As U.S. military officers prepare for possible combat duty in Iraq, some of them are asking an unnerving question: If they make a mistake in the split-second stresses of the battlefield, will their superior officers stand by them in an after-the-fact investigation? Or will they be hung out to dry?

A friendly-fire incident over Afghanistan on April 17, 2002, suggests some answers. That night, two U.S. Air Force F-16s were returning from a training mission when flashes of fire erupted from the ground near Kandahar. Radioing for advice to an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft in the area, they were told to hold their fire and confirm the information.

But the ground fire persisted. Maj. Harry Schmidt, thinking that he and Maj. William Umbach, were under attack, released a 500-pound laser-guided bomb.

Seconds later, the pilots learned that friendly forces were training in the area. But it was too late. Schmidt’s bomb, the pilots learned upon landing, had hit a group of Canadian soldiers engaged in a nighttime training exercise using live ammunition that was not directed at the F-16s. Schmidt’s bomb killed four Canadians and wounded eight.

Now, following a joint U.S-Canadian investigation, the two aviators face manslaughter and assault charges for acting in “reckless disregard.” If convicted, each faces more than 60 years in jail, with forfeiture of all pay and benefits.

No one disputes the tragic nature of the case. And no one challenges the above facts. But the case raises a host of ethical issues having profound consequences for the military.

1. So far, no superior officers have been called to account. Yet this issue revolves around information. Had the pilots known that “friendlies” were in the area, they might have acted differently. Should they have been briefed about the Canadians prior to their mission? Or did the Coalition Air Operations Center, communicating with them through AWACS aircraft, not know about the Canadian exercises? Was there a breakdown in information that implicates not just the pilots but their higher-ups? Is this scapegoating, or a real effort to rectify deadly problems?

2. The Canadians, with more than 800 military personnel serving in Afghanistan, immediately expressed serious concern over these fatalities — the first for Canadians serving in a combat zone since the Korean War. As close allies, they became part of a joint U.S.-Canadian investigative board recommending the charges. But should U.S. military personnel be subject to judicial proceedings recommended by other nations? The Bush administration has argued against this very point in refusing U.S. support for the International Criminal Court. Is there some conceptual doublespeak from the administration here?

3. Never before have U.S. Air Force pilots been charged with involuntary manslaughter. And never before have the penalties been so serious. Following an accidental bombing by U.S. planes near Kandahar last December, which killed three U.S. Green Berets and 25 Afghan allies, no charges have been filed. And the Marine Corps pilot whose plane severed a gondola cable in Southern Italy in 1998, killing 20 people, was sentenced to six months in jail — not for the deaths, but for obstructing the investigation. Does the punishment proposed for Schmidt and Umbach fit the crime, or is it excessive?

4. If it is excessive, why? Are there standards that lock into place when military personnel are killed that don’t apply to civilians at a ski resort? When allies from a Western nation die, does that call forth tougher standards than the deaths of allies from Afghanistan? Is this an effort to break with the past and enforce new, tougher military standards? Or are political and diplomatic considerations at work here, making it imperative that the United States assuage long-standing Canadian worries that it sometimes acts too much like a roughshod bully protecting its own interests above all else?

5. As the military moves toward precision firepower that reduces civilian casualties and places fewer troops in harm’s way, what’s the role of individual officers? Given the electronic nature of modern warfare, combat crews have less discretion than they once had. So when things go wrong, shouldn’t they share more blame with others. Has military justice caught up with military technology? Or do court-martials still seek to punish individual decision makers in ways more appropriate to the last century’s wars than to today’s digital command structure?

6. What signal does this case send to tomorrow’s combat officers? An email circulating to graduates of the United States Air Force Academy from 1981 graduate Tom Ferguson (classmate of Maj. William Umbach) notes that this case may cause future combat aircrews to “hesitate to exercise the right of self-defense, rightly believing that their decision will later be second-guessed by others who have the luxury of unlimited time, deliberation, and hindsight.” Will the result, as he believes, be “unnecessary American casualties,” and will it have “a deleterious effect on our military capabilities”? Or will it force new levels of training, discipline, and information sharing that will ultimately strengthen the military?

