No, But C.I.A. agents are not doctors and they’re not prescribing Viagra to patients. That’s the point, as you well know.

James, this is so intellectually dishonest, it’s breathtaking — all the more so coming from a respected blogger such as yourself.

The entire point in this discussion is that an agency of the U.S. government is dispensing Viagra to men in Afghanistan without a prescription. I have repeated that point over and over.

1. You adduce zero evidence that any woman had non-consensual sex as a result of the CIA handing out Viagra.

2. If, arguendo, they did, the blame rests with the perpetrator, not the CIA.

You’re an asshole.

Sorry to vent simplistic vitriol into one of your comment threads again, Kathy. I guess I just can’t leave this kind of idiocy alone. I read Joyner’s rebuttal post to you at his blog, OTB, where he basically says that you don’t have a point. But now in comments here, he’s essentially agreeing with your post… But still claiming that you’re wrong. And that’s just an asshole move, so I can’t not call him such.

Our objective is also to be ethical.

We can’t talk to the wives. We cannot know or predict what the wives in question consider distasteful or inhumane. We need to kill our enemies who are attempting to kill us. We have to make a call.

Perhaps Thomas Aquinas’ “Doctrine of Double Effect” can shed ethical light. This description is from Ronald Munson, in “Ethics for Military Leaders”, Simon & Shuster, 1998, p. 397 [my notes in brackets]:

[A]n action should be performed only if the intention is to bring about the good effect [dead Taliban/modernized Afghanistan] and the bad effect [unhappy sex] will be an unintended or indirect consequence. [...] Four conditions must be satisfied:

1. The action [the barter] itself must be morally indifferent or morally good.
2. The bad effect [unhappy sex] must not be the means [pill = info = target + kill Taliban] by which the good effect [dead Taliban/modernized Afghanistan] is achieved.
3. The motive must be the achievement of the good effect only.
4. The good effect [dead Taliban/modernized Afghanistan] must be at least equivalent in importance to the bad effect [unhappy sex].

Thanks for allowing me to comment here. I have found this subject more interesting than originally expected.

So…if a doctor prescribes Viagra to a patient, who then proceeds to commit rape, it’s the doctor’s fault? Surely, reasonable expectation of immanent criminality has to exist before culpability for follow-on actions perpetrated by a second party obtains?

No. If, arguendo, they did, with the aid of a prescription drug that made it physically possible for them to do so, then the blame rests both with the perpetrator and with the CIA.

Yes, exactly. We don’t know what kind of husbands the men are. We only know they want the Viagra. In the case of the husbands’ wives, we don’t even know that much.

But we’re still dispensing a medication without a prescription that is illegal to dispense without a prescription without knowing who the men are or whether their wives want them to have the Viagra.

Pharmacists fill prescriptions; they don’t write them.

Honestly I’d say that the use of the term “warlord” probably cemented an image in your head to reinforce the vision of the meek and submissive victims wives so common to outsiders not familiar with Muslim societies.

No, it wasn’t the term “warlord.” It was (and is) the failure to ask what a woman’s wishes might be with regard to her husband’s taking Viagra (or, more specifically, the effects of his taking Viagra that affect her). That point only becomes stronger when you argue that Afghan women are not meek and submissive.

I just realized that I attributed direct quotations to you that were actually gcotharn’s, not yours. I apologize for that.

Kathy

I think there’s a larger point here that you’re missing. Maybe I haven’t expressed it clearly enough. The issue with this story is not just the specific possibility of marital rape — that’s just one illustration a few bloggers have used to, uh, illustrate (sorry, can’t think of another word) the problem.

The larger problem is the fact that the C.I.A. is dispensing a prescription-only erectile dysfunction medication in Afghanistan for the purpose of getting information, not for any medical purpose. That in itself is wrong. The other piece of the problem is that in doing this, the C.I.A. personnel doing this have clearly not stopped to ask themselves or consider what the impact of this policy might be on the women in the lives of the men who are being given the Viagra. Cheap and obvious jokes about what the impact might be aside (and not that you’ve made those jokes; just in general) the entire concept that there actually might be undesirable impacts on Afghan women is not even a concept people commenting on this seem capable of understanding. I simply don’t know anymore how to explain what to me is such an obvious point if people don’t understand it — although i keep trying because I feel I must; this reaction I’m seeing is so upsetting to me.

