Teaching doctors to kill?

One of the implications of euthanasia is that it involves teaching doctors to take life. Margaret Somerville argues that:

We also need to consider how the legalisation of euthanasia could affect the profession of medicine and its practitioners. Euthanasia takes both beyond their fundamental roles of caring, healing and curing whenever possible. It involves them, no matter how compassionate their motives, in the infliction of death on those for whom they provide care and treatment. ...
Can we imagine teaching medical students how to administer euthanasia - how to kill their patients? A fundamental attitude we reinforce in medical students, interns and residents is a repugnance toward the idea of killing patients. If physicians were authorised to administer euthanasia, it would no longer be possible to instil that repugnance. Maintaining this repugnance and, arguably, the intuitive recognition of a need for it, are demonstrated in the outraged reactions against physicians carrying out capital punishment when laws provide for them to do so. We do not consider their involvement acceptable - not even for those physicians who personally are in favour of capital punishment. What would we lose by legalising euthanasia?

Is this a problem though? The following discussion of the study of the experience of killing in war by Stanley Hauerwas is to say the least thought provoking.

I think it is a mistake to focus - as we most often do - only on the sacrifice of life that war requires. War also requires that we sacrifice our normal unwillingness to kill. It may seem odd to call the sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill "a sacrifice," but this sacrifice often renders the lives of those who make it unintelligible. The sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill is but the dark side of the willingness in war to be killed. I am not suggesting that every person who has killed in war suffers from having killed. But I do believe that those who have killed without the killing troubling their lives should not have been in the business of killing in the first place.

In On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt Col Dave Grossman reports on General S.L.A. Marshall's study of men in battle in World War II. Marshall discovered that of every hundred men along a line of fire during a battle, only 15 to 20 would take part by firing their weapons. This led Marshall to conclude that the average or healthy individual, that is, the person who could endure combat, "still has such an inner and usually unrealized resistance toward killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility." Lt Col Grossman observes that to study killing in combat is very much like the study of sex: "Killing is a private, intimate occurrence of tremendous intensity, in which the destructive act becomes psychologically very much like the procreative act." Telling the truth about the sacrifice of war

Essentially what euthanasia requires is that doctors will be asked to undertake the sacrifice of overcoming societal norms and undertake the task of taking human life. If we wish to take the step of legalising the taking of life we need to be clear about the human implications of what we are doing and who will bear the burden of this. 

Reflections on Anzac Day

...A few useful reflections on a variety of perspectives that dug through to varying degrees the prevailing largely unself-critical accounts of Anzac Day.

Stanley Hauerwas in The Sacrifices of War though not directly about Anzac Day provided a good many insights into the character and language of Anzac Day. He makes the important observation that... it is a mistake to focus - as we most often do - only on the sacrifice of life that war requires. War also requires that we sacrifice our normal unwillingness to kill. It may seem odd to call the sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill "a sacrifice," but I will argue that this sacrifice often renders the lives of those who make it unintelligible. The sacrifice of our unwillingness to kill is but the dark side of the willingness in war to be killed.


We are, Hauerwas acknowledges ... fated to kill and be killed because we know no other way to live. But through the forgiveness made possible by the cross of Jesus we are no longer condemned to kill. A people have been created who refuse to resort to the sword that they and those they love might survive. They seek not to survive, but to live in the light of Christ's resurrection.

Bruce Skates in a comment piece in the Age, Gallipoli is a global calamity, argues that The futility of war is best acknowledged by mourning the suffering of all nations, not just our own and draws attention to some of the silences in our celebration.

As we approach the centenary of the Great War, we should remember that Gallipoli was a global calamity, one that claimed the lives of soldiers across the British Empire and the world. And we should go further than that. As the Anzac Correspondent knew all too well, battles don't end when the guns stop firing. In the 1920s, and for decades later, Australia and a dozen other combatant nations lived in the shadow of war. It was not just that war visited grief on countless thousands of communities. The trauma of war was not confined to the battlefield or the casualty lists.

Now is the time to broaden our focus and examine the plight of families and communities who cared for the legion of crippled, blind and insane. ''War-wrecked men'' they were called, and they carried the conflict home to their communities. Sadly, (as Marina Larsson's haunting study of repatriation shows) domestic violence, poverty and alcoholism were as much the legacy of war as the legends many celebrate today. Finally, what of the broken promise of Gallipoli? The men and women who served were told the Great War would be the war to end all wars. What a Great Lie that has been.

