Responsibility for viciousness

In a recent article, ‘From Captive to Suicide Bomber’, the Washington Post implicitly raises the fascinating question: How much responsibility does the US bear for the violent actions of those released from Guantanamo? (For a related article, go here).

There are two conflicting positions on this question, each of which bears some truth, but neither of which is complete or satisfactory.

The subject of the Post piece is Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi, a kid picked up in Pakistan in 2001 and then shipped to Guantanamo from which he was subsequently released—4 years later. In March 2008, he was responsible for a suicide bombing which killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 42 others.

The first kind of position will use the very fact of the suicide bombing as sufficient evidence that he was, all along, a vicious terrorist. Character is destiny, they argue, for no person of moral virtue can become someone who contemplates arbitrary killing (let alone carries it out). The crucial mistake was to have released such a person in the first place. Even if there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute Ajmi in a court of law, we now know, from the standpoint of ashes, that his incarceration was justified.

One can have some sympathy for this view, on the grounds that it is difficult to imagine the kind of transformation it would require to yield a vicious murderer from an innocent. The view holds that there was no transformation; the alleged innocent must have ‘had it in him’ all along. If so, the US is not culpable for what he became or for the actions that flowed from what he became.

The Post article, however, suggests a very different picture. In the initial stages of his incarceration, the boy was, by most accounts, respectful and hopeful. It was a consequence of, among other things, the humiliation, degradation and abuse suffered while at Guantanamo, that he morphed into the suicide bomber. On this picture, the US is responsible for either creating the man’s viciousness or, at the very least, bringing to fruition a viciousness that would have otherwise remained infant and unexpressed. Critics of US foreign policy often point to a vicarious version of this mechanism to support their claim that US action in Iraq is the greatest recruiting tool imaginable.

What can we make of this divide? Although we intuit that a traumatic experience can alter someone’s view of the world and, at the extreme, even ‘break’ him, it is nevertheless mysterious how character can be so extremely malleable. We use the word ‘break’ only as a stopgap in our understanding. For the hopeful kid picked up in Pakistan and the enraged man who bombed the Iraqi base are, for all the differences, identical--the memories are the same. Nevertheless, if not his identity something significant changed. But what, and more importantly, how?

I don’t know the answer to either question, but I can suggest a reason why the first view--that Ajmi had it in him all along--can seem so appealing. Our ethical understanding of alterations in character depends upon our ability to conceive it in ourselves. I can understand, for example, your remaining angry at the friend who betrayed you, because I can imagine how I would be in similar circumstances. However, when we reflect on our own character, it is (almost?) impossible for us to identify ourselves with, for example, the imagined driver of a truck loaded with explosives, who intends to kill as many people as possible, including himself. What could such a person be thinking and more importantly how can someone who used to find such thoughts unthinkable become one who not only thinks them but acts on those thoughts. There are pictures of despair, hopelessness and rage that fill out and help explain how someone could do such a thing, but seeing ourselves as we do, i.e. as ‘normal’, I am suggesting we cannot see from here how any such explanatory framework ever could apply to us. There is a large gap that cannot be filled by ethical imagination.

Of course, this doesn’t establish that Ajmi must have been vicious coming into Guantanamo. I don’t believe that. The evidence strongly suggests a transformation, and we can believe this because there is ample empirical evidence that such transformations can occur. To believe he transformed is partly to believe in the evidence of its possibility. This is different from being able to imaginatively project ourselves into his situation (a paradigm ethical move). From the evidential standpoint, we view the subject as an object that is completely subject to forces beyond his control. No longer an agent of his actions, he becomes a non-responsible kind of thing. If so, the US who created the conditions of duress which typically generate character change, should take some responsibility not only for what they did to him at Guantanamo, but additionally for the actions he committed after his release.

The adoption of the second picture requires that we take a clinical, and wholly objective, view of him. He, and his actions, were a product of forces beyond his control. This is a difficult view to sustain, for being human beings we cannot continue to see other human beings as mere objects who are the products of social forces. After all, Ajmi did not become an automaton. Even in his second incarnation, he had thoughts and he made decisions, ones for which we would typically hold him responsible. Once we view a human being as a product of forces beyond his control, it is difficult to know where to stop. Sure, the US contributed to making him who he became, but so did his parents and his community. Moreover, for those who were either victims of the suicide bombing or else knew them, we are hit with the truth that resentment needs a local target. Of course, it is possible, and I believe appropriate, to direct such anger at the US, but is it possible or appropriate to leave it at that? If the victims' loved ones continue to resent Ajmi, can we say that they are simply mistaken?

The tension between these two views does not mean we cannot adopt both of them. In fact, excepting those with an agenda or who are personally connected, moral ambivalence attends familiarity with these kinds of cases. Ajmi became vicious and intended to kill, and for that he is subject to blame; however, when we learn of the horrific circumstances which nurtured and conceivably gave birth to his viciousness, we (want to?) believe that blaming him is inappropriate. Neither is wholly satisfactory, but neither are completely unfounded either.