The Value of a Life

The way you can tell that, fundamentally, the right's Iraq hawk pundits are deeply unserious people is that you'll see things like Reuel Marc Gerecht making this argument: "I can understand--though not appreciate--Americans who don't want to see Americans dying in Iraq because they value American lives more highly than they do Iraqi ones. This sentiment, more common on the right than on the left, inevitably leads to a bigoted isolationism that allows nefarious forces to run amok." The view that American lives are more valuable than Iraqi lives is obviously false. The view that the American government should value American lives more highly than it values Iraqi lives is, I think, quite different, fairly intuitive, and certainly not something that advocates of neoconservative foreign policy deny in anything resembling a consistent manner.

I mean, the consequences of the view that the US government should draw no distinction between its responsibilities to Americans and to non-Americans has far reaching and radical consequences for policy areas far removed from the Iraq withdrawal debate. Immigration, say, or international intellectual property policy. Why not mothball a carrier group and spend the money on mosquito nets? Why not dedicate 3 percent of GDP to direct subsidies to the world's 25 poorest nations? I mean, who knows. Gerecht obviously hasn't given any thought to this position whatsoever. He's a hawk. Since he's a hawk, he against leaving Iraq. Since hes against leaving Iraq, he needs some arguments. He came to a point in the debate when arguing that the US government should value Iraqi and American lives equally was convenient, so he started espousing this position. Does he espouse it consistently? Has he considered its implications? No, no, of course not. He's just bullshitting around.

1/16/07 2:50PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

There is also (and I think this is a point you've made previously) the difference in being able to do something about American lives while not having the same capability over Iraqi/Iranian/Chinese ones.

Posted by: Pooh on January 16, 2007 03:14 PM

One could sensibly argue a middle position here: America has a duty to the citizens of countries it invades as well as its own.

Posted by: cg on January 16, 2007 03:19 PM

I'm with cg, but I also think it's past time a lot of beltway bloggers stop prefacing any delicate criticism of Gerecht with the disclaimer that he is a serious/earnest/standup guy who is really, really smart and I wanna still be on his good side. He's a sophistical apologist for this monumental debacle and gathering bloodbath. Enough with the backslapping--not from Matt, necessarily, but certainly from some of the insitutional blogs with which he is loosely grouped. Gerecht clearly wouldn't care to return the politesse.

Posted by: elle loco on January 16, 2007 03:27 PM

Why not mothball a carrier group and spend the money on mosquito nets? Why not dedicate 3 percent of GDP to direct subsidies to the world's 25 poorest nations?

Why not, indeed? These must seem like crazy ideas to anyone who assumes the United States has to keep spending half its budget on its military, but I fail to see how spending money on helping foreigners rather than killing them wouldn't do more to enhance our security than our current half-assed blow-up-half-the-world approach.

Posted by: Christmas on January 16, 2007 03:29 PM

the right's Iraq hawk pundits are deeply unserious people

They're not unserious. They're just unserious about something Matthew thinks should be valued: i.e., intellectual honesty. However, they're extremely serious about what they value: maintaining and increasing U.S. power over the world.

Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz on January 16, 2007 03:40 PM

The view that American lives are more valuable than Iraqi lives is obviously false.

Why is that obvious? It's not to me. How do you go about valuing lives, Matthew?

Posted by: Al on January 16, 2007 03:49 PM

These guys are just not serious.

We rolled into Iraq with force protection rules that allowed any soldier who felt under any kind of threat respond with deadly force. And they did, repeatedly.

I don't recall Gerecht or any other hawk being concerned with Iraqi lives when it came to blowing up cars full if Iraqi women and children. Or for that matter when we blew up the Canadians in Afghanistan. For them to suddenly take the moral high ground with a "Kumbaya" "aren't we all human" moment given the US record in regards to 'collateral damage' is ludicrous.

Particularly when they tolerate the most horrific kind of eliminationist rhetoric from their own side.

Posted by: Bruce Webb on January 16, 2007 03:49 PM

"Why not mothball a carrier group and spend the money on mosquito nets? Why not dedicate 3 percent of GDP to direct subsidies to the world's 25 poorest nations?"

The US is (supposedly) a representative democracy. In a representative democracy the representatives duty (supposedly) is to see to the interests of the people who sent him and all that tax money to washington. The tricky part is weighing the value of all the different options to determine which option best meets the interests of the electorate. Obviously we are talking about an ideal situation here.

