When all Options are Immoral

In his book, Corruptible, Brian Klass interviews former Thailand PM, Abhisit Vejjajiva. In early 2010, protestors numbering 1,20,000 gathered in the streets of Bangkok demanding his resignation. When the government sent in soldiers to clear the area, they (the soldiers, not the protestors) were met with bullets and grenades. The soldiers fired back, and 26 were killed, a thousand injured.

 

The heavily armed protestors started speaking of civil war. Sporadic gunfire in the streets started to become commonplace. Vejjajiva had helicopters drop pamphlets declaring some areas of the city as buffer zones between protestors and government troops. Anyone entering the buffer zone risked getting shot, said the leaflets. Eventually, troops were told to break through the barricades and go after the protestors. The protest was finally put down, at a cost of 87 killed.

 

Was Vejjajiva the stereotype ruler who tried to hold onto power at all costs? Maybe. But also listen to Vejjajiva’s reason for his decisions:

“When you’re in power, you are under intense pressure to keep order and to try and end the protests. But at the same time, you’re trying to do your best to make sure there are no (life) losses.”

Several Thai generals of the time agree with Vejjajiva:

“You’ve seen what has happened in Libya or Syria. We couldn’t let that happen in Thailand. That was the choice Abhisit faced: restore order by killing a small number of ‘terrorists’ or let thousands of innocent Thais dies a bloody civil war.”

 

Maybe it’s the truth. Or maybe it’s just the version those in power want to present. Klass reminds us that people in power have to make “life and death” decisions repeatedly:

“Cut mental health support to increase the pay for teachers and people will die. Shut down an economy one week too late during a pandemic and people will die. Allow protestors with rocket-propelled grenades to burn down a city or shoot at soldiers and people will die.”

 

Such “disturbing, morally nauseating political calculations” have to be made by those in power, says Klass. Just because most of us never have to make such decisions, does it make it right to criticize, double-guess and attribute malicious motives to those who do?

 

To be clear, those in power make self-serving decisions many times. But I think Klass does have a point when he tries to remind us:

“People we delegate authority to are sometimes thrust into situations in which all options are immoral.”

Winston Churchill, for example, had to at times let the Nazi U-boats sink Allied ships even though Britain had cracked the Enigma code and knew the attack was going to happen. Why? Because warning the ships might tip the Germans that their code had been broken… do you let some people whom you could save die because keeping the secret was critical to the World War II effort?

 

Or how about Abraham Lincoln who bribed legislators to vote in favour of his legislation to outlaw slavery? Was that corruption or a good thing? Did the end justify the means?

 

No easy answers here. All of which is why Klass says:

“For those in power, immoral acts are, at times, clearly the most moral choice.”