Does an "eye-for-an-eye" really make sense?

By Shaman

It is, tragically, a fairly popular belief that when it comes to responding to a wrongdoing, humans should adhere to the old Hebrew doctrine of "an eye for an eye." We first learn this childish behavior on the playground: "Hey, he hit you. Hit him back!" As we grew up we realized that politicians, who were hungry for votes and who wanted to appear tough on crime, supported the death penalty to appease the electorate's fragile emotions: "Hey, he killed somebody! We'd better kill him."

And then the great wrongdoing of Sept 11, 2001 came along and Americans mourned and grieved and then promptly sent their troops across the globe on a killing spree. A war without end.

Frankly, the old "eye for an eye" idiom has always struck me as, well, idiotic. It bears the approximate moral and pragmatic sensibility of the prehistoric caveman who had yet to figure out how to make fire with two sticks or that the world was not flat. He was, in a word or two, unlearned and underdeveloped.

Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King fully understood this reality. They put forth the fairly obvious concern that "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." But this was not simply a moral or philosphical observation. Indeed, more fundamentally, the real problem here is mathematical one: there is an endless bodycount. If I do you wrong, then you do me wrong, then i do you wrong, then...

Get it? The obvious mathematical problem with the "eye for an eye" equation is that the sum total extends to infinity. Therefore, the goal, using this formula, is simply unachievable. Again, all philosophy and moral admonitions aside, an "eye for an eye" is, quite simply, pragmatically stupid.

Yet this is precisely the prevailing American response to Sept 11, 2001. And the real tragedy here is that the hellbent pragmatism of this response has already shown itself in real numbers. Again, just talking math and pragmatism here: It was over three years ago, in 2006, when CBS reported that the soaring casualty count among U.S. troops in America's new war against terrorism had actually exceeded the total number of American casualties on Sept 11.

In other words, America's emotional response to Sept 11 is causing a far greater number of American deaths than those caused by the terrorist on Sept 11. Victorious, all the terrorists need to do is step back and let the body count roll by itself.

Hmmm...

And this doesn't even take into a count the unintended civilian casualties in our new war against terrorism which has also long-exceeded the civilian casualties on Sept 11, 2001.

Hmmm...

Again, in the "eye for an eye" equation, there's a real math problem here. The sum keeps approaching infinity--a number that doesn't even exist. In other words, justice becomes a perpetually moving target with a mathematically insatiable bodycount.

For the more sober-minded observer, the "eye for an eye" principle is about as sensible to foreign policy and our military's mission as it is to kindergarten and the playground. Blood on the playground, or at the Twin Towers, requires a mature, responsible and unemotional intervention--not organized vindication and mob rule. Simply put, our military forces should be used for defense--not for global tantrums and emotional outbursts. This is childlike, directionless, illogical, and costly. And, as with the kindergartener and the caveman, it shows human immaturity and underdevelopment.

True, an "eye for an eye" can make the wrong "feel" better. It can kiss their boo-boo. It can even make the wronged feel right. But without true resolution, new wrongs will just keep coming and more caskets will just keep tallying...toward infinity.