The Charlotte Observer). In “Company Praised for Role against Terrorism” in the same paper, reporter Gillian May-Lian Wee documented the recognition by a United States Army Brigadier General, Stephen Reeves, of the significant role played by General Dynamics Corporation in developing what may be effective chemical and biological detectors to help the fight against terrorism. A third story, “At Head of World Bank, Wolfowitz Calls for Hope—Former Defense Official Wants to Steer Africa from Poverty, Despair,” reported in the same paper that the then newly installed tenth president of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz listed one of his missions during his tenure would be to “do something about reducing poverty in the world and helping countries that are not yet on the path of sustainable development to get there.” These three stories would appear unrelated were it not for their respective acknowledgment of global and collective actions that bring about the recognition of an associated responsibility, and most importantly, claims of ownership of such a responsibility. We have been habituated to think that the area of public security is the exclusive domain of political institutions, of government. Reeve’s praise of General Dynamics Corporation in the report, however, moves a portion of public security into private, for-profit hands, thereby raising at once a host of philosophical difficulties. In the first instance, once the problem of collective and global action is resolved and that is no small task, we can readily admit or calculate the associated responsibility (French, 1992). Nevertheless, Wachovia Bank as a corporate and collective entity recognized its participation through intermediaries in the global
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enterprise of slavery and as such, should assume some collective responsibility for benefiting from the global practice. The story, interesting no doubt on many registers, appeared particularly significant to me because it admitted, unlike other public accounts of corporate wrongdoings, that a corporation, not strictly its individual officers, is active enough an agent to execute wrongdoings and to assume responsibility for its actions. To close the reported story, the responsibility admitted by the bank stopped short of determining how much it benefited and how much the reparation it should make for its deeds. Two salient issues are present in this example, the first, a positive one, the reminder consistent with the admission of action and responsibility, that a corporation can be held accountable for its associations. The other, less attractive, is that corporate agency is firmly in place in our contrasting liberal world with its emphasis on individual agency and responsibility. 2. Benefits Who are the beneficiaries or benefactors of collective acts, and what sorts of results obtain from these collective acts? In the Wachovia case, in addition to individuals employed by the company at the time, the corporation itself profited from the enterprise of slavery. More relevant for us here are the two other reports of collective action and responsibility. In the case of General Dynamics, the corporation was responsible for service to the public in the form of its manufacturing detectors of chemical or biological agents that would be used by terrorists. Finally, the aim of the World Bank is to rid Africa and eventually the globe of the scourges of poverty. This is a collective action; its associated responsibility brings to the fore factually, not only by theoretical arguments, the point that collective entities, non-human agents (corporations and various sorts of organizations), are significant constituents of the public space. On the other hand, since the assumed responsibilities are targeted and specific, for example, “eliminate the threat of terrorism and eradicate poverty,” they run the risk of limiting actions only to the specific cases that they observed and self-acknowledge. We see beauty in the independence granted to groups or organizations that act as agents to determine their responsibility. Contrary to this open source of freedom, moral responsibility is not simply self-assigned. Moral responsibility has an element of publicity. Being a moral agent at times requires that a person be subjected to the demands of the larger social environment and its members. Ethicists often overlook that aspect of publicity in their enthusiasm to include collective entities as organization and agents in the moral community. But if we limit the inclusion in the manner in which it has been articulated thus far, the idea of corporations as agents with self-assigned responsibility undermines the normative and prescriptive import of the intuition of responsibility.
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Moral responsibility is more general. It motivates beyond selfacknowledgment the specific actions articulated by the purported moral projects mentioned in the introductory paragraphs above. We are witnessing at last the publicity of collective moral responsibility, but the publicity is privatized. Private entities determine, or in the worst of circumstances, negotiate their responsibility. The novelty of the privatization and of the specific corporate responsibility issues proposed here concern the parties involved in the dialogue action and associated responsibility and in the nature of the competition for ownership of responsibility it encourages. In contrast, the privatization process with which I am concerned does not imply only privately assigning responsibility to oneself. It is motivated by the prospects of an equitable redistribution or use of public funds or property. It enlarges the private realm instead of limiting it. It is no doubt a promissory note, but it establishes at once the tone of a presumed dialogue about public or collective responsibility between the private and the public. We are accustomed as moderns, as offspring of colonialism and liberalism, pitting the private against the public, whereas we generally construe the private as the domain subjected to the potential and sometimes necessary intrusion of government. The contemporary emphasis in privatization as private collective responsibility extends our conception of liberalism in the hope of accommodating groups. Despite the effort, the modified liberalism remains exclusionary. It excludes the presumed raison d’être of the polity, its constitutive components: the individual and its civil/social environment. Privatization exercised in the contemporary period transforms the meaning of the private. In the historical interpretation of the private and the public, we interpreted the struggle of philosophical liberalism as the attempt to determine how permissive the individual would be in restricting the presumed necessary but encroaching role of government. The contemporary dialogue bypasses the tension between the individual and its artificial construction, government. Instead, it favors a dialogue exclusive of the individual but supportive of the one between two constructions: one political and the other, legal. The contemporary discourses of privatization pose yet another threat to philosophical liberalism, an adaptation of the term private, which denoted the territory, within which individuals would interact without fear of interference or intrusion by government. Instead, it now refers to a state of affairs that promotes ownership. The private shifts. It no longer refers to a physical space protected from interference. It is synonymous with possession and consists in that which one owns. The ownership is further accompanied by the expectations that it be protected from intrusion by others. In the new discourse of protected possessiveness, civil society is co-opted to give way to a political one where the competing forces are no longer the individual and government, but private collective agents. In our time, corporate entities have won the race for possession. Despite the admissions of corporations like Wachovia of responsibility for past behaviors, or
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the expressed laudable intentions of institutions such as the World Bank to implement future oriented programs, we in moral philosophy are challenged to assign objective moral accountability and responsibilities to such powerful actors. We are pulled in two directions. We are first encouraged by the Wachovia-types to recognize that conditions exist within our respective nation-states to which collective agents have contributed either actively or instrumentally. Such recognitions may serve and indeed should serve as bases for the assignment of direct objective accountability or responsibility. We are also pulled in a different direction. We realize that in some instances, the assignments of accountability or responsibility based on direct or indirect actions are sometimes difficult to gauge. Yet we are aware that in these instances, the conditions are inconsistent with an acceptable standard of human viability. Furthermore, redressing such conditions requires actions that collective agents can undertake. What would motivate such actions? 3. Vulnerability The examples of Wachovia, the World Bank, and General Dynamics offer a common preliminary option. All three accept a given state of vulnerability of persons in society. That vulnerability might be (1) exploitative power (of slave merchants), (2) terrorist attacks, or (3) natural or human-made conditions of scarcity. All three also reveal the plurality of moral agency. If and when moral scrutiny deems such circumstances detrimental to propitious conditions for human viability, a heuristic approach might put in place an alternative that will help bring about a more viable human environment, one in which the detrimental circumstances are corrected. A first attempt to establish such an environment might begin with a realistic approach to moral thinking one, as Duane L. Cady suggests, that would involve an “open-ended process involving ongoing interactions within and among individuals and groups, where disparate value frameworks, practices, and explanations stand in continuing review of one another” (2005, p. 102). Cady’s interest in the pluralism that should motivate our moral thinking is not without precedent. Although his articulation is innovative, some early Utilitarians offered a first approximation to embrace plurality in ethics when they moved moral thinking away from individual ratiocination and self-assessment and toward the consideration and inclusion of the condition and plight of others. In their consideration of moral responsibility, the moral acts consist of bringing about the happiness of those concerned. To the extent that we notice vulnerable persons and determine that its plight is worthy of our concern, the moral imperative is clear: Bring about a change in their condition, increase their happiness. Robert E. Goodin (1985) realized that the utilitarian directive to bring about the happiness of the concerned relies too heavily on the benefactor’s recognition of the other’s need. He argued for establishing the condition of vulnera-
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bility as motivator of our moral actions. His principle of responsibility for the vulnerable has the avoidance of pain as a primary end of moral human action. To be vulnerable is for him to be under threat. For him, persons are vulnerable to the extent that they perceive some harm is to be imminent. Protecting the vulnerable consists of protecting them from threatened harms. Protecting the vulnerable is an instantiation of responsibility. It is established as one of the starting points of Goodin’s ethics of responsibility. Vulnerability and its incumbent responsibility are fundamentally consequentialist. The responsibility that ensues from the inevitability of a person’s psychological or physical vulnerability seeks to bring about a determined end, the alleviation, or eradication of the harm. The principle of responsibility advocated by Robert Goodin seeks to bring about a state of affairs consistent with the utilitarian conception of morality. Notice that the conception of responsibility I propose here is also fundamentally public, following the manner in which we have been speaking of the transformations of the public sphere. Public, as I adapt Goodin’s conception, is collective and objective. His conception of responsibility holds that morality is not solely a method for evaluating and prescribing the interaction of individuals. It is also a method for prescribing the actions and conditions of groups and collectives. Goodin’s theory reminds us that membership in the moral community compels us to decry injustice, immoralities. Its conception of responsibility is attractive in theory. In point of fact, are we also provided a way to identify those injustices and immoralities and avoid the polemical tendencies readily available in the public? Most of us would agree that the position enunciated by Paul Wolfowitz at the beginning of this work identifies a problem that should concern us. Unfortunately, the ease with which we agree on the scourges of poverty and of its unacceptability is on a par with the potential contentious debates about which human conditions we ought to be responsible for eliminating. So short of an identification method that would keep us from denying the relevance of collective responsibility as an objective principle, we would be left with the view of collective responsibility as an opinion or the result of power play. The principle of responsibility short of such a method would seem too vague to be of value to us in our pursuit of an objective but public/collective and global morality. 4. Modernity and Remembrance This elaboration on the concept of responsibility has great ramifications for a contemporary world order. It has enlarged our conception of morality. It has moved morality from a traditionally atomist individualism to collective responsibility. This model morality enables us to consider the plight of others even as we could claim to have had nothing in particular to do with their plight. Thus not having contributed to their plight does not absolve us from protecting their inter-
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ests when social, health, and economic conditions have rendered them vulnerable to exploiters or conditions inconsistent with their viability. Lest I be accused of engaging in the philosopher’s favorite pastime, its eternal preoccupation with contemplating frivolous issues, let us remember that modernity, with its insistence on progress, civility, and impartiality kept in mind the other (Cady, 2005). The versions of modernity promoted in our times are those that convey its use of the other as instrument, as pedestal to that progress and its realization. In response to the familiar interpretation of modernity, I suggest that we remember the past to avoid a future that will result from the nefarious effects of an uncritical present. The shift in the meaning of the familiar tension between the private and the public has created a vacuum of responsibility. Self-assumed responsibility, a valued practice in the setting of philosophical liberalism, is rendered meaningless in a context plural agency. Collective agents have assumed a share of civic responsibility. By so doing, the responsibility of these unique agents have increased. Goodin’s work helped make the case for an increased in responsibility beyond the self-assumed variety lauded in the reports like those in the observer. Wachovia, however, should not be allowed to accept alone the blame that accompanies its acknowledgment of human rights abuse of the greatest proportion. The linear guilt fallacy that it commits, the error of presuming responsibility for acts directly related to the agent’s actions, is triggered by a commonplace uncritical acceptance that the environment in which we live is liberal and atomist. We accept a fictitious environment, one in which the fiction of individualism and its associated fixed individual responsibility is commonplace. But the condition within which the exploitation exhibited in colonialism, slavery, and its instrument of human subjugation denies the linear temporal gauge. Dislocated persons are affected differently by actions that in ordinary circumstances, we might believe to have a specific result or outcome. Slavery does not yield as clear a consequence as we might be tempted to believe. Likewise, the benefits of slavery are spread across persons and time. This combined inability to identify victims, and to some extent also victimizers, makes it more attractive to consider a condition responsibility that a linear atomist one. For self-acknowledged responsibility, even when coupled with the mission of the benefactor to assume incumbent responsibility by actions, cannot determine areas of redress. This conception of responsibility does a disservice to the challenges that we recognize in the present, challenges that spring from the peculiar conditions brought about by the practice and implementation of institutions like those of slavery, in the case of Wachovia for example. Objective collective responsibility that speaks to such conditions and informs policies that seek to alleviate the vulnerabilities of persons living these present conditions remains in my view the more attractive of the suggestions we have had here for collective responsibility.
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A modernity with emphasis on the new found good breeding grounds for the activity of slavery captures the complexity for which I have argued. The linear conception of responsibility consistent with the self-assumed responsibility of Wachovia cannot accommodate the plurality of the ramifications of having engaged in such a practice. For with the enterprise, the link between persons now living and considered to emanate from a common continent (Africa) cannot be substantiated. Such persons, now living in the Americas and giving the intentional diversity of slavery, did not share a common link and could not themselves communicate with each other. They had to be provided with the common history, the common past. Remembering the past in the manner in which Wachovia has done falls within the trap of modernity. Wachovia’s reluctance to admit initially the extent of its responsibility resulting from the activities of one of the parent banks of the conglomerate, and the subsequent acknowledgment of its current offspring give the false impression that Wachovia alone can gauge the extent of its responsibility. Remembering the past under those conditions creates the illusion of progress or of a novelty characteristic of the version of modernity I criticize here, the modernity that uses the other as pedestal because modernity intended ironically to break linear temporality. Modernity and the slavery that inevitably accompanies it wanted to create a present without past. The Caribbean especially and the Latin American region in general as a newly developing environment in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and where the repercussions of slavery are most felt, are territories that deny the past and exalt in the new. It is the environment of the modern. The Caribbean Islands is the only area “where Europeans moved as if it was indeed empty land, a terra nullius to be fashioned along modern lines” (Trouillot , 2003, p. 44). The amnesia about the area and its initial inhabitants also permits a neglect of these contributors to the present. We see this neglect of memory represented even today in the scholarship about the area, which emphasizes the recent past, presumably the significantly formative one of some parts of the area. (For criticism of that tendency, see Paget Henry’s Caliban’s Reason [2000] and Michel Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past [1995]). The result is the adoption of a version of modernity and the Caribbean reflective of the most recent wave of creation ex nihilo. But despite its denial of time and its rejection of plurality, modernity as an exercise in individualism and self-creation is “structurally plural” in that it requires for its relevance an “Other” but “otherwise modern” (Trouillot, 2003, p. 41). 5. Beneficence Our exploration into a version of the principle of responsibility is liberating on a number of fronts. First, it enlarges our realm of morality. Not only individuals but also collectives of all sorts ranging from groups to corporations and institu-
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tions are potential promoters of morality. It also extends our territory of operation moving from restrained socio-political, nation-states to the global scene. Vulnerable anywhere are a challenge to morality everywhere. The foray into collective responsibility adds yet another benefit to our efforts to rid ourselves of the fatal constraints of modernity. The principle of responsibility—especially that of collective responsibility—eliminates the necessary contentious gaps created by the practice of the dicta of modernity. The increase in the delegation of public duties to private institutions, the interests of those institutions, and the willingness of government to accept a modified protective role in a possessive polity put the individual at a disadvantage. John Locke, in his version of justifiable government, was not wrong in assigning the role of property protection to government, but the competition that Locke had in mind did not pit individuals against private enterprises. It instead placed individuals against individuals and argued for justifiable government to embrace the role of an arbiter. The circumstances have drastically changed as we have noticed. The civil society in which individuals interact is either non-existent or completely supplanted by one partial to the ideals of exchange in a market place. In advancing the principle of responsibility, I have been articulating throughout this paper, I seek to restore civility to a social environment overrun by market ideals that fix our gaze on what we owe our fellow human beings. I have intimated that the principle of responsibility I favor would reconcile our differences across culture and ideological boundaries. As borders become porous and are at times intentionally disregarded, the question of what we owe our neighbors is amplified in cases of disaster or extreme need. It becomes increasingly relevant also as the distance between “them” (those whom we have determined beyond the boundaries of our protection and immediate concern) and “us” (members of national, cultural, or transnational coalition) diminishes. This work has so far offered an early answer to the question regarding our responsibility to others. In its call to protect the vulnerable, it has presented a partial understanding of a globalization process that disregards the relevance of political borders and has begun to carve a range of commendable global behaviors for that environment. Furthermore, this work is intended to be consistent with efforts, moral and practical, to relieve the globe of various threatening conditions. I also wanted to help us respond satisfactorily to the vexing line of arguments that react to the proposal of someone like Peter Singer. Singer holds that when bad global conditions exist that are disastrous for some population of the globe, we as a global community ought to help alleviate those conditions to the extent that the effort to remedy the disaster does not lead us to sacrifice comparable objects of moral importance (1996, pp. 26–38). Singer’s minimal global ethics offers collective responsibility as risk assessment. Singer’s moral offering is appealing because most of us would agree that being moral rarely requires supererogatory acts. Given our traditional training in
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moral philosophy, when we consider moral actions, we rarely concern ourselves with determining how we should act toward persons beyond our immediate social vicinity. Even more rarely are we asked to coalesce with others to act collectively. Global actions and global morality in their challenge to moral philosophers ask us to do both. Apparently, we are ill equipped philosophically to respond to global disaster, whether political, social, or natural. Disasters appeal to our human sensitivities and emotional memories. For this reason, some like Singer think that the most appropriate metaphor to help justify our responsibilities to aid those in need, especially those who through no fault of their own find themselves in the throes of a devastating flood or earthquake, is the one triggered by memories of an impotent innocent child faced with imminent misfortunes. A drowning child compels us to help. Whether we share familiar ties with the child is mostly irrelevant. The compelling case of a drowning child also reinforces the intuition that acting benevolently toward a stranger does not require that we be self-destructive. Therefore, with Singer, I hold that helping others in need constitutes a minimum of social responsibility, provided we are not asked to give up objects of (moral) importance. Political realities constantly test moral impetus. The geography of political membership assigns national boundaries and appurtenance to persons. It limits the scope of the good will expressed in the drowning child example above. Allegiance to the dicta of a political environment does not necessarily extend beyond its political borders. One may agree to be kind and protective of one’s fellow citizen but it surely does not follow that one should be likewise with distant and foreign nationals. Transnational emotional charity may be baseless in this context of political markers and with closed borders; charity may not be extended to strangers. What then would compel the citizen of political territory A to extend its good will to citizens of territory B, especially if the resources available are limited? The requirements of liberal global polity may offer that the only prevalent duty is that others be left to pursue freely their own conception of the good. The acute need of those struck by natural disaster is distinguished and perhaps justifiably so from that experienced as a result of political malfeasance. A limited interpretation of liberal principles would suggest that integrity and independence of political community must be guarded and interference with such communities must be discouraged. But recognition of a global threat exists as a result of the contemporary condition and regardless whether they are articulated. It consists of the threat that despite political boundaries, conditions abroad will spill over our borders and disrupt the cherished conditions of life we enjoy within our secured borders. The threat, albeit perceived, to the way of life of a portion of the global community by the conditions of others the globe over reveals the interconnectedness of the members of that community. The connection is strengthened by the advocacy and implementation of preventive measures, measures that shed light on the common bond between the different communities. But more impor-
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tantly for my purposes is the realization that the common bond also reinforces the relevance of a collective morality. Solutions to a moral problem in an interconnected world readily uncover the obligations that are likewise collective. 6. Remembering the Past for the Sake of Peace That we only expect the needy part of the world to solve their problems alone is insufficient to give us peace of mind or create a peaceful common global environment. These problems, given our interconnectedness, are common. They imply by the principle of publicity (urged in section 2 above) that all the other members of that global community assume the incumbent responsibilities. For that community, these responsibilities would be both positive and negative ones. I reject the social isolation presumed by a narrow conception of responsibility on moral grounds. Social disasters, given our present memory and the political scenario offered thus far, have their source in two presumptions. The first is that famine, poverty, and human rights abuses emanate from a presumption of moral, economic, and nutritional isolation. The second is the belief that the isolation in turn, nurtures a greed that promotes a false condition of scarcity. Food and money are not scarce throughout the world or even in particular parts of the world. I follow Amartya Sen’s reminder as he analyzes third world hunger and poverty to say that the focus should be on whether enough people have access to valuable goods (1996, pp. 186–210). Monopolistic ownership and limited currency to acquire valuable goods create within any society conditions of poverty and need that also reveal more readily than other factors our common responsibility to respond positively to the plight of others, our fellow human beings, whether they reside within or outside our particular bounded society. The social character of poverty and its associated attribute, need, create tensions within society. Civil strife notwithstanding, the recognition of the pervasiveness of poverty and need also render us all vulnerable to transnational conflicts more now than ever before. Access through global media that encourages comparison of the conditions of societies unveils at once the common transgressions perpetrated against all marginalized persons. The separation of peoples of the globe within or without nation-states into two camps—the marginalized and privileged others—specifies that the conditions of marginalized persons are also transgressions of their human rights instead of failures in their natural constitution. Many of the basic rights enunciated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights are based on a universal conception of basic needs of human beings for certain objective goods, the absence of which are detrimental to the viability of every and all human beings. The resulting condition is often that the basic needs of marginalized persons and groups are not met as those of others privileged by political maneuvering or calculating cultural luck are systematically satisfied.
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Conditions of poverty and those that exacerbate the distance between inhabitants of the globe are detrimental to the viability of the globe and to the peaceful coexistence of all. In the atmosphere of globalization and privatization, the dynamic continues to be the modern one of competition. But I caution us to consider the competition involved. It is not a simple one of government and corporation but one among corporations for the eyes and favors of government as governments assume a quite limited role in the public realm. Corporations take on the public responsibility to serve the public and thus compete with other relevant governmental institutions to provide service to the individual. This competitive environment has superficially the look of a successful privatization process. In reality, the competition substitutes big government by big enterprise, both antagonist to individuality and its expression. Assuming that under these new competitive conditions we can still salvage some aspects of privatization on the grounds that it has been with us for some time albeit in different forms (for example, Christopher Columbus’s voyage), we may ask whether privatization works best in a democratic liberal society that values political and traditional civil society. Bhikuh Parekh urges us to go beyond these traditional expectations and to consider the place of pragmatism and cultural sensitivity in the proper application of the principles of privatization and democracy (1993, pp. 156–175). His caution is borne out by so-called relief programs engendered through transnational organizations like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. Even the United Nations reveals in part that not simply democracy impedes the success of the privatization and globalization, but also the more encompassing concepts of “strong and weak states” impede it as well. These observations corroborate the view that not only should conceptions of political structures be taken into consideration for restorative projects of public responsibility but also the socio-economic and cultural components of the society. The talk of privatization and values in the form of public responsibility has taken me to the river of human vulnerability, the banks of which are none too appealing. For on the right, I sense a neo-colonialism disguised as modernity and on the left, a neo-liberal market construction favoring large enterprise to the detriment of individuality but disguised as sustainable development. My intuition is that collective agency and its associated collective responsibility will power our saving craft of peace.
Three HOMELAND SECURITY, FIDUCIARY CARE, AND DUTIES TO FOREIGN NATIONALS Joseph Betz 1. The Changes in Us after 11 September 2001 Much changed for all Americans on 11 September 2001. But many knowledgeable and thoughtful Americans experienced significant changes when they came to learn that the United States had organized the 11 September 1973 military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende of Chile. Allende, a Marxist, despite taking his country to the left, had been democratically elected. He also had the backing of the majority of his legislature for the progressive reforms he had been able to make during the first two years of his presidency. The United States destroyed Chile’s democracy to eradicate its successful democratic socialism. United States’ foreign policy was not seeking to establish or preserve democracy, but to establish the form of capitalism, which allows large American businesses to dominate the economy. In a similar way, the United States had acted to overthrow democratic governments moving towards socialism in Iran, with Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, ousted in 1953, and in Guatemala, with President Jacobo Arbenz, ousted in 1954 (Schlesinger and Kinzer, 1984; Kinzer, 2003). Acting at the behest of International Telephone and Telegraph, which owned the Chilean telephone system, the United States government orchestrated the establishment of the cruel military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (MacEoin, 1974) Terrorism, the deliberate targeting of civilians to cause fear, is a heinous evil regardless of who adopts or sponsors it. In Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, the United States initiated terrorism and empowered governments that continued it for years with United States support. The United States was put in the opposite position on 11 September 2001. On that day, we were the attacked and not the attacker. Ingenious, resourceful, courageous or foolhardy, low-tech terrorists highjacked four, regularly scheduled, American passenger airliners. They succeeded in making three of them into jet fuel-laden bombs to destroy the entirety of a gigantic two-part citadel of American capitalism and a part of a gigantic multi-part headquarters of the American military. In addition, these being office buildings filled with ordinary American citizens and workers, and planes filled with passenger-victims, signified to the Al Qaeda terrorists that these were ap-
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propriate targets for delivering the intended message. The message was roughly this: Americans, your foreign policies of economic domination, backed by your worldwide projection of military might, make you all liable for the harms done to foreign nations by your government, and for that, you must be punished. What changed for ordinary Americans on 11 September 2001 was our naive sense of security, transformed into drastic insecurity characteristic of the nasty, brutish life in Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature. But Hobbesian insecurity and the Americans’ new insecurity differ. Ordinary American individuals did not begin to fear one another; they began to fear foreign nations and foreign nationals, especially Arab and Muslim ones, even Arab Muslims who had become American citizens. As Hobbes predicts, the ordinary American sought security and protection in the only “overawing power” they had known, their government. They gave their government much more power. Most placed more trust in their government, begging it for more protection. They would gladly trade-off some of the liberty that we had come to consider normal for more security—much more security. The American government was to be the fiduciary for the American people in this; it was trusted to protect the security and interests of the American people. Is this post-11 September 2001 surge of trust in our government protector justified? Informed and thoughtful Americans had become distrustful of the American government and its foreign policy because of 11 September 1973 in Chile over thirty years ago, because of United States’ actions in Iran and Guatemala earlier and in Nicaragua and El Salvador later (LeoGrande, 1998). Many informed and thoughtful Americans believe that our federal government has acted in a consistently untrustworthy and bullying way in almost the whole of the last half-century, as it “protected” us from communism. They believe that the United States had ravaged the rights and interests of foreign nations and nationals in projecting its citizens and protecting American rights and interests abroad. This informed, thoughtful American believes that, in some measure, the attacks on the New York City World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. were predictable, though unjust, retaliation for this long history of unjust American interference and domination. However, the ordinary American sees only the injustice of the terrorist acts against us and knows nothing of our unjust sponsorship of terrorists in “friendly” governments. These ordinary Americans, the majority of Americans who constitute those whom Plato would call “the many” and Søren Kierkegaard would call “the crowd,” have reacted to these attacks by putting an enormous new trust in our government and demanding more security from it. On the other hand, keeping our knowledge of the history of United States foreign policy in mind, especially United States’ behavior in Latin America, the informed American is wary of what this new security is going to mean for Americans and for the world. Has our government acted as our trustworthy fiduciary in protecting the security and rightful interests of ordinary American citizens? The evidence suggests the an-
Homeland Security, Fiduciary Care, and Duties to Foreign Nationals 27 swer “no.” In this essay, I hope to convince those ordinary Americans who have been unwisely trusting in our government to withhold that trust. 2. How Secure is “Homeland Security”? From whence comes this new word, “homeland”? Dick Polman answers in his 2002 Philadelphia Inquirer article titled, “Is ‘Homeland’ Un-American?” He explains that Americans have long been wont to speak of their “home sweet home” and “this land is your land, this land is my land,” but not of their “homeland.” He remarks that the word has a totalitarian taint, like the Soviet “motherland” or the Nazi “fatherland.” Republican speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, interviewed in the article, notices this connection as she explains why she will not use the term. Political thinker Michael Walzer thinks of the “homeland” as the place immigrants to the United States left behind. Many Jews have called for “a Jewish homeland” since 1918. During 1968, Arab Palestinians declared Palestine their “national homeland.” South African Apartheid forced tribal blacks to move to rural, isolated, infertile “homelands.” Polman believes that the phrase “homeland security” was “coined during the 1990s by Republican hawk Richard Armitage, since a deputy secretary of state.” Speaking of the phrase “homeland security” in his article, Polman notes that David Brinkley contends that “the word is ‘a great political ploy by the Bush administration’ to wrap its most controversial policies in warm fuzzy language designed to cow dissenters.” We should agree with Brinkley, and our suspicions about the Bush administration’s use of the word “homeland” should carry over to the word “security.” Authors like Stephen Schlesinger, Stephen Kinzer, William M. LeoGrande, and American anthropologist, Leigh Binford, have dispelled our illusions. Our nolonger illusory beliefs about what the United States did to fight “communism” in Latin America in the post World War II era gives us strong grounds for suspicion that the ordinary meanings of words are here distorted. Contrary to what our government then said, Noam Chomsky and others show that the United States government applied the word “communist” in Latin America to those who wanted to use the natural resources of their countries for the benefit of the average citizens (Chomsky, 1985; Rai, 1995). The “communist” to be eliminated with the help of our Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military was usually a simple, starving campesino trying to break the iron control over those countries’ resources by selfish oligarchs, holdovers from Spanish colonialism. Unfortunately, to strengthen the control of these oligarchs, with whom it was easy and profitable for big American corporations to do business, the United States encouraged the development of “the national security state” in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. An account of the development of this ideology is presented by Phillip Berryman in Liberation Theology (1987, pp. 118–122).
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The national security state would begin with a United States-involved military coup and then a cultivated close friendship with the new military rulers. The United States trained the militaries, especially in “counterinsurgency,” because the domestic communist subversive, not any external enemy, must now be subordinated to the state. Berryman’s description of the nature of the Latin American “national security state” goes like this. The state is the ultimate source of moral values, and every state is permanently at war with every other state. Its citizens, insecure because of this war, must take refuge in the power of the state, and trade their freedom for security. Governance relies on strategy. The highest good is national security. Human rights count for little. The agents of national development are the military and technological elites. People likely to object—peasants, unionists, and students—are children needing the tutelage of the elites. The elites and their military allies made close friends with the hierarchy of their nation’s Catholic Church. The nationalistically-inclined Catholic Churches were encouraged to ally themselves with the powerful rulers of the national security states so that Western civilization could be protected from atheistic Marxism. Binford’s “Toward the National Security State,” in The El Mozote Massacre (1996, pp. 37–47), explains how a United States-created, Immediate Reaction Infantry Battalion (BIRI) of the Salvadoran army, trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, slaughtered almost a thousand unarmed and unresisting civilians, mostly women and children, in Morazan Province, between 11–13 December 1981, just two months after the Atlacatl Battalion finished its training. Binford explains that the Salvadoran upper classes, the big landowners, seized land from peasants to plant in export crops, abandoning them to starve. Between 1910 and 1940, these oligarchic Salvadoran landowners realized the precariousness of their privileged positions because of increased peasant poverty, suffering, and unrest. These were the Treasury Police, the National Police, and the National Guard. The National Guard, for instance, was created to enforce the “Agrarian Code” which forced property-less peasants to work on private farms or public works. Binford explains that “security forces . . . was a disingenuous choice of terminology that internalized a class bias: the (hyper) security of the few that such armed bodies sought to maintain necessarily involved the insecurity of the majority” (ibid., p. 35). From a subaltern perspective, the so-called security forces were “insecurity forces,” virtual threats to shelter and safety since they enforced a system of insecurity—poverty, want, pain, and suffering. Binford continues, “those who ‘police’ or ‘guard’ a class differentiated system promote the national interest only if that interest is assumed to be identical with the interest of the dominant class” (ibid.). This Latin American experience constitutes strong grounds for suspicion of any “homeland security” doctrine, especially given the influential identities of the policy makers in the post-11 September 2001 American government. The next section of this paper shows that many of these personages had served in
Homeland Security, Fiduciary Care, and Duties to Foreign Nationals 29 previous United States administrations. They were the makers and executors of the United States foreign policies for Latin America that gave rise to “the national security state.” Because of them, in the world after 11 September 2001, security for Americans is to be gained at the expense of the insecurity of foreign nationals abroad and within our borders. The homeland security achieved is not for every American, but primarily for our most privileged classes. As this paper proceeds, I will show that the George W. Bush administration repackaged and refurbished our previous, spurious, national security actions taken against communism as national security against terrorism. 3. The Untrustworthy Bush Administration Personnel The American population desires that the government provide fiduciary care for us in guaranteeing our national security, at home and abroad, now named our socalled homeland security. Examining our policies in Latin America several generations back informs us of our government’s understanding of the term “security.” That historical meaning is this. Our government had judged that our security was to be guaranteed by protecting rich oligarchs like those in El Salvador, who exploited the poor much to the benefit of the American corporations in business partnerships with them. After the Ronald Reagan administration, during which he was Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Elliott Abrams was appointed by President George W. Bush as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs (ironic emphasis mine). At the start of Bush's second term, Abrams was promoted to be Bush’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy. He was responsible for advancing Bush's strategy of advancing democracy abroad. A Philadelphia Inquirer editorial calls Abrams “a shameful choice” because he “pooh-poohed the slaughter of civilians in wartorn El Salvador and Guatemala” (11 July 2001). Facing charges of perjury during 1991 for committing perjury before three Congressional committees about illegal aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanors and was sentenced to two years’ probation and 100 hours community service before President George Herbert W. Bush pardoned him on 24 December 1992. Otto Reich ran the Office of Public Diplomacy in the State Department during the Reagan administration. President George W. Bush used his powers of temporary appointment to make Reich Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. But during April 2001, the Religious Task Force on Central America sent letters about Reich to subscribers to its Central America/Mexico Report. The letters said that the Comptroller-General of the United States found that Reich had engaged in activities that were “prohibited, covert propaganda activities.” He had also worked to conceal illegal aid to the Nicaragua Contras and to hide their many brutal war crimes.
