Dehumanization
<p>A reader, responding to the suggestion that we call the Baathist<br />
holdouts in Iraq <a href='http://www.ibiblio.org/esrblog/index.php?m=200311#85'><br />
werewolves</a>, asked rhetorically whether the intent was to dehumanize<br />
them. Lurking behind this question was the theory that war supporters<br />
like me need to make our enemies into un-persons in order to justify<br />
continuing to kill them.</p>
<p>This question displays a kind of self-absorption by a person who<br />
cannot really imagine a moral stance different from his/her own.  In<br />
such tender-minded thinking, the world is neatly divided into humans<br />
that one must treat pretty much as though they were one&#8217;s next-door neighbor,<br />
and non-humans who are not part of the moral community.  The possibility<br />
that a human being could be outside the moral community is essentially<br />
ignored.</p>
<p>But there are human beings who are outside the moral community by nature.<br />
We call them psychopaths.  They lack the wiring for empathy and reciprocity<br />
that makes it possible for most human beings to cooperate; they can (and<br />
often do) commit sickening atrocities for pleasure.  Fortunately, most<br />
psychopaths have other kinds of neurological deficits as well and are<br />
therefore not very bright.  </p>
<p>Some people who probably were not born with psychopathy make themselves<br />
into psychopaths.  Consider, as a relevant example, Saddam Hussein and<br />
his sons.  They fed living people into shredders for amusement.  No semantic<br />
debate over whether that sort of monster is &#8220;human&#8221; or &#8220;dehumanized&#8221;<br />
is going to change my judgment that that it deserves a violent<br />
death as quickly as that result can be arranged.</p>
<p>The Baathist holdouts in Iraq are the hench-monsters of the<br />
Husseins &mdash; the men who tore infants&#8217; eyes out and strapped women<br />
to tables in rape rooms.  Calling them &#8220;werewolves&#8221; or &#8220;orcs&#8221;  is not<br />
an attempt to dehumanize them; that would be pointless, since they<br />
have already dehumanized themselves.</p>
