Thanks for the thoughts. I will write a few expanded responses in a bit.
Military and War Ethics
- Thread starter Giambattista
- Start date
Here I was thinking people lost their soul when they joined the military. In fact it's suppose to be the best part of getting out of the military, the day you get your soul back. I figure I might have had it all wrong. Some people just lose their soul when thinking of war.
People get so melodramatic about joining the military. The military is the most pragmatic part of society because by definition it has to be. Tom Clancy explained the military like a big guard dog. Its nice to have one keeping your house safe, but whenever you have company over its not something you like to show off too much.
Doreen, surely you know that you are treading in murky waters when you question these type of questions - when you try to "explain" or rationalize (or condemn or despise) certain activities in wartime.
I picked "shooting children" as a specific example, both because it tends to cause the most animosity, and because it is one I have second-hand knowledge of.
Truly - look to the depths of your soul, forget how you got on the battlefield in the first place (for the moment, and consider what you would do when the following behavior is common, if not rampant, in some conflicts):
The enemy (which could be a Western nation, say even the U.S.), succumbs to the idea of strapping explosives to little "Kathy", the cute three year old whom the grunts have fed chocolate to in the past, and sending her to run, prance, skip, whatever over to enemy line - with the express purpose of setting said explosives off via remote control, within "enemy" groups - the same groups who fed "Kathy" chocolate yesterday.
How are the combatants to deal with this type of activity? Ignore it, become "martyrs" (in the loosest sense of the word), or save their buddies and their unit? Seriously, you tell me?
Back to the personal side of it, my brother-in-law, from the 'Nam era, had no problem relating stories of.... are you ready?
Blowing a three year old off this earth with one well placed shot between they eyes - as she came bubbling over to the troops - mostly based on being tuned in to "situational awareness" - something is different today. Perhaps the elders who sent her scampering over are acting a little different to day, whatever.
Action on this is difficult, except perhaps to the most jaded psychopath. To the other, it is a situation which arises from day to day, week to week, etc. Point is the unit, or even just one man, has advance knowledge of "something's up". One hundred percent accurate? No, of course not, and not the point being argued here.
What would you do in this (or similar) conditions? Take the chance that things are just a little weird today, and Kathy, who may vary well be acting the same as yesterday (especially as far as she can tell), really is uninvolved in whats about to going down...
My brother in law (Marine sharpshooter (sniper) - 78 confirmed kills first tour in 'Nam, NOT counting small children) mentioned you get to the unthinkable position of having almost no hesitation in doing just that - "blow her away". After all, think of the potential consequences of doing the opposite and your unit dies. This is what I want you to consider - right? Wrong? Or completely outside of any "regular" environment in which to consider it?
No weaseling, again, on how you got to that exact point described above in blood - it happened, you're there - so you have to deal with it - you have three seconds? What does one do? You may have no more than a few seconds of indecision, but that changes naught the amount of time (lot's and lot's of time) to feel the second guessing, the consideration of "if I only had...", the reflection of little Kathy's parents, etc. Who is responsible? The group here that sent little "Kathy" to her death, or the hardened soldier who saw "something" wrong, raised a rifle and condemned Kathy to death - one shot, one kill. And God forbid, what if there were no explosives in this particular case?
Do you have nothing but cut and dried condemnations to offer?
Please...
Try to understand both sides (only of this sort of low layer, one (or a few) mens' ethical decisions. In seconds!
Once you have that figured out, try to appreciate (or denigrate, if that is your final choice) that these people participate at all, so you have a warm, soft bed to sleep in tonight!
Where do you draw the line?
Randwolf,
you are completely misunderstanding my post. I never even weighed in on my own ideas about wartime ethics and what they should be. I was shocked that people considered the topic meaningless and seemed to be basically saying to the OP writer that the topic should not even be talked about, war is hell, all if fair in it, period. I think that is very strange and I would guess that both of these people would, in fact, protest certain decisions by their buddies or by officers above them ON ETHICAL GROUNDS.
