Since 2004, about 2,200 police officers have been killed here in Diyala, a northeastern province that is a stronghold of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and a crucible of Iraq’s volatile mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. They have been killed in broad offensives against police stations, by magnetic bombs under their cars, by pistol shots at checkpoints.

At least three of them, confronting suicide bombers, have made the extraordinary decision to wrap their arms around their killers to absorb the blast.

The New York Times short profile of two of these police officers, Bilal Ali Muhammad and Naseem Sabah Ismail, does an excellent job of highlighting an example of moral heroism in Iraq that, otherwise, we might not have noticed (HT: Sara Kohen). What’s missing, however, is what I take to be the most important point: theorizing on why these police officers sacrificed themselves for others:

Pulling open the man’s jacket, Mr. Muhammad found an explosive belt strapped to his chest. Whether from instinct or training, or sheer lack of any other options, he acted in that instant.

It’s certainly not “sheer lack of any other options,” as the article points quite clearly to his other options:

If he ran and took cover, Mr. Muhammad, 31, had a chance to save himself, to continue supporting his widowed mother, to help put his younger brother through college and to watch his three young daughters grow up.

If we ought to chalk his behavior up to his training as a police officer, then wouldn’t we see more police officers taking this sort of decisive and heroic action in confronting suicide bombers? Why do we have only these three examples?

Lastly, then, what about instinct? Do others (police officers, bystanders, whomever) somehow not have the same instincts? Well, that really depends on what we mean by instincts.

I want to argue that some people are predisposed to act in a morally heroic way because of their background and because of little things they do throughout their lives — consciously or unconsciously — to prepare themselves to act heroically when the time comes.

Specifically, what tends to separate moral heroes from others is they are able to identify with those who initially seem unlike them, they have thought critically about the values instilled in them by their families, and they make choices that take into account the kind of life they want to live in the limited amount of time they have.

For a more detailed discussion of each of these important points and how they impacted one individual’s morally heroic actions, check out a paper I published earlier this year.