Though there is, at the heart of Lone Survivor, a fascinating question about ethics in a time of war, and how single decisions can change the lives of ones friends, that lesson is all but choked out by Mr. Luttrell's repellent blend of Christian moralizing and red-blooded patriotism.
Marcus Luttrell, a decorated Navy SEAL, was part of a team tasked to find and eliminate Mohammad Ismail, a Taliban-in-Afghanistan commander. While trekking through the mountains in search of Ismail, Luttrell and his team stumbled across some Afghani goat herders who recognized the SEALS as Americans. Given that the goat herders, if left to go free, could, with their superior knowledge of the terrain, locate and inform the local Taliban of the American presence, letting them live posed a significant danger to both the mission and to the lives of the SEALS. The team elected to take a vote on what to do, let the goat herders go free and trust in their decency and in the American mission in Afghanistan, or kill the goat herders against the Rules of Engagement and continue on with the mission knowing that it had not been jeopardized? According to Mr. Luttrell, it was his vote that swung the decision in favor of releasing the goat herders, a decision which would result in dire consequences for Mr. Luttrell and his team.
What a remarkable dilemma... To cross half the world in service of ones country, to navigate through foreign territory on a covert mission to kill the enemy, to encounter innocents by accident and to know that, thanks to barriers in language and culture there'd be no way to communicate, to know that safety could be found in killing but that righteousness could be found in mercy... It is a problem worthy of ancient Greek philosophers.
What is the value of a human life? Does one value the life of a comrade over the life of a stranger? Can a mission ever matter more than the lives of innocents? These are valid questions Mr. Luttrell would have been well-advised to devote himself to. And yet these ethical nuances are subsumed by the understandable agonies Mr. Luttrell endured, knowing that his choice doomed his companions, and the American proselytizing he indulges in as he justifies the deaths of his friends in the broader context of the justness of the War on Terror. This choice, reflecting Mr. Luttrell's inability to escape the biases of his nationality and his training, dooms what could have been an exceptional novel and a modern parable. (2/5 Stars)
No comments:
Post a Comment