Moral relativism & "A Mighty Heart" & July 4

Mariane and Daniel Pearl (Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman) in "A Mighty Heart."

The term "moral relativism" (or "moral equivalence") has always fascinated me because of its slipperiness -- its moral relativism, if you will. The way the term is used in politics these days (by Israelis and Palestinians, conservatives and liberals, Christians and Muslims, and so on), it can mean one thing or its opposite, depending on who's using it and what they're trying to justify.

What it boils down to, in popular rhetorical discourse, is the moral equivalent of a five-year-old's finger-pointing: "But they started it!" and "What they did was worse!" This creates an inescapable and illogical ideological loop, wherein each new assault is justified by a previous one (or fear of a future one) that attempts to even the score but never, ever does, since it is always used to rationalize the next reprisal. It's always a matter of "self-defense" in the minds of the perpetrators.*

This ever-escalating tit-for-tat is, in fact, moral relativism at its most insidious, because it posits that there is no objective right or wrong. Something is considered moral or immoral depending on who does it and when, rather than on the nature of the act itself and its consequences -- whether unintended ones, or the intended kind that pave the road to hell.

Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl, has an essay at The New Republic website ("Moral relativism and 'A Mighty Heart'") in which he recalls a conversation with a Pakistani friend who said "he loathed people like President Bush who insisted on dividing the world into 'us' and 'them.' My friend, of course, was taking an innocent stand against intolerance, and did not realize that, in so doing, he was in fact dividing the world into 'us' and 'them,' falling straight into the camp of people he loathed."

In other words, if there's one thing I can't tolerate, it's intolerance.

But I am confused by Pearl's argument. That's always been one of the perils of war, hasn't it? In trying to destroy the thing you oppose, you are inevitably faced with the prospect of, knowingly or unknowingly, blurring the moral distinctions between you and your enemy. You become the thing you hate.

Pearl states that "there is no such thing as unqualified tolerance." He begins by saying he used to believe in a simplistic morality in which "the world essentially divided into two types of people: those who were broadly tolerant; and those who felt threatened by differences. If only the forces of tolerance could win out over the forces of intolerance, I reasoned, the world might finally know some measure of peace."

If that sounds like an excessively naive position (perhaps even a straw man), it should come as no surprise that it is one he says he no longer holds: "There can be no comparison between those who take pride in the killing of an unarmed journalist and those who vow to end such acts -- no ifs, ands, or buts," he writes. "Moral relativism died with Daniel Pearl, in Karachi, on January 31, 2002."

Would that it were so. His own article, sadly, is proof that it isn't. "One should, in fact, condemn and resist political doctrines that advocate the murder of innocents, that undermine the basic norms of civilization, or that seek to make pluralism impossible," he writes. "There can be no moral equivalence between those who seek -- however clumsily -- to build a more liberal, tolerant world and those who advocate the annihilation of other faiths, cultures, or states."

Sounds good, but the problem here is as fundamental as the ancient clichés: "Talk is cheap," and "Actions speak louder than words." America's officially undeclared "War on Terror" is built on a tacit agreement between neoconservatives and Muslim radicals (see "The Power of Nightmares"), framed and fought by "both sides" as a battle of Western Civilization vs. Islamists. Rationally or irrationally, each is absolutely certain that the other's goal is nothing less than the annihilation of their faith, culture and state -- not to mention themselves, their neighbors, and their families. If those are the stakes, and anything can be justified in the name of preserving one's very existence, is that moral relativism? And if so, who do you have to convince that it is? And to what end?

Pearl quotes "A Mighty Heart" director Michael Winterbottom from a Washington Post chat in which he said he sees sees similarities between his film "The Road to Guantánamo" and "A Mighty Heart."

"Both are stories about people who are victims of increasing violence on both sides," Winterbottom said. "There are extremists on both sides who want to ratchet up the levels of violence and hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this."

(Winterbottom prefaced this remark, though Pearl does not quote him, with: "'The Road to Guantanamo' was not anti-American. It was showing what happened to three British guys in Guantánamo. I think Guantánamo is wrong. I don't think 'Guantánamo' should exist. That doesn't make me anti-American. Lots of Americans think it's wrong as well. In the case of Daniel Pearl, maybe at first glance it seems like this is the oppostie side of the story from 'Road to Guantánamo.' But I think actually both stories are very similar....")