When Viagra or similar medications are prescribed in this country, such prescriptions are not just handed out indiscriminately. A doctor’s decision to prescribe Viagra in this country (or any medication or medical treatment that affects more than one person) would be made in the context, not simply of the man’s erectile dysfunction. It would be made in the context of the man’s specific sexual history, sexual contacts, his relationships, etc.”Why do you feel you need this medication?” And if the answer was something like, “Well, I want to be able to go into any bar, pick up a girl, and fuck her all night and stay hard,” depending on whether the doctor was a good doctor, maybe he might not prescribe it in that case?

The entire point here is that the C.I.A. agents handing out Viagra don’t know the personal circumstances or motivations of the men they’re giving it to. I mean, obviously. That’s the point. They don’t care. So without knowing the individual you’re dealing with, without knowing anything about his sexual history, his family history, his relationships, etc., etc., how do you or how does anyone know whether marital rape or any rape is a possibility?

Do you see what I’m saying here? It’s not that marital rape will happen, it’s that you don’t know what will happen or how any given Afghan male will treat his wives or what his motives are — so you *don’t know* how the women in his life will feel about this, or anything else. And worse, you don’t think there’s any need to.

If dispensing Viagra hurries the day their subjugation lessens, or hurries the day their daughters’ or granddaughters’ subjugations lessen, then I believe Afghan wives would encourage us to dispense Viagra, and would call us damn fools for failing to distinguish greater problems from lesser problems.

How is dispensing Viagra going to hasten the day their subjugation ends, if their Viagra-fueled husband is brutal to them, which is a fairly common problem in Afghanistan? How can you claim to “own” this argument based on concern for Afghan women’s subjugation when you cannot even grasp the concept that a woman might have an opinion and that you might want to find out what it is before proceeding? Dustin, it seems to me that the very assumptions your argument reveals totally invalidate and belie the concern you say informs them.

Don’t you see, can’t you understand, that the very syntactical formulation you use — “IF Viagra helps end women’s subjugation, THEN I BELIEVE Afghan women WOULD ENCOURAGE us….” — is pure speculation uninformed by ANY inquiry into what Afghan women ACTUALLY FEEL and think?

If women’s wishes don’t matter, then nothing else matters, either.

My point is rather simple.

1. You adduce zero evidence that any woman had non-consensual sex as a result of the CIA handing out Viagra.

2. If, arguendo, they did, the blame rests with the perpetrator, not the CIA.

3. Gathering intelligence by means of dispensation of licit drugs for people who can them use them or not voluntarily is not problematic.

Afghan wives’ major problem (for those Afghan wives who believe they have a problem) is not that they might have sex with their husbands an extra dozen times per year. Their problem is their culture has encouraged their subjugation. If they are in a bad marriage, their overriding problem is their bad husband and their inability to divorce him. Distasteful sex is only part of a larger picture of difficulty. If dispensing Viagra hurries the day their subjugation lessens, or hurries the day their daughters’ or granddaughters’ subjugations lessen, then I believe Afghan wives would encourage us to dispense Viagra, and would call us damn fools for failing to distinguish greater problems from lesser problems.

Viagra hand wringers evince a dulled ability to discriminate between lesser good and greater good; between lesser evil and greater evil. They also remind of an old saying: only an intellectual could believe something so stupid.

Addendum: I agree with Dustin. I just chose not to go into that myself. He explains himself very well.

Yes Afghanistan has a strongly patriarchal Muslim society. Yes, not all polygamist marriages are happy (especially in instances of young brides, oppressive husbands, etc).

All that being said it’s a massive stretch to go from this story to accusations of marital rape. Honestly I’d say that the use of the term “warlord” probably cemented an image in your head to reinforce the vision of the meek and submissive victims wives so common to outsiders not familiar with Muslim societies. Does that situation exist? Yes, it does. There’s no getting around that, especially when discussing conservative Muslim society. But not always, and actually inside of the home it’s not uncommon for the wives to “rule the roost”, even in conservative settings.

So this idea that simply giving an aging man a pharmaceutical to give him back control of his failing body is akin to telling him to go home and rape his wives is, to put it nicely, a stretch. Do you look at every American pharmacist as rape-enablers then? Or is this simply in response to the fact that this is a Muslim society?

Look, I hate most multiculturalism arguments. They’re often filled with the misguided notion that there’s no such thing as right or wrong and that just because something’s different we can’t discuss or critique it. Well, in this instance it seems you’ve gone the opposite route. All we know about these men is that they’re A) old and in physical decline, and B) in positions of authority in their community. We know nothing else. For all we know you could be right about every one of them. Or you could be completely wrong and they could be wonderful husbands.

We simply don’t know so this outrage of yours is, while well intentioned, likely misplaced.

You want to change the situation? Trust me, cutting off successful modes of diplomacy and/or negotiation is the wrong way to go about it.