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Because of such actions by Latin American militaries acting in ways similar to the Hondurans, “disappearing” and “disappeared” came to be used as a verb in the active voice. It meant extra-judicial kidnapping usually followed by, in secret, the torture, murder, and burial of the victim. All this the criminal government carefully hid from the relatives and the public. John Negroponte, who was Reagan’s Ambassador to Honduras, became Ambassador to the United Nations, Ambassador to Iraq, Director of the Homeland Security Administration, and Deputy Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration. A series of investigative reports published in the Baltimore Sun newspaper during 1995 (“Special Report: Battalion 316”), discloses that Negroponte, at the request of the Honduran Army Chief of Staff, created a special unit of the Honduran army, Battalion 316, trained in the United States. Battalion 316 specialized in torturing and disappearing Honduran citizens who criticized their government for giving sanctuary to the Nicaraguan Contras. The Contras were a largely American creation designed to destabilize the popular, liberation theologian-supported, Sandinista government (Betz, 2000), pp. 25–47). From these Honduran sanctuaries, the Contras made cross-border forays into Nicaragua. Over 100 Honduran complainers were disappeared. When American embassy aides put complaints about these disappearances into the embassy’s annual human rights report to the United States’ State Department, Negroponte ordered them removed. This means that President Bush still chose John Negroponte, a death-squad creator and protector, to represent the United States in the United Nations, to bring democracy to Iraq, and to hold the number two position in the State Department. Retired Vice-Admiral John Poindexter was National Security Advisor to President Reagan, (ironic emphasis mine). He oversaw Col. Oliver North’s illegal Contra-aid activities. When Congress began to investigate, he and North destroyed 6,000 E-mail messages. The New York Times (20 January 2003) reported, “he was convicted on five felony counts, including lying to Congress, destroying documents and obstructing Congress in its investigation.” Poindexter’s conviction was overturned on appeal, but only because his Congressional testimony had been covered by a grant of immunity. Under President George W. Bush, Poindexter headed the Information Awareness Office, which the Times article called a “wide-ranging Pentagon monitoring scheme that could threaten the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans.” Consider former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger from the Richard M. Nixon administration. Listing Kissinger’s previous crimes, a Nation magazine editorial (23 December 2002) accuses him of overseeing the illegal secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnamese War; helping to plan the 1973 overthrow of democratically-elected President Salvador Allende in Chile; giving advance approval to Indonesia’s brutal 1975 invasion of East Timor; and encouraging the military junta in Argentina during their late 1980s “dirty war,” which resulted in more than 10,000 disappearances. President George W. Bush
Homeland Security, Fiduciary Care, and Duties to Foreign Nationals 31 had put Kissinger in charge of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks investigation, but after Kissinger accepted, public outcry made him withdraw. Finally, President George W. Bush appointed then-Governor Thomas Ridge of Pennsylvania to head the new 170,000-member, federal Department of Homeland Security, a Cabinet-level post. My quarrel with Governor Ridge is more about domestic affairs than were the objections to the other Bush appointees. But past acts of Governor Ridge evinces that he does not understand what justice is. Louis Mickens-Thomas (a.k.a. Louis Thomas) was serving a life sentence in Graterford prison near Philadelphia for the 1964 murder and rape of a twelveyear-old girl. The girl’s body was found in the alley beside Thomas’s Philadelphia shoe-repair shop. Only the testimony of criminalist Agnes Mallatratt connected Thomas to the crime; she claimed that microscopic particles on the dead girl’s clothing came from Thomas’s shop. He was convicted. Three years after Thomas’s conviction, Mallatratt was discovered to have lied about her credentials. Not only was she not the college graduate or certified medical technician she claimed to be, but also, she had never even graduated from junior high school. Accordingly, Pennsylvania’s Governor Robert Patrick Casey, Sr. commuted Thomas’s sentence. As preparations to free Thomas were set in motion, Governor Casey left office and Governor Ridge took office. Governor Ridge refused to free Thomas all during his term as Governor. Centurion Ministries founder, James C. McCloskey, a Presbyterian minister, son of Kennedy Ambassador to Ireland, Matt McCloskey, championed Thomas’s cause. He explained the wrong Ridge has done Thomas in an op-ed piece he published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on 9 December 1996. This is the way McCloskey tells the story. 4. The Bush Administration Gears Up against Terrorism Thus far, I have shown that its association with American support of the national security state in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s taints the present American concept of security. I have also shown that President George W. Bush gave those in former American presidential administrations, who designed and executed the worst of American support for these oppressive governments, crucial roles in his administration. Therefore, I believe that we Americans should distrust the Bush administration, not grant it the trust a fiduciary requires and often deserves. Continuing the post-World War II tradition of so defining American security creates enormous insecurity for foreign nations and nationals. We can see this trend evinced in what the Bush administration said and did about terrorism. For most Americans, the first of the big changes to make us more “secure” after 11 September 2001 was the passing on 24 October 2001 of HR 3162, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act.
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How does the Bush administration define terrorism? The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Bush, 2002), is suitably general in its definition: “terrorism—premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents” (Sec. III). But this does not describe the violence Americans experienced on 11 September 2001 sufficiently to define it as a crime for purposes of criminal prosecution. The state department prefers the definition given in Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d). There, “terrorism” means “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant* targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.” The asterisk explains that the word includes both civilians and “military personnel who at the time of the incident are unarmed and/or not on duty.” This accurately describes what happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. What the United States Code definition adds to the National Security Strategy definition is (1) that the innocent targets of the terrorist violence might include military personnel not engaged in fighting, and (2) that the terrorists are subnational groups or clandestine agents. But notice that definition also accurately describes what the United Statescreated Contras did during the 1980s as they made forays into Nicaragua from the sanctuaries the United States provided for them in Honduras. It was this support of the Contras, at times against American law, for which the abovementioned members of the present administration were indicted and convicted of criminal acts. During 1979, the Sandinistas succeeded in their revolution and ousted the United States-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Though there were twenty-eight Catholic priests in the first Sandinista governmental structures, and Catholicism opposes communism, as communism is usually understood, the Reagan administration declared the Sandinistas communists. Reagan soon created a surrogate army, the Counter-revolutionaries, or Contras, whose job was to oust the Sandinistas. The Contras’ officers had come from Somoza’s despised National Guard and few Nicaraguans found anything appealing about them or their political goals. The Contras often provided the “indians” to be led by the Contra “chiefs” by kidnapping unwary campesinos. The Contras could never hold any territory in Nicaragua, a requirement for obtaining war rights in international law, so they ventured into Nicaragua on hitand-run operations, quickly to return to their United States-provided sanctuaries in Honduras. Too weak to attack the Sandinista army, the Contras attacked civilian targets symbolically important to the Sandinista revolution. Because the Sandinistas had brought schoolhouses and health clinics to rural areas for the first time in Nicaraguan history, the Contras burned down the schools and clinics and murdered the literacy teachers and health promoters. Because Catholic liberation theology supported the Sandinistas’ “preferential option for the poor,” the Contras killed the catechists who instructed in it. Because the Sandinistas encour-
Homeland Security, Fiduciary Care, and Duties to Foreign Nationals 33 aged those to whom they had newly granted land to farm it cooperatively, the Contras burned the co-op buildings and murdered the people who worked and owned the co-ops (Sklar, 1988). The usual military action of these American-trained Contras constituted terrorism according to the state department’s preferred definition. This United States-sponsored terrorism so influenced the audience of Nicaraguan voters that, to stop the American terrorism against them, the Nicaraguans voted the Sandinistas out of office in the 1990 elections. In the persons of Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, John Negroponte, and John Poindexter, the present Bush administration included the designers and defenders of this Contra terrorism. Perhaps President Bush reasons that it takes a terrorist to know how to defend against a terrorist. However, if the Bush war against terrorism means attacking all terrorists, then the Bush administration would have to go to war against itself. We should examine another interesting twist in the way our government defines terrorism. The general definition of terrorism in the National Security Strategy would allow for two kinds of terrorism, that against governments and that by governments. The United States Code definition suggests terrorism against governments “by subnational groups or by clandestine agents.” This sort of terrorism is sometimes described as the warfare of the weak. A group like Al Qaeda, not a government, not with an army, not with the resources a system of national taxation provides, can create cells with the clandestine mission to do things like the 11 September 2001 terrorists did. This kind of terrorism is directed against the United States, its citizens, and its interests. In this kind, the weak terrorize the strong; the smaller groups terrorize the larger government. This terrorism against governments constitutes a serious problem for us, but it is not the only kind of terrorism in the world. The United States has long supported a different sort of terrorism, especially in Latin America and on much of the rest of the world. In his 1980 book, The Real Terror Network, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business Professor of Finance, Edward Herman studied this sort of terrorism. He distinguishes between retail terrorism, weak against strong, and wholesale terrorism, strong against weak. The retail terrorism against the United States and its allies, of which the United States always complains as if it is the only sort of terrorism, is the only form of terrorism most Americans recognize. But Herman’s real terrorism is the wholesale kind, terrorism by strong governments and their security forces against weak groups usually of their own citizens. The United States has widely supported this sort of terrorism. In what sense is wholesale terrorism more real than retail terrorism? Both forms leave their victims dead, but wholesale, enjoying the usual monopoly on the use of force that the state possesses, has killed many more victims than retail. Herman tries to show that the network of terrorist governments, created by the United States, mostly in Latin America, each with its death squads, is more real
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than any anti- United States network that the United States imagined to exist during the 1980s. El Salvador during the 1980s is perhaps the best example of this wholesale terrorism, strong versus weak, government versus its own subnational groups, supported by the United States. Since all those priests and others who the United States considered communists began running the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in 1979, the United States under President Reagan was determined that the same thing must not happen in El Salvador. The United States gave enormous aid, especially military aid, to the oligarch and military-controlled government of El Salvador. It was somewhere reported, perhaps by the American Friends Service Committee, that, because of this United States aid, El Salvador was the only state in the world whose national budget comprised its larger portion from state— money that came from United States intelligence services (see also El SalvadorEconomy, accessed 10 February 2008). With American aid came American intelligence operatives as advisors. They taught the Salvadoran authorities how to generate lists of the “enemies” of the oligarchic-military government, lists used by Salvadoran death squads to disappear 800 “subversives” a month during the early 1980s. To understand whom the American advisors considered enemies and subversives, understand that they were innocent unionists, liberation theology-inspired priests, nuns, and catechists, members of centrist and leftist parties, and human rights activists. Conditions in El Salvador got so bad by 1983 that President Reagan sent Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush to El Salvador to talk with its generals. He told them that, though the United States supported them and their war, the enormous number of terrorist disappearances by Salvadoran government death squads was embarrassing the United States in its claim to respect human rights (Krauss, 1991, p. 72) Before Bush’s visit to the Salvadoran government and military, their proterrorism mindset had been purposely created by the counterinsurgency doctrine that the United States military taught its Salvadoran military pupils. Leigh Binford explains it this way: Innovative perhaps—from the Salvadoran point of view—was the United States military’s promotion of “counter terror” as a legitimate governmental response to insurgent threats. According to the doctrine, communist insurgents would use any and all methods, including those that violate international standards of warfare; they could only be combated by employing their own methods against them. Hence the presumed legitimacy of, or at least the rationalization for using, counter terror, including torture, assassination and kidnapping. (1996, p. 38)
Homeland Security, Fiduciary Care, and Duties to Foreign Nationals 35 Such then is the meaning of terrorism to a government that promises to protect us from terrorism. On the one hand, the United States government condemns these behaviors when our enemies use them against our friends and us. On the other hand, our government does not label them terrorism, espouses and not condemns them, when the United States employs these same behaviors, instructs governments friendly to us to use them, and sees our friends use them against their innocent citizens trying to assert their human rights in non-violent protests. These behaviors are all morally reprehensible terrorism, regardless of who engages in them. Thus, when our government proposes to defend us from terrorism, we have yet another reason to distrust it in its “fiduciary care” of us. To this point, then, I have argued (1) the George W. Bush administration has a false understanding of security; (2) this Bush administration has employed many who criminally violated the security of many innocent Latin Americans during the 1960–1990 period; and (3) this Bush administration misunderstands what terrorism is, and is thus likely to inflict terrorism on foreign nations and nationals as it claims to be protecting Americans from terrorism. Protecting Americans from terrorism is what the USA PATRIOT Act and the Department of Homeland Security are designed to do. However, there is also an enormous amount of hypocrisy in the designers and designs of these institutions. 5. The United States Threatens Those Who Harbors Terrorists The USA PATRIOT Act’s Section 863 is titled, “Prohibition against Harboring Terrorists.” American leaders have repeatedly denounced nations that harbor terrorists and we have engaged in a recent and continuing war of punishment against one such nation, Afghanistan. However, I see hypocrisy at work here for which we should distrust our government. We only denounce those who harbor the retail terrorists who have attacked us and our allies, while we ourselves harbor many wholesale terrorists who have attacked innocents on our behalf and with our approval. Karen Olsson explains this hypocrisy in a Mother Jones magazine article, “The Torturers Next Door” (2003, pp. 56–61). Olsson explains that Amnesty International estimates as many as 1,000 human rights violators from around the world have been given refuge to live undisturbed and protected in the United States. When President Reagan signed the international Convention against Torture during 1988, which Congress ratified in 1994, the United States accepted the obligation to “find, extradite, or prosecute alleged torturers.” The Justice Department was assigned the task of enforcing the law, but it never has. Among the more famous foreign torturers and terrorists living in the United States are many from Latin America. For instance, Defense Minister Gen. José Guillermo Garcia and National Guard Chief Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, two Salvadoran generals found civilly liable in our courts for atrocities in El Salvador during the early 1980s have been here since 1989. Also living here
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was former head of intelligence for the Honduran armed forces, Juan Lopez Grijalba, who had supervised the torture of a Honduran professor of journalism. The professor later came to live in Washington, D.C., and when, years later, to his amazement, he met Grijalba there, he sued him. Living in Queens, New York City, is Haitian Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, leader of the paramilitary group, Armed Revolutionary Front of the Haitian People (FRAPF) in its French acronym), which massacred fifteen people in the fishing village of Raboteau. Constant was tried in absentia in a Haitian court for the massacre, was convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. But our government protects him here where he sells real estate undisturbed. We might suspect that a nation that harbors torturers from foreign nations might itself practice torture on foreign nationals. The United Nations defines torture as the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering to obtain information. For years now, we have known that this suspicion is true. It became and continues to be front-page news with the revelations of our practice of torture at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, frequent claims that we torture “unlawful combatants” at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and our “renditions” of both American and foreign nationals to countries like Egypt, which do our torturing for us. The earliest charges that I have found since 11 September 2001 that we are regularly torturing our captives were made during December 2002. The head of Human Rights Watch in Washington, D. C. then charged that the United States was torturing Al Qaeda detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (Alan Cooperman, “CIA Techniques Called Into Question,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 December 2002). Why does the United States harbor terrorists in violation of its treaty obligations in international law? Why do we provide the security of our homeland to those who so violated the rights to security of foreign nations and nationals? Part of the answer lies in cold war-era law. Olsson explains that during 1949, Congress passed the 100 Persons Act, authorizing the CIA to admit up to 100 people a year “in the interest of national security,” (ironic emphasis mine,) even if those people were war criminals who would ordinarily be barred from immigrating. Thus many of our surrogate terrorists find refuge here. Our untrustworthy government seeks national security for the United States at the expense of creating deadly insecurity for innocent foreign nations and nationals. 6. The United States Threatens Those Who Harbor Terrorists Another George W. Bush administration innovation in its war against terrorism invites us to distrust our government, because it seeks security against terrorism for us by creating terrorist insecurity for foreign nationals. This is the key doctrine in The National Security Strategy. This doctrine argues for a right to wage preventive war, to begin this war with preemptive strikes. It is far more permissive than any traditional just war theorist could endorse.
Homeland Security, Fiduciary Care, and Duties to Foreign Nationals 37 Compare The National Security Strategy, for instance, to “Anticipations,” in Michael Walzer’s modern classic of just war theory, Just and Unjust Wars (2000). Walzer justifies a preemptive strike only when a sufficient threat exists. He defines sufficient threat as a manifest intent to injure, a degree of active preparation that makes that intent a positive danger, and a general situation in which waiting, or doing anything other than fighting, greatly magnifies the risk. The National Security Strategy violates this norm in numerous ways. It raises a balance of power approach, which Walzer rejects, the idea that a competitor must be prevented from becoming as powerful as we are. It belittles the alternative means to dispute resolution other than war for which the United States helped bring the United Nations into existence. It treats neutral nonfriends as probable enemies. It aims to prevent other nations, not just from attacking us, and not even from threatening us, but even from becoming powerful enough to threaten us. It demonstrates that America intends to rule the world by bullying force, thus realizing the warning implicit in Lord Acton’s maxim, “Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.” That the United States has enjoyed this position of absolute power only since the break-up of the former Soviet Union constitutes an incentive to lament the demise of Soviet communism or of a bipolar world. To summarize, Bush’s doctrine justifying the preemptive war, its idea of security for the militarily monolithic United States, means insecurity for the rest of the world. Another current United States doctrine is somewhat like the preemption written large here rejected. This doctrine is preemption written small. This sort of preemption would focus on individuals instead of nations. The Bush administration reasons about preemption written small like this: “Suicide bombers” are unusually difficult to deter because they intend to die in their attack.” So this terrorist must be preemptively incapacitated. The only effective incapacitation of this type of terrorist is assassination. United States intelligence must discover these persons and their whereabouts, and then kill them, perhaps with a Predator drone, a remote-controlled, pilotless, explosive laden aircraft. Thus did the United States kill an Al Qaeda leader and five others, in a car on a road in rural Yemen on 4 November 2002. See the analysis of this event as preemption written small in Laurie Calhoun’s article, “The Strange Case of Summary Executions by Predator Drone” (2002). Turnabout is fair play. That which we do to others in this way is just as illegal, immoral, and terrorist as when it is done to us. What would the United States government say and do if some foreign nation did this to someone it identified as a terrorist, who had been convicted of crimes against its people, and was now living protected in the United States? For example, imagine that a foreign nation launched a smart missile to assassinate Haitian Toto Constant while he is riding in a car in his New York City neighborhood. We would probably claim that military force was used in violation of our territorial integrity and sovereign-
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ty, an act that, according to the Charter of the United Nations, justifies a defensive and retaliatory war. Attempted assassination by smart missile, killing innocent people, is often a not very smart act of terrorism. What if our smart missile is given its target by a dumb American intelligence officer like the one who targeted and mostly destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on 7 May 1999? In that incident, the CIA, using outdated maps, thought it was destroying a Serbian military facility in its effort to stop Christian Serbs from murdering Bosnian Muslims. What if the terrorist’s family members were killed with him, such as when, during April 1986, United States bombing killed the infant daughter of Col. Moammar Khadafi in Libya? At that time, Khadafi was suspected of ordering a terrorist attack on American soldiers in a Berlin nightclub some weeks earlier. In retaliation, President Reagan unsuccessfully attempted to kill Khadafi in his sleeping quarters. Why assume that smart bombs are the only way to incapacitate or deter terrorists? The many new, police-style domestic security measures would have been adequately incapacitated the nineteen terrorists on 11 September 2001. These measures include prohibition from taking any firearm, pointed, or bladed instruments onto planes, frequent searching of shoes and clothing and baggage, careful screening of checked luggage, mandatory passage through the metal detectors, stronger cockpit doors always kept closed and locked, pilots with pistols, and plain-clothed air marshals on many flights —now familiar to us. Away from the airport, we now take greater care to determine that those foreign nationals issued student visas are actually attending their schools. These domestic police measures, not preemptive assassinations causing insecurity abroad, are the legal, decent, and effective security measures we need. University of Chicago political scientist, Robert Pape, studies terrorist attacks of the retail sort. He is primarily interested in suicidal terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies. Pape studied 187 terrorist attacks, 95 percent of which were part of organized campaigns by terrorist groups. An account of his discoveries states: In every campaign, the terrorist groups’ goals were to gain control of their perceived national homeland and to eject foreign military forces from the territory. Occupation may not be a sufficient cause for suicide terrorism to occur, Pape notes, “but military presence does appear to be a necessary condition.” Even Al Qaeda’s goals for 9/11 included ridding Saudi Arabia of United States troops. (2002, pp. 22–26) This being the case, the correct path to our homeland security is to bring our troops home, not only from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but also from the whole Arab and Muslim world. We did follow Pape’s advice in withdrawing our military from Saudi Arabia after 11 September 2001. Now we should bring
Homeland Security, Fiduciary Care, and Duties to Foreign Nationals 39 our military home from our hundreds of bases, which we have maintained even in peacetime, throughout the whole world, except possibly for laudatory humanitarian intervention for peacemaking and peacekeeping missions such as in Bosnia. If we do, fewer others will have reason to make retail terrorist attacks on us. We will then have fewer temptations to retaliate with our sort of terrorism, “wholesale” terrorism. This suggests that we can best defend ourselves at and within our borders. 7. Conclusion The connection between homeland security, fiduciary care, and duties to foreign nationals is this: Since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on us, Americans have demanded greater security from their government. The George W. Bush administration has provided us with, in a newly coined phrase, homeland security. This chapter demonstrates that language most worrisome, because, in recent years, “homeland” and “security” have been terms those of the extreme political left or right, often fascists, have used most often. In the last half of the twentieth century, the United States helped repressive Latin American governments create what came to be known as “the national security state. This became a nightmare of terrorist oppression for foreign nationals who were ordinary citizens of these states. As American plans and institutions designed to provide us homeland security developed, the George W. Bush administration gave charge of it to veterans of the American governments of the 1980s, who had empowered the oppressors in the Latin American national security states. The federal government under George W. Bush was morally deficient. It was the close successor to our previous morally deficient governments, which had helped ravage Latin America. This indicates that these governmental officials did not know what our real security was. Consequently, our government is not to be trusted, is not capable of the fiduciary care that a government must provide. This government further proved its untrustworthiness as it proceeded to pass and enforce the USA PATRIOT Act. This acronym, means “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” But the same veterans of former governments appointed again to the Bush administration, who could not be trusted to understand true security, had already proven that they could not be trusted to understand terrorism. They only condemned the retail terrorism our enemies had used against us and our allies, not the wholesale terrorism we enabled our allies to practice to further American interests, allies like those controlling the national security states. Though the PATRIOT Act, in effect, legislated international law by justifying our attacks on nation-states that harbored terrorists, we were harboring terrorists ourselves. When our government began foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it further earned our distrust by completely misunderstanding the morality
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of preemptive war. Misunderstanding what security, terrorism, and preemptive war mean has had disastrous effects. These distortions of meaning have led to the misery of the foreign nations and the scores of foreign nationals that the present United States government has killed, injured, tortured, and impoverished in its perverted exercise of its fiduciary care in providing homeland security. America’s recent, spurious security has been at the expense of creating criminal insecurity in foreign nations and nationals. Our government, our fiduciary, does not deserve our trust and support. In this paper, I have attempted to make a Socratic argument, similar to Socrates demonstrating in a Platonic Dialogue that the popularly acclaimed experts in justice or beauty were phonies who knew little or nothing of the true meaning of the terms. My position is that the George W. Bush administration has been staffed with similar, popularly acclaimed phonies who know little or nothing of the true meaning of terms such as security, trustworthiness of a fiduciary, terrorism, legitimate military preemption, the rights of foreign nations and nationals, or justice. Given the present, untrustworthy, morally deficient United States government, a close successor to previous morally deficient governments, which ravaged Latin America, we can expect, and are experiencing, that our homeland security is spurious and that it is achieved at the expense of our criminallycreated insecurity in foreign nations and nationals. The USA PATRIOT Act notwithstanding, the real task of a latter day Socrates and genuine United States patriot is to uncover and work to change this shameful state of affairs.
Four FORGETTING AND NOT RECONCILING HIROSHIMA Joseph C. Kunkel 1. Introduction The topic of this volume is remembrance and reconciliation. The sixtieth anniversary of the United States’ atomic bombings of Japan during August 1945 to end the Second World War in the Pacific has passed. These bombings, one on Hiroshima and three days later, another on Nagasaki, have been the first and only uses of nuclear weapons in war situations. While much has been debated about whether these bombings were necessary to end the war, this chapter addresses the need to remember and reconcile with the awful repercussions of using atomic radiation weapons in wartime. Uncontrollable radiation marks nuclear weapons; along with chemical and biological weapons, these comprise weapons of mass destruction. My primary concern in this chapter is to remember Hiroshima and the tremendous toll on innocent human beings that marked the atomic bombings and the bombs’ aftermath. The United States would best remember Hiroshima by reconciling the deaths and injuries to countless numbers of innocent noncombatants because of the radiation factor. This includes the innocent victims of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and other innocent people, military and civilian, put in harms way during the years after the Second World War when such weapons testing was done in the atmosphere by the United States and other nations. Both non-combatant groups were unknowingly subjected to radiation fallout and never warned of the life-threatening dangers. For the United States to reconcile with both groups would send a strong message to other nations that future explosions of nuclear weapons will be viewed as serious aggressive international crimes that require reconciliation with the victims in order for justice to be restored. Unfortunately, that the United States does not intend to reconcile these bombings with these innocent victims is becoming increasingly apparent. Instead of remembering Hiroshima, the United States prefers to forget the bombings and the aftermath. Regarding the Japanese victims, successive United States governments have been blaming Hiroshima on the Japanese government, claiming that Hiroshima directly followed the unprovoked Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States is in denial that we chose to use atomic bombs on Japan.
