Does Caterpillar have any moral responsibility for Israel weaponizing it's products?

Great Debates
41

Those who say “it’s all Corrie’s fault” are not meeting the point being made by Giles and Kimstu and (rather less eloquently) myself.

Would you say that a US soldier defending legitimate interests against terrorists at the cost of high risk to himself was committing suicide? Would you say that if he had an hour’s warning of an attack but failed to desert his post he had only himself to blame? Would you say that staying at his post, putting himself in harm’s way, was only going to “annoy the terrorists” and that his death was an example of natural selection?

It all depends on your underlying view of the legitimacy of what someone is attempting to defend by placing themselves at risk.

And I notice aruvqan is yet to answer my question. Yes or no, aruvqan?

And Brutus still can’t find anything of substance to say of my analogies.

By the way the suggestion it was suicide is just nonsense. The protesters had been disrupting the dozers using precisely the same tactic for days without injury. They had no certainty of death, and there is no evidence at all that they intended anyone to die. That ain’t suicide. It may be reckless, but it ain’t suicide.

42

Heroic analogy but…

Corrie most likely tripped while trying desperately to evade the path of the D9, making the incident merely a tragic accident involving a well-intentioned American caught up as a patsy in a Middle Eastern war zone.

Why people continue to beat the culpability issue to death is beyond me.

43

In my case, Kezami, I’m interested because I expound the view that there is more than one point of view on the Israel/Palestine conflict. And I think some of the simplistic analyses of the manner of Corrie’s death evidenced in this thread ignore that.

44

Actually that is ill-put. What I mean is that some of the simplistic analyses of the manner of Corrie’s death evidenced in this thread contain significant underlying political or moral assumptions but are dressed up as if they do not.

45

Hmmmm…Protestors spend hours disrupting the dozer’s operations.

IDF ordered not to get out to arrest the protestors because of snipers.

IDF chose to disperse the 7 protestors with tear gas. It works, albeit for a short while.

Protestors regroup and start the game of chicken again an hour later.

Corrie doesn’t use her megaphone at this point, one fatal mistake.

Corrie gets separated from the rest of the group, a second fatal mistake.

Corrie and the driver experiences fatigue in this stressful game of chicken, a third fatal mistake. (courtesy of Fuji K.)
Princhester, I didn’t say it was suicide, but her judgement was about as impaired as a DUI suspect. I think Brutus isn’t too far off in describing her actions are that of a borderline suicidal person. I know your grasping at analogies to support your viewpoint, but quite a few of us are not swayed by irrelevant comparisons. Regardless of political motives, standing in front of an operating D-9 is foolish thing to do.

Here’s my analogy. The government is coming to put I-12 freeway through my house and my neighbors houses. I (and few other neighbors) protest by blocking the tractors…hell, I throw rocks at the damn things. I stand in front of them. My neighbor, the local wacko…is holed up in his house ready to shoot at any authority that tries to arrest me. The authorities uses tear gas to drive me away…I flee but come back to try to save another friends house, but no one else is around to help me and I lost my cell phone or some other communications gadget to let people know where the hell I am. I’ve been doing this for a few hours and am getting pretty damn tired dodging and running, diving and blocking. My fatigue is increasing and no doubt the driver of the dozer is getting fatigued also…mistakes are made. The driver misjudges my whereabouts and I didn’t get out of the way in time. The driver has tons of metal to protect him, but I just have this nifty red jacket to protect me. I guess I put too much faith in the dozer driver not being able to stop in time. I go under and die a horrific death. Looking back in my last few seconds of life, I realize that no house is worth my life and now my family will now have to go on (in some other house - a replaceable object) without me (an irreplaceable object) to support them and my friends will mourn my death and hopefully not do stupid things in my memory. I made a crucial mistake. A miscalculation. A misjudgement. I pay for it with my life.

I wonder if Corrie realized that in her last few seconds of life. If she didn’t realize that, then she probably was suicidal.

