Cage Match

Ye Gods! You pro-wrestling fans out there in the blogosphere seem to love a good no-holds barred match. The Maximum Leader's Smackdown title garnered a fair amount of attention - even the illustrious Rusty Shackleford stood up and took notice.

Many of you will remember that the good Brian B. took me to the woodshed a while back.

So here is your humble Smallholder's response.

Let the fisking begin!

But first, a disclaimer:

Those of you looking for mudslinging ought to take your rubber-necking heiniees hence - the good Brian B. is a gentleman with whom it is a pleasure to disagree - a fellow who supports his statements with facts. Although he has strong opinions, he shows the hallmark of true intelligence - when confronted with new evidence, he is quite capable of changing those positions upon reconsideration, despite the rather cryptic references to the contrary. Principled people do have a set of "first principles;" when shown that an opinion comes into conflict with those root touchstones, principled people will either change their opinions or rethink their touchstones. So much of the ugliness of political and intellectual life is the result of many people refusing to entertain the idea that they might not be 100% right (holding onto the the soothing falsehood that everyone else is 100% wrong). I am happy that there are some wonderful, thoughtful people in the blogosphere with whom I often disagree. They challenge me to rethink and refine my own positions, changing them as warranted.

Back to the regularly scheduled fisking:

Smallholder
Every morning, after I've checked my comments and my
trackbacks and my email, the very first other Blog I usually go read is Naked
Villainy. Maximum Leader has a real talent for writing and is an erudite fellow.
Smallholder is equally interesting to read, as he has knowledge of arcane
subjects which I find interesting -- agriculture, etc. And while I usually
disagree with his political views, I respect him for being a man of convictions.
He has extended me the same courtesy. Today I feel the need to take greater
exception than normal with one of his posts, and to more mildly disagree with
two others.

Well, we seem to have a regular mutual admiration society going on. I am particularly glad that someone out there likes the occasional agriculture post. I suspect that the vast majority of our readership comes to Nakedvillainy for the Maximum Leader's conservative essays that are leavened with my own T.R. Progressivism (Not to be confused with moonbat "progressivism," bitte schon). I write about farming when the horticultural muse smiles upon her loyal servant, so it is nice to hear that some folks enjoy my wee posts.

The post with which I take exception is this dig at the
Pope. Now, I'm not one to fall back merely on the defense "Don't speak ill
of the dead". I'll speak ill of those deserving ill speech, and speak well of
those deserving praise, be they dead or alive. What I do find troublesome about
the post is argument that the Pope's decision about his own death is somehow
incongruous with JP II's stance on the Terri Schiavo case.

Now, if I agreed with Smallholder on every point of the Schiavo case, I'd
have to agree with him about the Pope. But I don't. I don't necessarily
disagree, I just don't agree. For the Pope's stance to have been hypocritical,
Il Papa would have had to reach the same conclusion that Terri was dead and
unsaveable. Take SH's comment Surely he had more "life" to be held in sanctity
than a woman with spinal fluid where her cerebral cortex ought to have been.
While this conclusion is Smallholder's firm assertion, while it is Michael
Schiavo's firm conviction, and while it was the judge's firm conviction and thus
legal ruling, it was not an undisputed point. A great many people did not
believe this to be the case, and for them, there is no moral conflict between a
desire to give Teri a chance and a personal choice not to prolong their own
lives past hope. The crux of the matter is that if you don't believe Terri
needed heroic measures (whether you were correct in this belief or not), then
that's different from choosing to forego heroic measures.

One source of Brian's discomfiture with my posts may be perceived tone. The problem with the flat medium of blogging - and writing in general - is that it is not accompanied by voice and facial expression, two of the ways which we as humans determine the intent of speakers. Good writers overcome these deficiencies. I'm not a good writer. My intent was not to issue a dig at the recently deceased. I was simply commenting on the apparent (to me alone, perhaps?) discontinuity between the public and private death policies of the papacy. I was somewhat surprised that the Pope, who always struck me as someone who lived his convictions (witness his endurance of Parkinson's over the years), seemed not to follow those policies to the bitter end.