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It reasons that if Japan forced the United States to use atomic weapons on Hiroshima, then the United States is not responsible for the consequences. No guilt and no reconciliation are needed if the choice of weapons was not ours to make. What goes unsaid in these excuses is that the United States, under some circumstances, would have no qualms in using nuclear weapons again. Indeed, the United States has a policy of reserving the right to use nuclear weapons in retaliation for, or to prevent or preempt even a conventional attack. That implication is scary for the entire world, and is an added reason for wanting the United States to remember Hiroshima. Remembering Hiroshima would be a step toward removing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction from the arsenals of standing military forces. It would be a step toward delegitimizing the future use of nuclear weapons. In the first of two parts of this chapter, I address the need to apologize to and reconcile with the civilian victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of 1945, and the victims of numerous post-Second World War nuclear bomb tests. I highlight the radiation releases that spew out of nuclear explosions, whether these are nuclear tests or military bombings. As mentioned, these military actions include, among other things, putting our military officers in harms way, and injuring our citizens in the process of testing over the years various types of nuclear weapons. Some authors call this “killing our own” (Wasserman, Solomon, Alvarez, and Walters, 1982). The question that we ought to ask is whether the United States has any moral obligation to restore justice to numerous innocent citizens and their families, in our country and in Japan, who have been harmed on account of radioactive actions we have undertaken. Why do we consider the effects of radiation differently from the mass effects of chemical and biological warfare? Recently, Saddam Hussein was rightfully pilloried in the United States press for having used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds. Ignored was that we too have harmed innocent persons, citizens of other countries and ours, with the radiation from weapons of mass destruction. Do we not have the obligation to make amends? What is the United States doing about these obligations? (We can ask the same question of other nations that have tested nuclear weapons.) The second part of the chapter concerns nuclear amnesia or forgetting Hiroshima in the process of preparing to use nuclear weapons on other targets. I discuss nuclear treaties that the United States has ratified over the years, and what has become of them since the ending of the cold war in 1991. After the dissolution of the former Soviet Union into fifteen independent republics, the United States can no longer project its need for a nuclear arsenal upon the existence of a nuclear arsenal in its former archenemy, the superpower of the Soviet Union. Indeed, with Russia and China both becoming trading partners of the United States, eight of the nine present possessors of nuclear weapons are currently friends of the United States. The ninth, North Korea, apparently has only
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begun developing such weapons out of fear of a potential regime change invasion by the United States and aligned nations (Harrison, 2006, p. 4). Because of the perceived dangers of nuclear wars, nuclear and non-nuclear nations have entered into a variety of nuclear treaties that aim to reduce the chances of another nuclear war. This is the legacy of remembering Hiroshima, and not wanting to reproduce that tragedy in another region of the world. More recently, however, new nuclear policies have been enacted by the hardliners in the George W. Bush administration. This administration appears to be gutting the nuclear treaties of the past and forgetting Hiroshima, while preparing to build new, more usable nuclear weapons. At the same time, the United States is embarking upon building a hugely expensive defensive missile system, which may or may not shield the United States from nuclear attacks from other countries, a shield that would not be necessary if nuclear weapons were delegitimized. Instead of eliminating all nuclear weapons, we appear to be preparing to deploy and use a new generation of such weapons, while protecting ourselves from nuclear weapons aimed at us. In effect, in many ways, we are forgetting Hiroshima. 2. Reconciling Radiation Emitted on Innocent Civilians The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Whole square miles of densely populated city were incinerated in moments: 119,000 people died and 78,000 more were injured out of a population of around 350,000 (Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1981, p. 113). Harry S. Truman, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt as United States president, stated that the city was a military target. Hiroshima had a major port and an army base with as many as 40,000 soldiers, but these sites were not the target. Historian Barton J. Bernstein, who has written many essays on the atomic bombings, says the “aiming point was . . . the center of the city itself” (1983, p. 12). The bomb was intended for its shock effect, to kill as many people as possible. The second target, three days later at Nagasaki was no different. After dropping the bomb, the Truman administration announced that the “bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT” (Lifton and Mitchell, 1995, p. 4). This official story had a crucial component omitted. William D. Leahy, an admiral and the chief of staff to Truman, later wrote that the atomic bomb “is not a bomb. It is not an explosive. It is a poisonous thing that kills people by its deadly radioactive reaction. . . .” (1950, p. 10).This factor is why today nuclear bombs are listed, along with chemical and biological weapons, as weapons of mass destruction. The scientists who created the nuclear bomb were deeply divided about its possible use on a non-nuclear nation like Japan. Among the dissenters was a group of Chicago scientists led by Nobel Laureate James Franck. Prior to Hiroshima in June 1945, they issued the Franck Report asking Henry L. Stimson, the
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United States Secretary of War, to weigh the burdensome United States’ responsibility for being “the first to introduce such an indiscriminate method of wholesale destruction of civilian life” (Frank, et al., 1986, p. 48). In addition to scientists and Admiral Leahy, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander in Europe, expressed “grave misgivings” on dropping the bomb onto an already defeated Japan (1963, pp. 312–313). Huge numbers of deaths from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were overwhelmingly civilian non-combatants. The moral issue is the just war condition of discrimination. Under just war theory, an action that has a good effect, such as defending one’s nation, can only be undertaken if done through good means. The evil effect, such as intentionally killing the innocent, may not be intended as the means to the good effect (Kunkel, 2003). Put concisely, the (good) end does not justify the (evil) means. Accordingly, massacring ordinary peoples by troops has always been considered wrong. This understanding is what made the Nazi extermination of Jews so horrendous, and it is the basis for the current view that terrorist actions against civilian populations are evil. The United States generally circumvents this issue by referring to the Japanese as the primary aggressors at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese did execute a sneak attack on 7 December 1941, without first declaring war on the United States. The United States thus had a just cause for entering the war against Japan. A just cause for going to war, however, is not a license to indiscriminately and deliberately bomb Japanese non-combatants during the war. Each of the five major just war conditions is separate; a violation of one condition by the enemy does not override the others for the defenders. Japan and the United States were both guilty of violating conditions of the just war doctrine during World War II. The United States remains the only nation to have used this bomb in wartime. Sixty years later, we would expect that a country founded on human values would wish to apologize for the human destruction it caused with this radiation weapon. Instead, the United States has covered up the implications, excused its actions, and tried to forget what occurred. An apology as a step toward reconciliation, according to Trudy Govier and Wilhelm Verwoerd (2002), includes an admission of wrongdoing and a desire to make amends. I contend that by not apologizing, we as a nation have not grasped the moral implications of our possession and use of such lethal weapons. By making excuses, we confuse the moral issue and risk mindlessly using such weapons again. In the cover-up, we open the door for other nations to do the same. In the words of the Franck Report, the responsibility as first-users is ours. The Truman administration knew the general facts. They placed a tight censorship on information coming out of Japan shortly after General Douglas MacArthur became commanding general of the Islands. This censorship included prohibiting photographs of injured inhabitants in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and suppressing news dispatches describing human experiences and containing interviews with doctors and the people. Not wanting to arouse indig-
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nation at home, they allowed only photographs of the desolate terrain. Life magazine published the first uncensored photographs seven years later during September 1952, after the United States’ occupation of Japan had ended (Lifton and Mitchell, 1995, pp. 40–61). The United States could apologize to the Hibakusha, the Japanese atomic bomb survivors, innocent civilians who have endured considerable suffering because they lived in one of the two Japanese cities bombed by our weapons of mass destruction. The ongoing government cover-up has extended beyond Japan. The first United States’ victims of the bombings were the occupying troops sent into Hiroshima and Nagasaki as clean-up crews (Wasserman and Solomon, 1982, pp. 3–30). Over succeeding years, we placed 300,000 military officers in harms way on land and ships near hundreds of atomic and hydrogen bombs tested in the Pacific Ocean. The United States always falsely minimized the dangers from radiation. During the 1950s, the United States started testing nuclear bombs in Nevada, with deleterious effects upon ordinary citizens and nativeAmerican populations living in the surrounding areas (ibid., pp. 31–81). For example, the 1954 movie The Conqueror was filmed over three months near St. George, Utah. John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead starred under the producer-director, Dick Powell. All four died of cancer between 1963 and 1979. Of the 220 members of the cast and crew, ninety-one had contracted cancer by late 1980, according to People magazine (ibid., pp. 80–81). World attention centered on the effects of radiation after the United States tested a hydrogen bomb called Bravo during March 1954. Twenty-three Japanese fishermen were fishing from the Lucky Dragon, eighty miles east of the explosion. They started feeling the effects two days later, and by the time they got back to their harbor in two weeks, they were physically in very bad shape. Their catch of tuna was contaminated with high levels of radioactivity and had to be destroyed. Tuna from other ships were tested, and they too had to be destroyed. Seven months later, one Lucky Dragon fisherman had died and the rest were still hospitalized (ibid., pp. 87–88). From the 1940s until the 1960s, the United States conducted a series of experiments on unsuspecting human subjects that included deliberately releasing radioactivity from the Hanford reactor, releasing radioisotopes over Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, and injecting older patients with, or having them ingest, radium and thorium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In other secret experiments, researchers injected plutonium into human subjects at the University of Rochester and irradiated the testicles of inmates in Washington and Oregon prisons. Hazel O=Leary, then secretary of energy, officially disclosed these tests for the first time during December 1993 (Makhijani, 1994, pp. 18–20, 25–28). The damning revelations of O=Leary represent one of a few attempts by conscientious United States’ public servants over the past sixty years to tell the truth about the sordid side of building, testing, and possessing nuclear weapons. The ongoing government message has been one of denial: atomic bombs are like
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TNT explosions; military service officers training in the vicinity of the tests are unharmed; human experimentation is for national security purposes, and the dosages are non-lethal. Telling the truth is a major ingredient in restoring justice. O’Leary told the truth; she admitted the harm done. But truth-telling is only half the process. To restore justice a second obligation remains: to amend the harms done (Zehr, 2002, pp. 22–25). As O’Leary said, “For people who were wronged, it would seem that some compensation is appropriate. Let the Congress and the American people determine the level that would be appropriate” (Makhijani, 1994, p. 18). O’Leary opened a hotline for victims to call in and describe their situations, and William Jefferson Clinton set up a presidential advisory committee, but questions arose as to whether the O’Leary openness would continue (Weeks, 1998, pp. 11–14). No one got into the act of notifying victims or authorizing compensation. With the selection of George W. Bush as president in 2000, we are witnessing the resurgence of the secrecy of government. In contrast to O’Leary’s openness, we observe a qiote different high-level United States approach regarding preparations for the fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1991. Planners hoped that Japanese officials would participate in the commemoration at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, and that Japan would officially apologize for its unprovoked attack on the United States. The Japanese parliament divided on the issue. The prospects for such an apology may have been more likely if the United States had indicated its willingness to consider apologizing for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in time for its fiftieth anniversary in 1995. Unfortunately, George Herbert Walker Bush, the United States president at the time, rejected a reciprocal apology, stating during a television interview aired on 1 December, “War is hell, and it’s a terrible thing, but there should be no apology requested” (Shriver, Jr., 1995, p. 134). Consequently, Japan did not apologize for Pearl Harbor. When the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki neared in 1995, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum tried to produce an exhibit entitled “The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb, and the Origins of the Cold War” (Richards, 2004, p. 168). The original script provided information and commentary on interpretations of the bombings, and focused on their human tragedy and legacy. A storm of opposition arose that included criticism by the Air Force Association, the American Legion, congress, war veterans, and the press. The producers canceled this more meaningful script and replaced it solely with an image of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. In his essay on political forgiveness, Jerald Richards begins with right remembrance of the past. In the United States, we have experienced right remembrance with the O’Leary’s revelations, but not with the commemorations of the United States’ atomic bombings of Japan. Raul Hilberg writes, “The complexities of history are buried in books and journals. Collective memories are highly
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selective and often embrace a partial list in the form of nostalgia” (ibid., p. 169). To imply the United States retaliated against the Japanese for Pearl Harbor by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki sounds patriotic, but only in the awful sense of the expression, “my country right or wrong.” As Theodore W. Adorno, a philosopher of the Frankfurt School, says, we cancel out our bad actions by pointing to the bad actions of another and by disputing the innocence of non-combatant victims (ibid., p. 166). The problem is serious and far-reaching. Reconciliation involves telling the truth and making amends. In the United States, we prefer to simplify international relations along a good nation-bad nation (terrorist nation-rogue nation) polarity. The myth is that the United States leads the world on the side of rightness, coming to the aid of oppressed peoples. Understanding the moral issue of Hiroshima would puncture that myth. We forget that we used an indiscriminate bomb on innocent people in Japan to save military lives. I contend by forgetting the moral issue of Hiroshima we open ourselves to repeating the past mistake in the future. This forgetting is even more obvious when we look at recent approaches the United States’ government is taking on nuclear treaties. 3. Forgetting Hiroshima in Recent Nuclear Treaty Negotiations During October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came closest to all-out nuclear war. To counter United States’ nuclear missiles placed in Turkey (and Italy), Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, had ordered Soviet missiles shipped to Cuba. The high-level moves and countermoves by the two superpowers lasted thirteen harrowing days. Toward the end, John F. Kennedy, the United States president, issued a twenty-four hour ultimatum, after which United States forces would invade a nuclear weapons possessing Cuba. Khrushchev, not Kennedy, unexpectedly backed down and promised to remove the missiles from Cuba. The United States later removed its missiles from Turkey (and Italy), perhaps by secret agreement during these negotiations (Divine, 1988; Bernstein, 1988). Coming off this gut-wrenching nuclear chess match, during 1963, the two world leaders and Great Britain agreed to the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Those who favored the disarmament of nuclear weapons hoped for a comprehensive ban on testing, but the United States insisted on being able to test nuclear weapons underground, a system used subsequently by all three countries to keep the arms race going full-throttle (Freedman, 1981, pp. 190–207). At the time, the United States and the Soviet Union did not trust one another sufficiently to agree on a comprehensive test ban, and adequate means for verifying underground tests were unavailable. The limited test ban, including atmospheric, outer space, and underwater testing, is still in effect today, so are the hardliners who demand United States’ nuclear superiority. While underground testing is a considerable improvement over atmospheric tests, it does entail some health risks. Radioactive fallout does not end when
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testing goes from above ground to underground. Underground tests sometimes leak radioactivity into the air. The United States government has admitted that of 330 underground tests during the 1960s and early 1970s, thirty-five “nuclear blasts sent radioactivity outside the boundaries of the Nevada Test Site” (Wasserman and Solomon, 1982, p. 113; Caldicott, 1986, p. 44.) Over the years, additional treaties have been negotiated to curtail or control this huge nuclear threat to humanity. Among the most important have been the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START) arsenal limitation treaties, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and the multi-nation Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). These treaties aimed at capping and reducing the superpower nuclear arsenals, strengthening nuclear deterrence by halting national efforts at defending against the use of such weapons, and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons to have-not nations. SALT I was negotiated by the administrations of Richard M. Nixon, United States president, and Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet general secretary, between 1969 and 1972. The treaty was ratified and entered into force in 1972. With nuclear weapons running in excess of 20,000 for each superpower and these weapons averaging a greater explosive capability than the Hiroshima bomb, SALT I placed a five-year cap on strategic nuclear missiles. The United States then proceeded to add multiple warheads on many of its limited number of missiles, and the Soviet Union followed suit. This was the beginning of the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV). A consequence of this “limiting” treaty was that each side actually increased its deployed nuclear warheads by about five thousand (Arms Control Association, 1989, pp. 27–30). SALT II, which included strategic bombers and the same missile cap for both sides, was signed during 1979, but never ratified. The first nuclear reduction treaty was signed in 1987 while Ronald Wilson Reagan was President of the United States and a willing Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union. This was a non-strategic, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that eliminated superpower intermediate-range, ground-launched nuclear ballistic and cruise missiles from the European theater and elsewhere. This was the first treaty with full on-site verification by the other superpower. Intermediate-range weapons represented about 2 percent of these nations’ nuclear arsenals. In the wake of this treaty, George Herbert W. Bush signed START I in 1991; with full verification, this treaty reduced the number of delivery systems for each side, and for the first time placed a cap on the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons in both the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia at 6,000–9,000 (Arms Control Association, 2002b, pp. 12–13). These reductions were reached under the umbrella of the ABM treaty, which was jointly signed in 1972, along with SALT I. The ABM Treaty proscribed either superpower from experimenting with or deploying a defensive missile system. The rationale was that neither superpower would make deep cuts in its offensive nuclear arsenals if at some time in the future the other side were
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to field a defensive missile shield. To counter a nation with a defensive system, an opponent first needs to take out or override that defensive shield. In other words, deep cuts in offensive nuclear arsenals are only attainable when both sides have relatively equal numbers of known ground targets, now and in the future. If one side will eventually have some capability to destroy some number of incoming missiles, then the side without the defensive missiles will need more offensive missiles to destroy known ground targets and an unknown number of future defensive missiles and shields. Without an ABM Treaty, countries have little incentive to reduce offensive missiles in the face of an unknown future. The genuine fear remains today that one nation will become an invincible world empire, having both defensive weapons to defend, and nuclear missiles to attack, whenever it wishes. Reagan, when he first campaigned for defensive missiles, claimed that the United States would eliminate its offensive missiles after it got a defensive shield, but no foreign leaders believe that boast. The international Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) was formulated during 1968, while Lyndon B. Johnson was president of the United States. It separated nations possessing nuclear weapons from those not possessing nuclear weapons, with the goal of stopping the spread of nuclear nations. This division set up a double standard, which antagonized the have-not nations that wished to have equal treatment. Under NPT, the five nations known to have nuclear weapons in 1968, promised to provide the technology for have-not nations to produce nuclear power for energy, provided those have-not nations would submit to nuclear inspections of their acquired peaceful energy facilities. The nuclear powers would not undergo such inspections. In return, the nuclear nations agreed in Article VI “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” Nuclear disarmament would remove the two-tier system. Treaty signatories also agreed to an extensive public review of the working of the NPT, every five years starting in 1975 (Applegarth and Tyson, 2005, pp. 47–50). The major obstacle since the start of this treaty has been Israel, who, among a few other significant nations, has not been a signatory to the NPT. Today, we know that Israel acquired its first nuclear weapon during the late 1960s, with help from France, before the NPT went into effect. After the treaty went into effect, the United States tried to pressure Israel into signing the NPT, to no avail. Israel would not admit that it had nuclear weapons; nor would it sign on and be subject to international inspections and the removal of these weapons. Instead, Israel lies, deceives, and otherwise maintains what Avner Cohen calls an “opacity,” about its sizable nuclear arsenal (Cohen, 1998). To keep the secrecy alive, Israel is the only major nuclear arms nation that has never tested its nuclear weapons. Even after photographs of the inside of the Israeli nuclear facilities appeared in the London Times during 1986, Israel kidnapped out of Europe, jailed in Israel, and prosecuted Mordechai Vanunu, the whistle-blower, without any international sanctions being placed on it. In the
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meantime, the United States and other major nations look the other way, pretending that no evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons exists, and consequently there exists no need to place sanctions against Israel. Israel’s failure to disclose its nuclear weapons has had negative ramifications for peace with, and equal treatment of, other nations in the Middle East. During 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved into fifteen independent states. The arms race, which had been mainly contested between the unified military forces of the United States and those of the Soviet Union, lost its underlying purpose for possessing huge arsenals of nuclear weapons. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved, leaving NATO in place, but without a patent function. At the same time, a form of democracy and a freer flowing, non-centralized economy replaced the former communist ideology of most former Soviet republics. The United States no longer needed to deter a superpower from using such weapons against Russia’s new partners, the people of the United States. The bi-polar international cold war conflict was reduced to a single United States’ democratic, capitalistic superpower. What has happened in the past sixteen years since the United States emerged as the only global superpower is crucial for our story about not reconciling Hiroshima. At first, other nations made adjustments to accommodate the newly independent states into the ongoing policies. For instance, Russia replaced the former Soviet Union as the permanent member (with veto power) on the United Nations Security Council. The trickier issue for the purposes of this chapter was what to do with nuclear weapons formerly based in three other Soviet republics besides Russia. The United States stepped in and generously agreed to assist an economically weak Russia to finance the transfer of all Soviet nuclear weapons into the single state of Russia. At this time, too, the Republic of South Africa announced during 1993, that it had built, under its apartheid government, six nuclear weapons, but had dismantled them and joined the NPT before turning the reins of government over to the African majority (Stumpf, 1995–1996). These actions allowed the number of nuclear nations to remain at five plus Israel, rather than increase to ten. Regarding nuclear treaties, the United States and Russia continued to take the aforementioned START talks seriously. START I went into force in 1994 after Russia reclaimed responsibility for all formerly Soviet nuclear weapons and this treaty remains in effect until 5 December 2009. Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, the respective leaders of the United States and Russia, worked on inaugurating START II, which, when ratified, would have reduced the number of deployed nuclear weapons in Russia and the United States from over 6,000 to around 3500. START III, which would further halve the deployed nuclear arms, was accepted in principle in 1997 (Arms Control Association, 2002 pp. 12–13). Early after the end of the cold war, the position of the United States appeared to be that nuclear weapons no longer serve a needed military function. In this spirit, during 1992, the United States congress placed a temporary morato-
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rium on United States’ nuclear testing that would become permanent in 1996. The hope was that if nations no longer test nuclear weapons, such weapons would lose their reliability and eventually nations would eliminate them from military fighting options. Unfortunately, the presence of Israel’s large nuclear arsenal, never been tested underground or in the atmosphere, does not reinforce such a conclusion. Still, the moratorium was a step forward. During 1995, the Non-Proliferation Treaty came up for renewal, as the original twenty-five year international commitment was transpiring. The cold war with its military buildup in Europe was over. The major powers were significantly reducing their nuclear arsenals and a comprehensive test ban, equally applicable to have and have-not nations, appeared imminent. In Latin America, Argentina and Chile moved away from acquiring nuclear arms to full compliance with the NPT (Redick, 1994). Accordingly, the nations of the world voted to extend indefinitely the non-proliferation pact. The peace community was elated, and began looking for non-nuclear issues to address. During 1996, the United Nations’ General Assembly entered into final discussions for an international Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). It approved the treaty in September by a vote of 158 to 3; Clinton signed it for the United States. The treaty would take effect after all nations having nuclear research or nuclear power reactors—forty-four—ratified the CTBT. The treaty includes the emplacement of 321 monitoring stations worldwide to assure that no nuclear weapons are secretly tested. These facilities work like earthquake monitoring stations, except they are searching for nuclear explosion markings. These stations are in place today despite what has befallen the treaty. Clinton’s nuclear policies were piecemeal. He went from one treaty to another without overseeing and revamping the goals and objectives of possessing nuclear weapons (Caldicott, 2002, pp. 17–23). With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the changes in Russian foreign policies, which mirrored ours, do we still need nuclear weapons? If so, what targets can we foresee, and how many weapons would we need to attack those targets? Could conventional weapons accomplish the same objectives? While we could excuse Clinton for not having such a policy in his first term, during his second term, beginning in 1996, we needed a formal review of our nuclear strategy, but did not get one. Without agreement on objectives, Clinton’s policies could always engender opposition from congress and other nations. In The New Nuclear Danger, Helen Caldicott explains the problem. Clinton spoke idealistically but acted pragmatically (used in a weak political sense, not in the philosophical meaning of John Dewey or William James). Caldicott says to get the hard line United States’ weapons labs on board for both the indefinite continuation of the NPT and the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Clinton agreed to fund these labs for designing new nuclear weapons at more money than they received during the height of the cold war. She calls this the “Manhattan II” project, after the Manhattan Project that invented the Hiro-
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shima and Nagasaki bombs. While Clinton was leading the CTBT movement, he was hedging his bets at home by funding the nuclear labs to get around the treaties (ibid. 43–70, esp. pp. 43–45). The Clinton administration sent decidedly mixed signals about the direction the United States was taking on nuclear arms. In this climate, the nuclear disarmament mentality worldwide and in the United States began to change. During 1998, first India, and then Pakistan, tested nuclear weapons, becoming the seventh and eighth nations to possess nuclear arms. During 1999, a Republicancontrolled United States Senate voted against ratifying the CTBT. During the same year, both the Senate and the House of Representatives voted to deploy a national defensive missile system to defend the United States. This vote was a power move in violation of the international Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. During 2000, the states-parties to the NPT, as part of their five-year review process, approved thirteen practical steps to meet the treaty’s commitments. Clinton, the idealist, agreed for the United States, among other points, to continue the nuclear testing moratorium, to achieve an early ratification of the CTBT, to preserve and strengthen the ABM treaty, and to implement the beginning of START II and the completion of START III. Clinton also signed the Treaty of Rome, which would establish an International Criminal Court, to oversee illegal excessive military actions, including the battlefield use of nuclear weapons. This court could bring individuals and state officials before it, charging them for wars of aggression, crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes. At the same time, Clinton negotiated with Vladimir Putin, then president of Russia, to amend the ABM treaty to allow limited defensive measures, supposedly against rogue states that acquired nuclear weapons, but which could be used against Russia or China; Putin and the Russian Duma demurred (Talbott, 2002, p. 14). This post-cold war window of opportunity slammed shut as a conservative George W. Bush during 1991 assumed the presidency with an administration of hardliners. He refused to re-submit the CTBT to the senate for ratification. His action killed the treaty, since all forty-four advanced nuclear nations with, or on the threshold of having nuclear weapons, must ratify the treaty for it to take effect. Bush also refused to submit the International Criminal Court for ratification by the senate. The court has entered into international force without including the globally ever-present military forces of the United States. During December 2001, following the awful 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the New York City World Trade Center, Bush, citing the need to protect the security of the United States, withdrew the United States from the ABM treaty. Bush wants to build a defensive shield against nuclear missiles and to have the United States dominate outer space (Caldicott, 2002, pp. 71–144). The United States wants offensive and defensive weapons. This was the first such withdrawal of a signatory to a nuclear treaty.Following Bush’s action, Russia, believing it had to reconsider its security needs, pulled out of START II, ending the START string of reduction treaties with START I, which, as I indicated
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above, expires on 5 December 2009. In 2003, North Korea pulled out of the NPT, also citing security reasons. The situation looks bleak for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. For four weeks during May 1995, 150 nation representatives met in New York for the 2005 NPT review. The delegate distrust was so bad that they spent the first three weeks approving the agenda, which supposedly was decided before the public review began. The United States demanded that the review focus on North Korea and Iran, while most other nations wished first to discuss the new United States’ policies on nuclear weapons, including the United States’ rejection of most of the commitments made at the 2000 review. The 2005 review ended in disarray. During May 2002, Bush and Putin signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) as a weak substitute for the lost START II and START III treaties. This fewer than 500-word treaty calls for a reduction of [deployed] (the word does not appear in the treaty, but Bush later clarified it upon questioning) strategic nuclear weapons in the United States and Russian arsenals to a maximum of 2200 weapons by 31 December 2012 (Arms Control Associtaion, 2002a, p. 9). However, SORT does not call for the destruction of weapons or delivery vehicles that are no longer deployed, and weapons can be shifted from strategic to tactical operations. Additional nuclear weapons may be retained as a responsive force—a force readily able to become operational as contingencies evolve. In this way, weapons may be shifted from one category to another in a kind of shell game. Neither does SORT include any verification method, nor any interim stages in reducing weapons to the 2200 maximum; so confirming what each party says it is doing is by gentlemen’s agreement. Last, the treaty expires on 31 December 2012, which incredibly is the same day for both parties to have their deployed weapons reduced to 2200. After this date, no numerical limits remain on deployed nuclear weapons. A clause allows either party to withdraw from the treaty upon three months written notice. Based on these factors, most nations judge the treaty to be extremely weak. It is a treaty “of a sort.” Bush also announced that in addition to defensive missiles, the United States will research and deploy two new offensive missiles. One would be a large nuclear warhead fitted onto an earth-penetrating missile able to obliterate mountainous caves. The second would have a small nuclear warhead—a fraction of the Hiroshima power—that conventional forces could easily use. These new nuclear weapons would allow the United States to use such weapons of mass destruction as though they were conventional weapons that did not emit radiation. While congress has not funded these new nuclear weapons, its refusal of funding does not mean that the government will not build them with discretionary monies in the budget of the department of defense (Schwartz, 2005, pp. 58– 64). Bush appears to believe that military forces can remove the threat of new na-
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tions acquiring nuclear arms, along with chemical and biological weapons, a position that places the entire world in danger. 4. Conclusion For the past sixty years, two groups of strategists have vied with one another for control of United States’ nuclear policies. One group, remembering Hiroshima, proposes, “to reduce stockpiles, end production of nuclear weapon materials, increase international controls, and create new mechanisms for producing nuclear fuels.” The other, forgetting Hiroshima, favors “strategies to deploy new nuclear weapons, preserve large nuclear arsenals indefinitely, block selected nations from getting nuclear technology, and counter proliferation through military action (Circincione, 2005, p. 44). The first group seeks to reconcile the nuclear interests of the United States with its human values and the values of other nations. The second views the possession and possible use of nuclear weapons as a strategic military advantage. The United States is not alone in being divided between these two competing nuclear policy groups. The first group would be interested in forgiveness for the United States’ use of nuclear weapons in 1945, and the second would make excuses but not amends for what occurred. Under the Bush presidency, we have lost another opportunity to contain the nuclear threat. We have our work cut out for us if peace is to prevail.
Part Two RECONCILIATION
INTRODUCTION Dennis Rothermel The second part of this volume collects essays that explore avenues of reconciliation. Victims best heal who come to have compassion for themselves. Understanding the welfare of victims constructively in terms other than rights for retribution also better allows prosecution of offenders. Restoring harmony among the offender, victim, and community best serves the purposes of both victims and society. Unrestrained acquisitiveness is among the causes for violence that permeate the culture. Forging a language for peace that does not implicitly capitulate to the defining discourse of established power reshapes the context of social conflict imbedded in how political discourse has articulated issues of the nation. Robert Churchill examines the psychic states of victims in his “Compassion and Reconciliation.” Though an offender who declares remorse and asks for forgiveness may lack either sympathy or compassion, victims’ need to come to terms with victimization is the priority in their recovery. Recovery will remain incomplete, perhaps suffocating in anger or self-pity, so long as victims do not come to find compassion. Victim-directed reconciliation compels the victim into a reflective self-regard, one informed by empathy and compassion directed towards oneself. A full accounting of the transgression is a precondition for this reflective and emotional recuperation. Even in absence of confession and remorse from the offender, the victim coming to terms with having been wronged allows for natural, justifiable anger to dissipate. Forgiveness then becomes an act that the victim freely chooses whether to exercise. With that freedom, the individual ceases to be a victim. David Boersema’s essay, “What’s Wrong with Victims’ Rights,” poses critical challenges about who is the victim, what rights victims have, and why promoting the welfare of victims is couched in the terminology of rights. The full scope of all those who can be understood as victimized by a single offense renders the concept insufficiently defined for legal application. In addition to possible restitution and assistance, where victims’ rights interposes in the legal process there will be risk of undermining the fair deliberation of guilt. Boersema concludes that advocacy for victims’ rights is not the best avenue to address wrongs that victims suffer. Moral concern for the welfare of victims need not be framed in the language of rights. Whether victims’ rights legislation promotes the welfare of victims must be subject to empirical corroboration. To assess such legislation on moral grounds will be even more difficult. Rob Gildert’s essay, “Pedagogy and Punishment: A Unitarian Argument for Restorative Justice,” launches a utilitarian argument for restorative justice. Gildert’s discussion begins with a brief survey of utalitarian viewpoints
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on punishment, particularly the divide between retributivist and rehabilitative intents. In contrast, the utilitarian argument for restorative justice rests on the pedagogical consequences of redressing wrongdoing. The empirical record shows that punishment per se fails as a means of rehabilitation. Severity of incarceration correlates directly with repeat criminal behavior. The pedagogical effect of punishment is to enhance tendencies towards the behavior that resulted in criminal activity, conviction, and punishment. Since restorative justice has been demonstrated to reduce levels of recidivism, it serves to better protect society and rehabilitate offenders. Restorative justice has historical roots in ancient cultures and some nonWestern cultures. Current practices are established worldwide, with a growing following. A pedagogically balanced approach to crime needs to rely upon restorative justice in those cases where the offender is capable of acknowledging responsibility for the offense. The intent is to restore harmony among the offender, victim, and the community. A mediator can lead discussion toward a mutually agreed upon response to the crime. Ideally, the mediator motivates the offender to accept responsibility for the crime and to agree to work toward compensating and assisting the victims. Successful mediation reverses depersonalization of the victim; victims and offenders become humanized to each other. Victims are better able to progress beyond the stigma and anger at having been victimized, and offenders are better able to restore a sense of belonging to a civil community. After restitution, victims report a greater sense of satisfaction with the criminal justice process. They report a greater sense of empowerment and a sense of having had a direct effect upon the offender’s change of heart and behavior. The practice is particularly effective with youthful offenders, where it can avert a natural slide towards inveterate criminal behavior. Positive outcomes are unlikely in some cases. Thus restorative justice cannot serve universally as the only form of criminal justice. But an increased employment of restorative justice in those cases where it has a good potential for success will help victims and help restore individuals from offending acts. On both grounds, the benefits are substantial. Andrew Fitz-Gibbon’s essay, “Perpetual Violence? Mimesis and Anamnesis,” challenges the pervasive and usually unstated assumtion that violence is a necessary catalyst to change. Immanuel Kant’s remedy to the innate logic of aggression between nation states relies on the establishment of social contract among nations. Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud echoed this solution in their personal correspondence during the period between the first and second World Wars. Fitz-Gibbon enlists the philosophy of nonviolence of René Girard in approaching three critical issues: whether human propensity towards violence is inexorable; what constitutes the human propensity towards violence, whether it is innate or socialized; and whether the trend of human violence might possibly end.
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Mahatma Ghandi offers the insight that the survival of humanity and the continuity of its social institutions provide prima facie evidence that forces contrary to violence are strong and enduring. Civil society and the rule of law suffice to inhibit ubiquitous aggression. In contemporary society, we find inconsequential outlets to expiate violent urges in sports, movies, and video games. A Girardian perspective elucidates human violence as functionally reducible at heart to mimetic desire and its result in a general acquisitiveness in human behavior. Desire for possession of things, power, authority, or property is abetted by the perception of the same desire in others. Thus, mimetic desire leads to mimetic rivalry. Among others, Plato saw acquisitiveness as engendering conflict. Girard’s second insight of direct relevance to perpetual violence lies in the ready social and psychological mechanism of scapegoating, particularly as the deliberate action to realize vengeance and redemption. The choice of scapegoats tends toward those already vulnerable to victimization. Mimetic rivalry and scapegoating provide coherent heuristics in the understanding of cold-war militarism and the impulsive responses to 11 September 2001. Girardian antidotes to the prevalence of human violence include recognizing and avoiding mimetic rivalry, assisting victims, and abstention from violence and the rule of the crowd. Another Girardian theme, anamnesis, contributes to the need to recognize and avert mimetic rivalry, when the remembrance is intoned in reminders of the need not to re-victimize. The Girardian insights are eminently practical on a personal level and realizable in social institutions where the need to defuse conflict prevails. We have yet to discover whether those institutions can encompass nations. Our survival will rest upon conflict resolution and reconciliation, which arise in language, William C. Gay argues in his essay, “Language and Reconciliation.” Memory, too, is formulated in language, which compounds the facility with which reconciliation may succeed. Philosophical treatments of memory will have too long relied upon empiricist accounts of memory as functional impressions of experienced things. We have come to understand that memory is strongly connected with emotion. Reconciliation will thus begin with the pre-existing antagonism and sustain the risk of continuing that pain and alienation. Language will also intertwine with power and prevalent political structures of identity and evaluation. In this fluid context of oppositional frameworks, language remains fruitfully powerful to solidify or dissolve established versions of remembrance. Discussions about peace too often reduce to talk about how conflict has been averted, a language of negative peace. Reconciliation will thrive by revealing instead of concealing remembrance and by developing nonviolent figurative constructs. There is danger and deliverance in the pathways away from or towards reconciliation. In the course of these five essays, we discover the empowering potential of reconciliation. Victims’ healing begins with compassion for oneself. Conceiving of victims’ welfare in terms of retribution misconstrues victims’ genuine needs.