46

As far as the op’s question…

If I were to make a suicide bomb belt and place in it hundreds of nails, bolts and screws for maximum lethal effect, would the blame rest with the manufacturer or distributor of the shrapnel if I managed to successfully kill with it? Its intended use isn’t really to kill and maim so who should be held liable for the damage it caused?

Hmm…

47

Your definition of suicidal does not accord with that at law or in any dictionary that I am aware of. The key is intent to die

There is no evidence whatever that Corrie intended to die. You say otherwise, you find cite. Your desperate attempts to stretch Corrie’s behaviour, however reckless, into actual intent to die says more about your predilictions than anything.

There is also no evidence she was desperately tired or otherwise impaired. You say otherwise, you find cite.

Your analogy also is set in the context of a minor thing like a road resumption in nice comfy USA. In that context, where you are going to get compensation, where you are going to be supported by a sympathetic press etc has little or nothing to do with the Palestinians’ view of the dozing of houses being a form of collective illegal punishment as part of a war.

That is why my soldier analogy is more apt than yours. Though I notice that you expect me to deal with your analogies, but you won’t deal with mine.

Take your analogy and replace “government” with “illegal violent occupying force with which you are at war” and see how it changes the flavour. Would you argue that in such circumstances the illegal violent occupying force carries no blame? Or that dangerous resistance actions are not justified even if risky, if they help the cause?

In other words, deal with my soldier analogy.

48

Princhester, in post #10 you hijacked this from a question of Caterpillar’s culpability, to demonizing the operator. And that was the high point of this thread for you. :rolleyes:

To the OP, no Cat isn’t anymore liable than Ford is when someone drives one into a group of kids. Even less so since 1) the dozers are used in a foreign country, and 2) this dimwit knew what she was doing when she stood in front of the machine. I don’t give a shit if she fell over a clod of dirt, broke a heel, whatever. This is like using a set of books to prop up a car for an oil change and suing Chevy if the car falls on me.

49

BTW, how cool would it be to own one of those dozers? I bet I’d get the damn neighbor kids to stay off the lawn. :smiley:

50

kezami: *[…] merely a tragic accident involving a well-intentioned American caught up as a patsy in a Middle Eastern war zone. *

Like Brutus’s “little angel of peace” crack, calling nonviolent protesters “well-intentioned patsies” just serves to discredit non-violence and reduce its appeal to the people who desperately need to be using non-violence instead of terrorism.

If we really want Palestinians and their supporters to renounce violence, and we are sane enough to recognize that even if they renounce violence they’re not going to become meekly acquiescent in whatever Israel wants to do with them, then we have to stop sneering at nonviolent resisters as though they’re negligible and not worth bothering about. If nonviolent protest is disparaged as weakness and futility, then that’s just going to persuade more people that the only solution is terrorist violence. And then more Israelis, and many more Palestinians, will die.

It’s certainly true that some non-violent protestors are ill-informed and irresponsible, and that some violent groups cynically try to manipulate non-violent activism for their own purposes. But there is no reason to think that Corrie didn’t understand the issues involved or that she was a “patsy” for advocates of violence.

Whether she was right or wrong in opposing the Israeli demolition activities, and whether she was foolish or heroic in taking those risks on the demolition site, she was committed to resisting what she saw as unwarrantable oppression without using violence herself. If we don’t learn to treat that kind of commitment seriously and respectfully, we’re just encouraging more people to commit themselves to violence and terrorism instead.

51

Did I now? Post #9 is as follows:

Funny, but my understanding is that #9 comes before #10. Perhaps you count differently, duffer. Or maybe you are fine with hijacks you agree with, but only dislike hijacks you don’t.

And as for demonizing, there is a group of people in this debate who refuse to acknowledge that more than one person may bear some blame. There is another group who think the blame goes wider.

Guess which group you’re in?

Now who’s behaviour would be best categorised as “demonizing”?