I did not always agree with the Pope.

I'm not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Catholic party.

As someone concerned about suffering around the world, I believe that the Catholic church's refusal to support birth control is a bad position. I'm not willing to call it criminal like the dyspeptic Skippy, but I do think is it wrongheaded. I think the Pope's stands on women, gays, and priestly celibacy rely far too much on the misogyny of Paul and far too little on the compassionate, revolutionary equality of humankind preached by Jesus. But I'm willing to acknowledge that the Catholic position is closer to original Christianity than my own modernist libertine Episcopalianism. Perhaps the cause of the church would be advanced by a more inclusive approach, although that course has its share of risks too, if the church strays too far from its historical heritage - I'm not advocating the Vatican Rag.

This respectful disagreement brings me back to the tone issue. I did not mean to mock John Paul II. I apologize for not choosing my words more carefully.

But my critique of the Pope's handling of Schiavo stands (at least partially). I have since learned that the Pope's position against the removal of the feeding tube was at odds with official church policy. Since he was not speaking ex cathedra, his opposition to letting Terri's body die would not be considered by many to be covered by the papal cloak of infallibility.

Bill defends the Pope as having a different interpretation of Terri's saveability (is that a word?). Brian correctly points out that "great many" people disagree with my contention that a lack of a cerebral cortex is synonymous with brain death. He acknowledges that the next of kin and the legal establishment - on 34 occasion before nine different presiding judges (plus the Supremes) appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents - but forgets that the legal establishment's decision was based on the overwhelming testimony of the medical community - with the only two dissents coming from individuals, paid for by the Schindlers, who could not produce any medical literature to support their wishful diagnoses.

This is America, so a "great many" people have a right to their opinions. But the great many people were not basing their belief in Terri's awareness on any medical evidence.

All opinions are not equal.

Let me once again emphasize the fact that Americans are entitled to their opinions. We live in a free society.

But leaders have a greater duty to ascertain the facts than the "blissful" public. If one is going to make statements about public policy, due diligence requires you to make a real effort to understand the issue.

This is why Bill Frist's "diagnosis" was particularly appalling. As a doctor, he understands what a lack of a cerebral cortex means.

The blogosphere troubled me as well. Brian rightly notes that the real dividing line between the sides in the Schiavo case was each side's interpretation of whether or not she was alive. If you had decided that she is dead, the argument is not about Terri but the intrusion of big brother on private family decisions. If you believed she was alive, you were morally obligated to try to prevent her murder.

He's right.

But here's my problem: I don't believe that it was reasonable for any person who had read the medical reports and legal decisions to conclude that she was alive.

Many bloggers, when directed to the medical findings and court transcripts, simply chose to ignore the facts in order to keep the fire of their righteous anger alive. Many even resorted to magical thinking: "Well, the doctors, including those whose own defense in a malpractice suit made minimizing the extent of Terri's injury a self-interested goal, were all bought off by Micheal Schiavo, who spent the huge sums of money necessary to get doctors to assent to murder, in order to inherit a rapidly declining amount of money. And the bribery began even before Micheal himself gave up hope on Terri. And Micheal must be trying to cover up abuse that had never been raised by Terri's family (check their website - they were quite canny in avoiding making any actionable libelous statements while winking at the horrible lies spread by their supporters).

Magical thinking

A person's birthright. Whether the thinking is about Schiavo, creationism, or the utopian socialist future - it's a birthright.

But magical thinking is a sin for people who aspire to lead.

The Pope, as the head of a powerful organization (perhaps even the member of the Queen/Colonel triumverate), had the ability to find out the true nature of Terri's injury, unclouded by the delusional rhetoric of pro-life leaders. But he chose, against the dogma of his own church, to argue that the removal of the feeding tube was tantamount to murder. Now, perhaps the Pope made a calculated decision to strengthen pro-life forces in the United States - if you believe that abortion is murder, what is one little lie when you have a chance to save hundreds of thousands of lives?

I'd do it.

