Honor, murder and "the law".
In "The Whole News" forum, Featherock made a post that has actually been eating away at my thoughts. With the kind permission of the Council, I'd like to explore some of the concepts that are presented in this post. My thinking on this issue is somewhat all over the map, and I figured if someone would shoot holes at it for awhile, I could clarify some of the issues. So, here goes:
This post was in response to a post where I suggested that under some cultures, "honor" specifies that one breaks the law, and then presents themselves for punishment. Probably the most noteworthy example is a culture like the pre-modern Japanese culture, which celebrated the concept of "on" (I hope I'm getting that right) where warriors were expected to avenge perceived honor violations and then commit suicide or present themselves for punishment. (As an aside, to be denied the right to suicide or punishment was perceived as "unbearable" and "disgraceful" under that code).There's no "thinking" about it. The facts are the facts. What he did was against the law, pure and simple. An honor code is just that, a code, a highly subjective set of rules of conduct that different cultures define differently. An honor code is not the same thing as the rule of law as codified in instruments like the Geneva Conventions. For instance, a Marine wouldn't be tried in court for leaving behind a squad member, even though doing so would break a deeply held honor code among Marines (and other service branches, obviously).
While the law is subjective -- otherwise, why would we need lawyers (some would argue, rightly in a lot of cases, that lawyers do more to obfuscate and frustrate the law than they do interpreting it, the DOJ under Bush being a great example, e.g, Gitmo) -- the fact is all soldiers and contractors operating in a combat zone have to operate under the law, regardless of what the enemy does.
Does it hurt our COIN efforts? I would say yes. This specific incident? I don't know. This incident paired with other incidents like it (PMCs firing on civilians in Iraq, the Gitmo disaster) have a incredibly deleterious effect on COIN efforts and America's standing in the world.
Similar, but more western is the mythical "cowboy code", (under which I believe I was raised, obtw) which possessed an sense of honor, but did not have a suicide component and only sometimes had a punishment component. In other words, anonymous vengeance was sometimes seen as acceptable, and even preferable to public vengeance.
Finally, one can consider honor and the concept of honor in areas like the Middle East or in Africa, where honor killings and tribal/familial vengeance are portrayed as being part of the culture.
If you consider the equity of outcomes, I am finding it more and more difficult to push western "law" as being superior to "honor". After all, under Western law more often than not, the one with the most cash wins. Also, the one with the best I/O campaign in the press often appears to win.
Even with the consideration that law is just, in reality law is just the potential cost of an activity. Just because murder is against the law, it doesn't mean you cannot do it. It just means that if you wish to murder, it costs XX years in prison. It is futile to argue "law" with someone who has deemed the cost of whatever activity as an acceptable cost. For someone who values honor more than anything else, a tribal code is not subordinate to law.
Nearly every poster on multiple forums where I read, have asserted that Mr. Ayala, the PMC accused of murdering the apprehended fire-attacker must have been operating under a certain level of "rage" to have shot an allegedly restrained attacker, if initial reports are true. I would suggest that perhaps that it is also possible that Mr. Ayala may have actually thought his actions through. There IS precedent for individuals deciding that the consequences for an action were worth the "crime".
My "honor brain" tells me that an individual who determines they've failed in their core mission to the extent that someone else was maimed or killed, the concept of vengeance and then punishment would be cathartic, and relieve some of the guilt involved with the initial failure.
On the topic of International law, while it is often advantageous to appear to be adherent to that mythology, in truth, Nations still "do what they can, and suffer what they must", and international law is still a bad joke. Especially with the rise of the non-nation actor and apologists for non-nation criminals, such as the Somali pirates. Except for the occasional dead pirate, the Somali pirates will never pay any legal cost for committing piracy. In this way, they expose the laughable nature of "international law".
Originally Posted by Ken White
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