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Victims achieve a greater sense of empowerment for having turned an offender away from repeat crime than from relishing the offender’s punishment. There is tremendous hope for peace in the simple endurance of ordinary social institutions. Reconciliation will build upon rather than obscure remembrance of past travesties and those who survived them.
Five COMPASSION AND RECONCILIATION Robert Paul Churchill Forgiveness and reconciliation are different; neither entails the other. Forgiveness can exist without reconciliation. When offenders express no remorse and do not acknowledge wrongdoing, victims can forgive unilaterally (Govier, 2002). Similarly, reconciliation can exist without forgiveness. Martha Minow (2000, p. 250) points out that at its lowest common denominator, reconciliation is a minimal agreement among former antagonists to coexist or to co-operate. Both David Crocker and Rajeev Bhargava recommend recognizing three stages or types of reconciliation ranging from “thinner” to “thicker” in Crocker’s terminology (Crocker, 2000, p. 108; Bhargava, 2000). The thickest version of reconciliation, characterized by the successes of the truth commissions in South Africa and Chile represent “a shared comprehensive vision” (Crocker, 2000, p. 108n24) and “a cancellation of enmity or estrangement via a morally grounded forgiveness” (Bhargava, 2000, p. 60). The literature on thick or “deep” forgiveness and reconciliation emphasizes that the offenders must acknowledge and renounce their misdeeds, express remorse and ask for forgiveness, and distance themselves from their former selves. The former offender thus undergoes great psychological changes accompanying acts of disavowal, confession—often public—and the quest for forgiveness (Govier, 2002, pp. 42–61, 141–168; Prager and Govier, 2003). Philosophers Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton (1988) have written insightfully about the damaging effects criminal offenses and wrongdoing have on victims’ selfrespect and self-esteem, and the prospective benefits of feelings of resentment and vindictiveness in contrast to mercy or forgiveness to victims. In addition, they discuss a lively debate over unilateral forgiveness, or one-sided forgiveness, weighing the benefits of unilateral forgiveness against risks and potential harms incurred by victims who forgive unilaterally (ibid., pp. 62–77). Despite the helpful advances of Trudy Govier, philosophers have given insufficient attention to the ways efforts to reconcile victims and offenders evoke changes within the victimized or wronged party. In this paper, I focus on the psychic states of victims, or spouses, parents, siblings, or children of victims, who identify themselves as having suffered a terrible loss at the hands of an offender. It appears that some, but not all, cases of the thickest or deepest kinds of reconciliation between sufferer and offender involve compassion. In confessing wrong and requesting forgiveness, a former offender may have compassion for
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the suffering of victims or their loved ones. For remorse and a request for forgiveness to be genuine without sympathy for those to whom one has caused great pain appears unlikely. Sympathy is closely related to compassion. However, that even thick reconciliation need not require the offender’s compassion or sympathy appears to be logically possible. Empirical evidence from South Africa suggests that testimony from offenders self-interestedly seeking amnesty sometimes lacked both. In any case, this is not an issue I will pursue here. Sufferers who forgive may have compassion for the former offender, but no logically compelling or empirical basis exists for claiming that they must be compassionate even for thick reconciliation to succeed. To think of a kind of reconciliation fuller or more complete than versions of thick reconciliation presently in the literature may be useful. For, to be fully reconciled with the former offender, the sufferer must come to terms with, or be reconciled with, what happened in the past and with the idea that the way life now lived is a consequence of the past. I believe such cases of reconciliation do require that the sufferer have compassion. Sufferers must have compassion for themselves, and selfcompassion sometimes enables sufferers to forgive former offenders, perhaps even to have compassion for them. As I am now speaking of very special cases of reconciliation, clarity is well served by the use of a special term to designate this category. As we have no readily available term for this purpose, I suggest that we call such cases “victimdirected reconciliation,” where “victim” is understood broadly to include the actual victim, if this person is still living and seeks reconciliation, and others whose close affinity with the victim causes them to have suffered significantly. Victims may seek victim-directed reconciliation even if the person actually subjected to torture or criminal assault chooses not to do so. The immediate objective of victim-directed reconciliation is the restoration of the integrity or wholeness of the victim. Hence, we seek it for the sake of sufferers who initiate it, despite that it may have critically important secondary effects, such as vindication of the rights of the victim. We also seek it for the sake of the former offender when the victims’ re-integration and new self-identity enables them to offer forgiveness. I do not explore further the logical adequacy of concepts of reconciliation in this paper. My interest, as expressed, is in the possibility of compassion on the part of victims. I shall attempt to show why it makes sense to refer to a victim as having self-compassion. Not only does this make sense, but also, it illuminates how victims can be forgiving despite the recalcitrance of offenders. In addition, a look at self-compassion helps us see how persons capable of this condition can more easily have compassion for those who have wronged and humiliated them. Here I must mention a caveat, however. My argument might amuse social and behavioral scientists. To be sure, it is not based on empirical evidence collected first hand or from patients in psychiatrists’ offices or from the results of controlled experimentation. Yet my argument is not without considerable empir-
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ical substance, even if second-hand. Essential to my argument is a body of testimony and personal statements made publicly by victims and eyewitness accounts of proceedings at truth commissions and inquests, plus biographical and autobiographical accounts. This literature is voluminous, as illustrated in the bibliographies in Carol A. L. Prager and Govier’s Dilemmas of Reconciliation (2003), Govier’s Forgiveness and Revenge (2002), and in Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson’s Truth v. Justice (2000). In any case, my argument does not depend on such data; instead empirical evidence serves to illuminate and reinforce my conclusions—partly developed in earlier work—regarding the interconnectedness of empathy, sympathy, compassion, and forgiveness (Churchill and Street, 2004, pp. 87–105; Churchill, 2007, pp. 100–113). Compassion is psychologically complex as it simultaneously combines sympathy, which is an affective state, with empathy, a cognitive state, and the judgment that (if possible) we should alleviate the suffering of others. Sympathy involves co-feeling and identification with another. While often powerful, sympathy is subject to differences of intensity. Sympathy always involves affective states. By contrast, empathy designates a set of cognitive capacities, sometimes referred to as “perspective taking.” In speaking of empathy for a sufferer, Martha Nussbaum provides a serviceable characterization of empathy (for such a case) as involving an “imaginative reconstruction of the experience of the sufferer” (2002, p. 327). But this is accompanied by awareness of our difference from the sufferer. Empathy involves what Richard Wolheim has called a “twofold attitude,” according to which, as Nussbaum says, “One both imagines what it is like to be in the sufferer’s place and, at the same time, retains securely the awareness that one is not in that place”(ibid., p. 328). Sympathy and empathy frequently occur together in human experience, as many of us can attest from occasions when we have aided others in need. On the other hand, either can occur without the other. Cruelty feeds on the capacity to be empathic without sympathetic. Tragically, the capacity of torturers and sadists to understand how to cause victims a maximum of pain and humiliation is precisely what makes them so proficient in crime. Likewise, sympathy can be misdirected, or “misspent,” when it is lavished on persons who do not experience the suffering imaginatively attributed to them. Sympathy appears to require the presence of a person other than the self as the object or recipient of emotion. When directed toward the self, sympathy appears indistinguishable from self-pity. By contrast, to conceive of a person as engaging in perspective taking with him or her self as the object of alternating perspectives is also possible. Generally, empathy does require a firm distinction between self and others. But to succeed, empathy requires awareness of a self that is relatively hard, or bounded as the perspective-taker. Consequently, to see the self as it is now, the person one has become, in contrast with the sort of person one had been, or the self to which one aspires, is possible. Some forms of anguish, shame, and self-torment may result from awareness of the gulf between
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what persons have become, as they see themselves in their eyes or through the eyes of others, and what they expect of themselves or feel others to expect of them. In such cases, remorse appears to involve a split identity along with recognition of the individual’s failure to transcend the lesser identity. In compassion, intense sympathy is combined with empathy and a motivational push (Kohut, 1981, p. 543). Compassion subsumes the co-feeling and identification of sympathy. But the intensity of co-feeling is so great that one member of the dyad feels as the other member feels. Consequently, a person’s condition is, in being compassionate, as a co-participant in an emotive state that transcends the self while it remains in relationship with another. Compassion also differs from sympathy in motivational structure. To think of a person as sympathetic with the plight of another without responding is difficult. To be compassionate, however, is to be moved in some way, to be motivated to act for the benefit of the other as persons might act for themselves in a similar situation. Hence, we find continual references to extreme altruists, as for instance, among rescuers of the Jews in Nazi Europe, as rescuing others as if they are rescuing themselves-in-the-other (Konarzewski, 1992, p. 23; Monroe, 1996, pp. 197–216). Victim-directed reconciliation requires that the wronged parties be skilled in perspective taking toward themselves. Relying on empathic abilities, persons must be able to distinguish between themselves as the injured, traumatized, or humiliated self, on the one hand, and, on the other, being capable of re-visioning themselves in a transcendent position or posture. Victims come to assume a double identity. They see themselves as they had been as victims: as wronged, deformed, and incomplete. But, although they know this legacy of suffering, perhaps even the deep scars, will always be with them; they know that it is now just a part of them. They need not base their identity, as they see themselves now or in the future, on the fact that they were wronged. When someone has suffered grievously at the hands of others, the formation of a serviceable double identity is one form of success in mourning. The same process characterizes mourning more generally. A husband who has lost a spouse, or a father who has lost a child, will always feel that a part of them died with their loved one that night. Life feels torn apart and the wound never completely healed. Nor would we long retain our humanity if what so deeply cuts into and shapes life were to heal over easily. Yet, psychologically healthy persons cannot spend the remainder of their lives raging at the night. To mourn successfully is to let go—not of the importance of what was lost—but of one’s obsession with that loss. It is to pass beyond into a transcendent state. We come to see ourselves as the victim of tragedy in the context of on-going life. Instead of reliving pain on a daily basis, we empathize, with ourselves as the wife or father experiencing the tragedy. Perhaps during especially trying or depressing times we may be transported, as it were, back into the victim persona. Yet, given alternative self-identities, we are not fixated on the loss, and we include within the breadth and depth of a renewed persona the ability to move on by carrying, if
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you will, the first, sorrowful identity, completely within the new, more complex and more completely integrated self. So far, I have been focusing primarily on the empathic aspect of compassion and the emergence of a “secondary” self. Although it does not ordinarily make sense to speak about sympathy for the self, I argue that, given the effects of empathy, to speak of self-directed sympathy is meaningful. Before shifting to the self-sympathy and compassion involved in victim-directed reconciliation, though, I will say a bit more about empathy. Before victims can experience sympathy for themselves, in contrast to selfpity, they must push empathic understanding to its limits and fully accept the truth about their being harmed or wronged. Acknowledging that their former self—the self as previously innocent and unscathed—is irretrievably lost, whether we are speaking of victims still living or of their loved ones, requires as full an accounting of the facts surrounding the victimization as possible. In addition, a “performative” aspect of this fact-finding must necessarily take place as a public event. Others must witness the factual narrative and acknowledge that the horror or wrong, as related, occurred in fact. Among the most prominent features of truth and reconciliation commissions, as in South Africa, is the demand of victims that offenders come forward and acknowledge their wrongdoing. The demand for acknowledgment often verges on a compulsion to know the sordid, horrifying details, but it has nothing to do with morbid curiosity. Obviously, public confession and acknowledgment by offenders are the best ways through which victims can achieve an accounting of the facts they need. But former wrongdoers do not always confess. Even yet, one-sided forgiveness is possible. Hence, when a genuinely open hearing before a large body of witnesses is not available, the relevant “public” may be very small, consisting in limiting cases of just one other person whose judgment the victim regards as impartial. Often a therapist, counselor, pastor or rabbi, professional colleague, or respected elder will suffice to fulfill the public role provided that the victim trust them and that they possess the requisite skill and empathy. The accounting to which I refer is the best reconstruction of the facts explaining the role of the victim’s attackers, tormenters, or oppressors and the effects of these assaults on the victim’s body and psyche. Why is acknowledgment so powerful, so liberating? The answer has to do with the truth without which a new, more highly differentiated and integrated self cannot emerge. An empathetic understanding of the wounded, suffering self requires accurate knowledge. Truth cannot be subjective. Sufferers find it impossible to proceed with an imaginary account of victimization. Consequently, the accounting must supply an accurate narration or reconstruction of the events. As difficult as they may be to bear, concrete details render the horrible or tragic event palpable, thereby bringing finality to it. Some victims give up their identity as a victim only reluctantly, sometimes competing with others for distinction as the most wronged. Such persons do not
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seek closure and the emergence of alternative identities. Such persons do not seek closure and the emergence of alternative identities. Instead, they believe that clinging to their identity as “pure and innocent” injured party gives them moral superiority, while relieving them of responsibility for moving on (Govier, 2002, p. 146). The price of this strategy is more than continuing, festering wounds; it is bitterness born of a failing attempt to endow the self with an impossible “essentialism,” as if victimhood were a defining or determining quality. Ironically, as Simone Weil (1956) noted, persons who cultivate victim identities almost succeed in achieving what their assailants had intended, namely, their reduction to the status of determined “things.” Self-directed sympathy is more complete the more accurate is the accounting of past injuries. Yet without the full cooperation of others, victims may still be able to glean enough truth to clear the ground and succeed at selfreconstruction. Once an individual is able to take the victim-self into perspective, self-sympathy enables the victim to make a confession. Admittedly, it sounds bizarre to say that the sufferer ought to confess whether the real criminal or assailant has confessed. Here “confessing” consists of acknowledging what otherwise might not emerge in consciousness. We acknowledge that the wrong has happened and that it cannot now be undone. And, most important, we confess to accepting—finally—our powerless and inability to have prevented the harm. Thus we confess or finitude and our weakness. Consider Barbara Deming’s (1984) point: “we are all part of one another,” and that at the deepest level of our being we cannot help but believe that the universe bends toward justice, though we may disagree about the nature of justice. Our greatness as human beings requires believing we are born for individual destinies while embracing our earthly unity. When those whom we love and for whom we care are crushed or scarred, we cannot help feeling at our deepest roots that we share responsibility for the tragedy. In some inscrutable way, horror would not have overtaken a person whom I love, had I not been the person I was. Confession does not consist of “owning” the travesty as causal agent of it, unless we are guilty of collusion with victimizers. Instead, confession consists in admitting that we were broken; that our pain was so great we could not hide from it, and that our lament “I could not stop it,” “I could do nothing,” flew up, as it were, into a black hole in the night sky. When combined with perspective taking, self-directed sympathy can bring about transference of responsibility. To add literal insult to injury, victimization has something deeply stigmatizing about it. Suffering a serious loss, although not due to any fault of our own, is to be marked by fate. One function of mythology and much high art, such as drama and opera, is to memorialize wounds and scars. Events they endured and the reaction to them by others continually define victims, whether these events involved having a daughter “disappeared” during the Argentine dirty war, having limbs hacked off in Liberia, or being stripped and sexually humiliated at Abu Gharib prison. For-
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mer victims can move away and change their names, but they carry their hidden scars with them. Regardless whether others know of our pain and shame, the universe appears to mock us: we have been branded for life. I suggest that acknowledgment and confession—setting the record straight, and confessing the depth of anguish and despair—affects an important transference of responsibility, which is more easily completed and often more fully accomplished when the offender confesses publicly and acknowledges the crime before a truth commission. Still, this transference can succeed even when the sufferer receives the attention and reassurances of a few people or even a single, trusted other. Most important is for victims to come to understand that they have no responsibility for the terrible brutality or cruelty suffered and that the universe has not marked, condemned, or otherwise set itself against the sufferer. Most numerous among victims who cannot forgive are those who will not seek an accurate accounting of their suffering and who cannot admit to their own weaknesses. The pathos of the unforgiving—embittered and locked in rage as they are—is sufficiently well know not to need further comment. Because compassion subsumes the co-feeling and identification of sympathy, self-directed sympathy constitutes being compassionate with the self. Once individuals attain a sufficient level of empathy or perspective taking on their lives to allow for the emergence of self-sympathy, they are also selfcompassionate. Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh offers an illustration that is as delightful as it is provocative. He says that when we feel anger, we should not deny or repress it. Instead, pushing anger away would do violence toward ourselves. He recommends that we should sooth and care for our anger as a parent holds and calms a crying child. He seeks an integration and reconciliation of conflicting emotions instead of allowing them to knot up and harden into opposing energy. Obviously, we cannot practice well what Nhat Hahn recommends unless we can deal compassionately with ourselves, as a mother does with her baby. Remember, compassion differs from sympathy in motivational structure. To the co-feeling and identification of sympathy, compassion adds the disposition to be moved in some way. Nhat Hahn argues that as we become increasingly compassionate within ourselves, we increase our compassionate dealings with others. Compassionate persons are driven in this way, even toward forgiveness and reconciliation with former enemies. A few words need to be said, however briefly, on how victim-directed reconciliation can enhance the capacity of the victim to forgive offenders even when this requires unilateral forgiveness. In doing so, I draw on Benedictus (Baruch) Spinoza’s Ethics (1955, Pts 4, 5; pp. 187–271), particularly Spinoza’s account of the mind’s freedom from bondage of the emotions, the transference of emotions into clear and distinct understanding, and eventually, acceptance that everything is as it must be. I draw also on the great mahatmas of nonviolence in forming my position, especially the Dalai Lama (2005), Mohandas K. Gandhi (2002), and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1986). I will limit my discussion to cases in
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which one-sided forgiveness is warranted, when it will not be seen as condoning wrongdoing or be conducive to further abuse. Victims’ negative feelings toward offenders result from victims’ acute suffering. By negative feelings, I refer to anger, disgust, resentment, hate, humiliation, the desire for revenge, and similar feelings, in contrast to justified indignation and self-respect or self-regard, however degraded one might have come to feel. Forgiveness and justice are not mutually exclusive; although I view thick or deep reconciliation as offering alternatives to judicial proceedings, I do not want to claim that a forgiving person must forego the right be vindicated in court. The sorts of negative feelings to which I refer are ones causally related to the suffering a person has undergone: the pain, fear, anguish, humiliation, and degradation to which that person has been subjected. Negative feelings have a secondary content—some image or idea—in addition to the primary affective state. While pains may persist in bodies, negative feelings are the result of disorder in the mind, and between the mind and body. Negative feelings continue insofar as the mind remains incapable of processing them or comprehending them and their interrelations. Persons trust those whom they believe to understand them. When we believe ourselves to be understood by someone we trust— someone who cares for us—we begin to gain the capacity to separate the contents of our negative feelings, ideas and images, from our negative affective states and to transform the affective states. Images and ideas formerly attached to fear or anxiety, for example, can be moved, with the benefit of another’s assistance and perspective, into a broader context of understanding. In this process, a fearful and degrading self-image of suffering or humiliation at the hands of a tormentor increasingly loses its association with affective states. We can think of negative feelings as being transformed into positive energy as increasing freedom promotes self-understanding and self-acceptance. As we have seen, through empathic perspective taking and self-sympathy, victims can achieve self-compassion. Compassion involves the motivation to respond with sympathy and care to ourselves, as others we trust would treat us. Consequently, victims can develop self-trust and learn to care for themselves, although success in this process often requires interaction with helping others. Insofar as self-compassion represents the victims’ advance and selfdifferentiation, they can understand and master their negative feelings. It follows, therefore, that a victimized person can transform negative feelings into deeper insights, a greater understanding of the situation in which they and their assailants were enmeshed, and the freedom to forgive. Victims who have grown to be compassionate with themselves need not choose to forgive their offenders. Even a person who feels compassion for an offender need not choose to forgive the offender. Nothing about victim-directed reconciliation necessitates forgiveness. At most it makes forgiveness, when warranted, more likely by enabling victims to exercise authentic choices. This kind
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of forgiveness—when elected—may lead, in turn, to the most psychologically sound and durable form of thick, or deep, reconciliation. Thich Nhat Hahn gently admonishes us to remember to be compassionate with ourselves: Self-love is the foundation for your capacity to love the other person. If you don’t take care of yourself . . . if you are not peaceful. . . . You cannot help the other person. . . . Your capacity for loving another person depends on your capacity for loving yourself, for taking care of yourself. (2001, p. 41). He continues that self-love as compassionate self-acceptance releases positive, transforming energies that enable us to appreciate the truths of “non-duality” and “inter-being” (ibid., p. 69). Compassionate care for the self and self-understanding will lead us to appreciate respects in which “[t] he other person is you, you are the other person (ibid., p. 115). Thus, it follows, as I have argued, that what I have called victim-directed reconciliation entails compassion for oneself as victim. It follows in, turn, that one of the deepest and the most lasting forms of reconciliation between former victims and those who had harmed and humiliated them must be based on victims’ compassion for themselves.
Six WHAT’S WRONG WITH VICTIMS’ RIGHTS? David Boersema 1. Introduction The case of Payne v. Tennessee (501 U.S. 808), heard by the United States Supreme Court in 1991, upheld the constitutionality of admitting victim impact evidence at the penalty phase of capital cases. A jury found Payne guilty of the murders of Charisse Christopher and her two-year-old daughter, and of firstdegree assault on Christopher’s three-year-old son. The defendant committed the crimes after Christopher refused Payne’s sexual advances. The stabbings were so numerous and widespread that blood covered the floors and walls of the victims’ apartment. At the penalty phase of the trial, Payne called his mother and father, his girlfriend, and a clinical psychologist, each of whom testified to mitigating factors in his character and background. The state called the grandmother of the surviving son, Nicholas. She testified that the child continued to cry out for his mother and sister and that the experience had had a marked effect on the little boy and other family members. In his argument for the death penalty, the prosecutor commented upon the continuing effects of the episode on Nicholas and other relatives. The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed the imposition of the death penalty and rejected Payne’s contention that the grandmother’s testimony and the prosecutor’s comments violated his Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment cited under previous United States Supreme Court decisions. Payne then sought review by the United States Supreme Court. In delivering the Court’s majority opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist remarked: Payne echoes the concern voiced in Booth’s case (Booth v. Maryland, 482 U.S. 496) that the admission of victim impact evidence permits a jury to find that defendants whose victims were assets to their community are more deserving of punishment than those whose victims are perceived to be worthless. . . . As a general matter, however, victim impact evidence is not offered to encourage comparative judgments of this kind—for instance, that the killer of a hardworking, devoted parent deserves the death penalty, but that the murderer of a reprobate does not. It is designed to show instead each victim’s “uniqueness as an individual human being,” whatever the jury might think the loss to the community resulting from his death might be. . . . Victim impact evidence is simply another form or method of in-
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Rehnquist cautioned, however: We do not hold today that victim impact evidence must be admitted, or even that it should be admitted. We hold merely that if a State decides to permit consideration of this evidence, “the Eighth Amendment erects no per se bar.” If, in a particular case, a witness’ testimony or a prosecutor’s remark so infects the sentencing proceeding as to render it fundamentally unfair, the defendant may seek appropriate relief under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In his dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justice Harry Blackmun, stated: Evidence that serves no purpose other than to appeal to the sympathies or emotions of the jurors has never been considered admissible. Thus, if a defendant, who had murdered a convenience store clerk in cold blood in the course of an armed robbery, offered evidence unknown to him at the time of the crime about the immoral character of his victim, all would recognize immediately that the evidence was irrelevant and inadmissible. Evenhanded justice requires that the same constraint be imposed on the advocate of the death penalty. . . . The premise that a criminal prosecution requires an evenhanded balance between the State and the defendant is . . . incorrect. The Constitution grants certain rights to the criminal defendant and imposes certain limitations on the State designed to protect the individual from overreaching by the disproportionately powerful State. Thus, the State must prove a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Payne was not the first time the Court wrestled with victim impact evidence or with victims’ rights more broadly, but it pointed, at the highest legal levels, to several important issues connected to victims’ rights. For example, Rehnquist claimed that allowing victim impact evidence does not violate the Eighth Amendment and that such evidence is simply one kind among others that sentencing authorities may (and do) use in relating sentencing to the harm caused by a crime (or criminal act). For his part, Stevens claimed that in the context of legal proceedings, the burden of proof must lie with the State. As just mentioned, advocacy for victims’ rights did not begin or end with Payne. Indeed, for well over thirty years, citizen advocacy groups, such as the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) have been active, and statutes have been passed in numerous state legislatures. At the beginning of 2003, two-thirds
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of the states in the United States had constitutional amendments recognizing and identifying specific rights of crime victims. For example, the Oregon state constitution was amended in 1999, with two sections added to it, the first dealing with the rights of victims in criminal prosecutions and juvenile court delinquency proceedings, and the second dealing with the rights of victims and the public to protection from accused persons during criminal trial proceedings and the denial of pretrial release. In the state of Florida in 1988, voters approved by an overwhelming majority of 90 percent a victims’ rights amendment to their state constitution. Section 16, paragraph (b) now reads: Victims of crime or their lawful representatives, including the next of kin of homicide victims, are entitled to the right to be informed, to be present, and to be heard when relevant, at all crucial stages of criminal proceedings, to the extent that these rights do not interfere with the constitutional rights of the accused. Title XLVII, Chapter 960, of the Florida Statutes spells out in much greater detail the specifics of victims’ rights, such as information concerning services available to victims, information concerning protection available to victims, and others. In addition to amendments to many state constitutions, a bill had been proposed (several times) in the United States Senate to amend the United States Constitution with a Victims’ Rights Amendment. The primary sponsors of this bill are Diane Feinstein (D-Ca) and John Kyl (R-Az). Former presidents William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton and George W. Bush have supported this bill, in its different editions, but it has not passed in the Senate. While this bill has not become law, it does address a concern believed by many people that the legal criminal system has long emphasized the rights of the accused over the rights of victims, a concern we saw echoed in the remarks above made about Payne. For example, while a person accused of a crime has the legal right to a speedy trial by a jury of peers and a legal right to be present throughout the trial, the victim of the crime does not have a legal right to either. The issue of victims’ rights, then, falls under the larger issues of retributive justice (concerned with relevant punishment of a criminal) and restorative justice (concerned with restoring or compensating of a victim). In this paper, I want to raise concerns about victims’ rights, more at a philosophical, conceptual level than directly at a legislative or judicial level. If these conceptual-level concerns are well founded, they then speak to the legislative or judicial level. Why would anyone not support victims’ rights? The recognition or failure of recognition of victims’ rights shapes in part what and when victim testimony affects legal proceedings. For supporters of victims’ rights, their recognition helps balance the legal and moral concerns of victims with those of offenders. For critics of victims’ rights, their recognition contaminates the presumption of
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innocence and due legal process. With respect to specific victims’ right legislation and to victims’ rights issues generally, positions taken by different people are not simply a matter of partisan politics. Supporters of victims’ rights include people across the political spectrum (for example, Diane Feinstein, seen by many as ultra-liberal, John McCain, seen as a moderate Republican, John Kyl (Az) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), both seen as conservatives). Likewise, opponents of some victims’ rights legislation, including an amendment to the United States Constitution, include the American Civil Liberties Union, George Will, and even the Cato Institute (apparently strange bedfellows, indeed!). An additional minor point to mention, at least with respect to the present paper, is that the vast majority of victims’ rights legislation is aimed at criminal cases, even though the vast majority of crimes involving victims are property crimes (such as theft and burglary). The bill that proposes an amendment to the United States Constitution only speaks of “the rights of victims of violent crime.” As such, its scope appears to be too narrow for present concerns. A second preliminary point to make is that some opposition to victims’ rights legislation is based not on philosophical or conceptual grounds but on more practical legal and political matters. For example, during a debate over a federal Victims’ Rights Amendment several years ago, Beth Wilkinson, a federal prosecutor from the Oklahoma City bombing case, argued against such an amendment. Wilkinson argued that had victims of the bombing been able to block the plea agreement of Michael Fortier, who was granted leniency in return for significant testimony against other defendants, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols might not have been convicted. While such matters are relevant to the passage of statutes and to the role of victim impact evidence in specific cases, they are not the focus of this paper. Instead, here I will raise concerns over three aspects of victim’s rights: Who is the victim? To what do victims have rights? Why legal rights as opposed to some other mode of legal response? 2. Who is the Victim? One issue within the scope of victims’ rights is who exactly counts as the victim of a crime. Though obviously the person directly harmed is a victim, other people can be and are often indirectly harmed, such as a murder victim’s family. This becomes especially important when a Victim Impact Statement (VIS) is allowed into the legal proceedings. A VIS is a written or verbal statement of a victim’s views concerning the impact the crime has had on them. In cases in which the direct victim cannot give a VIS, other relevant persons (such as family members) can give one. These statements are offered, usually during sentencing or release hearings and provide the victims’ opinion not only on the impact of the crime on their lives, but also of their recommendation of an appropriate sentence, and even of what they believe is the risk to them if the accused or convicted defendant is released or is given a lesser sentence.
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This question of who is the victim is not simply an academic exercise in demanding a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying what counts as a victim. Rather, it points to a fundamental understanding of the relevant parties involved in the case. For example, sections 42 and 43 of the Oregon state constitution defines “victim” as: “Victim” means any person determined by the prosecuting attorney to have suffered direct financial, psychological, or physical harm as a result of a crime and, in the case of a victim who is a minor, the legal guardian of the minor. In the event that no person has been determined to be a victim of a crime, the people of Oregon, represented by the prosecuting attorney, are considered to be the victims. In no event is it intended that the criminal defendant be considered the victim. This statement of who is a victim raises two concerns. Victim Impact Statements usually include indirect victims. Drawing a non-arbitrary line between indirect victims and others creates a difficulty. For example, if a person’s home is burgled, and the next-door neighbor then purchases a home security system to avoid also being burgled, is the neighbor an indirect victim and hence entitled to some form of compensation from the defendant? The difficulty here, I believe, is not that we have not yet done a good enough job of enunciating who is the victim; the difficulty is that the concept is vague to the point of being legally unwieldy, given that there are direct and indirect victims, actual and virtual victims, manifest and latent victims, primary and secondary victims. Who, then, would or should be given legal status? Who would or should be awarded legal rights? Who would and should qualify for restitution and compensation? The second concern about who is the victim is highlighted by Oregon’s language that “the people of Oregon,” represented by the prosecuting attorney, are considered to be victims in the event that no person is so determined. The point here is that the State is the entity that prosecutes. The legal process is between the State and the defendant. Because it is the State, and not an individual person, who prosecutes, Justice Stevens emphasized that due process requires that the power of the State must be limited and balanced by the presumption of innocence, the insistence that guilt be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt. To enhance the power of the State in legal proceedings by augmenting the role of individual persons, identified as victims, would be to challenge a fundamental and foundational conception of limiting the power of the State.
