In the UN resolution and in much of the debate leading up to the launch of the operation, the word “responsibility” has been in the air. The popularity of this term goes back to 2001, when a Canadian commission proposed the idea of a “responsibility to protect” as the framework through which debates about humanitarian intervention and human rights should be understood. In 2005, the UN General Assembly proposed the concept as part of its reform of the UN system in order to avoid politicking over matters that demanded immediate action. Since then, it has been invoked not only by academics, but also by policy makers and even military officials in support of various interventions in support of human rights.

“Responsibility” is not just a legal term, but a moral one as well. Indeed, some analogue of the term is central to philosophical and religious traditions around the world, including the just war tradition. The idea is linked to concepts such as duty and obligation, although there are some crucial differences, according to some philosophers.

What does it mean to say we have a responsibility to others? In one morally extreme version, responsibility means having to care for the ills of all people. Especially when one is powerful and can provide aid to many around the world, this notion of responsibility becomes more resonant. The just war theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain has referred to it as the “Spiderman Ethic”: for those with great power comes great responsibility.

One response to this might be to say that no matter how powerful, no one state or coalition of states can be responsible for all the problems in the world. The 2001 report on the “responsibility to protect” recognized this when it proposed an overlapping set of responsibilities, starting with the responsibility of the state to protect its own citizens, which then expands out to the larger international community when the state cannot or will not aid its own citizens.

But there is perhaps another way to think about responsibility, one that helps us better understand what is happening in Libya and that might be more relevant for the future. The Lithuanian Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas famously proposed an “ethic of responsibility.” Educated as a Talmudic scholar, but one who influenced French philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Levinas argued that responsibility does not mean having a duty to solve the problems of the world. It is really about recognizing other peoples and communities as unique and worthy of respect in their own right. This recognition means challenging assumptions about oneself and one’s certainty about the rightness of one’s own cause.

Levinas was not proposing simple hand-wringing about one’s own sins or faults, nor was he recommending inaction. Rather, in the moment when one is called to act for the other, one must always recognize the danger of imposing the self on the other or assuming that one’s own ideas are the only ones.

So what does this have to do with Libya? As anyone with a passing interest in or knowledge of international affairs knows, relations between the countries leading the assault on Libya and the wider Arab world have been fraught with conflict and misunderstanding. These relationships have not been ones of recognition, from any perspective. Many in the Arab world believe North Americans and Europeans are simply interested in oil or supporting Israel, while those leading the intervention often demonstrate an embarrassing lack of knowledge about diverse political and religious Arab communities.

Rather than argue that the coalition forces should not act, the point here is that in acting, American, British, French, Canadian, and Italian forces need to be sensitive to their history of colonialism, occupation, and intervention in the region. While they may have a responsibility to protect the civilians in Libya, they also have a responsibility to recognize the reality of others who may not simply accept their aid with open arms.

Responsibility as recognition is not easy, but if there is to be any real ethics in international affairs, perhaps we need to look to new sources for understanding that responsibility.

Anthony F. Lang Jr. is senior lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews. He has written most recently for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on Afghanistan.

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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: In the ongoing national debate about the morality of torture, the question is whether it is ever the lesser evil. We want to identify the underlying principles in the debate, beginning with part of President Obama’s reply at his news conference last Wednesday (April 29) when he was asked whether he thought the Bush administration had sanctioned torture.

President BARAK OBAMA (at White House news conference): What I’ve said, and I will repeat, is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. You start taking short cuts and over time that corrodes what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

ABERNETHY: But can torture sometimes be justified?

Jean Bethke Elshtain is a professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School and at Georgetown University. She joins us from Nashville. Shaun Casey is a professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington. Welcome to you both. Shaun — never?

Dr. SHAUN CASEY (Professor of Christian Ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC): I think the bulk of the Christian moral tradition says that torture is never morally permissible. If you go to Christian Scripture, you go to the wide arc of Christian social teachings, you get a very consistent historical answer that it is never right to torture another human being.

ABERNETHY: What’s the underlying reason for this?