Do you think the topic is meaningless?
If you do you are going against the actions and decisions made by soldiers both in the field and in command posts and in classrooms in peacetime, where the issues are confronted, often with great bravery. Somehow you took my post as saying that soldiers are bad if they are not nice and fight with Marquis de Queensbury rules, etc., etc. I have not asserted that.
Context is important and I feel like you took my posts out of context and then interpreted them in the worst possible way.
I used extreme examples to see if the people saying there was no discussion to be had really thought everything was moral and there was no need to even consider such issues. I mentioned Yugoslavia because there, for example, children were killed not because they were threats but sometimes just for fun or because of who they might someday grow up to be. And where rape was used systematically, in other words cold bloodedly as a weapon. Maybe those guys really think that kind of stuff is OK. But I find it odd that they think the issue is not even worth discussing.
For all you know I might be more understanding than you about what soldiers do, especially in the heat of battle. Please let me take a stand before you judge it.
you are completely misunderstanding my post. I never even weighed in on my own ideas about wartime ethics and what they should be. I was shocked that people considered the topic meaningless and seemed to be basically saying to the OP writer that the topic should not even be talked about, war is hell, all if fair in it, period. I think that is very strange and I would guess that both of these people would, in fact, protest certain decisions by their buddies or by officers above them ON ETHICAL GROUNDS.
Do you think the topic is meaningless?
If you do you are going against the actions and decisions made by soldiers both in the field and in command posts and in classrooms in peacetime, where the issues are confronted, often with great bravery. Somehow you took my post as saying that soldiers are bad if they are not nice and fight with Marquis de Queensbury rules, etc., etc. I have not asserted that.
Context is important and I feel like you took my posts out of context and then interpreted them in the worst possible way.
I used extreme examples to see if the people saying there was no discussion to be had really thought everything was moral and there was no need to even consider such issues. I mentioned Yugoslavia because there, for example, children were killed not because they were threats but sometimes just for fun or because of who they might someday grow up to be. And where rape was used systematically, in other words cold bloodedly as a weapon. Maybe those guys really think that kind of stuff is OK. But I find it odd that they think the issue is not even worth discussing.
For all you know I might be more understanding than you about what soldiers do, especially in the heat of battle. Please let me take a stand before you judge it.
Why wouldn't they be?
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
The Nuremberg Principles were carefully drafted so they would not be a burden. "Military necessity" is specifically identified as a valid excuse for doing just about anything. To my knowledge there has never been any serious crusade to prosecute United States military or civilian personnel for the excessive slaughter of innocents in two Japanese cities with minimal tactical importance, even though they are textbook examples of terrorism: attacks on civilians in an attempt to convince them to adopt a policy (surrender) so unpopular among them that there was no other way to convince them. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been accepted as "military necessities" because if we had not killed those people Japan would never have surrendered until the last four year-old was gunned down while charging into a batallion of Marines waving her dead daddy's samurai sword. We accepted a couple of hundred thousand casualties because to win the war conventionally would have taken tens of millions of casualties among the Japanese and several million on our side, and obliterated Japan as a nation like the Aztecs and Incas. This is "situational ethics" writ so large that our heads and our hearts will never stop hurting from it. (And I was only two.) But it was also "military necessity."
We didn't "lose" Vietnam: it was never ours to lose. We arrogantly stomped into the middle of somebody else's civil war because our parents thought it was our duty to free the rest of the world from communism. The allegedly "capitalist, democratic" faction in Vietnam lost that war all by themselves, by being corrupt and not earning the loyalty of their own constituents.
As for Iraq and Afghanistan, those aren't "wars" and we're "bogged down" because we have no goals by which to measure "victory." Backward Baby Bush sent us in there claiming that we'd get the people who were responsible for 9/11, in order to distract us from the reality that the people who were responsible for it were his business allies in Saudi Arabia. For his family, business interests trump patriotism and he should be prosecuted for treason. Since Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and Iraq had no WMDs, we have no goal to achieve there. Since the only thing Afghanistan had to do with 9/11 is that Osama--a Saudi Arabian!--was hiding out there, and he's now surely long gone, we have no goal there either.