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Just what do or would victims have rights to? This varies from state-to-state, but they generally fall under these categories: (1) a right to information about numerous concerns, such as assistance programs for victims, compensation programs, protection and safety programs, status and location of the offender; (2) a right to participation in the different stages of legal proceedings, such as attending relevant hearings, providing statements (including a VIS) in the context of the proceedings, designating and conferring with a lawful representative, contesting any post-conviction release of the offender; and (3) a right to restitution or compensation, that is, to have the prosecutor ask the judge to order the offender to reimburse the victim for expenses incurred as a result of the crime, or access to educational or employment services for victims who, because of the crime, cannot continue in their past careers. This issue of what victims have a right to raises a second sort of concern, namely, that of allowing the views and interests of victims to be heard before a judge or jury returns a verdict contaminates the legal deliberation process and runs counter to the idea that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Such victim testimony violates due process at two levels, say critics, first, prior to the decision about conviction and, second, in sentencing after a conviction. For the determination of guilt or innocence, the burden of proof must lie with the State. Victim impact statements are not criminal evidence and so should not be allowed at this stage of legal proceedings. Once guilt is determined, victim statements can only inject emotion, perhaps just revenge, into the process. In addition, critics claim, victim impact statements run counter to equal justice under the law, since the offender is not being sentenced on objective common standards of punishment, but in part on how well victims can make their case of suffering. So, for example, two similar or legally identical crimes might result in very dissimilar sentences because of the different eloquence of victims. 4. Why a Rights Approach? A broader issue, one on which I will only touch here, is the rights-based approach to dealing with concerns about victims of crime. Mary Ann Glendon, in her book, Rights Talk (1991), argues that our social discourse and approach to problem solving has been impoverished because we have tended to address more and more issues as conflicts in which the rights of one party trump the interests or goals or even rights of another party. An ever-expanding catalog of rights, she claims, has been claimed, especially over the past forty to fifty years, with the result that we have seen an increasingly greater tendency to frame social controversies and conflicts as a clash of rights. Along with this tendency to formulate issues and problems in the language of rights has been a penchant for absolute formulations and a “near-aphasia” concerning responsibilities.
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A rights-approach tends to be a winner-take-all approach to settling and resolving problems. As Glendon puts it, “Saturated with rights, political language can no longer perform the important function of facilitating public discussion of the right ordering of our lives together” (ibid., p. xi). Rights now adhere to us more and more in terms not of whom we are as persons or citizens, but in terms of a role, sometimes a temporary role, we play in our public lives. So, we have, or claim, rights as employers, as consumers, as members of various groups, as victims, etc. We do engage in those various roles, but the result of framing ourselves as rights-holders because of these roles, says Glendon, is to impoverish our identity as persons and citizens and to treat social interaction as a matter of trumping others. Indeed, she says, as most lawyers know, “the assertion of rights is usually a sign of a breakdown in a relationship” (ibid., p.175). An example of this rights-based approach, outside of the arena of victims’ rights, is the topic of animal rights. Persons can advocate as strongly as desired about humane treatment of non-human animals, can argue and even litigate on their behalf, but to frame the issue of animal welfare in terms of animal rights is not indisputably the most appropriate approach. Rights are a means of enunciating and securing powers and immunities in social contexts. For non-human animals to be rights-holders, they would need to be in the arena of such social relationships; they would need to be the holders of responsibilities, yet, surely, they are not. To reject a rights-based approach to dealing with the welfare of animals is not to reject their welfare or our obligations and responsibilities with respect to them. Analogously, with respect to victims’ rights, one can be a strong advocate for victims of crime and for their welfare, including such issues as restitution or need for information, without framing such advocacy in the language of rights. To be a holder of rights qua victim would seem to entail that one is a bearer of correlative responsibilities qua victim, yet this is no more considered than non-human animals are considered bearers of responsibilities. 5. Objections Despite claims that restorative justice is important and that victims are indeed just that—victims—many people balk at the arguments I have presented. I will address several objections to the position that has been presented so far in this essay. These objections include: (1) The legal process has different stages (for example, determination of guilt vs. sentencing). Advocacy of victims’ rights, including the use of a VIS, is legitimate at some stages of the legal process, especially at the stage of sentencing. (2) The law, its implementation, and execution is an imperfect exercise at almost every turn (for example, the common use of the necessarily vague “reasonable man standard”), but we do the best we can, so victims’ rights and the use of a VIS are not necessarily trumped or refuted by the concerns about State power. (3) Numerous factors can and do influence legal
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judgments and decisions (for example, the skills of different lawyers, the attractiveness of the accused, and the attitudes of the presiding judge), yet these are allowed (or tolerated) within the legal system, so why not a VIS? The first objection rightly identifies different stages in the legal process. Most people recognize that the accused is charged with a specific crime and, so, must be found guilty of that specific crime to justify a punishment. For that reason, most people (though not all) agree that victims’ rights and the use of a VIS is not relevant in determining guilt in that stage of the legal process. More often, victims’ rights and the use of a VIS is employed in the sentencing stage. We have, however, morally (if not legally specified) appropriate criteria and standards for punishments “fitting the crime.” These criteria and standards do not require the notion of victims’ rights or a VIS. If the “ fitting” punishment is, say, a specified term of incarceration or a specified monetary fine, then that is or should be, spelled out in appropriate statutes and legislation long before the sentencing occurs. Framing the sentencing in terms of victims’ rights—in the sense that these are particular rights beyond the “normal” rights of every individual— does not provide a justified or fair criterion or standard of punishment. Likewise, allowing a VIS in the sentencing stage of the legal process introduces new criteria and standards into the process “in the last inning,” so to speak. It permits, as was noted above, enhanced variation in sentencing that runs counter to equal treatment of offenders. The second objection was that throughout the legal process and system we allow and tolerate imprecision and variation (for example, the reasonable man standard). Even what we mean by such fundamental legal notions as equal protection is imprecise. Given that we allow and tolerate them, why not allow and tolerate the imprecision and variation that could come in the wake of victims’ rights and the use of a VIS? The kind of imprecision and variation that accompanies legal aspects such as the reasonable man standard is, however, of a significantly different sort, I want to say, than the kind of imprecision and variation that accompanies victims’ rights and the use of a VIS. Aspects such as the reasonable man standard are our means of trying to apply statutes or standards to many cases. The law must work at the level of generalities in order to be applicable to many different specific cases. As a result, for the law to work at all there must be imprecision and variation built into basic language, with interpretation, discretion, and judgment required for implementation and execution of those laws and statutes. However, a VIS is a different thing altogether. It is specific to a particular case, to be used on par with evidence directed at determining an appropriate punishment (if not outright guilt or innocence). That is a different kind of (use of) imprecision and variation, one that pits the power of the State against that of the offender. The third, related, objection is that there are many factors that influence legal judgments and decisions, such as the varying skills of lawyers, the attractiveness of the accused (or of witnesses, lawyers), or even the attitude of the presiding judge.
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We are all aware of the notion of “jury nullification.” We are also all aware that judges and juries can and do make decisions based on all sorts of matters aside from evidence that is relevant to the crime committed. So, why not allow and tolerate the use of a VIS, as well? A (perhaps flippant) response is that two wrongs do not make a right! The attractiveness of the accused (or anyone else) should not be a factor in making these legal determinations. The fact that this happens certainly is not self-justifying and, indeed, we have a system of legal appeals to overcome and weed out judgments that are subject to such factors. So, if the point of such an objection is that, since we already tolerate some factors that are irrelevant to blind justice we should then tolerate other such factors, I would suggest that this is mistaken. Our focus should be to work harder on removing irrelevant features of the legal process not broadening them. 6. Conclusion To conclude, with all these concerns about victims’ rights being said, what is right about victims’ rights? Victims, by definition, have been harmed or wronged in some way. Our basic sense of fairness, couched as restorative justice, demands that something be done to compensate or, if possible, restore those who have unjustly suffered. In addition, we want to be protected against further harms and wrongs, so we demand, say, to be informed of future dealings with the perpetrator of those harms and wrongs. With time, we will assess victims’ rights as legal rights written into statutes and state constitutions in terms of their efficacy in promoting and protecting the welfare of persons who have been victimized. We will be able to conduct empirical studies to find out how well the welfare of victims has in fact been furthered by victims’ rights legislation. As moral rights, however, we will find it more difficult to decide whether we will be able to assess the value of such legislation. We can be strong advocates for the welfare of victims of crime without insisting at a moral or legal level that such advocacy be framed in the language of rights.
Seven PEDAGOGY AND PUNISHMENT: A UNITARIAN ARGUMENT FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE Rob Gildert 1. Introduction Theories concerning the justification of punishment typically fall into one of two competing camps. They are either forward-looking or they are backward looking. Forward-looking theories base their justification of punishment on its ability to maximize social utility. This type may claim that punishing offenders is justified to deter others from committing similar offenses. Forward-looking theorists recognize that punishment is painful and ought to be avoided. However, they argue that criminal offenses are also harmful and ought to be avoided. They justify punishment if the harm caused to the offender by the punishment can be offset by the good achieved to others by reducing crime. Thus, these theories are essentially utilitarian. Utilitarianism is the philosophical school of thought that contends we must perform those acts that maximize social utility. For example, if we cash utility out in terms of happiness, then utilitarianism would hold that we perform act A over act B, if act A will lead to an increase in the overall happiness in society. Broadly speaking, backward-looking theories are not concerned with any social utility that might accrue from punishing offenders. According to Igor Primoratz, on the backward-looking account: the prevention of crime is something distinct from punishment. . . . If by punishing we prevent the commission of crimes in the future, so much the better; but neither such effects, nor the intention to bring them about, are inherent to the enterprise. (1989, pp. 179, 197–198) Instead, backward-looking theories focus on the crime at hand and hold that the offender deserves to be punished due to some injustice caused by the offender. On the backward-looking account, broadly speaking, punishment is justified since it is the required mechanism to rectify the injustice and rectifying injustices takes a moral precedence over social utility. In this way, backward-looking theo-
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ries that justify punishment are essentially retributive in nature since retributivism is concerned with what one deserves for offending. Immanuel Kant is perhaps the paradigmatic retributivist. According to him, if someone acts exactly as a moral law requires, then that person gives that law what that law is owed. To do less than is required is to be culpable, while to do more than the law requires is to be meritorious (Kant, 1996, 6:227). When we praise a certain act in word or deed we say that that act was the morally proper act. The act receives such praise because such acts, beings morally proper, are owed praise. When we praise the individual, we say that that person made the morally proper choice. When a person’s acts reflect the type of person that individual is we say that that person is moral or immoral. Such a person is moral or immoral because such an accrediting is owed that person. For Kant, we are compelled to praise or blame in some manner due to equality. If an individual inflicts a certain amount of pain on another then an equality of justice —”the position of the needle on the scale of justice”—demands that an equal amount of pain be inflicted on that person (ibid., 6:332). In short, individuals are made accountable for their acts by getting what they deserve. In this chapter, I am not concerned with any backward-looking or retributive justification of punishment. Instead, I argue on utilitarian grounds for the increased implementation of a system of restorative justice over more traditional penal sanctions as the state’s official response to the criminal behavior of many current offenders. By restorative justice, I mean the form of non-violent conflict resolution that takes a victim-centered response to crime, giving: the individuals most directly affected by a criminal act—the victim, the offender, their families, and representatives of the community—the opportunity to be directly involved in responding to the harm caused by the crime (Umbreit, 2001), p. xxvii). The utilitarian justifications of punishment that I discuss all utilize a fundamentally pedagogical approach for their justification. This pedagogical approach rests on punishment’s ability to deter offenders. On this account, when we punish offenders, we teach them not to offend by showing them the consequences of their actions. But in advocating restorative justice, I am not concerned with the forward-looking theory that punishment is implemented to rehabilitate offenders. Since the 1970s, the position that punishment is not an effective tool to rehabilitate offenders has been widely accepted. Although proponents advocate for rehabilitation programs to reduce offender recidivism, they do not view these programs as part of the offender’s punishment. Instead, they deliver these programs as treatments (Vitiello, 1991). This treatment aspect of rehabilitation, as opposed to any punitive aspect of rehabilitation, is that I discuss in this paper. I am especially concerned with the fundamentally pedagogical nature of treatment
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as restorative justice. In what follows, I argue that restorative justice is a better tool to protect society because it is the superior pedagogical tool for teaching offenders how to live peaceful, pro-social lives. I argue that the pedagogical superiority of non-violent methods of conflict resolution like restorative justice rests in the idea they give offenders, their victims, and their respective communities a forum to engage with one another in a manner that is fair and respectful of all sides. Such a forum offers participants the opportunity to engage in reciprocal cooperation and to see the benefits of that cooperation. By engaging participants in reciprocal cooperation, restorative justice teaches them how to lead peaceful, pro-social lives, reducing offender recidivism and the harm caused by re-offending. By contrast, penal sanctions tend to further marginalize individuals already residing on the fringes of society by subjecting them to stigmatizing punishments, increasing their likelihood to re-offend. Consequently, on utilitarian grounds, if we are attempting to correct people, to teach them the error of their ways and encourage their pro-social behavior, restorative justice should be implemented over penal sanctions to reduce the harm caused by their criminal offenses, and thus increase social utility. 2. Utilitarianism’s Use of Punishment as a Pedagogical Tool: Traditional Justifications and Problems The utilitarian use of punishment as a pedagogical tool can be traced back to the nineteenth century. During that time, Jeremy Bentham argued that human beings were under the auspices of two supreme masters—pleasure and pain. According to him, people tend to do those things that give them pleasure and avoid those things that give them pain. Since humans are also rational, punishment is attached to prohibited acts to serve as a deterrent to “exclude, as far as may be, every thing that tends to subtract from that happiness: in other words, to exclude mischief” (1948, p. 170). We must understand Bentham’s use of punishment in this manner as a pedagogical tool as opposed to an appeal to brute instinct. For example, a wild animal that has never seen fire may recoil at its first sight of flames. This reaction is probably best attributed to instinct as opposed to the animal’s learning anything from the fire. Bentham’s theory is different in that it is irrevocably tied to our ability to rationally choose among options. On Bentham’s account, punishment becomes a pedagogical tool when rational people are able to judge among acts and avoid committing illegal acts by recognizing the pain attached to the consequences of those acts. If the pain outweighs any potential pleasure or benefit accrued from the performance of the act then rational people will be inclined to refrain from performing the act because they will rationally seek to maximize their pleasure. Bentham argued that the pain attached to the punishment was to be such that it always outweighed the
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benefit, thereby ensuring its ability to teach potential offenders properly by clearly delineating acceptable and non-acceptable acts. We can see Bentham’s use of punishment as a pedagogical tool in his treatment of children and the mentally infirm. He is quite explicit in claiming that punishment is to be precluded as a deterrent against an offender where “it could produce no effect on him, with respect to the preventing him from engaging in any act of the sort in question” (ibid., p. 173). According to Bentham, such is the case with children, the insane, and drunks. Since incapacitated persons such as the insane and children are not rational in the manner of a mentally competent adult, they cannot properly appreciate the potential pain that their criminal acts promise and rationally choose the less painful act. Thus, they are not to be punished. We should not underestimate this pedagogical aspect of punishment for deterrence theorists. Even when arguing against one another, the use of punishment as a teaching tool is not lost. For example, H. L. A. Hart (1968, pp. 18–25) argues that Bentham’s position is essentially a non-sequitor. Hart argues that because people such as the mentally impaired and children are not deterrable does not imply that they ought not be punished on Bentham’s standard. Such persons may still be punished to maintain the overall efficacy of the deterrent on others. Richard Wasserstrom (1988, p. 59) agrees with Hart, but he is not concerned that the sick will be punished on par with the healthy. He is concerned that offenders will be treated as persons with a disability and treated instead of being punished. To counter the possibility that offenders will be treated instead of punished, he asks, when is it the case that a person with crime-conducive characteristics acts as a direct result of those characteristics as opposed to something else, say, greed, or opportunity, or some combination of everything. Or, does a compulsion become so strong that it cannot be resisted. “Would someone be a kleptomaniac only if such an individual would steal an object even though a policeman was known by the person to be present and observing every move?” He argues, “even if someone is sick, and even if the person cannot help being sick, this in no way implies that none of his or her actions could have been other than it was” (ibid., p. 58). According to him, rehabilitation does not necessarily deter potential criminals from engaging in crime. Subsequently, we will have no mechanism to persuade others not to disobey the law. According to him, deterrence must be maintained for this reason (ibid., pp. 63–64). To maintain the relevance or the import of the threat as a real consequence of criminal acts for others who are deterrable, the undeterrable person may still be punished on Bentham’s account. However, Hart (1968, pp. 25–27) says that this leads to a reductio in that we are now justified in punishing anyone who is not deterrable, such as the mentally infirm. According to Hart, to avoid the difficulties raised by punishing the innocent, a morally acceptable justification of punishment must be separated into three distinct questions. The first question can be raised as, what justifies the
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overall aim of punishment? The second question asks, who are we legitimately entitled to punish? Finally, how much punishment are we entitled to deliver? For Hart, breaking the justification of punishment down to its component elements allows us to answer the criticisms he leveled against Bentham’s justifications of punishment. All the while, Hart can maintain his use of punishment as a pedagogical tool. According to him, the answer to the first question is still deterrence. The punishment of offenders is justified because it deters others from committing similar crimes, maintaining an overall conformity with the law among the general population (ibid.). But this does not mean that anyone can be punished to maintain this conformity. According to Hart, considerations of responsibility—that one is responsible for what one does—are valuable and to be accorded a prominent role in a penal system. Hart claims that responsibility is of such importance that it should be afforded an uncontested place in sentencing. According to him, a system of laws that preserves a persons’ responsibility for their acts provides a framework for people to “predict and plan” their lives (ibid., p. 181). This framework outlines what is acceptable behavior and what is not. This allows people to decide for themselves what they may and may not do and provides them with a sphere within which to operate that is free from legal interference. In this way, holding people responsible for their acts through punishment serves as an important pedagogical tool as it teaches us what is and is not acceptable in society. Should the framework that this type of punishment provides be taken away—should, for example, accidents and mistakes also count as crimes—this sphere is removed and people are “less able to foresee the times of the law’s interference” (ibid., p. 182) This answers Hart’s second question: we are only to punish those who break the law to maintain responsibility and provide people with a mechanism to lead lives free from the coercive influence of the law (ibid., p. 9). But it also preserves utilitarianism’s commitment to punishment as a pedagogical tool, since deterrence, for Hart, is still the general justifying aim of punishment. But Hart’s theory has its problems, stemming from his treatment of the third question: how much are we to punish? According to Wesley Cragg, Hart’s primary focus is on his first two questions and “no clear general answer to the third question emerges from those discussions” (1992a, p. 47). This is a serious problem. According to Hart, judges should determine sentence severity using common sense. In employing ordinary reasoning, judges are to keep in mind what is needed to maintain the deterrent threat of punishment and individual responsibility. But Cragg argues that such a combination is impossible since deterrence and responsibility each comes with its own requirements for punishing that will inevitably clash. Moreover, allowing some type of common sense approach for balancing the two could result in differing decisions as differing judges apply differing principles (ibid., pp. 47–49). According to Richard Mervin Hare (1986, pp. 211–233), the problem of what punishment to inflict is not a concern for the rule utilitarian. Rule utilita-
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rians argue that the best way maximize social utility is to establish a set of rules that generally serve to increase utility and adhere to them. With regard to punishment, rule utilitarians would seek to determine an accommodation between what is needed for social utility and what a society would allow given other values held by the society. This accommodation would be codified as a set of rules for all to follow. According to Hare, inflicting too severe, too lenient, or disparate punishments would only serve to undermine a penal system by planting both the seeds of discontent and uncertainty amongst adherents. Thus such a system would not be conducive to maximizing utility. Hare argues that there are utilitarian grounds for the implementation of rules that would serve to eliminate unsavory principles and remain true to our more cherished values. Richard Booker Brandt makes a similar claim (1959, pp. 480, 489–495, 503–505). But rule utilitarianism has deep pedagogical problems. What if sometimes ignoring the rule and punishing the innocent will merely increase utility? John Jamieson Carswell Smart argues that to avoid rule worshipping, the rule utilitarian must forgo the rule and act in the manner that increases utility. According to Smart, rule utilitarianism must ultimately collapse into act utilitarianism as act utilitarianism requires us to perform those acts that will increase utility. But if rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism, then the specter is once again raised that utilitarians might inflict overly harsh, lenient, or disparate punishments (Smart, 1973). The implied ability of punishment to teach social conformity is lost. We should not take this concern lightly. For example, Ernest van den Haag (1988) argues for the increased implementation of capital punishment as a deterrent. According to him, we should not be swayed by statistics that contend life in prison is as effective a deterrent as the death penalty. He says that common sense tells us that if life in prison is an effective deterrent, then the death penalty, the more frightening of the two penalties, should be even more effective. Jeffrey H. Reiman (1985, pp. 115–148) argues that such lines of thinking are pedagogically bankrupt. He holds that no studies indicate capital punishment is a more effective deterrent than life in prison. He claims that such a theory licenses morally abhorrent punishments such as torture. According to him, if the death penalty were frightening, then surely death by torture would be even more frightening. On Ernest Van den Haag’s account, we should license death by torture. Surely this is absurd. According to Reiman, murderers may deserve death, but punishments are meant to do more than frighten. According to him, if we believe murder is abhorrent, then there an important pedagogical reason exists for abolishing capital punishment. He argues that in refusing to kill the murderer, we emphasize our commitments to civility and the sanctity of life. In forgoing the execution of murderers, we teach civility and the sanctity of life to both murderers and society while maintaining the deterrent benefit of punishment.
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3. The Failure of Punishment as a Pedagogical Tool While Reiman’s retort to van den Haag is refreshing, it does not help us understand whether utilitarians can morally limit how much punishment may be used as a deterrent. The real difficulty for these utilitarians is that punishment is a flawed pedagogical tool: either it does not work as an effective deterrent or it serves to increase incidences of criminal activity. Although one of the more widely implemented punishments in Western society is imprisonment, according to Dean J. Champion’s exhaustive research (1994, pp. 516–517), no studies are known to indicate incarceration deters current criminals from future acts of criminal behavior or deters potential offenders from starting their criminal activity. Much anecdotal evidence supports these claims. For example, Russia incarcerates 694 prisoners per every 100,000 people; the United States of America incarcerates 600 people for every 100,000; Canada incarcerates 133 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The rate of violent crime in Canada is dramatically lower than in either of the other countries. Prison appears to fail as a deterrent on both counts. Increasing the severity of the incarceration to amplify its ability to deter is correlated with an increase in recidivism (Gendreau, Goggin, and Cullen, 1999; National Crime Prevention Council of Canada, 1995; Brody, 1976). According to Paul Gendreau, to effectively alter the behavior of offenders or potential offenders, punishment must be applied at the moment the offense occurs and it must be applied at maximum intensity to avoid any chance of escape for the recipient. The punishment cannot be spread out or varied. Gendreau (2000) offers as an example of such a punishment shock therapy applied immediately when an offender commits a crime. How this could be accomplished at present without some sort of Orwellian intervention on the part of the state is the stuff of science fiction. Unfortunately, a failure to punish in this manner may actually increase an offender’s likelihood to re-offend. According to Gendreau, this is exactly what punishments such as incarceration do (ibid., pp. 7–10). I realized that the utilitarian commitment to incarceration is purely contingent. If incarceration fails to serve as a deterrent, then the utilitarian could simply argue for the implementation of a punishment that will deter. That is to say, if incarceration does not teach people to be law-abiding citizens, then perhaps some other punishment will. However, such a punishment does not seem to exist. The inability of incarceration to deter offenders is due not to some inherent flaw exclusive to it but to punishment’s inability to deter. According to Don A. Andrews, “variation in the type and severity of offender penalties is largely irrelevant to future criminal conduct. Punishment alone does not work” (Andrews and Hoge, 1995, p. 35). So, what is this flaw, this problem with punishment? The problem with punishment, broadly speaking, appears to be people. Human beings simply do not respond to the threat of punishment or the implementation of punishment in the manner requisite to make punishment a viable deterrent and thus an effective
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pedagogical tool. Now, this is not to say that punishment deters no one. Some people undoubtedly will be deterred by the threat of punishment. However, to be justified on a utilitarian standard, punishment must not merely work on some people—the utility must increase because the pain caused by punishment, or anticipated pain, must outweigh the actual benefits accruing to the lawbreaker, or the lawbreaker’s anticipated benefits. That this happens is not readily apparent. To see the difficulties involved with justifying punishment on utilitarian grounds, we must note that the great majority of people do not refrain from criminal activity for fear of the potential punishment. The vast majority of people do not need to be taught through punishment that harming others is wrong. The thought of harming another, stealing, or some other offense is unconscionable to most people. So, for many people, punishments play no part in their abiding by the law. For these people a moral code or some religious belief is enough to maintain a pro-social lifestyle. Those inclined towards criminality “in virtually every crime category” claim that they give little thought to any potential punishment (Champion, 1994, p. 517). But if punishment is to be an effective pedagogical tool, then thinking of it before offending appears to be prerequisite to its success. To exacerbate matters, when offenders do think of the possible punishment for their crime, the thought of that punishment often has an effect opposite of the one desired. To escape the punishment for an already committed crime, offenders often engage in greater wrongdoing to conceal their crimes, risking greater punishment, instead of surrendering or ceasing their current offense (Manski, 1978, p. 401). In some cases, punishment appears to increase exactly the type of behavior it was meant to eradicate. Moreover, when offenders are punished, more often than not, the punishment stigmatizes them. Many offenders are individuals already residing on the margins of society. For example, individuals from impoverished social backgrounds are already marginalized by their social circumstances. Instead of encouraging their integration into society, purely punitive measures further marginalize them. Singling out and humiliating these already marginalized offenders further drives a wedge between them and society. Such a wedge can be most conducive to future incidents of crime and a decrease in overall social utility (Carp, 1988, 277–294). Increased marginalization is catastrophic for deterrence. Researchers have estimated that repeat offenders commit the majority of offenses. In the United States, one study reported that 6 percent of the American population commits 50 percent of the criminal offenses (Department of Justice, 1993). The situation is similar in Canada where a longitudinal study of 10,000 boys in Quebec discovered that 7 percent of them committed 70 percent of the crimes attributed to the group (National Crime Prevention Council of Canada, 1995; U.S. Department of Justice, 1985). Realizing that a relatively small group commits the majority of crime in society is a potential boon for reducing criminal activity. If this small group of re-
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peat offenders commits the lion’s share of crime, then implementing a pedagogical tool that can effectively deal with offending could result in a dramatic decrease in criminal activity. But punishment does not do this. Punishment ensures that those who commit offenses are much more likely to offend again, thus creating more misery. 4. Toward a Pedagogically Balanced Response to Crime A. Maintaining a Focus on the Offender We need not cling to punishment in hope of somehow creating a safer society. According to many researchers, an effective pedagogical tool can be designed to deal with the problem of offending. That pedagogical tool must be sensitive to the needs of the offender. Experts currently argue that the most effective crime prevention programs will be those that focus on a “social-psychological understanding of criminal conduct” (Andrews and Hoge, 1995, p. 34). Researchers have isolated four risk factors correlated with criminal behavior. Individuals who (1) foster antisocial attitudes such as rationalizations of their criminal activity, (2) have antisocial associates, (3) have a history of antisocial behavior, and (4) display antisocial personality traits such as restless aggressiveness and impulsiveness are at a greater risk of committing criminal offenses. To deal with these individuals, researchers advocate not punishment but treatment and education—to increase social utility, we must provide offenders with programs that meet their needs. For example, offenders addicted to drugs should receive substance abuse programming and violent offenders whose crimes are the result of angry acting out should receive anger management programming that deals with teaching offenders behavior modification techniques. These findings are widely corroborated. According to the office of the Solicitor General of Canada (1988), programs addressing the needs of offenders can reduce the levels of their recidivism by 50 percent. In Britain, young offenders sent to prison had higher rates of recidivism than those given communitybased sanctions (Brownlee, 1995, pp. 599–612). Offering those same programs in the community is twice as effective at reducing an offender’s recidivism rate as offering the same programs in prison. On the other hand, getting tougher on crime by increasing the utilization of incarceration or other more punitive measures has been shown to increase an offender’s potential to re-offend. Punitive sanctions—incarceration or otherwise—often work against successful treatments. For example, incarcerated offenders often seek treatment programs not for their medicinal or educational benefit but to reduce their sentences or because they are ordered to do so by their jailers. Unfortunately, such motivations do not make for good patients or students (Firestone and Marshall, 1999, p. 277).
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Even if in-prison programs are successful, the problem of stigmatization remains. Upon their release, ex-convicts must face a public not merely hostile and untrusting towards them, but often unwilling to employ them. In addition, time spent in prison means a lack of employment experience and a break in education often hard to overcome. The article, “A Stigma that Never Fades,” published in The Economist (10 August 2002, pp. 25–26), said that this stigma even affects individuals who have been convicted of a felony but who have never been incarcerated. In the United States, job applications ask if people have been convicted of a felony, not whether they have served time. “Too Many Convicts,” in the same edition of The Economist (p. 9), reported that sixty-five percent of American employers would not hire an ex-con, and a criminal record precludes employment in some occupations. For example, in Illinois, an ex-con cannot be a barber or a manicurist. Also, some ex-cons are denied housing benefits upon release and an estimated five million have lost the right to vote. Facing these hardships, offenders may resort to their criminal ways to survive, or out of frustration, regardless of their treatment or what they have been taught. Nigel Walker discusses these problems and argues that stigmatization may constitute a punishment more severe than intended, resulting in a punishment disproportional to the crime (Walker, 1991, p. 109). This cannot help but decrease social utility. B. Increasing the Focus on Victims For some people, the obvious way to deal with the inefficiencies encountered by punishment is to scrap it in favor of purely rehabilitative treatments. But this may not be the answer. In advancing deterrence measures as the justification of punishment, utilitarians typically place emphasis of concern on the offender, the potential offender, and the potential victim. Current victims appear to be lost in the shuffle. This has led (and may continue to lead) to a decrease in social utility. Victims of crime often complain that the criminal justice system has forgotten or ignored them. According to victims, in ignoring their needs, offenders and the state rob them of their independence and autonomy. In this manner, victims are twice victimized by crime, “first by the criminal and then by the criminaljustice system” (Hofrichter, 1980, pp., 103–119, esp. 116). Until recently, these difficulties facing victims “aroused little comment or interest. Suddenly they were “discovered,” and afterwards it was unclear how their obvious neglect could have so long gone without attention and remedy” (Geis, 1990, p. 255). To help seek a remedy for their situations, many victims have formed associations that advocate the recognition of victim’s rights and a greater role in constructing laws and passing sentences. In furthering this end, two types of associations have formed. One seeks to support other victims in their trauma. A second type seeks a greater role in determining the sentences of their offenders
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(Dijk, 1988). Those of the second type demand, among other things, that victim impact statements be presented in court when determining an appropriate sentence for an offender. They believe that the true scope and nature of the crime cannot be effectively assessed until the judge fully understands the effect of the crime on its victims. More often than not, these associations seek more punitive sentences. They do not typically recommend leniency (say in the form of a rehabilitative treatment program). But increased sentences lead to a decrease in overall social utility. Some theorists have labeled victim’s rights groups vindictive and their concerns misplaced in criminal justice proceedings (Elias, 1990). But this reaction is to the detriment of social utility. Victim driven initiatives that seek greater punishment for offenders have met with strong support from the general public, thereby putting increased pressure on governments to enact pro-victim change. More often than not, governments pander to the public’s demand for increased offender sentences to secure re-election (Scheingold, Olson, and Pershing, 1994, pp. 729–763). But, as we have seen, increased sentences not only fail to deter people from committing crimes, but also increase the likelihood of recidivism. The utilitarian is thus placed on the horns of a dilemma. Utilitarians who scrap the punishment of offenders for rehabilitative treatments run the risk of enraging the public, fueling a demand for even greater punishments, and decreased social utility. Utilitarians who retain punishment ultimately utilize a system that creates much pain and suffering and the continual erosion of social utility. 5. Restorative Justice as a Pedagogical Tool: Succeeding Where Punishment Fails Fortunately, we have a way out of the utilitarian’s dilemma, a way to reduce the harm caused by offending in a manner that satisfies the needs and demands of victims and increase social utility. We can find this way in forgoing violence for the teaching of peace in the form of restorative justice. While many people have never heard of restorative justice, it is not a new concept. Indigenous societies of North America, as well as Babylonian, Roman, Hebrew, Maori societies all practiced ancient forms of restorative justice. Today, close to 1500 restorative justice initiatives are in operation around the world. In the United States, over 300 restorative justice initiatives operate under a variety of names such as Native Justice Circles, Healing Circles, Family Group Conferencing, Victim Offender Mediation Programs, and Community Justice Circles. Literally thousands of groups from across the continent have requested information packets aimed at creating new restorative justice initiatives in their communities (Umbreit, 2001, p. xxxiii). The common element of restorative justice in all of these programs is the emphasis in criminal proceedings on the restoration of harmony between offend-
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er, victim, and community. In a restorative justice initiative, offenders, their victims, and community members gather voluntarily with a mediator to discuss the offenders’ crimes. All sides work together to reach a mutually agreed upon response to the crime. For a restorative justice initiate to be successful, offenders must accept responsibility for their crimes and actively work towards helping repair or compensate their victims. The ways in which offenders can help repair or compensate their victims is stipulated in the offenders’ “sentence” or disposition. The disposition delivered to offenders is a list of demands placed on offenders that they must fulfill in order to account for their crimes. But before an offender’s disposition can be reached, the pedagogical aspects of restorative justice—its mechanisms for teaching peace—must be implemented. This is accomplished through dialogue and understanding. For example, offenders are given the opportunity to explain to their victims why they offended. In doing so, offenders cease to be faceless terrors or monsters to their victims. Instead, offenders become humanized in the eyes of their victims. Victims and members of the community are given an opportunity to explain how seriously offenders’ crimes have affected them. In doing so, victims become a real in face-to-face encounters with offenders rather than remaining abstract objects that easily can be dismissed in the commission of their crimes. Because restorative justice, unlike punishment, considers the needs of both victims and offenders, it is a useful pedagogical tool in reaching these mutually agreed upon dispositions. Punishment leaves unattended the needs of the victim while exacerbating conditions that precipitated the offender’s offence, thereby decreasing social utility. Alternatively, the aim of restorative justice is solving problems as opposed to establishing some abstract concept such as justice (Shearing, 2001, p. 20). As a mechanism for solving these problems, restorative justice can be described as a type of grab bag of corrections responses. A partial list of these corrections responses include, any, or some combination of, the following: paying restitution to victims (either repaying money or fixing or replacing damaged property), offering apologies, community service, educational enhancements, treatment for addictions, anger management or life skills classes designed to teach coping measures, and employment (Umbreit, 2001, pp. 42–44). As such, restorative justice seeks to employ those mechanisms that will be most effective in dealing with the particular crime at hand. From a pedagogical standpoint, this is the strength of restorative justice. For example, if offenders commit crimes while addicted to drugs, then these offenders would be required to take treatment for addiction, directly addressing the contributing causes of their criminal behavior. Offenders would also apologize to any victims and seek to make direct reparation of any stolen money if possible. Offenders would be required, if needed, to upgrade their education to demonstrate a capacity to obtain employment.