Posted by: cw on January 16, 2007 03:50 PM

As the invading & occupying power in Iraq, America took on legal responsibilities under the Hague & Geneva Conventions. including among others the control of militias and the protection of the civilian populace. America could not and cannot either ignore its responsibilities when it might hurt or cost, nor blithely abandon its responsibilities on a whim. The invasion and occupation entail a pretty explicit promise to value Iraqi civilian lives over American soldiers. Invasions are really hard. made more difficult by the post-WWII consensus, and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

That the Bush administration has ignored or trashed the various Conventions just means they are despicable scum. I would not think a so-called liberal internationalist like MY would disregard those Post-war achievements just because the smart guys lost the debate over whether or not to invade.

Of course, the position that the various Conventions are worthless has its own set of implications. If American lives are worth so much more than Iraqis, how many millions may we kill?

Posted by: bob mcmanus on January 16, 2007 03:53 PM

Iraq is a diversion. As the army attacks Iraq, the US gov't erodes rights at home by suspending habeas corpus, stealing private lands, opening mail, banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon, rigging elections, conducting warrantless wiretaps and starting 2 illegal wars based on lies. Soon, another US false-flag operation will occur (sinking of an Aircraft Carrier) and the US will invade Iran, (on behalf of Israel).
Final link (before Google Books bends to gov't demands and censors the title):
America Deceived (book)

Posted by: Jack D on January 16, 2007 03:57 PM

Oh. And I think fairly explicit in the Post-War consensus is that even tho my gov't might ignore its responsibilities, this does not release me from them. The Hague & Geneva Conventions apply to individuals as gov't actors.

Posted by: bob mcmanus on January 16, 2007 03:58 PM

I think that in terms of the U.S. government's responsibilities, that they are responsible for protecting Americans and not responsible for protecting foreigners, and so in that respect American lives are "worth" more than those of non-Americans.

However, I think that U.S. citizens conflate what their government is responsible for, with what they personally value. So, many people end up "rooting" for Americans to live and not get killed, and not caring about what happens to foreigners, as if it was all a sporting event.

If you look at media coverage and what pundits say about Iraq, for example, very few people seem to care about the mass slaughter of Iraqis that has taken place.

Posted by: Jim W on January 16, 2007 04:01 PM

Gerecht is off the track in that argument. He's making sweeping generalizations he can't back up. It's fair to call him on this. But the topic is of fourth or fifth level of importance in Gerecht's writing. Why not focus on the main points that are important? I think there's a reason.

Yglesias is wildly overstating it when he calls Gerecht 'deeply unserious'. Even very serious people get stuff wrong, look at Einstein, Marx and Freud. Even Saddam was serious; Deadly serious.

By calling Gerecht 'deeply unserious' Yglesias is trying to impugn the whole body of Gerecht's writing without bothering to analyze it. I can't let that pass.

Posted by: Warren on January 16, 2007 04:06 PM

So Mr Gerecht would swap his children for an equal number of Somali children?

No, well how about his neighbors' children?

Should his Israeli friends swap their children for Somalis?

How about all American children for all Chinese children?

And let's think about the difference between Mr. Gerecht and politicians. If Mr Gerecht would swap his children, would he give his government the right to swap them for him no matter what he thinks?

The role of politicians is to act in the interests of those who elected them, not in the interests of others. It may be that it will turn out to be in the interests of the electorate to act in the interests of non-citizens. But that must be demonstrated.

Mr Gerecht is just throwing out a PC thought on the hope that anyone who opposes a PC thought will fear being called a racist and hence will go along.

Posted by: Robert Hume on January 16, 2007 04:09 PM

Moreover, of course, there's no evidence that leaving Iraq will increase the rate of bloodshed there for Iraqis.

Posted by: Julian Elson on January 16, 2007 04:21 PM

what bob said - and if it's not working out militarily the US has the goddamn duty to reimburse Iraqis financially - for a long time and it ain't gonna be cheap;

both a significant portion of Dems, who haven't spared a thought regarding non-military aid yet and just want the troops home, as well as many on the right who are more or less openly trying to shift the blame towards the Iraqis themselves, seem to fear such a commitment, which is shameful -but then nobody talks about Afghanistan anymore either ...

Posted by: novakant on January 16, 2007 05:28 PM

Of course, we've done a fabulous job of protecting Iraqi lives by carrying on this war.

