License to Dirty Your Hands

License to Dirty Your Hands

I know it may be late in the semester to talk about this topic, but the subject of “dirty hands” had never really seemed apparent to me in the world of politics around me. However, I recently went to see the new James Bond film Skyfall and all I could think about were the necessary evils of having a secret service that operates in ways unknown to the public. Often these government agencies, such as the CIA or MI6 for example, are involved in activities that the general public would consider immoral or illegal, and in fact much of the time they are illegal. There is one scene in particular that I found especially interesting in terms of the “dirty hands” philosophy. It was a scene, near the beginning of the film, in which Bond is fighting with an unknown “bad guy” on the top of the train and Bond’s partner must take out the other guy with a shot from her rifle. She hesitates, but M tells her to “take the shot,” knowing full well that it might hit Bond in the process. As I watched this scene I realized that this fit in perfectly with the concept of “dirty hands,” especially do to the fact that not only were illegal or violent activities taking place, but one of the agency’s own agents would be harmed in the process. This is exactly what it means to get your hands dirty. Deciding to take action in a way that, while harming some of your own people or going against the moral code of the nation, ultimately helps the majority of the nation in the end.

Here is the clip in which we can see "Dirty Hands" in action:

            We see these sorts of activities take place in the events of our own nation. When the waterboarding scandal arose from the activities that were taking place during the war in Iraq, much of the population was initially shocked that our own nation, seen by man citizens as the paragon of world justice, would act in such a despicable and seemingly evil way. As citizens of this nation we have never felt that torture was a justified punishment or fair tool to gather information. However, as many began to think about it, the view on this activity began to change. It was an activity that, while undesirable, protected the nation by gathering information from our enemies. Now, I am not condoning this activity myself, but it should be noted that it fits the definition of dirty hands. This example is different from the Skyfall example due to the fact that it deals with foreign and native participants while in the film both were part of the same agency, however, the theory behind the actions taken in both are the same. Each action was not the ideal action to take, and in fact had many negative consequences, however both were meant to ultimately protect the greater good of the people.