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From a pedagogical perspective, restorative justice initiatives will only license responses necessary to properly prepare offenders for lives as law-abiding citizens. If facilitators deemed a particular measure either inappropriate or unduly cumbersome for an offender, then that measure would not be assigned to the offender. Thus, if an offender is employed, then efforts would be made to accommodate that person’s employment with the assigned restorative justice measures. As well, these restorative measures are designed to help meet the needs of victims (McElrea, 1995, p. 43). True, when a restorative justice initiative is implemented, both the offender and the victim or the victim’s family or loved ones (in the case of death or incapacitation) work together to establish an appropriate response to the offense and help re-integrate the offender back into society. But this response to the offender’s crime (such as restitution or community service) must also convey to the offender the wrongness of treating people in harmful ways. Thus it is not the case that participants in a restorative justice initiative can settle for any response. For example, Chris Cunneen argues that for the restorative justice process to work, offenders must repair, as best as possible, the harm caused to the victim. This cannot be done by apology alone (2001, p. 94). Wesley Cragg rightly points out that the greater the harm caused by the offender, the greater will be the victim’s grievance with the offender. If we ignore this fact, then we fail to adequately address the needs of the victim (1992b, p. 165). He argues, “[effective] conflict resolution cannot occur unless those affected by the resolution see it as an adequate response to the harms” (ibid., p. 192). From a pedagogical perspective, victims must be shown that their needs are as important as offenders’ needs are. For example, a mugger in a restorative justice initiative cannot get off with a mere apology to the victim. To adequately convey the seriousness of the offense and address the concerns of the victim and the needs of the mugger, the mugger may receive a response that combines stipulations for treatment for substance abuse (if needed, for example), repayment of the stolen money, community service work, and apologies. Considering the utilitarian requirement to increase social utility, the commitment of restorative justice to addressing the needs of both victims and offenders has had impressive results. Ted Wachtel and Paul McCold point out that in satisfying victims, re-integrating offenders, and reducing recidivism rates the evidence shows, “[in the] vast majority of situations, restorative practices work better than punishment or treatment” (2001, p. 123). For example, with regard to the benefits of offenders alone, restorative justice initiatives have been shown to lower recidivism rates, at a minimum, on par with other more penal responses to offending such as incarceration. Most of the time, however, restorative justice works better than penal sanctions. According to the research, restorative justice initiatives typically lower the recidivism rates of offenders by 10-15 percent more than punitive responses do. In some instances, these recidivism rates have been lowered by as much as 32 percent (Umbreit, 2001, pp. 171–172). This is
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obviously positive for social utility as a decrease in offending leads to a decrease in the harm caused by offending. But what is perhaps most interesting, from a pedagogical and utilitarian perspective, is why restorative justice works. When we put people in conflict together in a manner that respects their needs and their dignity, and when we encourage that respect to be reciprocated, people tend to follow that lead. Moreover, in making that change and working together to solve problems, people take ownership of the problem and the solution. They invest themselves into securing those solutions. Through restorative justice, victims are given a greater sense of satisfaction and placed in a better position to put their victimization behind them and move on with their lives. Offenders view the proceedings as fair and are consequently more inclined to work towards the successful completion of their dispositions. According to McCold and Wachtel, satisfaction is the proper measure of success for a restorative justice initiative with regard to victims, while fairness is the standard to be employed for offenders (2002, pp. 132–134). As a result, restorative justice initiatives are able to affect true changes of heart. According to Sveinn Thorvaldson, what makes restorative justice work is that its participants “responded more positively for the right reasons: they tended to appreciate the principles of fair reciprocity that community service expresses” (1980, p. 85). Unlike punitive punishments, people are led in the direction of peace through restorative justice, and peace, I posit, is at the heart of living a law-abiding life. 6. Objections and Answers: A Further Fleshing Out of Restorative Justice A. Restorative Justice and Violent Offenders Despite the success of restorative justice, its critics have claimed that it is merely a “front-end” diversion tactic for less serious crimes (Umbreit, 2001, p. 175). The critic claims that restorative justice is implemented before a case goes to trial for more minor offenses. As such, restorative justice may be implemented in less serious criminal cases such as petty theft or minor vandalism. But restorative justice cannot be implemented in more serious cases such as murder, sexual assault, or armed robbery because the damage there is beyond repair. For example, rape is a crime that leaves victims with deep emotional scars. To require rape victims to engage their attackers in face-to-face meetings may further traumatize these people leading to their re-victimization (ibid., p. 59). But we cannot repair the relationship or restore harmony between a murderer and the person murdered. In these cases, a more punitive response is required to protect society from these serious offenders and to deter others from committing similar acts. Limited in this manner, restorative justice’s impact on social utility is only minor.
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In answering these objections, I am not arguing for the complete abandonment of the penal system. I am arguing for the increased implementation of a system of restorative justice to increase social utility by dealing with many offenders. Proponents of restorative justice understand that abandoning the prison system entirely is not a viable correctional option (McElrea, 1995, p. 3). I understand that some individuals will choose crime as a career, or to fulfill their most base desires, and be impervious to any restorative justice initiative. The protection of society may require that these more dangerous offenders be separated from the general population. I also understand that particularly heinous acts remove some offenders from the pale of restorative justice. The crimes of a Ted Bundy are irreparable. Nothing is left to restore with regard to some crimes, or series of crimes, because the methods of restorative justice cannot redeem some offenders. As a result, prison is the place for such persons (ibid., p. 4). It follows, therefore, that protecting society requires a high level of likelihood that an offender is redeemable. Retaining prison for many violent offenders does not mean that restorative justice is precluded as a response to all violent offenders. Restorative justice is not as limited in its application as its critics allege. Restorative justice initiatives have been successfully implemented in cases of murder, vehicular homicide, manslaughter, armed robbery, and sexual assault (Umbreit, 2001, pp. 171–175, 289–290). What distinguishes successful restorative justice in response to violent offenses is the degree of caution with which we explore initiatives. Crime involving violence is typically more complex due to the level of emotional trauma such crime causes. Due to this complexity, restorative justice measures typically proceed more slowly to discern what methods work best at meeting the needs of those involved, and what individuals, at what time, would make viable candidates for restorative justice initiatives. For example, a recently raped woman who is still bearing great emotional and physical pain would hardly be an ideal candidate for participating in restorative justice measures. Instead, mediators would meet with this person to discuss her difficulties, recommend support, and, in due time, reinitiate contact with her and offender. In instances where greater care and time is taken to deliver restorative justice the empirical evidence is quite clear. Restorative justice works as “these very intense, time consuming mediation efforts have shown promising, positive results” (ibid., p. 175). For example, restorative initiatives have met with great success in bringing together offenders who have murdered and the family members of their victims. Some participants even suggest that we should these programs to include other, more serious crimes (Umbreit, 1995, pp. 20–21). Family members who have lost a loved one to murder are often highly motivated to confront their loved one’s killer. These survivors express “gratefulness for not being forgotten, silenced or ignored” (Umbreit, 2001, p. 175). Offenders participating in these initiatives are often initially hesitant to attend mediation but then relieved at being given the opportunity to make tangible amends at alleviating the suffering caused by their
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crimes. Mark Umbreit provides us with several accounts of restorative justice initiatives that have changed an offender’s perspectives for the better. What is interesting about these cases is that while they are extraordinary examples of changes in a person’s perspective, they are not atypical for restorative justice (ibid., p. 275). We should not underestimate the damage that can be repaired from a social utility perspective. Offenders engaging in restorative justice initiatives often work within the prison system to change attitudes and penal conditions to better facilitate the treatment and education of other convicts. Survivors also experience a great deal of satisfaction in meeting their loved one’s offenders. Survivors are able to question offenders to find out, first hand, the events surrounding their loved one’s death and the motivations of offenders in the commission of the crime. Survivors are able to recommend courses of action that offenders may take to alleviate the pain they have caused survivors to experience as well as subsequent ways to monitor the progress of offenders. This has led, in some cases, to survivors ceasing attempts to block the release of “their” offenders (ibid., p. 270). In addition, both survivor and offender can work together to prevent further murders. Victims and murderers can speak with those at risk of offending and relate their pain, putting a human face on crime (ibid., p. 272). But if restorative justice can have benefits when the violent criminal is incarcerated for years, neither should we underestimate its benefits with regard to violent offenders sentenced to lesser terms. Possibly some term of incarceration is necessary to safeguard society from any immediate threat these offenders may pose. But many of these sentences can be mitigated, if not also precluded, by the social benefits of a truly reformed offender. Empirical evidence demonstrates that individuals in poorer communities are at greater risk of becoming offenders. For example, one study of 4000 school-aged children noted that 14 percent of boys living in poverty were violent while 5 percent of boys from wealthy areas were violent (National Crime Prevention Council of Canada, 1995). I think that this study suggests a concern. While longitudinal studies do not themselves indicate an escalation in criminality, we do know that individuals committing less serious offenses today are at a greater risk of committing more serious offenses tomorrow (Tremblay and Loeber, 1994, pp. 732–739). If a higher percentage of poor children are offending today, this could translate into a higher percentage of poor offenders committing more serious crimes tomorrow. Over time, whereas some previously incarcerated youths fear punishment, youths previously incarcerated for more serious offenses do not. “Instead, their fear of punishment is reduced by their poverty, drug use, association with criminal peers, and missing normative constraints” (Baron and Kennedy, 1998, p. 33). But when we give offenders currently incarcerated or those on probation the tools to succeed, we reduce the likelihood of their recidivism and the risk that their friends and associates will become offenders, thereby maximizing social utility.
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A further difficulty arises from the higher percentage of offenders coming from poorer communities. Many (if not the majority) of offenders will remain in their communities. For example, “A Stigma that Never Fades” reported a study that determined 20 percent of the state’s ex-prisoners live in 3 percent of that city’s neighborhoods (The Economist, 10 August 2002). This concept is crucial for us to understand if we are attempting to create communities in which offenders can live and become productive citizens. When we do away with more punitive responses to crime, we do away with some of the very things that help exacerbate the tendency of an offender to reoffend—the stigmatization, the marginalization, the pain, and the reduced opportunities of advancement that accompany punishment. However, in a restorative justice system, offenders are dealt with in a manner that addresses their needs. In doing so, offenders are given the opportunity not merely to return to society—to their communities—but to improve themselves for their reentry. When we reintegrate offenders into their communities after undergoing restorative initiatives, we aid in the construction of healthier more vital communities that serve to decrease the likelihood of creating new offenders. We aid in the construction of healthier communities by returning persons who contribute to their communities instead of harming their communities. B. Restorative Justice and Community Acceptance Finally, critics could argue that society will simply never accept restorative justice as an alternative to penal sanctions. The average citizen will not admit that anything but a penal response to offending is proportional to a criminal offense. Implementing more restorative justice initiatives will have a backlash, as citizens demand harsher punishments to hold offenders accountable for their crimes, undermining any increase restorative justice may have in social utility. As a result, critics claim, social utility requires punishment at its current levels to prevent an even greater backlash. I believe that an argument against this objection can be launched, one that promises much hope. First, the requirement of restorative justice to seek treatments aimed at the needs of a particular offender does not mean that sanctions or a sense of responsibility for persons’ actions is lost. For example, in 1989, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs passed a resolution stating that offenders should not only accept responsibility for their actions but also remain in the community to make restorations to their victims. Wachtel and McCold argue that this approach is more conducive at holding offenders accountable for their crimes than punishment is. They point out that with more traditional justice measures, offenders must wait passively in penal institutions while some verdict or sentence is delivered. Within a restorative system, offenders not only accept responsibility for their actions before the eyes of community members, but they also work to
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seek remedies for their wrongs, partly by making restitution to their victims (2001, p. 128). Offenders do not report that restorative justice and the responses deemed proportionate for their crimes are less demanding than other more punitive sanctions (Umbreit, 2001, p. 214). While offenders report a high degree of satisfaction with the restorative justice approach, they also claim that restorative responses to crime such as meeting their victims, experiencing guilt and shame at their crimes, seeing the pain they have caused, restitution, or maintaining a strict adherence to treatment regimens can be more daunting than simply “doing one’s time.” This is not to say that offenders accept as fair all of these responses. For example, offenders who have been incarcerated for their crime say that they are being punished twice if they are forced to pay restitution as well as serve their time (Novack, Galaway, and Hudson, 1980, p. 69). Offenders experienced with the penal system often report as much or more trepidation and discomfort with restorative procedures than with prison (Umbreit, 2001, pp. 267–275). But perhaps more importantly, victims do not see their offenders as getting off easy with restorative justice. Instead, victims report a sense of empowerment as “the restorative approach allows victims to play a central role in the disposition of their care” (Strang, 2001, p. 80). The ability of restorative justice to meet the needs of victims and offenders has led both parties to claim that the responses they reach to address the crimes of offenders is fair and that justice is indeed being done. According to Umbreit, “the vast majority of VOM (victim offender mediation) participants (typically over 80 percent), regardless of setting, culture, or type of offence, reported believing that the process was fair to both sides and that the resulting agreement was fair” (2001, p. 167). The sense of satisfaction and fairness that individual victims and offenders receive after participating in restorative justice initiatives should not be devalued in calculating collective, or social, utility. According to Umbreit, the satisfaction at restorative justice claimed by victims and offenders “goes beyond ‘feeling OK’ about things. It goes to heart of the justice system: fairness” (2001, p. 192). In time, the security produced by restorative justice and the sense of fairness it produces could extend to the population at large. Granted, this is a somewhat optimistic assumption, but not overly optimistic. If victims are satisfied with restorative justice, the general population may become satisfied with it. After all, a major thrust behind the call for more punitive sentences is the victim’s rights movement. Should this movement throw its weight behind restorative justice, the general public is much more likely to become more accepting of it. The success of restorative justice in meeting the needs of victims and offenders in a fair manner is becoming so accepted currently that the number of victims wishing to participate in these initiatives “far exceeds the resources available to accommodate their desires” (ibid., p. 176).
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Eventually, this satisfaction should lead to an increase in the resources devoted to restorative justice, and an increase in the implementation of its initiatives. And this should translate into an increase in social utility. We should not forget the direct impact that restorative justice initiatives can have on the community. Through their participation in restorative justice initiatives, offenders appear to experience a change of heart in that they come to internalize beliefs that their offenses were wrong. In coming to the genuine conclusion that their behavior was wrong, offenders are in a position to “winover” members of the community witnessing their transformation. This should lead to greater security, as citizens within the community no longer feel threatened by transformed offenders (Johnstone, 2002, pp. 143–144). Ultimately, whether restorative justice can win wider public approval is an empirical matter. However, given restorative justice’s ability to satisfy and educate those most directly harmed by the crime, we are on solid ground to believe that it can also satisfy and educate a jaded public. 7. Conclusion In this paper, I have examined utilitarian theories that link the justification of punishment with its perceived ability to teach offenders to refrain from crime. I have not argued for the complete abandonment of the penal system. Incarceration as punishment may be needed to deal with the offensives of more serious offenders. However, I have argued that as a pedagogical tool, broadly speaking, punishment has failed. Empirical evidence demonstrates that neither punishment in general nor the particular punishments currently utilized are effective mechanisms for controlling crime. It is my position that utilitarians who justify punishment due to its perceived capacity to deter should reconsider that justification in light of this evidence. In a different world, punishment might be justified as a deterrent. Such a world would be one in which people actually engaged in rationally weighing the potential pain that offending could bring them. In such a world, deterrent threats would serve to teach individuals which acts are prohibited. But ours is not that world. Ours is a world in which punishments cause more harm than they stop or prevent. If utilitarians are seriously committed to the enterprise of increasing social utility then we must consider viable alternatives to punishment. I have argued that use of punishment as a deterrent or corrective tool should be curtailed in favor of the implementation of a system of restorative justice. Finally, as a pedagogical tool for teaching offenders how to live peaceful, pro-social lives and avoid crime, restorative justice has been shown to be a rousing success. Restorative justice has not merely reduced offender recidivism rates, but it has also aided in the reconstruction of healthier communities to a greater degree than punishment. These healthier communities should, in their turn, produce citizens more resilient to offending.
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I have argued that restorative justice is successful in this venture because it forgoes the stigmatization of punishment for the implementation of measures designed to not merely reduce suffering, but to instill within individuals a respect for the humanity of others. Restorative justice does not merely practice peaceful conflict resolution, it teaches the virtues of peaceful conflict resolution to its participants. If utilitarians are truly committed to the increase of social utility and the reduction of suffering, then restorative justice deserves their attention. This may not influence the more hardboiled utilitarian committed to the flawed notion that punishments deter. These utilitarians may view the increased implementation of restorative justice initiatives as a risk to an already wavering system. But given the present state of corrections and the real harm caused by punishment it is perhaps a risk that we may have to take.
Eight PERPETUAL VIOLENCE? MIMESIS AND ANAMNESIS Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Every great philosophy up ‘till now has consisted of—namely the confession of its originator and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography . . . Friedrich Nietzsche 1. Introduction and Assumptions If, for Friedrich Nietzsche, “philosophy is self-confession,” and for Paul Ricoeur, “philosophy is narrative,” then autobiography—as self-confession and narrative—is a particular form of philosophy (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 10; Ricoeur, 1984). Autobiography is also a useful way of ferreting out assumptions. I have been convinced for some time, by Hans Georg Gadamer’s understanding, that presuppositions are best laid bare at the beginning of a conversation (1976). With him, I worry that assumptions, when unacknowledged, can exercise a “tyranny of hidden prejudice.” Thus, I will be candid from the start. The presupposition I bring to this paper is a developing nonviolent critical theory. We develop foundational moral commitments in different ways: sometimes through a long period of inner struggle, sometimes as an existential moment of enlightenment, often as an unthinking internalization of social mores. As a young trainee Christian minister during 1983, I attended a weeklong workshop hosted by the Royal Army Chaplain’s Department at Bagshot Park in Surrey, England. As a civic-minded young man, I was conscious of public duty and wanted to do something useful with my life. I considered becoming an army chaplain. Toward the end of the week, I concluded that I could not become an army chaplain. Above an ornate fireplace at the lodge was a grand depiction of the cap badge of the Chaplain’s Department, “In This Sign Conquer,” over a stylistic Christian cross. The inscription is a reference to the words that the Roman Emperor, Constantine, is said to have seen in his vision of the clouds, after which he converted to Christianity. The dread phrase, “in this sign conquer,” eventually laid behind the Crusades beginning in the eleventh century, the intolerance and persecution of Jews and Muslims, and the later imperialism of the West. It was then that I realized I am a pacifist.
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I had been toying with the idea of nonviolence for a few years—struggling with it, for I hail from a long line of warriors—yet, ironically, the moment of awareness came while I was surrounded by the most civilized and disarming trappings of the war machine. From that day, I began consciously to formulate a praxis—a critical theoretical reflection on practice—that would include personal, family, religious, and national practices. Daniel Bell (1993) has termed these “constitutive communities,” those constituent social structures of our lives that shape whom we are and what are our more important values and commitments. This praxis has led me to the conclusion that Western society has an ideology of violence that permeates the whole—ideology in the sense of assumptions taken for granted and which go unchallenged. I have often asked a class of students how many of their parents spanked them as children. The majority always answer in the affirmative. Slightly fewer, but still the majority say that they would continue the practice with their children. Most give muddled answered about why using mild (and not so mild) violence on children is acceptable. The hidden assumption is that violence effects change and further, that violence is necessary to effect change. The title of this chapter, formed in the interrogative, casts a glance in the direction of Immanuel Kant and his 1795 Perpetual Peace (1983). Kant’s little essay profoundly and proleptically calls for the establishment of something such as the United Nations as a means toward world peace. He proposed a social contract between nations, in which the individual nation state surrenders elements of autonomy for the sake of security guaranteed by a form of world federation. Without this, the nations are in a state of nature where each is free and equal, but which inevitably leads to perpetual war. This state, for Kant, is comparable to the natural state of people in primitive society before the advent of a social contract. Interestingly, the idea was used again by Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud in their early 1930s correspondence on the subject, “Why War?” Einstein wrote to Freud, “The quest of international security involves the unconditional surrender by every nation, in a certain measure, of its liberty of action—its sovereignty—and it is clear beyond all doubt that no other road can lead to such security.” Freud concurred (Einstein, 1978). The correspondence between Freud and Einstein contains a philosophy, which most politicians and world leaders have ignored. Largely, the nations of the world have preferred violence as a solution to disputes. Regardless, with Kant, I am happy to be one of those “philosophers who dream that sweet dream” (ibid., p. 170), though I do not share all the details of the dream. Suffice it to say that human violence, in its many forms, is the most pressing social ethical conundrum to face humanity, not only now, but always. In this paper, I will rely predominately on the nonviolent philosophy of René Girard. His critical theory of mimetic desire and rivalry, together with the mechanism of scapegoating, go some way to help in our understanding of human violence (Williams, 1997). I use Girard’s work as one piece of the puzzle—but
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only one piece. I am sufficiently postmodern to share what Jean-François Lyotard calls “incredulity towards metanarratives” (1984, p. xxiv). A hermeneutic of suspicion (a critical method of interpretation) suggests that no single allencompassing theory can answer all questions. I include Girard’s ideas, not as a “one size fits all” solution, but as one crucial element of a nonviolent critical theory. His ideas are dense, extraordinarily wide-ranging, and move with fluidity between philosophy and anthropology, myth, ritual, religion, literary criticism, and psychotherapy. In the nature of this paper, I can only present a summary of Girard’s work. I will look at the question of perpetual violence in three ways: (1) Perpetual violence—is this what humanity must face? The evidence from our lived reality and that of humanity is generally mixed. I will explore briefly some answers to the question. (2) Perpetual violence—how might we give an account of it? Is violence innate in human interactions? Are we “hardwired” to be violent, or does the problem lie with human socialization? In trying to answer this question, I will use Girard’s theoretical framework. (3) Perpetual violence—might we dare to dream of its end? I will offer a tentative Girardian framework, adding ideas of anamnesis, remembrance. 2. Perpetual Violence: Does Such a Thing Exist? The human experience of violence comes close to what existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers termed an “ultimate situation”; a condition we cannot evade or change—such as death, suffering, chance, or struggle (1954, p. 20). In this regard, all human beings know violence as an inescapable fact. Yet, violence, like love, is difficult to define. We know it when we see it, feel it, experience it, but when asked to say exactly what we mean we struggle with words—which is perhaps why for the language of love, and perhaps of violence too, poetry is a better medium than prose, metaphor than definition, novel than textbook. For example, in World War I poetry, poems as a conveyor of the meanings of violence are more enlightening than dry historical prose. For the purpose of this chapter, I adhere closely to the way Girard uses the term violence. Though he nowhere gives a definition, I take his sense to be human (as opposed to structural) violence; physical, mental, and emotional harm or the threat of it, with the emphasis on physical violence. One person, or a group of people, uses coercive force to inflict suffering on another person or group of people. This use of the term is not concerned with natural violence, such as the violence of a great wind, and institutional violence, where institutional policies
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can effect great suffering on people (for example, the violence of capitalism upon working and poor). For Girard, violence need not be intentional. Often, unconscious desires drive the violence for which the perpetrator can give no rational accounting; or the reasons people give for violence mask a hidden drive common to all human beings (1977, pp. 177ff). In this, Girard is close to Freud, and has an extensive dialogue with Freud’s notion of the repression of the patricide/incest desire (ibid., pp. 71ff, 116–118). Girard suggests contra Freud a repression of mimetic desire (ibid., pp. 145ff; Williams, 1997, pp. 62ff). We all experience violence, but must violence be perpetual? We might say that the experience of many people most of the time is not one of overt violence. In a popular sense take, for example, the 2003 film, Love Actually (Curtis). Its opening commentary says: Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion is starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed. However, I do not see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it is not particularly dignified or newsworthy. However, it is always there. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, and old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from those on board was messages of hate or revenge; they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I have a sneaky feeling that love actually is all around. The movie portrays a series of vignettes that suggest most people, most of the time, experience something like love instead of hatred and violence. Nel Noddings suggests something similar when she argues that an ethics of caring begins with the assumption that joy and not angst is the foundational human experience (2003, p. 6). Mahatma Gandhi also suggests that because humanity continues to exist constitutes prima facie evidence that, in spite of violence and wars, the force of love and nonviolence is the more powerful. He says, “History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love” (2001, p. 16). Perhaps reality is less romantic. John Locke might respond that many people do not experience perpetual violence, not because of love, but because of the civility of society and the protection afforded by law and government through its coercive use of power. The brute beast is tamed, to a degree; or instead, the brute beast is restrained so that it cannot exercise its savage nature. In the state of nature (before the social contract and civility), perpetual war exists, but no longer in civil society. In our advanced society, we often work out our innate violence in vicarious ways, on the sports field or through the virtual reality of television, film, and video game. With regard to entertainment, millions of Americans receive daily
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enjoyment from violence on TV, pay good money at the cinema to watch the most realistic bloodletting special effects can provide, or spend hours per day stealing cars, running over elderly pedestrians, and shooting cops—virtually. Being British, United States’ national games have never gripped me, I think due to my early socialization. However, football (soccer) I do understand. At every home game, 75,000 supporters of my soccer team, Manchester United, chant, “If you are a City fan, surrender or you die, we will follow United.” I have been known to join in the chorus—caught up in the crowd, exhilarated by the roar of so many voices. The camaraderie, the solidarity of the whole experience can be intoxicating. Manchester United fans do not routinely kill Manchester City fans for their non-surrender. Yet, having shouted until hoarse, Manchester United fans may well have expunged their inner violence for another week. I suspect the ritualized slaughter of the enemy Americans experience at college football games is the same. We vicariously work out violence. Spectator sports function as a means to channel aggression, rendering us less violent in real life. We sit within the pale and congratulate ourselves on our civility. The Pale was the area of Ireland controlled by the British, around which were fortifications to keep out the recalcitrant Irish. Within the Pale, we are safe, free from violence, so we tell ourselves. However, to those beyond, to use Thomas Hobbes’ phrase, life remains “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (1968, p. 186). Presently, where is our Pale, our civility? In the words of many media commentators, it is “fortress USA”; outside of which inhumanity, servitude, and violence reign. My nagging concern is that we maintain the civility we have so much enjoyed by a perpetual violence against those who remain on the outside. This situation is not far from the football chant, “If you are a City fan surrender or you die.” Those outside remain the “other” and the other who is “savage” or “beast” we kill with impunity; “destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts” as Locke would have it (1988, p. 274). To be truthful, not everything within the pale is as we would like it. Despite our civility, we live in one of the most violent countries on the planet, where each year, spouses kill more than 3,000 women, more teenagers die by gunshot than by disease, and where civility is maintained by the violence of the criminal justice system. We are now committed to an endless “war on terror” from which we are promised no respite. If we add to violence against human beings the unremitting violence perpetrated on nonhuman animals, the case is clear, but violence against nonhuman animals is beyond the scope of this chapter. What then can we say about perpetual violence? At best, human experience is mixed, and even those of us most shielded from violence cannot escape it. We need a deeper theoretical interpretation.
