Driving Votes: Jenny's Blog - Archived Entry

In December of 2001 my father handed me an article by the conservative Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly, who was killed fifteen and a half months later in a Humvee accident while traveling as a reporter with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq. His column was a sarcastic congratulation to Allison Hornstein, a Yale undergraduate, for arriving at the conclusion that the actions of the September 11th terrorists were morally wrong. Allison had written a piece in Newsweek in which she relayed that as students on the Yale campus attempted to understand the motives and causes behind the terrorists’ actions, conspicuously absent was any discussion of wrongdoing. As Allison explained, the downside of her generation’s schooling in moral and cultural relativity was a resulting collective difficulty with making moral judgments.

I identified with Allison. As someone whose education was also filled with lessons in tolerance and respect for cultural differences, there is a resistance in me to passing moral judgment on the actions of others. My first instinct is rather to attempt to pinpoint where “the other side” is coming from and then to arrive at an understanding that our experiences, motivations, and opinions are just different, a sort of complacent nihilism wherein no one and nothing is ever right or wrong.

I go through these motions when I consider politics and the Bush administration’s actions in Iraq. While I certainly don’t agree with much of what our country has done in the Middle East and in fact experience a feeling of revulsion over the steps our government has taken since September 11th, I still have the initial inclination to: 1) Investigate differences in opinion, 2) Understand differences, 3) Conclude it’s all good.

As Michael Kelly pointed out, the problem with this train of thought is that sometimes actions are morally wrong. Hijacking planes, sending them into buildings, and killing thousands of civilians is morally wrong. I would add that lying to the nation and the world about the certainty of a threat and the credibility of the intelligence behind it is morally wrong. Unilaterally invading a sovereign nation based upon these trumped up charges and killing thousands of civilians is morally wrong. Waiving the human rights of suspected criminals and implementing torture is morally wrong.

But wait, the empathizer in me cries out. George Bush means well, Dick Cheney thinks he has the best interests of the Iraqi people in mind, and Donald Rumsfeld just wants to make the world safer. While this may be true, it may also be true that years of poverty and the U.S. government’s capricious application of justice in the Middle East have contributed to a growing hatred of the West by many Muslims. Does this absolve the September 11th terrorists? Hardly. Can I excuse my government for its lies, killing, and condoning of torture because of its supposed good intentions? I don’t think so.

I have to go through too many degrees of rationalization to even be comfortable with, let alone support, the Bush administration’s actions in Iraq, and particularly in an election year, I don’t have that much time. It is up to each one of us to pass moral judgment with our vote. “Draw the line, Ms. Hornstein,” I hear Mr. Kelly urging. “Draw it where you know it belongs.”