Notre Dame, Football, and Culture

In a November op-ed piece in the Irish Rover, “Two Cheers for Drones: The ethics of UAV’s in the war on terror,” Notre Dame political science Professor Michael Desch argued for the ethics of drone warfare.  In doing so, he omitted discussion of key moral features of the drone question.  In addition, his professional relationship with the CIA and Department of State calls into question his objectivity.

Professor Desch begins by invoking the Catholic Tradition for Just War and outlines his arguments as follows:

Given that al Qaeda declared war on us on February 1998 and launched a series of escalating attacks on our embassies, warships, and finally our territory itself on September 11, 2001, our military response fits the requirements of a just decision to go to war, which include that it be conducted by the proper authority (the US government), with right intention (to destroy al Qaeda), that it have a reasonable chance of success, that the end be proportional to means employed, and that it be the last resort.

As Americans, we are deeply familiar with Desch’s premise that our primary justification for invading Afghanistan rests with the terror attacks of and leading up to 9/11.  However, Desch’s characterization of the Tradition’s requirements failed to include the overarching requirement, which is that war be defensive in nature—“legitimate defense by military force” according to the Catholic Catechism.  The Church is clear, therefore, that wars of aggression violate the principles of Just War.

More specifically, in the case of the Afghanistan War, a drone hotspot, a review of publicly available information leading up to the US invasion suggests that it was a war of aggression.  The goals appear to be three-fold: to seek retribution for a failed pipeline venture, to cause a change of regime, and to secure the country for transit and extraction of oil and other natural resources.

Kabobs and Boiled Peanuts:  The Taliban Go To Texas

A senior delegation from the Taliban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.  A spokesman for the company, Unocal [Union Oil Company of California], said the Taliban were expected to spend several days at the company’s headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.  Unocal says it has agreements both with Turkmenistan to sell its gas and with Pakistan to buy it.  A BBC regional correspondent says the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.  (Source: BBC, Taliban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline, Dec. 4, 1997.)

The pipeline deal would later fall apart over the price the consortium would pay to the Taliban, and military threats ensued.

Your Choice:  A Carpet of Gold or a Carpet of Bombs

Until now, former French intelligence officer Jean-Charles Brisard and intelligence analyst Guillaume Dasquie report, ‘the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia.  The Bush government wanted to change all that.’ However, confronted with the Taliban’s refusal to accept US conditions,’this rationale of energy security changed into a military one.’  In an interview in Paris, Brisard noted that ‘At one moment during the negotiations, the US representatives told the Taliban, either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.’ (Source: War on Truth, Ahmed, 2005)

In light of demonstrated motive and intent for a war of aggression, the idea that the war was defensive in nature becomes tenuous.  Given the involvement of many countries as planning sites for the 9/11 attacks that we did not later invade, including Germany, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Philippines, the terror attacks appear to have been used as a pretext for a campaign that had been long planned for Afghanistan.

Many public reports circulated regarding such plans prior to 9/11, the following being one example.

India and Iran will only play the role of ‘facilitator’ while the US and Russia will combat the Taliban from the front with the help of two Central Asian countries, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan… Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will lead the ground attack with a strong military backup of the US and Russia. Vital Taliban installations and military assets will be targeted. India and Iran will provide logistic support. (Source: India Reacts, June 2001, as quoted in War on Truth, Ahmed)

On Proportionality and Chances for Success

The aggression question notwithstanding, let’s consider Desch’s other arguments.  After his general argument for going to war, he moves on to address the drone question more directly and touts the ability of drones to save American lives and reduce collateral damage.

The United States also has very capable Special Operations Forces, such as the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team Six which can operate surgically against terrorist figures.  But the failed Ranger/Delta operation in Mogadishu in 1993 makes clear that such operations can easily go very wrong, not only in terms of friendly casualties (19 US soldiers were killed and almost 100 were wounded) but also in terms of collateral damage…

In a speech in Atlanta one year before his resignation, General David Petraeus promoted drones with great enthusiasm, also proclaiming a lowered risk to American troops.

But the nature of drone warfare does not square with these characterizations of it.