In both countries we were fighting against "enemies" of our own making. Carter and Brzezinski created the network of militias that became the Taliban, to fight against the Russian-created Northern Alliance back in the days when the entire Middle East was a chessboard for fighting the Cold War and the people who had the misfortune to live there were American and Russian pawns. We backed Saddam and gave him all kinds of assistance during his war with Iran on the principle, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," and he figured he was our ally.
It appears to me that our "accomplishments" so far include:
- Overthrowing the only secular, pro-Western state in the entire Middle East.
- Turning that country into a Shiite nation which will inevitably ally with Iran, the only other major Shiite country on earth.
- Destroying what little semblance of stability the region had.
- Chasing the terrorists all the way into Pakistan, an Islamic nation that is only an erstwhile ally of the USA and has nuclear weapons.
The Nuremberg principles make it clear that if you have reasonable suspicion that a civilian of an enemy country may be a guerrilla warrior out of uniform--even a child--and an attack is immiment, then it's up to your judgment whether "military necessity" allows you no options except to kill him. You don't have much time to dither and nobody's going to rag on you for doing the best you could under the circumstances. The fact that children have already been exploited this way is overwhelming evidence that the threat is statistically real, even if it does not materialize in any specific instance.
The "crimes against peace" that should be the subject of this discussion include some of the crap that's been going on in Iraq. Some of it is controversial but there's no way to excuse raping a minor as "military necessity." Those guys were simply assholes taking out their frustration on a hapless child. They deserve to rot in prison (I don't support capital punishment even for assholes) because they've brought dishonor to the U.S. military and to our entire nation.
I don't see any problem here. If you have reason to think you're being attacked then you get to fight back. War is full of incidents in which innocent people are killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the enemy soldiers honestly believe they are a threat.
This is a reason to avoid war in the first place, not to be skeptical of the Nuremberg Principles. Tell that to Backward Baby Bush. If we'd threatened to bomb Riyadh instead of Kabul and Baghdad, Prince Abdullah would have delivered Osama's head to the White House service entrance in a FedEx truck within 48 hours. And we would now be negotiating peacefully to take over the Saudi oilfields instead of destroying the oilfields in Iraq and providing the impetus for terrorists to build bases in Pakistan.
You do what you think is right and you have to live with the consequences even if they are nightmares for the rest of your life. But they will not include prosecution for war crimes.
The Nuremberg Principles are just about all we have for ethical guidance in war. They can't stop you from being haunted but they can stop you from going to prison.
War itself is unethical: it's an attempt by two parties who disagree over something to kill each other, even though only one can be right and they're probably both wrong. This is not an ethical way to resolve a dispute because it will never reveal who, if anyone, is right.
So to apply ethical principles once a war has started is a little late. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be discussed, for damage control.
These are textbook examples of war crimes and any lack of resolve to prosecute them is purely political, not ethical. Politics, like war, is devoid of ethics.
I'm not sure how rape can ever be a weapon. Perhaps it's like nuking Hiroshima, telling your enemy, "Stop fighting now or we'll obliterate your entire civilization."
If that was really their motivation, then it's extortion. We don't want to fight a long battle with high casualties in order to defeat you, so we're going to keep raping all of your women until you lay down your arms. If that doesn't work then we'll destroy all of your farmland with Napalm and bounce your babies on our bayonets.
Because its a choice they freely make. If you don't like it, do your time honorably and get out. Taking with you the considerable benefits of being an honorably discharged veteran.
Nuremburg was a witch hunt. As you clearly pointed out the allies nuked two cities full of civilians and got away with it, while a hand full of axis officers were killed for following orders. The rules for Nuremburg were written after the war and before the trials. That would be like catching a man who flipped off a cop, then deciding the penalty for flipping off a cop should be life in prison, then trying the guy for flipping off the cop. It was that blatantly biased.