Posted by: JP on January 16, 2007 05:58 PM

both a significant portion of Dems, who haven't spared a thought regarding non-military aid yet and just want the troops home

There's been plenty of thought regarding non-military aid. However, the problem remains the same as it has been for the last several years, which is that most non-military aid is simply wasted when you're in the middle of an ongoing civil war. That's why monies which have been budgeted for reconstruction over the last few years have been consistently redirected to "security," something which we haven't been able to provide a lot of either.

We definitely have a financial obligation to Iraq down the road, but there's just not a lot we can do until order is restored.

Posted by: Steve on January 16, 2007 06:06 PM

Moreover, of course, there's no evidence that leaving Iraq will increase the rate of bloodshed there for Iraqis.

Of course there isn't, because in Iraq there is whatever evidence for whatever point you want.

If the rate of bloodshed increases when we finally do leave, it will be because we stayed too long/because we left, depending on your political position; if the rate of bloodshed decreases when we finally leave, it will be because because we left/because we stayed so long, depending on your political position.

The problem with Iraq is that staying or going at this point is (or ought to be) a practical debate, not an ideological or moral one, the most essential part of which is projecting the various outcomes - and this is about the first thing people forget how to do when they get into political debates.

With that said, the idea that a foreign military presence in a country fighting a civil war could increase the violence is, to say the least, an unconventional opinion. (And one, I think, arrived at entirely for political reasons - seeing as most people who advocate our departure from Iraq would want those troops to take a pitstop in Darfur on the way home.)

Posted by: cg on January 16, 2007 06:06 PM

RMG is indeed talking shit about the alleged equivalence between US and Iraqi lives
1. I thought he whole rhetorical point of the war on terror (which I'm sure neocons have used) is that we 'fight them over there' because that way Ayrabs get killed rather than precious US citizens. Even though in America we'd be on home turf, so less people would get killed overall, right?
2. I know that the US takes US citizens' lives more seriously because they GET COUNTED when they are lost!! Iraqi corpses are not. Neocons don't seem to be trying to fix this issue
3. I am 100% that any event which had led to 0.1-0.6 mllion US citizens suffering a violent death would be the subject of a good deal more focused attention from the (partly neocon run) US gov't than Iraq does. I mean, 9-11 was 'only' 0.003 million fatalities, and that got a whole $100billion p.a. department dedicated to preventing followu-ps

Posted by: JohnTh on January 16, 2007 06:44 PM

So, The New Republic claims we shouldn't "value American lives more highly than they do Iraqi ones"?

Israeli lives, on the other hand ...

Posted by: Steve Sailer on January 16, 2007 07:45 PM

JohnTh: point #3: right on. The UN's body-by-body count says there were 36,000 civilian violent deaths in Iraq 2006. If 36,000 American civilians had been slaughtered in ethnic violence in a single year, there would be a draft, and we would be deploying 2 million soldiers to the affected area, not 150,000.

And as Spencer Ackerman said on the same topic, "should" presupposes "can".

Posted by: brooksfoe on January 16, 2007 09:02 PM

I thought President Bartlett already conceded that American lives are worth more than non American lives. Maybe that was President Clinton during Rwanda. Don't remember if either used the old 3/5 rule or if the value fluctuates similar to currency.

Posted by: Barney hates you on January 17, 2007 04:46 AM

Posing foreign policy questions with the vocabulary of what the US government "values" and does not value seems unhelpful. It's better to think of the US government as a political institution that serves certain functions, primarily, looking after the political community that is the United States. Another function is fulfilling international obligations. You can't meaningfully conceive of what goals we should pursue as a political community unless you recognize that there is a division of labor in the world's governance and oversight. Part of the international division of labor is that individual states look after their own citizens.

Matt is right that none of this contradicts the belief that all human beings are of equal worth and dignity. Nor must I necessary concede that the world's most impoverished people are subhuman because I insist on taking care of my family first rather than distributing my income pro rata to the poorest individuals in the world.

This is at the heart of the "world police" critique. Critics of American adventurism do not necessarily think that intervention in the erstwhile sovereign affairs of states is wrong, just that we have (or at least aspire to) a global, cooperative order that is designed to handle threats to peace and human dignity.

Gerecht's suggestion that US foreign policy should be based on a simplified utilitarian calculus that abstracts from a global order is not just unprincipled as Matt points out. It also negates all of these pretty basic points about the role of a nation state.

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