This is a four part assignment.

Part 1: (1 pages)

When I was in the Marine Corps I had several Marines under my care. I can remember when I was in Japan, I had a young Marine who worked for me and his grandmother died. If the Marine was in the states all he would have to do is have the Red Cross notify the command to confirm that his grandmother really did pass away, submit to go on leave and that’s was it he’s out the door on leave. Because we were overseas it wasn’t that simple. There is a funded travel issue that comes in to play. The rules at the time was in order for a service member to receive funded travel back to the states he or she had to live with their grandparents. I asked the young Marine did he live with his grandmother. He said “no” at that point he didn’t rate funded travel back to the states. I could tell just from talking to the Marine he was very close to his grandmother and he really wanted to attend the funeral but he didn’t have the funds to travel from Japan to the states. I thought about it for a few hours and I went to the admin office and told them the Marine lived with his grandmother. That’s not what the Marine told me, he told me the exact opposite (he did not live with his grandmother). Because of my statement to the folks in the administrative office the Marine was given funded travel back to the states to attend his grandmother’s funeral. I told a lie in order for the Marine who didn’t have the money to purchase a ticket from Japan to the states, so he could attend the funeral. It bothered me for a few days because if the boss found out I would be in serious trouble. Then I thought to myself that I didn’t benefit from telling the lie, I help the Marine to pay his last respect at his grandmother’s funeral. So, in those few instances in life where you do wrong, as long as you’re not benefiting and someone is being help it’s okay. That's my ethical delemma.

 

Here is part 4 which require 2 to 3 sentence comment.

 

The example I believe that is appropriate for this question would be the extrajudicial executions in the Philippines.  Instead of identifying a myriad of national issues to aggressively address, President Rodrigo Duterte, current president of the Philippines has chosen to stomp out the illicit drug trade in his country.  Duterte has gone on record as stating “We will not stop until the last drug lord . . . and the last pusher have surrendered or are put either behind bars or below the ground, if they so wish.” Iyengar, R., Cruz, K. D., & Royandoyan, R. (2016) .  Since being sworn into office approximately four months ago, over 3000 "alleged" drug dealers have been executed, with 41% of this number being executed without a trial in the month of September alone.  With disturbing numbers like that, 700,000 other self identified users or dealers have summarily surrendered to the Filipino Police.

With all of that being stated or known just off of one issue, one would certainly ask "what are next four top issues affecting the Philippines?" Well civil rights abuse, poverty, corruption, and sovereignty issues with China are all issues Duterte and his administration should be focusing on in addition to rampant drug dealing.

Do I agree with the way the drug dealing issues are being dealt with?  The answer is emphatically no!  One must identify the root problem, killing the "diseased tree" and not just picking off the "rotten fruit".  What I mean by this is President Duterte is plucking the rotten fruit from the diseased tree called illicit drugs.  Instead, Duterte should destroy the source, apprehend the alleged drug dealers/lords, trying and subsequently convict them, and if so execute them.  There is too much of the process that is being circumvented just to get to the desired result.  The illicit drug problem is not being addressed from the point of view regarding the drug user.  The Ulitarian approach to this problem is preventing issue in its entirety to be address.  Create drug treatment centers, drug education, and more importantly stricter anti-drug laws. 

 

References

Iyengar, R., Cruz, K. D., & Royandoyan, R. (2016). The Killing Season Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's War on Drugs. Time, 188(14), 46.