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René Girard’s first insight on this subject is that the root of violence is in mimetic desire. Mimesis means to look to others and imitate what is seen. Mimetic desire is everywhere in Girard’s writing, but a useful introduction is in Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (1987, pp. 283ff). It operates in human beings at a precognitive, prerational, unconscious level. As such, mimesis is neither good nor bad. Girard calls it a “hidden generative mechanism” and a “reflexive imitation” (Williams, 1997, pp. 263, 269). It is found in the smallest children as they seek to imitate what they see their parents do. Yet it is not merely socialized behavior, it is “rooted deep in our biology” (ibid., p. 268). Girard links this mimesis always with desire, and, like mimesis, desire is morally neutral. However, he does want to separate desire from its early Freudian libidinal connections—the mature Freud cautions about reducing eros to genital tyranny. Desire is not merely sexual. Desire is acquisitiveness in whatever forms that might take. In lay terms, “we want things.” This is the root of violence. In the words of Lesslie Newbigin, “the unremitting covetousness of capitalism” drives consumerist society (1986, p. 112). If acquisitiveness is the root of violence, then we should not be surprised at the violence created in advanced capitalism. Girard is not the first to suggest the correlation between acquisitiveness and violence. In “Civilized Society,” Plato suggests that in “embarking on the pursuit of unlimited material possessions, they will want a slice of ours too” (2003, 373d–e). Plato argues that this acquisitive desire is the root of war. The early Christian theologian, James, said similarly: Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so, you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. (James, 4:1) So thought the ancients, but Girard adds what he calls the triangular nature of mimetic desire. I as the self (the subject) perceive that you (as other or model) desire something. Your desire sparks mine. Whether you do desire the object is immaterial. The very possibility activates mimetic desire, this pre-rational motivation to desire what others desire. You, as model, in turn perceive that I desire the object now common to both our desires; this creates mimetic rivalry. Girard uses desire in a different way from Freud, not only in taking desire out of the context of sexuality, but also in seeing desire as something not focused merely on the object of desire (1996, pp. 225ff). The mimetic nature of desire focuses on the other or model, who also desires the object, which is crucial. In
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popular terms, we might say “keeping up with the Jones’s.” We do not so much desire the larger car for itself, but because we perceive the Jones’s to desire the larger car, we want it too. In Girardian theory, this mimetic desire creates mimetic rivalry in which we both, seeking to acquire the same object, begin to envy each other, resent each other, and set up roadblocks to prevent the other from taking the object of desire. Such a rivalry will inexorably end in violence, which in turn becomes mimetic, imitative, and will spiral into increased violence. The violence will continue until one of us destroys the other, or until something intervenes to defuse our violence. Here is Girard’s second insight. In examining ancient cultures, he discovered the scapegoating mechanism, in which the mob faced with a crisis and bent on destruction focuses its attention on a minority (Girard, 1986; Girard, 2001, pp. 154ff.). The minority is weak, helpless, and unable to defend itself against the mob. Immolation of the victim follows and assuages the violence as the mob look upon the annihilated victim of their violence. Girard writes: Terrified as they are by their own victim, they see themselves as completely passive, purely reactive, totally controlled by this scapegoat at the very moment when they rush in to attack. They think that all initiative comes from him. There is only room for a single cause in their field of vision, and its triumph is absolute, it absorbs all other causality: it is the scapegoat (1986, p. 43). Mimetic rivalry ceases for a while and an uneasy peace is obtained. Yet, peace is short-lived and mimetic rivalry begins again. Though Girard gained his insight by studying primitive societies and mob violence in myth and narrative, the notions of triangular desire and scapegoating are not limited to pre-modern societies. Once we become aware of the mechanism, we can find it in many places. A few examples will suffice to make the point. The policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union between the 1960s and the 1980s is a case in point. What would a Girardian interpretation look like, when neither side used its weapons, giving credence, at first glance, that strong military posturing with the threat of annihilation is successful to prevent violence? Both sides in the conflict assume that the other side seeks to take over the world, the world being the object of desire. Each becomes the model for the other. Mimetic rivalry ensues, with roadblocks, threats, and the building and stockpiling of weapons. Numerous times, the countries came close to war. What prevented nuclear holocaust? If Girard is correct, then the violence of the mob is assuaged when a scapegoat is found upon whom violence can be inflicted. Who, then, is the scapegoat victim that averted direct war between the United States and the Soviet Union? I suggest that smaller wars in Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and
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parts of Africa satisfied the bloodlust of the superpowers. Those weaker, softer targets became the scapegoat upon which the superpowers played out their violence and were pacified to a degree. What of 11 September 2001 and its aftermath? In the face of great crisis, the United States needed to place blame somewhere. The mob was baying for blood. In those early days after the terrorist incident, the United States was close to panic and chaos. To bring order, President George W. Bush quickly decided to attack Afghanistan. Afghanistan became the sacrificial victim. Look briefly at the details: In the United Nations Human Development Report for 2001, the United States ranked sixth out of 170 countries It has since fallen to eighth. (United Nations Human Development Index, HDI, ranking is based on a complex formula that includes life expectancy, education, standard of living, health care and other indices.) The United Nations issued no report on Afghanistan because of insufficient data and no reliable way to obtain it. Afghanistan had been devastated in a long war with the Soviet Union, followed by the brutal rule of the Taliban. Since then, we have discerned some facts. Life expectancy in Afghanistan in 2001 was 43.1 years; the adult literacy rate was thirty-six percent; the under-five mortality rate was 247 per 1,000; and, in the population of twenty-two million, the percentage of those undernourished was 70 percent (United Nations Development Programme, 2003). By all accounts, Afghanistan during 2001 was one of the poorest and most vulnerable nations in the world. Girard says that society chooses scapegoats “because they bear the signs of victims” (ibid., p. 21). Afghanistan was a weak country, bearing all the signs of a victim, which would become the first scapegoat after 11 September 2001. Iraq was to follow. One further example will suffice. In Fallujah, Iraqi citizens in the aftermath of the United States and British invasion faced their own crisis. On 26 March 2004, the city erupted in violence with a concentrated action by the United States Marines. The mob was out of control and threatened to destroy itself. A degree of order was achieved on 31 March 2004, when the crowd chose four United States contractors to become the scapegoats for their violence. Television news footage after the immolation of the contractors showed a pacified crowd. The scapegoating mechanism had worked its magic. The mimetic nature of violence occurred further when the United States military destroyed Fallujah—sacrificed to appease the sense of outrage at the callous deaths of the U.S. contractors. The United States Marines rendered the city uninhabitable to save it for its own citizens. That is the logic of violence. 4. Perpetual Violence: Might We Dare to Dream of an End to It? In a 1995 interview with Girard, James G. Williams asked about the ethical implications of the framework of triangular desire. Girard answered by suggesting four ethical strategies:
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(1) Give up a dispute when mimetic rivalry is taking over. (2) Provide help to victims. (3) Refuse all violence. (4) Come out from the crowd (Williams, 1997, p. 278). Girard did not continue to elaborate on how he would practically implement these strategies; I suggest a few possible ways below. First, I want to add to Girard’s thesis by considering the idea of anamnesis, remembrance, to which he gives no attention. To add the idea of remembrance of the victim is I suggest, helpful, yet at the same time double edged. It may give us a further clue to an effective strategy to help end violence. If wrongly handled, anamnesis strengthens further triangular desire. I recognize a kind of remembrance, of the victims of violence, which can result in further violence. In this sense, anamnesis is a part of Girard’s mimesis. Examples of anamnesis in the context of the Northern Ireland troubles shed light on the process. In the collective memory of Catholic and Protestant alike, anamnesis of the victims of the Battle of the Boyne in 1689, the Easter Uprising of 1916, and Bloody Sunday 1972 feature large. As people remember the victims of this violence, they feel an almost inescapable impetus to sanctify their memories through further violence. Not only Girard’s present mimesis, in which Protestant and Catholic see each other as models/rivals for the heart of Northern Ireland, but also the anamnesis of past victimization strengthens the drive to commit further violence. In this sense, anamnesis fuels and strengthens mimesis. I want to suggest another kind of anamnesis that is more optimistic, one found in war remembrance at its best. We see this sort of anamnesis in the phrases, “Lest we forget,” and “Never again,” found on epitaphs to the World War I, “the war to end all wars.” In focusing on the victim/scapegoat, this anamnesis says, “There must be no more victims.” Anamnesis used in this way becomes the antidote to mimetic rivalry. Holocaust remembrance is an anamnesis of this type. In the remembrance of the scapegoats of Nazi ideology, we make the choice to ensure that no one creates any more such victims. To the degree that we lose faith with the memory, then we risk the possibilities of further genocides. Christian Eucharist, divested of the primitive notion of the re-enactment of blood sacrifice (as if sacrifice satisfies the blood lust of an angry god), and given the meaning of anamnesis as the end of such sacrifices in Jesus as scapegoat, is helpful for peacemaking. Eucharist then becomes the frequent celebration of the end of scapegoating in the anamnesis “Do this in remembrance of me.” Yet, a further element to this kind of anamnesis must move beyond remembrance of the victim to forgiveness and ultimately to reconciliation with the perpetrator. In popular terms, we must move beyond mere remembrance, not to “forgive and forget,” but to “remember and then forgive.” It is not an easy forgetfulness, as if the victim does not matter. It is willingness, through anamnesis,
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to make present the victim’s plight—“lest we forget”—and through forgiveness to seek peace. I conclude with a brief glance at the possibilities for the end of perpetual violence: at the national and international levels, in personal terms, and for mediating structures. In Peter Berger’s terms (Berger and John, 1996), mediating structures are those social groups less than national and more than individual. First, in national terms and in international relations, with Kant, I dream, but have little hope. History appears to be against us. The United Nations appears to be our best hope, but its struggles among the rich countries and the global South, between the dominance of the United States and the impotence of other countries in the face of such might, and with the United Nations’ internal inconsistencies I see need for reform and commitment which, at present is absent. We can see glimpses of hope in, for example, the international helping of victims and refugees, and some rare success in nonviolent peacekeeping. The sticking place is in the refusal of all violence, which remains a minority view in every aspect of human life. Even if the United Nations functioned better, Girard’s analysis is far more pacifistic than either the United Nations or Kant in his dream for peace, would be. Both retain the notion of violence as a last resort with the threat of violence to maintain social order. This myth of redemptive violence is rooted at a very social deep level. Nations will only abandon their violence when confronted with violence or the threat of further violence greater than that which they can conceivably cope. The fire bombing of Dresden, the fire bombing of Tokyo and other major cities followed by the nuclear atrocities, the bombing of Kosovo, Donald Rumsfeld’s “shock and awe” at the beginning of the war in Iraq—all contain the logic of redemptive violence. Despite the rhetoric of the war on terror, to date, nation states, not insurgent groups, freedom fighters or terrorists, have developed and used weapons of mass destruction. Nation states were responsible for 100 million deaths in the wars of the twentieth century. The modern nation state and its accompanying ideology of nationalism remains a fearful entity. At a personal level, in terms of authentic, nonviolent Existenz—being truly nonviolent and making sense of a person’s commitment to nonviolence in the midst of the violence of society—I have more cheer. With Mahatma Gandhi, I share the thought that we can banish violence from the heart of an individual person, perhaps not entirely, but sufficiently that a person might have a sincere nonviolent commitment and make choices that facilitate peacemaking. I suspect that nonviolence cannot be sustained long without personal transformation from inner violence to peace. Such is never easy and requires personal discipline and practice, which I have sought to address in other places. At the level of mediating structures, I am more hopeful for the possibilities of nonviolence. I am not an individualist; I think more in communitarian ways— of small groups of people with nonviolent commitment as support to each other and witness to the possibilities of nonviolent living—a new way of being and
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becoming. Mediating structures are by their nature quite diverse. They range from families of all kinds, to community, religious, and interest groups, to larger institutions like corporations and universities. What would our institutions look like on a daily basis if we refused mimetic rivalry, refused coercion as a policy, and if we sided with victims and exposed underlying ideologies that promote rivalry? I leave the answer to your creativity and imagination. The dream, if that is what it is, falls far below utopia but may provide us with reachable middle axioms as we dream deeper.
Nine LANGUAGE AND RECONCILIATION William C. Gay 1. Introduction Johan Galtung observes, “The fact that we are around testifies to a lot of conflict resolution capacity. And reconstruction. And reconciliation” (“After Violence,” n.d.). Conflict resolution and reconciliation are products of dialogues. Language has facilitated our survival. Conflicts and violence themselves generally have linguistic precursors. If language can give rise to conflict and violence, how can it also prevent conflict and violence? Conflict resolution and reconciliation projects aim for such prevention, but they can and sometimes do fail. Once critical component in their success or failure is how language crafts memory. In this essay, I will examine the positive and negative relations that language can play in conflict resolution. 2. Memory Memory is fundamental to the pursuit of reconciliation as a strategy for conflict resolution. While modern British Empiricism presented memory as the straightforward set of ideas resulting from sense impression, recent philosophical analyses provide a more nuanced understanding. Not surprisingly, standard philosophical references, like The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, are not of much help in exploring the relation of memory and reconciliation. For example, in his article, “Memory,” Sydney Shoemaker’s main critical aim appears to be providing “a solution to the philosophical problem of skepticism about, and the justification of, memory” (1967, p. 274). More surprising is that major comprehensive encyclopedias in peace studies, like Violence, Peace, and Conflict, do not have extensive treatments of these topics. For example, the article, “Theories of Conflict,” only goes so far as to state, “Reconciliation is built on a nonviolent approach to conflict resolution which transcends dichotomization” (Jeong, 1999, p. 517). Standard philosophical treatments of memory generally question a naïve realist view of memory and favor a representative or representational view of memory. The second view gets classic expression in modern philosophy by David Hume. Ideas result from sense impressions, and memory is an association of ideas that is characterized as intermediate between the vividness of an impres-
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sion and faintness of an idea (1962, pp. 52–54). This approach continues through Bertrand Russell who further narrowed the discussion by distinguishing “habit memory” (the mere retention of a “motor mechanism” of, for example, how to ride a bicycle) from “true memory” (a cognitive act connected to an experienced event such as witnessing a car wreck) (1921, p. 166). Such philosophical treatments, beyond relying on a discredited representational view of mind and language, generally exclude the emotions. Much current work in conflict resolution stresses the importance of the relation of emotion to the type of memory that strengthens rational decision-making. As William J. Long and Peter Brecke observe in War and Reconciliation: Emotions generally assist us in storing and retrieving memories required for making decisions. . . . Numerous studies demonstrate that we tend to remember what is most emotionally laden because all emotional events receive preferential processing. (2003, p. 132) These authors, in their approach to restoring sociality after civil and international conflicts, make use of this research in evolutionary psychology to argue against a single and general logical decision-making capability and for one that integrates emotion and reason (ibid., p. 157). Frederick Nietzsche recognized the relation of emotions to memory, but his focus was on how remembering entails pain. He states, “Only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory” (1968, p. 497). If reconciliation requires memory, must those involved continue to hurt? Some children of Holocaust survivors seem to think so, and some of them ask to avoid the pubic and familial reinvoking of these memories in order to avoid the pain (Spiegelman, 1986). This connection between memory of past violence against a group with psychological pain in the present underscores the importance of the language used in reconciliation processes. In another context, Pierre Bourdieu notes that delegation, which is necessary for representation, entails the risk of alienation (1991, p. 204). I would suggest that for similar reasons, reconciliation involves the risk of pain and alienation. However, the pain and alienation that language can precipitate can be crafted in ways that, negatively, deny or intensify or, positively, acknowledge or resolve these hurts. 3. Language The relation of language to memory needs critical examination when we address the prospects for reconciliation. Although we can express memories by visual images, language provides the primary historical record. Language, however, is not a neutral medium. Language is inseparable from power. Since politics plays a large role in shaping language, the pursuit of reconciliation among social groups that have undergone conflict also requires an examination of terms or
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definitions that previous persons in power may have been chosen to set a political agenda. To the extent that politics controls language, politics also controls memory. Revisionist histories show how accounts of what has transpired are subject to change. Writers can alter the description of past events and consequently alter our recollection of those events. For this reason, while we can use language to facilitate remembrance, we can also use it to thwart remembrance. While we can use remembrance to acknowledge past violence and to help overcome the resulting pain and alienation, the politics of definition can obscure or even deny a genocide or atrocity when it negatively re-describes or altogether denies these past events. Berel Lang has addressed the connection of memory to the politics of definition. He notes how the Nazis engaged in “the willed re-creation of language entirely as an instrument of means, together with the conditions that accompany that change” and stresses how political authorities also claimed authority “over social memory and history” (1988, p. 344). Teresa Godwin Phelps observes: If we recognize the central role that language plays in political oppression, how the use of language is appropriated from an oppressive regime’s victims, then our traditional ways of thinking about revenge and retribution might be expanded. . . . If a victim wants a balancing . . . getting back the ability to use language for oneself might indeed be seen as a significant kind of retribution. (2004, p. 118) 4. Positive and Negative Truth The language of peace is an important component in the pursuit of peace and justice. The language of peace can be an example of linguistic nonviolence and can contribute to forging an understood language of inclusion. Just as the language of war tends to dominate official discourse, even when we use the language of peace, it is usually the language of negative peace. Negative peace is merely the absence of war; large-scale injustice may still be present. Anita Wenden has illustrated this point in her analysis of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. Between 1901 and 1993, sixty-three of ninety of the prizes (70 percent) went to endeavors for negative peace. Consider just a few of the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize who, at times, advanced at most negative peace. During 1973, the prize went to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. During 1978, the prize went to Anwar al-Sadat and Menachem Begin. During 1994, the prize went to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin. While each of these individuals in their later years did seek to advance peace processes that sought an end to armed conflict (the lull between wars of negative peace), several, in their careers, were involved with planning and waging wars and supporting and even conducting terrorist acts. Wenden notes that only with the
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awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Amnesty International, during 1977, did the Nobel committee recognize efforts for peace that aimed at more than the mere absence of war (1995, pp. 3–15). The fostering of reconciliation requires a non-revisionist language of remembrance and the cultivation of nonviolent metaphors that support the formation of new solidarities among once violently opposed groups. While “truth commissions” and “truth reports” are increasingly common as a first step in this process, they, like peace, can be negative or positive. The remembrance facilitated by empowering victims to tell their stories should not aim to foster revenge or speed political closure, but rather to “re-member” the community (Lakoff, 2004). Between 1995 and 2002 alone, about a dozen truth commissions were established in places like Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, and Peru. Phelps notes, “The international community has become so enamored with truth reports that they are being seen as the sole requite remedy in reckoning with the past” (2004, p. 119). Later, she observes that the making of truth reports: gives back to victims the ability to use language, an ability that was appropriated and manipulated by the oppressive regime. Once the ability to use language is restored, people can use that language themselves to shape their experiences into coherent narratives, both personal and collective. (ibid., p. 122). Phelps continues, “In remembering, we re-member. We put back together that which was broken apart—ourselves, our families, our communities, our countries” (ibid., p. 123). Trudy Govier has brought us some important lessons about the testimony of victims. She terms the “Myth of Victimhood” as the view that victims have special moral authority (2002, p. 11). While victims deserve sympathy, they do not necessarily have special moral insight into what they need to do to restore them. In addition, many victims are not able to give testimony. Children, for example, are often victims; about 36,000 children die each day due to hunger and diseases relating to malnutrition. One might ask why the death of thirteen million children each year receives so little media coverage, and why the victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the New York City World Trade Center received widespread attention. To get attention as a victim, a person needs voice. Nevertheless, some victims who command our attention can also be perpetrators of violence. Govier cautions, “The Myth of Victimhood is especially hazardous when the world’s most conspicuous victim is the world’s one remaining superpower” (ibid.). While many in the United States government portrayed it as a victim of a terrorist attack, the United States also could—and did—lash out viciously and generate many more victims—many of whom also lack voice and cannot give testimony that we will hear.
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In considering victims, we also need to consider perpetrators. Govier concludes “Perhaps every person is in some ways a victim and in others a perpetrator” (ibid., p. 15). In this regard, Albert Camus taught us a valuable lesson about walking between silence and violence when he urged that we be neither victims nor executioners (1986). Governments, as well as individuals, need to learn this lesson and practice it. 5. Conclusion The opposite of remembrance is forgetting, and, as Keith C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik observe, “forgetting is something we are very good at in the United States” (2004, p. 94). They note how public school teachers tend to reject presenting material that illustrates the absence of unity and consensus in United States history. They observe, “In the United States, the story of national unity and progress is so strong that it sweeps away all else, and the experiences of dissent and repression are forgotten” (ibid.). Despite problems with remembrance and reconciliation, forgetting is generally worse, unless through historical research or hypnotic therapy memories can be reconstituted. So, we need to undertake the difficulty work of proper remembrance and reconciliation. In undertaking this work, we need to remain vigilant in relation to the dangers and the opportunities language provides in relation to remembrance and reconciliation. Since we can continue to resolve conflicts nonviolently, we have a duty to seek to do so. Remembrance and reconciliation, thus, take their place alongside other vital strategies for advancing peace and justice.
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Binford, Leigh. (1996) “The Eye of the Oligarchy, Toward the National Security State.” In The El Mozote Massacre: Anthropology and Human Rights. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Bush, George W. (2002) The National Security Strategy of the United States. Falls Village, Connecticut: Winterhouse Editions. Calhoun, Laurie. (2002) “The Strange Case of Summary Executions by Predator Drone,” Peace Review, 15:2, pp. 209–214. Chomsky, Noam. (1985) Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace. Boston, Mass.: South End Press. Herman, Edward. (1982) The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda. Boston, Mass.: South End Press. Holly Sklar, Holly. (1988) Washington’s War on Nicaragua. Boston, Mass.: South End Press. Krauss, Clifford. (1991) Inside Central America: Its People, Politics, and History. New York: Simon & Schuster. LeoGrande, William M. (1998) Our Own Backyard: the United States in Central America, 1977–1992. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. MacEoin, Gary. (1974) No Peaceful Way: Chile’s Struggle for Dignity. New York: Sheed & Ward. Olsson, Karen. (2003) “The Torturers Next Door,” Mother Jones, 28:3 (MayJune), pp. 56–61. Pape, Robert. (2002) “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” The University of Chicago Magazine (December), pp. 22–26. Rai, Milan. (1995) Chomsky’s Politics. London: Verso. Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. (1984) Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. New York: Anchor Books. Stephen Kinzer, Stephen. (2003) All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons. Walzer, Michael. (2000) Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations. 3rd Edition. New York: Basic Books.
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Wasserman, Harvey, Norman Solomon, Robert Alvarez, and Eleanor Walters, Eds. (1982) Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America=s Experience with Atomic Radiation. New York: Dell. Weeks, Jennifer. (1998) “Will O=Leary Legacy Last?,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 54:2 (March/April), pp. 11–14. Zehr, Howard. (2002) The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Intercourse, Penn.: Good Books.
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Chapter 8 (Fitz-Gibbon) Bailie, Gil. (1997) Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. New York: Crossroad. Bell, Daniel. (1993) Communitarianism and Its Critics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Berger, Peter, L., and John, Richard Neuhaus. (1996) To Empower People: From State to Civil Society. Edited by Michael Novak. Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute. Einstein, Albert. (1978) The Correspondence between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Chicago, Ill.: The Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. (1976) Philosophical Hermeneutics. Translated and Edited by David E. Linge. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ———. (1989) Truth and Method. Second Edition Revised. Edited by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Sheed and Ward. Gandhi, Mahatma K. (2001) Nonviolent Resistance (Satyagraha). Meneoloa, N.Y.: Dover. Girard, René. (1977) Violence and the Sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. (1986) The Scapegoat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. (1987) Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. Translated by Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS JOSEPH BETZ is Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. In the past he has been the editor of the Journal of Social Philosophy, and President of two scholarly societies, the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy and the North American Society for Social Philosophy. For the past twenty-five years, he has been preoccupied with the ethics of war as applied to United States sponsored or conducted wars in Central America, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This has resulted in numerous conference papers, book chapters, and articles. DAVID BOERSEMA is the Douglas C. Strain Professor of Natural Philosophy at Pacific University, in Forest Grove, Oregon, where he is the chair of the Peace and Conflict Studies program. He has published in the areas of pragmatism, rights, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language. Along with Katy Gray Brown, he co-edited Spiritual and Political Dimensions of Nonviolence and Peace, a volume in Rodopi’s Philosophy of Peace series. DUANE L. CADY teaches philosophy at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is author of From Warism to Pacifism: A Moral Continuum, Humanitarian Intervention, and Moral Vision: How Everyday Life Shapes Ethical Thinking. He is a past President of Concerned Philosophers for Peace.
ROBERT PAUL CHURCHILL teaches philosophy and peace studies at George Washington University. He is past President of Concerned Philosophers for Peace and has published extensively on such topics as human rights, global ethics, war and ethnic conflict, nuclear weapons, nonviolence, and tolerance. His books include Human Rights and Global Diversity; he has edited Becoming Logical; Democracy, Social Values, and Public Policy and The Ethics of Liberal Democracy. He is presently writing a book titled Consuming Desires: Greed, Exploitation, and Oppression. ANDREW FITZ-GIBBON is associate professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Ethics, Peace and Social Justice, at the State University of New York College at Cortland. His academic interests are in the areas of nonviolence, love, mysticism and community. He has an earned PhD from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK and is the author or co-author of five books and a number of articles.
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WILLIAM C. GAY is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is past editor of Concerned Philosophers for Peace Newsletter (1987–2002) and, since 2002, Editor of CPP’s Special Series on “Philosophy of Peace” (Rodopi, VIBS). He is past President and past Executive Director of Concerned Philosophers for Peace. With T. A. Alekseeva, he is coauthor of Capitalism with a Human Face: The Quest for a Middle Road in Russian Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996); and coeditor of On the Eve of the 21st Century: Perspectives of Russian and American Philosophers (Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), and Democracy and the Quest for Justice: Russian and American Perspectives (Rodopi, 2004). With Michael Pearson, he is coauthor of The Nuclear Arms Race (American Library Association, 1987). With I. I. Mazour and A. N. Chumakov, he is coeditor of Global Studies Encyclopedia (Raduga, 2003), and Global Studies Dictionary (Prometheus, 2006). He has also published articles and book chapters on peace, justice, and nonviolence from the perspectives of philosophy of language and political philosophy. ROB GILDERT completed his PhD from University of Western Ontario, Canada, in 2003. His dissertation was entitled “Deriving Restorative Justice from Retributivism.” Gildert was an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Problem-Centered Studies at Cape Breton University up to his death in 2006. His academic interests were in crime prevention and alternatives to punishment. He had developed courses in legal theory, punishment, and alternatives to corrections. These interests had led him to seek peaceful alternatives to conflict resolution on both the personal and national levels. He and his colleagues had won honorarble mention in 2006 for the Alan Blizzard Award for Collaborative Teaching, awarded by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education for the creation of a course on community intervention. JOSEPH C. KUNKEL is Professor Emeritus at the University of Dayton. He has coedited two books and written a number of essays that examine various aspects of power, militarism, ethics, and peace. He has been a member of Concerned Philosophers for Peace since its inception in 1981, has served as executive secretary from 1989–1995, as editor of the Philosophy of Peace special series under the Value Inquiry Book Series from 1994–2003, and as president of Concerned Philosophers for Peace in 1997. DENNIS ROTHERMEL is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico. His recent publications include an essay on The Piano, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Pianist, and Hero in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video; book chapters on Mystic River and My Darling Clementine, and “Slow Food, Slow Film,” also in the QRFV. Forthcoming are contributions to separate collections: “Julie Taymor’s Musicality,” “Anti-War War Films,” an essay on Bertrand Tavernier’s In the Electric Mist, and an essay on No Country for Old Men.
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EDDY SOUFFRANT is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Associate of the Center for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. He received his PhD in the Philosophy of International Affairs from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. He has written on Ethics and International Affairs and is the author of a book on John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy of International Affairs. Souffrant is also co-editor of a recent book on Globalization. He has published a number of book chapters and articles on topics ranging from Africana Philosophy to Corporate Responsibility and is currently working on a book that explores a concept of global justice and contemporary collective responsibility fit for our time. His research interests examine issues of transnational responsibility, diasporic identity, and conceptions of multicultural identity. He regularly lectures on the problematics lodged at the intersection of Ethics and Capitalism and he teaches ethics, social and political philosophy, ethics, and international affairs at the University of North Carolina Charlotte.