52

**Brutus ** was clearly responding to a specific post, not hijacking. Your “side” is great at responding to stuff, as long as it’s out of context. Where you went off on a tangent is blaming the operator of the dozer, then keeping it up with continuing to blame the worker and the Isreali government with intentionaly “killing” the poor waif.

She was there specifically to protest the “occupation” and decided to become some kind of martyr for some cause. And of course, those she was “protecting” showed appreciation by killing more innocents in suicide bombings in her honor.

And you’re defending them. That’s telling.

53

sorry, didnt see your post 30…pasted in here=)

Originally Posted by aruvqan
This is a matter of suicide-as-protest, such as Tienman Square, or the monks selfimmolating, deliberately ignoring personal risk in the hopes that a messy death will cause public outcry.

Aruqvan, my point is a narrow one. Do you think the tank drivers and those giving them orders in Tienman were blameless?

Yes or no?
Lets see, Tieneman square. To be bluntly honest about it, I have absolutely no idea what the dispute between the protesting students and the government was, but I can make a broad assumption the students were upset at the government and teh government rolled in the military to disperse the crowd. Sort of like the York State deaths in the US in the early 70s. As to the tank drivers, they were ordered to go forth and drive, and deal with the crowd. Obviously the military in every coultry are bound by oath to obey lawful orders, and they were ordered to disperse protesters. I doubt that they were orderd to go out of their way to smush people, but to continue driving foreward. Let the smushee get out of the way or not. The student was suicidal, and allowed himself to get smushed. Never count on someone having a moral attack and stopping just because you are in front of them. Analagous to looking both ways for cars and then still walking.

Have you ever been in a tank? You are particularly blind to what is immediately in front of you, and seeing the 10 foot by 10 foot space immediately in front of the tracks is impossible [tried playing in a tank on family day down at Fayettnam when a friend was there playing with tanks. Fascinating behemoths.] The tank driver in Tieneman may actually have not known the student was still there, figuring he made the sideways dive out from in front of him. He may have nightmares to this day, I was not there and can’t judge. He may be the sort who tears the heads off kittens and laughs before baking them into a pie. Again I don’t know. The officer who ordered the tanks into the square was following his own orders from above.

At any rate, they are blameless to order the tanks into the square, because it could be assumed that the presence of force as evidenced by the tanks would clear the protesters out of the square. The simple fact that the student opted to get smushed was not expeted by the chain of command. Suicide is not a logical action to assume, most people have a sense of preservation that causes them to move out of the way.

Moving back to the original thread, as Yeticus Rex quoted

Eyewitness accounts suggest that Corrie followed this technique, initially sitting or kneeling, and then standing to clamber up on the pile of debris in front of the bulldozer. For a while she was on top of this pile, looking at the driver. At some point, Corrie fell off the pile of rubble, possibly having lost her footing. This may have obscured her from sight of the driver. Corrie may have tried to scrabble out of the way at this point, but if she did so she was unsuccessful.

She did scrabble out of the way several times, and the technique used by the protesters was to get in the way, and play chicken, either they move or the dozer operator moves/avoids/stops. The dozer operator is not to blame, he was following legitemate orders to doze the property. The fact that some silly woman tempts fate one time too many in a very suicidal manner is entirely different. Message I get from it isnt that Israel shouldnt doze palestinian houses, but not to dance in front of a dozer because you might get smushed.

Now, if you want to discuss Israel continuing to build in the zone they were to have evacuated more than 10 years ago, that I am willing to discuss, other than the fact that I happen to believe that they should be forced to adhere to the treaties they have signed makes it a very short discussion.

54

Let’s consider an alternate scenario that doesn’t involve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, just to remove any bias we may have as to who is the bad guy here.

Assume this was 1942 and Hitler was buying Caterpillar bulldozers and using them to squash Jews in concentration camps, and that Caterpillar knew that that is what Hitler was doing with them.

Would Caterpillar be doing a morally correct thing by selling its bulldozers to Hitler? I don’t think so.

