We Need to Make It Safe to Be Vulnerable

A tribunal of the United States Army today found Captain Rogelio Maynulet guilty of "intent to commit voluntary manslaughter" in the shooting death of an Iraqi. The killing was caught on video by a drone surveillance aircraft.

According to an account from the CBC, "Maynulet's armoured tank division had been on patrol near Kufa on May 21, 2004, when it was alerted to a car believed to be carrying two militants loyal to the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "

Maynulet and other US troops exchanged fire with the car's occupants, a driver and a passenger. One of the Iraqis, the driver, Karim Hassan, was severely wounded. When an American medic told Maynulet that there was nothing to be done for Hassan, Maynulet killed him. Maynulet said that he did so in order to end the man's suffering.

The Army's prosecuting attorney, Major John Rothwell, said in his closing remarks that Maynulet had decided to "play God" in ending Hassan's life. The BBC also quotes Rothwell as saying, "This combat-trained life saver prescribed two bullets. He didn't call his superiors for guidance, didn't consult with his medic."

The US Army court in Wiesbaden, Germany, decided that Maynulet had taken upon himself a decision that was not his to make. He killed a defenseless, unarmed man.

On the same day that ruling was rendered, one that, it seems, was warranted by the facts, Terri Schaivo died of starvation and dehydration in a Florida hospice.

I don't have any quarrel with the fact that her death was completely legal. The numerous judges who ruled on her case had the solid backing of state statutes and case law. The US Supreme Court was, according to the laws of the land, right in refusing to intervene in her situation and in so doing, to uphold the rulings of lower courts allowing her death. The federal and state judges are, in fact, to be applauded for the courage and for the consistency with which they stuck to the constitutional principle of federalism and avoided creating new law by judicial fiat in the Schaivo case.

But I also believe that Terri Schaivo's death and the means by which death came to her, were immoral, as surely as Karim Hassan's death and the means by which it came to him were immoral.

In both cases, decisions were made that a vulnerable person's life was no longer worth living and therefore needed to be extinguished. In both cases, someone played God with someone else's life.

The irony that emerges from these two judicial processes is that a defenseless person may be freer from the possibility of being killed in a combat zone than in a hospice in their own hometown.

Terri Schaivo was not terminally ill. She was disabled.

She was not allowed to die. She was made to die.

Her death came in accordance with the law. The law needs to be changed. We need to make it safe to be vulnerable.

[A previous post I wrote on the Schiavo case appears here.]

UPDATE: Thanks to Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost for linking to this post.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thanks also to John Schneider of Blogotional for linking to this article on Terri Schaivo's death.