# Attacking soldiers are murderers & get the death penalty-Sustainable ethical posture? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 12, 2006, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053 "2006-03-12T17:08:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/1 "2006-03-12T17:08:36Z")
Lets say Nation X is in armed conflict with US military forces and tells the US that if any of it’s soldiers are captured they will treated as incipient murderers and summarily tried and killed by lethal injection within one week of their capture. In an absolute sense the US soldiers are there to kill Nation X’s resisting military forces and topple the current regime. Does Nation X have an ethical right of self defense in treating invading soldiers as murderers? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/2 "2006-03-12T17:17:52Z")
[QUOTE=astro] Lets say Nation X is in armed conflict with US military forces and tells the US that if any of it’s soldiers are captured they will treated as incipient murderers and summarily tried and killed by lethal injection within one week of their capture. [/quote] Under the Geneva conventions, soldiers in uniform are not liable unless they commit war crimes. It doesn’t matter which side is the aggressor. The U.S. would have been in violation of the Geneva conventions if it had just summarily executed every Japanese soldier it captured, for example. > [@](#): > > In an absolute sense the US soldiers are there to kill Nation X’s resisting military forces and topple the current regime. Does Nation X have an ethical right of self defense in treating invading soldiers as murderers? You can’t be serious. First of all, there is an elected government in Iraq, duly elected by a majority of people, which supports the existence of U.S. soldiers on its soil. Second, the insurgency is hardly “Iraq’s resisting military forces”. It’s a collection of people fighting for various reasons, not a formal military force. It has little support among the population, and it’s a funny military resistence that focuses attacks on its own citizens who are trying to do things like building power plants and schools. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/3 "2006-03-12T17:17:55Z")
[QUOTE=astro] Lets say Nation X is in armed conflict with US military forces and tells the US that if any of it’s soldiers are captured they will treated as incipient murderers and summarily tried and killed by lethal injection within one week of their capture. In an absolute sense the US soldiers are there to kill Nation X’s resisting military forces and topple the current regime. Does Nation X have an ethical right of self defense in treating invading soldiers as murderers? [/QUOTE] Well, 1. This generally violates the understanding of the laws of war that have existed for centuries. Jus ad bellum (laws of wars) are separate from jus in bello (laws in war.) Soldiers are considered outside the decision makign structure of whether or not to go to war for a reason; because this enables us to distinguish between the soldier and civilian with the hope that, to the greatest extent possible, civilians can be spared war. If you conflate soldiers with the decision makers you blur than distinction. 2. If Nation X abandons such a rule, they expose their own men to similar treatment. 3. If in fact they plan on “summarily trying and executing” soldiers within a week of capture, there’s really no chance at all such men are getting any sort of a fair trial. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/4 "2006-03-12T18:03:24Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] Under the Geneva conventions, soldiers in uniform are not liable unless they commit war crimes. It doesn’t matter which side is the aggressor. The U.S. would have been in violation of the Geneva conventions if it had just summarily executed every Japanese soldier it captured, for example. You can’t be serious. First of all, there is an elected government in Iraq, duly elected by a majority of people, which supports the existence of U.S. soldiers on its soil. Second, the insurgency is hardly “Iraq’s resisting military forces”. It’s a collection of people fighting for various reasons, not a formal military force. It has little support among the population, and it’s a funny military resistance that focuses attacks on its own citizens who are trying to do things like building power plants and schools. [/QUOTE] This question is not (nor is it intended to be) a specific Iraq metaphor. I suppose I could better frame the question in the context of a nation in military conflict with the US that does _not_ make a military/non-military distinction for attacking soldiers, and gives the attacking nation (and by extension the soldiers) a heads up that they will treated as de facto criminals. The soldiers attack, get captured, tried (however long it takes) and are executed. Has the executing nation behaved ethically? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/5 "2006-03-12T18:21:14Z")