Now, if Caterpillar sells bulldozers to one party and that party sells them to someone else, it’s hard to find Caterpillar at fault.

But again, if we consider the Hitler example above, I can see that it would be morally correct for Caterpillar to add to their contracts a clause that says something like “you will not sell or give these bulldozers to the Nazi government”.

So, I guess this all boils down to whether you consider what Israel is doing with the bulldozers abominable.

55

And of course what you are leaving out the part about the bulldozers being used to destroy the tunnels through which weapons/explosives are smuggled. Explosives used by suicide bombers to blow up Jews. Then the argument can be made that caterpillar has a moral obligation to sell the bulldozers to Israel in order to save lives.
As far as rachel corrie goes, anybody dumb enough to play chicken with a bulldozer deserves what they get.

56

As I said: “I guess this all boils down to whether you consider what Israel is doing with the bulldozers abominable.” It seems you don’t consider what they are doing abominable, which is fine.

My point was that, if you find that a regime is using a commercial product in an abominable fashion (abominable in your opinion), and you still sell it to them, that is not morally correct.

That is, if you find the use of your commercial product by a regime abominable, you can’t hide behind the “it’s just a commercial product, it’s not a weapon” excuse.

57

Rachel Corrie and her fellow “human shields” seem to have conveniently forgotten that genuine shields actually get HIT, they don’t stop the attacker from attacking.

58

Is it reasonable? I know that if I were looking for a new truck and the Chevy dealer added a line to the contract stating “you will not sell, lend, or give this truck to anybody involved in the logging industry,” I would head right over to the Ford dealer. I’m not involved in the logging industry at all, and I know very people who are, even tangentially. But I’m not buying a truck that comes with restrictions on what I can do with it once it’s bought and paid for, regardless of what the basis of those restrictions is. I imagine the government purchasing agent negotiating with Cat at that point would pick up the phone and call John Deere. I’d bet that the US government purchases many, many more Caterpillar machines than it ships to Israel, and that each of Cat’s competitors would love to have another shot at the contract.

Do you think that Cat should have a line in their current contracts prohibiting their customers from supplying the equipment to the Sudan? To Russia if the machines are to be used in Chechnya? Should Cat refuse to sell equipment to the US government if it is to be used in Iraq? Which officers or shareholders of Caterpillar make the decision about what is an abomination and what isn’t? How could the company enforce the clause even if it were included?

Nobody deserves to be crushed to death under a bulldozer, no matter how foolish or brave they might have been. But if it does happen, it’s beyond reaching to blame the company that manufactured the machine and then sold it to somebody else, who sold it somebody else, who modified it, and then shipped it to a disputed part of the world, and only then used it to hurt somebody.

59

But you conveniently chose an example (logging) that most people don’t consider abominable.

In any case, I already said “if Caterpillar sells bulldozers to one party and that party sells them to someone else, it’s hard to find Caterpillar at fault”, and I was only trying to see if there was a moral thing to do in this case, which may or may not be practical.

But the third-party issue was not my main point. My maint point was that if you manufacture commercial products and you sell them (directly) to a regime you know is using them in an abominable way, then you are responsible, and you can’t hide behind the “it’s just a commercial product, it’s not a weapon” excuse.

60

And you conveniently chose an example that most people do consider abominable. I did ask who in the Caterpillar company should make the decision on what constitutes an abomination. It’s pretty obvious from this thread that opinions differ on whether the IDF’s use of the tractor is an abomination. I’m also curious about whether the line should be in every contract - anybody who buys a machine can turn around and resell it to whoever they want to. And how would such a clause be enforced, even if it were in the contract?

Would Cat still be partially responsible for the damage if an IDF representative had gone to an auction and bought the machine there? There’s a huge market for used construction equipment, and it’s routinely shipped all over the world. If somebody has a couple of hundred thousand dollars and wants a D9, it’s going to be tough to stop them from getting one.

I don’t think anybody’s arguing against this point. But I also don’t think it applies to Caterpillar in this situation.