One thing is clear: There are powerful moral arguments on both sides. When allies are killed by friendly fire, it’s right to take tough and even unprecedented action. But when officers risk their lives in defense of their country, they need to have a morally sound system in place that won’t scapegoat them. Justice must be done. But so must ethics.

(c)2002 by the Institute for Global Ethics

“Rich is not doing that good. His personality changed. He’s very short-tempered. We can’t get answers from anybody.”

–Dianne Abbott, speaking to the New York Times about her boyfriend, Richard Morgano, a maintenance worker who cut his forearm while fixing a U.S. Postal Service machine last September. Morgano is believed to be one of 17 survivor’s of last fall’s anthrax mail attacks. The Times notes that Morgano and the other anthrax survivors “have been ill with symptoms their doctors cannot explain — fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pains, memory loss,” depression, violent mood swings — and which the government has done little to systematically study. Observers say that although these survivors are in a unique position to provide badly needed scientific data on the after-effects of anthrax exposure, most have been largely abandoned in the year following the attacks.

SACRAMENTO
California last week became the first state in the nation to guarantee its workers a comprehensive package of paid time away from the workplace to care for a new child or sick relative — a move supporters say will help put the balance back into the work-life equation and force a national debate on the issue.

Critics contend that the move will weaken the state’s ability to create a competitive business climate. But supporters insist it will do the reverse, creating a more loyal workforce able to take care of business both at home and at the workplace.

Although the nation as a whole has a family-leave program — up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave — a 2000 Labor Department survey found that 78 percent of those who want to use the law cannot afford to do so because of lost pay.

Last week, California Governor Gray Davis signed a state law aimed at easing such concerns, guaranteeing up to six weeks of paid family leave to 13 million of the state’s 16 million workers.

The maximum leave benefit will be $728 per week.

The new law, lambasted by business groups as too expensive, will be paid for entirely by deductions from employees’ pay — an average of roughly $27 per year, reported the Los Angeles Times.

Workers will be allowed to take time off to bond with a new child — whether by adoption, birth, or foster care — or to care for a sick child, spouse/domestic partner, parent, or, in some cases, grandparent.

Payroll deduction of up to $70 per year will begin in January 2004, with employees able to use the new law in July 2004, according to the Times.

The law was bitterly opposed by many business groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Manufacturers & Technology Association.

But labor groups and Governor Davis say the costs of the program, borne by both employees and employers, who must find a way to fill posts while workers are on leave, fail to measure up to its benefits.

“This bill will make it easier for Californians to help their loved ones through a health crisis without going broke in the process,” Davis said last week. “I don’t want Californians to have to choose between being good parents and being good employees.”

Supporters hope California’s ethic will soon be embraced by other U.S. states, 27 of which are currently considering paid family-leave legislation, noted a report from the San Francisco Chronicle.

NEW YORK
Despite the current economic crunch, some U.S. firms are sticking to costly family-friendly policies whose price tags, they insist, are ultimately lower than the cost of losing workers’ loyalty.

The latest to measure this alternate bottom line is Working Mother Magazine, which last week released its list of the 100 U.S. firms that treat mothers — and fathers — the best.

This year, the survey’s gauge was recalibrated to calculate winners based in large part on their willingness to stick to family-friendly programs despite the economic downturn, reported the Associated Press.

Abbott Laboratories, American Express, Bank of America, Booz Allen Hamilton, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Colgate-Palmolive, Computer Associates, Fannie Mae, General Mills, and IBM (a 17-year veteran of the Working Mother list), topped the rankings.

The survey found that while some firms are indeed scaling back perks, others are bucking the trend and arguing that programs such as on-site childcare, flextime, and extended parental leave have become a critical part of their workplace ethos.

“The highest cost that you have in the people area is turnover,” said Steve Sanger, chairman and chief of food giant General Mills, which provides workers with benefits including infant care and onsite healthcare assistance.

“These are things that just try to take the hassle out of people’s lives,” said Sanger, who was named “Family Champion” in the magazine’s current issue. “If we can provide a work environment that enables people to commit themselves to their long-term careers here, that pays big dividends for us.”

Carol Evans, chief executive of the magazine’s parent company, Working Mother Media, said this year’s survey revealed another trend: a greater demand for work-life balance by Generation X fathers.

