Sympathy for the Devil

Let's say that you're having a bad day. The rebellion has stolen some rather important blueprints, and to make matters worse, your hostage is stubbornly refusing to cooperate. So, you blow up the planet of Alderaan. C'est la vie.

And yet in the end, Darth Vader was still forgiven. Haunting string music and all. From which we can all draw the lesson that even killing a few billion people doesn't really put you beyond the pale.

Granted, they were fictional fatalities. But it still begs the question -- where do we draw the line? President Bashir of Sudan is not a particularly nice man, but what if he's essential to ensuring that Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement doesn't collapse? What if Bashir holds it within his power to avoid a war between northern and southern Sudan?

This certainly isn't meant as an assertion of fact; instead, just a theoretical proposition, a thought question -- what if talking to Bashir lessens the risk of a larger war? Does that justify dealing with him? Not forgiveness, but walking with the devil across the bridge.

Or, an even more difficult example. What if Hitler had sued for peace in early 1944, before D-Day? What if he promised to stop slaughtering Jews, gypsies and other non-Aryans; what if he promised to withdraw from all occupied territories, and step down from power? Again, just a theoretical question. Would the costs of fighting on -- hundreds of thousands more killed -- have justified the benefits?

I'm not saying that the ends justify the means. Perhaps we do decide that some people are simply beyond the pale, regardless of the costs, or potential costs.

But if we're honest with ourselves, we have to admit there are almost always trade-offs involved.

Thoughts very much on my end at the moment. I'm reading Stephen Ellis' excellent book The Mask of Anarchy, about the Liberian civil war. There's an image in the book I can't get out of my head -- young Liberians singing He killed my Pa, He killed my Ma, I'll vote for him as they cast their ballot for vicious warlord Charles Taylor in the 1997 elections.

As Ellis explains: "On 19 July, 1997, Liberia held the fairest elections in its history, in which some 80 per cent of the eligible population voted. Three-quarters of those who went to the polls voted for Charles Taylor. In some cases, people may have reasoned that a vote for Taylor was the best hope for peace, since they knew that if Taylor didn't win the election, he was likely to re-start the war."

Walking with the devil indeed. I have no idea where to draw the line. But the more I think about it, the less I understand how to translate moral absolutes into the real world.

At least there's always the Stones - in Mick we trust.

[Photo taken during the Liberian civil war - link forwarded by a friend in Liberia, no attribution included.]