Ethically, it appears that would be an argument for an absolute standard on murder - defining that causing another person’s death for any reason would qualify as a crime. Most societies have recognized the principle that under some circumstances one person can kill another person without legally being liable for murder. One of the most common exceptions is a soldier killing an enemy in wartime. One other, slightly less common, exception is acts of capital punishment. So you see where I’m going with this. If a state argues that it’s prohibiting all forms of killing, how can it ethically impose a death penalty? One counter-argument would be that states can and do frequently ignore ethical logic if it doesn’t serve their purpose and simply declare that what they’re doing is right and “different” from other states are doing. But those kinds of unilateral ethic stances usually end up getting resolved on battlefields. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/6 "2006-03-12T18:21:34Z")
Well, this actually happened. In 1862, the Confederacy issued a proclamation (which you can see here) [http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/pow.htm](http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/pow.htm) saying that any white officers leading black soldiers that were captured would be executed, and black soldiers captured would be executed or enslaved. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/7 "2006-03-12T18:40:22Z")
You make that sort of proclamation, all you get is an enemy willing to fight to the death. Generally speaking, you _want_ enemy troops to surrender. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/8 "2006-03-12T23:12:31Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] which supports the existence of U.S. soldiers on its soil. [/quote] Wasn’t there a British survey a while back about how less than 1% of the Iraqis supported the occupation ? There was a BBQ pit thread about it. [QUOTE=Sam Stone] It has little support among the population [/QUOTE] The same report said that there was between 40-65% support for killing foreign troops, depending on where you asked. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2006, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/9 "2006-03-13T00:10:08Z")
BAck to the OP: I’ll presume that counrty X has an army. Thye want the soldiers in that army to follow orders in combat. If they punish enemy soldiers for following orders in combat, they are asserting taht soldiers are responsible for decisions that they don’t make. It wouldn’t make much sense at all. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2006, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/10 "2006-03-13T01:04:02Z")
[QUOTE=Alessan] You make that sort of proclamation, all you get is an enemy willing to fight to the death. Generally speaking, you _want_ enemy troops to surrender. [/QUOTE] And on top of it, any state that tried that would be inviting tit-for-tat retaliation. Not very motivational. Notice, BTW, the OP scenario involves a classic nation-v-nation war between organized states that can issue ultimatums at each other. Partisan groups and the like are not in the sphere of the OP and they are not treated the same under the Laws of War anyway. Y’know, we may need to adopt a rule to avoid mentioning any currently-combatant nation by name in these kinds of hypotheticals. What you all say we **ignore** any attempt to tie this OP to an Iraq debate? ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2006, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/11 "2006-03-13T10:31:47Z")
**Alessan** beat me to it. I recall reading one of the old Chinese strategists advising: “A cornered army will fight twice as fiercely; give them a way out and they will crumble.” Granted, this strategy would be more applicable for the US against another country, IOW, a situation where one side is very likely to win, but wants to do so quickly and relatively painlessly. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2006, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/attacking-soldiers-are-murderers-get-the-death-penalty-sustainable-ethical-posture/348053/12 "2006-03-13T21:41:53Z")
It is exactly correct that the Geneva conventions were explicitly designed not to interfere with the warmaking capabilities of the signatories, otherwise the conventions would never have been adopted. The conventions are supposed to make war less brutal but have no affect on who will win and who will lose the war. There’s generally very little incentive for a country to violate the rules. If you summarily execute captured prisoners you won’t have any prisoners, since enemy troops will fight to the death rather than surrender. And that will make achieving your military objectives more difficult, your soldiers are going to be killed and wounded during these fights that would have been resolved bloodlessly in your favor if you had adhered to the conventions. That means fewer of your soldiers left to fight the war. Treating prisoners humanely increases your odds of winning the war, summary execution and torture of prisoners makes it less likely that you’ll win the war. And after you’ve lost the war you’ll have to deal with a victorious army that you’ve just spent the whole war executing and torturing. It makes your bargaining position much more difficult.