“We are seeing the uprising of the Gen X dad who really wants to be involved with his kids,” Evans told the AP.

LONDON
Minority-owned businesses in Britain are having a harder time than their white-owned counterparts when seeking start-up funds from the nation’s banks, warns a new report from the U.K. finance industry.

The study, “Ethnic Minority Businesses in the U.K.” from the British Bankers Association, found that only 21 percent of black entrepreneurs received start-up funding, compared to 34 percent of whites and Pakistanis, and 49 percent of Chinese.

While the study noted that factors other than deliberate discrimination may be to blame for the disparity in lending rates, bias remains suspect, reported the BBC.

“There is clear evidence of disadvantage which cannot be explained in terms of other characteristics of the businesses or their owners,” the study noted.

The finance industry has recommended follow-up studies and a greater attention to tracking minority applicants and their success rates when applying for aid.

WASHINGTON
The nation’s largest natural gas company, El Paso Corporation, withheld energy supplies from California during its 2000-2001 power shortage, complicating the crisis and costing billions of dollars, a judge ruled last week.

The decision by Curtis Wagner, a judge for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), marks the largest finding of fault to date in the corporate factors that helped trigger the California energy crisis, an event that caused rolling blackouts throughout the state.

The case against El Paso was originally rejected in March 2001 by FERC investigators, who nevertheless recommended that further evidence be gathered, reported the Dow Jones news service.

After a year, the case was revived following an exposé from the New York Times and PBS television, which uncovered internal El Paso documents indicating possible collusion.

After reexamining the case, Judge Wagner said the new evidence indicated that El Paso withheld natural gas from California energy generators, hindering them from producing power that the state badly needed.

This “new evidence shows a clear withholding of substantial capacity during the relevant period,” indicating a clear and “unlawful exercise of market power,” Judge Wagner wrote in his ruling.

“El Paso Pipeline withheld extremely large amounts of capacity that it could have flowed to its California delivery points,” thereby exacerbating the crisis and warranting punishment, he concluded.

El Paso executives decried the ruling as “unsupported by the evidence” and vowed to appeal to the full FERC panel and an appeals court if necessary, reported the Times.

“Given the critical safety and deliverability concerns associated with operating a natural gas pipeline, it is inappropriate and without precedent to second-guess a pipeline’s day-to-day operations,” said El Paso chairman and chief executive William Wise.

While the company admits that it failed to funnel a full supply of natural gas to California during the crisis, it insists that the slowdown was due to legitimate reasons, noted Dow Jones.

During California’s energy crisis, the price for natural gas spiked from less than $6 per million BTUs to more than $50 per million BTUs, yielding high profits for firms such as El Paso.

Now, a raft of suits by individuals, local and state governments, and energy-producing corporations are targeting gas suppliers such as El Paso for alleged collusion and price manipulation.

El Paso alone is accused of reaping $3.7 billion in ill-gotten profits by forcing the price spikes, according to the Times. If convicted of foul play, the firm could be forced to pay three times that amount in damages.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

TORONTO
The Canadian regulatory body for the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) has issued updated guidelines for misconduct by brokers and others dealing with shares listed on Canada’s premier stock exchange.

The Market Regulatory Services Inc., the separately incorporated regulatory body of the TSE, has given warning in its new guidelines that fines will be imposed at the higher range of penalties for serious offenses such as stock manipulation or insider trading.

Such penalties could reach as high as $634,000 or more for each violation.

According to a Globe & Mail report, the president and CEO of the regulatory body, Tom Atkinson, has stated that stealing from Canadian investors will be treated severely. In some cases the penalty for market manipulation could be treble the amount that was made from the violation.

The new penalties will bring the TSE in line with other North American stock market regulators, according to the regulatory body of the TSE.

However, the Globe & Mail report points out that despite the new harsher penalties, due to the small number of enforcement staff and reliance substantially on software programs to give alerts of unusual trading, enforcement of the stock exchange rules will be difficult.

NEW YORK
The renowned Bell Labs last week fired acclaimed scientist Dr. J. Hendrik Schön, a Wunderkind in the field of molecular physics accused of concocting data that once wowed the scientific community.