It is time to see Gallipoli for what it was: pointless and obscene. It is time to look beyond that narrow beachhead at Anzac Cove, acknowledge the futility of war and mourn the suffering of nations other than our own. The Anzac centenary offers the opportunity for new forms of remembrance that are balanced and inclusive: ''bigger'' and ''more historical'', as our veteran put it. 

Jeff Sparrow doubts that the new forms of remembrance that Skates suggests is not likely. In Memory and the Anti-Politics of Anzac Day. Sparrow explains why. 

Conservatives, and most liberals, tell us that Anzac Day stands above politics. That’s true, in a fashion. But the event’s not apolitical so much as anti-political.

Where Carl von Clausewitz defined war as the continuation of politics by other means, Anzac celebrates the battlefield as a realm entirely removed from political life. The Great War spurred an unprecedented degree of social polarisation in Australia, and yet the obsessive retelling of the Gallipoli landing never corresponds to any equivalent interest in, say, the populace’s remarkable rejection of conscription in two ballots in 1916 and 1917. The Bush/Blair/Howard War on Terror rendered that period more relevant than ever, since obvious parallels can be drawn between the hysterical patriotism of the ‘Freedom Fries’ days and the jingoism during which most Australian cities renamed their streets (if you live in Victoria Street, there’s a pretty good chance it was once called Wilhelm Road), while the state-sanctioned suspicion of Arabs and Muslims after 9/11 corresponds to the widespread persecution of Irish and Catholics in the wake of the Easter Uprising, and the unparalleled freedom granted to security agencies echoes Billy Hughes’ promulgation of the open-ended War Precautions Act.

Yet Anzac Day functions not to celebrate but to prevent that kind of history. It lauds bravery yet allows no room for what Bismarck called ‘civil courage’, a trait that many non-combatants showed in abundance when, against all the newspapers, politicians and mainstream political parties, they opposed the slaughter in Europe.

The gods of war

One of the more disturbing and yet revealing themes introduced to justify Australian military engagement in the (civil ?) war in Afghanistan is the argument that we need to keep going with the war and succeed in our aims, whatever they are, or else the deaths of Australian soldiers will have been in vain.

The logic of this is that the more deaths there are the more we should keep going with the involvement, otherwise their deaths will have been in vain. the more soldiers that die the more deaths we should be prepared to envisage to justify the increasing number of deaths.

This is nothing less than worshiping death - military deaths demand ongoing participation in war. From a Christian point of view this is a form of idolatry - the gods of war having received the "sacrifices" of the death of young Australians demand further sacrifices to justify the initial sacrifices.

Where is the point at which we stop this ongoing spiral of death demanding death?

Wendell Berry on war

Wendell Berry has contributed a number of essays on war that are striking in the clarity of expression and the breadth of their moral perspective.

The Failure of War
Peaceableness Toward Enemies
Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

In his first book of essays The Long-Legged House there are two relevant pieces that are not available on line: "A Statement Against the War in Vietnam" and "Sme thoughts on Citizenship and conscience in Honor of Don Pratt"

Also:

Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ's Teachings about Love, Compassion & Forgiveness. Washington, D. C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005.

Berry is especially helpful in reminding us of the impact of war on creation and hence on ourselves as inextricably grounded in creation.

XIV. It was, as any war must be, in part a war against ourselves. Even in winning, we lost. Many of our young people were killed or hurt-though we look on this as a bargain price for the massive slaughter of our enemies. Our war industries are richer, but as a nation we are poorer. And though we have achieved "victory" by the damage that we did in the Middle East, we are poorer for that damage as well.

XV. It was not just Saddam Hussein's world that we damaged; it was our world. As every modern war has been and must be, this was a war against the world. In order to damage Saddam Hussein and his people, we damaged the earth. In order to protect himself and his people, Saddam Hussein damaged the earth. There was much talk in the press of Saddam Hussein's "crime" of releasing oil into the Persian Gulf. And yet we knew that he could and probably would do this; it was something we were willing to risk. It was the sort of thing that will inevitably happen in industrial warfare in industrial nations. Let us admit that the only solution to "world problems" that is in keeping with our military means is the destruction of the world. ("Peaceableness towards Enemies")

Remembering well

Remembrance Day in Australia has been just about lost to public view given the focus on Anzac Day.

