Althouse: "I questioned the morality of breaking into high-security nuclear sites: What if someone got shot?"

March 7, 2015

"I questioned the morality of breaking into high-security nuclear sites: What if someone got shot?"

"What about the trauma a young security guard might experience after realizing that he or she had killed a nun rather than a terrorist? Sister Ardeth replied that nobody had been harmed in the more than thirty years since the first Plowshares, and that the Lord should be thanked for that. She betrayed no doubts. 'I will continue doing direct action for the rest of my life,' Sister Ardeth told me. 'If I can walk, you’ll find me out there.'"

From "Break-In at Y-12/How a handful of pacifists and nuns exposed the vulnerability of America’s nuclear-weapons sites," by Eric Schlosser (in The New Yorker).

20 comments:

glenn said...: We should thank them for exposing the gaps in nuke security. Then we should shoot the next ones.; 3/7/15, 6:39 PM
Bill, Republic of Texas said...: This old biddy needs to keep her religion to herself. Hasn't she ever heard of separation of church and state?; 3/7/15, 6:51 PM
Big Mike said...: I fully concur with glenn; 3/7/15, 6:51 PM
Alex said...: I concur with Big Mike.; 3/7/15, 7:16 PM
m stone said...: glenn is right. Plowshares did more to undo their original mission of world peace than any group I could ever imagine. Doggedly. We are now better armed and our arsenals better protected than before partly because of them.

What a waste of human energy. Then again, you can't help but applaud them for keeping us some measure of safety from terrorists.

Were God's plan so simple!

It is not "the faith" that drives them because true faith is always accompanied by wisdom and God's guidance. It is directed at men, not storage complexes or the government. Faith wins over men, one at a time, unless God's Spirit chooses otherwise. Pacifism is not the faith, it is an idol.

We have Catholic activists here in this podunk city who protest at the War College now for many years. They accomplish nothing, unless they expect to accumulate "indulgences."; 3/7/15, 7:26 PM
The Godfather said...: I don't have time to read the whole article. When do the Plowshares folks head to Iran? or North Korea?; 3/7/15, 8:14 PM
madAsHell said...: Someone failed to shoot?

Court-martial them! Make sure the 2nd LT is taken out an shot as well.; 3/7/15, 9:38 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/8/15, 7:52 AM
Anonymous said...: Court-martial them! Make sure the 2nd LT is taken out an shot as well.

A long time ago, I was a 2LT in command of a response force for a nuclear weapons storage site in Germany during the Bader-Meinhof period.

The training of my troops was very detailed and we did the mission well, and though I was a 2LT, I was a combat Vet and a former Drill SGT, so I succeeded, and got an opportunity to do it again, next time the Battalion was in the rotation :)

"Those that take more than their share of hills, get more than their share of hills to take".

anyway, my troops had to know the 5 times deadly force could be used in responding.

1. Self Defense
2. Inner Fence. Any attempt to breach the site inner fence
3. Exclusion Area. If we arrived and the intruders were inside the inner fence, they could be shot on sight.
4. Prevent Escape. If they had been in the exclusion area, and were leaving, they could and should be shot.
5. On my Order.

The point of rules 3,4,5, was that getting into proximity of the weapons was a potential death sentence. Anybody who did that, could not be allowed to escape our control (perhaps with a weapon)

The Y-12 security response was a joke.; 3/8/15, 7:53 AM
Paul said...: With all due respect to Sister Ardeth, it stinks of moral selfishness to put others at such risk when there are other options available.; 3/8/15, 12:38 PM
Trashhauler said...: Useful idiots will always be with us. And publishing a rag called The Catholic Worker doesn't mean one represents either Catholicism or workers.; 3/8/15, 1:11 PM
SJ said...: ...and I run into the distinction between moral intuition and deductions-based-on-moral-intuition.

Sister Ardeth has a piece of moral intuition (or a Moral Precept) telling her that nuclear weapons are evil.

She also thinks that any guard who shoots her would be harmed, in some way, by the knowledge that he's killed someone who wasn't there to cause harm.

Even in that, she uses some deductive logic to decide which action is moral.

Her statements are opaque to me: I don't share her intuitive response to nuclear weapons. We could argue all day long, but I doubt she could bring me to agree with her intuition about nuclear weapons.

I'm working on a different kind of moral intuition. Every weapon from a sharpened stick to a nuclear bomb is capable of being used for evil, or for good. The evil lies in how the tool is used, not in the tool itself.

Is there a clean, rational way to resolve this problem?; 3/8/15, 6:41 PM
Robert Cook said...: "I don't have time to read the whole article. When do the Plowshares folks head to Iran? or North Korea?"

There's snark...and then there's dumb.

Why would they go to Iran? Iran does not have any nukes.

Also, given that America is the world's most militarily powerful and belligerent nation, and probably the most likely to launch a nuclear first strike, it makes more sense to focus on anti-nuke actions here, (though there have been Plowshares anti-nuke actions in other countries).; 3/9/15, 8:15 AM
Robert Cook said...: "Her statements are opaque to me: I don't share her intuitive response to nuclear weapons."

You don't believe that nuclear weapons are evil?

What if you see what modern nuclear weapons would do if expended against a major city?

To call such weapons "evil" is the least one can accurately say about them.; 3/9/15, 8:23 AM
Civilis said...: To call such weapons "evil" is the least one can accurately say about them.

I don't know about Robert's belief's specifically, but it's hard to believe that leftists that in general can't get beyond moral relativism have no problems with calling inanimate objects evil. It's far more accurate for me to say that "I've seen what Socialism does in practice to civilian populations in the USSR, Germany, China, Korea, and other places. To call that political philosophy "evil" is the least one can accurately say about it."

