On The Ethics and Practicality of Hanging ISIS Prisoners...

Posted a news article I found earlier on Facebook and got quite a discussion. The gist of it is the Jordanians have threatened to kill ISIS prisoners if any harm should come to a Jordanian pilot captured alive by ISIS during the air campaign.

I posted that I supported this policy. After all, one of the reasons armies are (supposed to be) kind to enemy prisoners of war is reciprocity--they don't want any bad things happening to their own people who fall into enemy hands. ISIS, given its propensity for killing prisoners en masse (you see this mostly with Syrian Army soldiers), taking and beheading hostages, etc. clearly needs to be taught this lesson.

Some people took issue with my supporting this policy on the grounds of both morality and practicality...

The first to object was Zaid Jilani, who pointed out that the guilt or innocence of anybody tried and convicted by Jordan is questionable given the practice of judicial torture, especially in regards to terror suspects. In case you need a source other than Wikipedia, here's al-Jazeera and here's Human Rights Watch. He also said "civilized people" don't execute prisoners, which is not something I agree with but that's not relevant to the issue at hand. My friend Evan, a college professor, said if anything merited killing ISIS prisoners, it would be that they had committed capital crimes, not that ISIS had killed prisoners/hostages first.

These are some very good arguments. If the Jordanians captured a bunch of teenage conscripts forced to fight by family members held hostage (I don't know if ISIS actually does this, but knowing them I wouldn't be surprised) or people like this teen "volunteer" suicide bomber, that would be victimizing them twice. The same if the captured female suicide bomber is telling the truth about being an unwilling participant in the scheme. During WWII the Allied powers didn't retaliate for Nazi crimes by making indiscriminate massacres among POW camps, although organizations that routinely violated the rules of war could expect little mercy. All too often the argument "don't sink to their level" is basically an exercise in putting the scrupulous at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the unscrupulous (think honorable Ned Stark vs. the crafty Cersei or Littlefinger in Game of Thrones--if Ned had been more willing to be more ruthless or dishonest about his ultimate intentions he could have won even as late as the attempt to arrest Cersei in the throne room), but this is not one of those situations.

On the matter of practicality, Zaid pointed out that ISIS glorifies the deaths of its soldiers in battle, so they wouldn't be unduly upset if some of their prisoners were hanged. Furthermore, martyrs can make useful propaganda tools, so giving them more is not a good idea. And if those hanged were not guilty of major crimes, the PR problem is multiplied on top of the morality problem. To use a WWII analogy, this isn't like bombing Germany--there are many Germanies and some of them are U.S. allies (i.e. Jordan, Saudi Arabia), so PR, propaganda, etc. is much more important.

(I didn't come up with that analogy, but it's a good one.)

Furthermore, this article depicts an ISIS emir captured by the Kurds praising them for their mercy and claiming to have been deceived by ISIS "caliph" al-Baghdadi, so even a high-ranking (and presumably guilty of capital crimes given ISIS's propensity for killing prisoners, making Yezidi women into sex slaves, etc.) enemy commander could be worth more alive than dead. The captive emir, for example, could be used to make particularly effective anti-ISIS propaganda videos and encourage ISIS soldiers facing the Kurds to surrender rather than fight to the death. Showing mercy to a defeated enemy is not just an ethical issue, but can be a practical one as well.

That said, avoiding making martyrs is not the be-all, end-all. The Allied powers made millions of martyrs for fascism during WWII and yet the occupied Axis countries are not ungovernable hellholes. Furthermore, there are martyrs and there are martyrs. If the Jordanians hanged some teenage conscripts, ISIS and opponents of Jordan's government more generally could give them such hell over it that it might not be worth it. But if the Jordanians have got an ISIS technical specialist (like the chemical weapons guy just killed in an air strike) or commander, the threat of hanging them might deter ISIS from killing its remaining hostages (since these people, unlike foot soldiers, aren't a dime a dozen) and their deaths would damage ISIS's cause so much that the "martyr factor" wouldn't compensate.

Think the bombing of the Axis countries during WWII--whatever hay Goebbels (or his Italian or Japanese equivalent) might make it of, their physical ability to make war was damaged. Severing the spinal cord of a mad ax murderer might make him more angry or psychotic than usual, but if he's paralyzed he can't do anything. And as far as the "repentant ISIS fighters make good propaganda" angle is concerned, someone who is remorseful and willing to denounce his former comrades is useful--an unrepentant fanatical twit is not.

