Good Riddance to Imad Mughniyeh

The assassination of Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mughniyeh has resulted in an interesting discussion of ethics, first raised in an editorial by Mike Baker, and then responded to by Father Jonathan Morris. The question is: is it ethical to be happy that Mughniyeh is dead? In a sense, this is also raising the question of the ethics of capital punishment.

As Father Jonathan points out, if an intruder is breaking into my house, I have the ethical responsibility to do what is necessary to protect my wife and child. Why? Well, the intruder is presently threatening to decrease the complexity of the universe. I believe that a good way of knowing the difference between good and bad is this: if you increase the complexity of the universe, that is good; if you decrease it, that is bad. If you decrease it on purpose, that is evil. If I am dead, and certainly if my wife, baby, and I are dead, the intruder has reduced the complexity of the universe. To prevent that from happening, I am allowed to kill the intruder. But doesn't that reduce the complexity of the universe? SInce the intent of the intruder is to reduce the complexity of the universe by killing me, I am really only keeping the universe in balance by killing him instead. If I prevent him from further reducing the complexity of the universe, then there is a net gain.

If you assassinate someone, you are killing someone who is not currently engaged in reducing complexity in the universe. The same is true in regards to capital punishment. In societies less complex than that of the contemporary West, it is legitimate to perform rituals which remove people from society to dehumanize them and thus make it legitimate to kill them. In the end, arguments surrounding capital punishment are really arguments about the legitimacy of the rituals used to dehumanize people so they can legitimately be killed. I myself do not believe such rituals are any longer legitimate since we can remove people from society who are otherwise intent on continuing to reduce the complexity of the universe. They are not an immediate threat, so killing them actually does result in reducing the complexity of the universe. Since we cannot know for certain that they will kill again in the future, we cannot make a legitimate argument for permanently removing them from society by killing them.

Mughniyeh, however, was still out and about in society, able and capable of killing more people. There's little evidence, based on his past actions, to believe that he wouldn't kill many more people in the future. Does that mean we should be happy he's dead? Perhaps that strong a reaction is a bit much. But I do think we should be satisfied with the result considering the likelihood he would continue killing people. With his death, there will likely be fewer future murders. And that is unquestionably a good thing.