Schön, a 32-year-old German scientist who began as an intern at Lucent’s Bell Labs in 1997, was believed to be on the fast track to a Nobel price until questions about his data began surfacing last year.

After fellow scientists noticed that Schön used identical graphs with different labels to prove claims in prominent scientific journals last October, they began looking through his older articles.

In May, more identical graphs were found and an investigative committee formed. Last week, that panel announced its results, concluding that Schön manipulated and fabricated data in research published between 1998 and 2001.

“He committed scientific misconduct,” Dr. Malcolm Beasley, a Stanford University physics professor who headed the committee, told the New York Times. “Nobody else did.”

Beasley’s panel exonerated 20 of Schön’s colleagues and coauthors, who observers now say should have put more scrutiny into his work before putting their names next to his on published papers.

Schön, who has been largely unable to duplicate his findings or provide corroborative journals, computer records, or data, last week defended his findings.

“I am convinced that they are real, although I could not prove this to the investigation committee,” he wrote in comments printed in the report.

NEW YORK
A growing number of wealthy families are trawling for educational specialists who will diagnose their child with a learning disability in order to secure extra time when taking college entrance exams, biasing the system, warned a report last week from the New York Times.

Disability shopping is becoming vogue for parents looking to pump up the scores of their kids’ Scholastic Assessment Tests (SATs), a standardized test used by U.S. colleges to gauge the skills of applicants.

In previous years, disabled students have had an asterisk placed next to their SAT scores by the College Board, indicating that the student was given as much as twice the normal time to take the tests.

Recently, the College Board announced it would drop the asterisk from future scores and strip it retroactively from past results — a move meant to keep any stigma from being attached to disabled students, reported the Times.

Some parents, however, are viewing the policy change as a chance to tip the system to their advantage — securing a bogus disability diagnosis for their child, who then gets more time to take the test, with colleges being none the wiser, according to the Times report.

Educational psychologists surveyed by the Times say they have noticed a recent jump in the number of parents seeking such diagnoses.

“More and more people are asking legitimately,” Dr. Dana Luck told the Times. “But more and more are also asking because, why not ask? It’s part of our culture that every point matters, so they’re looking for any kind of edge.”

Even when an evaluation finds no learning disability, some parents “will not hear it,” Luck said. “So they get angry and go to someone else until they get what they want.”

In the end, those students struggling with legitimate disabilities pay the price — squeezed both by students abusing the system to hike their scores and by an evaluation system that prices disability diagnoses out of the range of poorer families.

“This further privileges the privileged,” Jane Brown, the vice president who oversees admissions at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, told the Times. “You have to be able to afford a diagnosis.”

Government statistics have found that 2.9 million children in public elementary and secondary schools — six percent of the total — have learning disabilities. Many of them have no way to afford the diagnosis that could help them get extra time on college entrance exams, according to the Times.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed a bill aimed at making it easier for hospitals and insurers to refuse to provide abortions to women who request them — a move backed by the President, but likely to be nixed by the Senate.

The so-called “Abortion Nondiscrimination Act” would allow insurers, hospitals, and other health providers opposed to abortion to withhold information, counseling, and abortion services to women who want such information, even in the case of rape or incest.

Proponents argue that the measure is about religious freedom — exempting anti-abortion groups such as Catholic hospitals from doing something they believe to be against their beliefs.

The measure would allow such groups to continue receiving government funds and operating on government lands without offering government-protected healthcare choices, reported the Associated Press.

Critics contend that the bill is simply another backdoor attempt by the Bush administration and religious conservatives to roll back women’s access to reproductive services.

The bill, passed on a 229-to-189 vote by the House, is expected to go nowhere in the Senate, according to the AP.

DES MOINES, Iowa
The battle over a seat in the U.S. Senate took a turn towards the ugly last week in Iowa after Republican Greg Ganske accused his Democratic rival of secretly recording a meeting between Ganske and his donors.

Ganske, currently a U.S. Representative, went on the warpath against Sen. Tom Harkin, a three-term incumbent, whose campaign gave a transcript of the Ganske meeting to a local reporter.