Collateral Damage:  In the Crosshairs           by Johanna Poethig

I would challenge the General and the Professor on the grounds that removing the human agent from war, as is the effect of grounding the pilot, automates the taking of life.  This carries two ominous consequences.

First, the identity of the pilot as the bombardier of record has long provided a coincidental governor on the morality of conflict.  Separating the pilot from the aircraft inserts moral distance from the event, as the chain of responsibility for the killing grows longer and more convoluted according to the many specialized roles drone missions entail.

Second, the risk that pilots would normally incur presumably acts as a forcing mechanism for mission selectivity which accounts for the worth and safety of the pilot.  Eliminating this mechanism could cause otherwise marginal or even reckless missions to proceed unchecked.

Though difficult to confirm due to the secrecy of the drone program, one would therefore expect a disturbing combination of: less accountability, more missions, and more cumulative collateral damage and noncombatant casualties.

Desch adds further color to his theme of discriminate warfare:

In terms of conducting the war justly through discriminate and proportional operations, Obama’s approach has also been more in accord with the Tradition’s requirements.  Indeed, armed unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) are among the most discriminate of all weapons. … Consider the alternatives: the Air Force and Navy also have highly accurate laser-guided bombs that they have used to target al Qaeda figures, but the smallest of these has over 10 times the explosive power of the Hellfire Missile, raising significant chances for collateral damage and the harming of non-combatants.

But even a former Petraeus aid has made competing assertions.

David Kilcullen, the counter-insurgency expert who had worked closely with Gen. David Petraeus and is currently in charge of the US/NATO military operations in Afghanistan, said that only 2 percent of those killed in drone attacks had been ‘jihadists.’  Kilcullen noted that the use of drones is ‘not moral’ and only serves to provide ‘more recruits for militant movements that have grown exponentially as drone attacks have increased.’ (Source: Hellfire from the Sky:  The targeting of civilians by unmanned drones has increased in President Obama’s tenure, Frontline Magazine, November 2010)

Analysis such as that put forth by Professor Desch calls into further question Notre Dame’s moral autonomy.  In this case he misses a real opportunity to draw on his insider’s background to contribute fresh analysis on the drone topic.  His writing serves only to distribute prepackaged ideas that hew closely to current policy to a campus environment already suffering from a captive administration and controlled messaging.

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Notes
1.  Professor Desch’s CV.  See page 18 for consulting relationships.
2.  Little noted in public reporting on the Afghanistan War is that prior to joining Bush’s cabinet as National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice worked for Chevron Corp., an interested party in the pipeline deal, and later the acquirer of Unocal.
3.  I didn’t treat each requirement for Just War noted by Desch, however, there is an interesting argument against the Last Resort claim by Desch.  Laili Helms, the niece of former CIA head and longtime US Senator Richard Helms, served as a hired Taliban representative in the US and indicated the Taliban had tried to give up bin Laden but to no avail.   

Helms described one incident after another in which, she claimed, the Taliban agreed to give up bin Laden to the US, only to be rebuffed by the State Department.  On one occasion, she said, the Taliban agreed to give the US coordinates for his campsite, leaving enough time so the Yanks could whack Al Qaeda’s leader with a missile before he moved.  The proposal, she claims, was nixed.  The State Department denied receiving any such offer. (Source: Village Voice, The French Connection, 2-8 January 2002, Interview with authors of Bin Laden:  the Forbidden Truth, Brisard and Dasquie,)

Notre Dame students react to Osama bin Laden’s Death Announcement, May 2, 2011 (Source: The Observer)

It’s a question of epistemology:  how do you know what you know?  Given that these students came of age in the Homeland Security era, their deference to official media does not surprise.  But their response seems very shipyard worker or trade school student:  knee-jerk, emotional, unquestioning.

