It now appears as though all of the hostages killed in the Palace of Culture theatre died from the effects of the gas the Russians used rather than from gunfire or the direct action of the terrorists. The question is, how much blood is on the hands of the Russian Special Forces? At OxBlog, David Adesnik thinks the Russians were brutal and incompetent in their “reckless use of poison gas”. His co-blogger Josh Chafetz disagrees, arguing that the choice for the Russians was between killing all the terrorists together with 1/8 of the hostages versus having the hostages blow up the theatre killing everyone. He thinks that’s a bitter tradeoff, but worth making. Matthew Yglesias agrees, adding that the long-term consequences of appeasing the hostages should also be taken into account. He says “It’s tragic, of course, that those people died, but it’s also wonderful that the majority of hostages were rescued. More broadly, however, the standoff wasn’t fundamentally about saving the lives of the hostage, cold-hearted as this sounds. The goal had to have been trying to deter future atrocities…”

Matthew embraces realpolitik a little too quickly for my liking—- one wonders what other means he could justify with this reasoning—- but I think I agree with the basic intutition. Cases of this sort are horribly difficult to reconcile with moral principles we think we’d like to support, which is why moral philosophy is horribly difficult to do (as opposed to moral certainty, which is very easy to do).

Let’s assume that the choice really was as stark as it seems: 800 dead at the terrorists’ hands or 117 by the Russians’. We might also need to assume that there wasn’t anything the Russians could have done to reduce the death toll by much—- like wait another 6 hours for an extra batch of antidote to be cooked up, for example.

Stylized versions of cases like this are common in philosophy courses. In Moral Luck, for example, Bernard Williams tells us about Jim and the Indians. Jim has been invited by the local Leader to shoot one of 20 locals lined up against a wall. He gets to pick which one. If he kills one, the other 19 go free. If he refuses, the local Leader will kill all 20. What should Jim do?

If you’ve ever been in (or taught) a class where this comes up, you’ll know that students tend to have three stock responses: (1) Be a Utilitarian, pick some poor unfortunate at random, and kill her. The greater good is thereby served. This is a tough choice, but the utility of the many must outweigh that of the few. (2) Be a Kantian and refuse to choose someone to kill. Twenty people then die, but Leader is responsible for their deaths, not you. Besides, you ought not treat someone as a means to an end. The life of, say, Indian #12 is not an expendable item to be written off as the cost of achieving a goal, however noble. (3) Reject the case as unfair and absurd.

The problem with (1) is that you are the one who pulls the trigger, and the logic for your action holds all the way up to killing 19 out of the 20 people. Beyond that, how can you possibly calculate the ulility sum, anway? What if the Indian you shot dead would otherwise have gone on to Harvard and developed a cure for cancer? Even if you don’t look that far ahead, how many dead hostages will your realpolitik tolerate? 250? 401? 799?

The problem with (2) is that, although you are not directly causally responsible for the deaths of all 20 people, you know for certain you could have saved 19 had you acted differently, and you also know you could have acted differently. Beyond that, are you confident that the distinction between an act and an omission is strong enough to save you from moral responsibility for all those deaths? What would people’s reaction have been if the Chechens had blown up the theatre while the Russian forces stood outside, doing nothing? Would David Adesnik have been able to write essentially the same post, accusing the Russians of brutality and incompetence?

The problem with (3) is that you are standing behind an Armored Personnel Carrier on 1st Dubrovskaya Street and there are 800 people trapped in the building across the road.