[Peace-discuss] the ethics of striking first

[patton paul]

Here's an excellent article, that I found on 'Common Dreams' about the
ethics of striking first.
-Paul P.
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-328-4064
homepage: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ppatton/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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For a Person Or a Nation, The Wrong Code
by Courtland Milloy


In D.C. Superior Court not long ago, a man named Henry Wallace went on
trial for murder. A friend was afraid that someone was out to kill him, so
he paid Wallace to eliminate the threat.

Such an approach to self-defense is nothing new. Especially among
hustlers, dope dealers, hit men and thieves, "Do unto others before they
do unto you" is a time-honored code of the streets.

But the U.S. criminal code is different.

Judges in D.C. Superior Court routinely instruct jurors that a person must
be in "imminent danger" before the use of a "first strike" can be
justified.

Even international law seeks similar safeguards. Chapters 2 and 7 of the
United Nations Charter contain assurances that all nations have the right
to self-defense when attacked. Preemptive strikes, however, are against
the law unless the threat is deemed significant enough to warrant one by
the U.N. Security Council.

It is as if both sets of laws recognize the need to restrain our most
destructive emotions, such as fear, anger and hate -- whether manifest
through individuals or nations -- lest they mushroom into some irrational
act.

These rules are morally rooted and offer a framework for promoting
civilization: You don't use greater force than necessary to defend
yourself; if one shot takes the assailant down, you don't walk up to him
and fire 10 more for good measure. We are not savages.

If you somehow provoked the fight in the first place, you can't then turn
around and rely on the right to self-defense to justify the use of force.
We are not hypocrites.

You aren't necessarily expected to retreat in the face of imminent danger;
we are not cowards. But you should take reasonable steps to avoid the
necessity of taking a life.

"Even if you found your spouse in bed with someone else, the law says you
can't shoot them no matter how upset you may be," said Alan Boyd, an
assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the Wallace case. "You might be
convicted of manslaughter instead of first-degree murder; juries can find
mitigating circumstances. But you would not be excused."

The code of the streets, on the other hand, perpetuates a cycle of hate
and revenge.

When Wallace, 44, set out to kill for his friend, he found the target,
Ralph "Little Man" Dillahunt, talking on a telephone inside Anthony's
Beauty and Barbershop, located in Southwest Washington.

Wallace walked to within 10 feet of Dillahunt, pulled out a pistol and
fired 13 times. Dillahunt was wounded. But the man who died was Anthony
McDaniel, 33, the owner of the barbershop. He was just minding his
business when a stray bullet struck him in the abdomen.

It's bad enough to try to kill someone just because you're afraid of him.
Worse is the killing of others in the process. Unlike international
conflicts, where civilian casualties are termed "collateral damage" and
their faces censored from public view, jurors in the Wallace murder trial
got to see photographs of the slain man as well as his grieving family in
court.

The deaths of innocent people feel different when you can connect with
them as fellow human beings. We are, after all, humane.

Of course, there are significant differences between our domestic laws and
the fledgling international law. But the argument that the United States
must launch a preemptive strike against, say, Iraq because nobody can keep
Saddam Hussein in check echoes the sentiments of those who live in
neighborhoods that are under-served by police and want to take the law
into their own hands.

Domestically, our best answers to such situations have always been to work
harder for peaceful solutions. We have gun buy-back programs. We send in
books and broadcast messages of hope. We set up food banks that make sure
people have more to eat, not less.

These are principles of justice and compassion on which the nation
thrives. But if we fail to showcase them and opt instead to send the world
a message that might makes right, who can blame others for dying to be as
mightily right as us?

For abiding by the code of the streets, Henry Wallace was convicted and
sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. For nations that abide by the
same code, the penalties are much more severe.