I

t was Oct. 16, 1859. The United States of America was divided over the slavery issue between a pro-slavery South and an anti-slavery North. An old anti-slavery man, John Brown, led dozens of people to capture a federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Their intention was noble, much more noble than fame or revenge. They wanted to arm the slaves and provoke them to rebel against their masters. That way, they hoped to end slavery in the South.

Unfortunately ' or perhaps fortunately ' Brown failed to provoke the slaves to join him. A Marine detachment came and took the armory back. Many of Brown's men were killed. Brown himself was captured and later sentenced to death. His composure in the face of death inspired the North's anti-slavery sentiment: 'I am ... feeling the strongest assurance that in no other possible way could I be used to so much advance the cause of God; and of humanity.'

One and half centuries later, 11 Indonesian commandos raided a prison in Sleman, Yogyakarta and killed four inmates. Although the Army (TNI) claimed the killings were motivated by esprit de corps, the carnage represented revenge. The inmates, who the Army identified as thugs, had allegedly killed the soldiers' ex-commander, who had saved the life of one of the soldiers during a combat operation.

Just like Brown's, the actions of the soldiers have ignited controversies. Many are supportive of them, as evident in the campaign against thuggery. They argue that the inmates deserved to die because they were thugs. Killing them was a service for the country. It made society safer. Unsurprisingly, the soldiers, much like Brown, believed what they did was right. Is that so?

Far from ending the North-South division on slavery, Brown exacerbated it. The pro-slavery South believed that Brown acted on behalf of the anti-slavery North. Governments of slave states started to limit anti-slavery speeches. Pro-slavery radicals even put US$50,000 on the head of William Seward, a leading anti-slavery Republican and Abraham Lincoln's future secretary of state, who knew nothing of the raid. Worst of all, Brown's move emboldened the South's secessionist sentiment, which would lead to a civil war a little more than a year later. Brown's raid, no matter how noble its purpose was, was lawless and what it brought was even more lawlessness.

The commandos' operation was equally lawless. To say it from a militaristic point of view, if in wars, soldiers should respect the rights of prisoners of war, with any violations leading to a military tribunal, should not these prisoners' rights be stronger, as they were civilians in a time of peace? In no case can justifications be made for the soldiers' actions of killing the prisoners.

Though some respect should be given to them for their honesty in accepting responsibility for their actions, the soldiers have tainted the image of the military. It will be a great test for the TNI to try its own members for doing something that is perhaps publicly popular but morally and legally wrong.

On the other side of the coin, the soldiers have underlined society's desperation with crimes and lawlessness in the country. Notwithstanding the great wrong done by these commandos, an equally great, if not greater, wrong is the government's inability to enforce the law and clean up the corrupt justice system. With politicians in line for corruption charges, police generals possessing fishy assets of billions and religious thugs unaccountable for their violence, the public might begin to wonder if they can still trust the system to provide them with justice and security.

Actually, that happened in 1859. Brown also wondered if he still could believe in the system to limit the extension of slavery and uphold the American credo that 'all men are created equal'. What he found instead was that the government became more and more accommodating of slavery. He could no longer trust the system, so he took the matter into his own hands.

Back to the present, if the commandos, who were part of the system, were not confident that the system would bring justice for the murder of their comrade, how then can we describe the desperation of millions of citizens who have no arms or power to channel their hopelessness? If desperation and disbelief toward the system make a cold-blooded murder right, should not they also make right (God forbid) the insurrections of disaffected civilians?

Doris Goodwin's Team of Rivals pictures a moving moment when Salmon Chase, a leading abolitionist and Lincoln's future secretary of treasury, asks his daughter Nettie to dismantle a miniature fort she had built with her friends to honor Brown. Chase told Nettie that slavery was a great wrong but 'a great wrong could not be righted in the way poor old John Brown had attempted to do.'

There is a requirement for a state to survive and the submission of all before the law. When we start to agree that certain people or groups have the right to withdraw their obedience for whatever purpose, we are very likely digging our own country's grave.

The writer is a Fulbright student studying social psychology at Loyola University Chicago.