Libya

Ethics Quiz Time! Which Euphemism Is More Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Ethics Alarms hates euphemisms, which are usually not intended as delicate ways of describing something controversial, but rather an unethical effort to hide its true nature. Affirmative action…pro-life… pro-choice….all cowardly, all designed to deceive and avoid accountability for one’s actions and views.

Today’s quiz involves a brand new euphemism, cooked up by the Obama administration to describe warfare in Libya that the administration doesn’t want to admit is warfare: kinetic military action!

The Quiz:

Which euphemism is more unethical?

A

“Enhanced interrogation” for torture (The Bush Administration)

or

B

“Kinetic military action” for warfare (The Obama Administration)

Here is how to reach your decision: rank A and B in each of three categories…misrepresentation, cowardice, and degree of disrespect and contempt for the intelligence of the American public. First place is worth one point; second gets none. If you rate the category a tie, each gets one-half a point.

Good luck. By the way: there is no wrong answer, since both euphemisms are disgraceful. But let’s see if there is any consensus. I’ll reveal my answer later.

Unethical Quote of the Week: New York Times Op-Ed Writer David Brooks

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“Besides, the legitimacy of a war is not established by how it is organized but by what it achieves.”

—-David Brooks, writing in the Times about the messy United Nations coalition now intervening in the Libyan civil war.

This is blatant consequentialism, and Brooks is incredibly mistaken to write it. Would Lincoln’s war have been “illegitimate” if it had resulted in a defeated North and two nations, one still clinging to slavery? W.W.II “achieved” virtual slavery for million of Europeans whose freedom was conceded to the Soviet Union, the frying of two Japanese cities full of civilians, the opportunity for Mao to launch the worst genocide in human history, and 40 years with a very real risk of a nuclear war that might have exterminated humanity. Was that war legitimate?

The legitimacy of a war is measured by whether its cause is just, and its objectives are both vital and beyond accomplishing by any other means. What any war ultimately achieves is determined by events and factors impossible to know when the war is commenced, as well as pure, dumb luck..

How I Nearly Caused The World To Explode, and Other Travel Musings

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Lots of time to fume and muse about the ethical implications of a frustrating day and an aggravating week while taking an interminable plane trip to Houston: Continue reading →

No Time for Brackets

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Thank God THAT's taken care of...

I don’t need to go into great detail on this; either it bothers you, or it doesn’t.

I strongly suspect there are many of President Obama’s supporters who are bothered, but will never admit it: hence the silence from the mainstream media. I am certain that there are many on the Right who are bothered, but since they are bothered by everything the President does, their annoyance is easy to dismiss. Many, I know, won’t see it, can’t see it, don’t care, and will just turn their attention other matters with a shrug, if that. For my part, I am bothered because I believe that leaders have to be competent and to engender trust by showing good judgment, and I believe the President of the United States has an added obligation to maintain the weight, credibility, and honor of the office, and therefore its strength.

President Obama’s special invitation to ESPN to come to the White House and announce his bracket picks for the NCAA basketball tournament was as frightening a demonstration of tone-deaf leadership malpractice as I have seen, or read about, from any of the 12 U.S. Presidents of my lifetime. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Singing For Muammar

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Sing, Nelly---and charge him through the nose.

Singer Nelly Furtado has been attacked recently for accepting a million dollars in 2007 to entertain Muammar Gaddafi and his family. The idea seems to be that, as ringingly put by screenwriter Mark Tapper,

“It is quite simply willful blindness to claim that there is no moral dimension in the choice to perform privately for a monster like Gaddafi, and in being paid exorbitantly from funds no doubt stolen from his own people, or misappropriated from foreign aid or dirty deals.”

Furtado isn’t the only one who crooned for the Libyan dictator, apparently. Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Richie, Beyoncé and other performers also accepted big bucks to give Muammar and his family a good time.Furtado is donating her fee to charity in the wake of criticism like Tapper’s and Beyoncé has also donated the million that she received to charity, apologizing profusely. Mariah Carey is begging for forgiveness.

I’m glad that the stars are giving their money to worthy causes, and no doubt it is a good public relations move in a society where half-baked ethical notions become conventional wisdom before much thought has been applied to them. Nevertheless, Furtado and the rest did nothing wrong by entertaining Gaddafi. Continue reading →

United Nations Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

 

After the U.N., Plan B

Ah, the United Nations—can’t live with it, can’t live without it!

 

But I think it may be time for the U.S., having tried to live with a corrupt, hypocritical, impotent monument to how disastrous a one-world government would be—while supplying the lion’s share of its funding— to try living without it.

The U.N. Human Rights Council has issued a 23-page report praising the Gaddafi regime’s human-rights record. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Mr. Obama has spoken only once in public about the Libyan crisis. He has yet to condemn Mr. Gaddafi by name. He has not called for an end to the regime. He has expressed concern about protecting U.S. citizens – most of whom were evacuated from Libya on Friday – but has showed no intention of protecting the Libyans whom Mr. Gaddafi is slaughtering. The White House appears content to allow France and other nations to take the lead. But the reality is that as long as the president of the United States remains passive, the help Libyans are begging for will not come.”

—-The Washington Post, in an Editorial entitled “A Passive President”

President Obama is unilaterally abdicating the United States’ critical and honorable role as the world’s advocate for freedom and human rights. As President Obama calculated the political angles, people are dying at the hands of a mad dictator. He has condemned the Governor of Wisconsin with more intensity than he has Libya’s butcher.

There are certain sacred duties of being President Of the United States, and this one doesn’t apparently sit well with Obama’s famous “reserve.” It is the duty to lead the World to oppose evil, and he is ducking it as people die.

Cheers to the Washington Post for noticing, caring, and speaking out.

UPDATE: 2/26/11 The same day the Post ran its editorial, the White House announced that the President told Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel that “when a leader’s only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now.” I suppose that covers “He has not called for an end to the regime” part of the Post’s indictment, though someone has to explain to me why Obama is condemning the Libyan dictator without mentioning his name ,and weirder still, only doing so by reporting what he has said to the German Chancellor.

Obama, the Bomber, and the Dangers of Deceit

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I live in the Washington,D.C. area, and I often say that deceit is the official language here. Deceit is an artful form of lying in which literally truthful statements are made in a manner, tone and context designed to deceive others into believing something that is not true, by playing on their assumptions, hopes or trust. Like any other lie, it allows the liar to gain tangible benefits, but with less risk than with a normal lie.  If a deceitful statement is unmasked after an individual has relied on it, the originator of the deceit  can and often does blame the duped listener, who “misunderstood” or “jumped to conclusions.” That’s the special upside of deceit.

The downside of deceit is that it is the calling card of especially slippery people, the preferred device of the verbally adept and the unconscionably manipulative. Effective deceit takes work and talent; show me someone who can be deceitful easily, and I will show you someone whom neither of us should trust.

That is why this statement by President Obama from last week is so discouraging, and perhaps, a tipping point in his relationship to the American people: Continue reading →