I was channel surfing and paused briefly on the Bill Maher show. Maher was hosting a discussion with several guests, including Tim Robbins, "Actor/Activist". I heard Robbins pronoun that President Bush is responsible for many deaths. Then I surfed away.
Robbins is correct, of course. President Bush is also responsible for saving many lives and making many lives better and making many lives safer. But Robbins, actor/activist, was not interested in a balanced discussion of political decisions and policy options; he wanted to pin the deaths of Iraqi civilians, as well as enemy combatants and American soldiers, on the President. He would do this by invoking the chain of moral responsibility. There is a chain of social causality in the world and a chain of moral responsibility runs along side it. We all live in a web of social relations. Our choices, what we do, affect on people we do not know. We do not remove a tree limb from the street, where it has fallen, and a few minutes later a car, swerving to avoid the limb, hits another car and kills a child. We create situations that remain, after we have left the scene, to provoke events that affect other people. Our legal system might exonerate us of liability for such accidents, but in a stricter moral accounting, of the sort Tim Robbins, actor/activist, wishes to invoke, we bear some degree of responsibility.
Alas, Tim Robbins, actor/activist, is also responsible for those deaths, along with President Bush. The chain of moral responsibility passes to him, too. How could we deny that if Tim Robbins, actor/activist, applied himself consistently, diligently, to obstructing America's prosecution of the war, there might have been few military patrols in Iraq, fewer sorties flown, fewer bullets fired, and thereby fewer unintended civilian casualties?
And I would hold Tim Robbins, actor to a stricter accounting in this chain of moral culpability, than President Bush. For Tim Robbins, actor/activist, has greater freedom than does President Bush to follow his moral conscience. The President is hemmed in by political considerations, utilitarian claims on his decisions, and military authority and responsibility for those in command beneath him, than Robbins, actor/activist. Tim Robbins, actor/activist, could devote days to picketing naval ports of embarkation, the air bases where Marines depart, or to picketing US Army recruiting stations. He could even fly to the Mideast and there leverage his considerable international fame as an actor on behalf of his dubious political views. We had Hanoi Jane, why not Tehran Tim?
Fame has generated opportunities for moral grandstanding for Tim Robbins, actor/activist. He has been able to claim these opportunities at his convenience. But having picked up the chain of moral responsibility to flail President Bush, he too is linked to its ethic. Time for Tim Robbins, actor/activist, to put up or shut up.
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