INDEX Abrams, Elliott, 29, 33 Abu Gharib prison, 66 accidents, 85 accountability, 3, 7 moral a., 16 acquisitiveness, 57, 59, 106, act(ions)(s) Adorno, Theodore W., 47 advocacy, 21, 57, 72, 77, 79 Afghanistan, 7, 35, 36, 38, 39, 108 Africa, 13, 14, 19 A. diaspora, 10 A. labor, 8 “After Violence” (Galtung), 113 After Virtue (MacIntyre), 7 agen(cy)(ts), 13, 14. See also responsibility causal a., 66 clandestine a., 32, 33 collective a., 15, 16, 18, 23 corporate a., 14 governmental a., 4 individual a., moral a., 14, 16 national development, a. of, 28 plural a., 18 agents, biological/chemical, 14 Agrarian Code, 28 Al Qaeda, 25, 33, 36–38 Allende, Salvador, 4, 25, 30 amends, 42, 44, 47, 54, 95 American Friends Service Committee, 34 American Philosophical Association (APA), 9, 11 Americans, 11, 12, 25–27, 29, 31–33, 35, 39, 104, 105 law-abiding A., 30 poorest/wealthiest A., 8 Amnesty International, 35, 116 anamnesis, 58, 59, 101, 103, 109 Andrews, Don A., 87 anger, 57, 58, 67, 68, 89, 92 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, 48, 52 anti-imperialism, 10
anti-war movements, 10, 11 Apartheid, 27 Applebaum, Binyamin, 13 “Wachovia Details Past Ties to Slavery,” 13 Arafat, Yasser, 115 Arbenz, Jacobo, 25 Argentina, 27, 30, 51 A. dirty war, 66 Aristotle, 8 Armed Revolutionary Front of the Haitian People (FRAPF), 36 Armitage, Richard, 27 assassination, 34, 37, 38 atomic bombs dropped on Japan, 5, 41, 43, 45–47 authority, 59, 72, 115 moral a., 116 autobiography, 101 Babylonian society, 91 Bagram Air Base, 36 Barton, Keith C., 117 Begin, Menachem, 115 behavior, 59 acceptable b., 85 criminal b., 58, 82, 87–89, 92, 99 global b., 20 moral b., 10 past b., 15 b. scientists, 62 social b., 83 socialized b., 106 terrorist b., 35 United States b. in Latin America, 26 Bell, Daniel, 102 beneficence, 3, 13, 19 Bentham, Jeremy, 83–85 Berger, Peter, 110 Bernstein, Barton J., 43 Berryman, Phillip, 27, 28 Liberation Theology, 27 Betz, Joseph, 4, 25
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Bhargava, Rajeev, 61 Binford, Leigh, 27, 28 The El Mozote Massacre, 28 “Toward the National Security State,” 28 The Black Atlantic (Gilroy), 10 Blackmun, Justice Harry, 72 Blair, Tony, 7 Boersema, David, 57, 71 bombings Cambodia, b. of, 30 Dresden, fire-b. of, 111 Hiroshima and Nagasaki, b. of, 5, 41– 43, 45, 46, 111 Khadafi’s residence, b. of, 38 Kosovo, b. of, 111 Oklahoma City Fed. Bldg., b. of, 74 Pearl Harbor, Japanese b. of, 5, 41, 44, 46, 47 Booth v. Maryland, 71 Bosnia, 116 murdering B. Muslims, 38 Bourdieu, Pierre, 114 bourgeois civil society, 11 Brecke, Peter, 114 War and Reconciliation (with Long), 114 Brinkley, David, 27 brutality, 67 Bush, George W., 7, 31 B. administration, 4, 5, 27, 29, 30–33, 34–37, 39, 40, 43, 46, 48, 52, 54, 73, 108 Bush, George Herbert Walker, 5, 34, 46 Cady, Duane L., 3, 7, 16 Caldicott, Helen, 51 The New Nuclear Danger, 51 Caliban’s Reason (Henry), 19 Cambodia, bombing of, 30 cancer rates, 8 Caribbean Islands. 19 Casanova, Carlos Eugenio Vides, 35 Casey, Sr., Robert Patrick, 31 Central America Religious Task Force on Central America, 29 Central America/Mexico Report, 29
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 27, 36, 38 Champion, Dean, 87 charity, 21 Cheney, Richard (Dick), 7 Chile, 4, 7, 25–27, 30, 51, 61 China, 42, 52 Chomsky, Noam, 27 Churchill, Robert Paul, 57, 61 “CIA Techniques Called Into Question” (Cooperman), 36 civility, 4, 6, 18, 20, 86, 105 civilization, Western, 10, 28 civil rights, 7, 10, 11 “Civilized Society” (Plato), 106 Clinton, William Jefferson (Bill), 5, 46, 50–52, 73 cold war, 9, 36, 42, 46, 50, 51, 52 c. w. militarism, 59 collective act(ion)(s), 13, 14 collective unawareness, 8 commitment(s), 51, 52, 85–87, 93, 101, 102, 110, 111 common sense, 85, 86 communists, 9, 27, 28, 34, 50 Sandinistas c., 32 community acceptance, 97 Community Justice Circles, 91 “Company Praised for Role against Terrorism” (Wee), 13 compassion, 10, 57, 59, 61–69 self-c., 62 competition, 3, 15, 20, 23 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), 51, 52 Concerned Philosophers for Peace (CPP), 11 confession, 57, 61, 65–67, 101 conflict, 22, 50, 57, 59, 76, 82, 106, 108, 115 emotions, c. of, 67 c. resolution, 83, 93, 94, 100, 113, 114, 117 The Conqueror, 45 consequentialism, 10 Constant, Emmanuel “Toto,” 36, 37
Index constructs, figurative, 59 Contras, Nicaraguan, 29, 30, 32, 33 Convention against Torture, 35 Cooperman, Alan, 36 “CIA Techniques Called Into Question,” 36 corporationd, 3, 13–15, 19, 23, 27, 29, 111 corporate responsibility, 4, 13, 15 American c., 27, 29 counterinsurgency, 28, 34 coup, military, 4, 18, 25, 27 Cragg, Wesley, 85, 93 crime(s) (criminal acts) criminal behavior, 58, 82, 92 crisis, 107–109 Crocker, David, 61 “The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb, and the Origins of the Cold War,” 46 culture, 8, 10, 11, 12, 20, 57, 98 ancient c., 58, 107 Western c., 58 Cunneen, Chris, 93 Dalai Lama, 67 death squads, 33 Salvadoran d. s., 34 Death, Etc. (Pinter), 7 Debayle, Anastasio Somoza, 32 decisions, 10, 71, 78, 79, 85, 114 Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations, 10, 22 defense, 5, 7, 13, 53 Deming, Barbara, 66 democracy, 7, 23, 30, 50 Chile’s d., 25 global d. strategy, 29 deontology, Kantian, 9, 10 depersonalization, 58 desire, mimetic, 59, 102, 104, 106, 107 detectors, 13, 14, 38 Dewey, John, 8, 9, 51 diaspora, African, 10 dictatorship(s), 7, 25 dignity, 94
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disaster(s), 20–22 discourse, 3, 15, 57, 76, 115 dissent, 27, 43, 72, 117 Dresden, fire-bombing of, 111 Du Bois, W. E. B., 9, 11 Duma, Russian, 52 dut(ies)(y), 4, 10, 20, 21, 25, 32, 39, 101, 117 econom(ics)(y), 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, 34, 50 Einstein, Albert, 58, 102 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 44 11 September 1973, 4, 25, 26 11 September 2001 The El Mozote Massacre (Binford), 28 El Salvadore, 7, 26, 29, 34, 35 Salvadoran death squads, 34 emancipation, 8 empathy, 57, 63—65, 67 Empiricism, British, 113 enem(ies)(y), 7, 28, 34, 35, 37, 39, 44, 67, 105 Enlightenment, 9, 10, 101 Enola Gay, 46 environmentalism, 10 equality, 3, 82 ethics, 9–11, 16, 20 caring, e. of, 104 Goodin’s e. of responsibility, 17 Ethics (Spinoza), 67 experience(s), 8, 9, 44, 59, 105, 114, 116 American e., 28 employment e., 90 love, e. of, 104 offenders’ e., 98 past e., 10 sufferers’ e., 63 survivors’ e., 96 victims’ e., 65 violence, e. of, 103, 104 exploitation (exploiting), 8, 18 fact-finding, 65 Fallujah, 108 famil(ies)(y), 5, 102 terrorists’ f., 38 victims’ f., 71, 74, 93, 95
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Family Group Conferencing, 91 fear(s), 4, 15, 25, 26, 43, 49, 68 punishment, f. of, 88, 96 feelings, negative/resentment, 61, 68 Feinstein, Diane, 73, 74 feminis(m)(ts), 10, 11 fiduciary care, 4, 25, 29, 35, 39, 40 Fitz-Gibbon, Andrew, 58, 101 foreign nationals, 4, 21, 25, 38, 39 foreign f. military occupation, 4 f. nationals, 4, 21, 25–40 f. nations, 4, 26, 31, 36, 40 f. policy, Russian, 51 f. policy, United States’, 4, 25, 26, 29 f. terrorists, 35 forgiveness, 57, 61–63, 65, 69, 110 political f., 46 unilateral f., 67, 68 Forgiveness and Revenge (Prager and Govier), 63 Fortier, Michael, 74 Franck, James, 43 Franck Report, 43, 44 freedom, 3, 7, 14, 28, 57, 67, 68, 111 Freud, Sigmund, 58, 102, 104, 106 future, the 18, 48, 49 criminal behavior, f. acts of, 87, 88 deterrence of f. crimes, 81 equitable f., 8 perpetrators, f. dealings with, 79 repeating past mistakes in f., 47 unknown f., 49 victims’ view of self in f., 64 Gadamer, Hans Georg, 101 Galtung, Johan, 113 “After Violence,” 113 Gandhi, Mahatma, 10, 67, 104, 111 Garcia, José Guillermo, 35 Gay, William C., 59, 113 Gendreau, Paul, 87 General Dynamics Corporation, 13 genocide, 52, 109, 115 Germany, 5 Gildert, Rob, 57, 81
Gilroy, Paul, 10 The Black Atlantic, 10 Girard, René, 58, 59, 102–104, 106–110 G. theory, 107 Glendon, Mary Ann, 76, 77 Rights Talk, 76 good, the, 21, 28, 81 Goodin, Robert E., 16—18 government, 3, 7, 13, 15, 20, 23, 26, 27, 29, 33, 34, 117 morally deficient g., 39, 40 oligarchic-military g., 34 Govier, Trudy, 44, 61, 63, 116, 117 Dilemmas of Reconciliation (with Prager), 63 Forgiveness and Revenge (with Prager), 63 Graham, Lindsey, 74 Graterford prison, 31 Great Britain, 47 Grijalba, Juan Lopez. 36 Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, 7, 36 Guatemala, 7, 25, 29 guilt, 18, 29, 42, 44, 57, 66, 71, 72, 75– 78, 98 Gulf Coast, 8 Hanford reactor, deliberate releasing of radioactivity from, 45 Hare, Richard Mervin, 85, 86 harm(s), 17, 26, 41, 42, 45, 46, 65, 66, 69, 72, 74, 75, 79, 81–83, 88, 91, 93, 94, 97, 99, 100, 103 potential h., 61 Hart, H. L. A., 84, 85 hatred, 104 Hayward, Susan, 45 “At Head of World Bank, Wolfowitz Calls for Hope” (The Charlotte Observer), 13 Healing Circles, 91 heart, change of, 58, 94 Hebrew society, 91 Henry, Paget, 19 Caliban’s Reason, 19 Herman, Edward, 33
Index The Real Terror Network, 33 Hibakusha, 45 Hilberg, Raul, 46 Hiroshima, 3, 5, 41–50, 53, 54 histor(ies)(y), 4, 19, 46, 104, 110, 115 moral h., 10 Nicaraguan h., 32 philosophy, h. of, 3 United States h., 117 Hobbes, Thomas, 26, 105 Hobbsian insecurity, 26 Holocaust, 109, 114 homeland security, 4, 25, 27–31, 35, 38, 39, 40. See also security Honduran government, criminal, 30 hope, 5, 15, 47, 51, 60, 89, 97, 110 House of Representatives, United States, 52 human behavior, 59 Human Development Index (HDI), United Nations, 108. See also United Nations humanity, 48, 52, 59, 64, 100, 102–105 Hume, David, 113 hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, 8 Hussein, Saddam, 42 Immediate Reaction Infantry Battalion (BIRI), 28 immigrants to the United States, 27 incapacitation, 37, 93 inclusion, 14, 16, 115 indigenous societies of North America, 91 individualism, 17–19 infant mortality rates, 8 innocent, the, 21, 32, 34–36, 38, 41–45, 47, 65, 66, 76, 84, 86 institutions, 20, 111 global financial i., 16 government i., 23, 35, 39 penal i., 97 political i., 13 social i., 18, 59, 60 intellectual tradition, Western, 9 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, 48 international community, 5, 116
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International Criminal Court, 52 International Monetary Fund, 23 International Telephone and Telegraph, 25 intervention, international peacekeeping, 4, 39 Orwellian i., 87 Iraq, 7, 30, 36, 38, 39, 108, 110 I. Kurds, 42 Ireland, 31, 105 Northern I., 109 “Is ‘Homeland’ Un-American?” (Polman), 27 Israel, 49–51 James (Biblical apostle), 10 James, William, 9, 51 Japan, 5, 41–47 J. atomic bomb victims, 41, 46, 47 J. attack on Pearl Harbor, 5, 44, 47 Jaspers, Karl, 103 Jeong, Ho-Won, 113 “Theories of Conflict,” 113 Jesus, 109 Jews, 27, 44, 64, 101 Johnson, Lyndon B., 49 Just and Unjust Wars (Walzer), 37 just war conditions, 44 just war principles, 5 justice, 3, 31, 40, 41, 66, 68, 72, 79, 115, 117 criminal j., 58, 90, 91, 105 equal j. under the law, 76, 82 inj., 8, 17, 26, 81 restorative j., 42, 46, 57, 58, 73, 77, 79, 81–83, 91–100 Justice Department, U.S., 35 Kant, Immanuel, 10, 58, 82, 102, 110 K. deontology, 9 Perpetual Peace, 102 Khadafi, Moammar, 38 Kierkegaard, Søren, 26 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 7, 11, 67 Kinzer, Stephen, 27 Kissinger, Henry, 30, 115 Kosovo, bombing of, 111
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Kunkel, Joseph C., 41 Kurds, 42 Kurtz, Lester R., 113 Violence, Peace, and Conflict (with Turpin), 113 Kyl, John, 73, 74 Lang, Berel, 115 language (linguistic), 78, 113, 115 love, l. of, 103 philosophy of l., 11, 59 political l., 77 reconciliation, l. and, 113–117 rights, l. of, 76, 77, 79 Latin America, 4, 19, 26–31, 33, 35, 39, 40, 51, 107 law-abiding life, 94 lawbreakers, 88 Lawson, James, 7 leadership, 5, 7 Leahy, William D., 43, 44 Levstik, Linda S., 117 liberalism, 15, 18 liberation, 7, 10, 30 Catholic l. theology, 32, 34 Liberation Theology (Berryman), 27 libert(ies)(y), 4, 10, 26, 102 civil l., 30, 74 life expectancy, 108, 109 Limited Test Ban Treaty, 47 Libya, 38 Locke, John, 20, 104, 105 Long, William J., 114 War and Reconciliation (with Brecke), 114 Lord Acton’s maxim, 37 love, 66 self-l., 69, 103, 104 Love Actually (Curtis), 104 Lucky Dragon, 45 Lyotard, Jean-François, 103 MacArthur, Douglas, 44 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 7 After Virtue, 7 Mallatratt, Agnes, 31
Manhattan II Project, 51 Manhattan Project, 51 Maori society, 91 Marxism, 25, 28 massacre, 28, 36 McCain, John, 74 McCarthy era, 9 McCloskey, James C., 31 McCold, Paul, 93, 94, 97 McVeigh, Timothy, 74 media, 22, 105, 116 memor(ies)(y), 5, 19, 22, 29, 59 collect(ed)(ive) m., 4, 110 language, m. crafted by, 113–115 “Memory” (Shoemaker), 113 metanarratives, 103 Mickens-Thomas, Louis (a.k.a. Louis Thomas), 31 Middle East, 50, 108 militarism, 3, 59 military, 5, 43, 45, 107 American sponsored m. coup, 4, 25, 27, 28, 30 American, 7, 26, 39, 42, 50, 52 American-trained m., 4, 7, 28, 33, 34 m. bases, U.S., 4 m. buildup in Europe, 51 civilian/non-m. population, 5, 32, 41, 47 dictatorships, right-wing m., 7, 25, 34 excessive/illegal m. action, 52 Latin American m., 30 m. occupation, 7, 38 oligarchic-m. government, 34 param. groups, 36 m. preemption, 40, 53, 54 Salvadoran m., Bush visit to, 34 Serbian m. facility, 38 voluntary m., 8 Mill, John Stuart, 9, 10 mimesis, 58, 101, 106, 109, mimetic desire, 59, 102, 104, 106, 107 mimetic rivalry, 59, 106, 107, 109, 111 missile(s) Anit-Ballistic M. (ABM) Treaty, 48, 52 defense m., 5, 43, 48, 49, 52, 53 earth-penetrating m., 53
Index missile(s), con’t. nuclear m., 47–49, 52 offensive m., 49, 53 smart m. in Turkey, Italy, 37, 38 Soviet m., 47, 48 mistakes, 85 modernity, 10, 17–20, 23 Moorehead, Agnes, 45 morality, 10, 11, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 39 moral imperatives, 4 moral impetus, 21 moral impoverishment, 7 moral realm, shared, 4 moral sensibilities, 3 moral vacuum, 3 Mossadegh, Mohammad, 25 Mother Jones, 35 movies, 59 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) missile, 48 Muslims, 26, 38, 101 Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), 107 Nagasaki, 3, 5, 41–47, 52 narrative, 9, 65, 101, 107, 116 metanarratives, 103 nations, 108, 111 foreign, 4, 26, 31, 36, 40 have-not n., 48 nuclear n., 41, 42, 43, 48–54 social contract among n., 58, 59, 102 n.-states, 16, 20, 22, 39 terrorists, n. that harbor, 35 threat to U.S., n. with potential, 37 National Crime Prevention Council of Canada, 87, 88 National Guard, 8, 28, 32, 35 nationalism, 111 National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), 72 National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs, 29 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 32 Native Justice Circles, 91 NATO, 50
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Nazis, 115 N.Europe, 64 N. exterminations, 44 N. fatherland, 27 N. ideology, 109 negotiations, 5, 47, 49 Negroponte, John, 30, 33 neo-colonialism, 23 Nevada [nuclear] Test Site, 48 The New Nuclear Danger (Caldicott), 51 New Orleans, 8 Newbigin, Lesslie, 106 Nhat Hanh, Thich, 67 Nicaragua, 26, 29, 30, 32 N. Contras, 29, 30, 32, 33 Nichols, Terry, 74 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 101, 114 Nixon, Richard M., 30, 48 Nobel Peace Prize, 115, 116 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 48–53 nonviolence, 11, 58, 67, 102, 104, 111, 115. See also violence Noonan, Peggy, 27 North, Col. Oliver, 30 North Korea, 42, 53 The New Nuclear Danger (Caldicott), 51 nuclear weapons, 3, 5, 41–43, 45, 47–54 n. arms treaties, 5, 42, 43, 47, 48, 50, 52, 53 United States n. policies, 51, 53, 54 n. holocaust, 107, 110 n. testing, 45, 51 Nussbaum, Martha, 10, 63 offender(s), 57, 73, 76, 78, 81, 84, 85, 87–99. See also punishment, recidivism, rehabilitation, responsibility, victim(s) o. rehabilitation, 58, 82, 83 victim-o. reconciliation, 59–62, 65, 67–69 youthful o., 58 Office of Public Diplomacy, 29 Oklahoma City bombing, 74 O’Leary, Hazel, 46 oligarchic-military government, 34
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REMEMBRANCE AND RECONCILIATION
Olsson, Karen, 35, 36 “The Torturers Next Door,” 35 Orwellian intervention, 87 ownership, 13, 15, 22, 94 Palestine, 27 Pape, Robert, 38 Parekh, Bhikuh, 23 Payne v. Tennessee (Payne), 71 peace, 3, 8, 9, 11, 22, 23, 50, 51, 54, 57, 60, 91, 92, 94, 102, 107, 110, 111, 117 p.keeping/making, 39, 109, 110 negative p., 59, 115, 116 p. studies/teaching p., 92, 113 Pearl Harbor, 5, 41, 44, 46, 47 pedagogy, 57, 81 p. tools, 83–85, 87–89, 91, 92, 99 Pentagon, 26, 30, 32 Peres, Shimon, 115 perpetrators, 4, 117 Perpetual Peace (Kant), 102 persecution of Jews and Muslims, 101 perspective taking, 63, 64, 66–68 Peru, 116 Phelps, Teresa Godwin, 115, 116 Pinochet, Augusto, 25 Pinter, Harold, 7 Death, Etc, 7 Plato, 9, 26, 59, 106 “Civilized Society,” 106 pluralism (pluralistic), 3, 9, 16 plutonium, 45 Poindexter, John, 30, 33 politics, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 20–23, 27, 32, 38, 39, 46, 51, 57, 59, 74, 77, 114–116 Polman, Dick, 27 “Is ‘Homeland’ Un-American?” 27 poverty, 8, 13, 14, 17, 22, 23, 28, 96 Powell, Colin, 7 Powell, Dick, 45 power, 3, 7, 12, 28, 37, 52, 57 absolute p., 37 coersive use of p., 104 p. corrupts, 37
exploitive p., 16 language inseparable from p., 114 nuclear p., 49, 51, 53 overawing p., 26 persons in p., 115 state, power of the, 59, 75, 77, 78 Prager, Carol A. L., 63 Dilemmas of Reconciliation (with Govier), 63 Forgiveness and Revenge (with Govier), 63 preemption, 36–38, 40 prejudice, 101 present, remembering the, 3, 114 past, p. without a, 19 remembering the, 7–12, uncritical p., 18 Primoratz, Igor, 81 private vs. public, 3, 15, 18, 28 privileged, the, 22, 28, 29 problem solving, impoverished, 76 “Prohibition against Harboring Terrorists” (USA PATRIOT Act Section 863), 35, 39, 40 property, 15, 20, 28, 59, 74, 92 public, the, 9, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 30, 73, 90, 91, 98, 99 punishment, 35, 57, 58, 60, 71, 73, 76, 78, 81–97, 99, 100 Putin, Vladimir, 52, 53 Rabin, Yitzhak, 115 Raboteau, 36 racism (racist), 4, 8, 9 radi(ation)(oactivity), atomic, 41–45, 48 r. fallout, 5, 43, 47 ratiocination, 16 rational progress, 10 Reagan, Ronald Wilson, 48 R. Administration, 29 The Real Terror Network (Herman), 33 recidivism, offender, 58, 82, 83, 87, 89, 91, 93, 96, 99 reconciliation, 5, 20, 41–54, 57, 59–69, 110, 113–117 reconstruction, 8, 63, 65, 66, 99, 113
Index recovery, 57 Reeves, Stephen, 13 Rehnquist, Chief Justice William, 71, 72 Reich, Otto, 29, 33 Reiman, Jeffrey, 86, 87 Religious Task Force on Central America, 29 remembering, 3, 7, 8, 13, 19, 22, 41–43, 54, 114, 116 remembrance, 3, 5, 17, 41, 46, 59, 60, 103, 109, 110, 115–117 rendition, 36 responsibility, 3, 4, 13, 15–23, 44, 50, 58, 66, 67, 85, 92, 97. See also agen(cy)(ts) civic r., 18 collective r., 14, 17, 18, 20, 23 corporate r., 15 social r., 21 retributivis(m)(ts), 58, 82 Rice, Condoleezza, 7 Richards, Jerald, 46 Ricoeur, Paul, 101 Ridge, Thomas, 31 rightness, 47 right, political, 7, 23, 39 rights, 10, 22, 36, 42, 76, 77 accused, r. of the, 72, 73 American r. abroad, 26 animal r., 77 civil r., 7, 10, 11 Eighth Amendment r., 71 foreign nationals’ r., 36, 40 gay r., 10 human r., 10, 18, 22, 28, 29, 30, 34–36 victims’ r., 57, 68, 71–79, 90, 91, 98 war r., 32 Rights Talk (Glendon), 76 Roman society, 91 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 43 Rothermel, Dennis, 3, 57 Rumsfeld, Donald, 7, 111 Russia, 42, 48, 50–53, 87 R. Duma, 52 Sadat, Anwar al-, 115
141
sanctions, 49, 50, 82, 83, 89, 93, 97, 98 Sandinista government, 30, 32, 34 Saudi Arabia, 4, 38 scapegoat(ing)(s), 59, 102, 107–110 Schlesinger, Stephen, 27 security homeland s., 4, 25–40, 75 ins., 26 foreign nationals, ins. of, 29, 31, 36, 38, 40 Hobbesian ins., 28 international, 102 national, 13, 27, 28–31, 33, 36, 37, 39, 46, 52, 53 restorative justice, s. produced by, 98, 99 Security Council, United Nations National, 29, 50. See also United Nations self, 63–9, 106 s.-acceptance, 68, 69 s.-assessment/examination, 3, 11, 12, 16 s.-compassion, 62, 67, 68 s.-confession, 101 s.-construction/creation, 19, 66 s.-differentiation, 68 s.-esteem/respect, 61, 68 s.-identity, 62 s.-love, 69 s.-pity, 57, 63, 65, 67 s.-regard, 57, 68 secondary s., 65 s.-sympathy, 65, 66, 68 s.-trust, 68 s.-understanding, 69 Sen, Amartya, 22 Senate, United States, 52, 73 7 December 1941, 44 Shoemaker, Sydney, 113 “Memory,” 113 Sierra Leone, 116 Silencing the Past (Trouillot), 19 Singer, Peter, 20, 21 slave(ry)(es), 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19 smart bomb/missile, 37, 38 Smart, John Jamieson Carswell, 86
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REMEMBRANCE AND RECONCILIATION
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 46 social backgrounds, impoverished, 88 social contexts, 77 Souffrant, Eddy, 3, 13 South Africa, 50, 61, 62, 65. S. A. Apartheid, 27 Southeast Asia, 107 Soviet Union, 5, 37, 42, 47, 51, 108 S. “motherland,” 27 S. nuclear weapons, 50 “Special Report: Battalion 316” (Baltimore Sun), 30 Spinoza, Benedictus (Baruch), 67 Ethics, 67 sports, 59, 105 Stevens, Justice John Paul, 72, 75 “A Stigma that Never Fades” (The Economist), 90, 97 Stimson, Henry L., 43 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), 5, 48 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I and II (START), 5, 48, 50, 52, 53 suffer(ers)(ing), 5, 7, 28, 36, 45, 57, 61–68, 75, 76, 79, 91, 95, 100, 103, 104 superpowers, 5, 42, 47, 48, 50, 108, 116 surviv(al)(ors), 59, 95, 96, 113 atomic bomb s., 45 Holocaust s., 114 suspicion, 27, 28, 36, 103 sympathy, 57, 62–68, 116 Taliban, 8, 108 tax breaks, 8 terror(ism)(ists), 4, 5, 7, 14, 16, 26, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 47, 92, 105, 108, 110, 115, 116 al Qaeda t., 25 counter-t., 34 racial t., 10 suicide t., 38 United States sponsored t., 33 war on t., 3, 105, 110 World Trade Center t. attacks, 52 testimony, 30, 31, 62, 63, 71–74, 76, 116
“Theories of Conflict” (Jeong), 113 Tho, Le Duc, 115 Thompson, Dennis, 63 Truth v. Justice, 63 Thorvaldson, Sveinn, 94 Title XLVII, Chapter 960, of the Florida Statutes, 73 TNT, 43, 46 “Too Many Convicts” (The Economist), 90 tortur(ers)(ing), 4, 30, 34–36, 40, 62, 63, 86 “The Torturers Next Door” (Olsson), 35 “Toward the National Security State” (Binford), 28 transgression(s), 3, 5, 8, 22, 57 Treaty of Rome, 52 Trouillot, Michel Rolph, 19 Silencing the Past, 19 Truman, Harry S., 43, 44 Truth v. Justice (Thompson), 63 Turpin, Jennifer E., 113 Violence, Peace, and Conflict (with Kurtz), 113 26 March 2004, 108 Umbreit, Mark, 96, 98 underground [nuclear] tests, 47, 48 United Nations, 23, 30, 37, 38, 102, 110, 111 UN General Assembly 51 UN Human Development Index (HDI), 108 UN Human Development Report 2001, 108 UN Security Council, 50 UN torture definition, 36 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10, 22 United States, passim Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act, 31, 35, 39, 40 USA PATRIOT Act, 35, 39, 40 “us” vs. “them,” 20
Index utilitarian(ism)(s), 16, 17, 57, 58, 81–83, 85–88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 99, 100 Mill’s u., 9 utility value, 3, 9, 16, 23, 28, 44, 54, 86, 102 van den Haag, Ernest, 86, 87 Vanunu, Mordechai, 49 Verwoerd, Wilhelm, 44 veto power, 50 victim impact evidence, 71, 72, 74 Victim Impact Statement (VIS), 74, 76, 77–79 Victim Offender Mediation Programs, 91 victim(hood)(ization)(s), 3, 18, 25, 30, 33, 57–69, 73, 107–111, 115 v. compensation, 46, 76 crime, v.-centered response to, 82, 83, 90 definition of v., 75 v. empowerment, 115–117 v. impact evidence, 71, 72, 74–76, 91 indirect v., 75 mass v., 5 non-combatant v., 47 nuclear bombing v., 41, 42, 45 v.-offender mediation, 91–98 reconciliation, v.-directed, 62, 65, 67 re-victimization, 94 v. rights, 57, 73, 74, 76–79, 98 V.s’ Rights Amendment, 73, 74 Victims’ Rights Amendment, 73, 74 video games, 59, 104 Vietnam War, 11, 30 violence, 7, 12, 32, 57–59, 67, 91, 95, 107, 110, 113, 116, 117 capitalism, v. of, 104 institutional v., 103 memory of past v., 114, 115 mob v., 108 nonv., 11, 58, 67, 102, 111, 115 perpetual v., 58, 59, 101–106, 109 redemptive v., 111 social order, v. to maintain, 111 Violence, Peace, and Conflict (Kurtz and Turpin), 113 vulnerability, 3, 13, 16, 17, 23
143
Wachovia Bank, 13 “Wachovia Details Past Ties to Slavery” (Applebaum), 13 Wachtel, Ted, 93, 94, 97 Walker, Nigel, 90 Walzer, Michael, 27, 37 Just and Unjust Wars, 37 war(fare), 8, 28, 33, 34, 41, 42, 46, 102, 106, 108, 109, 115. See also cold war, World War I/II; see under Argentina, Vietnam anti-w. movements, 7, 10, 11 civil w., 7 cold w., 9 w. crimes, 29, 36, 52 dirty w., 30, 66 Iraq w., 111 just w. conditions/principles, 5, 44 nuclear w., 43, 47 peace as absence of w., 116 perpetual w., 104 preemptive w., 36, 37, 40 punishment/retaliatory w., 35, 38 w. rights, 32 terror, w. on, 7, 33, 36, 105, 110, 111 w. theory, 37 War and Reconciliation (Long and Brecke), 114 war on terror, 7, 105, 110 Warsaw Pact, 50 Wasserstrom, Richard, 84 Wayne, John, 45 weapons, 3, 5, 41–45, 47–54, 107, 110 Wee, Gillian May-Lian, 13 “Company Praised for Role against Terrorism,” 13 welfare, 57, 59, 77, 79 Wenden, Anita, 115 Western society, 87, 102 White, Morton, 8 Wilkinson, Beth, 74 Will, George, 74 Williams, James G., 108 Wolfowitz, Paul, 13, 17 Wolheim, Richard, 63 working class families, 8
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REMEMBRANCE AND RECONCILIATION
World Bank, 13, 14, 16, 23 World Trade Center, 26, 32, 52, 116 World War I/II, 5, 9, 11, 27, 31, 41, 42. 44, 46, 58, 103, 109
wrongs, 57, 79, 98 Yugoslavia, 116
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Titles Published Volumes 1 - 191 see www.rodopi.nl 192. Michael Taylor, Helmut Schreier, and Paulo Ghiraldelli, Jr., Editors, Pragmatism, Education, and Children: International Philosophical Perspectives. A volume in Pragmatism and Values 193. Brendan Sweetman, The Vision of Gabriel Marcel: Epistemology, Human Person, the Transcendent. A volume in Philosophy and Religion 194. Danielle Poe and Eddy Souffrant, Editors, Parceling the Globe: Philosophical Explorations in Globalization, Global Behavior, and Peace. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 195. Josef Šmajs, Evolutionary Ontology: Reclaiming the Value of Nature by Transforming Culture. A volume in Central-European Value Studies 196. Giuseppe Vicari, Beyond Conceptual Dualism: Ontology of Consciousness, Mental Causation, and Holism in John R. Searle’s Philosophy of Mind. A volume in Cognitive Science 197. Avi Sagi, Tradition vs. Traditionalism: Contemporary Perspectives in Jewish Thought. Translated from Hebrew by Batya Stein. A volume in Philosophy and Religion 198. Randall E. Osborne and Paul Kriese, Editors, Global Community: Global Security. A volume in Studies in Jurisprudence 199. Craig Clifford, Learned Ignorance in the Medicine Bow Mountains: A Reflection on Intellectual Prejudice. A volume in Lived Values: Valued Lives 200. Mark Letteri, Heidegger and the Question of Psychology: Zollikon and Beyond. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 201. Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo and Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo, Editors, A New Kind of Containment: “The War on Terror,” Race, and Sexuality. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 202. Amihud Gilead, Necessity and Truthful Fictions: Panenmentalist Observations. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology
203. Fernand Vial, The Unconscious in Philosophy, and French and European Literature: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century. A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 204. Adam C. Scarfe, Editor, The Adventure of Education: Process Philosophers on Learning, Teaching, and Research. A volume in Philosophy of Education 205. King-Tak Ip, Editor, Environmental Ethics: Intercultural Perspectives. A volume in Studies in Applied Ethics 206. Evgenia Cherkasova, Dostoevsky and Kant: Dialogues on Ethics. A volume in Social Philosophy 207. Alexander Kremer and John Ryder, Editors, Self and Society: Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume Four. A volume in Central European Value Studies 208. Terence O’Connell, Dialogue on Grief and Consolation. A volume in Lived Values, Valued Lives 209. Craig Hanson, Thinking about Addiction: Hyperbolic Discounting and Responsible Agency. A volume in Social Philosophy 210. Gary G. Gallopin, Beyond Perestroika: Axiology and the New Russian Entrepreneurs. A volume in Hartman Institute Axiology Studies 211. Tuija Takala, Peter Herissone-Kelly, and Søren Holm, Editors, Cutting Through the Surface: Philosophical Approaches to Bioethics. A volume in Values in Bioethics 212. Neena Schwartz: A Lab of My Own. A volume in Lived Values, Valued Lives 213. Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, Values and Powers: Re-reading the Philosophical Tradition of American Pragmatism. A volume in Central European Value Studies 214. Matti Häyry, Tuija Takala, Peter Herissone-Kelly and Gardar Árnason, Editors, Arguments and Analysis in Bioethics. A volume in Values in Bioethics
215. Anders Nordgren, For Our Children: The Ethics of Animal Experimentation in the Age of Genetic Engineering. A volume in Values in Bioethics 216. James R. Watson, Editor, Metacide: In the Pursuit of Excellence. A volume in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 217. Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, Editor, Positive Peace: Reflections on Peace Education, Nonviolence, and Social Change. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 218. Christopher Berry Gray, The Methodology of Maurice Hauriou: Legal, Sociological, Philosophical. A volume in Studies in Jurisprudence 219. Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo and Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo, Containing (Un)American Bodies: Race, Sexuality, and Post-9/11 Constructions of Citizenship. A volume in Philosophy of Peace 220. Roland Faber, Brian G. Henning, Clinton Combs, Editors, Beyond Metaphysics? Explorations in Alfred North Whitehead’s Late Thought. A volume in Contemporary Whitehead Studies 221. John G. McGraw, Intimacy and Isolation (Intimacy and Aloneness: A Multi-Volume Study in Philosophical Psychology, Volume One), A volume in Philosophy and Psychology 222. Janice L. Schultz-Aldrich, Introduction and Edition, “Truth” is a Divine Name, Hitherto Unpublished Papers of Edward A. Synan, 1918-1997. A volume in Gilson Studies 223. Larry A. Hickman, Matthew Caleb Flamm, Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński and Jennifer A. Rea, Editors, The Continuing Relevance of John Dewey: Reflections on Aesthetics, Morality, Science, and Society. A volume in Central European Value Studies 224. Hugh P. McDonald, Creative Actualization: A Meliorist Theory of Values. A volume in Studies in Pragmatism and Values 225. Rob Gildert and Dennis Rothermel, Editors, Remembrance and Reconciliation. A volume in Philosophy of Peace