There are many people who are opposed to the death penalty, but see no problem with the killing of enemy combatants in wartime.
As far as I can tell, the main difference between the two things is that an enemy combatant on the battlefield is on the loose and capable of using force in attack or defense, whereas a convicted prisoner on death row is essentially defenseless. It can’t be a matter of “It is wrong to take life,” because in both circumstances the ISIS terrorist who gets killed by an American laser-guided bomb is just as dead as the convicted criminal who gets killed by lethal injection.
Now, if that describes your views - namely, that you oppose the death penalty, but are OK with killing an enemy combatant in warfare - then is your real objection to the death penalty not so much that a person is getting killed, but rather, that a *defenseless *person is getting killed?
What makes this issue even murkier is the fact that most people on death row have been tried and convicted of something - typically, homicide - whereas an enemy combatant might not even have actually committed an act of violence yet, prior to getting killed by that American laser-guided bomb.
Have you considered crooks who get shot by cops mid-felony?
Plenty of people who object to capital punishment will okay gunning down some idiot who’s still waving his pistol around in between crimes – adding that, once he’s been disarmed and locked in a cell, it’d be wrong to then put him in front of a firing squad, because he’s pretty much been incapacitated.
But so long as he’s, like, a public enemy who hasn’t yet been incapacitated? Bang.
Yes, a bit of a conundrum, isn’t it? For me, it’s a case of someone now being in the care of the authorities. The same way we respect the lives of enemy combatants who we capture or who surrender.
I think I fit your description. Most reasonable people accept a right to self-defense proportional to the threat. As such, if you are on an open battlefield, lethal force is justified in most instances. This assumes of course that you have a legitimate right to be on the battlefield to begin with, which makes me all sorts of conflicted about recent US actions.
My main objections to the death penalty are as follows (in no particular order):
I think it takes a toll on those we hire to administer it
We have an inequitable distribution of incarceration, and by extension, death sentences
we have, to my satisfaction, had it demonstrated that innocents (read: innocent of the specific charges agianst them) have been put to death under the US system
death as punishment is cathartic for some, but I am not convinced it is the most effective deterrent or punishment
My opposition to the death penalty is primarily due to the possibility of getting it wrong. I don’t have a particularly strong objection to murderers and terrorists being executed, but since there’s a non-zero possibility of convicting and executing a person who didn’t do it, and since I don’t believe that the death penalty is any more just than life imprisonment (and therefore adds no value as compared to life imprisonment, in my view), then I oppose it.
Killing on the battlefield is an entirely different scenario with different considerations.
I think this falls into the category of ‘you does the bestest you can’. Much of the reason the US spends so much on it’s military is to try and mitigate civilian collateral damage. Smart bombs and smart missiles and finer and finer control systems. In the end, though, you are going to have some level of civilian causalities, especially when the people who are fighting against you choose, many times deliberately, to fight in and amongst civilians.
The difference between fighting enemy combatants in wartime and executing a prisoner is one of risk and control. You don’t NEED to execute the prisoner to remove his or her risk to society, since they are already in prison and under the control of the government. The soldier or insurgent in the field is, of course, not under control and is a greater risk…that’s why you are fighting them after all.
Yes, but there are no consequences for not using the death penalty, while there may be serious and even catastrophic consequences for refraining from using deadly force on the battlefield, in certain circumstances.
Or to put it another way, the death penalty has lots of cons and no pros (since I don’t believe it’s any more of a just punishment than life imprisonment), while deadly force on the battlefield has some pros to go with the cons, in some circumstances.
Or to put it yet another way, we have a viable alternative to the death penalty: life imprisonment. If anyone has a viable alternative to killing enemy combatants in war, I’d love to hear it.
When your life or the lives of others are threatened, you have a right, if not a duty, to respond to those threats with lethal force. A disarmed, handcuffed man in orange coveralls is not a threat to anyone.
This question is about as complicated as “If soldiers can kill people during wartime, why is murder illegal?”
So what? Do you feel that taking a position that the state should not have the right to legally execute prisoners is inconsistent with a position that the state has the right to use lethal force to protect it’s sovereignty?
Even a belief that its ok to kill enemy combatants in wartime is not straightforward when you take into account all the circumstances and nuances of modern warfare.
The main difference between war and the legal system is that war, by definition, is not a controlled environment.
Well, yeah, kinda there can be. People in prison kill other people in prison now and then. And (very rarely) people escape from prison.
But, mostly, you’re quite right. A guy who is in prison is not a very great threat to society, whereas the enemy artillery battery on Hill 19 can be a damn huge threat to your helicopter-mobile platoon, 175 yards away.
For the record I’m from the UK where the death penalty was abolished some time ago.
While I am generally against the idea of state sponsored killing I can think of one pro.
If I were imprisoned with no possibility of parole and would spend the rest (say 30+) years of my life in a single room I would rather be executed (as painlessly as possible). In many respects this could be considered to be more humane.
I see a lot of issues with this OP. By “enemy combatant” do you mean someone wearing the uniform of a military service that your country has decided is the enemy? Because he or she doesn’t have to be a combatant and doesn’t have to be on a battlefield to be a legitimate target. They certainly don’t have to be given any opportunity to defend themselves, and shooting an oblivious and unarmed soldier in the back is just as legal as shooting one who’s armed and firing back.
ISIS – I don’t even know, but I doubt their members even have a uniform which makes them unambiguously a members rather than just some person in the wrong place at the wring time. And they control some territory, but many are in areas that can’t be construed as battlefields at all.
So I would question the distinctions you’re trying to draw between combatants and inmates.
To me, there are only two distinctions. One is that prisoners sentenced to death have gone through some kind of formal proceeding to determine their guilt, though how legitimate any given proceeding might be is arguable. The other is the degree of latitude available to the “executioners” to carry out the killing. The military can drop a bomb on a “combatant” and kill those close by at the same time, but that’s not true of sentenced prisoners.
Sure; solitary confinement is, if not torture, at least renting an upstairs room from it. It’s horrific and should be banned in any nation claiming to be civilized.
But the rest of my life in genpop, with access to a library and education and human interaction? I’d take that over death, me.
I believe both to be immoral and criminal. However, one is completely unnecessary and easily avoidable, while the other is sometimes a necessary evil.
Mind you, when war does become necessary, there needs to be a level of transparency and accountability to the people that most countries, including the US, does not provide.
How many times do we hear stories about US drones killing people on foreign soil, usually with “collateral damage” also knows as killing innocent human beings. And how many of those times has the government let the people know why? On what grounds did we kill everyone at an entire wedding party?
I don’t know, I’ll never know, and neither will you. We can’t have a government for the peopl by the people if there is no transparency or accountability.
Hell, several instances were even superficial investigative reporting has been done after the fact, we sometimes find that we’ve killed people on incredibly flimsy intel, or even by error, with no accountability to be had.
I personally don’t think that’s how civilized nations should conduct war.