Add your own: CIA prof's post-9/11 ethics class scenarios

[JackRiddler]

.

Barracuda: great esxamples.

Luposapien: The winning entry.

[Luposapien]

Aw.... Shucks...

Thanks! Though I don't know if I can compete with the entertainment value of Barracuda's re-write:

A few CIA guys are hanging out at their condo in Hamburg. Their buddy gets them good heroin from Turkey and mules it all over Europe for them. At a big-time secret drinkfest at a nearby nightclub in Hamburg, the mule tells his CIA connection he thinks they are drunk enough to score some hookers and take them back to the condo. He says "You do it, and don't get the ugly one this time!" He adds that if the CIA does not pay for the hookers, he's going to bed. Would it be morally acceptable for the CIA to score hookers for the mule, knowing that to maintain "cover", they will have to join in the fun? 'Cause otherwise, the terrorists have won!! And the American way of life is over, or at least in deep peril!!

[JackRiddler]

Reviving this thread for anyone who hasn't seen it because seems to fit several of the themes currently running.

[DrVolin]

In several of the scenarios, one doesn't even have to get to the ethical questions. One is stopped long before by the realization that the proposed course of action is probably stupid. The first scenario will suffice to make the point. You've located and are tracking an active terrorist leader. Do you assassinate him, or do you monitor him, learn everything you can about his activities and his networks, and feed him lots of bogus intel? What did the brits do with the German agents discovered in the UK? Assassinate them? No, they did the intelligent thing and ran a very nice play back. No need to even enter into the moral debate.

If you let yourself be baited into the moral debate, fairly soon you'll be trying to think of reasons why assassination, kidnapping and torture shouldn't be used on you for failing to pay taxes.

[JackRiddler]

It was the Blackwater threads (esp. paying for prostitutes) that reminded me of the twisted justifications the spooks devise.

There is a hidden sector of industry explicitly devoted to breaking laws, with secret budgets, state sanction and authority derived from each participants' personal relationship to a god known as "national security." What the fuck is wrong with us?

[Uncle $cam]

Superb thread guys, for some reason it reminds me of

It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure - in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals.

— Trevanian (Shibumi: A Novel)


1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
3) You can't even quit the game.
-- Ginsberg's Theorem

It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
-- Canada Bill Jones

A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.
-- Canada Bill Jones

[AlicetheKurious]

I haven't seen this thread before, but if this is the basic rule:

The following scenarios are shortened versions of fictionalized case studies I developed for classroom use and then adapted for inclusion in my book on intelligence ethics. Read the following case studies and decide whether the given course of action in each of the ten case studies below is morally acceptable or not. Exclude practical, legal, or operational considerations from your decision, and focus on whether you are comfortable with U.S. intelligence agencies engaging in the indicated activities.

then it's really very simple. Like justice, morality is blind and impartial, and universally applicable. Whether something is moral or not does not vary according to whether it suits "our" purposes or furthers "our" objectives, but according to the action itself. By definition, if it's moral when we do it, it's moral when our enemies do it as well, in comparable circumstances (i.e. when, in their opinion, the lives of many civilians are at stake, or in retaliation for atrocities, or to protect "the homeland"). If this asshole is trying to replace the principles of international law with a self-serving ersatz "morality" based on an assumption of American military supremacy at all times and in all places, he should be told that he may very well live to regret it, when this new "morality" is self-righteously applied on his ass and on the asses of his virtuous torturers and killers and when the collateral damage isn't a bunch of non-Aryan non-persons but perhaps members of his own family.

This short-sighted moron should have it explained to him that if you make rules based on Might is Right, a day may come (and sooner, rather than later) when you, and the citizens of your country, have neither on your side. And then you'll have been hoist on your own petard.

[Nordic]

Some jackass wants to teach an ETHICS class at George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M.

Is it morally acceptable to allow this? Or should whoever thought of this have his testicles bitten off by a shark?

[Uncle $cam]

Is it morally acceptable to allow this? Or should whoever thought of this have his testicles bitten off by a shark?

I'd settle for him to be bitten in the face...



for the stupidity, but perhaps yours is more appropriate considering the gene pool...lol

Tell, me does this guy also teach the Plato's 'noble lie', 101?

the accepter in the using of jus ad bellum to further the foreign policy of greed.

Lastly, one could always, ask him: jolson@bushschool.tamu.edu

Professor Olson is the author of Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying, published by Potomac Books in 2006.

http://bush.tamu.edu/faculty/jolson/

"Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you're stupid. Did you hear that? - stupid."

-Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, 1965

[JackRiddler]

I'm giving this an annual kick, having been reminded of it by this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 39x2035875

[StarmanSkye]

OUTSTANDinG DU post there, Jack! That's about as word-for-word as I'd hope to be in putting this whole issue of retroactive moral relativism in its most just form.
Thanks so much for giving this thread its annual kick, somehow I'd missed it before now. Re: the Harper's article on the 'ex-CIA prof's' Ethics class, Barracuda's and Luposapien's contributions are absolute TOPS! among a bunch of really inspired entrants -- A big reason why RI is THE bestest deep-political forum and its posters are some of the most profoundly principled & self-aware on the Net hiway!

You made my day!
THANX!

Posted by Jack on DU, Quote:

JackRiddler (1000+ posts) Sat Oct-01-11 12:06 PM
Response to Original message
16. You left out the only option that would matter to the targets of this supposed attack.
Edited on Sat Oct-01-11 12:20 PM by JackRiddler
What would disrupt the actual plan to attack? Killing him obviously would make no difference to the plan (given your example based on the Aug. 6, 2001 PDB).

Going strictly by the official 9/11 story, if the response to the Aug. 6th PDB to Bush titled "Bin Ladin determined to strike in US" were to assassinate OBL, that alone would have made no difference at all to the plot. It would more likely have been an inspiration than any kind of operational disruption or deterrent to the alleged hijackers.

Your example is an extremely narrow false dilemma. Long as you're doing hypotheticals, why don't you set one up wherein I choose not to covertly intervene in Afghanistan in the first place (back in 1979)? Wherein I choose not to finance and arm the Arab mujahedeen, not to collaborate with the most extreme and backward elements in the Middle East including the later "Qaeda" militants and the oil monarchies, not to bomb most of the countries there for decades, not to starve and then invade Iraq, not to react to terrorist attacks by launching an endless global war and turning my country into a police state? Wherein - hey, I'm the president! - I dedicate myself to ending the endless wars and the policies of empire that are predictably driving hatred and bankrupting my country, and devote the money to meeting my people's needs instead of expanding the security state?

Because by omitting all that, your example is a mindless predetermination of the desired answer. Propaganda.

It reminds me of this:


Your pro-CIA ethics professor presents you with a list of decontextualized scenarios designed to coerce you into accepting a worldview wherein the interests of "The United States of America" (whatever that may be), a priori trump any or all ethical considerations. Is it morally acceptable to play along with his mind-game, and complete the assignment within the false parameters dictated, or do you call him out on his bullshit in front of the class and refuse to participate?


http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... p?t=2097...

--end quote--

[JackRiddler]

.

Starman! Thank you so much.

Just to clarify, the quote from me you posted was in reply to the following DU post. And the most fundamental problem about it lies already in the first three title words: "you are president," which really should follow with all of us dissolving into laughter. Cos "you" are not president, and you won't be, and taking his place mentally is just a way of forgetting that you are you and not someone who should be identifying with or fantasing or rationalizing the nominal CEO of the power elite. How many times are we hundred-millions asked to take that place in our minds, told speculations about its inner workings, given entertainments in which we can be Harrison Ford being the President beating up the forrn baddies from Somerwheristan personally?

But anyway...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 39x2035875

You are president and the CIA hands you a PDB entitled: Awlaki Determined To Strike in US

Edited on Sat Oct-01-11 11:53 AM by NNN0LHI

And inside that President's Daily Brief it lays out the threat and some possible options.

First option is sending in some helicopters full of soldiers with all the possible things that could go wrong with an operation like that and try to "arrest", him and bring him back for trial in the US.

Second option is that we already have a drone following his every move at all times and can kill this guy soon as the order is given.

Third option is we could threaten Yemen with being invaded if they don't arrest and turn Awlaki over to us. Knowing full well if it appears the leaders in Yemen either won't or can't comply with our demand we would have to invade and occupy the country to look for him ourselves.

Fourth option is we could do nothing and hope no attacks ever materialize.

Which option would you choose if you were the president in that situation?

Don

Just to add to the comedy, let's add Don's sig line:

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today. - Malcolm X

And the fucks who prepared today, back when it was future, are also the ones who killed Malcolm X, or wished him dead. He, barring some major strokes, would not be endorsing this shit.

But anyway, to clarify further, the last part of what Starman quotes me posting in reply on DU was actually from this thread, Luposapien's winning answer to the ethics test:

Your "ex"-CIA ethics professor presents you with a list of decontextualized scenarios designed to coerce you into accepting a worldview wherein the interests of "The United States of America" (whatever that may be), a priori trump any or all ethical considerations. Is it morally acceptable to play along with his mind-game, and complete the assignment within the false parameters dictated, or do you call him out on his bullshit in front of the class and refuse to participate?

So what I answered is what Starman quotes above.