The War Memorial Web site has a helpful account of the history of Remembrance Day and suggests that we take a minutes silence at 11am on 11 November to " remember those who died or suffered for Australia's cause in all wars and armed conflicts."

This raises a good question about remembering. Christians are called to remember and to re-member Jesus, as we do in coming to share a meal together, who refused to use violence to bring in God's kingdom. How should Christians remember war? This is an important issue for Christians in Australia given the emergence of Anzac Day as the manifestation of a form of civil religion.

Ekklesia in the UK have just produced a very useful report Reimagining Remembrance Day that though it adresses the specific issues related to Remembrance Day in the UK provides some useful theological insights that are relevant to the task of how christians might remember Anzac Day.

Some of the issues that churches could address include:

• A greater equality in remembrance to incorporate all those affected by war, including those on both sides and civilians, conscientious objectors, and those executed for ‘cowardice’
• The language used in remembrance should be more truthful. Words like ‘glorious’ should no longer be used. There should also be an acknowledgement that some did “die in vain” and an end to automatic references about all soldiers giving “their lives for the freedom we enjoy today”.
• Churches should resist the misappropriation of religious language in remembrance. Where it is used it should be qualified carefully, particularly with regard to words like “sacrifice”, which should not be used to condone violence.
• Following other examples from around the world a far greater commitment should be made to peace
• Churches that have bishops and chaplains to the armed forces, should also provide them for the “unarmed forces”, those who work as peacemakers and peacebuilders without weapons
• Remembrance should encompass groups who are often excluded. The environmental impact of war, including ecological damage and millions of animals slaughtered should also be more widely acknowledged

• There should be an end to ‘selective remembrance’ where the more shameful aspects of war are forgotten Ekklesia


Churches who seriously took up this agenda would find themselves in conflict with the RSL in short order. This might be no bad thing as there are serious issues of theological integrity at stake here for the churches. It would also make clear that we have reached an end of the Christendom settlement and any automatic alignment of church and nation.

War

War, even when it has international legitimacy ... is mainly about suffering and death.
Robert Fisk

Killing and the demands of warfare

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman exploring the psychology of the act of killing and the military establishment's attempt to understand and deal with the consequences of killing. According to Grossman and contrary to popular perception, the majority of soldiers in war do not ever fire their weapons and that this is due to an innate resistance to killing. Consequently the military has instituted training measures to break down this resistance and has successfully raised soldier's firing rates.

If accurate this is likely to have long term consequences when men who are so trained return to civilian life. When combined with the reality of traumatic stress syndrome now known to be common in men returning from war zone s such as Iraq the likelihood of violent responses to stressful situations by returned servicemen would seem to be almost inevitable. The need for substantial pyschological, spiritual and community support for Australian servicemen returning from active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be over-emphasised. people are trained to override their basic human instinct - which is - not to kill. The minimum moral duty we owe them is to assist them to become reoriented to the basic human instinct and requirement - you shall not kill.

Giles Fraser in commenting on Grossmans' book and connecting it with the recently released James Bond movie:

What Lt Col Grossman suggests is that a huge percentage of soldiers become conscientious objectors at the point of firing their weapon. Many simply aim over the heads of their enemies. Most soldiers cannot kill. Human beings have an inbuilt psychological resistance to the taking of human life.

Next week, the new Bond film (the fantastically-named 'Quantum of Solace') comes out. Once again, 007 kills with ease. But this is make-believe. Sure, a handful of people — perhaps two per cent, psychologists say — have a diminished resistance to killing, and these are the psychopaths. But the vast majority, when faced with the reality, find it an incredibly difficult thing to do.

This is why training in the army involves repetition, doing the same thing again and again, so that you come not to think about it. The soldier fires just as Pavlov’s dogs drool. This form of conditioning can significantly increase firing rates — as can the enhancement of denial defence mechanisms: soldiers do not shoot people, they shoot targets.

Lt Col Grossman thus asserts that, ... “A new era of psychological warfare has dawned, not upon the enemy, but upon our own troops.”

All this might be vital for the creation of effective soldiers. But what does it do to these people when they are demobilised?