I've seen what war does in general; it's never pretty, but sometimes the other options are worse. I'd rather live in a world with nuclear weapons than the world before nuclear weapons, with industrial economies devoted to total war, because that was the only way that you won, and it was possible to win a war.

I'd rather deal with a deterred totalitarian Soviet Union or China than one where the side that can throw the most bodies into the war machine wins, and I find it horribly ironic that these so-called pacifists would rather have that world than our own current one.; 3/9/15, 8:57 AM
Civilis said...: Nuclear weapons and the theory of nuclear strategy are rife with paradoxes that make no sense to those making their decisions on their emotional responses, so that so many people have such poor reasoning isn't surprising. Calling nuclear weapons evil is an emotional, not a logical, response.

At a fundamental level, nuclear weapons accomplish the goal that pacifists have been trying to accomplish for generations: they make total war too horrible for rational people to contemplate. Perhaps they're just jealous that the military-industrial complex weakened itself by being too effective, and they get no credit?

"The only winning move is not to play" isn't a design defect, it's an intentional effect of the technology, but the logic only works if both sides are sincere in their intention that regardless of the cost, the other side won't win.; 3/9/15, 9:06 AM
Peter said...: "Were God's plan so simple!"

One of the problems with the "plowshares" metaphor/quote is that it's far from clear that the Israelites were beating their swords into phowshares, and not just rejoicing that their enemies have been forced to do so.; 3/9/15, 9:14 AM
Robert Cook said...: "At a fundamental level, nuclear weapons accomplish the goal that pacifists have been trying to accomplish for generations: they make total war too horrible for rational people to contemplate."

You give too much credit to the "rationality" of people or governments, (look at some of the half-wits residing in Congress today), and too much trust that generally rational people or institutions and their systems can't fail in crucial ways at crucial times.

"Perhaps they're just jealous that the military-industrial complex weakened itself by being too effective, and they get no credit?"

The "military-industrial complex weakened itself?" Hahahaha! They're far more powerful and inextricably intertwined in all aspects of our society than they've ever been.

As to "calling inanimate objects evil," we can extrapolate from Marshall McLuhuan, who said that media were man's "extensions" of himself, and say accurately that our weapons, (as are all our instrumentalities), are particularly vivid extensions of ourselves, and to call nuclear weapons "evil" is really to say they are human evil made physically manifest.; 3/9/15, 9:31 AM
Civilis said...: The "military-industrial complex weakened itself?" Hahahaha! They're far more powerful and inextricably intertwined in all aspects of our society than they've ever been.

No, it's not, and that's what's actually bugging many on the left (though they won't admit it, even to themselves). Look at any of the industrial economies during the Second World War: everything dancing happily along to the military-industrial tune. Everyone that's not conscripted to fight is working in the factories or knitting socks or collecting scraps (except, of course, the big important people). All the little people are sacrificing all those things the important people think they don't need, like gasoline and meat. All the entertainment and media is happy propaganda and censored at the behest of the government, telling people only what's good for them to hear. All those uncomfortable civil liberties are suspended for the duration. All those nasty evil dissenters are in camps (and if a few unpopular minorities, like the Japanese, end up there as well, it's a necessary measure). Everything is run by the government for the war.

Total war was an excuse for the elites, the government and those tied to it, to control everything for the war effort. Notice how smoothly those crony industrialists become the heads of the various government Departments related to their industries?

Now that we can make sure the other side can't win (and therefore has no reason to start a total war), we can run an all volunteer military, relax government controls over the economy so little people don't have to worry about ration cards, cut military spending as a proportion of our GDP (which, since it was as close to ALL as it was ever going to get, isn't hard) and do other things.

It's not perfect. You still get proxy wars since we can't directly fight each other, and the other sorts of cold war shenanigans. But it's better than Warsaw and Dresden.

(look at some of the half-wits residing in Congress today)

But enough about Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders...

too much trust that generally rational people or institutions and their systems can't fail in crucial ways at crucial times

Yes, things go wrong. Things have gone wrong throughout history. Trusting megalomaniacs with total government power never ends well, and we won't stop centralizing power in the hands of people that are charismatic enough to get power and ego-maniacal enough to think they can do good with it...; 3/9/15, 10:01 AM
Civilis said...: No, it's not, and that's what's actually bugging many on the left (though they won't admit it, even to themselves). Look at any of the industrial economies during the Second World War: everything dancing happily along to the military-industrial tune. Everyone that's not conscripted to fight is working in the factories or knitting socks or collecting scraps (except, of course, the big important people). All the little people are sacrificing all those things the important people think they don't need, like gasoline and meat. All the entertainment and media is happy propaganda and censored at the behest of the government, telling people only what's good for them to hear. All those uncomfortable civil liberties are suspended for the duration. All those nasty evil dissenters are in camps (and if a few unpopular minorities, like the Japanese, end up there as well, it's a necessary measure). Everything is run by the government for the war.

To elaborate, what the left now objects to is the ends (war) rather than the means, and that may change if an enemy they believe to be as evil as fascism ever shows up again. Government control of businesses towards full employment? Government-forced reductions in consumption of goods? Censoring media that doesn't toe the Progressive party line? Suspending basic civil liberties? All are perfectly acceptable to many on the left. There's even a minority that has no problem with re-education camps for political enemies; the president is friends with one that openly admits it. But it's okay if it's the Koch brothers getting their 1st amendment rights suspended or rednecks losing their 2nd amendment rights, Fox News getting censored, evil gas-guzzlers getting hit with government price shocks (even if it's the poor hit the hardest), and the right crony capitalists benefiting from the government screwing with the job market, even if the country is worse off overall...; 3/9/15, 10:26 AM