Pearl responds:

Drawing a comparison between Danny's murder and the detainment of suspects in Guantánamo is precisely what the killers wanted, as expressed in both their e-mails and the murder video. Obviously Winterbottom did not mean to echo their sentiments, and certainly not to justify their demands or actions. Still, I am concerned that aspects of his movie will play into the hands of professional obscurers of moral clarity.

To acknowledge that there are victims and extremists on either side is not to play into the enemy's hands, no matter how they may try to spin it, because then they are forced to acknowledge the same thing. What serves the enemy is behaving in ways that appear to give weight to their propaganda, by far the most powerful weapon in any war. Suicide bombers, by definition, destroy themselves along with their victims. And because of that, they are doomed to lose. The West's challenge is to avoid helping to create more suicide bombers by acting in ways that appear to lend credence to their feelings of paranoia, humiliation, and victimhood.

The killers of Daniel Pearl claimed (publicly, at least) that he was a CIA agent, not just a reporter. That's how they chose to frame their brutal murder, hoping to shift the moral debate away from their own actions and onto Daniel Pearl. But even if he had been a CIA agent, does that excuse what they did to him? Is the very idea of due process simply another casualty of war, so that mere suspicion -- or allegation -- justifies torture and murder? There, I would say, is where moral relativism ends.

To say that Winterbottom's comparison "is precisely what the killers wanted" is to ignore that the whole "War on Terror" concept, and particularly the inept invasion and occupation of Iraq it was used to justify, is precisely what Al Qaeda wanted: to create the perception of a war between the West and Islam. It's been a worldwide recruiting drive for Al Quaeda and other ideological camps seeking to convert Muslims to terrorism. Winterbottom is quite specific about the similarities he sees between the stories of his two movies, and nowhere do I see him implying that the murder of Daniel Pearl and the secretive detainments at Guantánamo are equivalent. What he's saying, I think, is more like "two wrongs don't make a right" -- that, in war, victims are victims and aggressors are aggressors. No moral relativism there. Just a fact. Judea Pearl's son was savagely murdered, and nothing can rationalize or excuse that fact. Now, how do you explain to an Iraqi husband or father that the death of his children, wife or parents is less morally significant because they were accidental collateral damage?

Pearl continues:

Indeed, following an advance screening of "A Mighty Heart," a panelist representing the Council on American-Islamic Relations reportedly said, "We need to end the culture of bombs, torture, occupation, and violence. This is the message to take from the film." The message that angry youngsters are hearing is unfortunate: All forms of violence are equally evil; therefore, as long as one persists, others should not be ruled out. This is precisely the logic used by Mohammed Siddiqui Khan, one of the London suicide bombers, in his videotape on Al Jazeera. "Your democratically elected government," he told his British countrymen, "continues to perpetrate atrocities against my people ... . [W]e will not stop."

Pearl then gives his own reading of the movie:

What is needed now is for intellectuals, filmmakers, and the rest of us to resist this dangerous trend and draw legitimate distinctions where such distinctions are warranted.

My son Danny had the courage to examine all sides. He was a genuine listener and a champion of dialogue. Yet he also had principles and red lines. He was tolerant but not mindlessly so. I hope viewers will remember this when they see "A Mighty Heart."

In today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes: "Muslims have got to understand that a death cult has taken root in the bosom of their religion, feeding off it like a cancerous tumor.... If Muslim leaders don’t remove this cancer — and only they can — it will spread, tainting innocent Muslims and poisoning their relations with each other and the world." And in an NPR interview about his book "The Assault on Reason," after an accounting of America's failures in conducting the "War on Terror," Al Gore said: "The point of this book is that our nation is so shockingly vulnerable to such crass manipulation.... And the fact that there is so little protest or outcry points to the much deeper problem not of just the culpability of those in the White House at the present moment, but at the fact that we are so vulnerable to these mistakes and that we allow them to occur with hardly any impressive outcry of resistance or protest." Are Friedman's and Gores statements mutually exclusive? Not at all. Each "side" bears full responsibility for its actions.

From the New York Times' July 4 editorial:

Ideas have a way of recommending themselves by the behavior of the men and women who hold them, and this is no less true of nations. The question isn’t simply whether we can project our ideal of freedom around the world. The question is whether, by who we are and how we behave, we can make the freedom that animates us compelling to others.

Back when John McCain still appeared to have something of a moral compass, he criticized the inflammatory and ineffective Bush policies that allowed or encouraged "extreme interrogation methods" or "abuse" or "torture" (depending on whose PC term you want to invoke) by saying: "It's not about who they are. It's about who we are."

That is not "moral relativism." That is "moral clarity." We can't control who "they" are. We can only control who we are.