Harkin’s campaign at first denied providing the transcript, but later recanted and apologized. “We made a mistake, and we’re sorry,” campaign manager Jeff Link told the Des Moines Register.

But while Link said his staff would “take full responsibility for releasing” the transcript, it denied having any involvement in actually recording Ganske’s meeting or soliciting the transcript.

Ganske’s campaign refused to back down last week, demanding a criminal investigation. “This was not a social faux pas. It is an apparent criminal felony,” Ganske’s campaign said in a statement.

The leaked transcript, the contents of which were confirmed by Ganske’s staff, contained promises by Ganske to ratchet up attacks on Harkin to “mind-blowing” levels, according to the Register.

The incident echoes a similar incident earlier this year in Virginia, where the head of the state’s Republican Party was indicted on four felony charges of eavesdropping and distributing a transcript of a conference call held by the state’s leading Democrats.

RUCH, Oregon
U.S. suburbs and their shady streets of urban retreat are bumping up against a new kind of sprawl: evangelical megachurches touting the word of God with loudspeakers, fast-food restaurants, and thousands of devoted followers.

USA Today last week profiled a number of these megachurches and the conflicts they are creating with neighbors, who complain that the churches, sheltered by constitutional law, are ruining their quality of life.

The problem is a thorny one for all involved, notes USA Today.

Neighbors say they have no problem with religion itself, but only with the megachurches’ trappings of 24-7 traffic, amplified sermons, and mounting services ranging from fitness centers to fast-food restaurants.

Zoning boards say that while churches are exempt from most zoning laws, the megachurches’ proclivity to pave vast tracts for parking lots and peripheral services makes their impact little different from big-box retailers like Wal-Mart, which are banned in most suburban residential areas.

And the megachurches say their presence is meant to be a blessing. “We believe here that we have one purpose: to preach the gospel to anyone and everyone who wants to hear it,” Joe Stroble, part of the 5,000-strong Applegate Christian Fellowship in Ruch, Oregon, told USA Today.

In the United States, the number of megachurches like Applegate has doubled over the past decade to 700, with each attracting at least 2,000 worshippers a week. Most — 73 percent — are in the South and West, according to USA Today.

Under a federal law passed in 2000, such churches gained considerable license in building wherever they want, given the right to ignore local land-use restrictions unless a “compelling governmental interest” conflicts.

Critics say the definition of “compelling” interests was left so vague that they must wage a long raft of lawsuits to try to define the term. Currently, about 50 lawsuits trying to restrict the construction or expansion of megachurches are making their way through the courts.

The churches have also filed suit, arguing that federal law and the First Amendment protect their right to serve their members as they see best — whether with fast food, baseball fields, or Sunday sermons in the suburbs.

Jonathan Weiss, director of the Center on Sustainable Growth at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., says such battles may best be fought by sitting down to negotiate in “the Christian ethos of being a good neighbor.”

Stopping megachurch sprawl “must be done on a consensus basis,” Weiss told USA Today, “because there is little by way of practical legal mechanisms to control a megachurch.”

Not surprisingly, stories dealing with business ethics dominated the news this month. In this week’s edition of Ethics Newsline, we feature a report on a judge’s finding that the nation’s largest natural gas company deliberately manipulated supplies and contributed to California’s 2000-2001 power crisis. Previous issues covered the flap over perks provided to retired GE head Jack Welch (Sep. 23), a probe into finances at Tyco (Sep. 23), firings at a brokerage where employees allegedly refused to cooperate in an investigation of Enron finances (Sep. 23), a call by the New York Federal Reserve chief to take a hard look at spiraling CEO pay (Sep. 16), KPMG’s prediction that ethics — not the letter of the law — is the key to corporate responsibility (Sep. 16), sanctions against former Sunbeam CEO Al Dunlap (Sep. 9), a Canadian psychologist’s assertion that some corporate-ladder climbers fit the classic definition of psychopaths (Sep. 9), and the corporate implosion at WorldCom (Sep. 3).

Related workplace issues also figured prominently in September’s news menu. This week we feature a report on what promises to be a precedent-setting family-leave bill in California, and a new poll of “family-friendly” companies. On Sep. 16, we covered a dispute over employee evaluation methods at Goodyear.

