Does Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — the Guantánamo detainee who claims he personally beheaded the reporter Daniel Pearl — deserve the rights he denied Mr. Pearl? Which ones? A painless execution? Exemption from capital punishment? Decent prison conditions? Habeas corpus?
Such apparently unrelated questions arise in the aftermath of the vote of the environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month to grant limited rights to our closest biological relatives, the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.
(New York Times, When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans)
I’m not sure exactly why extending “rights” to apes raises all these questions, but I would submit that, at least in part, the quote above illustrates a problem with the way we Americans frame these issues, at least as they apply to humans.
It isn’t only whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (who, as Frank Rich points out today, may not be guilty of the crime to which he’s confessed) has a right to a painless death, but whether a civilized society should inflict any other kind, assuming in the first place that the death penalty should ever be used. That issue can’t be resolved solely by considering his rights.
The question is not, or not alone, whether individuals possess certain rights, but whether any society should demean and degrade itself by inflicting painful deaths, engaging in torture or setting up kangaroo courts, to name just a few of the crimes against humanity in which this country has engaged in the past seven years. Putting aside the practical objections to at least some of these activities (that they don’t work), we have proven in our own recent history that engaging in such practices destroys not only our claim to moral leadership, but our moral center itself. We became a compromised country when we chose to abandon the ideals we have espoused, and largely lived by, since George Washington opted to treat captive Hessian soldiers humanely, not as they deserved (they had been ordered to take no prisoners), but in accordance with our principles, not in accordance with theirs. Washington was not concerned with the Hessian’s rights, but with American principles and American honour.
As Hamlet told Polonius, “Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity-the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.”
Addendum: I have received an extended comment to this post. I haven’t read all of it yet, but it is essentially a defense of the death penalty, grounded in Catholic theology. You can, of course, prove anything by a resort to theology, a philosophical system grounded in fantasy. Though I should add, to give it its due, that the Catholic Church is now against the death penalty, except, apparently, in extreme cases.
One Comment