But I would expect more from the Pontiff.

Furthermore, there is the question of whether or not the choice made for
Terri was her own. Again, Smallholder believes it was. Many do not. While that
assertion is open to debate, the Popes decision on his own behalf is not.

Actually, I believe that it doesn't matter. If a person does not have a living will, their next of kin - in this case the spouse - is legally entitled to decide. I did discuss the issue of Terri's wishes as a way to demonstrate the biased interpretations of the Save Terri supporters. The only people who claimed that Terri would want to live in that situation were her parents - who also admitted that they didn't really care what Terri wanted - they would keep her on life support anyway. And Mrs. Schindler's "recollection" of a conversation with Terri over the Quindlan case was chock full of inconsistencies and counter-factual statements. She was destroyed on cross. But really, legally it didn't matter.

My point in that brief paragraph was that the Pope should have been consistent - his opposition to letting Terri die, as far as I know, was not based on her wishes - the church believes you don't have the right to take your own life. By refusing last-ditch medical maintenance for himself, he was doing exactly what he wanted to prevent being done for Terri.

Finally, I find this comment troubling: But perhaps, at the very end, he realized he could not follow those convictions into a prolonged death struggle.

Two points. First, I do think that this is a bit if an unkind dig at a man who
was dealing with a terrible illness, an illness I hope Smallholder never
suffers. Secondly, I seem to recall that many of those who agree with
Smallholder regarding the Schiavo case (and perhaps even SH himself, I can't
remember) argued that the efforts to keep Terri alive were motivated by a fear
of death, an unwillingness to accept immortality. But this comment seems to
imply that JP II's decision was to embrace death out of a fear of facing
prolonged suffering in life. So my question to Smallholder, and to other
potential Papal detractors, is this: If is was cowardice to prolong life, and it
was cowardice to refrain prolonging life, how was His Holiness to please you?
Not that that was ever his goal....

The issue was not intended as a dig, just a statement about human frailty that I wanted to hold in contrast with the arrogance of deciding what's right for another person. In fact, I was more disappointed in the apparent contradiction in the Pope's thought processes because I held the Pope's moral convictions in such high esteem. When Randall Terry makes an ass of himself about the Schiavo case, it's just part of the background noise because no one respects his moral convictions.

I don't believe that I ever made the "fear of death" part of my argument. My problem was with the selfishness of parents who refused to accept reality. But if I had, I'm not sure that I would agree with the conflation of fear of death and fear of suffering. If people make other people suffer because they are afraid of confronting their own mortality, that is cruel cowardice. If people decide that their fear of their own suffering is greater than their own fear of death, that's their decision to make. I don't think the Pope feared death. I imagine he welcomed it and looked forward to heaven with a peaceful confidence.

It ought not to be the Pope's job to please me.

But he ought to please God. When I believe that his doctrines do not please God, as a Christian I ought to be displeased. Luckily for everyone, my displeasure rarely takes any substantive form. After all, very few jihadis launch their crusade with "Cake or death?" as we Episcopalians are wont to do.

Brian then moves on to take exception to another of my posts:

As for the media. Smallholder would sarcastically have us believe that current news
coverage of the awarding of a Congressional Medal of Honor is proof that the
Media is not biased in its coverage of Iraq. I shall avoid relying solely on the
old maxim that the exception proves the rule, because that alone would be a weak
argument. I will, however, point out that the first presentation of our nation's
highest military honor in twelve years is quite a newsworthy event, and not
something the media could easily ignore. As for front page news, I'm curious as
to which paper and which day. Today's Red Register Guard certainly didn't place
it there (Although they do have an interesting and highly important story of a
man trapped in an elevator for four days). It would be easy to argue that the
every day acts of bravery that fails to meet CMH criteria is the reason those
acts are not reported upon, to which I would respond by asking why every day
acts of cowardice and savagery are deemed more noteworthy?