Technology continued to garner a share of the ethics headlines. On Sep. 23, we reported on a new method of “cleaning up” movies by digitally bowdlerizing content — a technological breakthrough that has some producers crying foul. Our Sep. 16 edition covered the continuing controversy over stockpiling DNA samples by British law enforcement, and our Sep. 6 report chronicled apparent efforts by China to block the search engine Google after company executives refused to cooperate with censorship efforts.

Human rights issues almost always figure in ethics news, and in September we reported on a ruling that a U.S. company could be held liable for human rights abuses committed on its behalf (Sep. 23), the resignation of a controversial human rights chief at the UN (Sep. 16), a flap over secret deportation hearings held in the United States (Sep. 3), criticism of intelligence-sharing methods of the U.S. Justice Department and the CIA, and the Japanese government’s admission that the nation engaged in germ warfare during World War II (Sep. 3).

Several education-ethics issues surfaced during September. This week, we carried a report on how some parents are apparently diagnosis-shopping in hopes of scoring an advantage for their children on the SATs. In the Sep. 3 edition, we carried stories about the Los Angeles school district banning soda machines from schools, and Harvard’s decision, in the face of a possible loss of government funding, to allow military recruiters on campus despite disagreement over civil-rights issues.

From Jericho Communications:

“Global warming, the status of world communities, even support of terrorism can be affected by major corporations being attuned to issues of corporate social responsibility, but few companies are devoting more money or resources to the issue, according to a recent survey of Fortune 1000 CEOs.

“The survey of 264 Fortune 1000 CEOs, conducted by Jericho Communications … found that 36 percent of respondents said their company is more conscious of corporate social responsibility since September 11, 2001. Despite this raised consciousness, however, only 12 percent of respondents said they are allocating more resources to CSR issues, while 9 percent said they are spending more money on CSR.

The survey found that 52 percent of Fortune 1000 CEOs think that corporations acting responsibly to communities around the world can ebb the support of terrorist groups. In addition, 42 percent said a company’s responsibility for communities around the world should equal a company’s commitment to communities in the U.S.

When it comes to the environment, 82 percent of Fortune 1000 CEOs believe in global warming, with 24 percent saying business practices have had a ‘major impact’ on global warming. An additional 48 percent feel that business practices have had ’some impact’ on global warming.

‘There are definitely some mixed messages in the results,’ said Eric Yaverbaum, President of Jericho Communications. ‘On the one hand, CEOs are in agreement that big business can have an impact on helping the world’s communities and stemming support of terrorism, yet despite that, very few are devoting more resources to corporate social responsibility. It was also surprising how many CEOs feel that business contributes to global warming; perhaps it’s an indication that this issue will become more of a focus from business leaders in the future.’

Sixty-four percent of respondents think the media has been fair in its coverage of company’s responsibilities to communities around the world, while 21% said the media has been too harsh. Nine percent said the media has been too lenient. When asked which company’s they feel have been unfairly maligned by the media for corporate social responsibility issues, Starbucks (30%), McDonald’s (30%), Nike (24%), and Wal-Mart (24%) were the companies most often cited….

“Every right has its responsibilities. Like the right itself, these responsibilities stem from no man-made law, but from the very nature of man and society. The security, progress, and welfare of one group is measured finally in the security, progress, and welfare of all mankind.”

–Lewis Schwellenbach (U.S. senator and Labor Department head, 1894-1948)

Do you know what’s in the First Amendment?
To read its text, highlight the passage below.
Start here:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
– The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
End here.

Walking by the lakeshore here in Maine the other day, I found a hornets’ nest larger than Saddam’s head. It was near a cabin where, some years before, the joists had been nearly chewed through by porcupines, bristling with quills like gunboats in the Gulf.

Like all animals, hornets and porcupines have sophisticated defense mechanisms. But where most animals respond to attacks by fleeing, burrowing, or biting, these two follow different doctrines. For the porcupine, the answer is deterrence. The woods are full of domestic predators who, like our dog, once tried to attack. Nothing like a nose full of quills to recalibrate one’s belligerence. Among wild animals, the word is out that this enemy is too well armed to make an attack even thinkable. That’s deterrence.

