The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
1–10 of 53 posts
Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
#2The article's veracity for me becomes questionable when it mentions that his father was a Catholic lay priest. No such thing exists.
Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
#3We either view Ongwen as an morally culpable human who is capable of making moral choices (certainly by the time he reached adulthood) and hold him responsible for those choices, and likely lock him away for many, many years as punishment for the horrible choices he made.
The other way is that we view him as so broken by his childhood trauma that he has had no moral capacity, even in his adulthood. If that is the case, he still needs to be locked away for many years, because someone with that level of brokenness is not safe human society.
Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
#4The article's veracity for me becomes questionable when it mentions that his father was a Catholic lay priest. No such thing exists.
Since it says that he was a teacher, could they be using it to say that he was not an official ordained priest?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priesthood_in_the_Catholic_Chu...
Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
#5He did not take prior offers of amnesty, that went back to 2000, and only surrendered when his position in the LRA became untenable.
This seems enough to condemn him. It's a complicated issue, which is why blanket amnesty gets offered in these kinds of situations - to people who want to re-integrate back into society. He did not do so until he had no other choice.
The split personality disorder is a beautiful story, that fails to explain why he didn't surrender at any point in the preceding two decades. If we were to suppose he was not culpable for his actions during his Dominic B states, Dominic A must surely be culpable for not extracting himself from a situation where Dominic B would keep on committing his atrocities.
Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
#6We either view Ongwen as an morally culpable human who is capable of making moral choices (certainly by the time he reached adulthood) and hold him responsible for those choices, and likely lock him away for many, many years as punishment for the horrible choices he made. The other way is that we view him as so broken by his childhood trauma that he has had no moral capacity, even in his adulthood. If that is the cas…
> If that is the case, he still needs to be locked away for many years, because someone with that level of brokenness is not safe human society.
Or rehabilitated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_(penology)
> The effectiveness of Norway's methods is evident as they hold the lowest recidivism rate worldwide at 20% as of December 2014.
Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
#7The article's veracity for me becomes questionable when it mentions that his father was a Catholic lay priest. No such thing exists.
Since it says that he was a teacher, could they be using it to say that he was not an official ordained priest? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priesthood_in_the_Catholic_Chu...
I understand what the article means: he was a catechist. A priest or a layperson can be a catechist. But lay is the opposite of priest.
Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
#8We either view Ongwen as an morally culpable human who is capable of making moral choices (certainly by the time he reached adulthood) and hold him responsible for those choices, and likely lock him away for many, many years as punishment for the horrible choices he made. The other way is that we view him as so broken by his childhood trauma that he has had no moral capacity, even in his adulthood. If that is the cas…
There's a sort of disconnect going on in our sense of justice between gaining explanatory power to describe why a person did something, and that person's culpability. We seem to think if we can understand why they behaved in such a way (for instance, they were victims themselves, they had a mental disorder, etc.) they must merit compassion. The converse is perhaps more troublesome: if we can't understand how someone could have done that thing, it is somehow more heinous.
My view is that this dynamic in our collective compassion does not help us accomplish justice. It seems that to pursue justice we must believe in agency of the individual. Agency to, no matter what their circumstances, make the right choices. As soon as we begin to weigh our explanatory power over individual agency we lose justice. Am I happy this man met justice? No, it's deeply sad and points to an irrevocable brokenness in humankind. Was it deserved? Yes. It was.
Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
#9We either view Ongwen as an morally culpable human who is capable of making moral choices (certainly by the time he reached adulthood) and hold him responsible for those choices, and likely lock him away for many, many years as punishment for the horrible choices he made. The other way is that we view him as so broken by his childhood trauma that he has had no moral capacity, even in his adulthood. If that is the cas…
> If that is the case, he still needs to be locked away for many years, because someone with that level of brokenness is not safe human society. Or rehabilitated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_(penology) > The effectiveness of Norway's methods is evident as they hold the lowest recidivism rate worldwide at 20% as of December 2014.
There's still that 20% that fails to be rehabilitated. This seems like it would be one of those cases.
Re: The trial of a child soldier who became a brutal rebel commander
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since it says that he was a teacher, could they be using it to say that he was not an official ordained priest? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priesthood_in_the_Catholic_Chu...
I understand what the article means: he was a catechist. A priest or a layperson can be a catechist. But lay is the opposite of priest.
Isn’t “a Catholic lay priest” how you’d best describe the person, in colloquial terms, to a readership that wasn’t familiar with the definition of catechist?