Conscience at War: The Israeli Soldier as a Moral Critic

3. Refusal in the Battlefield: From Passive to Active

3 Refusal in the Battlefield From Passive to Active What does the combatant's moral competence tell about his moral action in general and while under pressure in particular? Kohlberg (1984) believes that one does not act directly on principles, but rather on specific content judgments engendered by those principles . Moral judgments serve two psychological functions that he deems necessary for moral action: liThe first is a denotic decision function, a judgment of what is right. The second is a follow through function, a judgment of responsibility to act on what one has judged to be right" (p. S17). Thus, the definition of moral action, according to Kohlberg, includes the actor's perception of right action and his judgment of responsibility to perform the action. However, laboratory experiments show that, in situations involving authority, an individual's perception and sense of responsibility do not lead the moral thinker into his prospective action so smoothly. For example, in Milgram's (1974) famous study on obedience to authority, naive subjects were recruited to II shock" an innocent victim under the guise of studying the effects of punishment on memory. Milgram argued (and proved) that in authoritative situation there is a pressure for all subjects to enter an II agentic state of mind," and therefore they tend to not question the legitimacy of authority. Once in this mode, individuals no longer evaluate the morality of their actions by themselves, but rather see themselves as agents carrying out the commands of their superiors. Kelman and Hamilton (1989) suggested three social processes that seem to weaken moral inhibitions among actors in the field: (1) authorizaS5 S6 Conscience at War tion-the situation becomes so defined that the individual is absolved of the responsibility to make personal moral choices; (2) routinization-the action becomes so organized that there is no opportunity for raising moral questions; and (3) dehumanizationthe actors' attitudes toward the target and toward themselves become so structured that it is neither necessary nor possible for them to view the relationships in moral terms. Kohlberg brought some hope to Milgram's 1974 study by showing that nearly all subjects at the highest moral stage (which is now regarded as at least stage 4) were able to resist authority and quit the experiment early (87 percent). Milgram also reported that subjects who quit the experiment seemed to relinquish their sense of responsibility considerably less often than did subjects who were obedient. Kohlberg than moved outside the laboratory situation to the My Lai situation and examined Bernhardt's sole refusal to shoot civilians in the terrible massacre there. This chapter follows Kohlberg 's line of inquiry and takes the My Lai situation as a setting where moral action can best be studied. This examination, however, is based upon data from Bilton and Sim's (1992) book and from their documentary film (Yorkshire Television ) on the My Lai situation. This is followed by an examination of obedience and resistance to authority during extreme situations at the onset of the Intifada. By no means do these comparisons imply that the situations are Similar, as the My Lai situation is a unique case of massacre and, as emphasized by Walzer (1977), can only be compared to a massacre. Still, the focus is on similarities and differences in the separate and connected positions of moral criticism that await combatants in extremely ambiguous situations in the battlefield. The My Lai Situation: Why Did Kohlberg Fail to Interview Thompson? On 16 March 1968, an American infantry company was ordered to attack Vietcong guerrillas in the Vietnamese village of My LaL The soldiers were informed that the inhabitants were supposed to be outside the village on the day of the attack. The advance on the village was not met by any hostile fire. Within four hours the soldiers of this Company had murdered, raped, burned, and mutilated four to fivE' hundred innocent victims. Refusal in the BattlefIeld 57 The men of "Charlie" company had arrived in Vietnam from Hawaii in December of 1967. Their age ranged from eighteen to twenty years old. Nearly half were blacks and few had higher education . They were later described as a typical cross-section of American youth assigned to most combat units at that time, in that place, and in that war. Originally, they were supporters of the war in Vietnam or lacked the social resources to avoid participation in it (Kelman and Hamilton 1989). The...