Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [11]
Some moral dilemmas arise from conflicting moral principles. For example, one principle that comes into play in the trolley story says we should save as many lives as possible, but another says it is wrong to kill an innocent person, even for a good cause. Confronted with a situation in which saving a number of lives depends on killing an innocent person, we face a moral quandary. We must try to figure out which principle has greater weight, or is more appropriate under the circumstances.
Other moral dilemmas arise because we are uncertain how events will unfold. Hypothetical examples such as the trolley story remove the uncertainty that hangs over the choices we confront in real life. They assume we know for sure how many will die if we don’t turn—or don’t push. This makes such stories imperfect guides to action. But it also makes them useful devices for moral analysis. By setting aside contingencies—“What if the workers noticed the trolley and jumped aside in time?”—hypothetical examples help us to isolate the moral principles at stake and examine their force.
The Afghan Goatherds
Consider now an actual moral dilemma, similar in some ways to the fanciful tale of the runaway trolley, but complicated by uncertainty about how things will turn out:
In June 2005, a special forces team made up of Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell and three other U.S. Navy SEALs set out on a secret reconnaissance mission in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border, in search of a Taliban leader, a close associate of Osama bin Laden.37 According to intelligence reports, their target commanded 140 to 150 heavily armed fighters and was staying in a village in the forbidding mountainous region.
Shortly after the special forces team took up a position on a mountain ridge overlooking the village, two Afghan farmers with about a hundred bleating goats happened upon them. With them was a boy about fourteen years old. The Afghans were unarmed. The American soldiers trained their rifles on them, motioned for them to sit on the ground, and then debated what to do about them. On the one hand, the goatherds appeared to be unarmed civilians. On the other hand, letting them go would run the risk that they would inform the Taliban of the presence of the U.S. soldiers.
As the four soldiers contemplated their options, they realized that they didn’t have any rope, so tying up the Afghans to allow time to find a new hideout was not feasible. The only choice was to kill them or let them go free.
One of Luttrell’s comrades argued for killing the goatherds: “We’re on active duty behind enemy lines, sent here by our senior commanders. We have a right to do everything we can to save our own lives. The military decision is obvious. To turn them loose would be wrong.”38 Luttrell was torn. “In my soul, I knew he was right,” he wrote in retrospect. “We could not possibly turn them loose. But my trouble is, I have another soul. My Christian soul. And it was crowding in on me. Something kept whispering in the back of my mind, it would be wrong to execute these unarmed men in cold blood.”39 Luttrell didn’t say what he meant by his Christian soul, but in the end, his conscience didn’t allow him to kill the goatherds. He cast the deciding vote to release them. (One of his three comrades had abstained.) It was a vote he came to regret.
About an hour and a half after they released the goatherds, the four soldiers found themselves surrounded by eighty to a hundred Taliban fighters armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. In the fierce firefight that followed, all three of Luttrell’s comrades were killed. The Taliban fighters also shot down a U.S. helicopter that sought to rescue the SEAL unit, killing all sixteen soldiers on board.
Luttrell, severely injured, managed to survive by falling down the mountainside and crawling seven