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Articles

Humanism on the Front Line

Douglas Gearhart calls on philosophers to develop practical moral guidance for soldiers in war zones.

The rifle shot tore through the car window and possibly into the man’s arm; I couldn’t tell from my vantage point. He took off quickly, abandoning the car and scurried back across the road, clutching his arm. The bottom line that morning on the highway south of Baghdad was absolutely no one comes through. We instructed them, pleaded with them, but they kept coming by the hundreds and the Marines were growing annoyed, and perhaps a little slighted – you see our weapons, we have asked you nicely, now what’s it going to take? But as our Iraqi interpreter, ‘Fred’, explained to me, Iraqis do not fear the barrel of a weapon as instinctively as we might believe.

Since the specter of car-bombs had already reared its head, through second-hand accounts and rumors from elsewhere, there was no way the man could drive that close to the Marine perimeter without risking his life.

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