If we pause and look back, we might remember the story as uncomfortably sterile.  It began with a made-for-TV SEAL Commando raid and ended with an unannounced burial at sea.  But it seemed inorganic and lacked dimensionality.  Photos of the President watching as a spectator thousands of miles away felt surreal.  Thin and electronic, there was little bloodtrail as killings go.  It even lacked a corpse and evidence thereof:

Though the Abbottabad raid has been described in great detail by U.S. officials, no physical evidence constituting actual “proof of death” has been offered to the public, neither to journalists nor to independent third parties who have requested this information through the Freedom of Information Act.  Numerous organizations filed FOIA requests seeking at least a partial release of photographs, videos, and/or DNA test results, including The Associated Press, Reuters, CBS News, Judicial Watch, Politico, Fox News, Citizens United, and NPR.  On April 26, 2012, Judge James E. Boasberg held that the Department of Defense was not required to release any evidence to the public. (Source:  Wikipedia)

Despite a sole source problem, the media blitzed the public with mimeographs of the official report, and the public and these students bought it.  Later, after their FOIA requests were denied, none of these major media organizations retracted the story.  This degrading of reality from that which is physically observed to that which is simply reported emasculates language of its ability to help us discover and convey truth.  The truth in this case is that we simply cannot know when, where or under what circumstances Osama bin Laden expired.

Is this a case of deverbalization?  Easy for you to say.

On May 1, 2011, the New York Times’ newsbreaking headline  “Bin Laden Is Dead, Obama Says“ made clear the Times understood the distinction between Bin Laden dying, and making the claim.  Their need to attribute to Obama calls into question the assertion, and is fundamentally different than a headline like “Bin Laden Is Dead, According to Evidence.”  Obama understood this distinction – that the story’s credibility would swing on the Administration’s narrative – because the Administration made the decision to suppress the physical evidence.

The idea that unsubstantiated claims should be embraced as fact recalls Karl Rove’s dictum that the Executive Branch doesn’t respond to reality, it creates it.  From a 2004 interview with NYT Magazine’s Ron Suskind:

[Rove] said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.” He continued “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” 

At its heart, therefore, this story presents a language problem with serious repercussion, as no other person figured in more heavily to the dramatic shift in foreign policy and American public life since September 11, 2001.  Without the integrity of language in tact, the public lacks a factual context to evaluate a decade of national security policies.

To deverbalize a society is to dehumanize it.  A loss of verbal integrity plunges society into a social darkness of varying degrees, ultimately mutilating the fundamental way in which people relate to one another.  Language can mutilate the thought process.  Seen in this light, language is everything.

– Theologian J. Daryl Charles, The New Verbal Order

Neil Postman, in a classic work, noted that communicating through language requires serious effort that is often undercut by our own infatuation with being entertained:

Learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories. . . Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other.  They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and comercials.

– Amusing Ourselves to Death:  Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman, 1985

Just Me Asking:  Is free inquiry at Notre Dame dead? 

If young scholars as these can be moved to spontaneous celebration by fantastic but unsubstantiated Presidential decrees, and if the hollowing out of language itself is an enabler, one could imagine darker forms of mobilization of the young, the ignorant and other socially disenfranchised groups.

But how about that guarantor of dissent and speech – the University:  can it offer a back channel to truth and integrity to deliver us to terra firma?

There was a time when geographical isolation and distance offered communities like Notre Dame time to catch their breath and authenticate incoming news.  But media ubiquity has compressed time and warped geography.  In this case the pure abstraction of Osama bin Laden evinced persuasive power far greater than the tremendous physical distances that news had to travel, distance which normally would have intervened on the side of reticence.

If natural barriers have fallen, then institutions like on-campus reporting could fill the gap to help students see past image to reality when truth is in question.  But at Notre Dame, it fails to do so, as University Administration control over The Observer denies students the opportunity to deliberate, to question, and to form their own narrative based on rigorous study of history and primary sources.

Student writers and their editors thus reprint and recycle Associated Press stories, which are a secondary news source, and are captive to the language, predisposition and point of view of their sources.  This photo is but one example, where the staff photographer sought out examples of student behavior confirmatory to the official report, while surely there were more open-minded students whose response might have revealed doubts.

While most are familiar with Orwell’s 1984 and its warnings, few are aware that Christian author CS Lewis also weighed in on the dangers of ceding control over language, as he related truthful language to the foundational layer of a traditional value system.

Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted and indeed, when we read them – how Plato would have every infant ‘a bastard nursed in a bureau’, and Elyot would have the boy see no men before the age of seven and, after that, no women, and how Locke wants children to have leaky shoes and no turn for poetry, – we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses.  But the manmoulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irrestistible scientific technique:  we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please. . . A dogmatic belief in objective value is [therefore] necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.

– CS Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 1944

If this discussion seems esoteric, I’ll close with a few practical suggestions.  If you are a university student at Notre Dame or elsewhere, think about using your time as a student to build a reverence for language and history, and apply that context to news accounts and other media when trying to assess the world around you.  It takes courage to make independent judgements about the quality of such information and to form individual opinions accordingly.  Few of your peers do it, and the journey will be worth the effort.

If you are an adult professional, this is a call to reflect on the role of language in the commons, how its emasculation threatens our fundamental ability to communicate with one another, and to recognize that distortion of speech is a primary currency of the War on Terror (the other being fear), and that perhaps each of us should search for practical ways based on our own professional skills and social position to resist these attempts.

In a Sports Illustrated article from an earlier era, Notre Dame President Fr. Hesburgh warned that college football should be “kept within proper bounds of time, place and emphasis.”

Christian author C.S. Lewis likewise laid out the inadequacy of newspaper reporting.

“…I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read newspapers.  Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance.”

How would Hesburgh and Lewis react to ESPN’s reporting on the Tressel affair?

As is well known, the former Ohio State Coach’s demise resulted in stiff penalties for him and the entire Ohio State football program.  During the episode, ESPN has maintained a somber beat throughout, and in this case invoked heavy Christian symbology to describe Tressel’s infractions:

“Instead of arguing its innocence, Ohio State admitted to its sins — or more accurately, former coach Jim Tressel’s sins.”

“Former Ohio State Coach, Jim Tressel, who was forced to resign in May, committed the ultimate sin for a college coach when he withheld information about the scandal from OSU officials and NCAA investigators.”

“Now Meyer and the rest of the Buckeyes get to pay for Tressel’s sins.”

“It might not be a new day for the NCAA but it certainly is a breath of fresh air.   Even a program like Ohio State isn’t immune from paying the price for its sins.”

Language is important.  To employ spiritual analogues in the service of commerce can distort society’s thought life, and recalls the challenges of proportionality and emphasis issued by Hesburgh and Lewis. 

Because ESPN benefits economically from the current absence of a collective bargaining agreement for student athletes, it is particularly conflicted in its dual role as a steward of language and a marketer of college sports.  In other words, buyer beware. 

While Tressel may have sinned against his maker while breaking the rules, it’s not clear he did so against the NCAA, which is in the end an ephemeral entity, neither person nor God. 

While this style of reporting has succeeded in maintaining public opinion against Tressel and in favor of the NCAA, does it not dilute our understanding of the absolute in favor of the relative, the eternal in favor of the temporal?

“Father Hesburgh made his position on the war very clear Friday afternoon as he introduced Senator Charles Goodell to a group of over 350 students in the Stepan Center.  ‘If I had the wisdom and the power I would stop the war tonight before midnight, ‘ Hesburgh stated.  The remark was followed by over twenty seconds of applause.”   
                                            – The Observer, October 13, 1969

Long time Notre Dame President Father Theodore Hesburgh was unusually politically active by today’s standards.  He was anti-Vietnam, anti-draft, and heavily involved in the civil rights movement.  He flexed the University’s moral muscle unashamedly, and was considered a potential running mate to the anti-war George McGovern in 1972.

Today, after ten years of war and $1 trillion of spending, ND’s administration is strangely silent.  Through its media choreography, it implicitly endorses our wars in Central Asia, the Middle East, and domestically — a notable shift from its posture during Vietnam — but in terms of using actual rhetoric or better yet, university policy, it does nothing.  This myopic approach is disappointing. 

Reclaiming its moral autonomy is important in that both University and Country would benefit from intellectual independence, genuine inquiry and, when warranted, thoughtful dissent.