Dr. CASEY: Well, you look at basic Scripture, you look at Jesus in the Gospels about love your neighbor as yourself, do not repay evil for evil, love your enemy—so there’s this sense that each person is created by God in the image of God and has an inherent dignity, and torture would render that dignity undermined.

ABERNETHY: And Jean, what are the underlying principles for you?

Dr. JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN (Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School and Georgetown University): Well, the underlying principle for me is what I would call an “ethic of responsibility.” That’s an ethic that is especially important when we’re talking about statesmen and stateswomen who often have the lives of thousands in their hands, quite literally.

ABERNETHY: So they have a different rule, a different ethic, a different moral standard than somebody would if he’s just acting as an individual?

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Not entirely different. We don’t want a huge chasm to emerge. But I would say that there are extraordinary circumstances when harrowing judgments must be made by those we tax with the responsibility of keeping us safe, and at those times there may be a “lesser evil” kind of calculation to be made.

Dr. CASEY: We have about a 60-year tradition of international law and domestic law that regulates the behavior of those who, in fact, are called to be our political leaders and there is a consistent prohibition of the use of torture. In fact, the United States has been a leading catalyst in that international movement, so I agree with that. But I think we have some rules that are in place that prohibit torture.

ABERNETHY: But beyond what’s legal is what’s moral. I mean, they’re not always the same, are they?

Dr. CASEY: That’s true, and as the president said the other night in part of the clip that you played for us, that he believes that a leader in his position who faces those harrowing decisions ultimately is going to decide on both, of the angels and on responsibility if in fact we as a country refrain from using torture.

ABERNETHY: So, Jean, the president then has this primary moral responsibility, would you say, of protecting the people?

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Yes, that’s why we have states. That’s the reason that people made the deal back in the 17th century to organize the state — to prevent capricious power and the slaughter of human beings willy-nilly. That’s the reason we have states and have leaders to protect us.

ABERNETHY: And do you think people generally, American people, expect that a president will, somebody has written, have, you know, has to have dirty hands?

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Well, the problem of dirty hands is a perennial problem in politics. What it means is that one can’t remain absolutely morally pure, that you take actions. You don’t know what the full ramifications of those actions may be. Now I fully agree, by the way, that torture is something that should be ruled out as a general norm. My concern is with certain very specific and tragic circumstances, if there are severe forms of interrogation that may well fall short of torture as we usually understand it but are certainly severe — whether those are permissible.

ABERNETHY: And Shaun, the classic argument for permitting an exception, an extraordinary circumstance is the ticking bomb scenario, you know, that somebody in your custody has information about when a terrible, terrible thing might happen that would cost the lives of thousands of innocent people. Under such circumstances, perhaps others, don’t the people in authority have the responsibility to do something extraordinary if they think that can give them information quickly?

Dr. CASEY: Well, the fist thing we should observe is that there are no historical examples of that being lived out in reality. That’s a hypothetical contrary to fact, that it never obtained in the real world. What I worry about is the lack of rules to govern that exception. Many people argue that because they can create a hypothetical case like this there should be no rules against torture, and I think that is a grave moral error. The problem is we never know if that information can be elicited by other means. There’s no way to verify that, indeed, torture is the only option in those cases. So what happens if you torture that person and you turn out to be wrong, the information proves not to be true? But what do you say then to the person who’s tortured at your hands?

ABERNETHY: Jean, you want to comment on that?

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Yes. I would say that the resort to extreme techniques would be used only after all other possibilities had been exhausted. It wouldn’t be the first resort; it would be the last resort, and again we’d have to be clear about what we’re considering torture here, because some of the most severe forms I think must be ruled out. But there are other forms of enhanced interrogation that, I think, under those extreme circumstances and as an exception, may well, under the ticking time bomb scenario, be resorted to.

ABERNETHY: There is a recent poll by the Pew Research Center that found that 71 percent of Americans — American adults — said torture can be justified often or sometimes or rarely. Only 25 percent said never. Is that influential to you at all?

