Pick up a newspaper today and you’ll see the lessons of poor leadership and bad judgement all over the front page. Politicians and public figures behaving badly is sadly all too common.
Ethics is the focus of a two-day conference in Kingston this week, and all those public figures might benefit from the lessons of military personnel, especially soldiers, who have been asked to make difficult decisions in complex situations.
In wars in which an enemy blends in with the civilian population, in which schools and hospitals are used as locations from which to fire RPGs, and in which women and children are used as suicide bombers, their values and ethics have frequently been tested.
But as Dr. Asa Kasher, a distinguished professor emeritus with Tel-Aviv University and the author of the Israeli Defense Force’s Code of Ethics, reminded attendees on Tuesday, no matter how unscrupulous the enemy in his willingness to break basic principles of warfare, “it does not exempt us from respecting [our] principles” and professional standards.
The conference has explored the significance of these changes on Just War theory and on civil-military relations, which found new value but also new challenges in Afghanistan, and has learned that allies are also focusing on ethical leadership as they struggle at times with new defence and security strategies.
The conference, Ethical Warriors, continues today with a keynote from former Chief of the Defence Staff General (Ret’d) Walt Natynczyk.