GUARDING the MORALITY

I sent a letter to The Guardian that concluded the same way as does the previous blog entry (BLAIR: REST in PURGATORY) but they didn't publish it. A little suspicious, I wrote the following letter to the Readers' Editor of the paper:

Dear Madam,

I have had my fair crack on the letters page of The Guardian over the years – before that as a freelance journalist in the paper’s columns – and I do not complain (aloud, anyway) if a piece of banal, barely literate fluff is preferred over an argument of substance that I have carefully crafted. But I am provoked that my most recent letter has been overlooked and I wonder whether its conclusion -– that Mr Bush and Mr Blair should be tried for war crimes, found guilty and publicly executed – has damned it in the eyes of the letters editor.

After the massacre of schoolchildren at Beslan, I wrote to The Guardian advocating that, among other courses of action, the Russian government consider executing the Chechen terrorists it then held in jail, to prevent such prisoners being again used as bargaining chips against the release of innocent civilians taken hostage. It did not seem to me that such a suggestion was quite as morally bankrupt as the philosophy of the supposed freedom-fighters who had visited such grief upon that community.

The (then?) letters editor (I do not know if the same man still holds the post) telephoned me to satisfy himself that I was indeed advocating killing by the state. He did not use the phrase “judicial murder” but I sensed its presence. “We do not” he said (I summarise) “publish the advocacy of killing by anyone”.

That is not exactly so, of course. The Guardian has run pieces advocating, supporting or rationalising warfare and invasion. Warfare and invasion encompass killing. Any invasion or waging of war that did not result in loss of life would hardly merit the description. In electing to invade Iraq and visit war within its borders (a policy by no means universally supported in their respective countries, either among the populace or among the ruling elites), Mr Bush and Mr Blair ensured that tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and hundreds of military personnel on both sides of the conflict who would otherwise have been alive today are dead. Whatever alternative scenario may be offered, that is inescapable.

The lives of Mr Bush and Mr Blair are not, in some mystical way, more sacrosanct than those of obscure individuals who have no power over their own fate. These two men, wielding power unimaginable to their victims, conducted an invasion that was itself a breach of international law and thereafter oversaw many breaches of the international conventions that govern the prosecution of warfare and the care of detainees. In suggesting that there is a case for a war crimes trial, I merely reflect a comparatively widely held view. Many crimes – not all of them necessarily entailing the deaths of others – are punishable by execution across the world, not least in several of the United States. To contemplate such treatment of those found guilty ought not to be thought beyond the pale in a mature forum such as The Guardian.

The world has changed unutterably since the time when capital punishment was abolished in Britain. Even as a child, I instinctively recoiled from the hangman’s trade and I advocated abolition, much against the views of my parents, long before it came to pass. In those days, the whole conduct of war was an official secret. Such barbarities as were visited upon civilians and prisoners went unreported. The notions that journalists might be “embedded” with front line troops and rank-and-filers sell their stories to tabloid newspapers were perfectly unthinkable. Moreover, terrorists did not take civilian hostages and bargain for the release of their fellows. Suicide bombers did not inflict carnage upon city streets. Teenagers did not roam their neighbourhoods armed with guns. It was extraordinarily rare that the equivalent of something as paltry as a mobile phone or a pair of trainers would be the occasion for the slaying of a passer-by.

Perhaps my letter has been discarded because it is indeed the paper’s policy to avoid explicit, particular advocacy of death. Perhaps the lawyers feared there might be some response that would do the paper no good. Perhaps the letters editor merely disappeared under that convenient cloud of mist wherein editorial judgments are made about what is “appropriate” and what is “good enough” and anyway there were a lot of unexceptionable letters to chose from.

But I would be interested to know your own view … and indeed whether you can tease out a coherent editorial position,

Thank you for your time.

Yours faithfully,

W.Stephen Gilbert

I will inform my blog readers of any response.