Dr. CASEY: I think that shows the influence of the Rupert Murdoch school of ethics — that we’ve been watching Jack Bauer, where torture is routinely shown to be effective on our television screens. I don’t think we decide what is moral and what is immoral based on the latest Pew poll about American opinion.

ABERNETHY: Jean, and what do you think of investigation and perhaps prosecution of those who authorized what was done?

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Well, it strikes me that, number one, it would immediately be politicized in a way that would be egregious and unacceptable, and number two, there’d be the question of how far back you go. Extraordinary rendition began under President Clinton, for example. So I think that that kind of going back and second-guessing those who in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 were dealing with shock and horror and fear about another imminent attack and were asked by CIA operatives in the field whether certain things were permissible—it strikes me that the best thing for now is to go on and to make clearer what we expect from those who are interrogating even high-value targets and operatives of Al Qaeda, for example.

ABERNETHY: Shaun — investigation, prosecution?

Dr. CASEY: We need a thorough moral accounting of what’s gone on. We’ve had an air of moral permissiveness in the last administration under which tens of thousands of innocent people have been tortured — not simply the special Al Qaeda cases. We need to find out why that happened. We need to find out who was accountable in order to build a very tall wall against this kind of behavior. We need to empower the folks who do the interrogating with very bright lines about what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. At this point that, in fact, is not clear.

ABERNETHY: But, quickly, would you come out saying that there could be sometimes an exception to the “never” position?

Dr. CASEY: No.

ABERNETHY: No. Never?

Dr. CASEY: Never.

ABERNETHY: Thanks to Shaun Casey and Jean Bethke Elshtain.

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Thank you.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: As Congress and the Administration begin an all-out debate on whether and when to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, we want to discuss here what America’s moral obligations are now to the Iraqi people. What does America owe Iraq?

Jean Bethke Elshtain is a professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School. William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. And Akbar Ahmed is a former Pakistani diplomat, now the chair of Islamic studies at the American University in Washington. His new book is JOURNEY INTO ISLAM. Welcome to each of you.

Bill Galston, let’s begin with you. What do you think is the top moral obligation that this country has to the Iraqi people?

William Galston

Dr. WILLIAM GALSTON, (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): First and foremost, to do the right thing for those tens of thousands of Iraqis who have cooperated closely with us and who will be at risk as we begin to draw down our forces–increasing risk. We should also do what we can to –

ABERNETHY: Drivers? Translators?

Dr. GALSTON: You name it. People who have visibly cooperated with us, and there are lots of them, to their credit. We should also do what we can to improve the security situation that we leave behind, and I think that will involve regionalizing the discussion–bringing in the neighbors in a much larger way, even though we have our differences with some of them. That may not work, in which case we should do our best to create corridors and safe havens for the many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have been subjected to ethnic cleansing as we speak. The Iraqis also have obligations to each other, and we cannot reconcile the factions in Iraq. They have to do it for themselves.

ABERNETHY: Jean Bethke Elshtain, what’s your top candidate for this country’s obligation now in Iraq?

Dr. JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN (Professor, Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School): Well, I evaluate our obligation through the lens of something called the just or justified war tradition, which means that every aspect of a conflict has to be evaluated ethically–the terms under which one intervenes and then what happens after one has intervened. And the primary end sought is a more just or decent situation than the one that pertained before the intervention. Now you might think that given 30 years of Baathist misrule and Saddam’s republic of fear that’s a pretty low bar to set. But, arguably, a situation of chaos and complete insecurity and random killing could be even worse, and we can’t permit that. So our obligations continue until the point at which we have a decent security environment, ability of people to go about their daily lives without terrible fear, and we are playing a role in rebuilding the infrastructure of the culture. We owe the Iraqi people that much.

ABERNETHY: I want to come back in a minute to the question of whether that can happen.

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Okay.

Jean Bethke Elshtain

ABERNETHY: Akbar, what’s your top sense of the moral obligation that we have?

