News-Record.com

It's very doubtful the Kharzai government will play quid pro quo with the Taliban vis a vis hostages/prisoners.
Anyone who travels, works, or chooses to place themselves in a combat zone should be aware they may be killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.
Sadly, the Taliban may very well kill all of the Korean hostages before this is all over.
Civilians, do-gooders or not, operating in a war zone by themselves with no military or government sponsorship have always been a burden on the in-theater war effort.

I think we have a cultural misunderstanding. Westerners ("we") put an incredible value on a single human life. Many southern Asian cultures value the single life differently (not "wrong," just differently) -- perhaps that's why suicide bombers are more prevalent. A single life is a means to a greater end (fairly Spock-ian).

Let's not say that I support suicide bombers, OK? The point is that there is a huge chasm of difference between the way we value individual lives and therefore murdering a hostage per day "works" for the culture that doesn't value it as a tool against the culture that does.

Maybe a little philosophical but what we're dealing with is outside the law as we understand it and if we don't understand *that* then we're never going to be able to win whatever this is we're fighting.

Yes, according to our Western codes of conduct -- even though, ironically, it's probably the only way to save the lives of 21 innocent people, and it might require the execution of no more than one or two Taliban prisoners.* Doug

Doug! When you really get concern about our western values of life. Ask yourself one question! Why did our government murder Pat Tillman?

I may be misunderstanding you, Sue, but I am troubled by suggestions that other cultures simply have values that are not wrong but different when the difference includes a disregard for human life aqnd allows acceptance of suicide bombing as a legitimate means of political or religious expression. I believe there are rights and wrongs that transcend cultural differences.

jaycee, you are certainly right about the level of risk people of good intention can take. Their humanitarian work can be questioned when they put themselves in situations that require others to risk their own lives on their behalf.

Come on, Doug, you saw one of the two most beautiful brides in High Point history on Saturday and all you can write about is mayhem and war?

John, your little sister is dazzling. I loved the red sneakers.

Thanks for coming. And it was good to see Kenny as well.

Doug wrote, "...but I am troubled by suggestions that other cultures simply have values that are not wrong but different when the difference includes a disregard for human life..."

Actually, it's exactly that difference I'm talking about. We value a single life very highly and other culture use that value to manipulate our behavior with ransoms, prisoner trades, etc. Unless we get the understanding that this value is quantitatively different between our cultures, they will continue to use it for their bargaining advantage.

While there might be some a priori "right and wrong" things that transcend cultural differences, I jumped off the Cartesian gameboard a while ago and try not to think in such black/white terms when dealing with culture.

(Example: our day care in the US is markedly different than, say, in Sweden. That points to a different value we put on infants and children's upbringing. Does it make ours wrong? Not entirely, but it's a cultural difference.)

Wish I had more time to go into this; it's one of my fav topics. Always a good and usually civil discussion here; congrats.

Thanks, Sue. I see your point.

A side note to that: Some of us in the West might not think Koreans have the same regard for the value of life as we do (perhaps with memories of the Korean War or images of present-day North Korea in mind). However, I'm sure the Korean people are just as concerned about the lives of those hostages in Afghanistan as we would be if they were Americans. It's a very painful dilemma there, and yes, the terrorists know exactly how to hit us where it hurts.

It gets strange when we use large geographical labels to corral such supposed cultural differences. By "south Asian", I wonder if Sue meant specifically the region and peoples around Afgahnistan and Pakistan? Maybe also Iran? How about Southeast Asia? Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc.? And all of the subcontinent?

Is it the geography which accounts for such purported differences?

As teh Koreans themsleves are Asians, though "northern", do they come closer somehow to our "Western" ideals? Or does their commitment to Christian missionary work also factor in? What if they followed the older traditions tranferred from China?

Messy business, cultural critique. Not as messy as the horrors of the Taliban. It has been said that those who destroy art (Bamiyan Buddhas) are amomg the first and easiest to sway into destroying human life. The Nazi bonfires began with books.

The horrors hit home for me, as my own sister is adopted from Korea and maintains now connections there. Her husband, a Japanese national, has offices there.

Doug:

Why stop at executing Taliban prisoners? Why not round up their wives, children and parents and execute them? Or to continue along the same train of logic, just start carpet bombing Waziristan?

Part of this fight is about defending Western values. The defense is hardest when we are confronted with such horrifying acts. We DO value human life, and resisting the temptation to act like the Taliban is how we show it.

Committing atrocities in retaliation for other Taliban atrocities would only succeed in legitimizing the Taliban's tactics.

Dave, if you'll re-read my post, you'll see I concluded that such a response would be morally unacceptable.

But I do admit to some uncertainty on the point. And I don't agree that taking the life of one terrorist to save the lives of 21 innocent people would be acting like the Taliban.

Doug:

That uncertainty and ambiguity is communicated in the post. There's the issue of even proposing reciprocal killings in the first place. Then there's the weak, qualified statement that it's unacceptable but only "according to Western codes of conduct." The message is ambiguous at best.

In your follow-up, you have also placed yourself as judge and jury determining that a captured Taliban prisoner is automatically a terrorist. If our experience with Guantanamo has taught us anything its that many people caught up in the fighting in Afghanistan are not terrorists or even enemy combatants.

And your follow-up backtracks from your earlier proposal that we "execute a Taliban prisoner "every time that a Korean hostage is murdered." Executing prisoners without trials in retribution is certainly sliding down the slippery slope toward Talibanism, even if you have backtracked and now said that you would execute only one.

What the Taliban are doing is an atrocity. You are right to be outraged; all of us are. Allowing ourselves to descend into a cycle of expanding atrocities, however, is wrong at every imaginable level.

Dave, it might be necessary to execute only one. If the goal of the captors is to force the release of imprisoned comrades, and they learn their actions will result not in that, but in the deaths of their comrades, they might stop murdering the Koreans.

I am happy for your moral certainty, Dave. Would it be so constant if those 21 Koreans were people you knew personally and cared about?

I'm trying to be honest here. If a moral compromise could save 21 innocent lives, I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. That's a very high price to maintain one's air of moral superiority.

Doug:

It's surprising that a conservative would advocate moral relativism and situational ethics, as you seem to be doing. Since you are dismissing moral arguments, let's try practical ones.

First, we don't know that one or two or 21 executions would result in any Koreans being spared. Given the Taliban rhetoric regarding martyrdom and the fact that they are fighting an asymmetrical battle, they might be more than willing to make this sort of exchange.

Second, would such a move strengthen or weaken the Taliban's ability to recruit and receive support? How would it affect other Muslim groups?

Finally, is this a tactic to which we want to give our stamp of approval? If we engage in non-judicial, retribution killings, we send an unmistakable message that this activity is okay in our eyes--it's just another way of carrying out the battle.

As I wrote, your proposal is wrong on every imaginable level; this includes practical ones.

Dave, your analysis of the practicalities is just guesswork, same as mine. We don't know what would happen in any of the scenarios. I don't know that the Taliban prisoners whose release is sought haven't already been tried, found guilty and sentenced to death.

But what you so righteously dismiss as situational ethics is an attempt to explore whether there's a way to save the lives of 21 hostages. I find it strange that you can conceieve of no circumstances in which you'd consider any moral compromise in order to prevent the murders of those people. Don't we see the same quality in the Taliban, who are so convinced of the morality of their position that they won't compromise in their dedication to murder? Both sides can congratulate themselves on their faithfulness, while innocent people die. Where's the concern for them?