So however much hanging ISIS prisoners might appeal to one's instinct, this course of action should be trod very carefully. It would have been better if the Daily Mail article had included more detail about who these "ISIS commanders" the Jordanians have got are, so whether hanging them is moral and/or worth the trouble can be examined. However, it is not a course of action that should be closed off completely either. However vile and racist the Confederates could be in the Civil War (see the Fort Pillow Massacre or Confederate slave-raiding during the Gettysburg campaign), the threat to kill or enslave Confederate prisoners was enough to deter (most) Confederates from treating black prisoners as slave rebels.

"Illegal Alien" Might Just Be Relevant Again...

I wrote my short story "Illegal Alien", which features undocumented immigrants from Mexico encountering extraterrestrials (yes, it's a bad pun) in 2004. This was back when illegal immigration was a much bigger political issue. By the time I gave up submitting to the declining number of paying markets and self-published it on Amazon, things had changed--the recession apparently caused (or helped caused) a net reduction of the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico in the United States. After all, they were here for the jobs and if there aren't as many jobs, why stay here? Consequently, "Illegal Alien" has not been that great of a seller even though it has a beautiful cover.

Well, I follow al-Jazeera America on Facebook and found they're running a series entitled "Borderland" about people who've died trying to immigrate to America by illegally crossing the southern border. If illegal immigration from Mexico is becoming an issue again, maybe there'll be more interest in the topic and I'll make more sales.

(This is not to be flippant about the deaths of border-crossers, which is tragic.)

I've considered writing a blog post about how Kindle Direct (or other self-publishing platforms, like Smashwords) are best for stuff that's timely, since publishing takes awhile. I guess now's the time. :)

I've sold a few short stories and it was months before they were published. George Scithers, the late editor of Weird Tales, told me that publication lead time makes it hard to cash in on timely things--in that case, I had a Lovecraftian King Arthur story that I was trying to pitch when the Clive Owen King Arthur movie was in theaters. Meanwhile, Roger Corman once shot a movie in a few weeks to cash in on the Sputnik launch. He was the publisher as well as the writer, so he could do that.

So if you've got a story you wrote to cash in on a current event and especially if you've got one trying to cash in on a movie that's out, you're better off self-publishing it. Your window of opportunity to make money won't last long.

Hmm...I had an idea for a story set in the future where Japan, having shut down its nuclear plants, invades Indonesia again in order to secure the fossil fuels it needs to sustain its economy. Since people are going to forget about the tsunami, how Japan went (hopefully temporarily) nuclear-free, etc. pretty fast, that's something I'd Kindle if I intended to actually write it.

(I probably won't, so if you want to write it, go ahead. Pro-nuclear speculative fiction for the win!)

Arab Mascots, Arab Scientists, and Win-Win Situations

On Facebook today, I found this article from Al-Jazeera about Coachella Valley High School and its mascot, the Arabs. The image of the mascot on the school sign looks like some caricature of Yasser Arafat and there are a lot of more benign but still kind of cliched images of Arabs elsewhere on the school.

As you can imagine, some Americans of Arab extraction are not happy campers about it. Especially the image on the school sign, which is ugly as hell. Maybe he's supposed to intimidate the school's athletic rivals, but I'm not so un-empathetic that I can't understand how Arabs who've had to deal with the terrorist or oil sheikh stereotypes their whole lives might be bothered.

However, changing the mascot completely would be an enormous expensive pain in the behind. You'd need to repaint everything, rebrand everything, get people accustomed to using the new mascot, etc. And this isn't like the situation with the Washington Redskins, where "Redskin" is an actual racial slur. It's not like they're the Coachella Camel Jockeys (or worse). I'd compare it more to the Florida State Seminoles. Plus so far it's just one Arab-American organization that's upset--it doesn't seem like there's some massive groundswell among the Arab-American community in general or the local community (more important because it's their school).

So here's an idea that should please everybody. Keep most of the artwork and imagery for historical reasons and because although cliched they're not really insulting. However, replace the guy on the school sign who looks like a cliched terrorist with the image of one of the great Arab intellectuals. The "angry Arab head" might be fine for the sports teams to scare people with (and it wouldn't be seen as often), but the school is an educational environment and that should be paramount.

My initial idea for a new "Arab" mascot would be Avicenna, but it turns out he's Persian. Fortunately a quick Google search found this article, which lists many great Arabic scientists who kept the classical heritage alive and made many discoveries of their own while Europe stagnated. Someone whose field of learning is most relevant to a particular local industry would be best. If none are available, al-Battani might be a good pick, since he's so instrumental in trigonometry--something in Georgia at least is taught in high school.

This is a win-win for everybody. A rather caricatured image of an Arab is reduced in importance if not removed completely, the often-ignored contributions of Arab scientists are highlighted, and the school gets to keep its mascot.