Hornets chose a different option: preemption. They don’t wait to be victimized; they swarm out to attack first. If I’m strolling past a hornets’ nest minding my own business, I figure I’m safe at 25 feet, endangered at 15, and under full Red Alert at 7. Nor do hornets care about my intentions. I could be charging with a firebrand to burn out the nest, or sleepwalking with no clue to my whereabouts. No matter. The doctrine of preemption glows crystalline in every hornet’s heart: Anything within 7 feet must be removed.

Washington is no stranger to these twin doctrines. For years, the porcupines have been in ascendancy. They’ve argued that any would-be belligerent will be cowed when they see America all abristle with defense. And since our enemies are rational animals who seek to minimize their own pain and prolong their own lives, they’ll weigh the risks and leave us alone.

Since 9/11, however, the hornets have carried the day. That became clear last week when the Bush administration’s plan for “counterproliferation” ended decades of Cold War deterrence by asserting that the nation has a “right to self-defense by acting preemptively” against external threats. Anchored in a 33-page document titled “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” which presidents must submit to Congress, the doctrine of preemption makes it clear that, particularly in dealing with terrorism, the United States intends to get there first by attacking anything that comes too close for comfort.

Why the shift? Because a core premise of the porcupines — that our enemies want to save their own lives — collapsed into rubble along with the World Trade Center. What’s to deter a suicide bomber? Certainly not the threat of pain, punishment, or destruction. We’re fighting a new kind of war these days, say the hornets, and the only way to be safe is to destroy them before they destroy you.

This shift from deterrence to preemption is no mere theory. Last week it was clearly visible in three related areas:

• Saddam in Iraq. Is he really heading toward the West’s nest? Waiting to find out could be fatal, so send in the attack jets for the sting. Hence the administration’s request to Congress last week for authority for the president to use “all means he deems appropriate, including force,” to remove Saddam — whether or not he is actively developing weapons of mass destruction.
• Muslims in Lackawanna. Earlier this month, federal agents rounded up eight American men of Yemeni descent in upstate New York who allegedly trained under al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Admitting they knew of no specific terrorist act the men were planning, federal agents acted preemptively, based on intercepted calls and other evidence.
• Zacarius Moussaoui in court. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, overseeing the trial of the only person charged in this country with the 9/11 attacks, has refused to make public several court filings containing Mr. Moussaoui’s inflammatory comments, fearing he could be using code to communicate with his al Qaeda colleagues.

These are three expressions of the same ethical dilemma. On one hand, it is right to protect the rights of individuals to speak freely, associate with whomever they will, think whatever they like, and remain innocent until proven guilty. On the other hand, it is also right to defend the community against horrendous acts of mayhem perpetrated by those who aren’t interested in saving their own lives and are therefore difficult to deter. Under the former logic, you watch and wait. Under the latter, you preempt. Which is the higher right?

In the animal world, porcupines and hornets coexist successfully. Add a new element — a hunter with no weapon more complex than a club — and the slow-moving, over-confident porcupines haven’t got a chance. Hornets, more adaptable, adjust to new elements by striking first.

In the policy world, add the new element of suicide and what once worked well may no longer be up to the task. Look for this long, slow shift from deterrence to preemption to throw up any number of tough ethical dilemmas as it ravels out to its conclusion.

(c)2002 by the Institute for Global Ethics

Re: “When Poor Kids Fail, so Does Ethics,” Sep. 16.

Nice commentary. Just a side bar: While I believe subject matter knowledge is critical, I think more emphasis needs to be given to the importance of teacher/pupil relationships, especially in the lower grades. (”If you want to teach math to Mary, it’s more important to know Mary than to know math.”) Caring for and respecting Mary is also a determining factor in Mary’s willingness to learn.

– Luke Austenfeld
Augusta, Michigan

“Intellectual property systems may, if not used carefully, introduce distortions that are detrimental to the interests of developing countries. Developed countries should pay more attention to reconciling their commercial self-interest with the need to reduce poverty in developing countries, which is in everyone’s interest.”

–From the text of a new report by the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights. Established by the U.K. government in 2001, the commission’s recently released report warns that strict patent safeguards in developed countries are protecting Western profits at a dangerous cost to the developing world.