Double Injustice

 The New York Times reported yesterday that the Trump administration is apparently planning to deport more than a hundred Afghan nationals to Pakistan—with the full knowledge and deliberate intent, as part of the agreement, that Pakistan will then subsequent force them back across the border to their home country. 

The planned group of deportees reportedly includes people who would be obvious targets for persecution or assassination if they are sent back to Afghanistan, including relatives of people who risked their lives to aid the U.S. war effort against the Taliban. 

Arthur Schopenhauer writes, in his On the Basis of Morality, that there is a type of wrong in this world that is "loathed and detested as something revolting and outrageous," even beyond just the regular sort of injustice. It is a crime so odious that at its sight even "the gods, so to speak, cover their faces." (Payne trans. throughout)

This crime is called a "double injustice," writes Schopenhauer, and it "occurs when anyone has expressly undertaken the obligation to protect someone else in a definite respect; consequently, the nonfulfillment of the obligation would in itself be an injury and thus a wrong; but in addition, he now attacks and injures the other man at the very spot where he should protect him."

This, I realized upon reading it, is precisely what makes the Trump administration's treatment of Afghan refugees so specifically and egregiously noxious and evil; such a total moral disgrace before all the world—even beyond their many other atrocities.  

It is bad enough, after all, that the U.S. government is trying to commit the wrong of sending people who have fled persecution and harm back to the hands of their tormentors. That would be an injustice if committed against any nationality. 

But what is here added to the evil is the fact that this is a group of people to whom the U.S. government specifically pledged its aid and protection—both when it invaded Afghanistan, and subsequently when it pulled out its troops and promised that anyone who aided the U.S. war effort would find welcome and protection on our shores. 

Thus, the Trump administration is committing the same ancient violation of the laws of all hospitality as the King of Numidia, as described in Arthur Koestler's The Gladiators (who obviously had in mind here his own plight as a refugee from Hitler): 

"It turned out that the King of Numidia, who had seemed friendly and put them off with all sorts of promises, had only done so in order to make them feel safe, and extradite them to the dictator; for dictator Sulla's power reached far and his thirst for vengeance was unquenchable." (Simon trans.)

So too, after seemingly welcoming Afghan refugees in 2021 and making them feel safe—our government now proposes to extradite them back to the hands of the Taliban.

This maltreatment of people who trusted us is more than just an injustice; it is a double injustice in Schopenhauer's sense. It is not merely a wrong against a group of innocent people—the same way the administration is wronging Haitians, Syrians, Somalis, and so many others—but a betrayal against people we specifically pledged our honor to protect. 

This is what makes this act not only unjust, but faithless, to use Koestler's word for it. It is, as they would say in Christopher Nolan's adaptation of The Odyssey, a breach of "Zeus's law." And so, before the spectacle of it, even the gods hang their heads and avert their eyes in shame and disgust.