Animadversions on Radovan Karadzic
With A Few Comments on
The Death Penalty, Philosophy, and Iraq

They finally got the SOB. I could hold forth about his awfulness, but I've done that before, and nobody really needs to hear it anyway. There's actual evil in the world, and one of its clearest instantiations is in Karadzic.

Here's one thing that seems very clear to me about this case: Karadzic deserves the death penalty.

Now, a few years back, my friend Peter the Public Defender convinced me that the death penalty was extremely flawed in practice, and I came to believe that it should be used--if at all--only in the clearest cases. In fact, I am inclined to support an at least temporary ban on its use in the U.S.--until, that is, we can figure out whether/how we can apply it in something at least approaching a just manner.

However--and here's something, incidentally, that philosophers are better at than most folk--we have to separate the in-principle question from the in-practice question. The DP seems justified in principle, though not in practice. It is unjustified in practice largely because of epistemic problems--that is, the justice system is insufficiently good at determining guilt and innocence. And it is a virtual certainty that we have executed innocent people (and probably a non-trivial number of them at that).

However, this has no bearing on the in-principle question. The standard example here is Hitler--if we'd have captured him at the end of the war, it is about as clear as anything gets in this area that he would deserve execution. However, it seems to be an unextinguishable internet trope that you can never appeal to Hitler in any argument!!!11!!1 Dopey, but there it is. Appeals to Hitler play an important role in such discussions precisely because the case is so clear; everyone knows a sufficient number of facts about the case, every sane person acknowledges his monstrousness, and there are no significant epistemic questions in play.

But thing is, Karadzic is almost as good an exemplar. People might not be quite as clear about the facts in the case, but it doesn't take much digging to reveal them. He killed fewer people, but there is, it seems, little difference morally speaking. Once you've become a mass murderer on such an unimaginable scale, the difference between hundreds of thousands and millions doesn't matter much.

So, since there's no real doubt about what he did, and what he did was off the moral scale, what he deserves seems pretty damn clear.

Now, I won't try to address specific arguments against the DP here, though we've discussed them some in the past. But here's one thought to keep in mind: most arguments against the DP seem to turn, in the end, on premises that seem to entail one of two absurd claims, to wit, either: (a) No one is ever responsible for anything he does or (b) We are only responsible for the good things we do, but not the bad ones. Now, DP opponents cannot accept (a) without self-contradiction, and there is simply no coherent reason whatsoever to accept (b).

But the important--though elementary--point about method that I want to make here is just that one must not confuse in-principle opposition to the DP with in-practice opposition. However passionately one opposes the DP on the grounds that we have misapplied it, this cannot touch the position that holds that it can sometimes be applied clearly and justly. So, again, the philosophical lesson: separate in-principle objections from in-practice ones.

I want to close with a brief comment about Iraq. Intervention in the former Yugoslavia was one of Clinton's--and America's--finest moments. In that case, we intervened for genuinely moral reasons. The prudential/strategic reasons for intervention simply weren't very strong, and the motive was clearly moral. Clinton and company faced opposition not only from the international community, but from Republicans as well. But they saw what was right, and pushed forward resolutely. But, remember, they did so in a way that sought to ultimately create consensus and bring the opposition on board. Clinton was right, his opponents were wrong, but he treated them with respect by trying to gently--but firmly--reveal to them the error of their ways.

This, unfortunately, contrasts vividly with our actions in Iraq, and the motives and actions of the Bush administration. Although Saddam was a brutal fiend--like Karadzic, on par with Hitler, morally speaking--the war was not undertaken for moral reasons. Moral reasons were invoked only as it became clear that the strategic case was absurdly weak. Furthermore, since steps were not taken to insure that we would not make the situation worse, it may be true that we are blameworthy for our actions, despite the fact that we removed a brutal tyrant. And, in terms of the ultimate actual consequences, we may in fact have made things worse. Finally, instead of seeking to build consensus and show the loyal opposition the alleged error of its ways, Bush and his surrogates demonized all who failed to fall immediately into line--though we were right and he was wrong, and this was reasonably clear from early on.

So--though I don't want to become one of those people who try to turn every discussion back to the Iraq debacle--I do think that this case provides an opportunity for reflection on that case. Though this shouldn't distract us from the primary fact at hand, which is that Radovan Karadzic, mass murderer and all around evil piece of sh*t, has finally been captured.