The paper mentioned was the Washington Post. In fact, today's post also leads A1 with a story about the successes enjoyed by First Sergeant Ruiz (Go read it - it gives one hope for success in Iraq). Of course, the Post does not lead every day with a feel-good military story. The news media reports the news. Sometimes it is bad. I think that many people seem to perceive emphasis/story selection bias too frequently. That is not to say that it never exists, just that the right decries bias way too much and with too little evidence. Covering casualties is not anti-war bias. It's what people want to know. Covering success stories like Ruiz or the community building efforts of our civil affairs units is not pro-war bias. If both the right wing and left wing complain about the coverage, than I guess the papers must be doing something right.

Full disclosure: Mrs. Smallholder was a very successful journalist before we had kids. While she neatly balances the Maximum Leader's conservatism on the fulcrum of my centrism, professional ethics meant that she did not incorporate her biases into the story. Any pressure she felt from her editors - at two different papers - to insert slant into a story was a push to the right. While conservatives love to cite statistics that a majority of journalists are liberal, they ignore the fact that the greater majority of editors, publishers, and owners are conservatives.

Then Brian hammers for a third post - boy, I must have been the grit in the oyster that day!

As for the debate on the merits of
recovering the dead during combat:Smallholder's
points are at least worthy of consideration. So are the points of those who
disagree with him, as well as those
who agree. I'm just curious to hear input from one other, very important
point of view: The guys who actually have to carry out this policy. I don't know
any of these bloggers well enough to know if they're service veterans, let alone
combat vets. But when it comes to this policy, it seems to me that their opinion
should weigh heavily. Now, normally I am reticent to weigh in on issues having
to do with the combat experience, because I am a career civilian. However, on
this topic I think I've learned enough military history to have an
opinion.

Smallholder's original argument against the policy (Whether this is the
entire crux of his objection or not) was that he would be reticent as an officer
to send other men in to die to recover a body, and further, to have to tell the
families of those new dead why their son died: to recover a corpse.

Indeed. I believe the policy is immoral because it needlessly risks the living to recover the dead. I did not articulate in my brief post that it is also impractical; a soldier who dies to recover a corpse in not available to fight against military objectives later; objectives that may have a direct outcome on the battle.

I'd like to address the second part of the equation first. I find this
expression of concern for the families of the dead somewhat incongruous with the
previous statement "Private Snuffy was dead and his family would have to grieve,
with or without the shell." which seems somewhat (if unintentionally) cavalier.
Any combat death is a tragedy, and should be treated with as much dignity and
respect and compassion as possible. They should also be avoided if possible. But
in warfare, deaths occur. That is the nature of the beast. If the goal achieved,
or at least striven for, is worthy of the sacrifice, soldiers must be, and
almost always are, willing to make that sacrifice, and officers must be willing
to send them to that doom, as hard a choice as it may be.

There was no cavalier dismissal of a soldier's sacrifice. The name "Private Snuffy" is just army shorthand for "the average soldier." i.e. "Sergeants, make sure your Snuffies are ready to roll." Thinking about that class, I was mentally back in the army environment and didn't realize that most readers haven't served. I apologize to those I offended by my poor choice of language.

Combats deaths are a tragedy. Sometimes they are necessary. But KIAs incurred during corpse recovery operations are both tragic and unnecessary. I agree with Brian that our military goals occasionally require the expenditure of lives. But we disagree about whether bringing home bodies is a worthy goal:

Smallholder and Ally argue that it's all about "Honor and Dignity", and
assail these concepts as moot in the case of the dead. Bill, in arguing against
this position, focuses on the needs of the individual dying, and his family, to
know he'll be honored in death. I think he's on to something here, but I also
believe he falls a bit short.

I agree with Bill that it is not asinine to recover the dead. But I go a
bit further in my reason why. It is not for the sake of the dead man in his
dying, nor for his family, that I believe our military holds this policy. And
while I do believe that Honor has something to do with it, I do not believe, as
SH and Ally do, that it's honor for honor's sake alone -- some hidebound
tradition without reason. Ultimately, I believe that we adhere to this policy,
that we display this honor, for the sake of the living soldiers, for the sake of
those who may become the dead, as well as for the sake of those who will be
called on to risk and even give their own lives to recover those dead.

