×
THE PARADOX OF MORAL EQUIVALENCE. Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl's father, wrote a review of A Mighty Heart for TNR Online. The film, which stars Angelina Jolie as his wife Mariane, tells the story of Daniel Pearl's capture and subsequent beheading in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002. Reading the review is difficult, because it's a father writing about the portrayal of his murdered son. It's also difficult because I think in some places, Judea Pearl is misleading and wrong. On an emotional and moral level, his relation to his son makes it difficult to criticize his points. However, it also gives unfortunate credence to some problematic assertions. Pearl writes that he fears the film "falls into a trap Bertrand Russell would have recognized: the paradox of moral equivalence, of seeking to extend the logic of tolerance a step too far." He takes issue with the director's comparison of Daniel Pearl's circumstances with some things the United States is doing:
You can see traces of this logic in the film's comparison of Danny's abduction with Guantánamo--it opens with pictures from the prison -- and its comparison of Al Qaeda militants with CIA agents. You can also see it in the comments of the movie's director, Michael Winterbottom, who wrote on The Washington Post's website that A Mighty Heart and his previous film The Road to Guantánamo "are very similar. Both are stories about people who are victims of increasing violence on both sides. There are extremists on both sides who want to ratchet up the levels of violence and hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this."Judea Pearl fears that comparing his son's murderers to the way suspects in Guantanamo are treated is "precisely what the killers wanted," and notes he is "concerned that aspects of his movie will play into the hands of professional obscurers of moral clarity." The problem, however, is that an unknown number of these suspects in Guantanamo are just that: They are suspects who have still yet to be accused of any crime. Judea Pearl seems to imply Winterbottom is drawing a comparison between his son the journalist and a random terrorist detainee. But while Daniel Pearl was an innocent victim of war, so too are many currently locked up in Guantanamo."There can be no comparison," Judea Pearl writes, "between those who take pride in the killing of an unarmed journalist and those who vow to end such acts -- no ifs, ands, or buts." However, vowing to end such acts is not in itself a good thing. Whether or not this is realistic has to be considered. And if a government's actions in pursuit of this goal include torture and arresting innocent civilians (in the case of Guantanamo) and all sorts of misguided assumptions and bad planning (in the case of the Iraq war in general), then such clear lines are more difficult to draw.So while I mean no disrespect to Judea Pearl as a person and as a father who lost his son too early and too horribly, I think the philosophical and political assumptions guiding his review are troubling, and need to be carefully considered. His appeal is effective on an emotional level, but I fear in the grand scheme of things, it contributes to a black-and-white view of the Bush administration's "war on terror."--Steven White
