532 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 5 / 2015 chains and the success of productivity in accordance with the number of elements manufactured without defects. Collateral damage is more an issue for engineers than for philosophers or moralists: in the face of productivity, considerations of ethics or culpability dissipate, because this form of activity does not obey ethical order but follows efficacy controls, more in keeping with a factory. It is rather like replacing Aristotle with Henry Ford. If the errors and collateral damage are scarce, we can assume them. We respond in a similar way to traffic accident statistics. Here too there is a margin of admissibility or tolerance; if that is exceeded, we can demand concrete measures from the government for the repair, maintenance or redesign of roads. The basis for coping with collateral damage, which is statistics, transforms the ethical with the acceptable, inferred from a mathematical formula created ad hoc, founded on the analysis and interpretation of data, which intentionally explains regular conditions for random phenomena. There is no scope for ethics here. All non-voluntary acts of free will cannot be imputed to the actor. Neither can those which, although rare, constitute a deviation of the course of events. If out of every million engines manufactured by Ford one functions badly, it is accepted without any great outcry; if out of every hundred bombs launched one does not impact where it should and kills someone, death is accepted, because it is an “accident” that reduces errors to a 1% (a figure) attributable to what is imponderable. In order to render ethical judgement impossible, it is sufficient to demonstrate that the actor was working subject to external, incontrollable and unpredictable conditions, a sort of mathematised “force of destiny”. Thus we eliminate any judgement, ethical or penal; hence the liberating attempt which is the mathematical justification of acts; statistics (its acceptability) kills ethics. Reflect for a moment on the “ethical challenges” of all statistics, raised by Seltzer.69 Justification by means of a display of figures versus the “other” or versus political audiences creates a virtual image; a hyper-reality that frees governments and actors concerned from judgement, rebuke or punishment. Proof of this is the acceptance of collateral damage according to the principle “good intentions, bad results”. Truman affirmed that the nuclear attack on Japan was because Case No. IT-06-90-A, Date: 16 November 2012, Prosecutor v. Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markač”, in www.icty.org/x/cases/gotovina/acjug/in/121116_judgement.pdf. According to section 58: “the Appeals Chamber observes that the Trial Chamber did not explain the specific basis on which it arrived at a 200 metre margin of error as a reasonable interpretation of evidence on record. The Trial Judgement contains no indication that any evidence considered by the Trial Chamber suggested a 200 metre margin of error”. 69 SELTZER, W. US Federal Statistics and Statistical Ethics: The role of the American Statistical Associations. Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice. Revised and extended version presented at the Seminar organised by the Methodology Section, Washington Statistical Society, New York (2001, February). http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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