If you spend any amount of time reading the annals and recollections of
combat veterans, if you have watched their interviews, one thing sticks out in
your mind. While they were recruited with varying degrees of willingness, for a
multitude of causes, and fought under a thousand banners, they all seem to agree
on this thing. When the drums roll, and the trumpets sound, and the swords
clash, and the bombs drop, and the shells explode, and the bullets fly, and the
blood flows, they have all fought for the same reason: They fight for the man to
their left and the man to their right.

It's the inspiration of all good soldiers, not just the title of a
miniseries: They're a band of brothers. They fight, kill, and die to protect and
support each other. They rely on each other, trust each other. Even though it's
a bond forged in battle and thus dissolves to some extent with the peace, in
ways this bond is a vow more binding than the marriage vow: I'm married to my
wife "till death do us part". Soldiers are bound to each other even in death.
This is why they do not leave their dead behind. And this is why I believe
(though any vets out their are as always welcome to correct me) that they are
not only willing to, but believe strongly that they should, risk their own lives
to recover the bodies of their fallen buddies. And if we release them from this
obligation, furthermore, if an officer by his orders bars them from carrying out
this obligation, that vow has been broken. They have not kept the faith, they
have broken the bonds of brotherhood that bind even in death. And if that vow,
which has been made can be broken in death, what's to keep the bond in life? The
foundation of trust and honor which keeps good soldiers fighting for each other
has been eroded. And in the end, soldiers who cannot trust each other cannot
defend each other. And if they cannot defend each other, they cannot survive.
And that is why, I believe, the living risk their lives to honor the dead.

Soldiers do fight for each other. When it comes right down to it, as John Keegan has famously observed, soldiers don't die for their country; they die for their comrades.

But, in order to psychologically survive the trauma of combat, soldiers need to be able to build a firewall between their living comrades and those who have died, much as policemen resort to gallows humor when responding to automobile accidents or homicides. Soldiers may love each other, and grieve for the loss of their friends, they do understand the dividing line between life and death. And this leads to a practicality many civilians would shudder to behold.

Think Paul Baumer grieving for his friend Kemmerich while conspiring to get his boots.

The morale argument fails when framed on a longterm historical basis. We had no such policy during World War One. French and British and German soldiers got to watch their friends decompose in no man's land. I imagine that was less harmful to morale than an order to expose themselves to maxim guns to recover those bodies would have been.

My Uncle's own combat recollections were rather matter of fact. He would have found an order to move into a kill zone to recover a body to be asinine.

One person who commented on my post (sorry - I don't remember who) worried that my refusal to send men after a corpse might be based on erroneous information; what if we left a living soldier behind? Brian's bonds of brotherhood would justify going forward to check on the status of a fallen comrade. And soldiers would gladly do that. Morale would require it. But sometimes, it is pretty clear that the guy in the kill zone is dead. Modern warfare is shockingly violent. Large caliber bullets and explosives can pretty clearly mark someone as KIA, even when the body is viewed from a distance. One example would be the opening lines of the Washington Post article I linked above:

MOSUL, Iraq -- From inside a vacant building, Sgt. 1st Class Domingo Ruiz
watched through a rifle scope as three cars stopped on the other side of the
road. A man carrying a machine gun got out and began to transfer weapons into
the trunk of one of the cars.

"Take him down," Ruiz told a sniper.

The sniper fired his powerful M-14 rifle and the man's head exploded,
several American soldiers recalled.

If one of my men gets hit by a sniper and his head explodes, it is pretty clear that he is dead. And I doubt many soldiers who have actually seen combat (as opposed to armchair civilians) would argue that their bond with their fallen colleague justified risking further casualties.

Of course, I'm just an armchair civilian myself. The closest I came to combat was packing my gear for the invasion of Haiti - I never even left the states because Clinton called it off.

So I could be wrong about how a soldier would feel in combat. If Nakedvillainy has any combat vet readers, please e-mail me your take on the issue.