Dr. AHMED: I would say the number one moral obligation, Bob, of America to Iraq is that of a friend to another friend and that is winning the trust, winning the friendship of that friend. In the region, in that part of the Muslim world, there is a sense, both from the critics of the United States and the friends of the United States, that America is a fair-weather friend. And they give the example of what happened in Afghanistan. Pakistanis talk about it. They give the example of the Shah of Iran, who staked his entire career on being an ally of the United States. And they believe that United States may just pack up one day and leave Iraq and leave it then to the other powers in the region. And there are big powers in the region trotting around quite happy to fish in troubled waters.

ABERNETHY: Let me come back to this question of whether we can create a situation in Iraq that will permit all these other things that all of you want to do. Bill?

Dr. GALSTON: Well, there’s an important moral principle: “ought” implies “can”–that you don’t have an obligation to do what is not in your power to do. I think it’s an open question whether we have it in our power to restore even the level of security that that thug Saddam had created at the point of the barrel of the gun. We’re throwing as many troops as we have, and it appears that they’ll stay there as long as they can before we have to start drawing them down for purely military purposes, and it’s not clear to me whether, if we don’t achieve security in the next six months, that we’re going to be able to do it at all unless the Iraqis do it for themselves.

ABERNETHY: Jean, do you think that we can create a situation in Iraq that is better than the one that existed before our intervention?

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Well, I think that we can help to create the pre-conditions for a much better situation in Iraq, an Iraq in which people do get to register their views on things. They don’t live in fear of being a political dissident that suddenly finds himself as part of a killing ground, buried in some anonymous grave some place. I think we can do that. But I agree with my colleague Bill Galston that this has to be a cooperative venture. It’s not something that America can do for the Iraqis as a solo effort. It’s simply isn’t.

Akbar Ahmed

ABERNETHY: But we have a responsibility–

Dr. ELSHTAIN: We have a huge responsibility.

ABERNETHY: –to do what we can.

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Absolutely.

ABERNETHY: Akbar, I think you have said or written that in the Muslim world a huge number of people think that this country is trying to defeat Islam itself. Is that true? Have you said that?

Dr. AHMED: Yes, Bob, the book that I’ve just published which you mentioned, JOURNEY INTO ISLAM, is based on an extended trip to the Muslim world with some young Americans, in fact, for Brookings. And the number one finding in the Muslim world as we talked to Muslims across the Muslim world was the perception that the United States is involved in leading a campaign to attack Islam itself. So if we can reach out and seriously begin to win hearts and minds we will bring down the temperature, bring down the anti-Americanism in the Muslim world. We need to be conscious of this and not close our eyes to this.

ABERNETHY: What if leaders of the United States or a large number of people in the United States were to say publicly we made a mistake and we’re sorry about it. What would the reaction to that be? Would we be looked on as fools?

Dr. AHMED: Not at all. It would reflect the greatness, the strength, the moral authority of the United States. It is not a sign of weakness to say that “I am sorry.” In fact, the symbolic gestures, Bob, make a huge impact across the world with the power of the media. When President Bush went to the mosque several times, it was widely appreciated–

Dr. ELSHTAIN: Yes, yes.

Dr. AHMED: –throughout the Muslim world. These are just gestures of friendship. We are talking a friend to friend. We need to reinforce the relationship of humans talking to humans, friends talking to friends.

ABERNETHY: Have we gotten to a point where we need to say we regret what we did?

Dr. ELSHTAIN: I think that there would be an appropriate way to do that. It can’t simply be a mea culpa, however; it has to be followed by our acknowledgment of our ongoing responsibility and engagement with Iraq and the Iraqi people.

ABERNETHY: And we haven’t said anything about two million refugees in Jordon, in Syria, in other places. What’s our responsibility to them?

Dr. GALSTON: Well, to do our best to ensure that they don’t become a permanent body of alienated and bitter exiles. We’ve seen what’s happened in other places in the Middle East when that has occurred. That would be a disaster, not only for us and for Iraq, but also for the countries that have been good enough to admit them.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to Bill Galston and to Jean Bethke Elshtain and to Akbar Ahmed. It’s good to see you all again.