Our soldiers are getting killed in those places because we lack the will to do what it would take to stop the enemy from fighting us.
We went there and started shooting and bombing. I agree we made them our enemies and our presence there continues to make that so. You can't blame Bush about that anymore because his is out of the game now.
Its a mess and the kids in Afghanistan seem to know how to shoot as well as our Marines do.
Armed men under stress tend to treat civilians poorly. Its not an excuse for what they did but it is a good reason to send them home if they are not needed there anymore.
I blame Bush for getting us into unnecessary wars and I blame Obama for keeping us in them.
You must have been robbed of emotions. Seriously I love the military but joining it wasn't an easy choice & for many it's a last resort. Also considerable benefits of being honorably discharged? I wouldn't use the word considerable. Improving, yes. But considerable.. no. Unless you mean the context of considerable to be "yeah, i'll consider joining for the college money that i'm more than likely to get upon leaving the military."
So, total war as terrorism.
Don't be ridiculous. We're talking about a world that features massive nuclear arsenals. An "all out attack with no holds barred" would amount to the instantaneous obliteration of a huge proportion of the target population, and leave their country uninhabitable for generations. I.e., genocide. There would be no "mercy" or "surrender" in such a war: what you are suggesting is victory through annihilation.
Moreover, this take on warfare ignores the political ramifications vis-a-vis the rest of the world, which are frequently at least as important as the disposition of the parties to the war. I.e., it would create more problems than it would resolve. To go down that road, you'd have to be prepared to pursue a permanent policy of world domination through genocidal terror.
Interpretted charitably, your program would require never fighting any war unless faced with credible threat of genocide (i.e., incoming nuclear assault).
I have emotions but I'm not a basket case over every significant decision I make in my life.
I joined the US Marine Corps and later the Army National Guard to help pay for college. I knew I would be trained to kill people and I would have to follow the orders of the people who were given authority over me. Its a fairly straightforward job where they pay you okay, feed you regularly, and give you a decent place to live as well as good healthcare. The military is a fairly good place to work most of the time these days compared to most other employers. The main obvious drawback is war which is what the military is there for. Would you get a job at burger king and cry yourself to sleep about having to make whoppers every day? That is why I don't understand why people join the military and complain about war when they have to go. The military was not there to pay for all of my college up to half way through grad school. It was not there to pay for several of my children to be born. It was not there for me to get several VA home loans. It wasn't even there for me to get free healthcare at the VA when I was a poor college student. The military is and was there to further US interests around the world at the point of a gun. The price for all the benefits I received was holding that gun, if only for a time. I have no illusions about that. Neither should you so long as you agree to hold that gun.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
The military deliberately recruits people who are barely out of childhood and, therefore, very naive. It's not unreasonable to expect them to develop a more nuanced perception of the world, including a conscience.
Everyone has a duty to the entire human race and its civilization that trumps their duty to the pathetic little strip of land they call their "country." If their so-called "superiors" order them to subordinate that higher duty to the lower one, they have an obligation to tell the assholes to go fuck themselves.
Thank you Quadrophonics for coming in. The position he and RO took basically says that the only distinction between a terrorist and a soldier is that one is sanctioned by an organization - a state - that the UN recognizes, but there is absolutely no moral difference.
I truly doubt they believe this.
The military recruits young and healthy people. They don't want old people with bad teeth and back problems. Something about being fit enough to fight should the occasion arise.
If an 18 year old adult lacks a conscience or holds a naive view of the world then its parents did not do their job. There are much worse places than the military for a simpleton adult to find themselves.
I must say, your last paragraph made me chuckle. If it weren't for those armed people and their quaint notions of their "country" you would probably be in a Chinese or Soviet prison camp. Your high minded sentiment falls flat in the pragmatic world of international politics.
I'd suggest you seek a therapist for your mental illness.
What are you a Care Bear?
Anyone who say's joining the army is like breathing air, and then compares it to mcdonalds.. then says high interest, unforgiving morgages funded by the va is all peachy is definitely mental.