| ARMY, NAVY GAMES
During a tour in Baghdad, I befriended a man who, working for
an Iraqi employer, emptied our trash, cleaned our bathrooms and
shared our danger. He learned that he could double his salary by
working for another contractor overseeing a mess hall, but he
would have to show he had experience with menial kitchen work. As
he had no such experience, he asked if I would prepare a false
document saying he did. I refused. Was I right? -- C.M., Colonel,
U.S. Army, Fort Hood, Texas
Experience doing menial work in a kitchen? Surely there are
tasks a person can swiftly learn on the job. But dimwitted as is
this prerequisite, you were right to decline your friend's
request. The military and its contractors do not need more phony
documentation. The lack of reliable record keeping, of
conscientious oversight, has had lamentable consequences in Iraq.
Nor will it benefit your friend to be nabbed with faked
papers.
But deceit was not your only option. Integrity need not have
relegated you to inaction and remorse. You could have written an
honest letter to the American contractor, attesting to your
friend's ability to do the mess-hall job and detailing his true
work history. (Cleaning a bathroom sink is not profoundly
different from cleaning a kitchen sink.) You might have found
ways to get this fellow the experience required for that better
job or sought employment for him that lacked this ridiculous
obstacle. Surely as an officer you knew both military and
civilian officials who could have guided you toward legitimate
options. Ethics requires not just the rectitude to refuse
wrongdoing but the resourcefulness to devise an honest
alternative.
UPDATE: Unassisted, the friend found a better-paying job, $4
instead of $2 an hour, but in a more dangerous locale, a small
combat outpost in a Baghdad neighborhood. The colonel does not
know his current fate.
Years ago during my Navy service there was a series of
barracks thefts. Before going on leave, I booby-trapped my locker
so that anyone attempting a break-in would be met with a faceful
of liquid bleach. (The locker contained just my stuff, not the
crown jewels.) Ethical? P.S. The locker was intact upon my
return. -- Philip Salow, Bronx, N.Y.
I'm relieved that you didn't rig a small nuclear device to
your locker, so that anyone attempting a break-in would be met
with the destruction of the surrounding town.
Even if all had gone according to plan, your response would
have been wildly disproportionate. I am not a lawyer, but as I
understand the criminal code, we do not put out the eyes of
thieves. Or subject them to hideous facial scarring. Without a
trial. Indeed, we sometimes punish those who react so
ferociously. You might have a legal case against the driver who
rear-ends you, but you go to prison if you shoot him. (Except in
Texas. Or so say the snarky. By which I mean me.)
And if things had not gone according to plan? They seldom do.
Suppose someone had a legitimate reason to open your locker: An
infestation of mice in the barracks? An inconvenient decision to
repaint the lockers while you were away? A little kitty
inexplicably trapped inside? You would have imposed your
grotesque penalty on an innocent party.
It is reasonable to install a mechanism to thwart thieves -- a
burglar alarm, a packet of cash that sprays dye onto a bank
robber or that classic, a stout lock -- but not to harm others in
such a situation. |