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.